Mira Jacob, GOOD TALK: A Memoir in Conversations
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:35]Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.
[0:38]Mira Jacob is the author of Good Talk, A Memoir in Conversations.
[0:42]By the way, Mira and I co-hosted the literacy partner's gala online last year,
[0:48]and had the best time ever, and you could probably find that at literacypartners.org.
[0:53]We had so much fun, it was like we'd been friends forever, and we said we had to do a podcast,
[0:57]so then we just did this podcast.
[0:58]Anyway, her graphic memoir, Good Talk, A Memoir in Conversations, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award,
[1:05]and longlisted for the pen open book award.
[1:07]And her novel, The Sleep Walkers Guide to Dancing, was named one of the best books of the year by Curtis Reviews,
[1:12]The Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bessel, and The Millions.
[1:16]She lives in Brooklyn.
[1:17]Welcome, Mira, thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss your book, Good Talk, A Memoir in Conversations.
[1:24]Thanks for having me!
[1:26]Hi!
[1:27]Mira, we had so much fun.
[1:28]I mean, it's an odd way to say it, but we had to let it go!
[1:31]Let's do the literacy partners benefit!
[1:34]And now I feel like just so excited to get to interview you about your work.
[1:38]I'm very excited about this too, and it was funny because we had not seen other humans in quite a while,
[1:44]and then we hosted this thing together, and that was like the closest I had gotten to a party.
[1:48]I mean, it was like us alone in a room talking about like basically a cocktail party.
[1:54]Like it was amazing.
[1:55]Like it was, it was like a cocktail party like streaming live to like tens of thousands of people,
[1:59]and we were like, yeah, we're just gonna have fun here.
[2:01]Anyway, okay, so your book is amazing.
[2:05]A graphic novel meets memoir about all sorts of things from your career, growing up,
[2:11]your family, race, your marriage, parenting.
[2:14]I mean, you have like literally every element that you could possibly think of in your life story
[2:19]here that was, and you did it in such an original unique way.
[2:23]Tell listeners a little about how you came up with the form of this book and how,
[2:29]just how the whole thing came about.
[2:31]Yeah, of course.
[2:32]Okay, so just to give them a kind of visual,
[2:35]what it looks like when you're kind of reading through the book is,
[2:39]I do drawings of myself in various years and all the people in my life in various years,
[2:43]but I stick with one drawn version of it.
[2:46]So it's almost like a paper doll version that travels from page to page,
[2:50]and the backgrounds change.
[2:51]There are different photographs that were situated in.
[2:53]So it looks like the way that it looks as you're always looking at two people talking,
[2:58]but they are looking at you, the viewer while they're having an intimate conversation.
[3:02]And it is, in fact, a memoir in conversations.
[3:04]My publisher came up with that title, which I have to tell you, the subtitle.
[3:08]When they said it's like a memoir in conversations,
[3:10]I lost my mind for a minute because I was like, I didn't write a memoir.
[3:13]And they're like, you did.
[3:16]You actually, that is, in fact, this is a memoir.
[3:18]And I started laughing because I think if you told me that I was going to write a memoir,
[3:24]I would not have believed it.
[3:26]And if you had told me even four years before, you're going to draw a graphic memoir.
[3:32]I wouldn't have believed it mainly because I didn't really know how to draw.
[3:35]So that was, you know, it was all this big learning curve.
[3:37]So how that happened is it's really the first chapter really does tell this very specific story.
[3:43]And it was the first thing I drew for this book, which is my son,
[3:47]who was at the time six, was obsessed with Michael Jackson, like deeply obsessed.
[3:53]Like, you know all the moves and he had a whole, he had like a glove and the hat.
[3:57]And he would just basically Michael Jackson out on demand.
[4:01]And then because he was watching the videos all the time,
[4:04]he started asking me all these questions.
[4:06]Like, you know, is his skin like my skin and what happened to his other glove.
[4:11]And, you know, is that how people walk on the moon?
[4:14]And then at one point, he asked me, is Michael Jackson,
[4:19]because he had all the albums in his room?
[4:21]And he's like, is Michael Jackson Brown or is he white?
[4:24]And I was like, yeah.
[4:26]I was like, can you answer that question?
[4:28]And I said, you know, he's black.
[4:30]So his skin is brown.
[4:32]And then he kind of turned white.
[4:34]And he goes, he turned white.
[4:36]And I said, yeah, he goes, are you going to turn white?
[4:38]And I was like, no.
[4:39]And he said, am I going to turn white?
[4:41]And I was like, no.
[4:42]And he said, is daddy going to turn white?
[4:44]And I said, daddy's already white.
[4:45]And he goes, but was he always?
[4:47]And it was this terrible parenting moment
[4:49]where you realize you've done the wrong thing.
[4:51]Right?
[4:52]Set out with the best of intentions.
[4:53]You're like, I'm going to break this down for you.
[4:55]And instead, you basically turn your kid's brain to scrambled eggs.
[4:58]So those questions escalated pretty quickly,
[5:01]because that was 2014.
[5:04]And America was hitting a kind of inflection point
[5:10]that I think some of us felt much earlier than others.
[5:13]So a lot of things were coming on to our radar.
[5:17]One of them was Ferguson, the participant Ferguson,
[5:19]we're going on.
[5:20]And he was asking about that, because he had seen, you know,
[5:24]turn off the TV as fast as you can.
[5:26]But a six-year-old's going to soak in some things.
[5:28]And so he, you know, I think at one point he came to me and said,
[5:31]no, there was a kid named Ferguson,
[5:34]and he was killed because he was brown by a white policeman.
[5:38]And I said, OK, his name was Michael Brown,
[5:43]and he was killed in a town called Ferguson.
[5:46]And you know, trying to kind of try to help him
[5:49]to get the details right, but also not really
[5:52]wanting to talk about exactly what was happening.
[5:55]Because how do you convey the depth of what's happening
[5:58]and also not terrify a six-year-old?
[6:00]And then he then those that naturally led to all these other questions.
[6:04]Like he said, you know, at one point he was like,
[6:06]are white people afraid of brown people?
[6:08]And I was sort of like, what do you say to that?
[6:10]And the thing I ended up saying to him, which was kind of unsatisfactory,
[6:14]I guess, just in the depths of my soul, I said sometimes.
[6:21]And I said that because I didn't want to lie to him.
[6:23]And because the way that I was brought up, my parents
[6:26]would have never said something like that to me.
[6:29]And it's not entirely because they didn't know it.
[6:34]I think they knew certain things.
[6:36]And I think they didn't want me to know certain things.
[6:38]And I think they were also, first-generation immigrants
[6:40]trying really hard to ignore a lot of things
[6:42]so they could just get by day to day.
[6:44]My parents are from India.
[6:46]Anyway, and then he asked, you know, is daddy afraid of us?
[6:51]And I kind of lost my mind, not with him at that moment.
[6:55]With him at that moment, I just said, no, no, no.
[6:59]And then I went, and I put him to bed,
[7:01]and I went and sat in the bathroom, which is anyone who lives
[7:04]in New York knows is the only place you can get me privacy.
[7:07]And just sort of shook for a really long time.
[7:11]Because I think I understood right away
[7:17]that he was going to see and feel things about the world
[7:23]that were going to be very different than,
[7:26]a, what his father felt.
[7:27]And somewhat what I felt, though we're definitely more aligned,
[7:30]he is brown skinned.
[7:31]But I also just the feeling of being overwhelmed
[7:35]of how do you say these ugly things that you know are true?
[7:39]How do you give your child enough information to protect him?
[7:43]But not so much that you shatter his confidence in the world.
[7:48]And when he's asking a question like,
[7:50]are white people afraid of brown people?
[7:51]What's the right answer?
[7:52]Right?
[7:53]So I drew it.
[7:55]That's basically, I drew that conversation.
[7:58]And that was the first, the way I drew it,
[8:00]is what you saw in that first chapter,
[8:02]which is I basically drew two little pictures of us.
[8:04]I ran to his room, and I got all his Michael Jackson albums.
[8:07]And then I put us on top of them
[8:09]with that very intense conversation.
[8:11]It felt really good to do that.
[8:14]It felt like I was doing something proactive.
[8:16]I didn't even know what I mean.
[8:18]Yeah, so I mean, that you win the prize
[8:21]for like best parenting coping mechanism, I think.
[8:26]Well, we're not talking about the bottles of tequila.
[8:28]I also don't.
[8:30]I mean, that's like a, you know, foregone conclusion.
[8:32]But the drawing and turning it into this form,
[8:37]I mean, it is so hard to know how to process some of these big things
[8:41]and big questions.
[8:42]And you know, the sort of fear that underlines your whole book
[8:45]of like, am I totally messing up my kid?
[8:47]It's just so universal, especially with these incredibly
[8:50]complicated things that are like in the news every second.
[8:53]And even like throughout your book,
[8:55]the language that Dee was getting from the news
[8:57]that you were constantly like, I can't believe he's saying this.
[9:00]You know, the one funny scene when your friend at the bar
[9:02]was saying something like, wow, that's what four year old day,
[9:04]like what do babies learn these days?
[9:07]You know, because it's also in your face right now,
[9:09]we can't hide it.
[9:10]Yes, yeah.
[9:12]And especially, you know, in the years 2016 to 2020,
[9:15]a lot of it was pretty boldly anti-woman,
[9:21]anti-immigrant, anti-people of color sentiments
[9:24]that were just kind of taken for granted at some point.
[9:27]It's like, this is an opinion that should be in the world.
[9:30]And this is a totally normal thing to talk about
[9:33]how we don't like any of these things.
[9:35]And that was wild, right?
[9:38]Like trying to kind of raise a young brown boy in that.
[9:41]It was just sort of like, wow, how do we
[9:43]we're going to get through this with our skin on?
[9:46]And with you understanding that this isn't a way
[9:50]that people should really treat each other.
[9:52]Yeah, so true.
[9:54]I also, I found it so interesting the way
[9:56]you had to navigate your relationship with your in-laws
[9:58]in that time as well.
[9:59]And it's.
[10:00]and how you talk to your son about it.
[10:01]Tell me more about that.
[10:03]So my in-laws in this same time,
[10:06]so I should also explain.
[10:07]I'm Indian, my parents are from India.
[10:10]I grew up, I was born and raised here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[10:14]We were the third Indian family to move into the state.
[10:17]This is according to the other two Indian families
[10:19]that were already there.
[10:20]So like highly scientific.
[10:22]And then my husband is white Jewish American.
[10:27]His parents grew up in New York
[10:29]and they also moved to New Mexico.
[10:30]And so we knew each other for a very long time,
[10:35]though we never, I don't think we even
[10:36]talked to each other for, I was in my 20s.
[10:39]We kind of passed each other in hallways.
[10:41]And I could pull him out of a crowd very easily,
[10:42]but I couldn't have told you anything about him other than,
[10:45]I mean at one point, he had like long hippie hair
[10:47]and sort of looked like Jesus and listened to the dead.
[10:49]And I think that's what I knew of him,
[10:51]which was really disappointing to punk me.
[10:53]Anyway, I had like an identical person from my high school
[10:56]who that just brought to mind.
[10:58]So kind of wondering what he did.
[10:59]But it might keep going.
[11:01]Put it on that guy.
[11:02]Yeah, so my husband's parents
[11:04]became in this same moment, very pro-Trump.
[11:09]And it was really surprising.
[11:14]Actually, it was just totally shocking.
[11:16]I'd been in the family at this point.
[11:18]You know, my husband and I've been together since 2000.
[11:20]And we've been married since 2003.
[11:23]And I'd been through every funeral and hospital visit
[11:27]and bar mitzvah and bark mitzvah,
[11:30]which is hilarious, but the family god, yes.
[11:34]You know, we just been through a lot of stuff.
[11:36]And I think I had this before,
[11:40]you know, sometimes you just have a sort of,
[11:45]if you don't look hard at something,
[11:46]especially an interracial relationship,
[11:49]you can put two very different things
[11:51]in the place of real knowledge.
[11:52]And one is complete doubt that that person knows
[11:55]or understands anything about you.
[11:57]And the other is a kind of faith that they see you
[12:02]and they get you and they have your back.
[12:04]And what I found out in that moment
[12:06]was that my in-laws did not see me or have my back.
[12:11]And it didn't really matter to, you know,
[12:13]explaining to them like, this is what this is doing
[12:15]to my community, to my family, who you love.
[12:19]This is what it's gonna do to your grandson.
[12:21]They kind of felt like our voters are vote
[12:23]and you shouldn't bring politics into love
[12:26]and you're making our family life about politics,
[12:31]which is rough, right?
[12:32]It's a rough, I mean, I understand.
[12:36]I understand why they think that
[12:37]and I understand why their lives have been structured
[12:39]in a way that they're allowed to think that, right?
[12:42]They've never had anything to kind of tell them differently.
[12:47]My husband would argue that their Jewishness
[12:49]tells them quite differently
[12:50]and they did have another choice and they should have made it.
[12:52]But I can't speak to that.
[12:54]I can only speak to the fact that that's not how it played out
[12:57]with us and it was a real rift in our relationship
[13:00]as a real heartbreak, honestly.
[13:02]And at the same time, these are people
[13:06]who are such good parents to my husband
[13:10]and really good grandparents to my son.
[13:14]And so what do you do and how do you hold all those things?
[13:19]And that sort of became the conundrum of my life
[13:23]and then also the book?
[13:24]Yeah.
[13:25]What were the ramifications of your including
[13:28]all of that in the book?
[13:29]I mean, that's such an interesting question
[13:31]because I guess what I would say is
[13:35]they were both big, meaning my family,
[13:41]instead of me holding all of the pain
[13:44]and discomfort that that caused,
[13:45]which is usually what happens, right?
[13:46]Like it's usually that the person who is in the minority
[13:51]and who is processing the real violence of the situation
[13:55]is also, it's just sort of on them to do it
[13:58]unless they confront someone in a book in some way
[14:01]is a confrontation.
[14:02]And so I think it was hard in the way that it wasn't like,
[14:09]how do I say this?
[14:10]It wasn't, I think we had had many reasoned
[14:15]and loving conversations, but at the end of the day,
[14:17]the book is my opinion and the book is my version
[14:19]of what's happening.
[14:20]And I think whenever that happens,
[14:22]the person on the other end feels out of control.
[14:25]I did send them to the book in Galilee form
[14:29]knowing that if they said, you got this wrong,
[14:31]this isn't what we said, this isn't how it is,
[14:33]this isn't how we feel,
[14:34]I would have to revisit those passages.
[14:36]But they didn't say that
[14:37]because I didn't get it wrong.
[14:39]I just told my side of it.
[14:40]And that's kind of the worst part of the heartbreak, right?
[14:44]Like nothing I wrote was untrue.
[14:46]It's just that painful.
[14:47]I thought maybe them reading it or seeing it
[14:49]like that might have opened up.
[14:51]Oh, no, girl, that's the white fantasy.
[14:54]No, no, no, no, no.
[14:56]Okay.
[14:56]I swear, like that is always, that is literally,
[14:58]that is always the white fantasy of this.
[15:01]And no, no, it did not happen.
[15:03]And also, I will say like in the writing of it,
[15:06]I'm sure in the beginning there was a part of me
[15:10]that also felt like if I just explain this well enough,
[15:13]if you just understand how deep the stakes are right now
[15:17]and everything you're compromising
[15:19]with this thing that you think is seemingly, you know,
[15:22]your own and no one else is to worry about your vote.
[15:26]If I just explain it well enough, you will understand me,
[15:29]which is again, like something that I think I do think
[15:31]a lot of Brown and Black people do.
[15:33]If I just prove my value enough,
[15:36]you will find me worthy.
[15:38]If I just show you my humanity enough, you will protect it.
[15:42]And that's not really how it plays out very often at all.
[15:47]The problem of racism in America
[15:52]is not a problem of white people
[15:54]not understanding of humanity.
[15:56]It's them choosing to do nothing about it.
[15:58]Well, that was beautifully said.
[16:00]I feel like so important and so beautiful
[16:03]and so just crystallize and getting to the heart
[16:06]of the most divisive issues facing all of us right now.
[16:09]And again, your use of the word heartbreak
[16:11]feels so right.
[16:13]I mean, it's hard to hear someone's story
[16:16]and not be moved to it or moved to act or whatever.
[16:20]Anyway, beautiful, beautifully said.
[16:23]I'm sorry for perpetuating the fantasy.
[16:25]I guess I just have to hope.
[16:27]Mars.
[16:28]And also like we're, I mean, honestly, we're hardwired
[16:31]to, we are hardwired to perpetuate that fantasy.
[16:34]Like everything that you've grown up with
[16:35]perpetuates that fantasy, me too.
[16:38]Everything we've grown up with
[16:39]is built around this idea of white goodness
[16:41]and white saviorism and that like ultimately
[16:44]this will happen.
[16:45]This is a thing that does happen and will happen.
[16:48]But that's not really true unless people
[16:50]really decide to dig deep.
[16:52]And they rarely want to because it's painful.
[16:55]Like I understand that.
[16:56]I don't, it's not that I'm unsympathetic to that.
[16:58]I hate digging deep on things that I know
[17:01]don't show me in a great light.
[17:02]And also that mean that I'm going to have to do
[17:04]like years of work who wants to do years of work.
[17:06]No one, right, no one.
[17:08]So it's not that I'm unsympathetic to that at all.
[17:12]And it's not that I'm also not guilty of it myself.
[17:14]I completely am.
[17:15]But it's, but it's still devastating.
[17:18]Well, in your book, you also,
[17:20]I just was particularly struck by your 9-11 scenes
[17:22]because, you know, we're recording this
[17:24]day before 9-11 and this episode will come out afterwards.
[17:28]But just the scene of you on the sidewalk
[17:30]and talking to your dad and the realization
[17:33]of what was happening and your use of photography
[17:36]and just the way you've told that story,
[17:38]the way you tell all these stories in this unique way
[17:40]is just so moving.
[17:42]And I am like 100% convinced that one of my best friends
[17:45]was standing in the exact same place that you were.
[17:47]And I wish I had, I wish there was some way
[17:49]to like take a video camera
[17:51]because the two of you should have been, you know,
[17:53]maybe you've been interacted, I don't know,
[17:55]but she was like right there at the same time.
[17:56]But, yeah.
[17:57]But how does it, I mean, having this in the book
[18:00]and now with this anniversary right now,
[18:02]how are you feeling about that?
[18:04]I mean, so 9-11 was so traumatic
[18:09]for so many different people around the world, right?
[18:13]It was deeply traumatic on many levels.
[18:16]For us, and when I'm talking,
[18:18]when I'm saying us this time,
[18:19]I'm talking about Indians and South Asians in America,
[18:23]specifically also South Asian Americans
[18:26]who like me, many of us had grown up understanding
[18:29]that America had a way to sort of slot every other,
[18:33]every, every other race had a place, right?
[18:36]So it's like, are you gonna be, you know,
[18:38]are you going to like we're watching
[18:41]what happens to black Americans?
[18:42]Are you gonna be treated in that way?
[18:44]Are you gonna be treated the way Mexican Americans are treated?
[18:46]Are you gonna be treated the way Chinese Americans are treated?
[18:48]And Indians are kind of coming into this country
[18:51]was recent enough at that point.
[18:53]We were just throwing up those of us
[18:56]who had been, you know, kind of born in this country.
[18:59]We were among that first generation just sort of watching,
[19:01]what is our thing gonna be?
[19:02]What are they gonna think of us?
[19:03]What are they gonna decide about us, right?
[19:06]And what happened in that moment was suddenly
[19:09]and very quickly afterward,
[19:11]America had decided it was very terrified of faces like ours
[19:16]and that we had done something to the country
[19:19]and that we should be terrorized and kicked out.
[19:22]And what that meant was a lot of our uncles and brothers
[19:26]and aunts and sisters were being, you know,
[19:29]sort of violently attacked
[19:31]and no one was talking about it.
[19:33]And there was also a feeling of like,
[19:35]well, if that's happened, I'm sorry,
[19:36]but look what happened to us.
[19:38]As though we weren't ourselves American,
[19:42]as though we ourselves did not lose our city too.
[19:47]So when I think about it
[19:49]and we're coming up on the 20th anniversary,
[19:51]which is so wild, so wild.
[19:53]When I think about it, I think about,
[19:55]A, the sort of end of anything close to,
[20:00]to this sort of hopeful naivete
[20:02]about how America would take us in.
[20:05]Or not, you know, we were already here,
[20:07]so we're American, but like how America
[20:09]would kind of help us flourish in this country
[20:12]or at least accept us.
[20:13]And then I also just think about what it was like
[20:15]to be a New Yorker, which we both know,
[20:17]and it was just devastating, right?
[20:19]Like it was so, it was so awful to be here
[20:22]and the smell and the sounds and the terror
[20:26]and the fear of what it meant for everybody,
[20:29]but also to me, one of the scarier.
[20:32]Maybe scariest things was how quickly America at large
[20:35]took on this pain and their definition of American
[20:40]was this sort of white-heartland America.
[20:42]And meanwhile, that is not our city.
[20:44]Our city is super complex.
[20:46]Our city is full of immigrants.
[20:48]Our city is every color and every person on top of each other.
[20:52]And that was the thing that was lost in that moment.
[20:55]That was the place that was wounded.
[20:56]And yet, the way that it was spoken about was as though
[20:59]it was an attack on the sort of heartland white American.
[21:03]And that was also really wild to me.
[21:06]Like it made me so angry because I was like,
[21:07]what are you yelling about this stuff about America?
[21:11]But you don't even know the city you're yelling about.
[21:14]Like, this is us.
[21:16]We are like, this we are this complex thing.
[21:18]This thing that you no longer have room for.
[21:20]This thing that you're like, that's enough,
[21:22]enough of that, enough of giving those people a chance.
[21:25]That is the city that got hit.
[21:27]That is the heart that broke.
[21:29]So whenever I think about it,
[21:30]I kind of have those twin reactions.
[21:32]I don't know.
[21:33]I'm talking a lot.
[21:34]What did you think about it?
[21:34]I mean, no, it's okay.
[21:36]No, it's amazing.
[21:38]Yeah, I cannot believe it's been 20 years.
[21:40]I can't.
[21:41]I just, I don't know.
[21:43]It just, I can't believe that I'm old enough
[21:45]to have had something happen of such magnitude
[21:47]in my adult life that was actually 20 years ago.
[21:50]Yeah.
[21:51]Yeah, where were you?
[21:53]I was in Boston.
[21:55]I just started business school at Harvard
[21:56]and I lost my best friend and roommate
[21:59]who I had been, she was my roommate all of college
[22:01]and after college and in New York
[22:03]and then I left her to go to business school
[22:05]and she worked in the North Tower.
[22:07]So yeah, so I was in Boston that day
[22:10]and then the next morning I woke up
[22:11]and drove back to the city.
[22:13]Oh man.
[22:14]Yeah.
[22:15]Sorry.
[22:16]I know it was so hard.
[22:17]But you know, then I was trying to find her.
[22:19]And actually in your book,
[22:21]I was looking at the papers.
[22:22]You called it, what did you call it?
[22:24]Something beautiful, like a wall of paper or paper.
[22:26]Paper city.
[22:27]Yeah.
[22:28]And I was like, oh my gosh,
[22:28]how crazy would it be if she was one of those posters,
[22:30]but she wasn't, but anyway.
[22:32]Yeah, I tried to, you know, those are,
[22:33]that image specifically was built from stock photos
[22:36]but I actually took care to kind of take off the names
[22:41]as much as possible because I didn't want
[22:43]to traumatize somebody who saw the poster
[22:45]of their loved one there.
[22:46]Like this poster lived in my life in a very specific way
[22:49]that I imagine in somebody else's.
[22:51]It's just an open wound, unbelievable.
[22:54]Well, back to, you know, the lightness here of the everyday.
[22:57]All right.
[22:59]What are you working on now?
[23:01]And like what can we expect from you next?
[23:04]And then also what advice would you have
[23:05]for aspiring authors?
[23:07]Woo, okay.
[23:08]So right now I'm working on two things.
[23:10]I am working on a television script
[23:14]and that's exciting and fun and weird.
[23:17]It's based on the book and yet I not really
[23:19]because I went ahead and fictionalized everything
[23:21]so I could actually not talk about my marriage anymore.
[23:24]I think it was a good, good smart thing to do also
[23:27]because I'm actually just,
[23:28]I, my first book was a novel
[23:30]and I've gone back to writing fiction
[23:32]and I'm thinking just much more comfortable writing fiction,
[23:35]to be honest.
[23:36]There's a lot more freedom and writing fiction.
[23:38]So yeah, I've started another book
[23:41]and it is, I'm calling it a mystery
[23:44]but it's a mystery in the way, you know,
[23:46]like it's not, no one else would call it a mystery
[23:48]but me basically, but that's what I'm doing right now.
[23:50]I'm working on that.
[23:51]Wow, that sounds awesome.
[23:53]And advice to writers, like any advice to writers,
[23:57]whatever you want to say, aspiring authors,
[23:59]aspiring writers either way.
[24:01]Okay, I'll tell you all what I told my class.
[24:03]So I teach at the new school
[24:05]and at the MFA program in Randolph
[24:07]and one of the things that I tell my grad students a lot
[24:11]is that when you leave a grad program,
[24:13]it's very easy not to feel like you're writer anymore
[24:17]because you're not surrounded by writing
[24:18]because you're not actively pursuing something
[24:20]and even if you've got something
[24:22]that you're working on there days and sometimes weeks
[24:24]and sometimes months where you're manuscript
[24:27]or you're sort of, your drive fails you
[24:30]and that's, to me, the most horrifying thing
[24:32]is when I don't feel like a writer anymore.
[24:34]That's a pretty desolate feeling.
[24:36]So really practical advice.
[24:38]If you're in that place and you're listening to this
[24:41]a really easy way to get yourself back
[24:45]is to start with 20 minutes.
[24:48]And what that means is you set a timer for 20 minutes.
[24:51]You write for those 20 minutes.
[24:52]If you've got the 20 minutes done, boom,
[24:54]you're a writer, go on to the next day.
[24:57]And the way that I do this when I'm falling off
[24:59]is I do it every other day at first
[25:01]and then I go to every day and it builds that muscle back up
[25:05]but it also puts me back in touch with my interior
[25:07]in a way where I'm no longer scared of it.
[25:10]I'm no longer scared of my ability to make sentences
[25:13]of feelings.
[25:14]So that's my advice.
[25:16]So practical.
[25:17]I love that advice.
[25:18]That's good.
[25:19]I'm such a, I'm a Capricorn and I just realized
[25:21]like that was the least sexy most like,
[25:23]here's how to get it done.
[25:24]Folks advice.
[25:26]You know what?
[25:27]Sometimes people need that advice.
[25:29]Maybe that was the advice that someone out there
[25:31]really, really needed to hear it today.
[25:33]And they just...
[25:33]I hope so.
[25:34]I hope so too.
[25:35]I hope so.
[25:36]So I'm not sure if you knew that advice.
[25:38]Get out, go in this podcast and go sit down
[25:41]and write your 20 minutes.
[25:42]Exactly, exactly.
[25:44]You can dedicate it to Mira.
[25:46]Amazing.
[25:46]Thank you so much.
[25:47]Thank you for this conversation.
[25:49]I really was moved by your book and found it
[25:52]just incredibly innovative and funny
[25:56]and moving and cool and awesome
[25:59]and pretty much how I felt about you
[26:01]and I got to do it with a person.
[26:02]So there you go.
[26:04]Thank you.
[26:04]Thanks so much and thanks for having me.
[26:06]My pleasure.
[26:07]All right, take care.
[26:08]All right, okay, bye.
[26:11]Thanks for listening to this episode
[26:12]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:14]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[26:16]at Zebioans and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[26:19]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zebioans.com
[26:22]and sign up for my virtual book club
[26:23]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[26:26]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[26:29]for the Sound Editing.
[26:30]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[26:32]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.