Peter Ho Davies, A LIE SOMEONE TOLD YOU ABOUT YOURSELF
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[3:19]Today's episode has been sponsored by author Joe Piazza's new podcast under the influence.
[3:26]Under the influence is a deep dive into the mom internet, a place haunted by aspirational marketing where it feels like every other moms is social media influencer trying to sell you something
[3:36]all while posed in white kitchens that never seem to get messy with toddlers and cloth diapers that never ever leak, a bastion of carefully curated lives that are hashtag blessed.
[3:45]And behind this airbrushed perfection is money so much money, billions and billions of dollars, a multi billion dollar industry we never talk about.
[3:53]journalist and mom of two Joe Piazza brings a keen reporter's lens to examine how we got here.
[3:59]What it all means and how the commodification of motherhood is driving normal mothers to the brink.
[4:04]And through adults, she wonders if she should just join the ochre huge ranks of the moms to grammars.
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[4:20]And if this is the future of content, check it out, Joe Piazza is under the influence.
[4:25]Hi everybody, today is the last day of the February book blast. It's been a five day blast with multiple episodes per day because so many have collected that I just had to get them out into the world.
[4:36]On Monday, it was memoir Monday, then nonfiction Tuesday, literary fiction Wednesday, new novels Thursday and today is a more family themed memoir day.
[4:45]So I hope you have enjoyed the blast this week. There have been so many episodes and it's a short month, but why not listen?
[4:53]Get exposed to some new authors. I hope you've enjoyed it and enjoyed today's blast last day.
[4:58]Peter Ho Davies is the author of a lie someone told you about yourself.
[5:02]Peter's novel The Fortunes won the Annisfield Wolf Award and was a New York Times notable book of the year.
[5:08]He's also the author of The Welsh Girl, longlisted for the Booker Prize and a London Times bestseller,
[5:13]as well as two critically acclaimed collections of short stories.
[5:17]His fiction has appeared in Harper's The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Granta,
[5:20]and has been anthologized in prize stories, The O'Henry Awards, and Best American Short Stories.
[5:26]Welcome, Peter. Thank you so much for coming and moms don't have time to read books.
[5:29]It's a pleasure to be here.
[5:31]So we are talking about your beautiful book, a lie someone told you about yourself,
[5:37]which is fiction, although when I was reading it, I was positive. It was nonfiction,
[5:42]and I had to keep flipping back until I saw this tiny little novel word on the cover.
[5:47]Anyway, what do you mind telling listeners what the book is about and what inspired you to write it?
[5:52]Sure, it is a novel, although certainly parts of it are true. I like to think the whole
[5:56]is fictional even if parts that are derived from real experience. And it's a novel about parenting,
[6:02]you know, with some of the familiar trials and tribulations of that. But one that I hope
[6:06]starts from an unfamiliar place and will be even defamiliarized is that experience since it starts
[6:11]with an abortion. The couple involved at the center of the book, their first pregnancy is sort of
[6:15]interrupted by some pretty catastrophic prenatal test results. They choose to not have that child.
[6:21]And even though later they go on to have a second successful pregnancy and have a child,
[6:25]I think that experience of parenting for them is sort of shadowed, but also maybe in some
[6:29]ways also illuminated by that sense of loss from the first pregnancy as well. So that's roughly
[6:35]the tenor of the book. It's interesting you mentioned that sense of fiction memoir,
[6:42]the kind of blurry line between those two things. And there is something that going on in this
[6:46]space. I feel like I need to take the fifth in terms of explaining what's true and what's not
[6:51]probably because I think for most of us, and I lived experience, memory itself is a kind of means
[6:56]of fiction. So if I look back and some of these experiences, I'm not quite sure where reality gives
[7:02]over to fiction in some ways along the way too. But I think in a way that uncertainty for the
[7:07]reader is in part intentional on my part, because I think what the characters go through,
[7:13]the book is very much about the uncertainty of diagnosis. I think in many ways at sense of
[7:17]over this might be 99% this way, but there's a small sliver of a chance to go in the other direction.
[7:22]And I think in a way for the reader to wonder, is this part true, is this part fiction,
[7:27]is a way of giving them a glimpse into the experience of the characters themselves.
[7:32]That's the national idea behind that site uncertainty that the book reads in the reader as well.
[7:37]And the book, it wasn't only about the uncertainty that comes with whether or not to have a child,
[7:43]and the test results, but it's even as the child gets older, what do you do when things don't
[7:50]seem to be going 100% the way they should? And I'm sure so many parents can relate to this,
[7:56]you think that your child will pass flying colors with, I don't know, trying to think of an
[8:01]example. I don't know, jumping or climbing or monkey bars or something. And then all of a sudden,
[8:05]they don't know. What does that mean? And then there's all that anxiety and so much accompanying
[8:09]worry. And then what do you do? And this novel delves right into that from the dad's point of view,
[8:15]which I found so refreshing, because I just feel like there aren't that many beautiful literary
[8:20]works about fatherhood, whereas I feel like there are many more about motherhood.
[8:25]Thanks for saying that. I really appreciate that. I do think there's a deep anxiety for all of us,
[8:30]right, even in sort of like the most, you know, smoothest parenting experiences, and I guess none of
[8:35]them are actually genuinely all that smooth. We're worried about all those benchmarks, all those
[8:40]percentiles, we're anxious about, you know, inevitably, even though we wish we didn't,
[8:45]comparing our children to other children, you know, with us statistically, or whether in the
[8:48]playground, however it might play out, I think in some ways. And I think there's a kind of,
[8:53]I kind of tyranny of the normal, right, that we want our children, we yearn for our children to
[8:58]sort of fit within recognizable spaces, maybe sometimes a space that looks like our own childhood,
[9:03]so we feel reassured that they're having an experience that we recognize in some ways,
[9:06]or that they're having an experience that feels as though it's very much sort of typical, I
[9:10]think in some ways. And I think the great anxiety for all of us, and maybe the great truth,
[9:14]because all of our kids are so individual, is that nobody has a normal childhood, nobody has a
[9:17]typical childhood, they have their own individual childhood, I think in some ways as well.
[9:21]What's weird about that for a writer, I think, when writing about parenthood, is that fiction
[9:26]tends to be not made up of normal or typical experiences, you know, that's not where drama often lies,
[9:32]so there's an odd disjuncture between that feeling that we want to have something that seems very
[9:37]familiar for our children and their experiences, and writing a fiction that feels as though it
[9:42]pushes our children and pushes our own experience of having children into extremists, I think in
[9:47]some ways as well. So there's an odd tension going on in that space. I think for me,
[9:51]what's kind of going on in this book is that these characters, because of their various anxieties,
[9:56]and because of their past experiences, they sort of yearn for that normality, so I hope...
[10:00]There are aspects of the book, as I say, that they do seem very
[10:02]familiar to other parents.
[10:03]I think there's a great universal quality to many of those
[10:05]things, but also makes us maybe appreciate those universal
[10:08]qualities because we understand how tenuous they are for
[10:11]some people, some characters.
[10:12]So true.
[10:13]You know, one part that I kept sort of inserting myself into
[10:17]and thinking, like, how would I have handled this?
[10:18]What would I have done?
[10:19]Which I feel like you do most readers do at some point or another
[10:22]while reading, right?
[10:23]But when you and your wife were debating, or not, sorry, when
[10:26]your character and the character's wife, sorry, we're
[10:30]I appreciate that.
[10:30]Okay.
[10:31]We're debating whether or not after the fact to find out if
[10:35]the fetus had for sure this abnormality and you couldn't
[10:40]decide whether or not you wanted that information.
[10:44]And ultimately, I hope I'm not giving anything away.
[10:46]I mean, I don't have to.
[10:47]But anyway, you made a decision one way or another together
[10:50]and had to live with now have had to live with that decision.
[10:52]Tell me about that.
[10:53]Like, what do you do if your spouse wants to know and you don't
[10:57]want to know or what do you do when there's information out
[11:01]there?
[11:01]Like, I felt like I wanted to call this.
[11:04]I wanted to call the test person and get the results of this.
[11:08]Even though, like, I was like, you know, maybe they don't want
[11:11]to know, but I would like to know the answer.
[11:13]You know, it sure never makes perfect sense.
[11:16]And, you know, in a way that's that's also what the book is about
[11:19]it is about marriage.
[11:20]It's about the way that we can know somebody incredibly
[11:22]intimately and spend a lot of time with that person.
[11:24]And yet still when we come to these crucial moments, find ourselves,
[11:28]you know, on opposite sides of a feeling on opposite sides of a divide in
[11:32]various ways.
[11:32]We feel as though some parts of our essential characters are revealed in
[11:35]those moments.
[11:36]But I think also part of a marriage is learning those things about one
[11:39]spouse and living with more finding a way collectively to live with those
[11:44]kind of differences that we go through.
[11:45]And so the book is, I think very much about charting the ups and downs
[11:48]and the stresses placed on a marriage by these kind of circumstances.
[11:51]We progress through those spaces.
[11:53]But I do think there's a way in which, you know, I think for these characters
[11:57]in this book, the uncertainty that they're grappling with, as I say,
[11:59]sort of medical uncertainty, diagnostic uncertainty.
[12:02]But I think a lot of the times in our lives, we grapple with uncertainty,
[12:05]right?
[12:05]We don't have a sense of the sure thing.
[12:07]We don't have the 100% knowledge of a certain thing.
[12:10]We don't have perfect information.
[12:11]And I think that's very true for these characters that get crops up in a lot
[12:15]of fiction despite the fact that we often talk as writers about writing
[12:17]what you know.
[12:18]And of course, this book does in some degree derive from
[12:21]lived experience.
[12:22]I think we often write into what we don't know.
[12:24]And in some ways also maybe have to write books that live with uncertainty.
[12:29]You know, I think there's a way in which that's the nature of our lives in a way.
[12:33]And of course, I think that's been brought home very powerfully and painfully
[12:37]to many of us.
[12:37]And I know yourself, your family has gone through this too.
[12:39]That's through the process of the pandemic of the last few months as well.
[12:43]So we've been grappling with not knowing when this will end, not knowing what it
[12:47]means, not knowing again on certain days of diagnosis creep into this space as well.
[12:51]So it feels as though, although this is by no means intention writing the book,
[12:54]that it also hits that odd timely note where we have a kind of global uncertainty
[12:58]that we're all grappling with now.
[13:00]So true.
[13:00]I feel like in the pandemic, I've had to rely and probably most people,
[13:05]but when everyone's doing different things, where should we be?
[13:09]What do you feel is okay?
[13:10]What do I feel is okay?
[13:12]I'm not sure.
[13:13]Like I feel like this is a time where I'm just like, okay, I just have to look
[13:17]inside myself and go with it because that's all I really have at the end of the day.
[13:21]Like everyone else could be wrong.
[13:23]Everyone else could be right.
[13:24]But like I have to do what I feel comfortable doing.
[13:27]Although not being led exclusively by anxiety.
[13:30]I feel like lately I haven't even wanted to leave the house.
[13:32]I'm like, this is fine.
[13:33]I'm okay here.
[13:35]It reminds me a little bit of there are ways we think about.
[13:38]I studied this years ago at risk assessment.
[13:40]And it's sometimes about the statistics, but it's also a little bit about our
[13:44]emotions in response to that risk as well.
[13:46]It's the feeling that if somebody chooses to be a smoker, they're choosing to take
[13:51]that risk on for themselves.
[13:52]But if the government puts a nuclear power station nearby, even though that risk
[13:55]statistically might be a lot smaller than the risk from smoking, we feel that risk is
[13:59]being imposed upon us.
[14:00]So it's not just about the numbers.
[14:02]It's something about our emotional response to that space.
[14:05]I think we're all grappling with that sense of not just how do we deal with the numbers,
[14:08]but also how do we emotionally process the numbers of this particular moment.
[14:11]The characters have to think about that.
[14:13]But I think we as a society are thinking about that too.
[14:17]It's so true.
[14:18]Yes, it's very timely in emotion for sure.
[14:21]Absolutely.
[14:21]And by the way, the wife in this book is so funny and legable.
[14:26]So I found myself wanting to take whoever this was out to coffee.
[14:29]So if she happens to exist, tell the statisticians.
[14:33]I really appreciate you saying that.
[14:35]You are.
[14:36]No, that's actually very moving to me because the wife in the book, at least in
[14:41]some part, is modeled on a wife that I know very well that I love very deeply.
[14:44]Do you sort of behind the door behind me and back there?
[14:47]You know, and I think I was very conscious writing the book.
[14:50]You know, you mentioned the story about fatherhood, which is very much true.
[14:55]But you know, the reason that I think there are a few books that
[14:57]talk about parenting for the father's point of view is because we understand of course
[15:00]and I think it's very true that the motherhood experiences in many ways,
[15:04]certainly the birth experience is so much more intense than the father's experience.
[15:07]I think in so many ways.
[15:08]So I was sort of cautious and tentative a little bit, I think, in some ways,
[15:12]about trying to take on subjects like parenthood and sex of just like abortion
[15:16]from a male point of view.
[15:17]And I don't claim, of course, this is like a complete point of view, obviously.
[15:20]It's that one of the ways that the book is structured is written in these sort of short fragments
[15:25]that also leave a lot of space between those sections.
[15:28]I think allows readers to read between the lines a little bit and sort of to think that this is
[15:32]not the whole story, of course.
[15:34]And there's a story that the wife would tell in the novel,
[15:37]and maybe even the son would tell eventually in the book as well,
[15:40]that I can't claim to access, but I'm trying to leave some space
[15:44]for the readers might imagine what's going on with those characters in the background along
[15:47]the way as well and maybe fill in the gaps.
[15:49]It feels like the, you know, I'm a big believer in the way that the reader helps
[15:54]complete a book in some ways as well.
[15:56]So I'm hoping to leave some space in that territory.
[15:58]Although it's funny after that interruption, you know, I also think that some part of the
[16:02]structure of the book, the fact that it's written sort of short sections, short vignettes,
[16:07]comes out of the parenting experience, you know, this book, although mostly written over the
[16:12]last three or four years, the first chapter goes back about 10 years or so, I think.
[16:16]And it comes out of a time when I was trying to write when my son was pretty small.
[16:21]And so everything about the writing experience was sort of stolen in those moments where there
[16:26]was a nap or there was a small gap in that the busy schedule you have when you're parenting.
[16:30]So I think about the form of the book also I think it comes out of the parenting experience.
[16:34]And the way I've digested it also comes out of the parenting experience where I can only,
[16:40]I read snippets and I have the look here and there and it's good, you know, I love all different
[16:45]types of books, but like I'm also reading out a book with multiple view points for each chapter
[16:51]at shifts. And that's much harder. I still don't really enjoy it, but that's better if I have
[16:56]a longer stretch of time, but when I put it down and pick it up, I'm like, wait, who was she?
[17:01]And then I have to flip back this book, not you're like in it, I get it, whatever. So was it
[17:05]easier? I mean, you have that written all this historical fiction in the past, which I'm sure
[17:09]involved a great deal of research and time digging and all of that. Was it like a breeze for you
[17:16]to do this or was it harder because you were going into more emotional territory or is that not
[17:22]even true? I mean, it's it's difficult to compare. I think the historical work does require a lot
[17:27]of preparation. There's a lot of anxieties, right? But it's also a space where fact and fiction
[17:32]and where fact gives over to fiction. It feels like it's also an important question. So this book
[17:36]has some callbacks to that previous experience, I think this was probably slightly easier in the
[17:42]actual writing experience. It took less time. It's a shorter book, of course, than my previous
[17:46]historical novels. But I think you're absolutely right. It suggests that emotionally it was a tougher
[17:50]book. And I think maybe even, you know, while I've written about real historical figures in the past
[17:55]and there are questions there ethically about how they're represented. We think about questions
[17:59]for appropriation that comes up in those spaces. It felt that those questions were much closer to
[18:05]home, literally speaking in the context of this book. So there was a certain amount of anxiety and
[18:11]a degree of soul searching in those questions in the writing of this book. And if there's some
[18:14]degree, I think as I often do some of the things that I worry about when I'm writing a book,
[18:19]can I write this book? How do I write this book? Those questions ultimately in some ways become
[18:25]the subject of the book. So it feels as those questions sort of inhabit the book. And rather than
[18:29]having them stop me or sense of me, it feels as if the book is an opportunity to explore and
[18:35]engage with those questions in some ways as well. And I love how you just put a lie in the title
[18:39]because I feel like all the best books are all like, in fact, I would say most stories are
[18:46]about some sort of secret. Either you're keeping it from yourself or someone's keeping it from
[18:52]you. There's like always a secret, which I think is a flip side sort of a lie, right? Because you
[18:56]have to disguise that. So I don't know. I just feel like it just, it's so touches on like this
[19:04]basic interest people have in reading about what is not straightforward and what you might not be
[19:10]able to say straight out and all of that. Yeah, it's a great mystery of fiction, right, that it
[19:15]feels as though it advertises itself as a lie, it's a fiction. And invites us, I think, to think
[19:20]into, do I believe in this? What don't I believe in, you know, where might my suspension disbelief
[19:25]begin or end in some ways as well? But I think it's also one of the great, you know, we often
[19:29]talk about fiction is a kind of engine of empathy, which I think is true. And I bind those ideas
[19:34]importance of that. But there's also a way in which I think the reading of fiction sharpens our
[19:39]sense of reality by engaging is with that sense of what might not be real. I think in some ways
[19:45]there's a strange way in which I think, and I thought about this, particularly over the last
[19:48]three or four years, that the reading of fiction sort of sharpens our bullshit detective in a strange
[19:53]way, right? It feels as though it helps us figure out what's true and what's not what to believe
[19:57]in and what not to believe in. So even as it plays with those.
[20:00]that sense of where the line lies.
[20:02]I think it also sharpens our feelings about reality as well.
[20:06]And how did you become a writer to begin with?
[20:08]Oh, you know, it's weird.
[20:09]I mean, I know this comes a little bit out of the book
[20:12]in the main character.
[20:13]He starts off as a physicist, and I started off as a physicist.
[20:16]But my physics career, such as it was, at least as an undergraduate,
[20:20]was entirely derailed by, I think, the first really serious writing I did.
[20:25]When I was younger and I was a teenager,
[20:27]I wanted nothing more than to write science fiction.
[20:29]In fact, I'd been any good at it.
[20:30]I might still be doing that.
[20:31]But I wrote a story that was, you know,
[20:34]closer to home, more about my family.
[20:35]My grandmother was beginning to suffer with dementia.
[20:37]And it was a very difficult passage for the family to go through,
[20:40]and for me as well.
[20:41]And by writing about an infection, I found,
[20:44]I'd untapped something emotionally
[20:46]that I hadn't been previously aware was there in the fiction.
[20:49]So I wrote a story about that.
[20:50]I went on to be the first story that I published
[20:51]all that not for many years later.
[20:53]But even when I wrote it, I think I sense something of the power
[20:57]and the allure of fiction in doing that.
[20:59]So in a strange way, that story entirely derailed my physics career.
[21:03]Everything.
[21:04]Wow.
[21:05]So I guess we should keep all the novels away
[21:07]from mental physicists at the lesson here.
[21:11]What do you like to read?
[21:12]What types of book do you like to read?
[21:13]Oh, you know, it's funny.
[21:14]I think once I became a parent, I became very drawn
[21:17]to the idea of reading a lot of short books
[21:18]because it was very easy to get through.
[21:20]That's why I sympathized with what you were suggesting earlier on.
[21:23]I think too, there's a way, you know,
[21:25]we're talking about the interrupted,
[21:27]distractible life of a parent or a young parent,
[21:30]you know, and how they find time to read in that space.
[21:33]So how they find the bandwidth.
[21:35]So I think just engage with the book
[21:36]in those kind of moments.
[21:38]I think too that that distractibility
[21:40]is a cultural phenomenon, right?
[21:42]I think there's something about the way that we read,
[21:45]even when we're reading the news or we're reading online,
[21:47]we're hopping around, right?
[21:48]It feels like the net and the web have become really interesting,
[21:52]sort of metaphors of the way we hop
[21:54]from connection to connection to connection.
[21:56]There's a way in which we, when we engage with the world,
[21:58]like that, I'm making our own novel.
[22:00]I'm going to jump from this link to this link to this link.
[22:02]And I do think there's a body of work out there,
[22:06]a body of fiction that sort of begins to operate
[22:08]in those sort of elusive, connective ways.
[22:11]I think back to a book that I teach at great deals
[22:13]my undergraduates almost every year.
[22:15]Jennifer, you can see from the goon squad,
[22:17]which has that same kind of elusive, connective quality.
[22:20]And I find that really interesting.
[22:21]It feels as though there's an interesting way
[22:23]that it makes, I always talk to them about how,
[22:25]once they've read it, it sort of rewires their brains
[22:27]in interesting ways, although I think in some ways
[22:29]it's actually just playing into a rewiring of their brains
[22:32]that the world is engaging in in some ways for them as well.
[22:35]But I like that.
[22:35]I think I'm interested in that sense in which we're encouraged
[22:38]as readers to make connections between pieces
[22:41]that we're asked to fill the gaps in, again,
[22:43]that sense of feeling as though we're collaborators
[22:46]with the author.
[22:46]So those are books that I'm really engaged in.
[22:48]Do you have more books in the works?
[22:49]Like what's coming next for you?
[22:51]You know, it's funny, I was writing this book,
[22:53]or at least finishing it simultaneously
[22:55]with another book that I'm working on.
[22:57]It's a non-fiction book.
[22:59]I kind of teach you a book, a craft book
[23:00]about the writing fiction, but specifically about revision.
[23:03]It's called The Art of Revision, Subtitled, The Last Word,
[23:06]which has been ominous, but it's not quite as grim
[23:08]as that sounds.
[23:09]And, you know, I've been teaching for the best part of 25 years,
[23:12]so it feels like it's a distillation of those kind of things.
[23:15]But it felt a little as though, you know,
[23:17]in this new novel, the main character is also a writer
[23:20]and a teacher of writing.
[23:21]So there's a little bit of osmosis
[23:23]between these two projects, I think, in some ways as well.
[23:26]So that one will come out in November of this year.
[23:28]And my friends are like, oh, you've got two books
[23:30]coming in on the same year.
[23:31]But I have to admit, they're both very short books,
[23:32]as you know, from this one.
[23:34]So it doesn't feel like it's quite as a,
[23:36]as great achievement of that alone.
[23:37]It's fun, and I enjoy working on both of them.
[23:40]I have two anthologies coming out this year, actually.
[23:43]Excellent, congratulations.
[23:44]Yeah, thank you.
[23:45]I assembled them.
[23:46]But yeah, remember, so I'll see you in the November party
[23:49]that won't be there.
[23:50]That's a lot of work, though,
[23:51]assembling anthologies like that.
[23:52]It is a lot of work, and it's great.
[23:54]And I'm really proud of them, and it'll be great.
[23:56]But it's not like I sat down and remember them.
[23:59]Right, but it's a fun, you know, it also,
[24:00]I think, you know, it's the way I feel about,
[24:02]even when I'm putting together a list of readings
[24:04]for a course, you're interested in the way
[24:07]that pieces and anthologies bounce off each other
[24:09]and speak to each other.
[24:10]And I do think there's a way in which, you know,
[24:12]visit from the Goonscourt calls back to this space as well.
[24:15]There's something about the way I'm interested in novels,
[24:17]I think the borrow from not the structure of short stories,
[24:22]per se, but from the structure of short story collections,
[24:25]which I think do invite us to think about links,
[24:27]think about comparisons.
[24:29]And so, you know, anthologies do that work
[24:31]in really interesting ways.
[24:32]And again, it's a fun way of the brain moving laterally,
[24:34]I think, which is an interesting contrast sometimes
[24:36]to the linearity of some fiction as well.
[24:38]I like that.
[24:40]And I have to like steal that quote.
[24:41]I went describing anthology work.
[24:44]You have already started talking about this,
[24:47]and I'm sure you have a lot of views on revision.
[24:49]And I read your essay.
[24:50]I think it was called done on, you know,
[24:52]how to do it.
[24:53]Oh, sure, yeah, right.
[24:54]But what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[24:57]People who were just starting out?
[24:58]Well, this probably goes to some of the ways
[25:00]I think about revision.
[25:02]I think there's a way in which it's important for us to out
[25:05]wait the project,
[25:06]I wait the story, I wait the book.
[25:08]I think we're all much as we claim to love writing.
[25:11]There is a way in which we're often all of us in an unholy hurry
[25:13]to be finished with whatever we're writing.
[25:15]And I think that's understandable in a first draft, right?
[25:17]You know, we, we sort of build that first draft.
[25:21]It's like a rickety bridge that we're constructing across
[25:23]the chasm of our doubt, right?
[25:25]That we feel that we don't finish the bridge
[25:26]or just fall into the chasm or we won't get to the end of
[25:29]this thing.
[25:30]And so I think it's really important often to move
[25:32]quite quickly in our first draft.
[25:34]And I sort of see students doing that.
[25:35]But you can also feel them, you know,
[25:37]at the end of that early draft,
[25:39]believe it's a story that like a sprint is dipping for the line,
[25:42]right?
[25:43]So we're trying very hard to get across that line
[25:45]and get it built.
[25:45]And afterwards in revision, though,
[25:47]I think it's really smart to take some time to explore the work
[25:50]maybe entirely expand for a little bit.
[25:52]You know, I think, you know, we talked earlier on about that.
[25:54]And you're writing what you know.
[25:55]But often we don't quite know what we know.
[25:57]We write a first draft with feeling our way into that space.
[26:01]To the more we expand, I think the more we sort of explore our own
[26:03]work, I think, in many ways.
[26:05]And I'm really interested in that idea, that sense of
[26:07]hanging out with the work long enough to understand
[26:10]what it's doing.
[26:11]And maybe ultimately I think figuring out why we wrote it
[26:14]in the first place, that's how I know that I'm finally done.
[26:16]I feel like I finally understand my own work.
[26:18]I think in certain ways.
[26:19]And nearly always with different books.
[26:21]There's some late moment when I understand where I,
[26:25]something that seemed out of place
[26:27]or I wasn't quite sure why it was there,
[26:30]what work it was doing.
[26:31]It suddenly speaks back to me and says,
[26:32]I'm here for this reason and this reason is essential.
[26:34]That's why you hang on to me for as long as you have, I think.
[26:38]So the advice that I give to people, you know,
[26:41]there's so much of course.
[26:42]But the line I like to quote is a line of flow bias,
[26:45]a line, I think goes, the talent is long patience.
[26:49]And I think when I first heard that when I was quite a
[26:51]young writer, I didn't get it.
[26:53]I think I even thought it was just a bad translation
[26:55]from the French talent is long patience.
[26:57]What does that mean?
[26:58]And because the older I get, the more I think I understand that.
[27:02]And I try to talk about it often with young writers.
[27:05]Of course, you know, and I'm lucky I work with very talented
[27:07]young writers, talent and youth are sort of the enemies
[27:10]of patience.
[27:11]I think we often embrace talent as a shortcut, right?
[27:14]We don't need to have as much patience if we're talented.
[27:16]And I think that's part of the seduction of our feelings
[27:19]about talent.
[27:20]But I do think there's a way in which just being patient
[27:23]with ourselves and with our work, which feels like a value
[27:26]that seems sometimes counterintuitive to the pace of modern life.
[27:29]I think in some ways it's a chance for the work to speak
[27:31]back to us and to the characters to speak back to us and for us
[27:34]to grow into the work and understand it.
[27:36]And you know, in a fundamental way, it's about reading
[27:40]our own work carefully so that we allow it to speak back
[27:43]as we become readers of our own work and not just the writers
[27:46]of it.
[27:47]And maybe that's the fundamental essence of revision that we
[27:50]move.
[27:50]It's an aspect of resewing, right?
[27:52]That we move from seeing it through the eyes of the writer who
[27:56]thinks they know what they're doing with it.
[27:58]And we come back to it and read it through the eyes of a reader.
[28:02]I always suggest that you must have got through this too.
[28:04]I'm sure it's that moment I think when we share our work
[28:08]for the first time with somebody else, a friend,
[28:11]a loved one, a critical, we hit submit if we're
[28:13]sending it out for magazine or we hit submit if we're
[28:15]sending it to the editor or the agent.
[28:17]And even before we hear back from them,
[28:20]there's a moment, as soon as we've let go of it,
[28:23]we're like, oh shit, I should have fixed that.
[28:25]There's something that we recognize that we should have changed,
[28:28]that we meant to change, that we suddenly see in a different way.
[28:31]And it's because we intuit new eyes looking at it.
[28:35]And so that the beginning of revision, because we're
[28:37]starting to see it through the eyes of our imagined readers
[28:39]out there.
[28:40]It's true.
[28:41]I feel like revision is, I mean, it's the most important thing.
[28:44]And I feel like any time, like even for an essay,
[28:47]if I write it first draft, it's 1,000 words.
[28:50]And I know I have to get it to 750 or something
[28:51]or 800, it's going to be much better.
[28:54]Like it always gets better when I cut it down, inevitably.
[28:58]So I'm like, I don't know what that says.
[29:00]Maybe I just got to have to keep it really brief.
[29:03]But I think the point is when you're more intentional about
[29:05]which words end up making it, you have to have them sort
[29:09]of go up to the battle line and fight to make their way in.
[29:13]And if they survive, then they have a place for themselves.
[29:17]So anyway.
[29:18]But you also wouldn't find those if you hadn't written long
[29:21]in the first place.
[29:22]So I think it's really important that allow ourselves
[29:24]to have that sort of expansive moment before we contract.
[29:28]So I'm often, occasionally with young readers
[29:30]that I work with, there's a feeling that they think of revision,
[29:33]well, this is another parenting way of thinking about this, right?
[29:36]I feel that I encourage them to revise that I'm like their mom
[29:39]telling them to tidy their room, right?
[29:40]It feels like this is the boring work of writing.
[29:42]I've had all the fun creative stuff.
[29:44]And now I have to do the dull thing.
[29:46]And I want to suggest that the revision is also part
[29:49]of the creative process, right?
[29:50]It's an opportunity also for new discoveries
[29:52]to be made, new moments of creation to occur to them.
[29:56]And so I'm often encouraging them to take that piece
[29:59]and.
[30:00]I guess the way I put it is to allow it to breathe out.
[30:02]Sometimes it gets a little bit longer than it needs to.
[30:03]And then in a subsequent draft to cut it back and so it breathes in.
[30:07]And that sense of the draft is this breathing, living thing.
[30:10]Feels like I can a healthy way or sort of think about it.
[30:13]It's sort of like when I make sugar cookies with my kids, right?
[30:16]You need all that dough and you have to roll it all out.
[30:19]And then you put the cookie cutters in it.
[30:21]And nobody ever says, oh, I shouldn't have made that dough.
[30:23]You have to make the dough to get the perfect cookie.
[30:25]That's a great idea.
[30:27]That's a really good description of that.
[30:28]And I see also really helpful to me because I feel as though one of the
[30:30]struggles I have talking about revision sometimes with students is it can feel a little
[30:34]mysterious, right?
[30:35]You know, even that sense of I suddenly understood it was done or the character spoke
[30:38]back to me.
[30:39]They think it's a little mystical, I think in some ways.
[30:41]So anything that sort of makes it seem more down to earth, I think makes it more tangible.
[30:45]So that's a great metaphor for that.
[30:46]I really like that idea of that.
[30:48]I even talked about that.
[30:49]Can you use that metaphor as often as you like if you to help a person you're talking
[30:54]to, they have to listen to my audience.
[30:55]That's why I only do that.
[30:57]That's a deal.
[30:59]Yeah, of course we use it if it ever helps you, but yeah, I think it is kind of like
[31:03]that.
[31:04]Anyway, well, thank you so much for this chat.
[31:06]It was really fun and I really truly enjoyed reading your book, not at least because
[31:11]I couldn't pick it up and put it down 8,000 times before even finishing what 200 pages
[31:16]were 100.
[31:17]Anyway, it was great and it was lovely getting to know you.
[31:19]So thank you for coming on the show.
[31:21]Thanks so much for having me.
[31:22]It was a real pleasure chatting to you.
[31:23]I'll send you some sugar heat Sunday.
[31:24]I'm sorry.
[31:25]Thanks.
[31:26]I like it.
[31:27]Today's podcast has been sponsored by Under the Influence, a new podcast by author Joe
[31:36]Piazza.
[31:37]And just a reminder again, please pre-order a copy of my book, Moms Don't Have Time
[31:41]to A Quarantine Anthology and go to my website under the anthology tab for the fundraiser
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[31:54]proceed to go to COVID-19 research.
[31:56]So please join me for the fundraiser.
[31:59]Thanks so much.
[32:00]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:03]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[32:07]Books.
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[32:15]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing and thank you
[32:19]to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.