Laura Lippman, SEASONAL WORK: Stories
[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.
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[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:39]Laura Lipman is back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss seasonal work stories.
[0:46]Since her debut in 1997, Laura has been hailed as the distinctive voice and crime fiction.
[0:51]Recently named one of the essential crime writers of the last 100 years,
[0:55]she has produced 24 novels, Book of Short Stories, a collection of essays,
[0:59]and a children's picture book.
[1:00]And has been published in more than 25 languages.
[1:03]In New York Times Bestseller, she also has one more than 20 prizes for her work
[1:07]and been shortlisted for 30 more.
[1:09]Her 2019 novel, Lady and the Lake, will be produced as a television series,
[1:13]starring Natalie Portman and Lupita Nyanko.
[1:16]Lipman lives in Baltimore and New Orleans.
[1:18]Welcome, Laura.
[1:19]Thank you for coming back on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Bux to discuss your latest collection
[1:24]of short stories and novellas seasonal work.
[1:27]Thank you.
[1:28]Thank you for having me.
[1:29]I was kind of obsessed with seeing the interior of a ballroom with all book pages.
[1:37]Plastered on.
[1:39]Did you actually see this image in real life?
[1:41]Is this a fantasy?
[1:42]How can you recreate this?
[1:44]It's a fantasy.
[1:45]I'm the closest I've ever come to that.
[1:47]And it was done long after I wrote the short story is last year,
[1:53]it at some point during the pandemic, who knows what time is anymore.
[1:59]I took, I must have taken proof pages or actually maybe I took an actual book.
[2:05]I took my life as a villainous.
[2:07]And I cut it up and I day could post a lamp shade.
[2:12]That's in the guest room at my office around the corner.
[2:17]So that's the closest I've come to doing anything like that.
[2:20]But it was a fantasy.
[2:22]You know, I think we, I think book people.
[2:25]It's possible to love books as books into love them also as objects.
[2:29]I know that I do.
[2:30]You know, I'm looking at your beautiful room behind you or the books are arrayed by color and that's some gorgeous.
[2:37]We books are beautiful.
[2:39]And that short story, the book thing is literally a contemplation on.
[2:46]And is it the book or is it about what's in the book and can you love both?
[2:51]And I think I come down on the side of you can love both.
[2:56]You know, and I don't get upset when I see someone on social media has made an art object out of a book.
[3:02]I don't feel like that is a travesty.
[3:05]You know, because they're books all over the place that are being badly treated right now,
[3:10]and turning one into an art object seems to me to be a perfect book.
[3:13]Because it's not like the book is taken forever out of circulation.
[3:16]Right.
[3:17]There's so many ways to read right now.
[3:19]And it's just as like as a public shredder.
[3:21]So it says, I'm getting your book out of the library to your mind.
[3:24]I'm like, no, the library paid for it.
[3:26]I don't mind if you get it out of the library.
[3:28]I don't mind if you borrow it from a friend.
[3:30]I don't mind if you, you found it in a little free library.
[3:35]The only thing I mind is a writer is out and out piracy.
[3:39]You know, I don't approve of that.
[3:41]I don't think that's a good idea.
[3:42]But, you know, I don't care how my books get into people's hands.
[3:46]I don't care how people treat my books.
[3:48]I mean, I have books.
[3:49]I'm literally reading a book where last night the front cover fell off.
[3:53]It's a very old book.
[3:55]I'm actually reading the autobiography of Jim Schumer's leave for the first time.
[4:00]Oh, wow.
[4:01]Yeah.
[4:02]And I thought I had read it, but I clearly never had.
[4:05]And it's like a really old, true pocketbook paperback in the cover just fell off.
[4:12]That happens.
[4:13]You know, books are old.
[4:14]You know, I read in the bathtub.
[4:16]So I'm not precious about books.
[4:18]I collected first editions for a while.
[4:20]And I stopped because that seemed odd to me to have a book that I would ever worry about taking off the shelf.
[4:28]And then I'm glad for the ones that I have.
[4:30]And some of them are very dear to me.
[4:33]But then it was like a kind of crew out of that idea that an idea of a book that can't be held and opened.
[4:41]That's crazy to me.
[4:43]Yeah.
[4:44]Or you have to put gloves on or something to turn the pages, some of these art bags.
[4:48]And I have two books that a friend of mine gave me.
[4:51]I think it was my 21st birthday.
[4:54]It was some birthday of import, but we were really young.
[4:57]And I treat those two books.
[4:59]They're over there in the brown section where it's the browns.
[5:01]Anyway, I have never lost them.
[5:03]Like no matter how many moves where I've gone in my life.
[5:06]Because I'm like these two books that this guy gave me.
[5:08]I wonder if you know as I see him still all the time.
[5:10]I should tell him I still have those books.
[5:12]But there isn't any special.
[5:13]Can you share the titles?
[5:14]Yeah.
[5:15]They're psychology related because I was very into psychology.
[5:17]I wanted to be a psychologist back then.
[5:20]Hold on.
[5:21]I'm going to go grab them.
[5:22]Hold on.
[5:23]It's so cool.
[5:25]Yeah.
[5:26]So this one is how to read character, handbook of physiology,
[5:31]chronology, and physiognomy illustrated with a descriptive chart.
[5:35]And look how old this is.
[5:36]I had a feeling, well, when you hear chronology,
[5:39]it's your chart.
[5:40]I am.
[5:41]Look at this.
[5:42]Yeah.
[5:43]21.
[5:44]Ziv.
[5:45]Hope this book serves as a good lesson in bad psychology.
[5:48]Congratulations on 21.
[5:49]This is from 822, 1997.
[5:51]So this is come with me everywhere.
[5:54]And then this other one.
[5:55]Let's see.
[5:56]From the Northwestern library, the harp weaver and other poems.
[6:00]This is interesting.
[6:01]Two of the harp.
[6:02]Is it one poet or is it collection of poetry?
[6:06]This is a collect.
[6:07]It looks like.
[6:08]Hold on.
[6:09]This is the ballot of the harp weaver.
[6:11]What is this?
[6:12]Hold on.
[6:13]And other poems by Edna St. Vincent Malay.
[6:16]Oh, I should have known it was.
[6:18]I don't know my poetry.
[6:20]So I wonder why this one.
[6:23]I seem to have really responded to in some way.
[6:27]Because I've written all over it or someone wrote all over it.
[6:30]The ballot of the harp weaver.
[6:32]I wonder why.
[6:33]I'm going to read this after this.
[6:36]Oh, my goodness.
[6:37]Oh, my gosh.
[6:38]It was taken out of the Northwestern University Library on July 22, 1938.
[6:44]Copyright 1920.
[6:46]Pretty cool.
[6:47]Very cool.
[6:48]All right.
[6:49]Well, anyway.
[6:50]Of course, the reason I asked you about this is this is a scene in one of the stories that I found so interesting because it was sort of the whole story was like a love letter to books in and of itself.
[6:59]Right.
[7:00]If you steal a book, what does that mean about you?
[7:02]Who would want to steal a book?
[7:04]Why?
[7:05]What does it mean to free the insides of the book?
[7:08]I found that really interesting too.
[7:10]Can the characters be free?
[7:11]Should they be out?
[7:13]It's just all such an interesting concept.
[7:15]But of course, you made it in your traditional, you know, mystery uncovering the facts.
[7:20]You know, here I am in my bicycle, figuring it out.
[7:23]I feel like I'm trying to solve the mystery at the same time.
[7:28]So I just love that story.
[7:30]Thank you.
[7:31]Was there some Walker in your neighborhood that inspired the main character?
[7:36]There are a couple of sort of famous blockers involved some more.
[7:39]There were people I saw walking all the time.
[7:42]And I didn't know anything about them. And now I'm one of them.
[7:45]That's kind of the weird thing to contemplate is I don't think about myself that way.
[7:49]But I've been getting up now for a year and a half and walking every day at sunrise.
[7:55]And since last December, I've been trying to walk at least five miles a day.
[7:59]Wow.
[8:00]Oh, I'm out there.
[8:02]I don't get the whole five miles done in the morning.
[8:04]That's not going to be possible.
[8:05]But every morning, I walk at least two to three miles right around sunrise.
[8:09]And I see runners and I see dog walkers.
[8:14]And I can't tell if anyone recognizes me as a regular on the route.
[8:19]Because it's hard for me.
[8:20]There are a couple of runners I recognize because their gate is so distinctive.
[8:25]And I can recognize the dog walkers by the dogs that were also bundled up right now.
[8:30]But that's the best I can do.
[8:33]But yeah, I'm sure someone's like, who's that odd woman who's always stocking around the harbor taking photographs with the domino sugar sign? What's that about?
[8:41]Don't you get scared? I mean, I feel like you're like the your whole work is like what if like what if you don't like you always.
[8:49]Yeah.
[8:50]I got scared on your own. I get scared sometimes.
[8:52]I got scared this morning because it was relatively early and relatively dark.
[8:57]And there was a man whose movements seem to be changing as mind changed.
[9:04]And I think it was all innocuous and nothing happened.
[9:07]But I'm pretty careful.
[9:09]I'm pretty careful.
[9:10]I know where I go to feel safe.
[9:12]There are almost always people out.
[9:15]And I actually make a running joke on social media about seeing white vans on the route.
[9:22]But you know, just seems like the ultimate kidnapping.
[9:26]And I won't go anywhere near a white band like one day there is a white band part with the motor running.
[9:33]And it was between me in a beautiful vantage point for which I wanted to take a photograph or like, ooh, ooh, no.
[9:40]I have to walk around a white band to get somewhere. I'm not going.
[9:44]I dated someone who drove a white band in one way.
[9:47]And he came to visit my family outside of the city once.
[9:51]And everyone was like, what?
[9:52]What's going on here? Like, what?
[9:54]What?
[9:55]Like this is it.
[9:56]White panel, man, you got to be careful.
[9:59]Yeah, it's so funny.
[10:00]Oh my gosh, okay, well I dug here so much of the story for the first story, but let's
[10:05]talk about I also loved your last story just one more. Why don't you talk about the inspiration
[10:10]for that? Which of course is what goes wrong when you and your husband get bored and decide to
[10:17]play on dating apps basically. So with the exception of that story, all the other stories in the
[10:23]collection had been written in published previously, some of the very obscure places,
[10:28]but they had been written I believe from, I think it was 2007 through 2019. That was this
[10:37]lifespan of the other stories and then when my publisher agreed to do a collection they said that
[10:42]please write a new almost novelling story because everything else has been published before. So
[10:48]I was happy to do that and we were about six months into the pandemic when I started working on
[10:55]that story and it was a hard time to think about anything but our current life how things were
[11:04]and one of the things that interest me about the pandemic is it already seems to have been many
[11:09]pandemics. We're like in by my estimation we're in at least our third era. There was
[11:16]February or March of 2020 until early 2021 and then as people began to get vaccinated
[11:25]we entered a different phase and then with Omicron and breakthrough infections we
[11:31]entered yet another phase and I'm sure there will be phases to come. So by the time I started
[11:37]writing just one more we were kind of coming to the end of that first phase or certainly it
[11:42]become familiar and there were things that I wanted to touch on like menu planning and walking
[11:49]I mean all of the things all of the quotidian things in that story are things that I did
[11:54]I you know I went walking for a friend with a friend and in the early days we would actually talk
[12:00]in our cell phones because no one knew anything and we were like on opposite sides of the street
[12:04]she's a doctor who specializes in infectious diseases and everybody was watching a lot of television
[12:12]I think that I'm pretty fair to say and I'm a huge Colombo fan and when I realized that it was
[12:20]just historically accurate that the Peacock streaming service made all of the Colombo episodes available
[12:29]in April of 2020 I was like oh I have to do something with that as I said I'm a huge Colombo fan
[12:36]I own all of the original NBC Colombo's on DVD and I'm fascinated by the ones that appeared
[12:47]years later on ABC because I think they're actually quite bad and but I can't tell you why
[12:54]I like I watched them and part of it is because they fiddle with the formula too much
[12:59]and part of it is that I think they really cut the budget a lot I it doesn't the thing I love
[13:05]about the NBC Colombo's is that the world that you move through really does look like super rich
[13:10]people and the restaurants and the homes and all of the details are like wow these people are rich
[13:17]and it doesn't feel that way when you get into the the ones that they made for ABC and the late
[13:25]80s into the 90s and to like I forget I was surprised at how how recent relatively recent
[13:32]the last Colombo was so I love Colombo I love the idea of trying to write about the pandemic
[13:40]and if you watched certain channels on TV and I'm you know I watched a little bravo I watched a
[13:48]not embarrassed you see these ads for dating apps all the time and I had a lot of young friends
[13:57]and they're on the apps and this was just a completely foreign world to me that I didn't know
[14:03]anything about so I was fascinated by that too and you know I'm always interested in hubris
[14:10]you know the hubris of the happily married couple that you know I'm some level when this couple
[14:17]talks about let's try out an app and see if it matches us and you know comes up with the rules
[14:22]of the game so it won't be too easy how hubris tick is that even there it's kind of smog
[14:29]you know exactly as in the you know Bridget Jones diary the smog marries yes and they're they're
[14:34]like doubly smog because in the pandemic it's a really hard time to be alone and you know I know
[14:42]that because I have I have a lot of really young friends so I feel like I'm getting bulletins
[14:52]reports from people in their 20s people in their 30s etc etc and I know a lot of other lives and
[15:00]I find it interesting and I don't feel the least bit smog or hubris tick about it that was actually
[15:04]a very touched watching people who are living alone trying to find a way to get through the pandemic
[15:14]that wasn't too lonely too scary you know that had the human companionship that some of us took
[15:22]for granted wow yeah I know there's always this thing with dating apps it's like there's no
[15:29]end to possibility right like how could that even be like that you just keep going you could
[15:34]just keep going forever and there's no science to it that I later after I finished the short story
[15:42]I read Nancy Joe sales book very bad about book titles but I loved her book really canny
[15:48]combination of memoir and reporting yeah and when she goes into that section about how there is
[15:56]literally no data that shows that dating apps are effective that's so interesting and people
[16:05]are just like well this is how it's done now and I'm sort of like what if you just don't I don't
[16:12]know I mean I don't know I'm it's not it's not relevant to my life my daughter and I have just
[16:18]started watching how I met your father and it's so interesting that since how I met your mother
[16:24]which was a show that existed in a world although it ended in 2014 where there was essentially
[16:29]no dating apps although they existed at the time but they're not really shown in the show
[16:35]now you start from the premise that of course everybody is on dating apps and just is this
[16:41]the world I want for my daughter I have to admit I hope things change and they've probably
[16:46]will change but not for the better I have someone I'm very close to who's on a dating app and
[16:54]I think with COVID I feel like she feels safer that way right like she can't go to a big crowd
[17:00]and that makes sense right so I don't know where it will end up but I feel like at least for this time
[17:07]there's hope right there's yeah it's the hope of connection and but it does sound like a total
[17:13]game to me like the way you have to play it and you know it's it's a variation of candy crush
[17:19]I mean it's just yeah yeah all these things on our phones what they have in common is what they
[17:25]do to our brain mm-hmm and I mean I said that as someone who is a little bit too into Twitter
[17:34]but that's I went through a phase where I killed every non-essential app off my phone and even my
[17:42]Gmail and I remember I was on business and I got to a hotel and they couldn't find my confirmation
[17:47]number and I'm like trying I was like I can't I'm gonna have to put my I'm gonna have to put my
[17:53]so I put my mail back on there and I put Twitter back on there but that's pretty much it for me
[18:00]I am largely disengaged from Facebook I haven't shut it down because I reached too many readers
[18:07]so I keep the account open and it I kind of do bear service minimal service to it for whatever
[18:13]reason Instagram is like a language I can't speak mm-hmm even though my Twitter account is it
[18:20]extremely media heavy and people are like this should be an Instagram account like I can't I don't
[18:26]I don't get I don't speak it I don't scroll it I'm fascinated by it I recently listened to
[18:34]Joe Piaz's wonderful podcast under the influence which is all about mom influencers
[18:39]yep and it was so interesting to me I mean the main thing my main takeaway is that the hilarious
[18:46]thing about Twitter is that it can't be monetized I mean maybe a few people I mean maybe like
[18:55]people with millions of followers might be able to get paid for tweeting about things but
[18:59]it's so like Twitter is really like the place where you give it away for free and I
[19:06]John Waters the film director to whom I know he's like you know no why would you you know
[19:12]why would you do that why would you give away your writing for free and it's actually
[19:16]really out of character for me my father hated writing for free and it kind of instilled in me
[19:22]that same value which is you should be paid to write and I just finished a week of teaching
[19:28]a writer's workshop that I've been teaching every year since 2006 the difference being that this
[19:34]year I taught it virtually and I taught the personal essay for the first time and I talked to my
[19:39]students a lot about trying not to write for free trying to get people to pay you for your words
[19:45]however minimally because they have value and the content is something that people want
[19:52]so they should be paying for it and you shouldn't be throwing it up for free and yet
[19:56]you know there I'm on Twitter every day giving away
[20:00]at least, you know, 280 characters a day.
[20:04]I was just listening or I wasn't really,
[20:06]but I was in the car with my husband.
[20:07]He was listening to Colin Coward,
[20:08]and I know he's a big sports talk show guy,
[20:11]and yeah, yeah, I know we do them.
[20:13]Yeah, so he was saying, literally he was saying yesterday
[20:16]that he's like, whenever I run into people on the street,
[20:19]who know who I am or whatever,
[20:21]they are the nicest people.
[20:22]They come up to me, they say nice things,
[20:25]they just couldn't be better.
[20:26]It makes me feel so good.
[20:28]He's like on Twitter, no one's ever said a nice thing.
[20:31]Yeah, that's, yeah, it's really interesting
[20:35]because I have managed to live
[20:40]in a relatively benign pocket on Twitter,
[20:45]and I can't quite figure it out.
[20:48]Part of it is that I don't see tweets by people
[20:52]who don't follow me.
[20:54]So if you set up your filter that way,
[20:55]but that's not enough,
[20:57]because I know so many women who get dog piled on
[21:01]and who get mansplained all the time,
[21:03]and I think it's because they're writing about
[21:05]far more serious things that I'm writing about.
[21:08]For example, I'm thinking of one of my friends,
[21:10]she is an expert on Ukraine, she just is.
[21:14]She's young, she's very young,
[21:16]and she's very beautiful,
[21:17]and I think that is part of the reason
[21:22]that men love to dunk on her.
[21:25]It's like, how could you know about you?
[21:27]And it's like, dude, she's an expert.
[21:31]She's like, she's the former disinformation fellow
[21:36]at the Wilson Center where, so I know it's not something
[21:39]that the person, the account holder
[21:41]can really control for, but for whatever reason,
[21:46]probably because I never talk about the news,
[21:48]and I'm relatively silly.
[21:50]I've managed for the most part
[21:53]to stay out of people's firing range.
[21:57]And when people are meeting me,
[21:59]I just ignore them.
[22:01]I mean, someone would have to say something so inaccurate
[22:05]or libelous to me to respond.
[22:07]What I always do is,
[22:09]when someone's being a little jerky,
[22:12]I check their follower account,
[22:14]and I usually decide all I'm doing
[22:16]is amplifying someone who has almost no attention
[22:19]to begin with, and I'm mute.
[22:21]I don't even block, I just mute people.
[22:23]I'm not interested, and people never know
[22:25]and you mute things, that's my control.
[22:30]Interesting, I didn't even know what mute was.
[22:32]I feel like you on Twitter, like I don't understand,
[22:35]like I don't go on there, I don't read it.
[22:37]I post updates, and then I get right off,
[22:40]like I'm scared, I open the door,
[22:42]I feel the cold air, and then I so much that,
[22:44]and I run the other way.
[22:46]Well, I always tell all writers
[22:48]that when it comes to social media,
[22:50]the one thing you should do is whatever feels natural to you.
[22:54]And I know, like a one point, my publisher was like,
[22:58]Instagram is where it is, you should be on Instagram.
[23:02]And I was like, you know, was like,
[23:05]at that point, I said I've gone from Facebook
[23:07]to Twitter, Twitter just works for me.
[23:09]It's a happy place for me, and when it's not,
[23:11]I'll leave it, but for now it's a place that,
[23:13]I made friends, I made tons of friends on Twitter
[23:16]and met them in real life, it's amazing.
[23:19]I feel like I've met Instagram friends.
[23:21]I had someone stay over last summer.
[23:22]My kids were like, I thought we weren't supposed
[23:24]to meet people on the internet.
[23:25]That's like, except when you are.
[23:29]Yeah, oh my gosh, so funny.
[23:33]Wow, well, now I'm gonna investigate muting,
[23:35]and thank you for that.
[23:36]But I think it's like working out.
[23:37]It's like people say you should do whatever it is regularly
[23:41]that you actually wanna do and will do.
[23:43]Right, look at you walking.
[23:44]It's like, someone could tell me to walk five miles a day
[23:46]and I would just like laugh, you know?
[23:48]It's much easier for me to do a workout on an app
[23:51]or I don't know something where I'm in one place.
[23:53]Anyway, well, I'm glad that all of this inspired
[23:56]this final novella of yours in seasonal work.
[24:00]You know, this collection, I loved your memoir,
[24:03]my life is a villainous, which I read last summer.
[24:05]I remember where I was, because part of the time
[24:07]I was like, it was so hot and I was in a pool
[24:09]and I was holding it like this, and I was just walking,
[24:11]I was just walking back and forth
[24:13]and back and forth holding your book,
[24:14]which was fantastic.
[24:15]This of course is coming in a much colder time of year
[24:18]so I wouldn't dare, but I love your writing
[24:20]and I love how you engage our brains
[24:23]in our senses at the same time and it's like such a treat.
[24:26]So anyway, congratulations on this bag
[24:29]and I'm just curious, so what after this,
[24:31]what else should I expect?
[24:34]You know, I only write short short since I wanna ask you
[24:36]to, which is an embarrassing thing to admit,
[24:38]but every story in that collection except for the last one
[24:42]was solicited.
[24:42]It was like, will you write this for this collection?
[24:44]And that's how it works.
[24:46]I'm working on a novel.
[24:47]I think it's going to be finished by the spring,
[24:51]which will mean that I will have been working on it
[24:55]for almost 18 months, which is a long time for me,
[24:58]but it was a tricky one and it was inspired
[25:02]while I was walking, while listening to a podcast.
[25:06]And I'm a huge fan of podcast,
[25:09]and when you walk as much as I do,
[25:11]you just need a lot of, you need a lot to listen to.
[25:14]And one of my favorites is called You're Wrong About,
[25:18]which you still have two co-hosts that's now
[25:20]the host is Sarah Marshall.
[25:22]And the idea is to take a sensational topic,
[25:27]which is to say one that was very much in the news at some point
[25:30]and to examine how much we didn't really know about it.
[25:37]I mean, Sarah Marshall, who's the host,
[25:40]sort of came into prominence as a person
[25:45]to revisit the stories of difficult women,
[25:48]Tonya Harding being one of the first.
[25:50]And one day, I was walking along
[25:54]and I was listening to a podcast
[25:57]that had the title Prom Mom.
[26:00]And it covered a couple of cases that involved young women
[26:03]who had delivered babies either during
[26:08]or before approximate to a big dance.
[26:12]And the line that jumped out at me,
[26:14]and I'm pretty sure Sarah said it in Sarah since
[26:17]we come up front.
[26:18]Do you talk about Sarah and I have never met face-to-face?
[26:21]We hope to someday she lives in Portland, Oregon.
[26:24]I live in Baltimore, but we met on Twitter
[26:27]and we began having long phone calls during my watch.
[26:31]Sarah was like, I'll come on your walk with you.
[26:34]So I've gotten to know her bed at the time.
[26:35]I was just, you know, one of her many fans.
[26:38]And she said something that I thought was so interesting,
[26:41]which was that when you're a teenage girl,
[26:44]you don't know your body at all.
[26:48]It is absolutely completely understandable
[26:51]that a girl could be pregnant and denial about it.
[26:54]Not really know what's going on.
[26:55]That, you know, we tend to see these stories
[26:58]that is almost nefarious lens of cold-hearted,
[27:04]almost sociopathic girl ignores the reality and has no.
[27:08]But when Sarah said that something really clicked
[27:10]in my head, I was really interested in this idea
[27:14]of a young woman who would just have no real idea
[27:19]of what was happening to her and how, you know,
[27:21]or would be in denial about it.
[27:23]And then I just started reading,
[27:24]I got in line and I began reading about some of the more
[27:28]notorious cases.
[27:30]And I discovered that in one case,
[27:33]the now grown woman, now grown man,
[27:36]had met again via Facebook and were friends.
[27:41]And that just fascinated me,
[27:43]just the idea of, okay, so who are you 20 years after this?
[27:47]Who do you become?
[27:48]Does anyone remember this about you?
[27:50]Can you ever stop being prom mom?
[27:53]And that was the book I decided to write.
[27:57]And it's set, maybe inevitably.
[28:00]And this is an interesting choice that writers are making
[28:02]right now.
[28:03]And to acknowledge the pandemic or not acknowledge the pandemic,
[28:07]are you just going to set your work before the pandemic
[28:12]and thereby bypass it?
[28:14]My friend Megan Abbott, who's one of my favorite writers,
[28:16]we were having this conversation recently.
[28:18]And she said, we know my work takes place
[28:21]in kind of a timeless universe.
[28:23]And she's right about that.
[28:25]Megan's novels take place in sort of a less specific now
[28:29]where things are like our world.
[28:31]But it's interesting what's not there.
[28:34]And so she can kind of do that.
[28:37]I don't think I can.
[28:39]And I was coming off of having written a novel
[28:41]that took place right before the pandemic.
[28:44]And the two novels before that were,
[28:46]one was set in 1995, one was set in 1966.
[28:50]And I decided just to like, you know,
[28:52]go ahead and set this against the backdrop of the pandemic.
[28:57]The pandemic.
[28:59]And the idea is to remind people that as much as the pandemic
[29:05]and politics in January, six and these things
[29:08]are in the forefront of the news,
[29:10]they're not in the forefront of our lives necessarily.
[29:13]There's things that we adjust to.
[29:15]So it's very much the backdrop.
[29:17]And I'm, the book is pretty solid.
[29:21]I mean, the last third needs a ton of work,
[29:23]but I've more or less written the book
[29:25]I was working on the early sections this morning.
[29:28]And one of the things I'm trying to do
[29:30]is avoid anything that sounds like foreshadowing
[29:33]when it comes to the pandemic.
[29:34]I want people hurtling through life
[29:40]with the same expectations,
[29:42]especially when they're in the sections of like fall of 2019
[29:45]or January and February 2019.
[29:48]I don't want people to see what's coming
[29:50]because I didn't see what was coming.
[29:53]Most of the people I know don't.
[29:55]I think to the extent that I know people
[29:58]who anticipated what this is going to be.
[30:00]like it's just because they were temperamentally inclined
[30:02]to be wildly pessimistic.
[30:04]You know, I don't think there were wiser than other people.
[30:07]I just think there were, you know, more apt to be downers.
[30:10]And so as I was going through this morning,
[30:13]I'm like, as I work on this,
[30:15]I'm being very careful to excise any sentence that suggests
[30:22]a hint of what's to come.
[30:23]Like I had a character saying,
[30:25]2020 was gonna be a great year.
[30:28]No, that's two in the notes.
[30:30]But at the same time, I have a character
[30:32]and this is like based on something real.
[30:34]Or like, you know, where she's like,
[30:36]I wonder what new virologists say about 2020.
[30:39]And it was, I found some article in Cosmo.
[30:41]It's like, it's gonna be a great year.
[30:44]Oh my gosh.
[30:46]So I'm interested in the idea that we will see
[30:48]this is backdrop and that people still when I had
[30:52]and led their lives and still had concerns
[30:56]and preoccupations that the pandemic may have affected.
[31:01]But it's not the tale that's wagging the dog.
[31:04]It's like, I want this person who I can't have.
[31:07]I'm trying to make this business venture
[31:10]that looks like it's not gonna go through.
[31:13]It's just like people are just moving around,
[31:15]motivated by their visual desires and dreams and ambitions.
[31:18]And there happens to be a pandemic.
[31:20]Got it.
[31:21]And the working title is Prom Mom.
[31:23]Oh, I love that.
[31:25]I'm glad you did that.
[31:26]because I was thinking that's a great title for them.
[31:27]Anyway.
[31:28]Laura, thank you so much.
[31:29]Thank you for chatting.
[31:31]I'm gonna, now I'm gonna just read your stuff on Twitter
[31:35]because I don't know what to do when I'm on there.
[31:37]So anyway, I'm gonna quietly, you know,
[31:39]tip toe into your realm and your nice quiet corners
[31:43]of support of people.
[31:45]It's basically two things.
[31:47]It's basically a photograph taken every morning on my walk
[31:51]and then once maybe twice a week,
[31:54]there's a selfie because early during the pandemic
[31:57]inspired by Rachel Sim of the New Yorker,
[32:00]I dressed up for a day.
[32:01]She actually sponsored something called Fashion
[32:03]but from a distance, meaning her.
[32:05]And I found it so, so cheering that I did it.
[32:10]I started doing it every day.
[32:11]And I started putting on nice clothes every day.
[32:14]And I still do.
[32:15]I actually get dressed every day.
[32:18]And it's become kind of like a running joke.
[32:21]Like yesterday I posted a photograph of me headed
[32:24]of therapy because I always really get dressed up for therapy.
[32:27]And there's always usually a joke about that.
[32:29]But yeah, that's how I used Twitter.
[32:31]Really, really help in the world there.
[32:33]I got dressed today.
[32:35]I feel like once a week I try to like put on a necklace
[32:37]or something, I don't know, every so often.
[32:40]I was having trouble writing the other day.
[32:41]And I was like, you were having trouble writing
[32:43]because you have not put on your nice clothes yet.
[32:45]And I would upstairs that I dressed
[32:47]and it didn't prove everything.
[32:48]Wow, that's awesome.
[32:50]Okay, well, who knew?
[32:52]All right, Laura, thank you so much.
[32:54]Thanks for seasonal work.
[32:55]Always a pleasure.
[32:56]And I hope to always see you back for PROMOM.
[32:58]I said thanks to you take care.
[33:01]Bye, Laura.
[33:03]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[33:05]Don't have time to read books.
[33:07]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[33:09]at Zibi Owens and at Moms.
[33:10]Don't have time to read books.
[33:12]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[33:14]and sign up for my virtual book club
[33:16]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[33:19]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[33:21]for the Sound Editing.
[33:22]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[33:24]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.