David Sedaris, THE BEST OF ME
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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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 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 who have been on this podcast.
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[1:16]Just to give you a few, Chris Bajillion, Jewel Parker Rhodes, Ashley Prentice Norton, Gretchen Rubin, Rima Zaman, Eileen Zimmerman, and that is just from the first page of the multi-page table of contents.
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[3:21]three righteous mamas. Are you looking for a new podcast? I mean, keep listening to mind,
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[3:51]whatever platform you get your podcasts on. David Sedaris is the author of the books. Let's explore
[3:59]diabetes with owls, squirrel seeks chipmunk when you are engulfed in flames, dress your family
[4:05]in curdoy and denim. Me talk pretty one day. I think that was my favorite of all of his books.
[4:09]Holiday on ice, naked, and barrel fever. He's a regular contributor to the New Yorker and BBC
[4:14]Radio 4. He currently lives in England and his latest collection of all of the best essays that
[4:22]he's written is called the best of me. David has been nominated for five Grammy Awards for best
[4:27]spoken word, best comedy album. A feature film adaptation of his story, C.O.G. was released after a
[4:34]a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. And he can always be here to annually since 2011
[4:40]on a series of live recordings on the BBC Radio 4, or called Meet David Sedaris. In 2019,
[4:46]he became a regular contributor to CBS Sunday morning and has his own masterclass, David Sedaris
[4:52]teaches storytelling and humor. There are over 16 million copies of his books in print,
[4:57]and they have been translated into 32 languages. In 2018, he was awarded the Terry
[5:03]Southern Prize for humor, as well as the medal for spoken language from the American Academy
[5:07]of Arts and Letters. In March 2019, he was elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts
[5:13]and Letters. In 2020, the New York Public Library voted Me Talk Pretty One Day,
[5:17]one of the 125 most important books of the last 125 years. Welcome to David.
[5:24]Well, thanks for coming on mom. Still don't have time to read books, especially to talk about
[5:28]the best of me, your latest collection of all-time great essays, which is fantastic.
[5:35]Oh, right. I mean, usually, you know, when a book comes out, I go on a book tour and it feels like,
[5:41]oh, a book came out, but, you know, because everything's going on and I couldn't really go on
[5:45]any kind of a book tour, so I didn't really feel, you know, I didn't feel anything.
[5:51]So it's almost like it didn't happen? Yeah, it's a lot like it didn't happen.
[5:56]Well, I'm sorry to hear that. Well, I'm sure you've been entertaining a lot of people as they've
[5:59]been at home even if it doesn't feel that way to you. Well, I don't know. I mean, usually,
[6:04]I go on these lecture tours and so, you know, really things and you hear their response,
[6:10]but if you don't, there's like publishing something, you know, in a magazine now, I mean,
[6:15]I don't have any idea if it works or not. You know, I never got to hear anybody react to it,
[6:22]or not the reactions that I'm used to, like I'm not interested in a reaction like on Twitter
[6:29]that doesn't introduce me, you know, or in the comment section, or, yeah, that I'm never
[6:35]going to pay me to look at any of that. I mean, I was looking at something,
[6:41]I was looking at a book, it was a book that I really enjoyed in audiobook. I love audiobooks
[6:46]and William Maxwell, who was an editor at the New Yorker for years and years. I remember
[6:52]the story that he had in the magazine in 1979 and it came out, I think, in three different
[6:58]installments that I just couldn't wait for the magazine to come out so I could read more of it.
[7:03]And it's called So Long See You Tomorrow. And then I just realized there was an audio recording
[7:09]and it was him reading it when he was in his 80s him reading it. And gosh, you know, he
[7:16]calls sometimes and his voice is really weak and it trails off. It's perfect, he's a perfect person
[7:22]to read it. You know, he's not overly dramatic, he doesn't do different voices for the characters.
[7:28]That's the kind of thing drives me crazy. Anyway, it was such a such a fantastic book
[7:35]and so wonderfully read. So I was kind of shocked and I started looking at the comments
[7:41]and people giving it like one star, you know, they got an old man to read it. That will be the author.
[7:49]And he, the story, meanders. And it's like he's not really, you know, it goes back and forth
[7:58]between different points of view, but that's not called meandering. And I just couldn't believe
[8:03]how off the mark most of the comments were. And then I thought, you know what, I'm going to write a
[8:10]comment. And then I thought, no, that's like when calling in the talk radio, you know, the second
[8:15]you do it, you become a crazy person. So now you just don't ever read the comments. No, I read, I don't
[8:24]read mine. I don't read any comments pertaining to me. But, you know, like sometimes you go into a
[8:30]a store, like there's a store that I love to go into, right? And the people who work there are just,
[8:36]I don't know. I guess I think of them as friends, but I think actually when you, you know, more
[8:42]realistically, I pay them to be my friend, you know, I mean, I'm a customer, go in there and I buy
[8:50]things. And then I hang out talking to them. Anyway, so I looked on Yelp one day and the customer
[8:57]comments were like, you know, the people who work there are snobs and they file you on the store
[9:03]and they think they're better than you. And I thought that's something you bring into the store with
[9:10]you. You know, like if you walk into the store thinking that you're not good enough to be there,
[9:16]that's how you're going to feel. But the people who work there are fantastic. I mean, I don't,
[9:21]so I, you know, with any comments, half of it is stuff that people are bringing in with,
[9:27]it's baggage they're bringing in with them, you know, something they're bringing in too.
[9:33]It's a story. I've been watching that friendly woods show on Netflix, pretend it's a city,
[9:38]on Netflix. Well, it's Martin Scorsese and he's just kind of following around while she talks.
[9:44]And this moment in the New York Times wrote like, you know, a negative review of it,
[9:49]but at one point, family would say, oh, you know, now there's a sentiment using him. I mean,
[9:54]what's in there, tuberculosis? And just to this moment of the Times.
[10:00]I went through, I brought my children there, and they were in a group of people sitting
[10:06]there and looking at it by seeing that it doesn't seem in a space like that.
[10:10]And so I don't think she's very funny.
[10:12]And it's like, come on, that's just, what's in the museum tuberculosis, that's just
[10:17]funny.
[10:18]It's like, just, but it was a situation where I think friendly bullets had very accurately
[10:23]made fun of the woman who was writing this article.
[10:27]You know, like, sometimes somebody just, but sometimes somebody makes fun of you, and
[10:31]you think, wow, even a great job making fun of us.
[10:36]I have to hand it to you, he had a really great job making fun of me, and you know, even
[10:40]though it hurts or something, you know, you have to think, wow, well done.
[10:45]I have not actually thought about things that way, I think I'll have to change my point
[10:49]of you.
[10:50]Why not?
[10:51]I mean, I think you're right, you have to find a humor and everything, which is obviously
[10:54]something that you take pretty seriously.
[10:57]Well, I mean, I don't look for it.
[11:01]You know, in what I read necessarily, like I don't demand that of something that I read
[11:06]that before.
[11:07]Right.
[11:08]Well, that's good.
[11:09]You know, I'm always happy to laugh.
[11:10]But you also, in your writing, you don't only talk about funny stuff, you talk about
[11:14]serious.
[11:15]I mean, you are able to put a little bit of relatable humor into the saddest of stories.
[11:21]And when you wrote about your sister's suicide, for example, and how you, and the loss
[11:26]of your mother, for instance, and how you used to go to your home in North Carolina, or
[11:31]you rented a cottage or something, and you didn't come the year that she died and you made
[11:35]a joke like, well, it was really because she was the one who paid for it, not because
[11:39]we didn't want to go.
[11:40]I mean, it's like, how do you find these little nuggets of relatable humor when you're
[11:45]really going through lots of loss?
[11:47]And I think, especially now, people are really longing for some humor in the face of this
[11:52]global sense of loss.
[11:53]Well, I don't know.
[11:54]I mean, if I'm going to be reading something in front of an audience, I wouldn't want
[12:00]there to be no laughter.
[12:01]I mean, I'm not interested in that.
[12:03]I'm not interested in, I mean, there are people who do write that way, and, you know,
[12:09]John Gideon probably doesn't get a lot of laughs, you know, when she does a reading,
[12:13]but I'd be right there on the first row, happy to hear her, you know, but for me,
[12:19]personally, that doesn't interest me.
[12:22]One of the things that I'm reading, well, the book I'm reading now is the New George
[12:26]Saunders book, a swim in the pond and the rain, right?
[12:30]How is it?
[12:31]Well, it's about writing, and it's sort of like a course.
[12:35]It's almost like a, he takes like five Russian writers and takes short stories of theirs,
[12:43]you know, the short stories are there, and then he asks questions about the short stories
[12:46]and then kind of, there's a lecture up here about the short story, but then he talks
[12:52]about his own writing as well.
[12:54]And I thought it was so true and I thought it applied to everyone's writing, is it?
[12:59]You know, if your talent was a hunting dog, you know, you send it out to find a beautiful
[13:05]pheasant and it comes back with the lower half of a Barbie doll, and you think this
[13:10]is what my writing is, like my reading is the lower half of a Barbie doll, and it's
[13:16]like, yeah, that's because it's who you are and it's what you're interested in.
[13:23]And you know, see, you might start off trying to be this person or that person, but after
[13:28]while you realize, you know, that you're never going to be jumped at the end.
[13:33]And you know, maybe you could imitate her sentence structure and maybe you could fool
[13:38]a beginning writer, you know, that it would that didn't pass something off as a beginning
[13:43]of a John Gideon thing, but it's not you and it's never going to be you and that this
[13:50]is actually who you are.
[13:53]This is what you're interested in and this is what you write like, you know, and that's
[13:59]the beginning of your life as a mature writer is sort of not discovering who you are,
[14:07]but accepting who you are.
[14:09]Well, I also accepting it and then putting it into words, which is also, which can be a
[14:14]challenge, I think, for some people, I mean, I think some people think they have to write
[14:18]a certain way or if it's not literary enough or, you know, for what you were saying,
[14:23]like when did you realize that you were able to put who you were as a person onto the
[14:27]page?
[14:29]You know, when I was like, 27, I mean, I'd been writing for seven years by that point,
[14:33]but I think when I was 27, I kind of accepted myself as the writer that I am.
[14:40]And I thought, okay, you know, there's no point in any more in trying to be anybody else.
[14:46]This is who I am and this is what I'm interested in and this is what I sound like.
[14:50]And I'll try to improve the writing of it.
[14:53]You know, I'll try to improve my craft and try to tighten things up and try to make
[15:00]the word by word writing better, but this seems to be who I am.
[15:05]I remember when I was, I just moved to Paris and David Remnick took over at the New
[15:11]Yorker and then he came to Paris and met with me and he asked me if I would write for
[15:16]the magazine and I said, I don't, I mean, I had some shouts and murmurs in there, but
[15:22]that was all.
[15:23]And I said, I don't think I have a New Yorker essay in me and he said, I'll be the judge
[15:28]of that.
[15:29]I'll be the judge of what's in New Yorker essay because when I sat there and I tried
[15:33]to think, I am writing a New Yorker essay, I just froze and so we've kept it that way.
[15:42]You know, I send them everything I write and they decide what's a New Yorker essay.
[15:46]I don't have a clue.
[15:49]I mean, if it has the word content, it's probably not a New Yorker essay.
[15:54]Do I mean, but other than that, I really don't have a clue.
[15:59]Wow.
[16:00]And how, I know your whole life, you've been very open, well, maybe not your whole
[16:04]life.
[16:05]Maybe since age 27, you're just super open about your family and your relationship
[16:09]and all the things that come in and out of your mind and just inside and out, how does
[16:15]everyone around you feel about that and how did you get up the, if I don't know if it's
[16:21]courage or what, just to be able to say, you know what, I'm going to just write about all
[16:24]these people.
[16:25]Well, I mean, when I write about something in my family, I give it to them first and I
[16:30]run it by them, not my father because he's 97 and I always think you'll be dead by the
[16:36]time the book comes out, you know, or the article comes out or, you know, so why bother
[16:41]him with it.
[16:42]Everybody else will run it by them first.
[16:44]I mean, my brother lately, you know, has a lot of stuff he doesn't want people knowing.
[16:50]And he would said to me a while ago, my boyfriend here, we said, we need to write that
[16:54]anywhere and it's like, no, that's crossing the line.
[16:57]You know, I mean, if he doesn't want people knowing those things, I can't.
[17:03]I mean, what would I destroy my relationship over that, you know, how does Swake Kelly
[17:09]die?
[17:10]I feel like you might have to be a little worried to be a part of your family these days.
[17:16]You're just sitting there waiting for people to drop over.
[17:19]I kind of am a big cough and, you know, I'm on the edge of my cheek.
[17:26]That must make things giving lots of fun.
[17:30]But I don't know, there's so much fake writing about family, you know, so often I don't
[17:37]believe it.
[17:39]I'm just on television, I rarely believe a family, really, you know.
[17:45]I love you, bro.
[17:47]I got your back sis like, I just want nobody talks like that or nobody who I want to spend
[17:54]any time, whatever, talk like that.
[17:57]I'm, I don't think I've ever told anyone in my family that I love something.
[18:03]Why would I do that?
[18:04]I mean, to say it on a phone or to say, you know, Christmas, thank you for the gifts,
[18:11]you know, but the greatest gift is your love.
[18:13]Like, I'm, I think I show it, but I don't, I don't know how a really hard time believing
[18:23]it when somebody has it.
[18:25]How are you though?
[18:26]Are you the only one who doesn't say I love you and your family or just nobody say
[18:29]I love you?
[18:30]Nobody does it.
[18:32]Nobody.
[18:32]I mean, no, I mean, you might put it at the end of our letter or an email or something.
[18:37]Love, you know, but no, I've been with you, we've been our point.
[18:43]We'll just laugh at it.
[18:44]I mean, if, if my sister Amy said I love you, I would laugh at her and, and I would
[18:49]hope she would do the same to me if I said it to her.
[18:52]We just doesn't, you know, the thoughts like my sister went to LA the other day, right?
[18:57]She flew to Los Angeles and if her plane had gone down.
[19:01]I was not think, I never told her I loved her, like that would never occur to me.
[19:07]I mean, I showered her with Christmas presents, right?
[19:11]So that's, I mean, if her plane went down and I hadn't gotten or anything for Christmas,
[19:17]yeah, I feel bad, but to, to think, oh, I never said I loved her.
[19:21]It sounds like so love is taking the form of, of Christmas gifts.
[19:24]Well, yeah, you show you love somebody.
[19:26]You don't have to, you don't have to say it if you showed it.
[19:29]Okay.
[19:30]It's fine.
[19:31]I'm not, I'm not being in any way critical.
[19:34]I think.
[19:35]Just asking.
[19:36]No, I mean, no, I feel like it's the same with children.
[19:40]My parents never said they love us ever.
[19:43]I mean, can we just would have thought, okay, what do you want?
[19:46]If they had said it, we just would have thought, what is this, what do you, what do you
[19:50]want, you know, you're manipulating me, but why, that's what we would have thought.
[19:57]and my grandmother had dementia right before she passed away.
[20:00]my uncles and my dad were all together with her.
[20:02]And one uncle said to my dad, you know,
[20:05]how is she?
[20:06]And she said, well, she told me how much she loved me.
[20:09]And they were like, oh no,
[20:11]she must not be doing well at all.
[20:13]So I think they can probably relate to that environment.
[20:22]Wow.
[20:22]Well, in terms of your writing, how much of this year,
[20:25]I mean, obviously you're always thinking
[20:27]and reflecting on all the sorts of funny stuff
[20:29]or just the way the world works
[20:31]and everything, how often do you sit down to write?
[20:34]And how often do you write like just for yourself
[20:36]versus with an eye towards publishing it somewhere?
[20:39]I write every day, you know, every day I get up
[20:43]and I go right to my desk and I write
[20:45]and I write probably from 10 until like one or 130
[20:50]and then I go back to my desk at eight o'clock
[20:53]until nine 30 and then I have dinner.
[20:57]And, you know, I just spent a week working on something
[21:02]that just came to nothing, you know,
[21:05]just fell apart and just disintegrated.
[21:08]And I think when I was younger,
[21:09]I would have thought, well, that line is funny
[21:11]and that line is funny and then tried to build a scaffold
[21:14]around those two funny lines.
[21:17]But, you know, now I'm just holding up to admit defeat
[21:21]and then I moved on to something else, you know,
[21:24]moved on to something else.
[21:25]It's not for anything really.
[21:28]I mean, I don't agree to write, you know,
[21:31]like my agent will approach me and then say like recently
[21:34]she said, oh, the guardian, you know,
[21:36]the magazine, the newspaper and inklet.
[21:39]They want you to write 1,000 words on the subject of home.
[21:43]And I said, well, give me a few days
[21:45]and let me see if it appeals to me.
[21:48]Cause I don't wanna say yes and then be stuck.
[21:52]I'd rather just write it and then see if that's the thing
[21:56]that fell apart.
[21:57]So I started on it and I mean, I guess I could just take
[22:01]a different angle, but the deadline's already passed.
[22:03]And so I just thought, eh, I'll just leave it behind
[22:07]and move on to something else.
[22:08]I mean, I don't expect everything to work.
[22:11]I mean, I'd like for it to,
[22:14]but sometimes I get bored with things, you know?
[22:17]I just, and I abandoned them because of that.
[22:21]I don't destroy the file.
[22:23]I mean, I keep it sometimes a couple of years from now
[22:25]you turn back and then you think, oh, that's what
[22:28]this is all about or, oh, it's easy.
[22:31]What didn't I see earlier?
[22:32]How to fix this.
[22:35]But, you know, I don't know who wrote that.
[22:37]You know, you worked every day without hope.
[22:39]No, without expect, without hope,
[22:42]but without expectation or without, you know,
[22:46]and that's probably a rule.
[22:49]You should never quote or phrase
[22:52]when you can't remember the two most important words.
[22:55]But, I never said interesting thing, too,
[23:00]that George Saunders said in his book,
[23:02]that if you sat down to write a story about two dogs walking,
[23:06]you're going to write a story about two dogs walking.
[23:08]You know, and sometimes it's nice to,
[23:11]you set out to write about something.
[23:13]And then you realize in the second paragraph, oh, look,
[23:17]I'm going over here now.
[23:18]And I just, you know, you need to try to rain it back
[23:21]and write about the two dogs walking
[23:23]where you can just see, oh, what's over here?
[23:25]I'm going to follow myself over here,
[23:28]because maybe over here there's a much richer subject.
[23:31]I don't know if you've seen,
[23:32]there's a new movie out called Our Friend,
[23:35]and it's based on the National Magazine Award
[23:37]winning article by Matt Teague called The Friend.
[23:39]And in it, he writes about losing his wife,
[23:43]but the article ends up becoming about the friend.
[23:46]And in the movie at least, when they're talking about it,
[23:49]he says, well, I thought that you were writing
[23:50]all this time about Nicole.
[23:52]And he said, so did I, right?
[23:54]But the whole point is that it became all about the friend.
[23:57]And that's not what he even intended to do.
[24:00]Yeah, I mean, I imagine the libraries are full of books,
[24:03]you know, but the author didn't intend to write.
[24:07]I don't like to, I mean, I often feel like
[24:10]if I'm going to write about, you know,
[24:12]a specific incident, sometimes I just feel like I'm,
[24:15]you know, you've got to force somebody into the car
[24:17]and you've got to get them over there
[24:18]and then you've got to force them over here.
[24:20]And then like I'm moving pieces
[24:23]rather than following where the story goes.
[24:26]Does that makes any sense?
[24:27]Yeah, yeah.
[24:28]I mean, it's interesting because you're writing nonfiction,
[24:31]you know, but there's a way that it can still be
[24:35]like a process of discovering.
[24:37]There's a way that you can be telling the story.
[24:39]You didn't, you know, you wind up telling the story
[24:41]you didn't mean to tell, you know,
[24:43]like there's a story and best of me about
[24:47]my sister Tiffany, the one who committed suicide.
[24:49]And I said in the story that last time I saw her,
[24:53]I was in Boston and I was at Symphony Hall
[24:55]and I was doing a show and she showed up there.
[24:58]And I had them close the door and face.
[25:01]I didn't allow her into the backstage area where I was.
[25:05]And I did not mean to put that in the story
[25:09]because that makes me look really bad.
[25:12]But the second that it was on paper,
[25:15]it seems false not to include it.
[25:19]I assumed like a phony for leaving it out, you know?
[25:23]Even though nobody would know, but me, you know,
[25:25]if I'd left it out, nobody would have said,
[25:27]oh yeah, what about the time?
[25:29]Because five people knew about that, you know?
[25:32]But once I'd put it in the essay, then I couldn't
[25:37]reveal like the truth about myself that,
[25:39]hey, I thought made the story more honest
[25:42]and that made the story more honest
[25:46]and therefore more believable, you know?
[25:49]I mean, because I knew that there were gonna be
[25:51]a lot of people out there who'd be like,
[25:53]yeah, that's what I'd get to somebody or,
[25:56]yeah, I would do the same thing.
[25:57]I mean, my understanding is that there were even
[26:00]more people, of course, who were like,
[26:01]you're a monster, you know, I hate you,
[26:04]you're a terrible person.
[26:06]But, you know, when they get older,
[26:08]they'll maybe eat differently.
[26:11]Well, that was definitely my favorite essay in the book.
[26:14]So, whatever you did, it worked.
[26:16]I know you've, this whole, a lot of this talk
[26:20]has been about things that will help other writers,
[26:22]but if you had to drill down to some of the things
[26:25]you've learned to piece or two of advice,
[26:28]and I'm sure you get us this all the time,
[26:29]but I have to ask again, what advice would you give
[26:32]to aspiring authors?
[26:34]Well, not to mistake publishing for writing.
[26:38]You know, there's two different things,
[26:39]not to feel like, you know, I always remember this woman
[26:44]who was a friend of mine, and she was older than me,
[26:47]and she wasn't in the arts in any way,
[26:50]but we were close friends.
[26:53]And I remember I moved to New York City,
[26:55]and she wrote me a letter shortly after I arrived,
[26:58]and she said, look, I'm just telling you,
[27:00]this is a friend you need to quit writing.
[27:03]You're never gonna make it, and you need for your own good,
[27:07]you need to find a career before it's too late,
[27:10]find a career, and stick to it, you know.
[27:13]And by that time, I've been writing every day
[27:17]for like, I don't know, 14, 15 years.
[27:20]And what was interesting to me about it
[27:23]was that she didn't understand that I could never quit.
[27:27]I mean, regardless of whether I ever got published or not,
[27:31]but have anything to do with writing,
[27:33]you know, that's not writing, that's publishing,
[27:36]and those are two different things, right?
[27:39]I mean, I went to art school,
[27:41]and some of the best artists who I ever met,
[27:44]never had a show, not interested in it.
[27:47]Their work is just private, and they do it,
[27:50]get up every single day, and they paint.
[27:54]And it's not, they're not interested in going to parties,
[27:59]where artists might be, they're not interested in
[28:04]pushing their work on galleries,
[28:07]they're not interested in promoting themselves
[28:09]in any way, all they care about is the work.
[28:12]And the work is amazing to me.
[28:15]So publishing isn't writing,
[28:17]so, you know, when people are like,
[28:18]if I don't get published by the time I'm 25,
[28:21]or by the time I'm 30, I'm gonna quit.
[28:24]Well, it's quit now, because you're not,
[28:26]or, you know, don't mean, you're not a real writer,
[28:29]if that's your additive.
[28:32]So I think, because I do meet a lot of people,
[28:35]when I go on tour, who, you know, I'll do a book signing
[28:39]and somebody will come up and they'll say,
[28:41]you know, here's some short stories I wrote,
[28:43]and I'd love to read to read them,
[28:45]and, you know, because I really wanna get them published.
[28:48]And I never would have done that,
[28:50]ever, in the same thing years, or I have done that.
[28:54]I mean, it's a tricky thing to try to convey,
[28:56]but, you know, people like to help other people.
[29:00]They really like it.
[29:02]But if you force yourself on somebody,
[29:05]you're denying them the opportunity
[29:08]for it to be their idea to help you.
[29:11]And I know that sounds very come by out,
[29:13]like how people even supposed to know that I, you know,
[29:17]but trust me, I mean, pushing yourself on people
[29:20]and hanging out and trying to meet somebody
[29:23]who works as a publicist, or trying to intentionally
[29:28]befriend someone who's an editor at a magazine.
[29:31]That's not the way to do it.
[29:33]All that time, you spend scheming and stuff,
[29:35]you spend that time working and writing.
[29:40]And I don't know, it works out.
[29:42]I mean, it's like with every writer I know.
[29:44]I don't know, it just works out.
[29:47]I don't know a single person who, you know,
[29:50]bully people or has to work on the strangers
[29:54]and, you know, it book signings or mailed their manuscript.
[30:00]to, you know, a published writer saying, can you help me get this published? I don't know
[30:04]a single person who took that path and had it work. So I mean, the important thing is just to
[30:12]work. And that's what you care about. And then the rest of it just comes if it's supposed to.
[30:20]And again, I know that sounds like kumbaya, but no. But all I ever know is what worked for me.
[30:30]So when people write me and ask me, like, I never gave anything to anybody. Like, I never
[30:35]sent a story to a magazine. I never asked anybody, you know, well, it was in college. And I read
[30:43]something in class. And then somebody said, oh, we, I'm having a happening at my loft where
[30:48]you read something to Saturday at my loft. And so I did. And then somebody said, oh, I'm having
[30:54]a much better happening at my loft in two weeks when you read something there. And then somebody said,
[30:58]oh, I do put together this little variety show when we read something there. And it just one thing
[31:05]kind of led to another. But I never asked anybody, can I read? Can I take part in this? I just
[31:14]waited for them to ask me. And I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but I mean, it also helps to be,
[31:21]you know, to be the best. I mean, maybe not the best, but I mean, to care. You know, I can't
[31:31]tell you how many readings I went to. And then people would just act like they were just
[31:37]had been mowing the lawn. And then somebody said, you got to be on stage in five minutes. And they
[31:41]would, you know, get up there and they would be dressed like they'd been mowing their lawn. And they
[31:46]would say, well, I don't know what to read. Like, should I be this or should I be? And I would
[31:52]sit in the audience. And I would think, how do you, how do you not know what you're going to read?
[31:57]Like, you're disrespecting us as an audience. You're disrespecting us by not being prepared.
[32:04]And I guess I just learned so much by sitting in an audience and realizing, oh, if somebody is
[32:10]late, this is how it makes you feel. Or if somebody goes on too long, this is how it makes you feel
[32:16]because I think a lot of people think their feelings are specific to them. And they're not like
[32:23]98% of the people feel the same way about the same things. You know, like, so when people get up
[32:32]there and they say, I mean, I can't tell you how many readings I've done. I mean, as a grown-up,
[32:37]like as a professional, right? Like at Lincoln Center, right? So they say, you know, there's
[32:44]something at Lincoln Center called the reading or learning. It's a big thing they have at Lincoln Center
[32:50]every year. And they invite like eight or nine authors. And it's a black tie event, literacy volunteers.
[32:57]And it's a black tie event. And the audience is just in tuxedos and ball gowns. And they have,
[33:04]you know, they say to us, okay, 10 minutes, you read for 10 minutes. And you're up there with
[33:09]people, you know, who all who have written like a half dozen books at least, right? And the time I
[33:16]did it, the first person went on for 45 minutes. You know, the next person went on for half an hour.
[33:23]And they're up there thinking, well, people want to hear me for 45 minutes, right? Because I
[33:29]wrote the definitive biography of LBJ. So, and I'm sitting on the last to go on. So I'm
[33:35]paying for everybody's targetness, the audience, and I'm sitting there, and I'm the only one
[33:40]up there who's realizing, okay, the audience had drinks before the saying, they're asleep. I mean,
[33:47]they're literally every 80% of the men in this audience are asleep by now, you know? And they
[33:54]and I was the only one who kept it to 10 minutes. And I had timed it and worked on it and caught
[34:01]it down. So it was exactly 10 minutes long. And Oprah was there because they were giving an award
[34:07]to Oprah. And then Oprah came up on stage at the end of it to accept her reward. And I was the only
[34:16]author that she talked to. And that's because I was 10 minutes long. Why didn't Oprah talk to me?
[34:26]Well, because you went on for 23 minutes. That's why Oprah didn't talk to you.
[34:31]Mental note, stick to the time limit and Oprah will talk to you. Good to know.
[34:36]But I think it's just being aware and all sorts of situations. You know, just when you're reading
[34:42]something, when you realize, oh, I stopped listening, I stopped re, I'm skimming. And then to ask
[34:48]yourself, why am I skimming? Why did I stop paying attention? And to realize that if you do that same
[34:55]thing in your own work, right? So like nothing to me is worse than a dream sequence. Nothing.
[35:02]And so if I, so what if I write a dream sequence that I'm going to say, well, mine is interesting.
[35:07]No, it's not. It's as boring as everyone else's. It's a dream sequence. So if I were a reader,
[35:16]I'd be skimming over my dream sequence. And that's a good thing about reading out labs when
[35:21]audience is because the audience tells you, you're boring me right now. They're not saying it,
[35:28]but you can feel it in the room. And if you're like in a 2000-seat hall, you see that little door,
[35:35]you see the doors in the back of the theater open. That's people going out, they're going out,
[35:40]to the concession stand, they're going out in the bathroom. And you don't go out to the bathroom like
[35:46]if something's exciting, then you'll hold it. And then you read it the second night, and you
[35:53]realize, oh, people are going to the bathroom and leaving at the exact same time in this story.
[35:59]I bet it's boring. And I need to work on that part of the story. And then you go back to your hotel
[36:07]room and you rewrite it and you read it the next night, and people are remaining their seats
[36:12]if you're lucky. And it's the same thing with an editor, like if you have a good editor,
[36:17]and you don't listen to your editor, because that happened to me recently. I wrote something,
[36:23]and I didn't, I wrote something for, I don't even remember what it was for. It was my agent
[36:30]approached me and said, oh, can you write about this and the subject interested me, so I wrote
[36:35]wrote it. And then the editor got back to me and I just saw all these queries, right, and all these
[36:43]changes that she wanted. And then my first thought was like, you know what, go to hell, this is like
[36:49]going to mean $800. I'm not doing this. Forget it. And then I read her notes and it was like,
[36:56]why don't these are really good notes? And she's a good editor. And all editors, they don't want
[37:02]the same thing they don't want to make it better, right? And then I was really, I don't know,
[37:08]it was really super grateful I didn't act like a baby, because I'm listening to an editor,
[37:12]I'd love to work with her again. Amazing.
[37:15]Well, David, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. I love your advice
[37:22]and all of it. And I'm going to think about the salespeople in the stores who are not my friends,
[37:28]who are nice to me because I'm paying them too. But thank you for all of your time. It's really
[37:34]generous of you and I really appreciate it and have been a fan for so long, so thank you.
[37:40]Oh, thank you. Thanks so much to three righteous mamas for sponsoring today's podcast.
[37:48]And just a reminder again, please pre-order a copy of my book, Moms Don't Have Time to
[37:53]A Quarantine Anthology and go to my website under the anthology tab for the fundraiser. And I hope
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[38:07]So please join me for the fundraiser. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of
[38:12]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibbolens and
[38:17]at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbolens.com and sign
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[38:26]Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[38:31]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.