Andi Buchanan, THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING
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[1:14]And here today with Andrea Buchanan, who goes by the nickname Andy, who is a New York Times
[1:18]best-selling author and we're talking about her books at the beginning of everything,
[1:22]the year I lost my mind and found myself.
[1:25]She's also the author of 10 other books, including The Daring Book for Girls and Mother
[1:29]Shock.
[1:30]Becoming a full-time writer, Andy, was a concert pianist and she currently lives in Philadelphia
[1:35]with her family.
[1:36]Welcome, Andy.
[1:37]Thanks for coming on, Mom.
[1:38]So I have time to read books.
[1:39]I'm so glad to be here.
[1:40]Thanks for being here in person, too.
[1:41]This is so great.
[1:42]Yeah.
[1:43]I know in my pleasure.
[1:44]Your memoir, the beginning of everything, the year I lost my mind and found myself
[1:49]P.S.
[1:50]Great title.
[1:51]Like how can you not want to read a book with the title, tell listeners what it's
[1:54]about and what inspired you to write it.
[1:58]It's a book about a lot of things, but primarily about the year that I experienced a pretty
[2:04]profound health crisis when I had a spontaneous spinal C.S.F. week, which unbeknownst
[2:10]to me is a thing that can happen.
[2:12]C.S.F.
[2:13]Three rows.
[2:14]Three rows.
[2:15]Yeah.
[2:16]So I had a flu, I had a high fever, I had a cough, and I coughed one day, and then unbeknownst
[2:22]to me, that was enough to make a tear in my dura-mata, which is the tough protective membrane
[2:28]that covers the brain and spinal cord, and this tear was large enough for my super spinal
[2:33]fluid to begin leaking out, which is a bad thing.
[2:39]I didn't know that that's what was happening.
[2:41]I had a terrible, terrible headache, I thought maybe I just still had a flu, so maybe
[2:46]had a sinus infection.
[2:47]I saw doctors who told me I had migraines or sinusitis.
[2:51]And then eventually, after going to several doctors and telling them that I had noticed
[2:56]that I felt better when I laid down and worse when I stood up, somebody connected the
[3:01]dots and said, this sounds to me like a CSF leak.
[3:05]But it took me about nine or ten months to find an actual doctor who knew that I definitely
[3:13]had a spontaneous spinal C.S.F leak, knew how to treat it, and knew how to fix it.
[3:19]So for that year, basically, I was mostly bedridden.
[3:25]I had a headache pretty much 24-7.
[3:29]After a while, even lying down didn't make it feel better.
[3:31]I couldn't read, couldn't write, couldn't watch TV, couldn't remember my kid's birthdays,
[3:37]sometimes their names.
[3:38]I was really, really cognitively compromised, and on top of everything I was going through
[3:44]a divorce.
[3:45]So it was a big year for me.
[3:48]At the time, I wasn't really able to think about how any of this felt, because my brain
[3:54]just – I didn't have the capacity for narrative.
[3:57]I – things just happened, and I accepted them, and I really didn't have the brain ability
[4:05]to – or brain power to think any – any more deeply than just what was happening
[4:09]on the surface.
[4:10]So in moments of lucidity after I'd had maybe a steroid injection, or a treatment that
[4:17]helps for a little while, I might have thought about how scary it was, or worried about
[4:22]what my future would look like, but most of the time I was just in too much pain and
[4:25]too out of it to really understand.
[4:28]And it was only when I started to feel better that I started to kind of grapple with
[4:31]those questions, and it was about maybe six months after I had my procedure to fix the
[4:36]leak that I first was able to start writing about it again for real, which was difficult,
[4:44]but also a relief, because when I was very sick, I wasn't sure that I'd be able to
[4:48]write anything ever again, at least not in a book form.
[4:52]Wow.
[4:53]You do such a great job in the book of mixing a lot of the science-y explanations.
[4:59]Like I feel like I learned a lot more about even how the body works, I know, because
[5:03]I'm like not –
[5:04]Yeah.
[5:06]So you wove it in as you were going through this odyssey of figuring out what was wrong
[5:10]with yourself.
[5:11]So if you're only there in the moment trying to figure everything out, how did you
[5:14]go back to write about it in such detail?
[5:17]Because it's almost like you were just, you know, fly on the wall watching this happen
[5:21]to you.
[5:22]Right.
[5:23]How were you able to?
[5:24]I mean, in some ways, that's what I kind of felt like.
[5:27]Like the me that was me was this tiny, tiny speck that was like a fly on the wall watching
[5:32]everything happen.
[5:33]So that's kind of when I was trying to figure out how do I write this book and how do
[5:37]I tell this story.
[5:38]That's kind of where I started.
[5:39]Like I'll just zoom in on these moments and kind of go from there.
[5:43]But I had to do a lot of research on my own life.
[5:45]I had to look at medical notes from doctors visits.
[5:48]I had to look at the CT and MRI and other procedure results and interpret those.
[5:55]I had to look back on emails I'd sent to my family in moments of lucidity, just kind
[5:59]of giving them updates.
[6:00]I had some text messages I'd saved.
[6:03]I even came across when I was trying to look for clues about what exactly I'd experienced.
[6:08]I even came across some writing I tried to do, which was completely nonsensical and I
[6:13]didn't even remember having done it.
[6:15]So yeah, I had to do a bit of investigation.
[6:18]So out of these like breadcrumbs, like I had the dates and times of appointments and, you
[6:23]know, emails, maybe to friends and family about the results and some other things that
[6:27]I, you know, jotted down at the time.
[6:30]I was able to kind of recreate that journey, but it was, it was tricky.
[6:34]And for me, it called into the, into question that the real, what I think is the real
[6:39]fundamental question of memoir anyway, which is who is telling this story and how much
[6:44]of it is true and what is truth and what is the self, you know, who's I that's doing
[6:50]the storytelling.
[6:52]So I talk about that a lot in the book because it's so interesting to me.
[6:55]And because, you know, my experience was very much about that, that questioning of who am
[7:01]I, if I can't think, if I can't use words and I'm a writer, who am I, if I'm not there,
[7:09]who am I?
[7:10]What'd you come off of?
[7:12]Well, it was very, it was kind of, it was an existential crisis.
[7:17]You know, I kind of realized that I had all the long thought that I was the person driving
[7:21]the car and I've been a, a baby and a toddler seat in the back with a pretend steering
[7:25]wheel this whole time, you know, I very much realized it was almost, you know, Buddhist
[7:30]talk about this kind of self and non self.
[7:33]And I had this amazing experience of really being able to observe the self going on without
[7:41]me.
[7:42]And if I hadn't been, you know, in the midst of a terrifying illness and incredible pain,
[7:47]that might have been like a crazy intellectual revelation, but it just felt discombobulating.
[7:55]It felt like groundlessness and, and it wasn't the kind of groundlessness that I could
[7:59]experience.
[8:00]So they got a yoga bat and feeling safe and protected.
[8:01]It was like, this is my life and nothing is what I thought it was.
[8:06]So how does that impact like your day to day life and decisions now?
[8:09]Does it?
[8:10]Well, yeah, I mean, it's hard not to come away from an experience like that and not
[8:15]have it linger.
[8:16]In the very beginning, I felt very raw walking around.
[8:19]I felt like like I'd been, you know, to the moon and back and like nobody could tell
[8:24]from the outside that I was different.
[8:26]But I felt like everything had been, you know, this has been a world kind of shattering
[8:30]event.
[8:31]And I was also really anxious, well, not anxious, but conscious of the fact that this could
[8:36]happen again.
[8:37]Like this wasn't my one thing and now nothing bad will ever happen to me.
[8:41]And so that was a little bit, you know, anxiety provoking.
[8:44]And on the other hand, it was also a little bit of a relief.
[8:47]Like, well, okay, this has been the worst thing that's ever happened to me and I'm okay
[8:51]now.
[8:52]So another thing will probably happen to and I'll probably also be okay.
[8:57]Or maybe not.
[8:58]It's not up to me, you know, so kind of, you know, this process of being kind of vigilant
[9:02]about like, you know, worrying about it, but also being able to kind of relinquish this
[9:07]because it's truly out of my hands.
[9:09]You know, I spent a lot of the book trying to retrace my steps back to the beginning
[9:13]of everything, hence the title, to figure out where was that moment that I could have
[9:17]undone?
[9:18]And I, you know, I had, I had for years even up till this year, I've had, you know, these
[9:23]night terrors where the theme is like, I did, I forgot to do something and now everything
[9:28]is horrible and the world is ending and people I love are dying and, and it's because
[9:32]I didn't do this one thing that could have saved everybody.
[9:35]And that was kind of the theme that I was grappling with when I was ill and in trying
[9:40]to create a narrative around this time, you know, where's that one thing?
[9:45]But there wasn't just one thing.
[9:46]It was the combination of a myriad of things that I could never tease out to one tiny factor
[9:54]factor that I had any control over.
[9:57]And I mean, I think that's true weather.
[10:00]you're grappling with an illness or a life-changing event
[10:04]or even a happy thing, like there isn't
[10:06]the one thing that you have complete control over
[10:09]that can determine whether or not
[10:12]everything's gonna be fine.
[10:13]But yeah, I mean, in the immediate aftermath,
[10:16]I was very careful.
[10:17]I didn't wanna cough, I didn't wanna have a cold,
[10:19]I didn't wanna bend or lift or strain,
[10:22]you know, there's no more yoga for me,
[10:23]there's no more headstands, there's no roller coasters,
[10:26]nothing that is gonna put stress, no weightlifting,
[10:29]nothing that's gonna put stress on my dura
[10:31]because I don't want this to happen again.
[10:33]And every once in a while, even now,
[10:35]I'll carry groceries up the stairs and think like,
[10:37]is this the moment that I'm gonna look back on
[10:39]and think, oh, I shouldn't have done that.
[10:41]But on the other hand, I can't stop living my life,
[10:44]I do have to keep going,
[10:45]because what is the option, other option, you know?
[10:49]Wow, that's a lot to sort of carry around with you
[10:51]every day, I mean, yeah.
[10:53]I also thought it was great in the book,
[10:55]you were a former pianist,
[10:57]professional concert pianist,
[10:59]I don't know the right lingo for what you are,
[11:01]but gifted pianist professionally, whatever.
[11:04]And you use music in a way to find yourself again
[11:07]and to reignite those sort of neural circuits
[11:10]and get back to where you were before
[11:12]when you were teaching yourself how to play the piano
[11:16]and following your old notes and tell me about how
[11:18]the piano kind of helped you find yourself again too.
[11:22]Well, you know, one of the frustrating things
[11:25]about this disorder in the first place
[11:27]is that there's very little research about what patients
[11:30]experiences are like in terms of how long they suffer
[11:32]before they are fixed and then how long the fix works
[11:37]and how long that holds.
[11:38]And there's not any research about kind of what
[11:41]the trajectory is like after you're patched up and repaired,
[11:44]there's just nothing about like once you're okay
[11:48]how to get back to Baseline.
[11:50]Like it's not like you're sent home from the hospital
[11:52]with a list of things like, oh, here's the kinds of things
[11:55]you can do for somebody who's had a brain injury
[11:58]or a concussion, there's nothing like that.
[12:00]So I was kind of a drift when I was recovering from this,
[12:04]not sure if I was actually okay
[12:06]or how long this patch was going to hold
[12:08]or if this was the real fix
[12:10]or if this was just a step towards the real fix.
[12:13]But once I was able to start reading again,
[12:15]I began to read a lot about the experiences of stroke survivors,
[12:19]about the experience of TBI survivors
[12:21]and concussion survivors and a lot about neural plasticity.
[12:24]And when I read about the neuroplasticity research
[12:27]about the brain, what they described when
[12:30]in the context of rehabilitating stroke patients
[12:33]was a focus on very small repetitive movements
[12:37]in the case of stroke patient with a damaged hand
[12:39]or side of the body.
[12:40]And what I read was that this kind of sustained focus
[12:44]practice with very small muscle movements
[12:48]was really integral in creating a kind of plasticity
[12:51]or I guess taking advantage of the plasticity
[12:53]of the brain to create these kind of new neural pathways.
[12:57]And that seems very interesting to me
[12:58]because it reminded me that description
[13:00]of this small muscle movement and focused intent
[13:03]reminded me a lot of practice in piano.
[13:05]And as somebody who had been practicing piano
[13:08]for 30 years, I thought, well, this might be a way
[13:11]for me to help my brain get better.
[13:14]I mean, definitely the top things they say are to sleep
[13:17]and to rest and not do anything to overstart yourself.
[13:22]But after those things, I would say
[13:24]that playing the piano was the number one thing
[13:27]that helped my brain get back to where it was.
[13:30]Because I wasn't able to tolerate sitting very much at first,
[13:33]sitting brought on a pretty bad headache.
[13:35]Once I had been fixed and my leak was gone,
[13:38]I still had these after effects to deal with.
[13:40]So I thought, I'll sit at the piano with a good piano
[13:42]posture that maybe helped me tolerate sitting a little bit.
[13:45]And I'll do some very basic old exercises
[13:48]that'll make me really have to concentrate
[13:50]and just really focus on one finger at a time.
[13:53]And so I started out really small, like five, 10 minutes
[13:56]at a time and working up to maybe half an hour at a time.
[14:00]And then I started being able to go through old repertoire
[14:02]I had and then things that I learned more recently.
[14:06]And so it kind of started to dual purpose.
[14:08]It not only helped, be able to take my brain
[14:11]and kind of have my, this my piano brain training exercise,
[14:15]but it also helped me reconnect to myself
[14:19]because I was going through and playing pieces
[14:23]that I played when I was eight, when I was 10,
[14:25]when I was 13, when I was 17 and at the conservatory,
[14:29]when I was 20 and I was in graduate school,
[14:32]when I was 26 and doing Carnegie Hall recital,
[14:35]like the process of going through that repertoire
[14:39]was not just practical, but also an emotional experience
[14:44]as well because I had really struggled
[14:47]with a sense of who am I, as I said.
[14:49]You know, who am I if I am out of commission
[14:52]and being able to go back and revisit these kind of snapshots
[14:56]of who I have been through my whole life
[14:59]really helped me establish a feeling of a continuity of self
[15:03]so that I could see I've always been there,
[15:05]which was very useful.
[15:06]And you mentioned you were going in,
[15:09]it's obviously a lot in the book,
[15:11]but that you were going through a divorce at the same time.
[15:14]Yes.
[15:15]How did that play into everything?
[15:16]And by the way, I felt like your ex has been given
[15:19]that you were going through a divorce
[15:21]and having been through a divorce myself
[15:23]knowing how that can stir up certain feelings
[15:26]and all the rest.
[15:26]How he was really like helping you quite a bit,
[15:29]especially with all the medical stuff.
[15:31]So I don't know if that was a conscious decision,
[15:34]if that was the question mark truth of a memoir or what,
[15:37]but I don't know, tell me a little more about that relationship.
[15:39]Well, one thing that was really important to me
[15:41]when I was writing this book was I did not want to tell
[15:43]other people's, I mean, obviously I have to tell
[15:46]other people's stories because there's other people in my life
[15:48]and they're not writing this book.
[15:49]I am, but I didn't want to tell other people's stories too much.
[15:54]Or I didn't want my version of somebody else's story
[15:56]to become the official story of record,
[15:59]because I am the only one writing this particular memoir.
[16:02]My ex has been, isn't writing his own, that I know it.
[16:05]So it was very important to me to be fair
[16:09]and it was important to me that whatever I write
[16:12]not contradict anything that perhaps was the story
[16:15]that my children knew about the end of our marriage.
[16:19]But I will say that, you know,
[16:21]that was something that was important to both of us
[16:23]that we, you know, our primary concern was
[16:26]that the children have a positive experience
[16:29]that we be as amicable as possible.
[16:32]And so, but of course, even in the best case scenario,
[16:36]it's still really difficult.
[16:37]So I didn't want us to be a book about my terrible divorce
[16:41]or my stressful divorce or whatever divorce.
[16:43]I wanted that to be a part of the story,
[16:45]but I didn't want to focus everything on it.
[16:46]So I really tried to do my best to be fair
[16:50]and how I told the story.
[16:51]And, you know, luckily he was somebody who was very helpful
[16:57]in connecting me with some medical professionals
[17:00]who were then able to connect me to other professionals
[17:03]who actually knew about what I was dealing with.
[17:06]So for that, I was very grateful.
[17:07]It really reiterates how terrifying the medical field
[17:11]can be if you don't have some sort of an advocate.
[17:14]Oh, right.
[17:14]I mean, I was so grateful when he would swoop in
[17:17]and sort of help you when you were floundering,
[17:19]but I'm thinking like what if she hadn't been married
[17:21]to a doctor?
[17:22]Like what?
[17:23]Right, that, I mean, that's what's so striking about all,
[17:25]and I've spoken to so many patients or former patients
[17:28]suffering with, I don't see a self leak,
[17:30]and it is so difficult to be taken seriously,
[17:35]even for the patients who are men,
[17:36]but especially for the patients who are women.
[17:39]It's so difficult to be taken seriously,
[17:40]especially if you're talking about pain as a woman.
[17:44]And that's made even more difficult by the fact
[17:46]that there are so few experts in this disorder.
[17:49]So it's kind of a cliche story at this point
[17:52]that, you know, the people that this happened to spend
[17:55]a lot of time being disbelieved and misdiagnosed
[17:57]and have to become advocates for themselves at a time
[18:01]when their brains are so compromised,
[18:03]they can't do anything.
[18:05]And it's a, it's symptomatic of a lot of problems
[18:08]with our healthcare system that patients
[18:10]have this burden put on them at a time
[18:12]when they are not in their right mind
[18:15]or their right health, like they don't have the energy
[18:18]or the resources or the connections
[18:21]or the luck to be able to do this kind of thing
[18:24]all the time.
[18:25]It was very frustrating.
[18:25]I spent a lot of time on very confusing phone calls
[18:29]with insurance companies just sobbing.
[18:33]They should have just like a sobbing hotline.
[18:34]They should insurance recovery.
[18:37]Or a patient advocates hotline
[18:39]where somebody else can take all the information
[18:41]and bring it to the people who are gonna, you know,
[18:44]rather than having, they must have something like,
[18:47]they must have, they must have.
[18:48]We'll have to live.
[18:49]I just wanted to read one passage from your book
[18:53]that kind of stuck with me and I thought was beautiful.
[18:55]You said, I'm not performing yet.
[18:57]I am somewhere in between the chaos and the finish.
[19:00]I am recovering.
[19:01]And so I can start anywhere.
[19:02]I don't need to know where the beginning is.
[19:04]I don't have to determine where it might be.
[19:06]I don't have to choose a precise moment
[19:08]when it all started and when it all went wrong
[19:09]because in practicing it doesn't matter.
[19:12]And the more I practice, the more I see that in life
[19:14]it doesn't matter either.
[19:16]I pick a point and work from there
[19:17]and that's the work, that's the point.
[19:19]Every day I work a little longer,
[19:21]increase my stamina, nourish my brain
[19:23]and every day it helps me stop the fetal quest
[19:25]for the answers to everything, which of course
[19:28]could never be located in one perfect precise moment.
[19:30]Every day I continue to start where I am
[19:33]because I'm not performing, not yet.
[19:35]I'm practicing.
[19:36]Wow.
[19:36]That was amazing.
[19:37]It's like, that's the meaning of life right there.
[19:40]Thank you very much Andy.
[19:43]So tell me a little about that passage.
[19:45]I mean, I know we just spoke already
[19:47]about your quest to find the beginning and you know.
[19:50]But, well, this was in a, you know,
[19:52]this was from a chapter where I'm talking
[19:54]about the importance of my piano brain or he have
[19:57]and the benefits of practicing.
[20:00]general. And it's interesting when I used to teach piano, that was primarily what I was teaching
[20:04]people, whether they were little kids or grown-ups, what I was teaching them was how to practice,
[20:09]because you know, you don't know how to practice. And so in reminding myself how to practice by
[20:15]going back to this old stuff and sitting at the piano and really, really trying to work through
[20:20]this stuff in a really focused way, I was really reminded of the work of practice, which
[20:28]has always felt to me like a metaphor for life. And this was pretty on the nose from me,
[20:35]like this notion of, you know, when you approach a piece of music, you can play it all the way
[20:40]through from beginning to end, but if you're really going to practice it, you should start somewhere
[20:44]in the middle. You should start at a place that's hard for you and work on that first. You should
[20:49]pick a small section and just focus in on that. And then later on, you can extrapolate to like how
[20:55]matters to the rest of the piece, but in this moment of practice, you're not working on the whole
[20:59]thing. You're just tackling this one small thing. And starting where you are, or starting with
[21:04]what's hard for you, or starting with your least favorite part, or starting with some place that's
[21:09]all, that's tricky. Like, that's where I was when I was, you know, suffering with this condition,
[21:15]when I was writing this book, which was, yeah, I was going to ask you something right, you could
[21:19]apply this whole section to writing. Yeah. Yeah. So it was a really useful way for me to think about
[21:24]living in my life where too, where I also can't start from the beginning and play it all the way
[21:30]through. And I have to be where I am. And I have to tackle these things that are hard for me and not
[21:34]have answers. And, you know, it's, you only be able to look back later and say, oh, that's how it
[21:40]all fits together. So this is a reminder to myself as much as advice to anybody else. I think
[21:46]tell me a little more about writing the actual book. Like, how long did it take for you to write
[21:50]this book? Where did you sit and write it? Like, did I write it at night or in the morning or just
[21:55]like, this was definitely, this was my 11th book, 12th book. And it was definitely, it was almost
[22:03]like, it was my first book. It was the hardest book I've written for sure. Normally, I'm a very
[22:07]fast writer. I don't usually have to do many drafts. It just, but that was not the case with this book.
[22:14]It was not easy. It was not fun. When I first wrote the book proposal, and that was the first
[22:21]big piece of writing I'd done since my injury or my, the CSF leak. And that I think I wrote
[22:29]maybe about nine months after I had the leak fixed. And it was so exhausting for my brain and
[22:34]so difficult. And I've written a ton of book proposals before, but this was like, so when I
[22:39]sent it off to my agent and then we got an offer for the book, I was like, oh no, I thought I
[22:43]was done. But now I have to write a book. I hadn't thought this through, you know. And so then
[22:49]it was very scared because I thought like, I could barely just do this, you know, 30 page proposal.
[22:53]How am I going to do this whole book? My brain is just not ready for this. And so I kind of put
[22:57]everything off for a little while. I did a lot of mulling. I did a lot of like, I was still very
[23:02]much like having to spend a lot of my day at bed at that point. So I was like, you know, I set
[23:08]my little writing station in bed and I took notes and I did a lot of thinking. And then I
[23:13]eventually decided to do kind of actually what I was talking about in that passage you read,
[23:16]which was to pick a point and zoom in and write about that. And then I picked something else
[23:21]and write about that. And then I kind of made like a CSI murder board on my wall of all these
[23:27]different points that I wanted to write about. And then I clustered those points into bigger
[23:32]post notes that were like more organizing concepts. And in the beginning, it had to be a very
[23:37]visual process like that, which is not normally how I work. Normally I just couldn't fix yourself
[23:42]in my head and I'm good to go. But this I really needed to physically move things around. But the
[23:47]actual writing of it was very difficult. And I checked in with my therapist who I'd seen while I was
[23:53]very ill to kind of talk with her about, you know, just check and see how I was doing and where I
[23:58]was with the book. And I told her like this, you know, normally when I'm writing and I come up with
[24:04]this kind of resistance, like not the kind of resistance where it's like, oh, maybe I should look
[24:08]at this a little bit more. This is like a question that's a begging to be answered. But this kind
[24:11]of like, this is terrible. This is not working. The kind of, these are the kinds of things where
[24:18]if I encountered them in another project, I would say, you know, this project isn't going anywhere.
[24:22]I need to work on something else. But that's not what's happening with this book. It's just
[24:27]everywhere I turn it. As I try to write it, it's really, really hard. And I can't give up on it. But
[24:32]like, I don't know what else to do. And she kind of laughed. And she was like, wait, so you're
[24:36]telling me that a book about a time when you like thought you might die or never recover your
[24:43]bring ability is difficult to write. And I was like, I guess, you know, when you put it that way,
[24:49]she said, you know, she had a good point. She was like, this is, this was a traumatic experience.
[24:54]It is retromtizing to write about it. And she was like, frankly, I'd be concerned if you were
[24:58]like, yeah, it's going great. But it was, it was a challenge because, you know, here I was trying to
[25:04]take everything that had happened, which had happened for me the first time around outside of
[25:08]narrative and put it into a context and give it narrative, like, find a beginning, metal end,
[25:14]which I just kind of come to accept does not exist. And so doing that and writing through it,
[25:22]and even even picking points and starting here and there was really hard because it was the
[25:27]first time I was experiencing it in a full way where I was thinking about what had happened and
[25:36]implications and everything. It wasn't just the moment of feeling being in pain and feeling the
[25:40]experience, but really trying to make a story of it. It was like it was happening all over again.
[25:45]And so it was, it was a challenge. It was definitely the hardest book I've ever written, but I think
[25:50]it's the book I'm most proud of. How long did it take to write? It felt like it took forever, but I
[25:54]realized when I say this that other writers would be like, excuse me, I procrastinated writing
[26:01]it for a month and was just kind of mulling about it. And I started writing it in in full force
[26:06]in like May of 2017 and I turned it in in December, mid-December 2017. So that's not so long to me.
[26:16]It felt like a really long time. Wow, but that's amazing. But I look back on it now. It's like,
[26:21]what? You know, just because I felt like I'd wasted a lot of time agonizing over how difficult
[26:25]it was to write. It doesn't mean I was doing nothing. And it was really, really good. And like
[26:31]from the introduction on, I think I wrote you like, this is the best instruction I've ever read.
[26:36]You're like in it. And it's not just the narrative. It's like the emotional reflection
[26:46]and the science and the visuals. I don't know. It was really good. It was really, should be really
[26:51]proud of it. It was really, really good. Thank you. I'm so glad you liked it. Do you have another book
[26:56]coming? Right now, I'm just kind of in the middle of trying to figure out what's next. So mulling.
[27:02]So. All right, which means you'll have a book in like two months. Oh, I wish the mull to production
[27:08]ratio, right? Do you have any advice to aspiring authors? I mean, there's two things
[27:15]that usually tell people and I definitely had to take my own advice when I was working on this
[27:18]book. One is that the best process is the one that gets your book written. So whatever that is,
[27:24]whether it's a murder board or writing a bed. Like I did most of my writing, although I did
[27:28]sit at a cafe and write sometimes too, or writing it a particular time or whatever it is for you
[27:35]that gets the book done. That's the process. And then the other thing I tell people is that each
[27:40]book that you write teaches you how to write it as you go. And that was probably the hardest
[27:45]bit of my own advice to take with this book because what it taught me was that it was not going
[27:50]to be easy. And it wasn't going to be a fun process. And that even if I couldn't trust in the moment
[27:57]that what I was writing was any good, I just had to keep going. You know, I think sometimes
[28:04]we can get kind of lost in the feeling of like, Oh, I just wrote something really good. You
[28:08]or you wrote 3000 words and you feel great or whatever. But it's writing isn't always like that.
[28:13]You don't always get the high of like, I did it. You know, sometimes it's not until you're
[28:17]looking back on, you know, the book in a galley form where you're like, Oh, wow, this is actually
[28:23]a book. I did it. So yeah, that's that's my advice. Learn to write the book. The book will teach
[28:29]you how to write it as you go. And whatever process works best for you is the best process to write
[28:35]it. It's like when people say about the gym. When's the best time to work out whenever you
[28:40]actually will do it? Yeah. So like when people say like, when's the best time to have kids? Like,
[28:44]there's no good time. You just you do it or you don't. Yeah. Well, thanks, Andy. Thanks for coming
[28:50]in. Thanks for being here in person. Yeah. Thanks for having me. That's really great. Great book.
[28:55]Thank you. It's really great. You've been listening to moms don't have time to read books with
[28:59]zippy Owens. Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zippyowens.com to get more updates
[29:05]about episodes like these and also lots of live events. This episode has been sponsored by the podcast,
[29:10]but that's another story with Will Schwabing. Check it out for insightful stories to find out
[29:15]what notable figures like authors, actresses, and directors have found to be some of the most
[29:21]powerful books in their lives. You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books.
[29:26]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to
[29:31]Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music. Thanks for listening.
[29:36]You could always email me at zippyatzippyowens.com.