Hazel Hayes, OUT OF LOVE: A Novel
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[0:51]My name is Richie Jackson, and I'm thrilled to have contributed to Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:59]My essay is called Peloton and On and On.
[1:03]And what I really don't have time for is losing weight.
[1:07]Hazel Hayes is the author of Out of Love, a novel.
[1:10]She's an Irish-born London-based writer and director who has until now been writing primarily for the screen.
[1:15]Having graduated from Dublin City University with a degree in journalism,
[1:18]she went on to study creative writing at the Irish Writers Center before finally finding her feet online,
[1:23]and honing her craft as a screenwriter through various short films and series.
[1:27]Her eight-part thriller, Prank Me, one series of the year at social in the city, as well as the award for excellence in storytelling,
[1:33]at Buffer Festival in Toronto, out of love is her first novel.
[1:36]Alright, welcome.
[1:37]Hazel, thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to read books to discuss out of love.
[1:43]Thank you so much.
[1:44]Thank you for having me.
[1:45]I'm so excited to do this interview.
[1:47]Oh my gosh.
[1:48]I really, really loved this book.
[1:50]And I regret not reading it sooner, but you know, whatever.
[1:53]I read every page, I like enjoyed it.
[1:56]Like it was like a delicacy.
[1:58]Like I only gave myself a little bit each day to make it last longer.
[2:01]And I don't always have that luxury to do with books.
[2:04]So I just loved it.
[2:06]Oh, well done.
[2:07]Thank you.
[2:08]That means so, so much.
[2:10]Yeah, because I only do that with stuff.
[2:12]I really, really, really love so that means a lot.
[2:15]Thank you.
[2:17]And I was trying to describe it to somebody like, why did I love it so much?
[2:21]I was trying to like analyze it.
[2:23]And there are obviously really cool, neat things you did with the structure and going backwards in time and all of that.
[2:30]But I really just loved the character.
[2:33]I just love the narrator.
[2:34]She's somebody I want to spend a lot more time with.
[2:37]Like I just enjoyed being with her.
[2:39]So I think that's what I just loved her.
[2:42]So anyway.
[2:43]That's true.
[2:45]That's a minute.
[2:46]Again, so lovely to hear.
[2:48]I never know.
[2:49]I'm still terrible.
[2:50]But no, I will take that on her behalf.
[2:53]Because I think that's something that I'm not worried about.
[2:57]But was definitely aware of.
[2:58]You know, she's a very flawed person.
[3:01]And she comes as a kind of whole warts and all package.
[3:04]And there has been that thing in the media.
[3:07]You particularly with female characters.
[3:09]I mean, it was so what happened with Captain Marvel,
[3:11]where if a woman isn't likable enough, there's an issue.
[3:14]And yeah, I mean, I personally don't care whether they're a likable person.
[3:19]Or it's more for me, whether I like spending time with them.
[3:22]Even if they're a little bit evil.
[3:24]Sometimes it's kind of fun.
[3:25]But yeah, it's nice to know you like spending time with her.
[3:28]No.
[3:30]How would you describe the book to somebody?
[3:32]Like what would be your elevator pitch, sorry, to pay attention.
[3:35]Yeah, which is getting more weary every time I repeat it.
[3:39]I know.
[3:40]I realize it's a way to sweetend and met a few new people.
[3:43]And every time they ask, I'm like, so it's a love story in Rose.
[3:47]Like I need to start doing that.
[3:49]It is a love story told in reverse, beginning with them breaking off and moving backwards through sort of a series of vignettes of their time together,
[4:00]all the way back to when they met.
[4:02]And fall in love, amazing.
[4:04]Well, as I showed you before, I've dogured like every other page.
[4:07]But look, I'm just going to pick this one passage, which is towards the end.
[4:11]We'll at least start with this one.
[4:13]And I'll just read it and it's about.
[4:15]And so the character doesn't have a name, which I just realized.
[4:18]Trying to remember it.
[4:19]And I was like, why can't I not remember this day?
[4:21]Well, I sometimes she's kind of become known as angel because theo.
[4:26]We've been calls her angel as a pet name a lot and you sort of find out why.
[4:29]But yeah, she's just kind of shorthand.
[4:32]Now is angel, but no, she doesn't have a name.
[4:34]To be honest, the only times I really liked theo were when he called her angel.
[4:38]That was like a moment of redemption.
[4:42]I mean, whenever he would say that.
[4:44]I'm like, oh, okay, I guess he does care.
[4:46]He would only he would only ever call her that in moments
[4:49]when he was really connecting with her.
[4:51]And things were good between them.
[4:52]He doesn't really call her that when things aren't okay.
[4:55]So that's not true.
[4:56]Anyway, just this one passage.
[4:59]And so having spent the best part of my childhood in survival mode,
[5:03]what should have been a temporary measure to cope in a crisis became my way
[5:07]of dealing with everyday life.
[5:09]Stay on high alert.
[5:10]Press your feelings down and always always have a plan.
[5:13]To this day, I have a faulty security system running constantly in the background,
[5:18]sounding the alarm and sending me into fight or flight over every perceived threat.
[5:22]I live life with a proverbial tiger in the room that I can somehow withstand its presence
[5:27]as long as everything else is in order.
[5:29]Una understands.
[5:31]She knows why my wardrobe is color coded and my kitchen is always clean.
[5:34]Una is her older sister.
[5:36]She knows why my books are arranged alphabetically.
[5:39]Why I need to know the route before I start driving.
[5:42]Why I panic when people don't come home on time.
[5:44]And why if one domino falls, they all come crashing down.
[5:47]Rituals and routine, they keep the tiger at bay.
[5:52]I love that.
[5:53]I think this is how I live.
[5:55]Personally, I like career doing all this stuff.
[5:58]Is this what you are like to?
[6:00]Or is this like a manifest just something you decided to do for your character?
[6:04]No, I loaned that to her.
[6:06]She has many elements of me on loan.
[6:09]I'm not even me.
[6:10]I say a version of me.
[6:12]And certainly a past version of me.
[6:14]Although that is to some degree.
[6:16]Not as true as it used to be.
[6:18]But it's still very true for me.
[6:20]And even that's where that phrase came up for me yesterday.
[6:23]I was talking about this is so strange.
[6:25]My skater routine changing.
[6:27]Because I changed my pill and I got acne and I had to go on a different thing.
[6:30]And now I'm not using all the same creams and stuff at night.
[6:33]And I've noticed that this little ritual is bedtime ritual.
[6:36]I used to have of all my lotions and potions.
[6:39]And even the self massage and everything is kind of gone.
[6:42]Because I'm afraid to put certain things on my skin.
[6:44]And I was on that phrase popped up.
[6:46]Rituals and routine, they keep the tiger at bay.
[6:48]And I'm noticing a lot of my lately and definitely over the past year and a half.
[6:53]So many of our rituals are gone.
[6:55]And I think they're really important to us.
[6:57]Like whether or not you have trauma.
[6:59]They're very important.
[7:00]But for people, for neurodivergent people.
[7:03]Whether that's trauma or PTSD or BPD or autism or whatever.
[7:09]I think there's a real safety and structure for a lot of people.
[7:14]So it doesn't surprise me that your folks are going to go to that.
[7:18]But they are also.
[7:19]There is also just an aesthetic beauty to it.
[7:21]So it could be one of the other things.
[7:24]Now, I am so reluctant to change my skin care routine.
[7:28]My mother continues to give me these anti-aging creams.
[7:32]And I'm like, I'm good.
[7:34]Like I have my three things that I use that somebody prescribed to me 100 years ago.
[7:38]And I just want to keep using them.
[7:40]And she's like, finally, last night, she was like, you know,
[7:42]they were actually quite expensive.
[7:43]Can I just take my retinol back if you're not going to use it?
[7:46]And that's like, okay.
[7:48]That's probably fair.
[7:49]I think it's only 30.
[7:50]But God, everyone is finding out about retinol these days.
[7:54]I know.
[7:55]I'm like, I don't know.
[7:56]I don't know.
[7:57]I don't know.
[7:58]I mean, my routine is baby wipes and my cellar water.
[8:03]Oh, yeah.
[8:04]My daughter got me into that.
[8:05]That I did change.
[8:06]Because, you know, the guy, the guy she follows on YouTube
[8:09]swears by a miscellular water system.
[8:11]And I can't.
[8:12]I have to listen to him now, you know.
[8:14]So, you know, you had a lot of interesting characters throughout.
[8:19]Not just your main girl in Theo and her relationship
[8:22]with her mom was so interesting and her mother-in-law
[8:25]or not mother-in-law because they weren't married.
[8:27]But, you know, in fact, I recently told somebody else
[8:29]I was talking to who was having trouble with her partner's mother.
[8:32]I was like, okay.
[8:33]Well, you have to read because this girl that I'm reading
[8:35]about right now has the same thing with her.
[8:38]Even like Theo's first roommate, right?
[8:41]And how he can be mean.
[8:43]And I found that passage really interesting because you talked
[8:47]about how a dog when it's scared, right?
[8:50]A dog gets backed into a corner just like this guy does,
[8:54]essentially.
[8:55]And Theo does really.
[8:56]And maybe I'm mixing the metaphors with the descriptions.
[8:59]But how people lash out essentially when they're scared
[9:04]and upset and hurt themselves and how she's able to look
[9:08]into the, you know, the drawn swords to see why what's happened
[9:14]and like what's causing that.
[9:16]Which I think brings such an interesting take on,
[9:19]and why do people, why do people disparage people?
[9:21]Why does he always put her down?
[9:23]Like, why do people do things?
[9:25]Anyway, I don't know.
[9:26]Talk about that a little bit.
[9:27]Talk about that a little bit.
[9:29]It's a random part of the book.
[9:30]I don't even know why I brought it up right now.
[9:31]But I just brought several parts of the books mixed together.
[9:34]So I'm trying to figure out where you're about that.
[9:36]No, I'm sorry.
[9:37]No, don't be.
[9:38]I love it.
[9:39]I love that you're like this excited about it.
[9:40]So, the dog backed into a corner metaphor came up
[9:44]in the chapter called Are You a Banana,
[9:47]where she goes to therapy for the first time.
[9:49]She's been having these kind of attacks.
[9:51]The first one.
[9:52]The first big one was brought on by her first fight with Theo.
[9:55]And she devolved into some sort of feral animal.
[10:00]more version of herself and didn't really have any control.
[10:04]She will later discover she is suffering from PTSD
[10:08]and that she was triggered in that moment.
[10:09]But her initial chat with a therapist,
[10:12]the therapist reveals that what she explains that, you know,
[10:15]they did these sort of studies on puppies,
[10:17]which are terrible and awful and they don't happen anymore.
[10:19]But where sort of learned helplessness came into play
[10:23]and where puppies were exposed to certain different stimuli
[10:26]that they would respond differently.
[10:28]And so the point she's making is we're not that dissimilar to dogs.
[10:31]You know, we can sort of sometimes our higher brain just shuts down
[10:35]and we're working off a fear response.
[10:38]The amygdala lights up and we're just,
[10:41]we're basically animals.
[10:42]Like that's kind of the level of logic we have to work with.
[10:44]And she's the narrator's remembering a time when she was a kid.
[10:48]And these guys were like throwing stuff at a dog
[10:51]like back alley over house.
[10:53]And when the boys had gone away,
[10:55]she went out to the dog to bring it some food.
[10:57]And you know, it's trying to show compassion.
[10:59]But as she approached, it snapped and bit her.
[11:02]And the therapist makes the point like,
[11:03]were you angry with the dog?
[11:04]And she's like, oh, this is a dog.
[11:06]It was a fright.
[11:06]You know, it didn't distinguish between me and those boys.
[11:09]And the whole point being sort of, you know,
[11:11]if somebody has brought trauma into your life,
[11:13]then later on another thing is going to trigger that.
[11:15]And they might receive the same response
[11:17]because of that faulty security system
[11:19]when it's not necessarily warranted in that situation.
[11:22]And I think because she's had to learn that self,
[11:25]that much about her style,
[11:27]she starts to apply it to other people more.
[11:30]And that's an experience that I definitely had
[11:32]through therapy, like having compassion for yourself.
[11:36]And the reasons why you do things.
[11:37]Like, why did I stay in that relationship so long?
[11:40]And why did I put up with that shift from that person?
[11:42]Can be really difficult.
[11:43]And it can take a lot of work to finally come to the conclusion
[11:46]that there were a lot of factors at play.
[11:48]And I was kind of playing with a losing hand.
[11:50]And I shouldn't be angry with myself for that anymore.
[11:53]And because she's able to start doing that with herself,
[11:56]she starts applying that to other people.
[11:58]And so when Theo's first roommate, as you mentioned,
[12:01]he's just a bit of a dick.
[12:02]And he's quite mean to her.
[12:03]And he's quite mean to this other girl who's a friend of theirs.
[12:06]And then it'll clicks for her.
[12:07]She's like, oh, he's in love with her.
[12:10]He's still in love with her.
[12:11]And he's lashing out over those feelings of jealousy and regret
[12:16]and remorse for losing her.
[12:17]And then she begins to be able to apply that to her mother-in-law
[12:22]potentially who's lashing out out of fear.
[12:25]So yeah, I think that's really important for me, which
[12:27]is why I kind of ended up in the book.
[12:29]This practice of compassion.
[12:30]And it doesn't always mean you can forgive.
[12:34]And it doesn't always mean you should put up with that crap.
[12:37]It's just interesting sometimes to be able to step back
[12:41]and see the bigger picture and sort of know
[12:43]why that person's lashing out because suddenly it's not personal.
[12:46]Suddenly it's like, oh, she doesn't hate me.
[12:50]She hates what I represent, which is something
[12:53]that could take her son away from her.
[12:54]It could take attention away from her and time away from her.
[12:58]And she felt the same about his job.
[13:00]And that taking him away from her.
[13:02]So yeah, it's something I try and practice.
[13:04]I don't always get it right.
[13:07]I try.
[13:09]You also exhibited several times this sort of inherited mental state.
[13:15]I want to say like inherited trauma, but it's not necessarily
[13:18]always inherited trauma.
[13:19]But when her mother, I don't want to give things away
[13:22]that happens towards the end.
[13:23]But like some things emotionally that her mother goes through
[13:25]that she sort of finds herself mirroring.
[13:27]And how she replicates in her male relationship,
[13:30]some of the things that have like gone on in her own family.
[13:34]And how you even talk about how to cope with abuse.
[13:37]When you said like the abuse I thought was bruises and broken ribs,
[13:40]abuse left marks.
[13:41]But I've since learned that abuse can also be insults
[13:44]and isolation, veiled threats and accusations,
[13:48]a clawing, clawing control that stifles and suffocates
[13:51]till you forget what it was like to take a full deep breath.
[13:55]Oh, that's good.
[13:56]I thought that was a good idea.
[13:58]Yeah, you really, really, really good.
[14:01]Oh my gosh.
[14:03]Yeah.
[14:04]Tell me about like writing through this abuse part of the book.
[14:11]It was the most difficult part to write.
[14:15]And a lot of it was difficult because
[14:18]inspection, but the feelings are real.
[14:20]This is what I always say to people like the facts aren't real,
[14:23]but the feelings are, you know, like that event
[14:26]didn't necessarily take place or something similar happened
[14:29]in a different place with a different person.
[14:32]But what I'm bringing to the table is how I felt about some other event,
[14:36]maybe, and I'm bringing it to this fictional one.
[14:38]So it's funny.
[14:40]People can't question their heads around that sometimes.
[14:42]I was like, this is not you, and it didn't happen.
[14:44]But it is real.
[14:45]And it's like, well, yeah, part of it.
[14:46]So yeah, that's, I mean, it's a big, heavy topic for me.
[14:50]The childhood that I described that she had
[14:55]isn't a million miles from my childhood.
[14:57]It was very chaotic.
[14:58]It was abusive, and it took a sort of whole family
[15:02]to try and drag themselves out of that.
[15:05]And we're still dealing with it today.
[15:06]And it's really tough.
[15:08]And the abusive relationship that she went through,
[15:11]I went through something very similar.
[15:13]I was with someone for eight years who was deeply abusive.
[15:17]And I didn't know because you don't.
[15:20]You know, because I was 17 when I got into that relationship,
[15:23]and he was a lot older than me.
[15:25]And you sort of take their word for it,
[15:28]because you've never had a relationship.
[15:29]And because particularly for people who are already
[15:33]on the back foot in terms of like maybe having doubts
[15:36]with an abusive male earlier on in life,
[15:38]whoever that may have been, you're sort of accustomed to it.
[15:41]Like some part of your body is welcoming.
[15:43]It's some part of you is familiar with that kind of pain.
[15:47]It's almost comfortable there as much as it hurts.
[15:50]It's comfortable.
[15:51]And so yeah, you stay in these situations
[15:54]because it begins gentle and it gets worse and worse and worse
[15:58]and worse and so you kind of quite remember the beginning.
[16:00]It's not like on day one, they start, you know,
[16:02]lashing out and punching walls in front of you.
[16:05]But on day one, it's a little thing on day two.
[16:08]It's another little thing and it builds and builds and builds
[16:09]until suddenly it feels normal.
[16:11]So that's what I was kind of trying to get at there was that like,
[16:15]that's the thing that's difficult when you come out of it
[16:18]and you try and tell people about it.
[16:20]It's like, so it didn't hit you, you know,
[16:23]so you didn't do this.
[16:23]So you didn't do that as like, well, no, but it doesn't always leave marks.
[16:26]Well, I mean, in a way, if it were just not just,
[16:31]if it were physical,
[16:32]yeah, women know that that's a signal, right?
[16:35]They know like, oh, I am being physically abused.
[16:39]Like, I see this in the movies or this is one of those things where they're ads
[16:42]that if I'm being abused, I should leave and like, you know, that is very much-
[16:46]You see these ads, you see these ads around with like women with black eyes
[16:49]and women with marks and women with scars and like not to say that they shouldn't,
[16:53]those ads are important and we should obviously have some representation in the media
[16:58]of that kind of abuse is important and that kind of domestic violence.
[17:01]But what you don't, what we actually have seen in the media for a way too long
[17:06]is men gaslighting and nagging and love bombing.
[17:09]And, you know, everything that we grew up with was, you know,
[17:12]the guy turning up our side or house with a boom box and, oh, isn't that so sweet?
[17:16]And I said, well, she fucking told him to go away.
[17:18]Yeah, it's like, she know this makes her.
[17:20]There is a lot like every rom-com is sort of like, she said, no, but I'm gonna chase her anyway.
[17:25]And not to call that abuse, but that's, you know,
[17:28]that's the kind of thing that we're being told is that they get to do this and they get
[17:32]to cross these boundaries and then the boundaries that they're crossing a bigger and bigger and
[17:35]bigger and we don't know where the line is and when it's more insidious and yeah, it's emotional,
[17:43]it's verbal, it's cerebral, it gets, you know, gets in your head and it gets on to your skin
[17:48]and it can be, it can be just something like that, they're kind of isolation.
[17:51]It can be telling you, your friends and loved ones, you know, they're not the right ones,
[17:55]it's me and it can be taking control of your bank account and saying, that's okay, I'll just do
[17:59]all the finances and now you're not financially independent anymore. There's so many tiny ways that
[18:05]it happens that you don't see because that's your partner. Oh, he's taking care of all the
[18:09]finances, isn't that so sweet? And then you break up and realize, yeah, can I get any of your money back?
[18:14]And, you know, these are the little things that sort of creep in and I thought it was important
[18:19]to talk about that in particular in this book because it's something I experienced and it's
[18:23]something that's so many people who I know personally have experienced and when you start to have
[18:28]these conversations, the me tooness of it is, it's devastating, you know, especially with
[18:34]friends, you've known for years when you love dearly and you care about it and then suddenly they say,
[18:39]oh, this actually my ex kind of did this thing and that thing and the other thing and it starts
[18:44]to come out and you're like, oh, you sure can't believe someone treated you that way. But they didn't
[18:48]feel like they could say it because you're right because it wasn't this cut and dry black on white
[18:53]abuse. Sorry. Well, no, I mean, I'm so it's great. And it's just such a creative way to put it
[19:02]out there. I mean, you could have written a memoir. You could have done this a million ways
[19:06]and you chose to do it in this form, right? And some of this doesn't even come out until
[19:11]towards the end, right? Where you really go into it because we're so focused on her current
[19:15]relationship and the breakup, but saying it's about a breakup, I think is so minimizing this book,
[19:20]right? That's really not what it's about, really. But I tricked by tricked people. Like, I think
[19:26]it's that it's that thing of, so I have always of sci-fi and I've always of horror and there's
[19:33]something in the book about that as well. But I love the way that horror and sci-fi in particular
[19:41]can deal with human themes through the lens or something very alien. You know, unlike Star Trek was
[19:49]doing it for years. And I'm like, I grew up in Star Trek. I loved it. But you had episodes where
[19:53]like there was one episode where there was an alien species who were non-binary. For example,
[19:57]that's just a random thing, but they're all…
[20:00]They were all just non-binary, non-gendered people,
[20:03]and they got to know them,
[20:04]and they were interesting in other ways,
[20:05]and that wasn't really the big thing about them.
[20:07]It just happened to be part of it,
[20:09]and there was a planet where women were in charge.
[20:11]And there's time travel,
[20:14]and there's like, how would you interact
[20:16]with the past selves?
[20:17]And these are actually just very, very human questions.
[20:20]So, and similarly with something like comedy,
[20:23]I think we're seeing a lot more of that now
[20:26]with stand-up.
[20:27]Like people like Hannah Gadsby and Bo Burnham,
[20:30]and Mike for Big Lea, you know, it's not strictly gags.
[20:33]It's like, we're having real deep, meaningful conversations
[20:36]here about socio-political stuff and about emotional stuff.
[20:40]But I'm wrapping it in a little bow,
[20:42]and you're getting a little giggle,
[20:43]and you come here to have a nice night, and you will,
[20:46]but you're gonna leave maybe thinking about some stuff.
[20:49]And that's the part, that's all just storytelling,
[20:51]that's the power of storytelling.
[20:52]So that's why I choose this art form
[20:55]in whatever, whatever, if it's directing
[20:57]or if it's a book or if it's a series,
[20:58]like whatever it is.
[21:00]It's the power of story, you know?
[21:02]Like from day dot, like from the gods in the sky
[21:07]and tables and Bible stories.
[21:10]Like there's so many ways of teaching lessons
[21:13]that aren't just do this thing.
[21:15]It's actually, here's some characters that went through it,
[21:17]and you're gonna relate to them,
[21:18]and you're gonna get involved and invested,
[21:20]and you're gonna care.
[21:21]And then this thing's gonna happen,
[21:23]and it's gonna make you think,
[21:25]how would I deal with that?
[21:26]Or how should they have dealt with that?
[21:28]Or was that the right king,
[21:29]or was that fair that that happened to them?
[21:31]And I just think it's a very nice sort of a plate
[21:35]to serve up different kind of ideas on,
[21:38]because I don't know that people would have picked up
[21:39]my book on like abuse.
[21:41]I think it would have been fun.
[21:45]Yeah, so it's just another way,
[21:47]and it's another way of exploring it as well.
[21:49]Sorry, I feel like I'm talking a lot,
[21:50]but it's another way of exploring it.
[21:51]For me, I was doing some very, very heavy lifting
[21:54]and therapy while I wrote this book,
[21:56]which made it interesting.
[21:57]There was several chapters I had to go back and rewrite
[21:59]because I changed as I was writing them,
[22:01]and then it didn't make sense anymore,
[22:04]particularly because we were going backwards.
[22:06]So sometimes she felt a certain way about a character,
[22:09]and then that would change, but in the future.
[22:12]So I'm gonna let it go and change it,
[22:14]but I was doing a lot of heavy lifting too,
[22:15]and I didn't set out, I didn't sit down and go,
[22:18]I'm gonna write a book about trauma.
[22:20]I wrote a story, I just wrote a short story
[22:22]about a breakup, because it was in my head,
[22:24]and it was keeping me awake, and I just went down the page,
[22:26]and I just kind of vomited that out.
[22:29]And then that sat there,
[22:30]that sat in a drawer for months and months and months,
[22:31]and then eventually there was talks with my agent about,
[22:33]you know, do you want to write a book?
[22:35]Is that somewhere I was like,
[22:35]yeah, something I maybe want to do,
[22:36]and he's like, what about that chapter?
[22:38]I can't remember how I came about,
[22:40]but I was like, I could expand on that.
[22:41]Like, I think maybe I could turn that into something,
[22:43]and but I don't want to go forward.
[22:45]I'm not that interested in seeing her get over this breakup.
[22:50]That's an interesting story, but it's not the one I want to tell
[22:52]right now. I think what I actually want to do
[22:54]is look backwards at who they were before this,
[22:57]and how it all came undone.
[22:59]And so the next chapter I wrote was the last chapter.
[23:03]And then I sort of went back,
[23:04]and I just dotted all about the place.
[23:06]I didn't write it as my particular order.
[23:08]It was kind of where I was at the time.
[23:09]So for example, that chapter,
[23:11]which more than the other is dealt with abuse,
[23:14]which is called Canadian geese.
[23:15]That was at a particular time,
[23:16]where I was thinking a lot about that.
[23:19]And it was never really meant to go in the book.
[23:21]I just thought this is what I want to talk about this right now.
[23:23]And this is what wants to come out of me.
[23:26]So it's gonna happen, and that's, yeah,
[23:28]that's kind of how it all came together.
[23:29]But it never was like,
[23:31]I'm gonna teach some people a lesson.
[23:33]Wow. No, that's amazing.
[23:35]And I'm so glad you kept that in
[23:37]because it's like, I loved it, obviously.
[23:39]And you know, the first thing I did
[23:42]when I read your last chapter is that I was like,
[23:44]oh, and then I like had to go back
[23:46]and start reading the first chapter again,
[23:47]because I was like, oh, oh, you know,
[23:49]I'm like, sorry, I've been so inefficient
[23:51]with our time together.
[23:51]And sorry, I had like so many things
[23:53]I wanted to talk to you about it at the times I was over.
[23:55]Oh my God.
[23:56]But no, tell me just how did you even start writing?
[24:00]And like, what have you been doing with your whole life?
[24:02]Up till now.
[24:04]So sorry, you don't know much about it.
[24:06]We don't know much about it.
[24:07]But just answer like the story of your life.
[24:10]Oh, and by the way, like what you were saying
[24:12]about story, by the way, before you go into your life story,
[24:16]like that's how I feel like this podcast is not like,
[24:21]books and reading are what I say it's about.
[24:23]But it's about stories.
[24:25]It's about life and how we connect and all that.
[24:28]But like, you know, you have to get into it some way, right?
[24:32]You can't just be like, yeah, let me tell you a story.
[24:35]Like, anyway, yeah.
[24:36]Okay, anyway.
[24:37]Okay, so yeah.
[24:38]So give me like a little more background on you as a person.
[24:42]One more time.
[24:43]Okay, grew up in Dublin.
[24:45]Just, I mean, again, I, I loaned my, definitely like my passion
[24:51]for storytelling and kind of how I got into it all.
[24:53]I have, I have loaned to this character.
[24:55]I think what I did was I gave her a lot of things
[24:58]that didn't impact other people.
[25:00]You know what I mean?
[25:01]So I didn't like, I didn't necessarily give her stories
[25:02]about other people that would be affected or named anyway.
[25:07]But a lot of, a lot of my personality traits are in there.
[25:09]A lot of kind of why I came to be what I am.
[25:12]So I did a degree in journalism after I left school.
[25:17]And that was kind of before your degree
[25:18]and what I don't want to do.
[25:20]I don't want to be a journalist by the end.
[25:22]It was very prescriptive.
[25:24]And it was like, you know, news is news
[25:26]and it's very objective.
[25:27]I'm not an objective.
[25:28]I mean, I'm objective, but I don't like to write that way.
[25:30]I want to write creatively and it became more and more apparent
[25:33]that like, you're not going to get your own columns straight away.
[25:36]You know, it's, you may not ever.
[25:38]And so you're kind of going to be stuck with this particular type
[25:40]of writing.
[25:41]But then that, we did so many other modules that really interested me.
[25:45]And we did a lot of like TV and film stuff.
[25:47]And we studied art and semiotics and politics and loads of other things
[25:51]that interested me.
[25:52]And it was more kind of the campus life that I got involved with
[25:55]that I stayed with.
[25:56]I was on various societies and most in the musical and I was that kid.
[26:00]And then I stayed on to be on the students union
[26:02]as the education and welfare officer.
[26:04]So I was dealing for like a whole year with students who were, you know,
[26:09]going through all kinds of different troubles and maybe struggling with exams,
[26:12]just struggling at home and trying to help them out and find ways of campaigning
[26:16]for mental health and all.
[26:17]And I knew that was important to me and I really enjoyed it.
[26:21]Then I got offered a job at Google and I sold myself.
[26:24]Cause you did.
[26:25]I got a lot of money and I was young and I wanted it.
[26:28]So I went to work with them.
[26:29]But at the time it was like, you know, Google were one of the only organizations
[26:32]that were offering, you know, a certain percentage of your time to work on charity
[26:36]projects. And we did.
[26:37]And that that was really lovely and it was such amazing experience for me to be
[26:41]in a corporate environment like that to have to work as part of a team,
[26:44]to have my own projects, my own portfolio to manage.
[26:47]Like there was so much that I was there for seven years and moved into YouTube
[26:52]where I started managing youtubers.
[26:54]Most of them are now my very best friends moved to London with that job and
[26:59]continued to work with them.
[27:00]And it was them that kind of inspired me to start my own channel.
[27:04]Cause I was helping them out with their content.
[27:05]And I, I wanted to act, applauding them to act.
[27:09]I always wanted to be an actress and she'd be still, but there were no parts.
[27:13]3D for women were no good parts.
[27:15]So I thought of a book and I was writing my own parts.
[27:17]I hadn't done script writing before, but I had, I'd studied at the Irish writer
[27:21]center for several years and studied short story writing specifically and
[27:26]loved that form, which is why my book is basically short stories.
[27:29]Love that form and then sent one to a friend and he was like,
[27:32]his list is kind of a script.
[27:34]Like you write so visually, this so easily could become a script and
[27:36]they've got me thinking.
[27:37]So I started writing scripts, started making my own stuff just like on
[27:41]the shoestring budgets.
[27:42]And when you're your own team, I had to produce write drafts, edit, you know,
[27:46]star, get my friends involved, call them a lot of favors, stood up for a few years,
[27:51]started my YouTube channel and when people ask what the YouTube channel was about,
[27:54]I don't know.
[27:54]Like it's just telling stories.
[27:55]It was just always me just either it was a story that had happened that week or
[27:59]it was a story in my life or it was about mental health or it was about a film,
[28:02]I loved or whatever.
[28:03]It was just me yalmering on and then be occasional,
[28:05]like scripted content, capturing that until I got more kind of bigger directing gigs,
[28:09]directed a horror series for a platform called Full Screen in the States.
[28:13]So it was like an eight part horror series, which was so much fun.
[28:16]And so it was like the speed version of my life.
[28:18]And all the while I was kind of doing YouTube, doing it a little bit.
[28:21]It was all just kind of slowly coming together and then wrote that chapter,
[28:25]continued working on other stuff, wrote a few other chapters kind of came back to it.
[28:29]So the book happened over the course of a few years,
[28:31]while I was doing a million other projects that paid bills.
[28:35]And then the book came out, the book came out in the UK last year,
[28:38]and then got picked up by Penguin for the US this year.
[28:42]It's just silly.
[28:43]And then Barnes and Noble picked up his two fiction,
[28:46]I think that I'm a lot of it's just insane.
[28:49]And yeah, that kind of makes sense now.
[28:51]And I just started writing book two.
[28:54]Well, so same character.
[28:56]Yeah, or new, somebody knew.
[28:57]No, no, it's not a sequel.
[28:59]Okay.
[28:59]I think I can.
[29:00]Oh, I haven't actually said that, I think.
[29:02]That's okay, I think.
[29:03]But no, I didn't, I needed to step away from them.
[29:07]I put up a video on YouTube about it recently.
[29:09]And actually, that's what YouTube has become now.
[29:11]It's really been lovely.
[29:13]It's built this lovely community.
[29:15]And never, it was never a bell.
[29:17]I got to get to a million subscribers.
[29:18]It was just like, I'm going to put myself out there and people like it great.
[29:21]But now YouTube is not every single week.
[29:24]It is a used to be like full-time job and lots of collaborations.
[29:28]And lots of like a lot of thought put in.
[29:30]And then I stopped because it got too much.
[29:33]And you know, with writing and everything, it was just so much.
[29:36]And then I picked it up again and thought, you know what, I'm just going to care less.
[29:39]So now, when I feel like it, when I'm just in one of those minutes,
[29:42]when I want to have a chat, I want to connect with people.
[29:45]I'll pop my phone down.
[29:46]I don't even set up a camera or lights or anything anymore.
[29:49]I'll just do it in daylight, pop my phone down, barely edited it.
[29:52]Just have a chat.
[29:53]And then people have said, it's sort of just like having a friend on FaceTime.
[29:57]I'll just, I'll just yap away.
[30:00]And I'm like, look, the views are so much less than used to be, I don't care.
[30:04]If you enjoy it great, if you want to cook your dinner or tidy your room or whatever,
[30:08]particularly Irish people, you know, living abroad during the pandemic,
[30:11]I sort of was like, I know I want to hear the accent right now.
[30:14]So if you do, here's an hour of me talking crap and you can just sort of do what you want with it.
[30:20]You don't even have to look at the screen.
[30:21]It's not pretty.
[30:22]It's not interesting.
[30:23]So that's kind of what YouTube is now.
[30:25]And my last video was about the writing process on the new book,
[30:29]which I've only written a one chapter for.
[30:31]So I need to be very clear that's not going to be out for a while.
[30:35]Awesome.
[30:36]I'll have to go back and watch that one.
[30:37]I'm really sorry.
[30:38]I hadn't seen it yet.
[30:39]Oh God, no, definitely.
[30:40]So as I said, they are not that interesting.
[30:44]Like I like now you need to go like,
[30:46]adapt this and start in it, right?
[30:48]And then all your worlds could collide.
[30:50]Right?
[30:51]Is it, are there?
[30:51]I would.
[30:52]Well, so it has been optioned.
[30:53]It's been optioned for TV series that's produced or involved.
[30:57]We kind, we actually kind of put on the back burner for a couple of months
[31:00]because I went away for a month to start the new book
[31:02]and we had like a million of things going on.
[31:04]But yeah, there's a pilot script
[31:07]and we're kind of in the process of getting getting people attached and on board.
[31:11]I don't know if I was star in it.
[31:13]I will see.
[31:14]I don't know if I have the acting chops to take on Angel.
[31:16]And I want the, I want the part to serve just best it can.
[31:20]There are far better actresses than me.
[31:22]You know, if with some coaching, I could do it, then great.
[31:24]But I don't know.
[31:25]I think I refer to people behind the camera because that's the end of that whole story
[31:29]was I thought I wanted to be an actress and then wrote parts for myself.
[31:32]Got behind the camera and went, Oh, this is much better.
[31:35]I don't know when I get to be on set and I don't have to be in front of the camera.
[31:39]That's that's the dream.
[31:40]Like I much prefer that.
[31:42]So yeah, I think ideally I would be involved in writing and directing.
[31:46]Very cool.
[31:47]Okay.
[31:48]Last question.
[31:48]Then sorry again for taking so long.
[31:50]It's absolutely fine.
[31:51]What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[31:54]God.
[31:55]What advice would I have for aspiring authors?
[31:59]Rights just writes so many people talk about writing.
[32:03]I'm going to write a book.
[32:04]I'm going to do this.
[32:05]I'm going to do that.
[32:06]We'll sit down and write it then because often it takes thousands and thousands of words
[32:12]before you even hit on the thing you wanted to start writing about.
[32:15]And then you have to scrap all of them and kind of start from that one nugget,
[32:19]write and practice and get good.
[32:21]It is like I'm sure like ballet or ice skating.
[32:25]You know, there's probably people who are just born and adapt to it, but it's a muscle
[32:29]and you have to use it and you have to practice it.
[32:32]And as I said, you know, I, while I haven't become a journalist, I did do four years of journalism
[32:37]and I did do years at the Irish writer center and I have been writing scripts.
[32:41]Many of which will never see the light of day for years and years and years and making short
[32:45]films and just writing in any form and particularly I would say my short story creative classes
[32:53]were probably kind of the biggest help for me.
[32:57]Like take classes that it creates an impetus to submit something every week.
[33:03]It means you're in a room full of people who are like-minded and care and will give you
[33:08]honest feedback, which is important.
[33:10]You don't want your friends just going, yeah, it's great.
[33:12]I loved it.
[33:13]It might not be great.
[33:14]You might need some criticism, you know, you might to get better.
[33:18]I've got a lot of criticism over the years and still do.
[33:22]So yeah, I think that that's healthy coming from a professional and coming from a group of
[33:26]people who who are doing it for the right reasons.
[33:28]And then you're reading the air stuff, your help and critique the air stuff.
[33:31]I think that was just such a great environment to get better at my own stuff.
[33:34]And then being handed out these incredible writers every week who I never would have known about.
[33:40]Just go read this, go read that, go read this.
[33:42]And I would come back full of ideas and be so inspired.
[33:45]So that's the thing.
[33:46]Right?
[33:47]Learn to write and consume.
[33:50]Just consume as much as you can.
[33:52]Stories, books, essays, films, albums, you know, any kind of storytelling and decide,
[34:00]consume good stuff, consume bad stuff, decide why it's bad.
[34:02]Why don't you life get?
[34:03]Why is it good?
[34:04]What did it for you?
[34:05]And that will really kind of help you.
[34:06]Thank you very much, boys.
[34:07]Amazing.
[34:08]He's all.
[34:09]Thank you.
[34:10]Thank you for this.
[34:11]Thank you.
[34:12]Thanks for taking so much time.
[34:13]And you're coming to my book club soon too, so that'll be fun.
[34:16]Oh!
[34:17]When is it?
[34:18]December.
[34:19]December.
[34:20]It's all the way.
[34:21]Yeah.
[34:22]Okay.
[34:23]All right.
[34:24]Have a great day.
[34:25]Bye.
[34:26]Bye.
[34:27]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[34:31]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[34:35]Books.
[34:36]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club
[34:40]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[34:43]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound for the Sound Editing.
[34:47]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.