Cheryl Strayed, THIS TELLING
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[1:35]So this is a recording of the Instagram Live that I did with Cheryl Strade. I was like over the moon to be interviewing her.
[1:42]I have been a fan for so long and you can probably tell in my, you know, fandom,
[1:49]adulation, and all the rest when I talked to her. So I hope I did an okay job. I was stuttering.
[1:54]I was like a little bit nervous actually because I'm such a fan. Anyway, Cheryl Strade is the author
[1:59]of the number one New York Times best selling memoir, Wild, The New York Times bestsellers,
[2:03]tiny beautiful things, and brave enough, and the novel torch. Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as
[2:09]her first selection for Oprah's book club 2.0. Her books have been translated into nearly
[2:13]40 languages around the world and have been adapted for both the screen and the stage.
[2:17]The Oscar-nominated movie adaptation of Wild stars Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl and Laura
[2:23]Dern as Cheryl's mother. Bobby, tiny beautiful things was adapted for the stage by Nia
[2:28]Vardellos, who also starred in the role of sugar slash Cheryl. And by the way, that's who is in
[2:33]my big fat Greek wedding. The play was directed by Thomas Kale and debuted at the public
[2:38]theater in New York City. Cheryl Strade is also the host of The New York Times hit podcast
[2:43]Sugar Calling and also Dear Shuggers, which she co-hosted with Steve Almond. Her essays have been
[2:47]published in The Best American Essays, The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine,
[2:52]Folks, Salon, The Sun, Tinhouse, The New York Times Book Review, and Elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction
[2:57]writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota.
[3:01]She lives in Portland, Oregon. I spoke to Cheryl on our Instagram live about her new story
[3:06]called This Telling, which is an Amazon original story, kind of like a mini novella, but she
[3:11]calls it a long story. Anyway, that's what we talked about and it's really great. It just came out.
[3:15]Hi. Good to be. Hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Oh my gosh, it's so nice to see you.
[3:22]It's so nice to see you too. I'm so excited to be talking to you. You're like such a hero of mine,
[3:28]so thank you for doing this. Well, I think you're pretty awesome yourself.
[3:32]I just heard you say that you're a memoir addict. I love memoir addicts. I'm one too.
[3:37]We can talk about these on it. What are I? Have you read a good one lately? Are you? Should we
[3:41]chat memoirs? There are so many, right? Yeah. So I have, and you know, the minute I people ask me
[3:48]that question, I'm always like, my mind was blank, but I can tell you a couple of amazing books
[3:54]I've read the undocumented Americans. Are you familiar with this book? I'm not Carla,
[4:01]Cornejo, Villa. I'm going to, I should have written down her name. No, it's okay. I thought you
[4:07]went a bit. Is the undocumented Americans really a stunning, amazing book. I love Motherland
[4:15]by Elissa Altman. Me too. I love that. Love it. Love her. It's such a huge fan. Me too. Me too.
[4:22]And I also am reading, I'm almost done reading cast by Elizabeth Wilderson, which is not a memoir.
[4:28]I mean, she writes about aspects of her life. But wow, have you read that book yet? It's on
[4:33]my shelf. I have it. I just have not gotten there yet, but I'm getting to it. I feel like everyone
[4:39]in America should read past. Yes. My mother was like, you have to read this book. So, you know,
[4:43]if nothing else, I'm going to read it for her. That's great. I'm a little child behind you. I'm
[4:48]gonna put on my glasses. Thank you for telling me. There was a little
[4:53]urge and popping up. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry. You know, it's like five o'clock on a
[5:00]school night and I'm very sorry, but, you know, I don't think they're going to pop up, but
[5:08]yeah, you never know. Yeah, you never know. Okay. So, let's talk about your latest,
[5:13]which I listened to in the car the other morning with my husband and my sister-in-law and
[5:18]everybody and we just loved it. I always call you this telling part of the out of line series,
[5:24]which are all about women on the verge of a breakthrough. Then you're in such good
[5:28]company with Roxanne Gay and Emma Donahue and all these great women authors writing about
[5:33]like feminist stuff. So, tell me for those people on the call who haven't or on the Instagram
[5:40]line or whatever, who haven't read it or don't even know about it that much yet. Can you please
[5:45]tell us a little more about the story? Yeah. So, I was approached by Amazon and the editors
[5:52]there to write a piece of feminist fiction at, you know, a short story that and they basically
[5:58]like said, you know, whatever you want to do, just make sure it's feminist. And of course, I
[6:02]thought, well, that's like everything I write. I am a feminist. It's part of all of my work. But
[6:09]when I started to think about what I was going to write about, what kept emerging is the story,
[6:15]that I have been wanting to tell and trying to tell one former and other firm for actually many
[6:21]years. And it's rooted in a piece of my own personal history that it's one of those scenarios
[6:27]where I've always thought, well, what if what if it went the other way? And it's this. When my mom
[6:32]was in her teens in the 1960s, she became pregnant. She was not married. She got pregnant.
[6:40]And because abortion was illegal then and, you know, as we know, there was a lot of kind of social
[6:47]censure against women having babies without men. She was basically, you know, forced to marry my
[6:53]dad. That's why my parents got married. My mom was pregnant with my sister. And, you know, she had
[6:59]me and my brother and sister and onward, she went. But when I was a teenager and really asking my mom
[7:05]about her life, she told me the story about the choice that she had, which was really no choice at
[7:11]all. And those of you who are familiar with my other work know that that my parents' marriage was
[7:17]a terrible one and my father was abusive to her. And, you know, it was a very hard thing to endure.
[7:23]And so I always, you know, the little creative writer in me really reflected upon a, the impact
[7:30]that that kind of lack of reproductive choice, the impact of that on girls and women. In my
[7:36]mother's life, it pushed her in one direction. And in the character, the main character in this
[7:41]telling a young woman named Gerald Dean finds herself in the exact same situation my mom found herself
[7:46]in. It's the mid 60s. She was just out of high school and she finds out she's pregnant. And what
[7:52]was fun and fascinating for me to do is just imagine what if my mom had taken this other track,
[7:58]what would have happened, what would be the outcome of that? And so with Gerald Dean, I followed her,
[8:03]the story opens up when she's 17. It ends when she's like 70. And I follow her, the story is very,
[8:11]very, as you know, little micro trap chapters as we follow her over the course of her life. And
[8:17]as she reckons with that decision she made back in the 60s. Wow. And so many, it brings up so many,
[8:24]what ifs, like for so many people and especially in light of all the prevalence of DNA testing and
[8:30]everything that's going on. I mean, a friend, I just saw the other day just told me that she found out
[8:35]she was adopted. She's like 60 years old and her parents. And this happens all the time now.
[8:40]But it's just all these things that we thought were secrets or that people thought were
[8:45]secrets are no longer secrets. And I feel like that's really sort of what your story was about.
[8:50]it's like this corrosive power of secrets and how keeping them can just like
[8:55]affect everything from the inside out for the rest of your life more so than whatever actually
[9:00]happens. And so, please. And you know, that's, I'm so glad you picked up on that because
[9:05]that's what I was really also trying to interrogate is the way that silence is always serving
[9:11]in cooperation with shame. You know, the reason we have secrets is we're ashamed to tell the truth.
[9:17]And of course, as we've seen over and over again, that especially when it comes to
[9:24]the realities of the lives of women, the lives of mothers, the radical act of telling the truth
[9:31]is a radical act. You know, the change can't be made until people say, as we see, like I almost
[9:38]just said, me too. Well, okay, me too. When it comes to sexual violence and sexual harassment,
[9:43]me too, when it comes to abortions or, you know, finding yourselves in relationships or situations
[9:51]that you wouldn't have imagined or expected. And so much of essentially women's bodies
[9:56]are, are cloaked in shame. And this-
[10:00]story for me was about the impact of shame on one woman's life and the form of my main character
[10:06]Geraldine, but also her movement, you know, we don't want to spoil the story, but her movement
[10:12]towards stepping out of that shame. In some ways, the only way to reject shame is to tell the truth
[10:18]about who you are. That is just a fact. And that's so much easier said than done, especially if
[10:26]you're someone like Geraldine who has been, you know, really steeped in a culture and in
[10:31]generation that said, no, you should be ashamed. It's hard to believe. I mean, I feel like maybe
[10:36]because I live in New York or I mean, like, there are still places that view all of the choices as
[10:43]not really choices now. It's, I don't know, that there are different tolerances I should
[10:48]say of all sorts of things and control and all these things. Anyway, I want to say something
[10:55]about that because I think it's really an important thing for us to remember that I think a lot
[11:02]of American women are, you know, sort of think, oh, yeah, you know, we have access to
[11:07]birth control. We have, you know, abortion has been legal for a long time. We have all kinds of choices
[11:13]when it comes to reproduction. But first of all, those things are very much being threatened on
[11:18]many fronts right now. But also even like our own, what I found is we even have kind of revisionist
[11:23]history about that. When I was writing this telling, it like all stories that I always go through
[11:30]an editorial process. And so Geraldine and my character, she gets pregnant in like 1964. And the
[11:38]editor was like, well, wait a minute, wasn't the birth control pill legal by then. And it really
[11:44]was fascinating for me because I think a lot of you are like, yeah, it's been legal since the 60s.
[11:49]But then when I actually did the research and learned that yet technically, a very small group of
[11:54]women had access to the pill earlier in the 60s. And they were married women in certain states
[12:00]that they literally had to have like permission from their husband to be prescribed the pill.
[12:06]And it really wasn't until like the early 70s that women in all states could get the pill even
[12:13]if you weren't married, which, which was really later than I even imagined. And so that was the
[12:18]the other piece of this is I wanted to tell a kind of like, it's in some ways in this historical
[12:22]story. I mean, it only goes back to 64. But that's been more than 50 years now. And I think we
[12:27]forget like what it was really like for women who were coming of age in the 60s. We think of it as
[12:33]a wild and free time. But actually most of America was really quite still very conservative,
[12:39]certainly when it came to issues of sex and female bodies.
[12:43]So tell me about writing something like this, which in audio form was 45 minutes. So I'm not
[12:48]even sure how long it would have been had I read it in hard copy. But tell me about trying to get
[12:52]so much into a shorter, disformat because this is not like a common length necessarily. It's not a
[12:58]short story. It's more like a novella of sorts. And you've done like, you know, in depth memoir and all
[13:04]the rest, like just what was this particular assignment like for you? It was really, I'm so glad you're
[13:09]asking about that because it was what I try to do with everything I write is I try to do something
[13:15]new. I try to stretch myself or I mean trust me is that there were so many times where I
[13:21]cursed myself. Because you know, to try to fit in, like I said, it starts when she's 17 and ends when
[13:31]she's like 70. And so to really try to kind of tell that much of a life and that small of a space,
[13:37]it is a short story, but it's a long short story. And you know, to try to fit that in was a challenge.
[13:42]And so with this style, I don't know if you know, I mean, I'm sure, you know, this is about
[13:46]the chance to be kind of minimal in the language. I had to very much like each chapter is almost
[13:52]like a little sketch, just a sketch of a moment or one scene or a gesture or a thought, or I tried
[13:59]in some cases to kind of summarize a whole era in a very concise way. And so it was really fun
[14:07]for me on the language of level, on the level of language of like trying to say as much in
[14:13]most economical fashion as I could. It's so funny because my husband sometimes I read him books
[14:18]and sometimes I make him like listen to audiobooks like this and especially in the car.
[14:22]And this is what he was doing. I was like, well, what did you say? That was so great. He's like,
[14:25]well, I just felt like it was very abrupt, you know, because like each writer, he's like each chapter
[14:30]ended in such a abrupt way. And I was like, but that was so great because then you wanted to listen
[14:35]to the next chapter. And I think that's what, you know, propels the reader on so well, the shortness,
[14:42]the right to the point of it, basically. I mean, you have to do, that's like the whole trick
[14:47]of a writer, right? It's like getting an image into somebody else's head and the least of
[14:50]other words unless you're, you know, heavily invested in the actual beauty of each individual
[14:56]sentence. But you have to like do your job, right? It has to get the point across and like with
[15:01]the shoes, for instance, like that was such a perfect thing to that. I mean, I won't give anything
[15:06]away, but the shoes, like the, the, the sputty, each other at the mall, like these little moments
[15:12]with just little. I mean, it's great. It's just amazing. Yeah, it's definitely for me,
[15:18]a challenge as a writer to let each piece be what it is because they're so, you know, I would say
[15:24]that most of my work, I'm much more expansive and much more like, okay, I'm going to tell,
[15:30]I'm going to describe everything and tell a full, the full story behind all of these details.
[15:35]But that was the cool part is that it's trying to do that very minimalistic, abrupt. I mean,
[15:41]I don't know if it was a, like, I wouldn't be afraid to certainly, certainly like concise and
[15:47]knowing that there's so much off the page that I'm hoping that the reader in their mind will
[15:52]elaborate on if that makes sense. Of course it makes sense. Yeah. And Kristen Bell read it. Yes,
[15:58]I know that was so cool. That was so neat. You know, it was funny. As I was writing this piece,
[16:05]it was like late, late last year, early this year. My daughter and husband and I were binge watching
[16:11]the good place. So it felt, it felt, it felt perfect. She felt perfect that she was the one to read it.
[16:16]Did you get to pick? Did you have any say in that or not? Yeah, I have a little say. And, you know,
[16:22]she's just certainly, I mean, she's the perfect choice. It's excellent. Yeah. So you've been writing
[16:28]for so long. I mean, I was on your Instagram earlier and you had the picture of yourself 25 years
[16:32]ago for a while. And I was like, wow, is that long ago? Like, because when you read, you're writing,
[16:37]it feels like it happened like yesterday, right? You're so in it. It's so like in this sense of
[16:42]immediacy, it's just like overpowering. And yet it's from a long time ago. So even writing and producing
[16:48]all this stuff about all these periods of your life. Like, I know you say you like to experiment
[16:52]with form, but how do you keep it interesting to yourself? How do you keep coming up with new
[16:57]stuff? Like, just how do you keep it going? So well. Well, it's true. I've been a writer
[17:04]since I was like 19, I'm 52 now. With wild, you know, I do actually write the book. And so,
[17:10]you know, much later. But yeah, I've written all along the way. And I have been publishing
[17:17]works since I was in my 20s. And, you know, one of the ways to keep it, I guess, alive is always
[17:23]to, you know, take on a challenge with every, with every piece. It's like, it's, I don't feel like,
[17:29]okay, I've got all these years of writing behind me. What I feel like is, okay, how am I going to
[17:35]pull this off? I always feel afraid. I always feel like I can't do it. One of the things I say
[17:40]over and over is that to me, Bill, you know, I'm the way it feels to me to write a book is that I
[17:46]can't write a book. The way it feels to me to write a short story is I can't write a short story.
[17:50]I mean, I can't even tell you how many times during this telling that I just thought,
[17:55]okay, I surrender. I'm retiring. I can't do it. You know, and then you persevere,
[18:01]and you get through it. And you do your best. I mean, that's the thing too that I want to say.
[18:07]So just, I do want to tell people, you can go to Amazon and get my story this telling.
[18:13]Just click, click, click. You can also get the whole collection, my story, along with all the other
[18:18]amazing writers who are in the collection. But what I always feel really full in my heart when I'm
[18:25]whether it be a short story like this telling or my next book or a while is that I'm trying to
[18:31]do my very best. I'm trying to use all of my intelligence. I'm trying to put my whole heart into
[18:36]that work. I labor over every word again and again and again. But my work ends with the writing.
[18:44]Like I can't help it if people love it or if they hate it or if they're different to it. And
[18:51]I try to really just focus on the work and not on other people, like people's opinions of that
[18:57]work. And I think that that in some ways keeps me really alive as a writer because I'm putting
[19:04]my focus always on, you know, how can I make the best words on the page today or on the computer
[19:10]screen today? And I think the minute I would, if I shifted my attention to being like, do they love
[19:15]it? Do they love it? Do they hate it? What do they think? That's when I would sort of, I guess,
[19:18]lose my grounding as a writer. Interesting. When you first came out with wild and you shared
[19:23]everything, right? It's like you're an open book, right? We know all about so much stuff about you.
[19:28]Do you feel as you're going through life that you make different decisions about what you want
[19:33]to share, what you feel comfortable sharing? Do you regret any of the earlier sharing? Is there
[19:38]anything you'd want to take back? Like how about your kids? Like, like all of this? Like, where
[19:42]are you in this today? Yeah. No, there's nothing I would take back. And, you know, my first pieces
[19:48]that I when I first began publishing back in my 20s, they were essays that were extremely revealing
[19:55]like, like wild is two essays. One's called the love of my life. One is heroin.
[20:00]They both ended up in Best American essays,
[20:02]and they both introduced me to a big audience
[20:06]in a sort of situation where I was really lame
[20:11]bear at my heart.
[20:13]And that was a very, it was extremely educational for me.
[20:17]It was a sort of practice for what would happen
[20:21]with Wilde, which was, you know, a million times bigger,
[20:24]but that people who I don't know would know a lot
[20:27]about my personal life.
[20:29]And what I try to do as a memoir and personal essayist
[20:33]is really to try to be as vulnerable and brave
[20:38]as I can possibly be about telling the truth
[20:41]about who I am and about my experiences in my life.
[20:44]Shucking off that thing, that silence and shame
[20:47]that we were talking about, that my character in this telling,
[20:50]you know, essentially lived her life
[20:51]under the trap of silence and shame.
[20:54]And I as a writer do the opposite of that.
[20:56]I'm like, okay, if I'm ashamed about it,
[20:58]I'm going to write about it, right?
[21:00]And, you know, I do think that for me,
[21:02]it was really important to be mostly vulnerable
[21:07]with myself, like, I'm definitely careful
[21:09]about the things I write about other people.
[21:12]I don't just say, okay, I'm just going to say everything.
[21:15]I'm going to talk about my siblings,
[21:16]and I'm going to talk about my husband,
[21:17]and I'm going to talk about my kids.
[21:19]Like, it's not that I don't write about them.
[21:21]I just, when I do write about them, I am more considered.
[21:25]Like, because I don't think it's my right to expose their,
[21:29]you know, their privacy.
[21:31]So I try to violate my own privacy, not other people.
[21:34]And of course, you know, you inevitably,
[21:36]when you write about people,
[21:37]you do have to sometimes, you know,
[21:41]announce to the world things about them
[21:42]that they wouldn't otherwise tell.
[21:45]But I try to, you know, I try to do that
[21:47]with a lot of love and respect,
[21:48]and also sometimes permission.
[21:50]My kids are teenagers now.
[21:52]They haven't read my books,
[21:54]but a lot of their peers have.
[21:56]And I feel okay with it.
[21:57]Like, I think that someday they'll come to my books,
[22:00]and they'll be grateful that they can see
[22:03]the inner life of their mom.
[22:04]I would certainly have loved to have that.
[22:08]Oh, that's a nice way to look at it.
[22:10]I don't know.
[22:11]I mean, I want to know the inner life of my mom.
[22:12]I'm not sure.
[22:13]Well, I mean, I think that that's,
[22:15]I think that that comes with time.
[22:17]I mean, my mom's been dead a long time, you know?
[22:20]And I would love to have that.
[22:23]I would love to have that.
[22:25]And I think when when your mom is still alive
[22:27]and you're active and you're, you know,
[22:29]that maybe you still need to have that kind of like boundary,
[22:32]you know, and I certainly by no means would ever say
[22:34]to my kids, okay, you know, time to read mommy's books now,
[22:37]I think that they'll come to them when they do.
[22:39]And it could be well into their adulthood, you know?
[22:42]Yeah.
[22:43]So what are you working on now?
[22:43]What's your next book?
[22:45]I'm working on another book.
[22:46]I'm really, I just finished writing a screenplay,
[22:50]which was, I was hired to write a screenplay
[22:52]about a very interesting person.
[22:53]I can't say who it is, but I finished that.
[22:57]And I'm doing some revisions of that right now
[22:59]and working on my next book.
[23:00]Now listen, it's a novel,
[23:02]but then I'm also working on a memoir
[23:05]and I keep changing my mind about which one
[23:07]I'm going to finish first.
[23:09]So I'm kind of like running two races at the same time
[23:12]and I'm not sure who's going to win.
[23:13]Remember our novel, memoir or novel,
[23:16]but I do know it's funny because, you know,
[23:17]wild was published in 2012, March of 2012.
[23:21]And the tiny beautiful things was published
[23:23]literally like four or five months later,
[23:25]which is insane.
[23:26]Like I just had a crazy year of book promotion
[23:29]and doing, you know, more than a year, to be honest.
[23:33]And I just wonder because I'm writing the two books
[23:35]kind of at the same time, like if something,
[23:38]they will probably come out four months apart,
[23:40]but they might come out in quicker succession
[23:42]than expected.
[23:43]So how are you toggling back and forth like that?
[23:45]Like how are you structuring your time?
[23:47]How are you a lot of time to each project?
[23:50]How do you even in your head keep it kind of straight?
[23:53]Or is it just you pick it up when you are inspired for each one?
[23:56]Yeah, I mean, I think what's probably going to happen.
[23:58]I'm going to actually do a little writing retreat soon.
[24:02]And I think what's going to happen is like I met the moment
[24:06]of truth like, okay, Cheryl, like because I can't.
[24:08]I can't really get to that like total sink in mode
[24:13]until I commit.
[24:15]So I've written a bit of both, or you know,
[24:18]a substantial amount of both,
[24:19]but there's a certain point where I'm like,
[24:21]okay, now this one, I'm diving in.
[24:23]So that decision's coming very soon.
[24:26]Because you're right, I don't go like day by day.
[24:28]It's kind of like I'll work for like a month on this
[24:31]and get stuck and then I'll work for a month on this
[24:32]and get stuck.
[24:33]So I'm going to have to make a decision.
[24:35]Do you have a vote?
[24:36]No, I'll vote or no more.
[24:37]Are you remember more out of it?
[24:38]I was going to say I vote for memoir.
[24:40]Oh, that's right.
[24:41]I mean, I also love fiction though.
[24:42]I read a ton of fiction.
[24:44]I love both.
[24:45]I think there's just something about memoir
[24:46]this so intimate where I know it's you.
[24:50]It's not like I suspend disbelief and I, it's a character.
[24:53]I can still get a really emotionally invested in it.
[24:55]And I love it, but it's a memoir.
[24:57]It's literally like like what you're saying.
[24:59]Like someone's just giving you their diary and they're like,
[25:02]you're loving put this in your hand
[25:04]and then I'm just going to like stand by
[25:06]and let you read it.
[25:07]And so I just feel like this
[25:09]and I'm just gratitude to memoirs
[25:10]because I'm like, thank you.
[25:12]Like thank you for trusting the reader essentially
[25:15]as what you're writing because I think it always helps
[25:17]so much and helps somebody with what you're going through.
[25:20]Totally.
[25:21]Well, and you know, I think too it's interesting
[25:23]absolutely like I think that while
[25:26]and Tanya beautiful things and brave enough,
[25:27]all three of them nonfiction.
[25:29]So many people say you helped me with these books.
[25:32]But my first book, Torch is a novel
[25:35]and lots and lots of people read that and say,
[25:38]oh my gosh, that helped me so much.
[25:40]I saw myself in these characters.
[25:42]And so I do think that for me, really good fiction,
[25:46]it does that thing where you actually feel like
[25:48]you're reading about real people
[25:50]and you can identify with that character
[25:54]as much as you identify with somebody
[25:56]who happens to be a real person.
[25:58]So I think that it can have that function.
[26:00]I will say writing this telling made me feel like,
[26:03]oh my gosh, it's so fun to be back in the world of fiction again
[26:07]because you can change your character's plot.
[26:09]You can be like, well wait a minute,
[26:11]let's have her do this instead of that.
[26:12]Whereas memoir you're stuck with,
[26:14]you're stuck with a plot of your own life.
[26:16]That's true.
[26:17]That's true.
[26:18]Memory of course is, you know, they can straight.
[26:21]Yeah.
[26:22]You talked about writing a screenplay.
[26:23]What has it been like sort of entering
[26:24]the Hollywood land of life?
[26:27]Like what is the like being in the entertainment world
[26:29]in that way?
[26:30]Yeah, like a whole new universe.
[26:32]It really is a new universe.
[26:34]Well, first of all, the wild movie experience
[26:37]was as good as it could possibly be for a writer.
[26:40]I heard so many, I had friends
[26:43]who have really bad experiences in Hollywood.
[26:46]And most of almost writers have the experience
[26:48]of having their book options
[26:50]and they're so excited about it and it's glorious.
[26:53]And then nothing happens.
[26:55]And I had the great fortune of really having
[26:57]Reese Witherspoon and she was partnered
[27:00]with this producer, Bruno Papadreya.
[27:02]And they were just like,
[27:03]we're gonna make this movie and we're gonna get it done.
[27:06]And it was amazing.
[27:07]They got to work on it.
[27:08]They hired Nick Hornby to write the script.
[27:11]And next thing you knew, we were rolling.
[27:13]And it was, we shot it in Oregon
[27:17]and I was really very involved with everything.
[27:20]You know, they sent me the script
[27:21]and I would weigh in on it.
[27:23]And they sent, they had me on the set.
[27:25]And I got to become friends with all the people
[27:28]who made the Lord and during who played my mom
[27:30]and recently played me and lots of folks.
[27:33]And it was just a wonderful experience.
[27:35]And what was really cool about it
[27:37]is I knew from the start
[27:39]that I was going to need to not be like,
[27:43]wait a minute, cut, like that's not how it is.
[27:46]That's not how the book is.
[27:47]I had to really realize, okay,
[27:49]this film is not my book.
[27:50]My book is my book.
[27:51]My book is the thing I made.
[27:53]And what they're making is an interpretation of this.
[27:56]There is its own thing.
[27:59]So if you only see the movie,
[28:01]you didn't really have the wild experience.
[28:05]Like, you know, there's so much more in the book.
[28:07]I think that the movie did a really beautiful job
[28:10]being true to the book in a lot of ways
[28:12]and honoring the book.
[28:13]But there's, you know,
[28:14]there's stuff in the book
[28:15]that there couldn't be in the movie.
[28:16]They had to really streamline it more as you do.
[28:19]And now, you know, being a writer in Hollywood too,
[28:22]just kind of as like a sideline job has been really fun.
[28:25]Like I said, I really didn't try any new stuff.
[28:28]I mean, that's how Dear Sugar was born.
[28:29]I was asked to write into a face column.
[28:32]I said, I don't, I'm not an advisor.
[28:34]I don't write in a face films.
[28:35]And then there I, you know, I went for it.
[28:37]And it was honestly one of the biggest things
[28:40]of my life, a really powerful thing.
[28:44]And so when I was asked to write this screenplay,
[28:46]I was like afraid.
[28:48]And I thought, maybe I can do it.
[28:51]And then I did it.
[28:53]And I felt like, wow, I learned so much in that process.
[28:57]And, you know, I'll be able to kind of talk about it
[29:01]like more directly someday.
[29:03]I hope and I do hope the movie gets made.
[29:05]because it really was, you know,
[29:07]it's a really cool experience.
[29:09]And it's a different world.
[29:11]But it's also a wonderful, you know,
[29:13]I learned a lot about writing in writing in that very new form.
[29:17]I think we need to explore at some point.
[29:19]No, you know, why you keep thinking you can't do it.
[29:22]And why you're so scared of the video projects
[29:24]and like all evidence to the contrary.
[29:26]But I guess that's just the way people are, right?
[29:28]It's just, yeah, would you please be my therapist
[29:30]to be one of those?
[29:32]It's because I'm damaged.
[29:33]It's because, I mean, the thing is is I'm laughing,
[29:37]but I'm telling you the truth.
[29:39]Like, I really always think I can't do it.
[29:43]And then I always do it.
[29:46]And it's just, it's just part of me.
[29:48]It's just part of, it's my psyche, you know, I,
[29:52]and maybe, and so I, you know,
[29:53]I don't think it's necessarily like a sign of like weakness
[29:57]or maybe even, I mean, I wish,
[29:59]I don't know that it's something.
[30:00]And I have to fix like maybe it's just that that I'm embracing it really fully and saying like, this is how I feel. This is how it feels.
[30:08]It's a scary and it's hard and then I think that the fact that I always meet that fear and difficulty with essentially saying, okay, I'm going to persist anyway and doing it. Like I think that's what matters in the end.
[30:23]I think I'm not alone. I think a lot. I can't read the comments, but are people saying I feel that way too. I haven't been reading them either, but I guarantee you I know other people are feeling that way because like most authors I talk to are like, that must have been a fluke. I hope I can do it. So it's not you.
[30:40]Yeah, is it called imposter syndrome or something. I mean, yeah, like what's weird is like when I hear that phrase imposter syndrome, like I don't feel like an imposter in that kind of larger way. Like I definitely feel like yep.
[30:52]I am a writer. This is my call and I've answered that call. To me, it's alive. The imposter is more on the daily like there I am sitting in front of my laptop and I have to do what I feel I cannot do.
[31:06]This is what I say to my daughter when she like gets scared to go to school or something like that. We have this mantra like I've done it before and I can do it again. So I just have her like say that over and over. I write it on a little piece of paper and
[31:18]and now that's like our thing. So anyway, you're free to use that if that helps. It's a great one.
[31:24]So what advice would you have to aspiring authors? Well, so much advice.
[31:30]I mean, just give a little bit. I mean, I think that this thing we're talking about is really key. I would say that most writers I know struggle with this very thing. I was just talking about that with that sense of doubt or doom or like I, oh, I, you know, I tried and I failed and I can't do this.
[31:51]But that kind of voice in in your head that keeps you from writing. You have to come up with a way to work with that.
[31:59]You know, probably what's going to happen isn't that like suddenly one day you're going to be like, I'm a great writer and everything I say is brilliant and so let me just type away.
[32:09]That's probably not going to happen. I don't know one person who writes that way. So you need to learn how to manage those voices in your head and decide that you're going to continue the work even if it's hard
[32:21]It feels impossible or scary.
[32:23]And you also have to find a way also to glide past the external voices.
[32:28]You know, who say like, well, but that's not a very good career plan or, you know, hardly any writers make a living from writing or, you know, all of those kind of practical
[32:38]advice givers who basically want you to go get what they call a real job. And what I would say to anyone who really wants to be a writer is writing as a real job.
[32:49]It's the realist work I've ever done.
[32:51]And, you know, of course it's fraught with all kinds of, there are no guarantees to any kind of artist in this world that you'll ever have that kind of external success that manifests itself and, you know, a check in the mail.
[33:04]You know, we know that you won't get the check if you don't try, you know, we know that you won't succeed as a writer if you don't write.
[33:13]And so decide to keep faith with that.
[33:17]Decide to keep faith with the daily practice of doing it.
[33:20]And by dealing with the practice of doing it, I don't mean you have to write every day. I mean, whatever little fire that you have burning in you that tells you you're a writer, feed that fire, do that work.
[33:30]And write one time a month for a day or write every day or like come up with some system where you get the work done.
[33:37]And spite of all of the forces against you that live both in your head and out in the world.
[33:42]Once you finish something great, do you allow yourself to be like, actually this is pretty awesome.
[33:46]Once it's all done.
[33:47]Yeah, I mean, every single time here's the other thing. So I have a like, and that's, I guess that's the benefit for me of being an experienced writer.
[33:55]If I actually can like see like I know the pattern, the pattern is I can't do this. This is impossible. I'm going to try.
[34:03]I can't do it. I quit. I quit. No, no, no. And then I keep going. I keep going. I keep going. I get to the end.
[34:09]And then I look at it. And I think like a minute, like what was wrong with me. Like this isn't so bad. Like this is actually kind of okay.
[34:17]I do not be perfect or the best thing I've ever written. And some people might not love it. But hey, it's pretty like it stands up, man. And I did it. I made it.
[34:27]That is, you know, the reason it's such hard labor is, you know, we writers like we make something that didn't exist before there we made a story where there was no story.
[34:37]And you know, once you have it there before, you know, it's hard not to have some gratitude and respect for it.
[34:47]And so yeah, I feel great when I finish something. See, you're cured. Our session is over.
[34:53]My therapist, so he has not helped me. Now, I see, you know, you just have to keep it's so much it's so much like running a marathon or hiking along trail. We want to use wild as the metaphor is like, you know, we're even like every time I go on a hike, you know, there are like times are like, okay, this is hard. It's hard to keep pushing up the mountain.
[35:12]You get there. You're like, Oh, this is glorious. That was worth it. You know, persistence is such a key. I think piece of being a writer.
[35:20]That's amazing. And also loose back in with this telling and the whole feminist theme of the entire series of all of the entire collection. It's all about, you know, breaking through and doing great work and achieving and not giving up.
[35:38]And staying strong even through the hard times, you know, yeah, all circle. All circle. Well, Cheryl, thank you so much. I was so excited to see this with you. I'm, again, I'm just, I have so much respect for you and it's been so nice getting to talk to you when I'm one. So thank you.
[35:55]That's really, really lovely to talk to as well. And I hope thank you for all of you who are listening to us and tune into this.
[36:03]And I hope you go and read this telling and I hope you enjoy it. Yes. Absolutely.
[36:09]I think I have a code on Audible because I think they're my sponsor now. So you can get a free month on all. Audible dot com slash zibi and you get a free month of Audible. So use it to get this telling.
[36:21]You can listen to it on Audible. Right. You did. Or you can go read it. Yeah. So that's the go do a zibi's link. Everyone.
[36:29]I just realized. Anyway, thank you so much and stay in touch. Yes, YouTube. I said anything. Bye.
[36:36]I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I know I enjoyed recording it. Don't forget to check out my new podcast.
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[37:04]Moms don't have time to lose weight. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[37:21]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.