Elizabeth Passarella, GOOD APPLE
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[0:53]Hi, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but I have an anthology coming out
[0:57]called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology.
[1:01]And it comes out on February 16th and has essays by 60 plus of the authors
[1:07]who have been on this podcast.
[1:08]So, first of all, please pre-order this book.
[1:11]I think you will love it.
[1:12]I'm so excited about all the authors who are represented,
[1:16]just to give you a few, um, Chris Bajillion, uh,
[1:20]Jewel Parker Rhodes, Ashley Prentice Norton, Gretchen Rubin,
[1:24]Rima Zaman, Eileen Zimmerman, and that is just from the first page of the multi-page
[1:28]table of contents.
[1:30]So, please pick up this book.
[1:31]Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology.
[1:34]It's available anywhere you buy books.
[1:36]Amazon Bookshop.org and your local independent bookstore.
[1:39]So, please pick up a copy.
[1:41]And also, I want to invite you listeners to my, um, fundraiser slash launch party.
[1:49]The night it comes out on February 16th, the Tuesday at 7 p.m.
[1:53]Bookhampton and the Children's Museum of the East End are co-hosting it for me.
[1:58]And 50 of the authors who wrote essays in this book, as well as many of the amazing authors
[2:04]who blurbed this book, um, who wrote little praise worthy quotes at the, at the front,
[2:09]will be there.
[2:10]And you can be there too.
[2:12]So, if you go to my website, zibbyowens.com and just click on anthology and go to book tour.
[2:18]You will see, um, a whole fundraiser section.
[2:21]And for $50, um, you can attend.
[2:25]You'll get a copy of the book.
[2:27]And you'll get to schmooze on zoom with all of these amazing authors.
[2:32]This is like going to be the literary happening of February.
[2:36]So, please come.
[2:37]I would love to see you all in person on zoom, I guess.
[2:40]But even see some of your faces.
[2:42]I know so many of you are really loyal listeners.
[2:45]And that makes me really happy.
[2:47]All proceeds of the book and the fundraiser are going to the Susan Felice Owens program
[2:53]for COVID-19 vaccine research at Mount Sinai Health System.
[2:58]And it is named after my husband's mother who passed away from COVID over the summer,
[3:03]which many of you followed along on Instagram as I recounted that horrific experience.
[3:08]So, all the proceeds are going there.
[3:11]The cost includes the price of a book.
[3:13]So, thank you for supporting this effort.
[3:16]And for supporting my book, I can't wait to see you there.
[3:19]Elizabeth Pastorella was a former editor at Real Simple and Vogue,
[3:22]where she spent more than 20 years writing about food, travel, home design, and parenting.
[3:27]Her writing has been featured in media outlets, including the New York Times,
[3:30]Wall Street Journal, parents, Martha Stewart-Weddings, coastal living,
[3:33]and apartment therapy as the kitchen.
[3:35]Elizabeth is now a contributing editor for Southern Living,
[3:38]where she writes the social grace's column.
[3:40]Her wickedly smart and utterly hilarious debut memoir, Good Apple, Tales of a Southern Evangelical
[3:46]in New York, is about the absurdity, chaos, and strange sacredness of her life on Manhattan's
[3:51]Upper West Side.
[3:52]I hope you enjoy our talk.
[3:53]I wanted to be Elizabeth's best friend after I finished our interview.
[3:57]Welcome, Elizabeth.
[3:58]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[4:00]Don't have time to read books to discuss Good Apple, Tales of a Southern Evangelical
[4:05]in New York.
[4:06]Thank you so much for having me.
[4:07]I'm thrilled to be here.
[4:08]By the way, I love this cover, too.
[4:10]I'm holding it up on our video, which listeners can't see.
[4:13]Oh, thank you.
[4:14]It's particularly inviting, I think.
[4:17]Anyway, so Elizabeth, tell me how you decided to write this book.
[4:21]Why did you decide to write this book?
[4:23]And tell listeners also basically what it's about.
[4:26]Okay, so Good Apple is a collection of essays.
[4:28]It's stories about my life.
[4:30]And to be completely honest with you, I didn't really set out to write this exact book.
[4:36]I've had a career in magazines.
[4:37]I've been in, I've written for women's magazines and been an editor of magazines for about 20 years.
[4:42]And so I've always loved nonfiction.
[4:43]It's what I love to read.
[4:44]It's what I love to write.
[4:46]And so I always assumed that maybe I would write a book about my life experiences,
[4:50]but I never really anticipated bringing sort of my faith into it.
[4:55]I just assumed I would write a funny, interesting, relatable book about life.
[5:00]And I was thinking about all the magazine articles that I have edited or written over the years.
[5:06]And there's so many that we talked about how to make your marriage stronger,
[5:10]how to be a better parent, or how to deal with a difficult friendship.
[5:13]And there were many times where I'd get to the end of that article.
[5:15]And I would think, okay, this is great.
[5:17]And I love all these tips.
[5:18]But what if you follow all this advice?
[5:21]And it still doesn't work out.
[5:22]But if you follow all these tips and your marriage is so really hard or that friendship still falls apart.
[5:27]And for me, I'm a Christian.
[5:29]And so for me, that's kind of what my foundation has built.
[5:32]And that's sort of the viewpoint that I look through when I,
[5:34]when I deal with difficult situations.
[5:36]So then I started thinking that I was talking to a colleague and a former editor who now happens
[5:41]to be my book agent.
[5:42]And we were talking about ideas for books.
[5:44]And she said, okay, it would be great to write about your life in New York or raising kids
[5:49]in Manhattan or all of these small space living, all these things you're passionate about.
[5:52]But it's got to appeal to all those evangelical Christians in the middle of the country.
[5:55]And I thought, oh, I can do that.
[5:57]That's who I am.
[5:58]And she was a little bit surprised.
[5:59]But she said, you're not what I think of when I think of a Christian.
[6:02]When I think about that, you're not what I think of.
[6:04]You're this New Yorker.
[6:05]And you hold a lot of the same views and political views and worldviews that I do.
[6:10]And so that was another big part of it is I just felt like this kind of book in terms of how
[6:15]non-Christians look at Christians doesn't really exist.
[6:18]I wanted to write something where I gave a different viewpoint of what people think of as a Christian.
[6:23]And I think it works the other way.
[6:25]All the people that I grew up with in the South.
[6:26]That's where I grew up and people who are really strong Christians.
[6:30]I think they look at New Yorkers and they look at the way I live my life and think,
[6:33]well, I can't possibly have anything in common with her.
[6:35]She's raising three kids in this two bedroom apartment in Manhattan and this crazy city.
[6:39]And so I wanted them to look at these stories and see themselves too and sort of
[6:43]realize that we have a lot in common.
[6:45]So it is, yes, stories about my life.
[6:47]I talk about growing up in the South.
[6:49]I talk about growing up in a pretty conservative Republican family and kind of switching my
[6:54]political views as I got older and moved to New York and lived here for a while.
[6:58]I tell stories about heavy stuff.
[7:00]I mean, I talk about miscarriages.
[7:02]I talk about death of a loved one.
[7:04]But there's a lot of lighthearted funny stories too.
[7:08]Stories about, you know, a rat getting trapped in my apartment building, which was a really
[7:13]not a great day.
[7:14]So there's some light stuff.
[7:16]It's some heavy stuff.
[7:16]But I feel like most of all, I just wanted to be entertaining.
[7:19]It's mostly embarrassing stories about me.
[7:21]I look the worst of everyone in my family.
[7:23]As personal as the stories are, I definitely come out looking to worse.
[7:26]So one of my favorite stories was when you got trapped in the elevator.
[7:31]And I think it was your building super or somebody had to take the baby out of the crib and
[7:34]like sit and play with, yeah, on the floor while you got extracted.
[7:38]Yes, it's a New York story.
[7:40]That was just separate.
[7:41]Yes.
[7:42]And I think everyone hears that and they think you left your baby in your apartment
[7:46]while you went downstairs to the basement.
[7:48]And I said, yeah, I mean, if you lived in a huge house in the suburb somewhere and you went
[7:52]out to your mailbox to get the mail while your baby was napping, that's how far away from him I was.
[7:57]But that's New York living.
[7:59]I left him in the apartment and then I got stuck in the elevator for almost an hour.
[8:03]So yes, the staff of my building.
[8:05]We've lived here now for 12 years.
[8:06]So they know us very well.
[8:08]And this very nice man who works in our building went upstairs and got my baby out of the crib
[8:13]and played with them when he woke up from his nap.
[8:16]So you're like, they call me Pasa and I'm not sure if they think that's my last name or not,
[8:22]but it's too late now because we've been doing this for like a decade.
[8:26]Yes, you always have those people who have your name slightly off,
[8:30]but you've known them too long.
[8:31]You've passed the point of no return where you can tell them they've got it wrong.
[8:34]Yeah, there's one guy in my building that I think it's it's just his nickname for us.
[8:38]So there was this whole religious dimension to the book, but that was only a slice of the book.
[8:45]You could have almost done it without it.
[8:47]Like I feel like it didn't it didn't permeate every single chapter and every single experience.
[8:53]It just like set a framework for it.
[8:55]So I don't feel like it in any way left anybody out,
[8:58]especially the fact that you will first of all you define evangelical and what it really means,
[9:04]but also the fact that you grew up with a Jewish father and then you have a whole chapter on like
[9:08]Jews I've known and loved and are like some funny title you had, I should look at all the Jews I've
[9:14]loved. Yes, yes, yes, to all the Jews, to all the Jews I've loved. It's like somebody
[9:20]and just like your experience in New York and different religions and there's some where you put
[9:26]in your points of view and how it is to be like a Democrat among a lot of people who aren't in
[9:32]your background, but then it's also so many other things. So I don't know it's I found that part
[9:37]super interesting and not talked about as much, but I also thought it could have been amazing even
[9:42]if it wasn't for that. Like I don't in other words that made it more interesting, but that was
[9:47]only one piece of it. I don't want people to think that was like, you know, even though it's part of
[9:52]the title that that's what this was all about because I don't think it was all about religion at all.
[9:57]I struggled, I think at first, whether I should
[10:00]put that word on the title,
[10:02]because I think you're right,
[10:03]I don't want to turn anybody off.
[10:04]If you're someone who has a different faith background
[10:07]or no faith background at all,
[10:09]I really wrote the book originally primarily
[10:11]when I thought about my readership.
[10:13]I thought about the people that I do life with in New York,
[10:15]people who I know through my kid's school,
[10:17]people I work with, people that live in my building,
[10:20]my neighbors, I really thought about a non-Christian audience.
[10:23]That's who I wrote it for.
[10:24]I think there are plenty of Christian women
[10:26]who will pick up this book and enjoy it
[10:27]because I don't think there's a lot of Christian books
[10:30]out there that have an irreverent sense of humor.
[10:32]And I hope that this book does,
[10:34]but yes, I think you're right.
[10:36]I absolutely wrote it primarily for the audience
[10:39]that I do life with all the time
[10:41]and anyone else who doesn't come from this background.
[10:44]And I found that part fascinating.
[10:46]I didn't, like I'm glad you put it in the title
[10:47]because I like to hear other people's experiences
[10:50]in points of view.
[10:51]I mean, I don't want to only read about my own,
[10:53]like, I don't know, that would get boring after a while, right?
[10:57]You want to learn about new things and new backgrounds
[10:59]and like what makes you tick and all the rest.
[11:02]So anyway, I thought it was a really interesting piece
[11:05]and about a culture and a particular sort of sect, I guess,
[11:09]that I didn't know that much about ahead of time.
[11:11]Yeah, yeah.
[11:12]But, well, and I'd also, like I mentioned kind of it,
[11:14]you said I sort of addressed this in the introduction
[11:17]of the book, you know, the word evangelicals
[11:19]become so charged.
[11:21]I mean, I certainly do not walk around the streets of New York
[11:23]using that word to describe myself very often.
[11:26]It's become such a politically charged word.
[11:28]And so that was something else I wanted to,
[11:31]not like I'm trying to take the word back.
[11:32]I don't really care, it's just a word,
[11:34]but I also feel like people do have a misconception for me.
[11:37]It's just a really, it's sort of a theological framework, I guess,
[11:42]as opposed to a political one.
[11:44]And I think that it's been sort of co-opted
[11:47]by politics, unfortunately, which is why most evangelical
[11:50]Christians, even if they are really don't use that word
[11:52]anymore, nor do I.
[11:53]But from a theological standpoint,
[11:55]I think it still does define me.
[11:56]And I love how much you put in about your marriage,
[11:59]because I don't know, I've been feeling like very snoopy.
[12:02]Lately, I don't know if that's even the right word.
[12:03]Like I love like peeking into the cracks in the curtains
[12:07]and seeing what's going on in other people's marriages.
[12:10]You have people who are like my age,
[12:12]because for a while, I feel like nobody was really talking
[12:14]about it or, you know, the only your closest friends,
[12:18]I feel like share, and that's why so many people get divorced
[12:21]and you're like shocked by it.
[12:23]I know I got divorced and I never talked about my marriage
[12:26]while I was in it, and I rarely do now anyway.
[12:28]But I don't know.
[12:29]I just like always appreciate when people are willing to share.
[12:32]And the fact that you shared how you like yell at your husband
[12:36]or that you get annoyed that you place golf all day
[12:38]and, you know, do this like passive aggressive thing
[12:40]where you like pretend like you have to work can get better
[12:42]or go into the spa.
[12:43]And like there are so many things you put in
[12:45]that were so relatable and awesome and just amazing.
[12:50]And even how I said, you know, we were talking before
[12:53]about how we have both married tennis for us
[12:55]because I'm remarried.
[12:57]Yes, so has your tennis gotten better?
[12:59]To has you ever taught you?
[13:00]No, no, my tennis does not great.
[13:03]We do not play together.
[13:04]So when we were dating, we played occasionally
[13:07]and it turned into a huge fight.
[13:09]So this, yes, I clearly fight a lot with my husband.
[13:12]So it did not go well when we were dating
[13:14]and we would try to play tennis together.
[13:16]Because he just, he is a very laid back guy.
[13:19]His reaction to every shot I missed
[13:21]or anything that I wasn't doing well was,
[13:23]we should need to play more.
[13:24]Yeah, you should need to play more.
[13:25]And I'm like, no, I want you to tell me exactly what to do.
[13:27]I want you to tell me exactly how to hold the racket
[13:29]or exactly which way to move to make that shot go in.
[13:31]And he'd say, yeah, she should play more.
[13:34]So it did not go well.
[13:35]And I just didn't really play that much.
[13:37]And you know, because you live in New York too,
[13:40]it can be hard to find a tennis court in New York area.
[13:42]It's not the type of sport
[13:43]that really, Manhattan does not lend itself
[13:46]well to playing a lot of tennis.
[13:48]So anyway, I just, I don't play a lot of the tennis.
[13:51]I don't love to exercise anyway.
[13:53]And so he does play with my kids,
[13:55]which is nice, he plays with the kids.
[13:57]And he plays on his own.
[13:58]But now he doesn't, it's sort of like golf.
[14:00]He says all the time, oh, I wish you would take up golf.
[14:02]I wish you'd pick up.
[14:03]I said, you know, you say that.
[14:05]But I think actually you just want me to play
[14:07]the one day out of the year
[14:08]that you can't find anywhere else to play with.
[14:09]I don't think you actually want me to play golf
[14:12]with you on a regular basis.
[14:13]You really like to play with people
[14:15]who know what they're doing.
[14:15]And it's the same with tennis.
[14:16]He wants to get a workout.
[14:17]He wants to play with guys that he went to college with
[14:19]and they played together.
[14:20]And so I don't play a lot of tennis.
[14:23]I'm not terrible, but I'm not good.
[14:25]If you guys were to play golf together,
[14:26]I don't think that would help with the fighting.
[14:28]No, no, it would not.
[14:30]No.
[14:31]I agree with you.
[14:32]I think I mix people uncomfortable sometimes
[14:34]because I tell all the dirty secrets about my marriage
[14:37]or how much I don't like my children sometimes.
[14:40]But you know, we all feel it.
[14:42]We all feel it.
[14:43]Even if nobody's talking about it,
[14:44]they're definitely doing it.
[14:45]They're definitely having those arguments behind closed doors.
[14:49]I tend to have a temper.
[14:50]I'm much more of a verbal, confrontational person.
[14:53]So I probably fight more than the average person does.
[14:55]But that's where in some sense
[14:56]where the faith element comes into
[14:58]because I feel like I'm very secure in who I am
[15:02]and sort of what grounds me.
[15:03]And so I feel like I don't have to put forth
[15:05]any sort of image of being the perfect wife
[15:08]or the perfect mom because I am definitely not.
[15:11]I'm very below average on both of those things.
[15:14]So I feel really confident being honest
[15:17]because I know where my real identity comes from
[15:20]in a sense, if that makes sense.
[15:21]So it's easy for me to be, I guess, shameless.
[15:26]Well, it's refreshing and it's as a reader in particular.
[15:29]It's well, a very relatable and b, very entertaining.
[15:34]I mean, it's funny.
[15:35]All the stuff you're saying is very entertaining and funny.
[15:38]So that's great.
[15:39]I mean, what else can you want in a book?
[15:40]I mean, thank you.
[15:42]Yes, that's the goal.
[15:43]And even like when you talk about,
[15:45]you're basically growing up in the city,
[15:47]growing up into adulthood, I should say.
[15:50]And even your days of like, as I read this
[15:53]when you were like in tortilla flats
[15:54]and automatic slims and all this stuff,
[15:56]I was like, I was there.
[15:58]I thought you were in the same place
[16:00]at the same time and we're about the same age.
[16:02]And like everything you kept going through,
[16:04]I was like, me too.
[16:05]Anyway, it was crazy.
[16:07]Cause like when I picked up this book,
[16:09]I never expected to have so much in common
[16:12]with the author of this book,
[16:13]not knowing who you were or anything about you.
[16:16]I was just like, oh, this will be like,
[16:17]one of those experiences that I don't really relate to,
[16:20]but it'll be so interesting.
[16:21]And in fact, like, you're probably like on my block.
[16:24]You know, it was, yes.
[16:26]I think, and also funny how you included all of this stuff
[16:30]of like almost like explaining yourself
[16:33]to people who don't live in New York, right?
[16:35]As if you've never lived.
[16:36]I've lived in New York my life, so I get it.
[16:38]But tell me about including all of that.
[16:40]Well, I think people, I mean, listen,
[16:42]I have tons of friends who still live in Memphis
[16:45]Tennessee where I grew up.
[16:46]I have tons of friends who live all over the South
[16:48]and other cities.
[16:50]And so they look at my life and they think,
[16:53]I mean, most of them have known me a long time at this point,
[16:55]but I'm, I, we live in a, an apartment
[16:57]that's two bedrooms, we have three kids,
[16:59]one of my children sleeps in a closet.
[17:00]It seems very normal to us.
[17:02]But I do think that people, yeah, are very intrigued.
[17:05]So I have this whole chapter that's sort of like a Q&A
[17:09]that talks about all the, all the quirky things
[17:11]about living in an apartment and living in a building
[17:13]in Manhattan.
[17:14]But I think that's fascinating to people, especially now.
[17:17]And, you know, when I wrote this book, of course,
[17:19]it was finished a year ago right before the pandemic hit.
[17:22]I mean, I finished in January of 2020.
[17:25]And now I think even more so people are curious
[17:28]about New York, what's going on, what's life like there.
[17:31]And so I really think of the book as kind of a love letter
[17:35]to New York.
[17:35]I, like you said, I grew up and I moved here
[17:38]right after college and I've lived here for 20 years.
[17:39]And I really feel like this is my home now.
[17:41]I feel so much like a New Yorker.
[17:43]And I love the city so much.
[17:44]And I think it's such a wonderful place to raise kids
[17:46]and it's such a beautiful community.
[17:48]And that's just come out more even since the pandemic started
[17:52]because a lot of people left or, you know,
[17:55]you're much more confined to kind of your neighborhood.
[17:57]And so you get to know your neighbors more
[17:58]and you're happier to see them when you go outside.
[18:01]And so it has made the city feel like a really resilient,
[18:04]small town to me in some ways.
[18:06]So I just love New York so much.
[18:08]So I wanted this book to be sort of a love letter
[18:10]to the city too.
[18:11]And everyone loves New York.
[18:12]Maybe if they don't live here,
[18:13]they're curious about what life is like here.
[18:15]So I hope that I give people a little bit of a glimpse.
[18:18]And it's a, and it's a good one.
[18:19]Oh, no, it's nice to see a mom in New York
[18:22]sort of telling it how it is.
[18:24]Because everyone's like, how can you do that with kids?
[18:26]And I'm like, well, you do it.
[18:27]You just do it.
[18:28]I don't know.
[18:29]You just do it.
[18:29]And like you, my husband grew up here.
[18:31]So I do give people the caveat that for him,
[18:34]this is his hometown.
[18:35]So when there, when we first started having kids
[18:37]and there was something that would seem sort of strange to me,
[18:39]it wasn't strange to him because this was how he grew up.
[18:42]So when we started letting our daughter walk home from school
[18:46]just this year by herself.
[18:47]And I thought, okay, is this a good idea?
[18:49]Should we do this?
[18:50]And he's like, oh my gosh.
[18:50]When I was in third grade,
[18:51]I was walking to Johnny so-and-so's house down Park Avenue
[18:54]or whatever it was.
[18:55]So she's not in third grade, by the way.
[18:56]She's in fifth grade.
[18:57]But he was doing all these things growing up.
[19:00]And so it just gives me a nice perspective
[19:02]that he grew up here, he's a very normal person.
[19:05]And it made everything feel a little more palatable, I guess.
[19:09]I think, I mean, I grew up in New York
[19:11]and I believe I'm a normal person.
[19:12]My husband might disagree with that,
[19:14]but, you know, and so are all the people I grew up with.
[19:17]I mean, I think there's a lot of misconceptions
[19:19]about what it means.
[19:20]My husband likes to say more people are born
[19:22]and raised in New York than any other city in the country.
[19:24]Isn't that amazing?
[19:26]When people say, oh my gosh, you're raising kids there
[19:27]and he's like, yes, lots of kids grew up in New York.
[19:30]So it's true.
[19:31]That I knew him growing up.
[19:32]Anyway, we'll come down to that.
[19:34]It's also a very small town.
[19:35]He was on the east side too.
[19:36]I don't know if you were on the east side.
[19:38]I think yes, I was on the upper east side.
[19:39]I think it's just a very small world
[19:42]between siblings and people you know.
[19:44]And anyway, so in that way,
[19:45]I do also feel like it's a small town.
[19:47]Tell me about your decision to include the whole piece
[19:50]about your miscarriages, which also feels like very timely
[19:54]with the op-ed the other day.
[19:55]Now I'm gonna blank on her name.
[19:57]This is like a marker.
[19:58]Thank you.
[19:59]Megan, I'll go.
[20:00]which I thought was really great, by the way.
[20:01]It was.
[20:02]Tell me about that decision.
[20:03]Well, that was another one where I just,
[20:05]I have no problem talking about it.
[20:06]I think that when, so I had two kids who are 10 and eight now,
[20:11]but when they were probably six and four,
[20:13]I guess we had sort of thought about having another kid,
[20:15]but I was 39.
[20:17]I had two miscarriages before I finally got pregnant
[20:19]with our two and a half year old now.
[20:20]So I didn't have him until I was 41.
[20:22]So obviously the statistics would bear out
[20:25]that it's very possible, that I wouldn't as scary.
[20:27]And the first miscarriage I had,
[20:30]as I started talking to friends,
[20:31]and anyone will tell me this.
[20:32]Once you start talking to people,
[20:33]you realize so many people you know
[20:35]went through the exact same thing.
[20:37]So it is so common.
[20:39]And I think that maybe the reason people don't talk about it
[20:42]is it's just such a personal bodily issue.
[20:45]I mean, it takes place usually in private or in the hospital
[20:49]and there's just a lot of hormonal issues that you go through.
[20:52]But again, I won't always talk about anything.
[20:55]I'm the person at the dinner party.
[20:57]You either really love or really don't like that.
[20:59]I'm talking about a lot of personal things.
[21:01]So I just wanted other people to read it
[21:04]and realize that yes, of course it's common.
[21:08]And we know that statistically,
[21:09]but you probably know a lot of people who have been through this.
[21:12]And it's different for every woman,
[21:14]but there were certain commonalities.
[21:16]I think when I started talking to other friends
[21:18]who had miscarriages,
[21:19]I think the sort of hormonal cliff that you fall off
[21:21]a couple of weeks after this happened.
[21:24]Just the simple things of you're not pregnant anymore.
[21:26]But if you take a pregnancy test,
[21:28]it will still show that you're pregnant.
[21:29]And that is so emotionally wrenching.
[21:31]And I think that that's something people don't talk about.
[21:33]All of us have sat and peed on a thousand different sticks
[21:37]to try to figure out if we are pregnant.
[21:39]And then you've lost a baby and you pee on these sticks
[21:41]and it's still such a pregnant.
[21:42]And even just that small detail,
[21:44]I think is something that was so impossibly hard for me
[21:48]to get through.
[21:49]And I want people to know, hey, this happens.
[21:51]This is one of these really annoying things
[21:53]that you're gonna come up against.
[21:55]And this happens and it's normal.
[21:57]And it will pass.
[21:58]Why keep peeing on the six?
[22:00]I don't know.
[22:01]Because you're waiting.
[22:03]Because you're waiting for your hormone levels
[22:05]to drop to the point that you don't appear pregnant
[22:08]so that you can try again.
[22:09]Because that's the big thing is like the minute you miss
[22:11]here, you think, okay, well, can we can I try again?
[22:13]And it's just a lot of waiting.
[22:14]And it's a lot of time.
[22:15]Got it, understood.
[22:17]So when did you find the time
[22:19]and how did you find the space and all of that?
[22:21]To write this book with three kids.
[22:24]That's a good question.
[22:25]Okay, I will say I said this earlier
[22:26]but the book was finished before the pandemic.
[22:29]If the book had not been finished before the pandemic,
[22:31]I'm not sure we would be talking right now.
[22:33]That has made work so much more difficult.
[22:36]But I work from home.
[22:37]I've been a freelance writer for a long time.
[22:38]I work from home but when we did have this third kid
[22:41]and he's home with a sitter or someone,
[22:44]I couldn't work at home anymore.
[22:45]So I pay a lot of money to babysitters
[22:48]and let the summer of 2019.
[22:51]I paid a lot of money to summer camps
[22:53]and day camps to keep my kids occupied.
[22:55]And I actually go to a library that is probably near you.
[22:59]It's the New York Society library.
[23:01]You're gonna say.
[23:02]So the private library, a lot of writers go there.
[23:04]It is not expensive.
[23:06]It's a bargain in Manhattan for a yearly membership
[23:09]and they just have really sort of sad, depressing desks
[23:14]in the stacks.
[23:15]They have really nice private rooms
[23:17]but I never use those.
[23:17]I just go to the stacks.
[23:19]I set it a little desk and I'm completely isolated.
[23:22]You can't even talk on the phone.
[23:24]You can't bring food.
[23:25]So that's where I wrote this book.
[23:27]I wrote it in the stacks of the New York Society library
[23:29]on 79th in Madison.
[23:31]I feel like with enough time,
[23:34]I will interview everybody who's ever tried to write a book
[23:36]in the New York society library.
[23:38]Yes.
[23:39]I already know a couple of them
[23:40]and I see them sometimes.
[23:41]Yeah.
[23:42]It's a great, it's a beautiful old library.
[23:44]It's a beautiful building and it's quiet
[23:47]and there's just nobody bothering you.
[23:48]So that's what I did.
[23:50]I paid as many babysitters as I could afford.
[23:53]That's awesome.
[23:54]I love that.
[23:55]And what are you hoping to do next?
[23:58]Do you have like more essay books
[23:59]or are you good with getting all of this out?
[24:02]What's the?
[24:03]Well, there's, yes, I am under contract to write another one.
[24:07]So I've got to come up with some more stories.
[24:09]I've got to have some more things to happen.
[24:10]No, I will see, we'll see.
[24:12]It's interesting as this book makes its way out
[24:15]into the world, what resonates with people
[24:17]and which chapters people really love
[24:18]and which ones, you know, seem to attract the most attention.
[24:22]But yes, this is, listen, I'm a one trick pony.
[24:25]I do not have a lot of talents.
[24:26]This is about it.
[24:27]So I'm not a fiction writer.
[24:29]There's no, there's going to be no romance novel for me.
[24:32]This is sort of what I enjoy and what I like writing.
[24:35]So hopefully yes, I will write another book of essays.
[24:38]I would love to do that.
[24:39]Down the road, yeah.
[24:40]Awesome.
[24:41]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[24:42]Oh gosh.
[24:43]Well, you know, I came up through the magazine world
[24:45]and to the journalism world.
[24:46]So I did not come, I came to book publishing that way.
[24:49]But I would say from my perspective,
[24:52]you probably will write a lot of things
[24:54]that you don't like to write about
[24:55]before you get to write about something
[24:56]you do like to write about.
[24:58]I think about all the years as a young editorial assistant
[25:01]or assistant editor, how I wrote so many captions
[25:04]for fashion spreads that I did not care about at all.
[25:06]But it taught me so many lessons.
[25:07]It taught me about word choice
[25:09]and how to say something in the most economical way possible.
[25:12]And I spent a lot of time looking over proofs
[25:15]and seeing what editors changed
[25:17]and why it sounded better that way.
[25:19]And I studied those.
[25:20]And it made me a better writer.
[25:22]So I think don't shy away from those kinds of assignments,
[25:25]even if it's not what you want to do.
[25:26]Just be humble and use everything as an learning experience.
[25:30]And I would also say this is something
[25:31]that Catherine Newman, my friend, Catherine Newman,
[25:34]who I used to work with at Real Simple.
[25:35]And I think she's been on your podcast.
[25:37]She's a wonderful human and writer.
[25:39]But she said, you know, be nice,
[25:41]turn things in on time, be easy to work with.
[25:44]You know, do your job well and be nice to everybody.
[25:47]Because there is, I cannot tell you how many people I worked with
[25:50]as assistants who are now the editors
[25:52]in chief of magazines or who are content directors.
[25:56]It really big platforms.
[25:58]And so you just never know where someone's gonna end up.
[26:00]So be a hard worker and be nice.
[26:03]Be pleasant to work with and do a great job
[26:06]because the people that you're working with now,
[26:08]even though it might be at a really small publication
[26:10]or someone who's even younger than you,
[26:12]you never know, they could go on to have a really big job
[26:16]that could be really helpful to you down the road.
[26:17]Well, that's great advice.
[26:20]Awesome.
[26:20]Well, thank you, Elizabeth.
[26:21]And that was fantastic.
[26:23]And one day we can meet in Central Park.
[26:26]And we go on a walk around the reservoir.
[26:28]You want to walk around?
[26:29]Thank you for everything that you do for authors.
[26:31]It's just so uplifting and wonderful,
[26:33]especially for people like me who are first timers.
[26:35]So thanks for having me.
[26:37]Well, I'm really excited for your books to come out.
[26:38]I'll be cheering for you.
[26:40]Thank you.
[26:41]OK.
[26:41]All right.
[26:42]Have a great day.
[26:43]Bye.
[26:45]And just a reminder, again, please pre-order a copy
[26:48]of my book, Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology
[26:51]and go to my website under the anthology tab for the fundraiser.
[26:56]And I hope you'll buy a ticket and join me for,
[27:00]and I should have mentioned, I'll
[27:01]proceed to go to COVID-19 research.
[27:04]So please join me for the fundraiser.
[27:06]Thanks so much.
[27:07]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have
[27:09]Time to Read Books.
[27:11]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens
[27:14]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:16]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com
[27:18]and sign up for my virtual book club
[27:20]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:22]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[27:25]for the Sound Editing.
[27:26]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:28]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.