Francesca Serritella, GHOSTS OF HARVARD: A Novel
[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:05]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:07]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology called Moms Don't Have Time to Have Kids.
[0:12]Check it out, and you'll hear from 49 authors about all sorts of things
[0:16]Moms Don't Have Time to Do. All the authors have been on this podcast.
[0:19]Also, check out my TikTok at with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:22]My other podcast, Sex Talk with Sivi and Tracy.
[0:25]Check out Moms Don't Have Time to Write on Medium.
[0:28]And of course, my new publishing company called Sivi Books.
[0:32]And now back to our daily author interview site and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[0:36]Hi, hi. Hello.
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:41]Francesca Saratella is the author of Ghosts of Harvard, a novel.
[0:45]She is a New York Times bestselling author and columnist who grew up in the Philadelphia area
[0:49]and graduated cum laude from Harvard University,
[0:52]where she won multiple awards for her creative writing,
[0:55]including the Charles Edmund Horman Prize and Le Baron Russell Bricks Prize.
[1:00]Her senior thesis in Novella was awarded highest honors and won the Thomas T. Hoops Prize.
[1:05]She also performed in choir and musical theater,
[1:08]in particular, the Harvard Radcliffe Gilbert and Sullivan Society productions
[1:12]because she was very cool.
[1:13]By the way, I auditioned for a Gilbert and Sullivan play in seventh grade
[1:16]and was cast as a statue.
[1:19]But anyway, upon graduation, Francesca moved to New York City with a suitcase and a puppy.
[1:24]The puppy was her happiness insurance and it worked.
[1:27]She began writing and researching her first novel, Ghosts of Harvard.
[1:30]While working on the novel, she also co-authored a best-selling nine-book series of essay collections
[1:35]with her mother, best-selling author, Lisa Scott-Alini,
[1:39]and co-writes a Sunday column entitled Chick-Witt in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
[1:43]I have like a million of their books together in my shelves from back in the day.
[1:47]Anyway, Francesca lives in New York with her dog, Pip and Kat Mimi.
[1:51]She is working on her next novel.
[1:53]Welcome, Francesca.
[1:54]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:56]Don't have time to read books to discuss Ghosts of Harvard.
[1:59]Oh, please.
[1:59]Thank you so much for having me.
[2:01]I'm so honored.
[2:02]My mom and I both are just total fan girls of yours and I'm thrilled to be here.
[2:07]Thank you.
[2:08]I adore your mom.
[2:09]She's amazing.
[2:10]She's the guest.
[2:11]I mean, the two of you, really, are sensational.
[2:15]We all have to get together at some point.
[2:17]I guess I could loop in my own mom.
[2:19]But mother's day, episode, something or other.
[2:23]It won't be the best.
[2:25]So tell listeners about Ghosts of Harvard and how you came up with the idea for this
[2:30]book and what it's about.
[2:31]Yeah, so Ghosts of Harvard is my debut novel, my first novel.
[2:36]And it's just a long dream realized it's been really special experience,
[2:42]even coming out in this weird years that we've had.
[2:44]It's these virtual connections have just been everything.
[2:47]So Ghosts of Harvard follows the story of a young woman named Katie Archer,
[2:52]who is struggling in the aftermath of her beloved older brother's suicide.
[2:56]Her big brother, Eric, was her hero.
[2:58]He was that gold standard by which she measured herself her whole life.
[3:03]He was a genius of prodigy even.
[3:05]He made getting into Harvard look easy.
[3:07]And it seemed like he just had the brightest future guaranteed.
[3:09]But while he was a student at Harvard, he began having mental health struggles,
[3:13]ultimately diagnosed as schizophrenia and sadly dies by suicide on campus.
[3:18]Katie just has so many unanswered questions.
[3:22]She's so haunted by, you know, what could she have done differently?
[3:25]What did she miss that might have prevented her brother's death?
[3:28]And she knows the answers are only one place on Harvard's campus.
[3:32]So she feels she tends herself.
[3:35]She's trying to piece together the mystery of his final year
[3:37]of how his life could take this unfathomable turn.
[3:41]And I'm sorry, my jog is barking.
[3:44]My dog's like looking around like what?
[3:45]I know.
[3:47]And begins hearing voices herself.
[3:49]And then the new question is, is she losing her mind like her brother,
[3:53]struggling from the same illness?
[3:55]Or could these voices be something else?
[3:56]Could they be ghosts?
[3:58]Anyway, once she begins hearing voices herself, she starts to question.
[4:02]What would, what if I listen?
[4:04]What if these voices could lead me to the answers she craves and the ghosts she
[4:09]misses most her brother?
[4:11]And then the question is, is she, are they going to lead her to that?
[4:14]Or are they just going to lead her down a path of her own self-destruction?
[4:18]So that's really, it's a blend of a psychological thriller,
[4:23]has these historical and supernatural elements.
[4:26]But really, it's core.
[4:27]It's a family drama and a story about identity as much as it is about grief.
[4:31]Wow.
[4:32]Good pitch, by the way.
[4:34]That was awesome.
[4:35]Thank you.
[4:36]Except for the jog interrupting with the barking.
[4:38]That's life, you know, life today.
[4:40]OK, so tell me about how this novel came to be.
[4:44]Dave, you novel.
[4:45]How long did this take?
[4:46]How, when did you start it?
[4:48]When did you come up with the idea?
[4:49]Yeah, I wrote this novel while trying to build the rest of my life
[4:54]and the rest of my career.
[4:55]But over, I wrote it over 10 years.
[4:57]It really took nearly a decade.
[4:59]But like I said, I mean, I was juggling a lot like we all do.
[5:02]So maybe if I had been juggling less or just had better self-confidence,
[5:06]I could have written it faster.
[5:07]But I went to Harvard undergrad myself.
[5:10]And there was a sad story really that inspired me for this book,
[5:15]which was when I was a junior, a young man in my dorm,
[5:18]died by suicide.
[5:20]And he wasn't a close friend.
[5:22]But this was somebody I was used to seeing in the dining hall
[5:25]every day.
[5:25]And you know, especially someone who I never
[5:29]would have thought was suffering from what could be a terminal illness.
[5:32]And that's the cruelty of mental illnesses
[5:34]that it's invisible.
[5:35]And with these high achieving kids, it's not even, you've no inkling.
[5:39]And we were all shocked and saddened.
[5:42]But I think as a community and even among my roommates,
[5:46]there's such a fear of saying the wrong thing about suicide
[5:50]or it comes from a good place of sensitivity,
[5:53]but it defaults to just compartmentalization and silence
[5:57]and quiet.
[5:58]And it got bottled up and put away wherever
[6:00]painful, complicated things do.
[6:02]And I don't think we really processed it together.
[6:05]And then the following year I was my senior year,
[6:09]I remember reading, picking up the Harvard Crimson
[6:11]The Newspaper, and there was a little article
[6:13]about that young man's little sister,
[6:16]her self-only high school senior at the time,
[6:19]had learned to play guitar in that year
[6:21]interim because her big brother was a musician.
[6:24]And she came to Harvard's campus and played a musical tribute
[6:27]to him on the anniversary of his passing.
[6:30]And I just remember the wind feeling knocked out of me
[6:33]of just, God, what was that year like for her?
[6:36]That for all of us where we could just have a painful thing
[6:41]and shrink from it or have a walled up that compartmentalization,
[6:46]that is not an option for the family.
[6:48]A tragedy like suicide doesn't happen
[6:50]to just one person with family.
[6:51]It happens to the whole.
[6:52]And how you agree when you don't have that community support
[6:57]and you don't have those people.
[6:59]And I was so moved by the labor of love
[7:02]that of learning this play guitar
[7:04]to coming to the campus where this tragedy happened
[7:06]and playing, even just playing for older kids,
[7:09]much less that heavy weighty legacy.
[7:11]And I was so moved by her courage and her love.
[7:14]And I want to be really clear
[7:15]that the book is absolutely not based on that family.
[7:17]I never did any more research into that family.
[7:19]It's not, I know intention of based,
[7:21]it's not based on them, not based on any real family.
[7:25]But in my heart, what I was so moved by
[7:28]was that the sibling love and that's what inspired me
[7:30]to tell it from a sibling's perspective.
[7:33]Wow. Well, that was really,
[7:35]I mean, it's haunting in many ways as you point out.
[7:38]The, what could you have done
[7:41]and the way that her brother had taken such good care of her
[7:45]and how she just keeps thinking.
[7:47]And I wonder if I, hold on, let's see if I,
[7:50]if I dog your to page to read a good quote, maybe I didn't,
[7:53]but how he had always been there for her,
[7:55]always ready to catch her.
[7:57]And yet then in the one moment that he needed help,
[8:00]right, like she almost fell off a roof once
[8:01]and he grabbed her at the ankles and saved her.
[8:04]And then when it was his time to sort of fall,
[8:08]she wasn't there to save him and how that stays with her
[8:11]forever.
[8:12]Even of course, you can say it's not your fault
[8:14]and blah, blah, blah, blah, like just that,
[8:16]that residual guilt and especially from a big brother,
[8:20]right, who's, you've been under there that they're weighing.
[8:25]For so long and yet then you can't repay the favor.
[8:29]Anyway, it was very emotional to read it
[8:31]and you got us right in the heart of the characters.
[8:35]And I found myself just so loving Katie
[8:39]and, you know, emphasizing with her
[8:42]and just really liking hers as a person.
[8:46]No, thank you so much.
[8:47]I mean, that's so gratifying here.
[8:49]And you know, I'm an only child.
[8:51]And I think that in part contributes to my fascination
[8:55]with that sibling bond.
[8:56]And, you know, what do we know better than that
[8:58]which we don't have but want?
[9:00]And I think I growing up really dreamed of having,
[9:03]a big brother was the fantasy
[9:04]because it is that protective fantasy
[9:06]and that there's narratives we have around
[9:09]that type of relationship.
[9:10]But I think what this main character really has to contend
[9:13]with during the course of this book
[9:15]and that's is why I say the book
[9:16]is as much about identity as it is about grief,
[9:19]is that there's also her relationship with her brother
[9:22]was true and authentic and real and wonderful.
[9:26]Yeah, but she also has stories about it
[9:29]that she is telling herself.
[9:31]Stories about her role in her family,
[9:33]her brother's role, her brother being the star
[9:35]and she being the second banana,
[9:37]but sort of a happy second banana.
[9:39]She liked being in that that shadow was a comfort
[9:43]but now that his narrative has changed
[9:45]from stopping the superstar brother
[9:48]to a tragic story.
[9:50]How does that impact her?
[9:51]And that narrative about that her brother always saved her
[9:55]and then she missed her moment to repay him.
[10:00]There is an element of truth that haunts her,
[10:03]but there is also as we see as the story unfolds,
[10:05]over the more complications to that, you know,
[10:08]as in any sort of law.
[10:10]Right, right.
[10:11]Some bits and pieces of the relationship
[10:13]gets get completely magnified,
[10:15]especially in the aftermath and others
[10:18]takes longer to remember or,
[10:20]or, you know, give attention to over time.
[10:24]But I just, I thought it was really moving
[10:28]and, and great and funny too, by the way.
[10:30]I love her and her roommates.
[10:32]And, you know, sometimes with books that take place on campuses
[10:37]and you can compare this to like Alex,
[10:40]Michael Liedes' new book and they're like all these campus books,
[10:45]but sometimes they make me feel old, right?
[10:48]Not those two in particular, right?
[10:50]They, they, being on the campus in the characters eyes,
[10:53]I'm like, oh my gosh, that was so long ago, whatever.
[10:56]But this didn't even feel old at all.
[10:58]I was like, I felt like on the exact same wavelength
[11:01]as this character, and it could have just been me
[11:03]as opposed to looking back and feeling like,
[11:06]what, what are kids up to today?
[11:08]I'm so glad, right?
[11:09]Yeah, I mean, one, we're obviously, we are very young.
[11:12]So of course we would have, I know you're right.
[11:15]And I think I, because I really wanted to situate myself
[11:18]in the consciousness of these, this woman
[11:22]who happens to be a college student,
[11:23]but not from any kind of place of condescension
[11:26]or even lovingly so, but because what I remember
[11:30]about college and what I think is so key to this book
[11:32]is that it's this time where you really,
[11:35]you don't feel young.
[11:36]You feel like the most important and oldest
[11:39]and kind of like readiness that you've ever been.
[11:41]It's this weird, it's this strange duality
[11:44]because as older adults, we look back and think,
[11:46]oh, that was the beginning of everything.
[11:49]But to the student themselves, it feels like the culmination.
[11:53]And it feels like this time in which
[11:55]every choice is so consequential.
[11:57]If I don't get the right, if I,
[11:59]hey, it starts even before they get in, right?
[12:01]If I don't get into the right college,
[12:02]my whole life is off track.
[12:04]Once I'm at the right college,
[12:05]if I don't get the right grades,
[12:07]I'm not gonna get the right job.
[12:09]If I don't meet the right person,
[12:10]I'm never gonna get married and bomb up.
[12:12]You know, it has this, the stakes feel so high.
[12:16]And it is a little, it's artificial
[12:18]or it has, it comes from a bit of a naivete,
[12:20]but such an earnestly held belief.
[12:23]And I think that's why some of these different struggles
[12:27]or mental health struggles or even just the normal struggles
[12:29]like you said with a roommate can be very fraught
[12:32]and very heavy on these people's shoulders
[12:35]because it just feels like this is such a critical time.
[12:38]And that feeling of time closing in on you both,
[12:41]although the weight of your personal history
[12:44]and then, you know, for Harvard,
[12:46]this enormous national history and legacy
[12:49]and the weight of the future,
[12:50]these pressure of expectations of, you know,
[12:53]this is your golden ticket if only you don't blow it.
[12:56]That claustrophobia is what I really wanted to capture
[12:59]because that's something that even before I ever knew
[13:01]I wrote about Harvard,
[13:03]I knew, you know it's that school is a character
[13:05]the moment you stepped on campus.
[13:07]It is larger than life, it's larger than you.
[13:10]And I felt that past and future overlapping.
[13:14]And so I wanted to both represent the psychological experience
[13:18]of it and then have a bit of fun making it almost literal
[13:20]with these historical ghosts.
[13:22]It's true.
[13:23]I actually stopped and was thinking about it
[13:25]as I was reading.
[13:26]It's hard to imagine that the school predates the country
[13:29]and what were those students like?
[13:31]Like what was that like?
[13:33]And to have that it's in the same place.
[13:36]I mean, I know this is obvious,
[13:37]but I don't know.
[13:38]I was trying to like put myself in the back in the moment.
[13:41]It's right because it's so challenging to wrap your mind around
[13:43]that the school was founded in 1636.
[13:46]It doesn't just predate our nation.
[13:47]It predates it by a hundred years more.
[13:50]Yeah, not like by a year or two.
[13:51]Yeah.
[13:52]And this is really like the cradle of the nation of the plotting
[13:57]and planning and vision for what America was ideally
[14:02]going to be and writing that narrative.
[14:05]You know, they were writing the story of America
[14:08]and they were penning it from the beginning.
[14:10]And what I wanted to show in this book
[14:12]is how we have those personal histories and stories
[14:15]and narratives and with these national ones.
[14:17]And we long to rewrite them.
[14:19]And we keep editing them and keep tweaking them.
[14:21]But sometimes there is a real departure from the truth.
[14:25]I also love how you introduce the character
[14:28]right from the start her aunt, Katie's aunt,
[14:30]who has a disability and is in a wheelchair.
[14:33]And you treat it that in such an amazing way.
[14:37]And like it just is what it is.
[14:38]And she leaned over to say goodbye and did it on.
[14:40]I love seeing that because you really don't see that many
[14:43]disabled characters in fiction.
[14:46]Oh my God, I'm so touched and happy that you said that
[14:49]because you're the first interviewer has ever mentioned it.
[14:52]But that was something important to me
[14:54]because it's true of my own family.
[14:56]My late uncle had cerebral palsy.
[14:58]And but was just still an incredible awesome uncle
[15:03]who was a sports aficionado and savan.
[15:07]I mean, he knew so many stats and was really a cool
[15:10]and great person, but also struggled not as much
[15:14]of his disability, but with the stigma
[15:16]society's reaction to it.
[15:18]I think actually that caused more mental anguish
[15:22]than anything that would have originated from his disability.
[15:25]Of course, he was born a different time in the late 30s.
[15:29]So this was a hold of heat on tired different trajectories
[15:32]than we have today.
[15:33]But I think yeah, disability is a fact of every many families
[15:38]and deserve representation and love and characters.
[15:41]It's strange that we I think it's weird
[15:43]that we don't see it more in fiction
[15:44]because it's just a part of many lives.
[15:46]Yeah, I agree.
[15:47]I just love that.
[15:48]And I guess the last thing with all these intricate
[15:51]interpersonal relationships is is your investigation
[15:54]of how Katie's mom handles the death of her brother
[15:58]and her having to still be apparent to Katie
[16:02]at the same time and how even something as simple as being
[16:05]able to drop your child off at college
[16:07]seems insurmountable to her or that she can't go back
[16:09]or for whatever reasons and how their relationship unfolds.
[16:13]Tell me a little bit more about that.
[16:15]Yeah, again, I was so interested in how this singular event
[16:20]of losing their brother in the sun this way
[16:23]would impact everyone and would impact them differently.
[16:25]And there's of course the ideal would be
[16:28]that when a family is impacted by a tragedy
[16:30]that they could all come together and really support each other.
[16:34]And that isn't happening with this family
[16:37]and it's not because they aren't good and loving.
[16:40]That was so important to me is that understanding
[16:43]during the writing and research of this novel
[16:44]that suicide affects so many families.
[16:47]Wonderful loving families, good families, rich families,
[16:50]poor families, it's not an indictment in any way
[16:54]on any flaw, but that it's such a complicated grief
[16:59]and it's such a complicated thing to process.
[17:02]And I think grief is a isolating emotion.
[17:06]Anyway, then it's really magnified.
[17:08]And you see in this book how these family members
[17:11]think they're protecting one another sometimes
[17:13]from emotions that are being painful.
[17:16]They're trying to soften the edges for each other
[17:18]but because they're still withholding so much
[17:21]and holding back up from,
[17:23]they're holding back from each other
[17:24]the pieces they think are broken in the hope
[17:27]that that's helping one but holding back
[17:29]it's keeping them all separated
[17:31]and fractured and distant.
[17:33]And like I said, for my own inspiration to this book
[17:36]and drawing from my own experience,
[17:39]I don't have a sibling but I do have a mother
[17:41]I'm incredibly close with and the notion
[17:43]that I could be going through the hardest thing in my life
[17:46]and not have my mom to lean on and talk to freely,
[17:50]that was a fear.
[17:51]I could very much tap into it.
[17:53]I think that would be incredibly difficult
[17:55]and that's what Katie, that's schism,
[17:57]the heartbreak between that she and her mom
[17:59]are not able to comfort each other for their own reasons
[18:02]the beginning of this book.
[18:03]I think it's really as much of a source of pain
[18:05]for her as the loss of her brother
[18:07]even though she can't really name it yet.
[18:10]Right, well, you lose so much
[18:12]because the family itself is the loss.
[18:15]You know, it shapeships into something else
[18:17]but what you knew is gone.
[18:19]I lost a really close friend just suicide a long time ago
[18:22]and I'm still in touch with her mom and everything
[18:24]but you know, it doesn't go away.
[18:27]You know, it gets still top of mind all the time
[18:30]and I do think it is a complicated grief
[18:32]that people don't know how to talk about
[18:34]and find it easier maybe to avoid discussion
[18:38]which is definitely not the right path.
[18:40]Right, right or you think if you,
[18:42]I have a friends too and who, when we've lost them
[18:46]and you go, I don't wanna bring up the painful memory
[18:49]if they're in a good place or something
[18:50]but really the default is then you're never talking
[18:53]about these wonderful people.
[18:55]Or what I think a great pathos of suicide
[18:57]is that the people who succumb to that
[19:01]are too often, they're named their cause of death, right?
[19:05]Like it's, when somebody dies of cancer,
[19:06]they're not a cancer.
[19:08]Suicide, it should never be a suicide
[19:10]that should never become a noun for a person.
[19:12]Yes.
[19:13]We wanna talk about them in their whole life.
[19:15]They shouldn't be defined by these,
[19:16]this one final moment and mistake.
[19:19]And I was thinking very much during the writing this book
[19:22]and then even during this pandemic, you know,
[19:24]for this main character, the loss of her brother
[19:27]is that type of cataclysmic event
[19:29]which in her mind creates an alternate reality.
[19:32]Every step she's at Harvard,
[19:33]she's like, if my brother Eric were alive,
[19:36]he would be doing this.
[19:37]He would be helping me this.
[19:38]He would be turning this age.
[19:40]I think that happens with many forms of loss
[19:42]but now I think it just happens with anything unexpected
[19:45]when we're really confronted with that loss of control.
[19:48]I've caught myself so many times this last couple years
[19:51]being like, oh, if the pandemic weren't here,
[19:53]I would be meeting Zippy in person
[19:54]or I would be using, you know,
[19:56]maybe I would be this farther along.
[19:58]And that's why I got even this.
[20:00]spooky physics of sort of really exploring alternate realities
[20:03]and other dimensions.
[20:04]And what does that feel psychologically?
[20:06]What does it feel scientifically?
[20:08]What does it feel super naturally?
[20:09]Those are the types of things I was interested in.
[20:12]I'm totally fascinated by that.
[20:14]This whole exciting door is a notion of life
[20:17]and mourning the life you could have led.
[20:19]Like what would it have been?
[20:21]What would have these last two years have been like?
[20:23]What would even a heartbreak, right?
[20:25]What would those kids have looked like?
[20:27]If I had stayed with that guy,
[20:28]I mean, there's just, it's absolutely, but anyway.
[20:32]Yeah.
[20:32]I also loved the moment and could feel it so deeply
[20:36]when Katie, when her dad doesn't tell her about her brother's
[20:40]loss and she has the amount of hours exactly
[20:43]that she didn't know that something had changed.
[20:46]And that feeling, which I think people feel
[20:50]with regard to major tragedies or their own personal losses,
[20:53]that oh my gosh, I didn't know that life was forever changed
[20:58]and how could I have been doing
[20:59]whatever stupid thing I was doing in retrospect
[21:02]when really the biggest thing of my life had happened
[21:05]and I didn't know.
[21:06]I mean, that's something that I think a lot of people
[21:08]can relate to.
[21:09]Absolutely.
[21:10]Yeah.
[21:11]Anyway, so yeah.
[21:12]Anyway, you're a great writer and thank you.
[21:15]That's really awesome.
[21:16]Wait, so tell me about your mom.
[21:18]Tell us more about your mom.
[21:21]I didn't even explain your mom in her books
[21:23]and I think so talk a little more about her
[21:25]and what it's like going up with a writer
[21:27]and being a writer and you know, all of that gets up.
[21:32]So my mom is Lisa Stanley.
[21:33]She's the author of like 33 incredible thrillers
[21:37]and most recently historical fiction
[21:39]with her latest eternal, which was so good, by the way.
[21:42]I loved it.
[21:43]I'm so proud of her.
[21:44]I mean, that was awesome, bubbling over.
[21:47]But the coolest thing that I always, oh, and also she
[21:50]and I wrote together a series of nine essay collections
[21:53]that are sort of humorous and also
[21:56]Harvardly heartfelt and sometimes serious.
[21:58]Stories just of like life as a life as women.
[22:01]I had those here.
[22:03]I have your eyes here.
[22:05]I should have pulled them out and reviewed them
[22:06]to talk to you about.
[22:07]No, you're so sweet.
[22:08]No, I seriously do.
[22:10]If you gave me a minute, I would be able to find them.
[22:12]But it's really titles like, does this beach make me look fat?
[22:15]Yes.
[22:16]And it's a nice skill trip.
[22:18]They're really fun and they're really true to us.
[22:20]And I look back on those and feel so incredibly blessed
[22:23]that I got to sort of have this living permanent journal.
[22:27]Like I narrated my 20s and got to write about this time
[22:31]in my life and my relationship with my mom,
[22:33]especially actually my relationship with my grandmother,
[22:35]who I was incredibly, incredibly close to.
[22:38]And I'm so sorry for your loss of your grandmother
[22:40]and I was so close to my, I also did a little nickname
[22:45]for my muggy, but she was muggy to me
[22:49]and was so precious to me and a real star in a spitfire.
[22:53]So she was, we had a lot of fun writing about our family.
[22:56]And I always say, but my mom,
[22:58]that the greatest blessing was I was born
[23:00]not to have a selling author, but to a beginning one,
[23:03]that I got to watch her build her career brick by brick
[23:06]and see the perseverance and the just butt in chair time
[23:13]that it took to build that career.
[23:14]And I think that was one of the most inspiring things
[23:16]because I think creative careers and like writing,
[23:20]they're so, they're so opaque.
[23:23]How does that book become on the shelf?
[23:24]How does a person get to do that as a job?
[23:26]And so to have it demystified.
[23:28]And then like I said,
[23:29]demystified in this really down to earth way in my mom.
[23:32]And it made it seem possible.
[23:34]And it wasn't a given that I was gonna follow
[23:36]on her footsteps even though we are very similar.
[23:38]Of course, to us, we think we're like polar opposites
[23:40]to everybody else, you guys are the same,
[23:42]but of course, you know, when you're very close,
[23:44]any difference feels like a brain of sand in your teeth, right?
[23:47]So we have our own little friction over the littleest things,
[23:50]but it just seemed possible.
[23:53]So I always say that she,
[23:55]the reason I'm a writer isn't because of my mom,
[23:57]but that I have the courage to try is entirely because of her.
[24:01]Oh, my gosh, it would be like a dream come true.
[24:05]I think one of my children ends up saying something similar.
[24:10]I mean, if you can read this essay books,
[24:12]we have our moments, we call them our Chihuahua fights.
[24:15]Cause it's like, I know we have small dogs
[24:16]or just like, you know, attacking each other
[24:20]without drawing blood.
[24:20]That's kind of, that can, that's a lot of times our default,
[24:24]but it's all with love.
[24:26]And very much like with your,
[24:28]what I love so much about your whole series and movement
[24:31]and everything is that it's like,
[24:34]it might look, to me, you look like a superwoman mother,
[24:38]but you're so revealing drawing back that veil
[24:41]and revealing like the grit and the tough times
[24:44]and the blood sweat and tears that go into it.
[24:46]And that's certainly what we were trying to do
[24:47]with our essay collections too.
[24:49]So many people, and it's really touching and honoring
[24:51]when people say like, oh, you guys have the perfect relationship
[24:54]or we wish I wish I, that's like, oh my gosh,
[24:56]if once you read the book, you'll see it's not,
[24:58]it's not perfect.
[24:59]It's not smooth all the time,
[25:01]but it's still really authentically fiercely loving.
[25:05]Yeah.
[25:06]And that's really all that matters anyway.
[25:07]Well, I think a lot of people aspire to that closeness.
[25:11]It's, I don't think people think it's perfect,
[25:13]but to be super close is something
[25:16]that not every mother, daughter, duo gets, you know,
[25:18]just not, no, that's true.
[25:20]And I, and I don't take it for granted.
[25:22]And I think, and I think in part it came
[25:25]from some tough times we did have, you know,
[25:28]during, not necessarily even between us,
[25:30]but just circumstantially and being on that journey.
[25:34]And this, in this book, I dedicated it to,
[25:36]for Ghost of Harvard, I dedicated it to her.
[25:38]And the dedication was almost like an inside joke,
[25:42]but I said, but it's not a joke.
[25:44]I mean, just feeling, and I knew people might not get it,
[25:46]but I said, for my mother,
[25:47]you kept the rickety raft to float.
[25:50]And that's cause we used to play this game
[25:52]called Ricky Raft, and I was little,
[25:54]and I was really little, like a small child.
[25:56]And she would hold on to me.
[25:58]I would hold on to her little shoulders
[26:00]and she, and would bounce on her bed.
[26:02]And we would roll around and she'd make it like,
[26:04]almost fall off the bed, but I'd cling to her.
[26:06]And when I look back and think about that, like,
[26:09]I'm an author, and even I would think
[26:10]that that metaphor in game was a little too on the nose.
[26:13]But we very much, that was a metaphor
[26:16]that was true.
[26:17]We had sometimes stormy seas,
[26:19]and sometimes felt like we were on a bit of a rickety raft,
[26:21]but I held on to her really tight.
[26:23]She held on to me, we held on to each other,
[26:26]and not too much smoother place.
[26:27]And every fall, so.
[26:28]Yeah, I do that same thing with my kids,
[26:31]but we call it rollercoaster.
[26:33]And I could probably use that metaphor as well.
[26:38]Well, that's probably better
[26:39]because when I was doing the dedication,
[26:40]I remember, and I wanted to keep a surprise from her,
[26:43]but I ran it by one of her best friends,
[26:45]and she was like tweaking the wording,
[26:46]because it was like, would rickety does that make her sound old
[26:49]if you call her rickety?
[26:50]That's what we called the game,
[26:51]the game was the rickety raft.
[26:52]I can't change it.
[26:53]So yeah, roll this in a level of age.
[26:55]Well, do you talk every single day to your mom?
[26:58]Do you text all day?
[26:59]Like, what's your, yeah, all the time?
[27:01]We do talk every day for the proof of life call.
[27:04]That's what she calls her, like, just sometimes I forget.
[27:07]I mean, maybe it's not every day,
[27:09]but it's a lot for an Italian mother
[27:11]to have an only child alone in New York City.
[27:13]So she worries.
[27:14]But yeah, we just text,
[27:16]I didn't even realize you were in New York City.
[27:17]You could have come over here.
[27:19]I would love to have met you in person.
[27:22]Oh, I'll have to do it for next time.
[27:24]But yeah, so we text,
[27:25]we'll be yesterday we were texting about Lady Gaga
[27:28]at the House of Gucci premiere,
[27:30]how fabulous her outfit looks.
[27:32]So she's like a friend that way.
[27:34]And, you know, she's my first phone call
[27:37]when something really good or really bad happens.
[27:40]Yeah.
[27:42]Well, my husband is Italian
[27:44]and we have another dear friend who is Italian
[27:47]and her husband and we all go out
[27:49]for these really fun meals.
[27:50]So we're gonna, I'm gonna grab you next time.
[27:52]Oh, that would be the last.
[27:54]Okay, any advice for aspiring authors?
[27:56]You know, I love the book in Lamott's Bird by Bird
[28:01]and her section about, you know,
[28:04]that she keeps a one inch by one inch frame on her desk
[28:07]to just remind herself to just only write
[28:09]what you can see through that frame.
[28:11]And I think that's all getting to that idea
[28:12]of shrinking the day's task.
[28:14]And there's a lot of different ways to do it.
[28:16]You know, I learned from my mom to work with word count goals
[28:19]to sort of make the day's writing a more empirical judgment.
[28:23]Like you either wrote your 500 or 1000 words a day
[28:26]or you didn't.
[28:27]It isn't just, am I good or writer or a bad writer
[28:29]or a good person or a bad person?
[28:32]And I love that eel doctorate quote that's something
[28:34]like writing a novel, it's like driving a car at night.
[28:37]You can only see as far as the headlights,
[28:39]but you can make it the whole way home that way.
[28:41]And it's so hard to not look at the whole project
[28:45]and to think of all you have yet to write
[28:47]and all the long way you have yet to go.
[28:50]And that's really paralyzing.
[28:52]And I can still feel it.
[28:53]I mean, that's my biggest advice to writers
[28:55]is that if you feel like you're bad at it,
[28:57]that doesn't mean you are bad at it.
[28:58]Every writer is even at the top of their game
[29:00]feels like they're bad at it a lot of days.
[29:02]But a lot of times you feel that way
[29:04]because you're mentally fighting off too big
[29:07]a chunk at a time.
[29:08]Love it.
[29:09]Yes, snackable bits.
[29:10]Very important.
[29:11]Thank you.
[29:13]Awesome.
[29:13]Well, Francesca, thank you.
[29:14]It was so nice to meet you.
[29:16]I'm sorry we're not together in person, but next time.
[29:19]And I'm glad I could close the loop on your other spend
[29:22]half of our episode, raving about you.
[29:24]So I'm delighted that now we can do the best.
[29:27]Thank you so much.
[29:29]Thank you for having me.
[29:30]Thank you for all that you do for the foster
[29:32]this wonderful community of readers and writers
[29:34]and mothers and just women.
[29:36]Thank you.
[29:38]All right, take care.
[29:39]Bye.
[29:39]Thank you.
[29:40]Bye-bye.
[29:42]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't
[29:44]Have Time to Read Books.
[29:45]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans,
[29:48]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:50]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[29:53]and sign up for my virtual book club
[29:55]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:57]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[29:59]Next, next, textures.
[30:00]sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[30:04]fantastic intro and out trim music.