Nicole Kear, FOREVERLAND
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[0:12]Moms don't have time to read books. Please sign up for my newsletter at ziviowens.com
[0:17]for updates on podcast guests and lots of live events.
[0:21]Hi everybody. Thanks so much for listening. I hope that you have had a chance to check out
[0:26]We Found Time. We found time.com my new online magazine. We have such amazing essays out this week
[0:32]and I really hope you'll take the time to go read them or send them to friends or
[0:36]see what you think and I'd love your feedback if you have any thoughts.
[0:39]All the essays on We Found Time are written by authors who have been on this podcast already.
[0:44]So it's original content and I think it's really awesome. So I really hope you'll check it out.
[0:50]This week's sponsor is Nini's Treats, which is my in-laws crumb cake business and it is so good
[0:56]and they had gone on hiatus for a little while and they're back in business now stronger than ever
[1:01]and it's the best crumb cake in all different flavors and you can order it on
[1:06]goldbellie.com and their brand is called Nini's Treats. Nini is my husband's house grandmother
[1:12]and E and E, a bostrophe S. Nini's treats and you just search it on gold belly and they have
[1:18]this amazing black and white crumb cake and a regular crumb cake and anyway it's really delicious
[1:23]and for everybody who is at home and going stir crazy it will ship really quickly and fresh
[1:30]and you can freeze it if you don't eat it right away. So anyway Nini's Treats.com or
[1:36]go buy it on goldbellie.com. I'm here today with Nicole C. Keer who is the author of the middle
[1:41]grade novel Foreverland, the memoir Now I See You, which was on many magazines best of lists,
[1:46]the chapter series, the fixed friends and the startup squad. Her essays have appeared in the
[1:50]modern love column of The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, Parents, Salon, Have Post and More.
[1:55]She teaches nonfiction writing at Columbia University and the NYU School of Professional Studies.
[2:00]A New York native, she received a BA from Yale University, an MA from Columbia,
[2:04]and a red nose from the San Francisco School of Circuits. She currently lives in Brooklyn with
[2:09]her husband and three children. Welcome to Cole. Thanks so much for coming on mom's time to read
[2:14]books. Thank you for having me. We are joined today by my two little guys who are six and five
[2:20]and we'll see how they do but they read your book Foreverland with me or I read it out loud to them.
[2:25]So I thought it'd be nice if they could hear us talk. So welcome. Can you please tell listeners
[2:32]what Foreverland is about? Yes, Foreverland is about Margaret, who's a shy, anxious, eccentric 12-year-old
[2:41]who's having trouble at home and she runs away to live in an amusement park called Foreverland.
[2:49]And when she gets there, she meets Jamie, who is also a runaway, though her polar opposite,
[2:56]and she and she forage a friendship and have an exciting adventure, which is also a transformative
[3:06]journey of self-discovery for both of them. Perfect fit. Well done. So how did you come up with this
[3:14]plot? What made you want to write this book? Well, when my son, my son, I have three kids,
[3:20]my son's 15, my daughter's, oh, just turned 13 this week. Yeah. And then my little one is seven.
[3:26]And when my son was 12, he went through this period of being really nostalgic for his childhood,
[3:34]which was very funny to me because he was still a kid. He was only 12, but he kept expressing
[3:41]this feeling of like, I don't want to get any older. I don't want to have responsibilities.
[3:47]I miss being a kid. And I actually, he actually helped me come up with the idea
[3:54]because he said, you should write a book about a kid that doesn't want to grow up. And
[3:59]I thought of Peter Pan, who's the proverbial boy who never grew up. And my son said,
[4:04]you should have it set in an amusement park because those are the most fun places. And that sort of
[4:11]put the idea in motion. So was it supposed to be like a play on Never Neverland? Yeah, it was.
[4:18]I did not. Yes. Yes. It's a very, very loose. I mean, it's inspired by Peter Pan, but the
[4:27]retelling is so loose and modern as to it's the kind of thing that I think maybe readers
[4:32]will dawn on them towards the end or maybe it won't, maybe just in the retelling. But it is
[4:38]definitely loose. But I did have the inspiration of, you know, your traditional coming of age
[4:44]story and what it means to, you know, grow up and put childish things behind you and how that
[4:50]can be really difficult. So Margaret runs away in part because her parents will mostly because her
[4:55]parents are separating. And you have this very sad image of the father's suitcase by the door
[5:00]and how she gets so upset. She ends up kicking the suitcase. And it kind of brought back for me,
[5:04]I remember the day that my dad moved out and all of his bags were like going through the lobby
[5:09]out into cars. And it was so sad. And it brought that all back when I thought about that suitcase that
[5:14]you mentioned like throughout the book. Anyway, it just like brought it all up for me. And I was
[5:18]thinking, okay, well, she was so mad that she just ran away. And I was 14. She's 12. Did you ever
[5:23]have a feeling like that where suddenly things were just spiraling out of your control, something bad
[5:27]that you didn't want to be happening was happening. And you just wanted to like run away from it all.
[5:31]Oh, I've had that feeling so many times. I mean, I think I'm having it right now.
[5:39]Yeah, sometimes it's on her daily basis. I was going to say kids, you know, I have so little control
[5:45]over things. I mean, they are so it's easy for kids. I think to feel powerless because things
[5:51]happen to them. And then, you know, they can react, but they have so little agency over what happens.
[5:58]And, you know, divorce, I think is one of those things, but there are so many things that happen
[6:02]to us as kids. And also, but also for adults, obviously. So yeah, I think there've been plenty of
[6:10]things that have happened where I've felt like, boy, there's nothing I can do to change this.
[6:17]And yeah, I think that the fantasy of running away is cool because you have total control,
[6:23]like especially as a child. I think that's why so many coming of age classics start with running
[6:29]away because that's where an adventure will begin. It's the time when kids have total control.
[6:36]They don't have to go to school. They don't have to do their homework. They don't have to do
[6:38]chores. They don't have to, you know, listen to their parents. So it's exciting.
[6:44]What did you guys think of Foreverland? I really liked it. What do you like about it?
[6:48]Because it was very good. And there are a lot of good parts in it.
[6:56]Okay, so now you have to answer what was a good part in Foreverland?
[6:59]Like the part when Jamie said, you know the only, there's not only one star in the sky.
[7:05]Oh, you like that part? Oh, that's awesome. I love that. That I added in sort of late.
[7:13]That was in late stages of revision that I added that in.
[7:17]Any other parts? Not really. I think so.
[7:20]Do you remember anything he liked about Foreverland? No, I don't love anything.
[7:25]Great.
[7:28]Perfect. Thank you for being a guest interviewer.
[7:32]All right, well one out of two isn't that, right?
[7:35]But what would you want to happen if there was another, if there was a sequel?
[7:38]Can you think of anything?
[7:39]Because I really wanted a sequel. I wanted to keep following Margaret and Jamie to see what
[7:44]would happen to them afterwards. Wouldn't you, my friend? Yeah, maybe they could go to like,
[7:49]not so Foreverland. Every so often land.
[7:53]I keep you laughing occasionally.
[7:56]Just for at a glance.
[7:58]You wrote in the book. You said fun fact places that aren't scary get scary in a hurry when you
[8:02]are alone in the dark. Which definitely relates with to you guys, right?
[8:07]Yeah, it's the dark still scary.
[8:10]And I was like, I'm scared. I'm I'm alone in my bed at night.
[8:14]Yeah. So are all of my children, which is why my seven-year-old particularly
[8:20]finds our way into my bed most night.
[8:23]I guess it's like, I think I need a little to a thing for this.
[8:25]I think why are you even king sized bed?
[8:30]But joking aside, you've had this eye diagnosis and disease. I don't know the
[8:35]proper word. Eye condition. Both. Okay, that you've been coping with for some time,
[8:41]and that you wrote a home memoir about and lots of amazing essays about how to cope with a degenerative
[8:46]eye disease, which you sort of like what's going on in the book, which you ultimately don't have
[8:51]that much control over. Right. And I thought that this quote about things being scary in the dark
[8:56]might also relate to that. Yes. Like my digging. Yes. Well, the great thing about vision loss and blindness
[9:04]is that everything's a metaphor. Right. You really can't say anything without it being a metaphor,
[9:11]which really as a writer is very elegant and works nicely. But yeah, I was diagnosed with the
[9:16]degenerative retinal disease, retinitis pigmentosa when I was 19. So in the middle of college,
[9:23]and I did, I wrote a memoir called Now I See You, which is all about sort of coming to terms with
[9:29]that diagnosis over the course of many years and really primarily when I became a mom. And yeah,
[9:38]so things get scary in the dark. I'm sure that's related in some sense. You know, nobody likes to
[9:46]think about encroaching darkness of any kind, especially the literal kind. And it is yeah, it's
[9:52]definitely scary, but also I genuinely that happens to me at night. And I think to so many of us
[10:00]where you go through your day having somewhat of a grip
[10:03]on yourself and your anxieties.
[10:05]And then as soon as you lie down,
[10:07]all of the things that's just like a flood
[10:11]of preoccupation that seem overwhelming.
[10:15]So, and that definitely happens to all of my kids too.
[10:19]So I think there's something about nighttime
[10:21]that does that, it sort of unlocks your worst imaginings.
[10:26]And I thought that happens to Margaret
[10:29]when she's having a sleepover in the haunted house.
[10:31]And she's an anxious girl by nature.
[10:33]So, I thought that would be a likely thing
[10:36]that would happen to someone in her position.
[10:39]I feel like things in the night
[10:41]I have to literally say to myself,
[10:42]like, this will not feel like a big deal tomorrow.
[10:44]It's not feel as big a deal,
[10:46]like it's big a deal tomorrow.
[10:48]Hold on, one second.
[10:49]Welcome back.
[10:50]Yay, I'm Jack.
[10:51]I'm Jack.
[10:52]I've got brief buzz while I kicked my kids out of the room
[10:53]because that was really hard.
[10:55]But I'm glad they got their two cents in there.
[10:59]We were talking about being a mom
[11:01]and going through your own issues
[11:03]and coping with all of that
[11:04]and things that I found very interesting,
[11:06]but didn't want to talk about it for them anyway.
[11:08]When you, well, let's back up for one second.
[11:11]When you found out you had the degenerative retinal disease,
[11:14]you decided to live your life in a totally different way.
[11:17]And you went off and you joined the circus school
[11:19]and did lots of different things.
[11:22]Tell me about that.
[11:22]And if this needs to sort of appreciate every moment of life
[11:27]and do everything you can still linger to do.
[11:31]Yes.
[11:31]So I was 19 when I got my diagnosis
[11:35]and it was, it's a gradual but progressive disease.
[11:39]So basically the doctor explained first.
[11:42]I would lose my nighttime vision,
[11:45]which had already begun.
[11:46]It was what sent me to the doctor in the first place
[11:49]because I couldn't see those stars at night.
[11:51]And then he said, I'd lose my peripheral vision
[11:54]and then ultimately my central acuity.
[11:57]And they didn't know how long it would take,
[11:59]but there was no cure was the main takeaway,
[12:02]which is such an unusual thing to think about in this day
[12:06]and age in terms of, you know, no treatment at all,
[12:09]no cure, nothing.
[12:11]And it's different now, you know, it's been a few years.
[12:13]There still is no reliable treatment,
[12:15]but there's a lot more sort of promising avenues.
[12:18]Nonetheless, I was 19 years old in the doctor's office
[12:21]by myself and he was telling me,
[12:24]you're gonna go blind.
[12:25]There's literally nothing you can do at all.
[12:29]Good luck.
[12:30]And so it was a very complicated summer.
[12:35]I really didn't know how to deal with that.
[12:37]I was, I had just finished my sophomore year at Yale
[12:40]and I really felt like the world was my oyster.
[12:44]I was sort of like poised to do anything I wanted to do.
[12:47]And then I had never met a blind or visually impaired
[12:50]person before at all.
[12:52]So I didn't even understand what that meant practically,
[12:57]like, you know, could you have kids?
[12:59]I don't know.
[13:00]I'd never seen any besides Stevie Wonder, you know,
[13:03]like that was the only reference I had.
[13:05]And so the more I thought about it,
[13:08]the more sort of panic-stricken I became
[13:11]because I had a total absence of information or support.
[13:15]So I basically decided, you know what?
[13:18]This is a gradual disease.
[13:19]It's not gonna happen for a while.
[13:21]I'm just gonna sort of forget all about it
[13:25]because like 10 years from now, like,
[13:27]who knows if I'll even be alive 10 years.
[13:29]Plus, I'll be super old.
[13:30]I'll be 30.
[13:31]Yeah.
[13:33]Like, whatever those things.
[13:34]One quality of life to 30 year olds have anyway.
[13:38]So I sort of, that's where I began to sink into
[13:42]a kind of accidental denial.
[13:44]But the thing that really did stick with me
[13:47]was this idea of,
[13:49]well, my vision now has an expiration date.
[13:52]I'm not gonna have vision forever.
[13:55]So I better use it while I can.
[13:58]If there's things I wanna see,
[14:00]I better not, you know, hit the snooze button.
[14:03]I should absolutely see everything I wanna see right now.
[14:07]And it did make me start to say yes instead of no
[14:12]to things that I might have perhaps exercised
[14:15]better judgment and declined the invitation.
[14:18]That I just thought is really an hour and ever.
[14:20]So yes, this was the car paid deal part of my life.
[14:25]And I am really glad that I had that because it,
[14:30]I think I was so young when it happened, 19 that I feel
[14:33]I kind of maybe changed the kind of person
[14:37]that I would become.
[14:39]I was by nature very sensible, I think,
[14:43]and cautious and because of my prognosis,
[14:47]I really sort of had to override that
[14:50]and become more kind of grab life by the horns
[14:54]and, you know, climb every mountain.
[14:56]And I do think, I mean, you can't maintain
[14:59]that level of car paid deal.
[15:00]It's exhausting, you know.
[15:04]But I do think it still stays with me.
[15:06]Absolutely not 24 hours a day,
[15:09]but I will have moments where I will think like,
[15:13]wow, this is so beautiful.
[15:16]This flower or by usually it's my kids,
[15:20]like, look at this, like that I can see the hole
[15:24]that her tooth left when her tooth fell out.
[15:27]And it sounds really cheesy,
[15:29]but it does make me remember to linger a little bit
[15:33]and sort of take that in and, you know,
[15:35]take that photograph in my head.
[15:38]Uh-oh, it's cheesy.
[15:40]It's not.
[15:41]I warned you.
[15:42]No, it's a good reminder for everybody to slow down
[15:44]and appreciate the empty spot in the mountain, too.
[15:48]It's so cute.
[15:49]It is such a cute, empty spot.
[15:51]You know, and then the big teeth came in.
[15:52]They're so, like, un attractive
[15:53]and then you have, like, worth the donsha.
[15:54]So anyway, that moment is like, I'm not saying, right.
[15:57]Did you just, out of curiosity,
[15:59]is there like a family history of this
[16:00]or was it completely random?
[16:01]No, there's no family history.
[16:04]It's just spontaneous mutation.
[16:07]So, yes, random.
[16:09]Wow.
[16:09]Well, it sounds like you've been coping with it
[16:12]like incredibly well.
[16:13]I mean, you know, a sense of humor.
[16:14]You do crazy things, like, you know, become a clown
[16:17]and whatever else and you work it up far.
[16:20]And, you know, I mean, it's like, you just,
[16:22]it's awesome.
[16:23]It's just inspiring and awesome.
[16:25]Yeah, I try to, I mean, the thing about vision loss
[16:30]and I've been very lucky
[16:31]because it has been very slow and gradual,
[16:34]which has given me the time to sort of adapt.
[16:38]But I really try not to let it stop me
[16:43]even when I feel, even when my reaction is,
[16:46]oh, this is gonna be inconvenient
[16:50]or this is gonna be difficult
[16:52]or I really don't know how I'm gonna do this.
[16:56]I try to, if it's something I really want to do
[16:59]to just say, I'll figure it out.
[17:01]And that is what I did this sort of towards the end
[17:03]of my memoir is about me choosing to have my third child
[17:06]with her tooth hole with her adorable tooth hole.
[17:09]And that was a really hard decision
[17:11]because by then I had lost a lot of vision
[17:13]and I could see sort of the impact
[17:15]it was gonna have on me and my parenting,
[17:18]it was very scary.
[17:19]But ultimately, and I was very lucky
[17:22]because my husband was sort of totally on board
[17:25]and really leaving it up to me and trusting me.
[17:28]And ultimately I thought, you know,
[17:30]I feel like I can do this right now
[17:33]and I don't know what the future holds,
[17:35]but neither does anybody if we're being honest.
[17:39]So I have to sort of trust that we'll figure it out.
[17:43]And that has been my sort of method.
[17:47]Sometimes it's a terrible method
[17:49]because sometimes I find myself in situations
[17:51]where I'm like, oh my God, I do not know.
[17:55]I have not figured it out and this is a mess.
[17:59]But usually, you know, usually I manage.
[18:03]And how are you writing throughout?
[18:04]So you've written so many books now.
[18:06]You have the Six of Friends series.
[18:08]You have the memoir, you have Foreverland,
[18:10]you have the Startup Squad.
[18:12]When are you doing all this?
[18:13]How are you doing all this?
[18:14]Is this what you do full-time?
[18:15]Like, yes, I'm mainly right.
[18:17]And then I also teach writing at NYU School of Professional Studies
[18:22]and I teach at the Columbia MFA program as an adjunct.
[18:25]So I mean, the great thing about being visually impaired
[18:29]in 2020 is accessibility is so easy.
[18:34]And Foreverland, and I just have a Mac computer
[18:37]which has the same settings that anybody's Mac computer has.
[18:41]And you probably wouldn't even know it.
[18:43]It's just buried there.
[18:44]And I can magnify it as much as I want.
[18:48]And it's super easy and convenient.
[18:51]So yeah, and I have a Kindle where I do my reading.
[18:54]I'm a big audiobook listener,
[18:57]like a sort of junkie of audiobooks.
[19:01]So because of all this various technology,
[19:05]not only am I able to do all the writing and the reading,
[19:08]but I'm able to do it really, you know,
[19:12]with just great facility and efficiently.
[19:15]So yeah, I'm glad to be living.
[19:19]Technology drives me crazy, especially as a parent.
[19:22]I'm not a big fan of it always,
[19:24]but the flip side of it is it enables me
[19:27]to do incredible things.
[19:29]So yeah, so I guess I'll keep the technology.
[19:32]And do you ever dictate when you're writing?
[19:34]I don't.
[19:35]I mean, just because it's not how I've done it, you know,
[19:39]and writing is so much a force of habit,
[19:41]I imagine that I certainly could, you know,
[19:43]that's the thing about it, the one advantage
[19:46]that I tell this to, you know,
[19:48]people who've read my memoir,
[19:49]especially younger people and kids
[19:51]who have similar diagnoses,
[19:53]I try to impart to them the upside of dealing
[19:58]with the degenerative disease, whatever it is.
[20:00]as or any kind of personal challenge really is that you begin to understand and believe
[20:05]in your own ability to adapt, which is so tremendous.
[20:10]And it's something that if you don't have to adapt all the time, like you don't, obviously.
[20:14]But if you're continually losing vision and so you have to change the way you're doing
[20:20]things continually, you start to believe no matter what happens, I'll be able to reconfigure
[20:27]things so that I'll adapt to the new way.
[20:29]So I don't dictate now, but if I needed to, I would just do it.
[20:36]I guess, although from what I know about dictating to you, I don't know what the books
[20:42]would end up being.
[20:43]Very interesting.
[20:44]Like maybe more like James Joyce, then I am right now, maybe they would have to be
[20:52]like a different program.
[20:53]I mean, I'm sure there is, but you could not.
[20:56]Yeah, they have some better programs than Siri, I think.
[21:00]So sitting here with you, you would not know you were visually impaired in any way.
[21:05]I mean, you don't give that away.
[21:07]You don't, does it ever impact the way somebody might perceive you?
[21:12]Yeah, it's funny.
[21:13]And that's why I was able to be in denial for so long.
[21:17]And that's sort of, I mean, it's been a bit of a challenge actually because a lot of
[21:22]my memoir is about passing, you know, passing first sighted.
[21:26]And it's because I read as fully sighted to most people that I've been loath to sort
[21:33]of correct that because it just mainly because it feels awkward and weird and then it involves
[21:38]a whole conversation and then people, when you tell people you're losing your vision,
[21:42]they get depressed and then you have to cheer them up.
[21:44]And you know, so for most casual interactions, it's not worth it to do the whole explanation.
[21:50]I look perfectly sighted and I get by well enough.
[21:54]But then, you know, there's all sorts of weird things that come up like the main thing
[21:59]is I have no peripheral vision.
[22:01]So I'm continue really bumping into people and really in a way that must seem to them
[22:08]very perplexing because I look totally fine and then I don't see somebody right in front
[22:13]of me, you know, like dogs and kids especially because they fall below my frame of vision.
[22:19]So it does get me into situations where people are like really annoyed and angry at me
[22:24]because they don't understand.
[22:25]I don't have, I do have a white game and I carry it with me.
[22:28]I use it at night more and it probably, people have told me it would be really helpful
[22:34]to use during the day mostly as a marker for other people so that they would know I'm
[22:40]visually impaired.
[22:41]So you don't want them to know.
[22:43]Well, that's the tricky thing is sort of like it's, you know, and that's what my book
[22:48]really explores too is it's, the mobility cane is this huge kind of hurdle I had because
[22:53]it really was such a marker for me, you know, like this is blind when you use the cane.
[23:00]And I think I just had so much, you know, hang ups about sort of accepting that because
[23:06]my disease was so slow, it wasn't something I had to accept.
[23:11]And because I can get by well enough in all sorts of situations, it's difficult to
[23:16]know when I need it and when it would be helpful even as just an indication to other people,
[23:22]like I didn't, I'm not actually like a self-obsessed narcissist that I bumped into, I literally
[23:28]just couldn't see you.
[23:29]So that's where it gets me into trouble sometimes or, you know, not being able to, you
[23:36]know, my central vision, I just had this surgery, this cataract surgery, me and a bunch
[23:41]of octogenerians, but I did develop cataract because of my eye condition.
[23:47]And that has helped tremendously with my acuity.
[23:50]But previous to that, I literally could not sign anything, you know, forms, permissions
[23:57]lips, sign up sheets and so I'll go to my kid's school and sign something and it will
[24:03]be like not in the right spot.
[24:07]And next thing, you know, you've volunteered yourself as like head of the PTA and you're
[24:10]like, wait, I didn't mean to sign that.
[24:13]I have gone into so many like kerfles like that, registering my daughter at the pediatrician
[24:19]and I said I was her adoptive mother by accident and just like all sorts of false information
[24:24]and then people don't easily or readily understand like why would you make such a mistake.
[24:30]So it's tough actually.
[24:33]It's complicated reading as perfectly cited when you have like pretty significant vision
[24:38]loss because it's hard for people to understand.
[24:40]Wow.
[24:41]And then you have just like regular parenting issues on top of everything.
[24:44]I mean, those are mainly the kind that I have, the only, the vision loss parenting
[24:49]issue, the only one I'm dealing with now is my daughter thinking she can wear makeup because
[24:54]she's not allowed to wear makeup.
[24:56]And so she'll just see how much can, you know, fly under, she doesn't really, because
[25:02]she doesn't see through my eyes, she doesn't really know what I'm able to see or not.
[25:06]But it always makes me laugh because I'm always catching her and she's like, how did
[25:11]you see?
[25:13]So I like to like cultivate this era of mystique around myself as having like a sixth sense.
[25:18]Love it.
[25:19]Yeah.
[25:20]So what are you working on now?
[25:22]Are you doing another book?
[25:23]Are you?
[25:24]Yeah, I'm just a few months into starting work on another middle grade book, which I'm
[25:31]very excited about.
[25:32]I really like writing middle grade.
[25:35]I mean, I've written for a Delta written for, you know, elementary school kids and now
[25:39]for Riverland is middle grade.
[25:41]So I enjoy it all, but middle grade particularly is a place that I really like to write
[25:47]because it is, you know, being 12 years old, you know, the onset of puberty and coming
[25:55]of age, moving from childhood to adolescence.
[25:59]It is such a rich time emotionally development, mentally.
[26:05]And I just feel like it also has such a long tradition of great books and my favorite
[26:10]books by Judy Bloom and the classics too, you know, Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz.
[26:15]All of those books I really loved as a child.
[26:18]They tended to be middle grade books and plus I have, you know, I have a daughter who's
[26:23]is that age now and I think it's a remarkable period of transformation, sometimes exhausting
[26:30]for parents, but good for literature.
[26:32]Well, I feel like by the time things get published because it's so slow, she'll be like
[26:37]in college.
[26:38]You should really start writing college books, you know.
[26:40]That's right.
[26:41]Well, my youngest will probably be reading middle grade by them.
[26:45]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[26:48]My main advice would be to just write, write, write.
[26:54]I mean, I guess that's maybe pretty simple advice, but just writing every day, sometimes
[27:01]it just feels like there's never enough time to do the writing that I want to do, writing
[27:09]a book takes so long and doing other things and working on multiple books at one time.
[27:15]You can feel very frustrating, but I try to just force myself to write a few pages every
[27:21]day.
[27:22]And then the remarkable thing is that after a few months, you know, you're like, oh my God,
[27:28]look at how many pages I have, I have 150 pages.
[27:32]Like I have a book and it's incredible because it feels like you never had any time and
[27:37]that if you keep pushing it forward a little by little, you know, voila, you have a
[27:42]whole book.
[27:43]Love it.
[27:44]Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and for dealing with my kids and for sharing
[27:48]all of your personal experience with vision loss and being so open and thank you.
[27:54]Yes.
[27:55]Thank you so much for having me.
[27:56]That's pleasure.
[27:57]You've been listening to moms and have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[28:01]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com to get more updates about episodes
[28:06]like these and also lots of live events.
[28:09]Thanks so much for listening today.
[28:11]And please go check out we found time.com.
[28:14]We found time.com for this week's new five essays from authors who have been in the
[28:19]podcast and also go to goldbelly.com and order some ninnies treats crumb kicks.
[28:25]They are so good and you will not regret it, although your clothes might be a little
[28:29]tight next week.
[28:31]I hope you all have a great week, but bye, thanks.
[28:33]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books.
[28:37]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing and thank you
[28:42]to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.
[28:46]Thanks for listening.
[28:47]You could always email me at zibiowens.com.
