J. Courtney Sullivan, FRIENDS AND STRANGERS
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[1:32]I interviewed Jay Courtney Sullivan at the beginning of the pandemic, but I hope that
[1:36]her episode, which I'm releasing today on her publication day, is still relevant.
[1:40]We talked about timeless themes and I just adored talking to her.
[1:44]So if there are any things that seem out of date, that's why.
[1:47]But congratulations to her today on her publication and so glad you've gotten to know her.
[1:51]For those of you who don't know, Jay Courtney Sullivan is the New York Times best-selling
[1:54]author of the novel's commencement, Maine, the engagements, and St. for all occasions,
[1:59]and now, as of today, friends and strangers.
[2:03]Maine was named a best book of the year by Time magazine and a Washington Post notable
[2:06]book for 2011.
[2:07]The engagements was one of people magazine's top 10 books of 2013 and an Irish Times best
[2:13]book of the year.
[2:14]And it seemed to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon and distributed
[2:18]by Fox 2000 and it will be translated into 17 languages.
[2:23]Her latest novel, Saints for All Occasions, was named one of the 10 best books of the year
[2:27]by the Washington Post, a New York Times critics pick for 2017 and a New England book
[2:32]award nominee.
[2:33]Courtney's writing has also appeared in the New York Times book review, The Chicago Tribune,
[2:37]New York magazine Elle, Glamour Alor, Real Simple O, The Oprah Magazine, and many others.
[2:42]She is co-editor with Courtney Martin of the S. anthology click when we knew we were feminists.
[2:47]In 2017, she wrote the four words to the new editions of two of her favorite classic
[2:51]novels and of Green Gables and Little Women.
[2:53]A Massachusetts native, Courtney Nell lives in New York with her husband and two children.
[2:57]And by the way, friends and strangers has been on every most anticipated list and best
[3:01]book of the summer list there basically is for 2020, including mine, which I wrote for
[3:05]Good Morning America.
[3:07]Enjoy the episode.
[3:08]So welcome, Courtney.
[3:09]Thanks for coming on mom's.
[3:10]Don't have time to read books today.
[3:12]Thank you so much for having me.
[3:14]And your book is coming out at the end of June, but we're recording this mid quarantine.
[3:18]So it's via Skype, I just wanted to get that out there to set the stage.
[3:22]Yeah.
[3:23]That's right.
[3:24]Hopefully by June, we will all be out and about and bookstores buying your book.
[3:28]I'm hoping.
[3:29]Oh, yeah.
[3:30]I hope we'll be out and about by then.
[3:32]Yes.
[3:33]Would you mind telling listeners what friends and strangers is about?
[3:37]Sure.
[3:38]So friends and strangers is primarily it's about the relationship between a new mom who's just
[3:46]had her first baby and just left New York City and moved upstate, which she's sort of ambivalent
[3:52]about the move.
[3:53]And she doesn't have any friends where she's living, feels kind of isolated.
[3:57]And she ends up hiring a college senior to babysit her child and the two of them develop
[4:05]a friendship.
[4:06]And it's kind of a complicated friendship, of course, because one of them is the others
[4:10]employer and their lives become very enmeshed in a lot of different ways.
[4:16]But I think, you know, in a larger sense, the book is very much about motherhood and
[4:21]women at different sort of stages of transition in life.
[4:27]You know, I think there are years of our lives where we don't have huge life altering
[4:34]transitional moments.
[4:35]And then there are years of our lives when we have our first baby or we're graduating
[4:39]college and starting out in the world.
[4:41]And each of these women is really kind of out of crossroad.
[4:45]Probably the friendship they develop and the intensity of it would never have occurred
[4:50]at any other point in their lives.
[4:53]But it does.
[4:54]And, you know, it also kind of takes a look at sort of what does it mean to have a safety
[5:00]net?
[5:01]What does it mean in this particular climate in which we live with the gig economy, with
[5:07]massive class divides in this country?
[5:10]What does it mean to be supported in a lot of different ways?
[5:15]Interesting.
[5:16]I like it.
[5:18]I think that's the first time I've described the book to anyone.
[5:21]Well done.
[5:22]I know.
[5:23]I don't know why I put authors on the spot like this.
[5:25]It's so mean of me.
[5:26]But I like a lot into it right away, like, okay, need your elevator pitch.
[5:30]But I actually feel like it's so interesting to hear how everybody responds.
[5:35]And sometimes I feel like I have a different take on the book, sometimes, or like that
[5:39]I would describe it a little differently.
[5:40]Anyway, so thank you for getting through that.
[5:42]Now, now I want to know how you describe it.
[5:45]Oh no, I shouldn't have set myself up like that.
[5:47]No, you did a perfect job.
[5:48]I would never cause you to do it.
[5:51]I have to say reading it.
[5:52]I was like, Courtney is in my brain.
[5:55]These are the things that I thought when I had a baby at home and just you tapped into
[6:01]that feeling so well, from the very beginning of wanting to hate your husband because he's
[6:07]not helping, but you don't really hate your husband to like, how are you going to deal
[6:10]with the baby?
[6:11]What if you do something wrong with the baby stuff, all the fears and all the common
[6:16]feelings, just like boom, you were like right there, like the type a momness and like
[6:22]clinging to your social group and all of it.
[6:24]So how do people who have babies like six weeks older than you are the profits in your
[6:29]life?
[6:30]How old are your, you have, tell me about your family situation and how much this book parallels
[6:37]reality, if at all.
[6:39]So my son is two.
[6:43]He's going to be three in June.
[6:44]So he'll be turning three right when the book comes out.
[6:48]My daughter is 18 months old.
[6:51]So there's 16 months apart.
[6:54]And I started writing this really when my son was, when I was pregnant with him, but really
[6:59]a lot of it when he was brand new in the world.
[7:03]And at that point, you know, the first six months of his life, it was kind of, it was
[7:08]impossible to sit down and write actual chapters.
[7:11]But I was emailing myself, you know, I had my phone in hand for better or worse all the
[7:16]time.
[7:17]And I would, you know, I think, oh, I've got to remember this or I've got to put this
[7:20]into the book because I knew the book I was going to write.
[7:23]And I emailed myself under the subject line babysitter.
[7:28]And then six, when he's six months old, and I'm actually sitting down to start writing
[7:33]the book.
[7:34]And then I came to my email search for the word babysitter and, you know, a hundred emails
[7:38]I've sent to myself in the last six months, pop up with all these little observations,
[7:42]which I otherwise I'm sure would have forgotten most of them three hours after they
[7:47]happened.
[7:48]You know, so I do feel like that part of it, the new mom part of it is so kind of true to
[7:54]my own experience.
[7:56]And also the experiences of my friends, I was very intrigued, you know, finding out,
[8:03]I think kind of welcomed into this world of like moms on Facebook and these groups that
[8:08]they have and they're really intense in a lot of ways, you know, I'm in a few different
[8:12]ones.
[8:13]I'm in one for alumni of my college, I'm in one for moms in my neighborhood.
[8:18]And they all have kind of a different flavor about them.
[8:21]Some are incredibly confessional or women are just saying everything about, you know,
[8:27]they're how they just can't stand their husbands for one more second, you know, or they
[8:31]can't stand their children for one more second.
[8:34]And some of them are more like, what's the best gymnastics class for a two-year-old, you
[8:38]know?
[8:39]So I just found it all really fascinating that in some ways this is where women are gathering
[8:44]now.
[8:45]And it actually doesn't even have to be motherhood that is the glue, you know, there are
[8:52]these groups for people who all supported Hillary Clinton are all of books or whatever
[8:56]it is, right?
[8:58]And oftentimes the conversation end up being so much deeper and so personal.
[9:03]And as you said, there's this notion that anyone with a child six weeks older than yours,
[9:09]you know, they are their profit.
[9:11]Like I said in the book, you know, they know everything.
[9:14]And now I find it, you know, kind of gratifying because all these women were so kind to
[9:22]just tell me what they knew.
[9:24]And now I can tell other people what I know and they think I'm brilliant, but no, I've
[9:27]just done it now, you know?
[9:29]I guess the difference with me between me and Elizabeth, the character in the book, she
[9:34]really, really only wants to have one child.
[9:37]And obviously I have two kids under, they were both under two for a long time.
[9:43]And so that wasn't my feeling, but also I was curious about it because I do have a lot
[9:49]of friends who are completely madly in love with their babies, but they they just want
[9:55]to have one.
[9:56]And I thought that was an interesting thing to explore, especially since her head.
[10:00]It's been felt differently.
[10:01]Yeah, and that's a huge thing, right?
[10:03]Because marriage is also something
[10:07]that gets really sort of explored and dug into in this book.
[10:11]And it's kind of, if you're looking at marriage
[10:15]from a distance, when you're younger,
[10:17]when you're the age of Sam, the college age babysitter,
[10:20]it's kind of like, well, you just love someone
[10:23]and that's it, right?
[10:24]But actually, there are all these intricacies
[10:26]that we have to work out with this other person,
[10:29]including the most important details of our lives,
[10:31]such as how many children are we going to have?
[10:33]And when you have different, strong feelings
[10:36]about that, it's very tricky.
[10:39]And I also think people sometimes don't know what they want
[10:42]about until they start having kids.
[10:44]Like, I have a lot of friends who were sure they'd
[10:47]want to have tons of kids and then they had a kid
[10:49]and they were like, no, no, no, no.
[10:51]That's good.
[10:53]Absolutely, that's absolutely right, absolutely.
[10:56]And I think Elizabeth, you know,
[10:58]it's definitely true of me as well
[11:00]that my son, when he was born, I was 36.
[11:04]And so I had gone through a period in my 20s
[11:09]where I was like, baby crazy,
[11:10]and I would have loved to have three babies
[11:12]in my studio apartment in Brooklyn, you know, whatever,
[11:14]but that wasn't gonna happen.
[11:16]And then I finally got to the point in life
[11:18]where people are actually having babies
[11:19]and I was really ambivalent about it.
[11:21]I wasn't sure because it is the ultimate commitment
[11:24]you can make, right?
[11:25]Like, you do this thing and you cannot change your mind.
[11:29]And I was pleasantly thrilled to find that
[11:33]the second my son was born.
[11:34]I was madly in love with him,
[11:35]but it can kind of go any which way.
[11:38]So that was something else that I really kind of wanted
[11:40]to look at.
[11:42]And I think there is a lot more
[11:43]ambivalence about it than we maybe talk about.
[11:46]Very true.
[11:47]And I love how you point out just going back for a second
[11:49]to the mom group thing,
[11:51]because I also find that super interesting.
[11:53]And I spent like hours on these group boards
[11:56]before I had my twins,
[11:57]which is now almost 13 years ago,
[11:59]like about the different strollers
[12:00]and which one was the best one?
[12:02]I spent hours.
[12:03]And as you point out,
[12:04]you were in the book,
[12:05]will not you Elizabeth in the book.
[12:07]Would spend hours on like trips
[12:09]that she wasn't even planning on taking with kids.
[12:11]Like why was she,
[12:12]but that's like what you do.
[12:13]That's how you were fair.
[12:14]One of my dear friends who I actually met
[12:16]when I was pregnant with my son
[12:18]and her daughter is within a week of his age.
[12:21]But we were in Central Park with our kids
[12:23]when they were like just about one.
[12:26]And she just looked at me and she said,
[12:27]remember what we thought that strollers mattered?
[12:29]Like it was really gonna matter which stroller we had.
[12:32]It was gonna be make or break.
[12:33]But what I didn't tell her at that point was
[12:36]because I got pregnant with my daughter
[12:38]when my son was seven months old.
[12:41]So at that point when she said that,
[12:42]it was so funny because I was actually as obsessed
[12:46]with the perfect double stroller at that juncture
[12:50]as we had previously been.
[12:51]So she was already at the stage
[12:53]where she was able to laugh at how insane we've been.
[12:55]And I was like, actually I'm still
[12:56]every good as great as that.
[12:58]But now I can look back and say, wow, yeah, that was crazy.
[13:01]My, so I have twins,
[13:02]but I also have two other kids
[13:04]and they are 17 months apart.
[13:06]So I feel you with the kids in those two ages
[13:10]and not knowing how to cart them around properly
[13:12]and whatever.
[13:14]But the thing about the neighborhood group in particular
[13:17]is how, which you point out, it's just so true,
[13:20]that everybody lives within 20 blocks of each other
[13:23]and shares all of this stuff.
[13:26]And yet you're probably walking past them every day
[13:28]and not even knowing it on the street
[13:30]because especially in Brooklyn,
[13:32]where her circle was,
[13:34]they're like, oh, they're right on top of each other.
[13:36]And yet you can be free to say all these secrets
[13:40]in this group.
[13:41]I don't know.
[13:42]It's so funny.
[13:43]It sort of feels anonymous
[13:44]and then it sort of feels intimate
[13:46]and it's just weird, because actually it's not anonymous
[13:48]and not actually it's not intimate,
[13:50]but somehow it feels like both of those things.
[13:53]And I also, you know, the fact that you spent this book
[13:56]addressing the relationship between a babysitter
[13:58]and a mom, because at the, and even how you were saying
[14:02]how like some of the Tibetan or Caribbean women
[14:05]and in Brooklyn, we're taking the place of the grandmother
[14:08]you wish you could provide from your own family,
[14:10]but yet you really can't.
[14:12]But the relationship is so important
[14:14]and it often sort of eclipses every other relationship
[14:17]in your life because you're so in need of that support.
[14:20]And yet it's not often written about as much,
[14:22]especially not in a beautiful literary way,
[14:24]the way that you tackled this book.
[14:26]So tell me about deciding to write it
[14:28]about that relationship as it's center.
[14:31]So it's kind of funny.
[14:32]I think novelist, or at least in my case,
[14:34]and in the case of a lot of other fiction writers,
[14:36]I know, you know, there's certainly,
[14:39]I think Danny Shapiro described it beautifully.
[14:41]She said like something you're going to write about
[14:45]will have, I think it was Danny.
[14:46]I hope it was Danny.
[14:47]I'm pretty sure it was little pretend.
[14:49]She said that there'll be a certain shimmer around something
[14:54]that lets you know, oh, I'm going to write about this.
[14:56]This is something I'm going to write about,
[14:58]but it might not always be the moment.
[15:00]And a lot of times you're kind of putting something
[15:03]in your pocket for later and saying,
[15:04]I know I'm going to write about this,
[15:06]but I'm not ready yet or it's not the right time or whatever.
[15:10]And so I think it was probably six years ago,
[15:15]five or six years ago, the relationship in the book
[15:18]is very, very loosely based on the relationship I had
[15:23]as a senior in college with this woman
[15:26]whose children are, baby, I, I managed for.
[15:30]And I went to Smith in North Hampton.
[15:32]I was, I was there to give a reading so really years ago.
[15:36]And I think this woman really put me kind of on my path
[15:40]to coming from New York City, becoming a writer.
[15:43]I had all kinds of terrible plans for myself
[15:45]for after graduation.
[15:47]And she was sort of like, well, maybe you should think about this.
[15:50]And so, you know, we fell out of touch
[15:52]as you do with people like that.
[15:55]And, but now it was many years later,
[15:58]I was back at Smith to give a reading.
[16:00]And when I came out, it was very cinematic.
[16:03]I came out of this hall where I was giving a reading.
[16:05]And I walked on, it was like drizzling rain
[16:08]and I was walking to my car, standing at the crosswalk,
[16:11]waiting to cross, and this big SUV pulled up.
[16:14]And there were three kids in the back
[16:16]and driving the SUV as this woman
[16:18]who I used to be so close with.
[16:20]And I was just like, oh my gosh,
[16:22]I was kind of waving, she, she had no idea who I went
[16:25]and kept going.
[16:26]And I kept thinking about that moment.
[16:29]I was back in New York that same night
[16:31]and I was having dinner with my friend Jamie Attenberg
[16:35]who's also a novelist.
[16:36]And she, she was like, I told her the story.
[16:39]And she said, oh, that should be your next novel.
[16:41]But I didn't know what, what would I write about that?
[16:44]At that point, I only had the experience
[16:46]of having been the babysitter.
[16:48]And I kind of thought there was something
[16:52]to what Jamie was saying.
[16:54]But I wasn't sure exactly what it would be.
[16:57]And so I went on and wrote a totally different book.
[16:59]My book stinks for all occasion.
[17:01]But by the time it came around to what will I write next,
[17:06]I was pregnant.
[17:07]And so suddenly I thought, oh, now I've kind of been,
[17:10]or soon will be both these women.
[17:13]I've been in the role of the mom.
[17:15]I've been in the role where I've seen will be.
[17:17]I started writing it from Sam's point of view,
[17:20]the babysitter, leaving the mom part blank thinking,
[17:25]I don't know what she would be thinking or feeling yet.
[17:27]But I will probably know soon.
[17:29]So I'll just wait and see.
[17:31]And so in that way, this kind of was the perfect time
[17:34]to write this book.
[17:35]I think my other novels have been very research heavy.
[17:41]When I loved doing research.
[17:43]But this book was written in the two years
[17:48]during which I had my two children.
[17:49]And it was kind of more raw in a way because of that.
[17:53]It just kind of came out.
[17:55]But I feel like you can tell, like reading it,
[17:58]you're like, the author is going through this.
[18:01]Like this is what is actually on her mind right now.
[18:05]Like you could feel it.
[18:07]And there's nothing else on my mind right now.
[18:09]Because that's all I can handle.
[18:11]Yeah.
[18:12]But that's what makes it so good.
[18:13]Because you're like immediately in conversation with you.
[18:16]Not that you know this, but as a reader.
[18:19]Good.
[18:20]So how did you, with little kids and writing this,
[18:23]how did you do this?
[18:24]Like when did you do it?
[18:25]Did you get up early?
[18:26]Like I know you sent the emails to yourself.
[18:29]But yeah.
[18:31]So I was home with my son until he was six months old.
[18:34]And at that time, we found an amazing nanny
[18:38]who has been with us ever since.
[18:40]During, well, I guess it was right when he turned one
[18:44]was when this is about to take a weird detour.
[18:47]But before I said, I love weird detour.
[18:51]So right when he turned one, which was June of 2018,
[18:55]was when the Trump administration started
[18:57]separating families at the border.
[18:59]And I was, I had a one-year-old.
[19:03]And I was five months pregnant.
[19:05]And I like, I just couldn't bear it.
[19:07]I mean, none of us could bear it because it was horrendous.
[19:10]But there are so many things that we can't bear,
[19:13]but we do, you know, in the news all the time.
[19:16]But then I feel like something will jump out at you
[19:19]and you're just like, no, I can't, I can't stand it.
[19:21]And I felt like I had to do something.
[19:24]And so I got involved with a group called
[19:26]Immigrant Families Together, which was started by a mom
[19:29]in Queen.
[19:31]And we're all volunteers, all of us besides one
[19:35]are mothers.
[19:36]We're all women.
[19:38]And we just started bonding mom who were in immigration
[19:43]detention centers out, raising money to bond them out,
[19:46]bonding them out, getting them reunited with their kid,
[19:50]and then supporting them on an ongoing basis
[19:52]with legal, with housing, with medical, all that stuff.
[19:56]So that work actually sort of became my...
[20:00]whole time job. So even though I had a nanny with my son and
[20:04]with both my kids so that I could be writing, it just as it
[20:08]turned out, I spent most of my daytime sort of business hours
[20:12]when people are at work talking to lawyers and talking to
[20:15]realtors and going, you know, all doing all kinds of crazy
[20:18]things all the time for immigrant families together. And so
[20:21]what I ended up doing was writing this book really in the
[20:24]middle of the night. I like, you know, when you have babies,
[20:28]like there's this adrenaline, right? And so when I finished
[20:33]this book, I was just like, oh my God, I am so tired.
[20:38]I didn't realize it somehow hadn't realized until then. So
[20:41]basically like, you know, come home at five. Our nanny would go
[20:44]home. I would be with the kids still at that time. They would
[20:47]go to bed. I would write until my daughter had her waking up,
[20:53]you know, moment at two in the morning or whatever, be it
[20:56]her and then go to bed. And that seems normal. I'm impressed.
[21:01]Crazy. Crazy. That's it. And as I said, when I finished, I finally
[21:04]just went, oh, I think I've been running on a drone line for
[21:07]a year and a half. And I'm really tired and want to nap. But now
[21:12]not get one because we are in quarantine with no childcare.
[21:17]Yeah. So if you tell me you're writing, are you writing another
[21:20]book now in quarantine? If you can pull this off, I will like
[21:24]that down. Like, God, no. But what I am doing is I am doing that
[21:30]email thing again. I think I'll always do that. And I was
[21:33]actually just talking to a class of fiction writing workshop
[21:36]that a friend of mine leads actually at Smith. And I was
[21:39]supposed to be there this week to talk to her class. But of
[21:42]course, they're not there. So we did it over Zoom. And I was
[21:45]telling the students, you know, because they are concerned, as
[21:48]I think writers at all levels are about the fact that they
[21:51]want to be writing, they want to be productive. But they
[21:53]just kind of can't be. And I was telling them like, there
[21:56]are just these times in life when you can't be for whatever
[21:59]reason. But you can find these little ways to keep it alive or
[22:03]keep the story alive for me. That that email thing has really
[22:06]done the trick. So I'm doing that again with this book. Because I
[22:09]think when you're writing a novel, you know, the whole world,
[22:12]you kind of see it through the lens of that novel. So you
[22:16]little things happen. And you think, well, that might be good
[22:18]for that character. Or I should put that in here. So I do have
[22:20]a rough idea of what I'm going to write next. But I haven't
[22:24]actually sat down and written anything. I love that email
[22:27]idea. Because I'm also I also I'm like, well, this I won't
[22:30]forget. This is so funny or this is like so perfect. And then
[22:34]of course it's gone. I know. It's so bad. I try to do that too.
[22:39]Like what my kids said kind of write down what they're saying
[22:42]a notebook. But inevitably, if it's written down in the
[22:44]notebook, I'll go like weeks and weeks without writing
[22:47]anything. And then like you said, I don't remember what the
[22:49]heck it was. Do you can you give any general like
[22:54]tweezers? Is what this book might be next? Usually I would.
[22:58]But I feel like I shouldn't because it's very weird. And I
[23:02]don't know if I'll actually stick with it.
[23:05]No problem.
[23:07]So what other advice? Like what other advice did you give to
[23:10]the students? What advice would you give to other aspiring
[23:13]authors?
[23:14]Well, I think, you know, the what advice would I give? I
[23:18]think there it depends on sort of where they are, what they
[23:21]need to know about. But I think generally speaking, reading
[23:25]is a huge part of writing. You know, it's always been a huge
[23:28]part of my writing life. And I think when you're writing, I
[23:32]think different people feel different ways about this. But my
[23:35]feeling is it's almost like an athlete needs to eat really
[23:38]well because our reading is our fuel. You know, so you want
[23:42]to be reading things that inspire you that in my case, I
[23:46]like to feel really jealous of the person who wrote it and
[23:50]like, oh, I hate this person. This book is so good. I could
[23:53]never write this. You know, that's instructive. That is when
[23:56]you're learning about the craft of writing just by reading.
[23:59]And I think like I said before, you know, just the sense that
[24:02]like not every day is going to be at least not for me is the
[24:05]day to sit down and write 15 perfect gorgeous pages of
[24:10]prose. You know, some days are for just like hunting and
[24:14]gathering and living in the world. And if you're a writer,
[24:19]you have a certain degree of sensitivity about you as a human
[24:24]being. And so most likely you cannot, you know, be in the
[24:28]midst of a global pandemic under quarantine and say like, I
[24:32]just feel really inspired to write my novel today. Now, some
[24:35]people might and that's great. They probably do not have
[24:37]children, but that's another aspect of the whole thing. But I
[24:40]guess it's just like being kind to yourself. You know, it
[24:43]happens when it happens. I'm not a writer who writes every
[24:46]day. I know there are some who do. I think the main thing
[24:49]about rules for writing is like there are not any rules for
[24:55]writing. So it's really important and instructive, I think,
[25:02]to listen to as many writers as you can and sort of like here
[25:08]the, you know, hear what you think will be helpful for you and
[25:13]take that away from the process. So like if it takes the
[25:15]pressure off to know that some writers don't write every day,
[25:19]I don't write every day, you know, but if it if it helps you to
[25:22]be disciplined to be in the world of your story to write every
[25:25]day, as some writers do, then by all means do that. You know, I
[25:29]think if you take many fiction workshops over a period of
[25:33]years, you'll kind of see like, and now I'm teaching some
[25:36]workshops and I hear students say, oh, but someone else said you
[25:38]have to do it like this. The fact is you don't have to do it
[25:41]anyway, you know, like it's not heart surgery. No, there's
[25:45]no plan. You, you find your own way. The other thing I told
[25:49]these students the other day, which I also stole from
[25:52]Danny Shapiro, but I did give her credit is through Danny, I
[25:56]learned about this book called I Remember by Joe Brainard. You
[26:00]know, this book, I don't. It's so amazing. It's a book that
[26:04]came out, I think in the 50s, maybe in the 70s, I think maybe
[26:09]it came out in the 70s, about the 50s. Joe Brainard is a
[26:13]gorgeous poet, artist, and he's writing just his memory,
[26:18]collecting his memories from life, starting from childhood
[26:21]on up, and some of them are very personal and some of them
[26:24]are are just about the world as he observes it, but every
[26:28]paragraph in the book begins with the words I remember. And
[26:32]many of the paragraphs are just one sentence long. And I
[26:35]find like this is an amazing place to go when you're feeling
[26:39]stuck at the writer is to do this exercise. Like, you
[26:43]literally sit down for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever you
[26:45]have. And don't censor yourself and don't think about it
[26:49]too much. Just sit down and write each paragraph. I remember
[26:54]whatever it is, drop down a line. I remember, I remember,
[26:57]especially if you're doing something like pulled from your
[27:00]own life. So I was trying to write something about my childhood
[27:03]about the neighborhood I grew up in, where generally speaking,
[27:07]I think, oh, I have so many memories of that time. And then I
[27:10]sat down like in front of my word document to write the story
[27:13]and I thought, oh, I don't remember anything, you know, but
[27:15]when it somehow doing this exercise unlocks so much of what
[27:22]is in there. So I've just found that to be really helpful.
[27:26]Where did you grow up? I grew up in the suburbs of Boston in a
[27:30]town called Milton. Awesome. And just quickly, because I feel
[27:34]like I missed this part of your life story, how did you
[27:37]become a best-selling author to begin with that now you're
[27:40]embarking on yet another book? How did I start? When I was
[27:43]in college, when I was at Smith, I did an internship at the
[27:47]Atlantic Monthly Magazine in bot, which was then in Boston. And
[27:51]I had the great good fortune of getting to assist Michael Curtis
[27:56]who was a fiction editor there. And he asked me, you know, do
[28:00]write fiction. And I said, I did. I was very nervous. I was
[28:03]like terrified of this man, even though he's very kind. And he
[28:06]said, well, I would be happy to look at some of your stories
[28:09]sometimes. So I actually came in one morning before he'd be
[28:13]there. And I put my stories on his desk chair and like ran away
[28:18]which is so absurd and unprofessional, but that's what I did. So
[28:21]my main job for him was basically typing his letters because
[28:25]he did not use a computer. So he would hand write them and I
[28:28]would type them up on my computer and they were letters
[28:30]mostly to writers who'd sent in short stories. And one day
[28:34]when I came into work, I heard him in the office. He had the
[28:37]door closed. I heard him like banging around and I was trying
[28:40]to figure out what it'd be doing in there. And I came back
[28:43]later that day from lunch. And I had on my chair this letter,
[28:47]he had typed it on a typewriter. That's what he had been banging
[28:51]around in there doing because he was going to write to me about
[28:54]my story. He couldn't ask me to type up the letter to myself,
[28:58]of course. So I have still have to this day that type written
[29:02]letter he gave me was so amazing. And he said, you know,
[29:06]keep sending me your work. And so I did when I went back to
[29:09]college, I would send him a story every so often. And some of
[29:13]those stories he ended up giving to Lucy Prince who was an
[29:16]editor at the Atlantic who had hired me actually. And she
[29:21]contacted me and said, you know, I know this young agent who
[29:25]is just starting out. She was also an intern at the Atlantic
[29:30]Gratney Bloom. And can I share your stories with her? So I
[29:33]said, sure, that would be amazing. And Bratney has been my
[29:37]agent ever since then. I mean, it was years before we had a
[29:40]book come out. But I met her in college. I was very lucky to
[29:44]have that connection. And we kind of had grown up together in
[29:47]the business. I worked at a women's magazine, a lower
[29:50]magazine for two years when I first came to New York. And then
[29:53]I worked at the New York Times for four years. And it was
[29:56]while I was there that my first novel commencement was.
[30:00]published and I wrote about half of my second book, Maine. And then that was after I sold
[30:06]Maine, that was when I kind of started writing fiction more or less full-time.
[30:10]Amazing. I actually met Brettany about a year ago and like love her. So I see
[30:14]what the best to have a great relationship.
[30:17]It is the best. She's wonderful.
[30:20]Well, thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your story with me and coming on my podcast and
[30:25]I really loved your book and I'm really excited for it to come out.
[30:28]Thank you. Thank you.
[30:31]Thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books. Please don't forget,
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[30:41]Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much to Riley Versa
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[30:48]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to
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[30:56]Thanks for listening. You can always email me at zibi at zibiowans.com.