Bill Clegg, THE END OF THE DAY
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:13]Please sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com for weekly updates about my podcast, events, and more.
[0:20]Also, follow me on Instagram at zibiowens and also at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:26]And finally, join my virtual book club called Zibi's virtual book club, which meets every other Tuesday at 2 p.m.
[0:32]Eastern Time until 3 p.m. and features half an hour of book club discussion, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A with the author whose book we've just discussed.
[0:41]You can sign up on my website zibiowens.com under the virtual book club section or even on Instagram, under the link in my bio.
[0:49]I hope you'll find me in all these different channels and enjoy this podcast.
[0:53]I am so thrilled that Audible.com is my new sponsor. They'll be sponsoring this whole week, and they're giving you all a free 30-day trial of Audible, which includes not only their audiobooks, which they're famous for, but also guided wellness now, podcasts, and so many Audible originals.
[1:13]You have to go check it out. I even have my special URL, which is audible.com slash zibi. How cool is that?
[1:20]So you have to go check it out so that they know that people who are listening are actually listening to this.
[1:26]Audible.com slash zibi. And you can even text z-i-b-b-y all lowercase zibi to 5-0-0-0 to get your free trial.
[1:40]So go do it now. I don't know about you. I love listening to audiobooks when I'm walking my new dogs, who are my former mother-in-laws, when I'm putting away the laundry and doing all that stuff.
[1:54]I love i-e-men-like air by Alice Berman. I listen to where the light enters by Jill Biden to prepare for her episode and Jamie Lee Curtis's letters from camp.
[2:04]Anyway, you should definitely go to Audible and go to Audible.com slash zibi and get your free month of fantastic listening.
[2:14]Thank you. Phil Kleg is a literary agent in New York and the author of the best-selling memoirs portrait of an addict as a young man and 90 days. He's also the author of the novels.
[2:24]Did you ever have a family? And now at the end of the day, he is written for The New York Times, Lapham's Quarterly, New York Magazine, The Guardian, and Harper's Bazaar. He currently lives with his husband and they're soon to be adopted daughter who is actually Bell's niece.
[2:38]Welcome, Phil. Thanks so much for coming on Monster Time to read books. Thanks for having me on. It's my pleasure. I was just telling you, but just to showcase my Bill Kleg fandom over the years.
[2:50]Portrait of an addict as a young man, which was so amazing and now I know everything about this period of your life as we were discussing.
[3:00]I have a family which I like everybody is like, this is the best book ever. Oh my gosh, everybody I taught you. And then the end of the day, which of course has just come out and which is absolutely beautiful and I was so privileged to have read. So I'm so happy to be here talking to you.
[3:17]Thank you. So let's just talk for a sec first about the end of the day, even though it's not the end of this day, but what inspired you to write this book and what's it about why this book and like why now in your life.
[3:28]Well, the easy questions just summer and just all that and then we're good to go. Okay, the end of the day when I'm writing I usually is usually some other kind of secondary like writing that's going on to the main thing and it's usually like when I sort of hit a wall.
[3:45]I'll just go to that other thing that doesn't have any booby traps or problems associated with it. So I kind of am of the go where it's warm philosophy and writing.
[3:56]Like if it gets too kind of tortured or you know uncomfortable or just isn't is incoming. I'll just move off and go write something that just feels easy and that will be fun.
[4:07]And usually then I'll hit a wall there and go back to the problem that I couldn't solve before and it will seem usually much less difficult to solve.
[4:16]So with the end of the day, one of the central characters is a woman named Jackie and she actually appears for a moment in did you ever have a family and she's the mother of the caterer who is a minor character at the beginning of that book.
[4:31]Who kind of like tells a story to sort of lay the groundwork of the scenario of that novel.
[4:37]And she appears in the driveway in like a house coat and her porch light is on in the middle of the day and then she's gone and you never see her yet.
[4:47]But when I was writing that book, she just kind of interested me and I just sort of kept on coming back to her.
[4:53]And so she was the sort of secondary. I didn't know it at the time, but like I kept on writing her backstory, her childhood.
[5:01]This important friendship she had when she was a kid and then it became clear that she and her entourage were not going to be central to did you ever have a family.
[5:11]But I just kept on to writing her because she was interesting to me. And then when I finished did you ever have a family, you know, there were all these pages without really organizing center to them.
[5:23]And then I heard a story I overheard a story about somebody from who is in Lake Hill, Connecticut, which is near where I grew up.
[5:33]And this is a many, many years ago and he was telling the story of how he was at a picnic and I can't remember if it was like a holiday picnic of some kind.
[5:43]I don't know if it was fourth of July or and he had gotten up to run an errand and went to like the, you know, like the story to get something.
[5:53]There was some group of New Yorkers who were kind of hanging out and they invited him basically to come party with them and they went up this mountain and he didn't come back for two months.
[6:08]Like he had left his family at this picnic and he just disappeared into this.
[6:13]So, you know, I was interested in that for a lot of reasons, namely, you know, I identified with it because at a certain point in my life, like that might have been something I would have done.
[6:22]But the fact that he had a family and that he had just left them and then he came back down the mountain and faced this family and the marriage survived apparently.
[6:32]So, that was a very captivating scenario and somehow, and I was imagining into that quite a lot and then it somehow merged with this whole story of this woman in this small town named Jackie who had been born of this other novel and suddenly the book became clear to me, like what it was going to be.
[6:50]And so that's that's how it that's how it started.
[6:53]It was like proof that if you don't use the pages and your novel, you can save them and maybe use them another time.
[6:59]Exactly. Exactly. Like nothing should be ever wasted.
[7:02]Yeah, don't waste it.
[7:03]Start a new like word document and who knows it could end up as this.
[7:07]Yeah. And maybe it's because like I have so little free time that like anything that would exist that like could be used, I think it was like potential.
[7:15]So, but it was it was like in our it was like this kind of pile of like it just didn't quite and then this other sort of random element came in and activated it and made it a story that I could lay my mind around.
[7:29]Well, I'm glad you didn't toss it because it was beautiful. I mean, you're writing first of all, it's just as you know, I mean, as you must know, it's just so beautiful.
[7:39]The way you write the way you tell stories, way you can like paint a picture of the room and like you can feel yourself in it and such a gift.
[7:46]Like really awesome. And obviously it goes from such extremes. I mean, in your memoir you hear now you're like shaking and like waiting for your craft dealer to call you and losing 40 pounds.
[7:58]And it's like, you know, your life is crazy. And then you go to like this elderly woman and like waking up in her bed with the light.
[8:07]It's like all it runs again. It's amazing the way you can take their reader to all these places. I mean, I guess that's writing it in itself. But anyway,
[8:15]it somehow makes sense to me. Like maybe not from a distance like cracked ends of New York, you know, the country bedrooms and you know, women waking up and pondering the morning.
[8:28]Like, yeah, I guess they don't obviously connect but somehow to me they seem like there's a direct link.
[8:34]Well, so how did this whole writing side of your life get started? Like when did you know you were a writer? Is this something you've always done? Was the was fortunate as young man your first book or did you have like novels dashed away somewhere?
[8:49]No, that was that's the first that's the first thing I had written, you know, since college I think. Yeah, I had I kept notebooks in college and then in my early years in New York, but it was always like I just sort of like wrote impressions of things.
[9:07]I looked at some of that stuff. A lot of it is like me coming home a little bit tipsy and sort of wanting to record something that felt like very urgent or important to to transcribe.
[9:18]Usually it was just like the Brooklyn Bridge and the likes of the city. It's like so cliche and so bad. But I did right. It's just, you know, I worked with writers that's when I came to New York. I started working at the literary agency to honestly like me writing didn't even enter a kind of a real consciousness.
[9:36]I think of course that's like what I hoped would happen. I've never named it to myself. It seemed to be on me. And then after I got sober like in early early recovery, I was writing stuff down because I thought that I would forget it. There was a lot that was sort of it hovered in this kind of like gauzy space of like did it happen?
[10:00]And did I, you know, did I imagine it?
[10:02]And I wrote it all down.
[10:03]And some of those details were incredibly vivid.
[10:06]And I thought that if I just wrote it down then that,
[10:09]like later I'd be able to make sense of it.
[10:11]And it would all become clear.
[10:13]And it didn't.
[10:14]I mean, not really.
[10:15]This is back to your saved pages writing theory again.
[10:18]Exactly, like nothing is wasted, like nothing is new.
[10:21]Or nothing is new.
[10:23]Right, exactly.
[10:24]And it just gets repurposed.
[10:26]And then like, I put those pages down.
[10:29]And then I kind of like, I went back to work.
[10:31]And after getting sober for a year and sort of,
[10:34]like, you know, I had a lot of damage to clean up
[10:38]and a lot of relationships to mend.
[10:40]And I had to learn how to live my life sober.
[10:42]And that took some time.
[10:44]And then at one point I went back to those pages
[10:47]and just sort of looked at them.
[10:49]And it unlocked something.
[10:51]And in a pretty, I mean, now I looked at that time period.
[10:55]I just started writing what had happened.
[10:58]And it came somewhat easily at the time.
[11:01]I mean, it really came out like a gusher.
[11:03]Like, I felt like I was catching up with it
[11:05]as I was typing.
[11:06]Then the book kind of came into being.
[11:08]And after I finished it, it was sort of like,
[11:10]oh, I can write a book.
[11:11]Like, it just takes, and I loved the experience
[11:14]of being alone with pages and the sentences.
[11:16]And just that sort of, just the project of making a story
[11:20]that's here, like putting it here.
[11:22]And so, and now, I mean, since then,
[11:25]it just become a regular part of my life.
[11:27]Like, it's just, you know, my main job
[11:29]is as a literary agent.
[11:30]And so, when I can, I write, there's always something,
[11:33]even if it's like several months
[11:35]like between writing sessions,
[11:37]I'm still kind of puzzling through stuff a little bit,
[11:39]like kind of just in the downtime.
[11:43]And how does your experiences are right
[11:45]or then affect the books that you gravitate towards?
[11:48]Or does it not at all?
[11:49]Like, do you pick books to publish similar
[11:51]to your style of writing?
[11:53]I mean, I saw your list.
[11:54]And I've had some of your authors on my show and everything.
[11:56]But how does it relate?
[11:58]I think in the main, like, I think I'm more attracted
[12:02]to writing that I can't imagine myself doing, you know?
[12:06]And so, it's like I don't have, there's recovery,
[12:12]there's things that involve themes that I've explored.
[12:15]But in the main, it's like these are writers who,
[12:17]like I'm in awe of and, you know,
[12:20]trying to at first figure out sort of like what it is
[12:22]they're trying to do.
[12:23]And then ultimately, when I get to the edge of that,
[12:26]I'm trying to help them get that writing into the world.
[12:29]So usually the things that don't occur to me
[12:31]are the things that excite me the most.
[12:32]So there isn't that kind of overlap.
[12:34]And a lot of, it's changed over the years too, you know?
[12:37]Because part of it is people ask sort of like,
[12:40]what are you looking for?
[12:41]And my answer, which sounds so trite in some ways is like,
[12:45]it's sort of like the thing that I didn't expect
[12:46]is the thing I'm looking for.
[12:48]You know, I mean, it's, if you've seen it
[12:50]or if you've read it a lot of times before,
[12:52]it's not necessarily the thing that you're gonna be
[12:55]the most excited to engage in.
[12:57]So yeah, and so when I go come up to this house
[13:01]that we now, you know, live in all the time
[13:04]because of the coronavirus,
[13:06]but we used to only come up like maybe two or three
[13:08]weekends out of the month.
[13:10]I would come up for like a week
[13:12]and sort of pull up the drop bridge and write,
[13:14]but on the other end of that week,
[13:15]I'd be so desperate to get back to other people's writing
[13:19]and out of the head of my own.
[13:21]So just setting up those kind of like reunions
[13:24]with like the job and the writing,
[13:26]like it's just been a nice balance for me.
[13:28]I kind of like, I'm always looking forward
[13:30]to the thing that I'm heading toward
[13:32]and nothing ever feels like too oppressive or too much.
[13:35]So even though the age of two takes, you know,
[13:38]primacy sort of in the days and the weeks,
[13:41]but I'm thinking about sort of what I'm writing usually
[13:43]and it's on the horizon somewhere,
[13:45]even if it's months away.
[13:46]And then in addition to reading for your work
[13:49]as an agent, do you read for fun on top of that?
[13:53]Or does that, I mean, you must not have time for that.
[13:55]Do you?
[13:56]You know, it's really helped me with that or audiobooks.
[13:59]Audiobooks, and I'm kind of late to the table, I think,
[14:02]but I've discovered them and so when I work out,
[14:07]I listen to audiobooks.
[14:08]If I'm lifting weights or if I'm doing something,
[14:10]I listen to audiobooks.
[14:12]And so I have now become kind of an,
[14:15]I mean kind of an that I am an addict.
[14:17]And so now audiobooks are just, you know,
[14:19]along with like pizza and donuts,
[14:21]like there's audiobooks.
[14:23]But yeah, it's great.
[14:24]And I love them and some of them are so well done.
[14:27]I just listened to the Dutch house,
[14:30]which Tom Hanks narrates.
[14:32]And when I first approached it,
[14:33]I was kind of skeptical because that felt a little too
[14:35]Hollywood.
[14:36]He's amazing.
[14:37]I mean, he reads it and really delivers like
[14:41]a kind of a major performance in the reading.
[14:43]And it's great if you haven't listened to that,
[14:46]I recommend it.
[14:48]That's a great suggestion because I've been meaning
[14:50]to read that book and I've had it like right here
[14:52]for so long.
[14:53]And that would be a great way.
[14:54]And I also have recently gotten into audiobooks.
[14:56]I feel like being out of the city,
[14:58]there are like,
[14:59]there felt like there were more opportunities
[15:01]like taking long walks and like drives and like,
[15:04]I wasn't gonna listen to an audiobook
[15:05]in a taxi.
[15:06]You're like, although,
[15:07]I mean, I guess I could now
[15:08]and not that I'm an a taxi, but often.
[15:10]But anyway, I'll just say I don't recommend
[15:12]City of Girls Elizabeth Gilbert's that it's Blair Brown.
[15:17]You know, she is like,
[15:18]she was in a television show in the 80s
[15:21]called The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.
[15:23]Oh, I remember the question.
[15:25]Right?
[15:25]And then she's doing a lot of theater and stuff like that.
[15:28]She's one of the,
[15:29]she's, I mean, based on this performance alone,
[15:31]I think she's one of the best actresses on the planet.
[15:34]Like it is so,
[15:35]and it all depends on it's the story of this woman's life.
[15:38]And it's really like the whole sweep of the life
[15:40]from like teenage years into her 70s, 80s maybe.
[15:45]And it's epic and brilliant.
[15:48]It's one of the best novels ever.
[15:50]And the performance that she gives in the reading
[15:52]is mesmerizing.
[15:54]I like also reading the writers
[15:55]when the author narrates themselves
[15:58]because then I feel like you know them even more intimately.
[16:00]Like, yeah.
[16:01]Cody Patterson is the bold world.
[16:02]She did such a good job reading that.
[16:04]I just read Jill Biden.
[16:06]I just sat around and she read her memoir.
[16:08]And I don't know.
[16:09]I just felt like, okay, but I told my talk to them.
[16:11]I've already like talked to them for eight hours
[16:12]or whatever it did.
[16:14]I listened to Michelle Obama's.
[16:15]That was actually the first one
[16:16]that I listened to in March in quarantine.
[16:19]And I thought it was great.
[16:21]Like, it was just like,
[16:22]I looked forward to it every morning
[16:23]when I would go down to the basement
[16:25]and work out like in the cobwebs.
[16:27]And like Michelle Obama made it possible.
[16:31]Who narrated your audio books?
[16:32]Do you have audio books?
[16:33]No.
[16:34]Yeah, I agree with you.
[16:35]I think having the authors like read is makes it better.
[16:39]In my case, I've read them.
[16:41]And I can't say that I've made them better.
[16:43]Like, I'm not that good at it.
[16:46]And in fact, on the end of the day,
[16:48]I was supposed to read the audio of the end of the day
[16:51]in New York at a studio
[16:52]and then COVID happened.
[16:53]And we were up here.
[16:55]Somehow they figured out,
[16:56]it's like this converted barn
[16:58]that's a recording studio,
[16:59]but mainly for like musicians.
[17:02]And in fact, oh gosh, I'm gonna forget his name.
[17:05]But there's like a pop star Sean,
[17:07]something who's dating Camila Cabello.
[17:10]I'm gonna embarrass me.
[17:11]I know I should know this.
[17:13]Anyway, he had just left after recording his new album
[17:17]and then I turned up and it was literally like five minutes
[17:19]down the road.
[17:20]So I would go for like an hour and a half a day
[17:24]and just read a little bit.
[17:25]And I did it over the course of like two months.
[17:28]I shouldn't probably say this,
[17:29]but like I don't think it was, it's the best.
[17:32]Oh yeah, I did my best.
[17:34]So I did my best.
[17:36]I'm sure it's fine.
[17:38]At least you knew what you meant,
[17:40]like at least the intonations
[17:41]or what you had in mind when you wrote it
[17:43]versus somebody coming into it
[17:45]who might misinterpret or something.
[17:46]Yeah.
[17:47]But then when you listen to somebody like Tom Hanks
[17:49]read like the Dutch house,
[17:51]it's like it's so shaming because they really do,
[17:56]there is a way to really embody like the dialogue.
[17:59]And like, and I just don't have the skill set.
[18:01]That's his whole job.
[18:03]I know, I know.
[18:03]I know.
[18:04]Like if he tried to be a literary agent for the day,
[18:06]he might not do like a job, you know.
[18:08]That's his job.
[18:09]This is your job, so.
[18:10]Yeah, true, true.
[18:12]To my life.
[18:13]And so these glimmers of ideas that you still have,
[18:16]do you, are you like always writing a book?
[18:18]Like are you in the middle of one now?
[18:20]But you just,
[18:21]I'm a little bit more like this.
[18:22]Look at me and look for more scraps.
[18:24]I feel like you should go through your, you know,
[18:26]junk mail and like find whatever you can.
[18:28]Exactly.
[18:28]Like, oh yeah, like this,
[18:29]this like loan offer is a normal, possibly.
[18:32]Now I'm definitely working on something right now.
[18:34]And it's something, it's going to be the sort of the third
[18:39]of what is sort of unofficially a kind of trilogy of these books
[18:43]that take place in the fictional town of Wells, Connecticut,
[18:47]which is where did you ever have a family
[18:49]in the end of the day take place.
[18:50]And this is one that I've been sort of circling
[18:54]since the first one.
[18:55]Like there's a character that I've just sort of been,
[18:57]I've had in mind and I had the title a long time ago
[19:01]and but didn't have the book.
[19:03]And I had the character in the title,
[19:05]but I had no idea really what the story was going to be.
[19:07]And now I'm coming into it a little bit
[19:09]and just sort of typing toward it.
[19:12]So do you discuss your work with like some of the writers
[19:15]you represent or just friends or do you keep it
[19:17]on your ass?
[19:19]Like, in the beginning of this,
[19:21]I was like church in the state, oh no.
[19:23]But there are a few who, you know,
[19:26]it's the thing about working in book publishing
[19:29]and working in literature, I think,
[19:31]and probably any creative field, you know,
[19:34]where the medium is something that matters to a lot.
[19:38]You know, I represent these writers
[19:40]who are also big readers and so we talk about books,
[19:43]we talk about like their books.
[19:44]It's just, there's an intimacy that develops
[19:47]and especially with some of them over time
[19:49]and with a few like my writings come into it,
[19:52]kind of against my like sort of urging
[19:56]and certainly better judgment.
[19:58]But yeah, I can couple of them.
[20:00]I've been really good at red stuff, and even early,
[20:03]and we talk about it so some, but not that many.
[20:07]Can you give a little glimpse of what portrait
[20:11]of an ad act as a young man was about?
[20:13]I know this is from a while back, and it's about your life.
[20:16]But I thought it was just so good,
[20:17]and I've remembered it all this time,
[20:18]and no, that was that long.
[20:19]Was it 10 years ago or something?
[20:21]How long ago was it?
[20:21]No, it was an antennae got published.
[20:23]Yeah, I really think that was good.
[20:24]I didn't even research that.
[20:27]Anyway, but share a little bit of your life story
[20:29]from that time and how you made it through,
[20:33]because that's the most inspiring type of story
[20:35]there is going through the worst and coming out better
[20:38]for it on the other side.
[20:40]Wow, I mean, that memorable chronicles
[20:43]a period of time.
[20:44]The foreground is a couple of months
[20:46]that I spent, really, in a free fall of crack cocaine
[20:51]addiction.
[20:51]And I had, for over 10 years, had an active crack addiction
[20:57]that I had kept secret.
[20:59]I was a heavy drinker.
[21:01]And I'm sure there were some people in my life
[21:04]who thought that I was an alcoholic.
[21:06]Nobody had confronted me about it,
[21:08]but I'm sure I didn't give them a lot of room to.
[21:10]But in terms of the crack cocaine addiction,
[21:13]my boyfriend at the time knew what I lived with,
[21:15]but that was the only other person.
[21:17]And if you know anything about addiction,
[21:21]particularly with crack cocaine, or it becomes less
[21:26]manageable, and if the point had it became completely
[21:28]unmanageable, I just walked out the door of my life
[21:31]and on a bender that I had intended to end in death.
[21:34]And so on the other side of that, I ended up in treatment.
[21:38]And so I went back and because so much of that,
[21:43]those two months were a lot happened in that time.
[21:48]I think when I was getting sober,
[21:51]I was trying to make sense of what had happened.
[21:53]And so it's a very close look at those last two months
[21:58]of my active addiction.
[21:59]But then it panels back when I was a kid
[22:02]to lead up to the period of time
[22:04]that that two months commenced.
[22:07]And it's sort of like, how did you get here?
[22:09]And so, and I think I'm still puzzling through that.
[22:12]I'm still engaged in that.
[22:14]But that book is a kind of representation of like
[22:17]what my engagement with that sort of puzzle
[22:19]like at the time in 2008, I guess,
[22:23]is when I finished writing it.
[22:25]And I was lucky, you know, I went to treatment.
[22:28]I found other alcoholics and addicts in recovery.
[22:32]And I realized after relapsing a fair bit
[22:36]in my first year of sobriety that I couldn't stay sober
[22:39]without other alcoholics and addicts in recovery.
[22:42]Like I needed them very closely and actively in my life.
[22:46]And they are, and some of the people from that period of time
[22:50]in 2005 and 2006, when I was first getting sober,
[22:53]those people are still active in my life.
[22:56]And so, you know, I sort of let go of everything I thought
[23:00]I knew about how to live my life.
[23:02]That's really, I mean, if I'm, you know, I'm sober today,
[23:04]if there's a reason, it sort of connects to that.
[23:07]Like I had a lot of ideas about how I should live my life
[23:10]and how I could navigate, you know, the problems in my life.
[23:13]And I had to throw all that out to get sober.
[23:16]And so people in recovery kind of taught me how to live,
[23:20]how to be honest, how to be accountable,
[23:22]how to be responsible, and how to be useful.
[23:25]You know, I think like growing up before that,
[23:28]the North Star was like, you know, am I gonna be happy?
[23:32]Like that was the sort of like, how can I be happy?
[23:34]And I let go of that in recovery.
[23:36]And it was really like what became clear is that
[23:40]if happiness was ever gonna come into it,
[23:42]it was because you were living a useful life.
[23:45]And so where the focus of self isn't the primary objective
[23:49]of the day, but really sort of focusing on others,
[23:52]which parenting is very helpful with.
[23:54]Like, so there's a sort of like the crisis
[23:58]of taking care of somebody like immediately takes
[24:01]your mind off yourself.
[24:03]And so that's also been helpful.
[24:05]But you know, there's no finish line in recovery.
[24:08]So it's, you know, it's been a lot of years since then,
[24:11]but I'm not standing on the other side of a finish line.
[24:13]Like it's something that I have to engage with always.
[24:16]And happily for me, like, I love the rooms of recovery.
[24:19]I love the people in them.
[24:20]I love so brow, alcoholics and addicts, their stories,
[24:24]their sense of humor about like, you know,
[24:26]the worst things and identify with them.
[24:28]So that's kind of it.
[24:30]But there are people who I know who've leaned into it
[24:33]and followed a very similar path to mine
[24:35]who haven't gotten sober.
[24:36]And on some level, it's a mystery.
[24:38]Like, I really guess a little woo-woo-woo for me
[24:41]because when I look at like the video tape,
[24:45]I'm kind of shocked that I am sober
[24:47]and that I was able to navigate that period of time,
[24:50]especially in early recovery.
[24:52]So it's somewhat of a mystery still.
[24:55]So you feel like part of the being useful
[24:57]is contributing your own story through your memoir
[25:00]and the novels that came after.
[25:03]I think that, you know, part of writing the books
[25:05]kind of felt like not a choice.
[25:07]I mean, it really became the sort of puzzle
[25:10]that I needed to see through.
[25:11]And having it be published was the choice.
[25:15]And that, like, the only way in which it made sense
[25:18]was if it could be useful.
[25:20]Because, you know, it was,
[25:22]you've talked to a lot of memoir writers.
[25:23]So you know this and it's, you know,
[25:26]there's, you're bringing in other people's stories
[25:29]by telling your own.
[25:30]And so there's a cost and there's a complication.
[25:33]And so it really had to be something that,
[25:37]and there's a discomfort too of just, like,
[25:40]taking those parts of your life that are, you know,
[25:43]for a long time, the most shameful.
[25:45]And the ones you would do a lot to keep in
[25:48]and then you're actively putting them forward.
[25:50]So yeah, the reason to do it was to have it be useful.
[25:54]And so I think probably anybody who's written
[25:57]a memoir of their experience,
[25:58]even of experiences that aren't as dark as my own,
[26:03]when people identify with your story,
[26:05]like, I still get nails and DMs
[26:07]and all sorts of communication about people reading those books
[26:11]who've identified who say it's useful.
[26:13]And so that's been helpful to kind of make peace with
[26:16]whatever the discomforts have been for me.
[26:19]And then, and especially with the people
[26:21]in my life who those books have involved.
[26:24]Well, I know we were joking
[26:25]before we started recording about how, you know,
[26:28]your neighbors are like, yeah, you know,
[26:30]they find out about your book
[26:31]and maybe they don't want to send their kids
[26:32]to a plate of it right away.
[26:34]I mean, I'm kidding, but it's over.
[26:36]Yeah.
[26:38]Is I, you know, I'm surprised it doesn't,
[26:43]I mean, to my face, I don't get much of it.
[26:45]But like, I can't imagine the conversation
[26:48]and the opportunity to look, I mean, so,
[26:51]but I mean, one of the things that I have found,
[26:54]which was not my experience when I was younger,
[26:57]is that stories like mine aren't that unique.
[27:00]Like, you know, it seems all true unique as you live it.
[27:04]Like it feels like terribly singular and not knowable,
[27:08]but addiction and alcoholism seem to cut through,
[27:12]you know, even like the most, you know,
[27:15]serene looking lives.
[27:17]And so I find more that, you know,
[27:20]as I navigate the world, people who I meet
[27:22]confess to me more easily by what's going on in their life.
[27:25]And so, and it's, it's overwhelming
[27:28]how, how much it affects people.
[27:30]I mean, that's so, that just hits on like the whole point
[27:33]of books really is that when you're going through
[27:36]life, these experiences all make you feel that way.
[27:39]And then as soon as you read someone else's
[27:41]or you put your own out there,
[27:42]you realize that you're just one,
[27:44]this is just part of the collective experience.
[27:46]And that's what I forgot it.
[27:47]I think that's true.
[27:48]There's in the literature of recovery,
[27:50]there's one phrase that really caught my attention early on,
[27:54]which is there's a description of getting sober
[27:56]as like an end of isolation.
[27:59]And that was 100% my experience,
[28:01]which is going from this secret, shameful, you know,
[28:06]tortured existence into a community of people
[28:08]who had had very similar experiences
[28:10]in many of the feelings they would even describe
[28:12]in the same language that I would use,
[28:14]which shocked me to my bones.
[28:16]But also with books, I remember, you know,
[28:19]reading books when I was young,
[28:21]like identifying with experiences
[28:25]and just connecting to the world,
[28:27]you know, I grew up in a small town at the end of a long driveway
[28:30]before social media.
[28:32]And so books were also just a way of like seeing
[28:34]what was going on in the world,
[28:35]but also recognizing certain feelings
[28:37]and circumstances like it just,
[28:40]it had this connecting effect,
[28:42]it ended isolation or it tempered it in some ways,
[28:46]made it more bearable.
[28:47]And certainly recovery was the extreme version of that for me.
[28:50]It like a lot of moms use like Facebook groups
[28:53]as their recovery.
[28:56]I'm not even kidding.
[28:57]Like that's what I think what you're talking about
[28:59]with community and all that.
[29:00]Like I think, you know, I've never been a big like
[29:02]message group user type person,
[29:04]but so many people like that's what they need.
[29:07]That's what they're like hooked on and provides them
[29:10]some sort of solace for when they go back
[29:12]and little denied and they can't walk sleep
[29:14]and blah, blah, blah, blah.
[29:15]Yeah, I mean, all these groups, so.
[29:18]Life is hard.
[29:19]Like, I mean, it's like, it's just so I think
[29:22]when you anytime that you can connect in any way,
[29:26]like even if it's not explicitly to connect about
[29:29]what's hard about life,
[29:31]just to not feel alone in it is, you know,
[29:34]booing and it helps you survive it.
[29:37]It helps you navigate it.
[29:39]Very true.
[29:40]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors
[29:42]is our last question and I've kept you for too long here.
[29:45]You know, just right, right, like just right
[29:47]and right more read a lot.
[29:49]Like I think reading is one of the most important things
[29:52]that a writer can do is in and to do both
[29:54]and also right without an expectation.
[29:57]I think a lot of the time is
[30:00]some of the best work that I've read when I find out later from from the author, like sort of how it came to be.
[30:06]A lot of it just it happens first without a shape in mind.
[30:10]It comes from, you know, this sort of amorphous feeling.
[30:13]All the writers I work with know that I quote this line from the poet, W.S. Merlin,
[30:18]which is he wrote a poem about writing a poem, and he says,
[30:23]like he says, any day now I'll make a knife out of this cloud.
[30:26]And so I think of that cloud is like the idea or the inspiration feeling that like something should be written down.
[30:33]And that the writing is sort of is making that more specific, more purposeful, more deliberate.
[30:39]And sometimes it just needs to be cloud for a while, you know, and just to like luxuriate in that and to explore that.
[30:45]And usually along the way a shape or a pattern or a purpose emerges and then you write toward that.
[30:53]And but to not, I think there's so much tension that arrives at the blank screen and thinking that you need to know what it is exactly.
[31:03]Like before you begin and just right, just start.
[31:06]Like it's like analysis.
[31:08]Like if you I don't think people are in analysis anymore, but like once upon a time people would sit for just hours just rattling off stuff.
[31:16]And little patterns would emerge from what they would say.
[31:19]and meaning would be gleaned from that.
[31:21]And then like, and then a story gets shaped and then something really meaningful, you know, happens in shape.
[31:27]But over time it takes time.
[31:29]So right you're a sculptor.
[31:32]Widdling it down.
[31:33]Exactly.
[31:34]Well, thank you.
[31:35]Thank you so much for chatting today and for coming on my show and sharing all your experiences and and writing all your fantastic books that have really made a big difference. So thank you.
[31:46]I appreciate it. Take care.
[31:50]Thanks again so much to Audible for being my sponsor.
[31:54]You can go to my site at audible.com slash zippy for your free trial month of Audible.
[32:01]You get all their audio books and podcasts and guided meditations and Audible originals and just so much.
[32:08]So go check it out. Please please please audible.com slash zippy.
[32:12]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:15]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zippy Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:20]Also sign up for my newsletter at zippy Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week.
[32:27]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[32:31]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.