Special Re-Release: Courtney Maum, TOUCH
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[1:19]Thanks so much for being a sponsor. Hi, everybody. Today, I'm re-releasing this episode that
[1:23]I recorded as one of my first episodes with Courtney mom, who's the author of Touch. She has since
[1:28]released costa leg gray, and also before and after the book deal. But her novel touch is really
[1:35]for what's going on now with the coronavirus and the inability to touch each other and what society
[1:41]looks like when that happens. So I really just wanted to re-release this so you could hear
[1:45]about all her forward thinking imaginations that she put into her novel. And this is definitely
[1:52]a great novel to pick up while you're at home because it's so relevant. And also Courtney has been so
[1:58]great about assembling lots of resources for everybody during the COVID-19 crisis. So have a
[2:03]listen, and hopefully this will help you pass your weekend. Today, I'm excited to be with Courtney
[2:08]mom, who is the author of Two Novels Touch, and I am having so much fun here without you.
[2:14]She inked a nonfiction book deal just last month, ironically called After the Book Deal,
[2:18]which will come out in 2019. Touch is about a trend forecaster hired to predict the next trends
[2:24]in technology for a giant tech company. Problems arise when she starts to feel like the next big thing
[2:29]is going to be a return to in-person interactions. Touch was rated one of the NPR's best books of
[2:34]the year, and it was a New York Times editor's choice. The graduate of Brown University, Courtney
[2:39]has published essays in the New York Times and owe the Oprah magazine, and has co-written films
[2:44]that have premiered at Sundance and won awards at Cannes. She has worked as a trend forecaster,
[2:48]a creative brand strategist, a corona for motor in Paris, and a corporate name her for
[2:52]Matt Cosmetics. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Connecticut where she founded
[2:56]the collaborative retreat at the cabins. So welcome, Courtney. Thank you. Thanks for being here.
[3:01]Thank you for having me. So for listeners who haven't read your latest novel Touch, can you tell me
[3:06]a little more about it and how you came up with the idea for it? Sure, I'd be happy to. So touch
[3:10]is my second book, and it is about an American trend forecaster named Sloan Jacobson, who has
[3:17]lived in France for about the past two decades, and she's called on assignment to New York City
[3:24]to work for what's basically a turduck in of Google, Amazon, and Apple, specifically she's
[3:33]tasked with forecasting the next trends in technology. But while she's there, she starts to feel
[3:39]like the next trends in technology are going to be no technology at all of a turn to face-to-face
[3:46]interactions and touch and intimacy. This is problematic because it's against her, her clients,
[3:53]interest, stated interest in her bottom line, and also she has a life partner, a zany French guy
[3:59]who's been going around publishing these op-eds on post-sexuality and the death of penetrative
[4:06]sex, and our fearless heroine finds herself in a little bit of a conundrum. And I came,
[4:13]I came to write touch. It actually came out of as many of my books do a failed attempt to write
[4:21]a different book, which when I showed that draft to my agent, she said, you know, the only thing,
[4:27]she said it nicer than this, but she said the only thing worth holding on to in this book is this
[4:31]woman's job, her job is very interesting. And in that particular rendition of the book,
[4:38]the Sloan character had been a prop stylist specifically for Creighton Barrel. And I had made
[4:44]I was sort of circling around my past where I had worked as a trend forecaster, but I don't know,
[4:51]I hadn't worked up the courage to go there yet. It's a little bit of an abstract occupation
[4:56]that a lot of people don't understand. It's also, I was under a lot of ND in non-disclosure agreements,
[5:03]but I guess this was in 2C 2015. I started thinking of the idea and around that time it was,
[5:12]for me, at least in my social circle, that's when I started noticing that my friends were just
[5:17]everyone was looking at their phone all the time and letting their phone make all the decisions
[5:23]for them. You know, if they were hungry, they'd ask their phone what they should eat and where they should
[5:27]eat. And so I was thinking, well, gosh, I wonder if intuition is something that if you don't
[5:35]practice and if you let it, you know, get rusty, could human beings actually lose their sense of
[5:40]intuition? And I thought about my prop stylist trend forecaster and I thought, well, what could I
[5:47]what could I do with a woman who, you know, makes her living off of her intuitions? What if she starts to
[5:54]what if intuition is an interesting to people anymore? And so slowly I started building the book
[6:00]that would many drafts later have a come touch. Do you feel like you have that same sense of
[6:07]intuition where you can almost predict things that are coming at times? So I mean, so I do
[6:12]sometimes feel that. I mean, I don't think that I'm alone. I think a lot of artists have a little
[6:17]bit of a heightened awareness and certainly novelist or I think they're paying more attention than
[6:24]most people. They're thinking perhaps more than most people about people's motivations and,
[6:31]you know, it's our job to be aware. So yeah, I think maybe I've lived now in the countryside for
[6:38]over a decade. So if I did have a skill, it's distilled a little bit because I'm mostly around
[6:46]trees and squirrels and senior citizens now. I'm not really in the heart of the trends that are
[6:53]happening, but yeah, I mean, is there a little bit? I feel like another big element of touch is
[6:59]the relationship sort of what happens to families after you lose a parent because I felt like
[7:04]that whole dimension was like a whole other part of the book that was super interesting and moving.
[7:09]Yeah, I mean, I think when book first came out, the press was very nice to me, but they focused
[7:16]a lot on the technology aspect. Where in fact, the family struggles and slums present inability
[7:24]to connect with people in her life was for me really at the heart of the book actually because
[7:30]what we're dealing with is someone who's hyper successful, she's well paid, she's respected,
[7:37]but she doesn't have a lot of friends, her relationship with her, you know, I love her, I guess,
[7:44]there's no love in it, you know, there's no sensuality, there's no touch in it, but and a lot of
[7:49]that stems back from the loss of her father because he's, you know, you know, and you know,
[7:57]that's from having children, but when you decide to love completely you make yourself incredibly
[8:01]vulnerable and she really, really loved her father and was when he passed away, she was still
[8:07]young enough that she was just innocent and completely open to the love and didn't really, she
[8:13]she wasn't old enough to have been hurt yet and realized that you can lose people, you know,
[8:18]and so his death was really a pivot in making her the somewhat cold-hearted, untouchable person
[8:29]that we meet when the book opens. Right, because when the book started to have her
[8:34]pegged as the ultimate anti-mom and you've been had her quoted as saying reproduction is a
[8:40]akin to eco-terrorism, and then she called reading short-sighted that she's even helping out
[8:45]with a conference called reproduction with the rekind of background stuff, you know, asking,
[8:51]you know, what will we make when we stop having kids and are the needs of people who for whatever
[8:56]reason decisively remain childless going to be different than those who reproduce? Was it the death
[9:01]of her father that made you want to create a character that didn't want children or did you think
[9:05]that was sort of just a good mechanism for contrasting with? I think it's both really, I mean,
[9:11]I mean, it took me a while to get there, but it really felt like putting her specifically on a task
[9:18]force that was coming up with products for the voluntarily childless, not only made sense in terms of
[9:25]future forecasting because the world is overpopulated, right, so people can choose to have children,
[9:30]they can choose not to, but the idea that, you know, perhaps it's not environmentally the best
[9:37]idea to have more than one or two children, that's something that could be argued, but more,
[9:44]it was really for, I wanted to set up a sterile environment, both literally and figuratively,
[9:51]where consumerism and overconsumption was incredibly heightened as was sort of modern American
[10:00]It is lack of empathy and compassion.
[10:04]So when you read the book,
[10:06]you're exposed to a lot of these brainstorming sessions
[10:08]where they're literally trying to think,
[10:10]well, what can we come up with for people
[10:12]who decide not to have children?
[10:14]What cosmetic products will they need?
[10:16]What kind of furniture?
[10:16]What's our house gonna look like?
[10:18]What's their car gonna look like?
[10:19]Does it have, is it driverless, is it so on and so forth?
[10:23]So the way that they're speaking about the people
[10:26]who are going to be using these products
[10:28]is in a very robotic, cold manner
[10:30]where I do think the minute you invite children
[10:35]into the equation, there's 100,000 different ways to parent,
[10:40]but I think a common denominator,
[10:42]if you're going to try to be a good parent,
[10:44]is a compassion, empathy and ability
[10:48]to be sensitive to other people's feelings.
[10:51]So that was too much kindness for the beginning
[10:55]of the book, I, it was important to have her.
[10:59]And in an element of, yes, to really be,
[11:03]and also, she's 40, she's moving past 40,
[11:08]so there is, she has decided,
[11:11]she's not going to have children,
[11:12]but her in theory, it might not be too late,
[11:17]if she changed her mind.
[11:18]I love doing this story, you had all these 20 somethings
[11:21]talking about what they do with their furniture,
[11:23]versus people with kids,
[11:24]and people with kids, you use your sofa
[11:28]so much more versus just occasionally sitting on them
[11:30]for one, two, three.
[11:30]It's just one.
[11:31]Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking of myself as like,
[11:33]oh my gosh, all the politicians become like a raft
[11:37]and everything is ever used before,
[11:39]everything becomes something else and make it weird.
[11:41]It's funny, yes, because I have friends,
[11:43]I have a lot of friends who are much, much younger,
[11:45]I have some friends who don't have children,
[11:46]and it's so true that I would go to their house
[11:48]and the way that they were setting up,
[11:50]the wine and the cheese was so specifically like,
[11:53]who decided to use this coffee table
[11:55]and it's gonna be used for this one thing
[11:57]where some of our coffee tables just,
[12:00]we don't even have one anymore
[12:01]because it became a hazard.
[12:04]Even what you said about the fridge,
[12:06]which everything, that's how people with kids open the fridge,
[12:09]open and close, open and close, open and close,
[12:11]all the time, and you don't have to think so much
[12:13]about the supplies you need,
[12:15]whereas people don't have kids.
[12:16]Yeah, our home is my, you know, every so often,
[12:19]they're like, oh, I wonder what's in the fridge.
[12:21]It's so funny that you notice
[12:22]the fridge thing because I think I had to edit out.
[12:24]I was a little obsessed with this fridge thing
[12:27]because I was writing it at a time
[12:30]where my husband and I live in Litchfield County now,
[12:33]but for 10 years we lived in the Berkshires
[12:35]in a town called Sandersfield,
[12:37]it's pretty hard to get more remote.
[12:39]Like the post office was up for sale.
[12:41]I mean, there's not a lot going on
[12:43]and we lived a half an hour from anything
[12:46]you wanted a cup of coffee, gas,
[12:48]it's a half hour in the car.
[12:50]And when we had our chat, you know,
[12:52]we lived in the sort of Lucy Goosey Manor.
[12:55]We rarely had, like the fridge wasn't ever stocked enough,
[12:58]but we just like pasta, we're both artists,
[13:00]it didn't care.
[13:02]Then we had my daughter and started to really,
[13:04]really matter, you know,
[13:05]if my husband would go out and forget something
[13:08]from the grocery list, the milk,
[13:09]if he forgot the milk, it became this tremendous thing
[13:13]like that would be an hour out of my day
[13:15]or his back and forth to get this,
[13:18]the fridge became like, what was in the fridge became,
[13:20]it became so, so important.
[13:23]So yeah, I have a whole fridge obsession.
[13:26]I feel like as soon as I go on to people's homes
[13:28]and soon I know you want to go,
[13:30]yeah, it's like being in the grocery line
[13:31]with someone.
[13:32]It's a very intimate thing.
[13:33]You've seen how they feed themselves
[13:35]and if they have a family.
[13:37]Even now, like when I go to my mom's house
[13:38]and the first thing I do is open the fridge now,
[13:40]it's like so empty and sad in there.
[13:41]Oh, you know?
[13:42]They're like, mom, you're no food.
[13:44]Right?
[13:45]Because we're like, yeah, it's stuck.
[13:46]Yeah, you know, obviously very lucky,
[13:48]you know, they were all in this like world
[13:49]that we can afford to get everything else.
[13:51]But, you know, we have like things just flying.
[13:54]You can barely pack it all in.
[13:55]Yeah, no, I mean, some people have more than one fridge.
[13:57]Yeah, exactly.
[13:58]Anyway, so I'm not so keep going on with it.
[13:59]Oh, my God, I'm glad that you're so smart.
[14:02]I'm ready to do this last year.
[14:03]Speaking of moms, for a book about someone
[14:06]who didn't want to be a mom,
[14:07]I feel like you did such a great job
[14:08]of painting a picture of Sloan's mother
[14:10]and that dynamic between them.
[14:12]And I love the scene when Sloan makes up
[14:14]and her mother's house in the morning
[14:15]after she spent the night there for the first time in years.
[14:18]And she's, her mom wants to make her pancakes
[14:21]and she's like, no, don't do it.
[14:22]And then it says, Sloan looked at her mother's
[14:24]mismatched eyes and her wild hair
[14:26]and the bathroom with the tea stains.
[14:28]And she wanted to fall down on the floor with her
[14:30]and lean against the cupboards and let everything out.
[14:32]Tell her mother that her partner preferred rubbing up
[14:34]against strangers and touching her in bed.
[14:36]Tell her that there was a darkness in her decision
[14:38]to work for mammoth.
[14:39]But instead, she just stood there at the fork
[14:40]between the way she wanted her relationship
[14:42]with her mother to be like, and the way it actually was.
[14:45]And then she says toaster probably be easier.
[14:47]Oh, yeah.
[14:48]That makes me really sad.
[14:49]I mean, I know I wrote it, but it still likes,
[14:53]I still am very touched by that.
[14:54]Yeah, the mother-in-law relationship
[14:57]is another really key motor, I think, to this story.
[15:01]And I mean, what you have is someone,
[15:04]her mom is the exact opposite of Sloan.
[15:08]She gives of herself readily, generously,
[15:13]she self-effaces a little bit.
[15:15]She really, Sloan has a sister and her sister's
[15:18]about to have her third child.
[15:19]So her mother's joy is really taking care of other people.
[15:23]And she went into overdrive when her husband died
[15:28]and Sloan was unable, she's just not selfless that way.
[15:33]And so she's somewhat repelled by her mother's
[15:38]emotional generosity, as well as probably
[15:42]being jealous of it, because she just,
[15:46]that means a beautiful thing to see.
[15:48]And she just doesn't have it and doesn't
[15:51]know how to communicate with a woman.
[15:55]I mean, it's just so clear in all of their scenes
[15:58]how much the mother just wants Sloan to just stop.
[16:03]You know, and touch her, just hug.
[16:07]Like you just read, she's like, gosh, if we could just embrace.
[16:10]But it's not as easy as it sounds.
[16:13]And I mean, definitely, their relationship
[16:15]was inspired by my own relationship with my mom,
[16:19]who is that kind of woman who just gives and gives and gives.
[16:22]And another commonality is that Sloan and her mother
[16:27]completely struggle from a lack of, I don't want to not
[16:31]respect the understanding regarding what the other person does.
[16:35]So Sloan's not a mother.
[16:37]She's not a very maternal person.
[16:40]So you can't really understand where her mother's coming from,
[16:43]whereas, you know, even Sloan's colleagues
[16:45]don't really understand what she does.
[16:47]Her mother doesn't really understand.
[16:48]She doesn't speak any other languages.
[16:50]She has a daughter who lives in France.
[16:52]And that is very similar to me and my mother
[16:55]when my touch had already come out.
[16:57]And I had an op-ed in the New York Times.
[17:01]And my mom called me and she was like,
[17:05]did you know you have an article in the New York Times?
[17:07]Like, how did that happen?
[17:09]Do you know someone there?
[17:11]And I was, you know, I was like, god,
[17:13]this is just a really big divide.
[17:15]Do I know someone that like, no, I've written two books.
[17:18]And this is sort of how it works.
[17:19]And I didn't know whether to be offended or just spell it out
[17:22]for her, you know?
[17:24]And so that's, yeah, that's a personal struggle.
[17:28]I have with my mother.
[17:29]I feel like my other daughter relationships are complicated.
[17:33]Yes, I sometimes I look at my two little girls now.
[17:35]And I'm like, I don't know how is this going to evolve?
[17:37]Oh, I joke with my husband.
[17:40]I'm like, I think our daughter won't go to boarding
[17:42]school for high school, but I will.
[17:44]Because I can feel this coming.
[17:46]She's really stopped.
[17:47]She's very much like I was.
[17:48]And I hope against hope that I'm wrong,
[17:51]that I foresee some cloudy weather.
[17:55]Right.
[17:57]You start the book with Sloan being so deprived of physical
[18:00]contact that she'll jump on the crowded subway just to kill
[18:03]people again.
[18:04]And you know, at the end, you know, not to give anything away,
[18:07]you have her sort of engaged in this very passionate
[18:09]physical relationship, like the complete opposite
[18:11]from the beginning.
[18:12]Were you trying to illustrate what's lost with the advent
[18:15]of technology or just sort of hit home on this sort of universal
[18:19]need for touch human contact?
[18:22]Yeah, more of this book, I interviewed a professional
[18:25]Kudler named Samantha Hess out in Portland.
[18:28]And she's, she's actually one of the people who started
[18:32]this movement of a professional touch professional hugging.
[18:37]And she was telling me that even for people who didn't buy
[18:42]into this whole thing of, you know, professional embraces,
[18:46]all it took was an actual hug from, you know, total
[18:50]stranger, normally to just get them crying, sobbing.
[18:54]Just a simple touch.
[18:56]They didn't need to explain why they were there or what the
[19:00]problem was or how confusing it seemed to need to solve the
[19:04]obstacles between them and solving their problem.
[19:06]Just just the embrace was so comforting that people just
[19:12]sobbed.
[19:13]She says most people come to her office just to cry and someone
[19:17]else's arms.
[19:18]And so it was very important to me at a certain point in the
[19:23]story that we allow Sloan a little bit of that unlocking
[19:28]that physical unlocking as well.
[19:30]You know, when she's finally touched, she's basically frigid.
[19:34]I mean, her partner doesn't not only does not touch her,
[19:39]but he's pronounced to the New York Times that he's never
[19:42]going to.
[19:42]He's quite proud of his post-sexuality.
[19:46]And she's so busy.
[19:47]She's pretending to be fine with it, but she's not fine with it.
[19:49]You know, and she's completely isolated.
[19:52]Even her closest friend is her driverless car.
[19:55]You know, she has no touch in her life.
[19:58]And so when she finally has...
[20:00]It's a little, it's just the floodgator are completely open.
[20:04]And then you know, it's fun to have a little sex in it.
[20:07]And it's on my book, I think it's fun.
[20:10]I like to write those scenes.
[20:12]I said that the wind's the favorite back in the end.
[20:14]Oh, yes, yes, yeah, perfect.
[20:16]It's been.
[20:17]I know I'm honed in a lot on touch
[20:18]because I really loved it and just finished it.
[20:21]It's like stirred up so many different thoughts.
[20:23]I think that was really great.
[20:24]But can you tell me a little more generally
[20:26]about your path and how you became a novelist
[20:28]and all the different works in the film?
[20:30]Oh, everything.
[20:32]Yeah, I'm your father.
[20:33]Well, let's see.
[20:34]I think I have somewhat non-typical path
[20:37]in that I didn't study English in college.
[20:40]I went to Brown University and I studied comparative literature
[20:44]and French translation.
[20:46]And then I moved to Paris after college
[20:49]and was working sort of under the table as a translator.
[20:53]And then my official job as a party promoter
[20:56]for Corona Extra, which it's a long story.
[21:00]I don't even really like that beer,
[21:02]but it was a way to get a visa.
[21:04]And actually it was a great job for a writer
[21:06]because I worked at night.
[21:07]So I wrote all day and I had been working at that time.
[21:11]So I never got an MFA or anything.
[21:12]I just always love to write and read
[21:14]and was working on a short story,
[21:17]which was not short.
[21:19]It was just getting longer and longer.
[21:21]And it was getting, it was at 30,000 words
[21:23]and showed it to a girlfriend.
[21:24]And she said, I think this is a novel.
[21:27]And what was great because I didn't have a formal background
[21:31]and writing was that there was no fear.
[21:34]I was just not in my mind to think about,
[21:37]I don't know, agents or competition or anything.
[21:40]I thought, oh, it's a no, okay, well, I'll keep going.
[21:42]You know, and I was writing the book
[21:45]that would eventually become my first book.
[21:46]I'm having so much fun here without you.
[21:48]I wrote it very quickly and actually I got an agent
[21:52]and an editor very quickly,
[21:53]but I was like a little girl.
[21:55]And I was, I was 23 or something
[21:57]and just didn't know enough about the way the world works.
[22:02]And so I was doing everything,
[22:04]I was revising all summer long for this editor.
[22:06]And I was doing everything without a contract
[22:08]and long story short by the time I got back to New York
[22:11]and was supposed to meet this editor.
[22:13]And she quit her job and the project was just completely orphaned.
[22:18]And it actually wasn't published for 10 more years.
[22:21]And it was not that I wrote the book from scratch
[22:24]10 years later.
[22:25]So, you know, in those 10 years,
[22:29]I mean, in the interim,
[22:30]I really wasn't much part of the literary community.
[22:33]I work in branding on the side
[22:35]and kind of kept my word chops up that,
[22:39]you know, writing copy and I work as a nameer
[22:42]and my husband's French.
[22:44]I don't know, we started writing films together
[22:46]and then what, and then I don't know.
[22:50]After 10 years, I really reached a point
[22:51]where I thought, okay, well, I'm not,
[22:53]I thought I would have a novel,
[22:55]like, I guess I'll be a published person
[22:58]in a different way, maybe it'll be little pamphlets
[23:01]or these funny pieces online.
[23:02]And I kind of took it as a,
[23:06]and tried to feel kind of free and joyful about it.
[23:08]So I started publishing a lot of weird stuff,
[23:11]whatever I felt like doing.
[23:13]And, you know, agent started reading
[23:16]and I got this agent and she was like,
[23:20]she must have a novel, you know, and I,
[23:23]oh, it's in a box.
[23:24]Anyway, long story short, I wrote it over completely
[23:27]from scratch and yeah, that was,
[23:29]I am having so much fun here without you.
[23:32]Cheers.
[23:33]Yeah, I see it there.
[23:33]It's okay.
[23:35]And can you tell me more about the cabins?
[23:37]How does this retreat that you?
[23:39]So the cabins, I don't,
[23:40]I'm not, my husband, Diego Ungaro is a filmmaker
[23:43]and we used to collaborate together more
[23:45]than we do now.
[23:46]We would write screenplays together
[23:48]and our films would go on the film festival circuit
[23:51]and I would go to these film festivals
[23:53]and I would meet only filmmakers,
[23:55]not even screenwriters, just filmmakers.
[23:57]And then I would go the next weekend
[24:00]to a writer's festival of a writer's conference
[24:02]and I would meet only writers
[24:04]and I would go back and forth and think,
[24:06]oh, you know, this short filmmaker should really meet
[24:10]this short story writer.
[24:12]I wish I had a way to get everyone together
[24:15]and I started thinking of a program
[24:17]where it would be interdisciplinary
[24:19]and people could not just network
[24:21]but learn from each other
[24:22]but just literally as just so overwhelming
[24:25]but where am I gonna do this?
[24:26]How am I gonna do it?
[24:27]But when we moved from,
[24:29]so I got a web domain for it.
[24:31]I mean, this idea was in the back of my mind for years
[24:33]but when we moved to Norfolk, Connecticut,
[24:36]it's an old town that historically has a lot of,
[24:39]you know, great families that lived there
[24:41]and they had these estates that roll down
[24:44]to this beautiful lake and they have lake cabins
[24:46]little by little I started meeting all these people
[24:48]who had spare houses and spare cabins
[24:51]and I started thinking, wow, I've got my places
[24:56]so I could do this here, you know,
[24:57]there's enough room and by that point in my life
[24:59]I had enough contacts I felt.
[25:01]So the cabins I founded it in 2016
[25:05]and it's an interdisciplinary collaborative retreat
[25:09]based on skill sharing and across disciplines
[25:13]so we keep it low cost that students are the teachers
[25:17]so everyone comes as of a caliber
[25:19]where they can teach an hour long masterclass
[25:21]in the subject of their choice
[25:24]and the only caveat is you can't get up there
[25:26]and read your own work.
[25:28]We do a sort of closing evening
[25:30]where everyone gets to get up and perform their own.
[25:34]Well, like a talent show, basically
[25:35]but that's only on the fourth day and up until then
[25:37]it's really about learning from other people
[25:39]and being a little bit more humble and open-minded
[25:42]and so it's like an intellectual summer camp
[25:45]really you could have a weekend full of,
[25:47]you could have a dance class followed by a class in carpentry
[25:51]or stone engraving or something that seems boring
[25:55]but so important like writing for, you know, grants,
[25:58]grant applications or something like that
[26:00]how many people go at one day?
[26:02]So it's very small, we keep it like nine people maximum
[26:06]so it's usually between six and nine,
[26:08]we form the group by it's symbiotic.
[26:11]You know, like who can learn from who can learn from who?
[26:14]So it's really neat.
[26:15]So there's some applications are open.
[26:17]So July 1st and it'll be our fourth session.
[26:21]So it's exciting.
[26:22]Yeah, it's awesome.
[26:23]Yeah, it's the cabins retreat.com.
[26:26]Cabins retreat.com everybody write that down.
[26:29]So aside from, so you have a nonfiction book coming out
[26:32]after the book deal.
[26:33]So it's going to be two books in one actually
[26:37]and since we last book and the first part of the book
[26:40]will be before the book deal.
[26:42]And then hopefully you'll,
[26:43]I think this is how we're going to do it.
[26:44]You'll flip it over and you'll have after the book deal.
[26:47]So it'll be a cool resource that people can graduate from.
[26:52]You know, it'll be like a giant giant.
[26:54]And if you don't get a book deal,
[26:55]you can just tear off half of it
[26:56]and throw it in the crystal.
[26:57]Absolutely.
[26:58]Yeah, it's funny.
[26:59]Yeah, it's.
[27:01]And you said you're working on two other novels.
[27:03]Yes, I have a novel coming out next summer 2019
[27:07]called Coast of Lengueh.
[27:09]And then another book I'm working on right now
[27:12]that I can't say the title of because superstitious.
[27:14]OK.
[27:16]Can you say what either of those books
[27:17]are going to be about?
[27:18]Yeah, Coast of Lengueh is a big departure for me.
[27:23]It's a little bit more experimental.
[27:25]It's about the surrealist artists
[27:28]who were exiled from Europe during World War II,
[27:32]heavily inspired by the story of Peggy Guggenheim,
[27:35]who the American art heirs who helped a lot of European
[27:40]intellectuals and artists escape Europe
[27:43]before Hitler invaded in real life.
[27:45]They went to New York.
[27:46]And my book, they go to the jungle in Mexico.
[27:49]And the whole book is written in a diary format
[27:53]from Peggy Guggenheim's daughter, a 15-year-old daughter.
[27:58]Wow.
[27:58]That sounds really interesting.
[27:59]Yeah.
[28:00]Yeah.
[28:00]That's great.
[28:01]And the other book, you know what I'm talking about?
[28:03]Oh, no, it's OK.
[28:04]I can tell.
[28:04]It's all right.
[28:05]Don't worry about it.
[28:05]Yeah, I'm too keen to be there.
[28:07]OK.
[28:08]That's all right.
[28:09]I will say there's going to be another portrait
[28:11]of a troubled couplehood.
[28:13]OK.
[28:13]We'll leave it at that.
[28:14]I won't write.
[28:16]In terms of your writing and how you do your best work
[28:18]and everything, what are your, what's your go-to schedule
[28:21]or having a child care?
[28:23]It all comes out of quality childcare
[28:24]in my child being healthy.
[28:26]If those things are in tax, then I can.
[28:28]How did your daughter?
[28:29]She's four.
[28:30]She's four.
[28:31]Well, thankfully, I have a very supportive part
[28:34]owner who actually does a lot of the bulk of the child
[28:37]hearing.
[28:37]So perfect week in a perfect world looks like we get our
[28:42]daughter on the bus at 817.
[28:45]And then from 830 to 2, I will write more or less.
[28:51]I mean, you know, you have there's some emailing.
[28:54]There's some lunch.
[28:56]But I really tried it to write.
[28:58]And then by 2, I'm sort of tapped out
[29:00]and I try to do something nice for myself
[29:02]that involves exercise.
[29:04]And then that's it, you know, the days got to go get my daughter.
[29:08]And then I try to be a mom and a wife and not work
[29:13]once she's home and pretty strict about if I'm not careful
[29:17]with myself, I'll just work myself to death.
[29:19]So I try to set up these, you know, don't work any evenings
[29:23]if I don't work on the weekends.
[29:24]And I find I really I need that.
[29:27]And that when Monday comes around, I'm actually excited
[29:30]to work again or rather than feeling like, oh my God,
[29:33]I'm just working myself into the grave.
[29:36]So it tries to work really hard when I'm working.
[29:39]And then not work.
[29:40]That's great.
[29:42]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors out there?
[29:45]Of course, I have a whole book coming out about that.
[29:48]Yeah.
[29:49]Well, a couple.
[29:49]Yeah, no, yeah, how long do you have?
[29:52]No, no, I have to have two pieces of advice and one is craft
[29:56]and one is just practical.
[29:57]The practical piece of advice is do not go.
[30:00]into the writing life expecting to support yourself
[30:03]by writing, be smart about it,
[30:05]and get a job, preferably with a whole health insurance,
[30:08]something that you don't hate
[30:09]where you're not gonna come home,
[30:10]a miserable shell of a person,
[30:12]or if you have someone to support you, fantastic.
[30:16]And don't look down on, you know,
[30:18]wait for saying or bartending,
[30:19]or babysitting is actually,
[30:21]the hourly rate is really good compared to,
[30:23]you'll make more babysitting than you do as an adjunct.
[30:26]So, you know, don't knock these like simple,
[30:29]or what comes off as sort of hourly,
[30:31]I don't know, occupations.
[30:32]And then craft wise don't let perfectionism get
[30:38]in your way.
[30:39]I speak to a lot of people who are just so,
[30:42]they feel like what's on the screen needs to be perfect.
[30:47]And what's coming out of the printer needs to be perfect
[30:49]and the first draft is the one
[30:51]that's gonna get them the book deal.
[30:52]And, you know, you shouldn't,
[30:54]it's good to push yourself obviously
[30:56]and try to come up with something beautiful
[30:57]that you're proud of.
[30:58]But just know that ultimately,
[31:00]if you keep working really hard,
[31:01]you'll have a support team around you at some point,
[31:04]you know, hopefully you'll have an editor,
[31:07]an agent, some writing friends,
[31:09]and these people will help you get it just right.
[31:13]But if you don't get the words on the page,
[31:15]you're never gonna get there.
[31:16]So don't, for so long, no one's gonna see your work.
[31:20]So you might as well put stuff on the page
[31:22]and have fun and don't sit there not writing
[31:25]because you're ashamed.
[31:27]It's not gonna be great.
[31:28]It's not gonna be great.
[31:29]The first draft is terrible.
[31:30]It's terrible.
[31:33]Awesome.
[31:34]Well, thank you so much.
[31:35]Thanks for coming in.
[31:36]I'm excited for what you have coming down the pike.
[31:39]Thank you.
[31:39]And I do.
[31:40]I'm very pleased to be here.
[31:41]Thank you for having me.
[31:42]Of course.
[31:43]Thank you.
[31:44]You've been listening to Momstone
[31:45]have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[31:47]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[31:49]at zibiowans.com to get more updates
[31:52]about episodes like these and also lots of live events.
[31:55]Thanks again to Kaiuchi for sponsoring this episode
[31:58]of Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[32:00]You can follow me on Instagram at momstonehavetime2readbooks.
[32:04]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[32:06]for the Sound Editing.
[32:08]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[32:09]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[32:12]Thanks for listening.
[32:13]You could always email me at zibiowans.com.