Doree Shafrir (THANKS FOR WAITING: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer) and Kate Spencer (IN A NEW YORK MINUTE)
[0:01]Hi, this is Vivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[0:05]Moms don't have time to read books, and speaking of books, I have two of my own books
[0:10]coming out this spring and summer.
[0:12]Princess Charming is a picture book, which debuts on April 19th, and bookends.
[0:17]A memoir of love, loss, and literature comes out on July 1st, and it is truly a labor of love.
[0:24]I hope you'll pre-order, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country.
[0:28]You can find out more at ziviowens.com, or bookendsmemoir.com, and you can follow me on
[0:35]Instagram at ziviowens, because I always post about everything.
[0:38]Enjoy the show!
[0:41]Dory Schaffier and Kate Spencer are the co-hosts of the award-winning podcast for ever
[0:46]35, and they are both also authors.
[0:49]Dory is the author of startup, a novel, and the memoir, Thanks for Waiting, the joy and
[0:53]weirdness of being a late bloomer.
[0:55]She is also the co-host of Matt and Dory's Excellent Adventure.
[0:59]She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
[1:01]Kate Spencer is the author of the memoir The Dead Moms Club.
[1:05]In a New York minute, is her first novel.
[1:08]She writes a bi-monthly column for in style, and her work has been published by the
[1:11]Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, and numerous other places.
[1:16]Previously, she worked as a senior editor and producer at VH1.
[1:20]She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.
[1:22]So today, we have two amazing women here talking about two different books, but their
[1:27]podcast co-hosts, so this makes sense, I guess.
[1:30]Anyway, the first guest is Dory Schaffier, the different answer, right?
[1:35]You say hi now.
[1:36]Hi, I'm Dory.
[1:39]And Dory's book is Thanks for Waiting, the joy and weirdness of being a late bloomer, which
[1:44]we have so much to discuss.
[1:45]And then Kate Spencer in a New York minute.
[1:48]Hello, this is my voice.
[1:50]Thank you so much for having us.
[1:52]Oh, it's my pleasure.
[1:54]And they are the co-host of Forever 35, which I wish I still were.
[2:00]You know, whatever age you are, we like.
[2:04]That's kind of where we've landed as people who keep aging beyond the age of 35.
[2:09]The longer we do this podcast.
[2:11]So funny.
[2:12]You were talking on your podcast about how a new serum that you had tried made your skin
[2:18]brighter.
[2:19]And you're like, what did that even mean?
[2:20]But now you know, but it's like to have bright skin, and you're like, don't even talk to
[2:25]me about bright skin.
[2:26]And you're like, 22.
[2:27]Like, you know?
[2:28]No.
[2:29]Yeah.
[2:30]And that's the thing.
[2:31]All of these like beauty, you know, how I get my skin to be so great.
[2:34]It's always like a 25-year-old with just beautiful, dewy skin.
[2:39]And I'm like, you know, how about a 44-year-old mom who is like over tired and
[2:48]you know, you got it.
[2:49]Don't have time for skincare, basically.
[2:51]No.
[2:52]They did.
[2:53]I know, my daughter this morning, my older daughter, my older daughter, my older
[2:57]daughter, who's almost 15 and she came down this morning, she's like, I did my whole skincare
[3:02]routine this morning.
[3:03]I did all of it.
[3:04]And she felt like she had just gone to a spot.
[3:06]I'm like, even if I did my whole skincare routine, it would take like two minutes.
[3:09]That's the long version.
[3:13]I do a lot of like half of my routine and then I get distracted by like having to do
[3:17]school drop-off.
[3:18]And so then I'm like, I never quite know what's on my face with any given time slash
[3:23]if I brushed my teeth, which I think today I have not yet.
[3:26]Yes.
[3:27]We were talking about the glory of doing podcast ads.
[3:30]But there's one sponsor, and I'm not trying to sell it, so I want to say the mascara is
[3:35]so great that I can actually go out the door without having to put it on again the next
[3:38]day.
[3:39]Who is it?
[3:40]It's called Thrive Cosmetics, C-A-U-S-E-O-Y-A.
[3:43]Oh yeah.
[3:44]Okay.
[3:45]Yes.
[3:47]Oh, their mascara is fantastic.
[3:50]Say your mask for days.
[3:52]Yeah.
[3:53]So now I'm like, well, if I just wash underneath, give it a week, leave it on for weeks
[3:59]you would happen.
[4:00]I would.
[4:01]I really would.
[4:02]Oh my gosh.
[4:03]Okay.
[4:04]Anyway, Dory, let's talk about your book first.
[4:05]We have like so much in common.
[4:06]Oh my gosh.
[4:07]There's so much.
[4:08]I know.
[4:09]I was reading your book and I was like, oh my gosh.
[4:10]I need to like sit in that coffee other and talk about all the stuff.
[4:13]I've dug your like a hundred different pages of your story.
[4:16]Anyway, why don't you why don't you give it a little synopsis?
[4:20]Sure.
[4:21]Thanks for waiting.
[4:22]Yeah.
[4:23]So my book is about being a late bloomer and kind of struggling with a lot of questions
[4:28]of like, are these quote-unquote milestones that we're supposed to be hitting in our lives?
[4:33]Are these things that like we genuinely want or these things that we feel like we should
[4:38]want because of societal cultural pressures?
[4:42]And the book is kind of about me navigating that in my mostly in my 30s into my 40s.
[4:47]I'm now 44 and also along the way meeting my husband on Tinder, struggling with infertility,
[4:55]quitting my job and deciding to become a full-time podcaster at 40.
[5:01]So you know, I think it's kind of cliche to be like, it's never too late.
[5:06]But like, I think the message is that we are continually evolving into the people that
[5:14]we want to be and that evolution like doesn't stop and like that's a beautiful thing.
[5:20]So true.
[5:22]I think you're your French kiss on the basketball court really sealed the deal for me.
[5:28]That was to be fair.
[5:29]That was the summer before eighth grade.
[5:32]So not something that happened recently.
[5:35]Yeah, sorry.
[5:35]I didn't mean that.
[5:36]Yeah.
[5:37]She's not French.
[5:38]Cause anybody let me.
[5:39]Oh, my gosh.
[5:40]Well, yeah.
[5:41]And I'm there to get a voice.
[5:42]Yeah.
[5:43]And I mean, I think that brings up another kind of theme that runs throughout the book of
[5:47]feeling.
[5:48]Like, you know, I was always kind of out of step with my peers, which, you know, now that
[5:54]I can look back on things, I, you know, I don't know that I actually was, but I had
[5:58]placed so much pressure on myself to be doing things at, you know, exactly the same time
[6:04]that's everyone else.
[6:05]And I think that that's something that, well, I know it's something a lot of people
[6:08]feel because I've heard from a lot of people about this.
[6:11]So yeah.
[6:12]Did you ever read the children's book Leo, the late bloomer?
[6:15]No.
[6:16]No.
[6:17]Oh my God.
[6:18]Oh my God.
[6:19]What is it?
[6:20]It's so good.
[6:21]I would go running grab it, but I'll never be able to find it.
[6:22]But it's about a boy and his parent, he's, you know, it's about, he's the only child.
[6:28]And everything he does is all, he's a lion, now he's a tiger.
[6:31]I don't know.
[6:32]He's a tiger.
[6:33]And all the other animals are doing things faster, so they all walk before him.
[6:38]Yeah.
[6:39]You know, they can even write in a straight line and his writing is all like, do do
[6:43]you can't even read it.
[6:44]And then his, and his dad keeps saying like, it's okay, like your late bloomer, your late
[6:48]bloomer, and then at the end, he's like, I made it and it's like, we don't get it.
[6:55]Yeah.
[6:57]It really only matters that everybody gets there at some point, right?
[7:01]This whole, the timelines are so artificial anyway.
[7:05]But I'm interested in your book too because even though it was framed this way, I feel
[7:10]like you could have had a different frame and told the same story almost like your life story
[7:14]is just like the really interesting meaty part.
[7:17]And yes, I know you felt like you're a little delayed, but it easily could have been like,
[7:21]you know, like you're not like your novel startup, like startup nation or, you know,
[7:25]what to do?
[7:26]And you know, it could have been an advice career thing.
[7:29]You could have spun it that way and done it differently or like, that's so interesting.
[7:32]But journal, you know, like I feel like the meat of the story had a lot of different applications
[7:37]and could have proved a lot of points because it's a really unique journey and you had a
[7:40]lot to say about it.
[7:41]And I don't know.
[7:42]Well, thank you.
[7:44]Yeah, I never, I never really thought about that, but I guess that is true.
[7:49]I, yeah, my professional journey was kind of meandering, but I did sort of find myself
[7:55]in these like, especially New York media, these kind of spots where, you know, in retrospect,
[8:02]it was like, and that's kind of a very meaningful time for various reasons.
[8:07]You know, I worked at Gokker kind of at the height of when Gokker was powerful or whatever.
[8:15]You know, however, you want to put it and I worked at the New York Observer and Rolling
[8:18]Stone.
[8:19]And so, you know, at the time, I don't think I fully appreciated it.
[8:22]But now I'm like, oh, like those were kind of moments that don't exist anymore.
[8:27]Like that is a world that 10, 15 years later, like just doesn't exist.
[8:32]And so to kind of be able to look back and be like, oh, I was a part of that is kind of
[8:38]exciting.
[8:39]That's awesome.
[8:40]Oh, it's funny to go from your book to Kate's book, which opens right at like one of
[8:45]the scenes, essentially, from your book where you're being laid off.
[8:48]And it's slightly different.
[8:49]But I was like, oh, this is like, exactly what happened to her.
[8:52]Totally.
[8:53]Yeah.
[8:54]I mean, I feel like if you worked in media in New York or, I mean, if you worked in
[8:58]New York, probably period, like you've gotten laid off at some point.
[9:02]So yes, I love that.
[9:03]I love the opening scene of Kate's book, you know.
[9:06]I actually, I spent like a morning at the New York Observer once when I was trying to
[9:10]figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
[9:12]And I had actually kind of forgotten about it until you until this part of your book.
[9:16]But I literally went and like sat it at a team meeting for the day.
[9:19]Oh, wow.
[9:20]And it was like, well, this just happened.
[9:21]Who wants to go down to like town hall or whatever?
[9:23]It's called the mayor's office.
[9:24]And someone's like, oh, I'm going to go and I was like, oh, no, I don't want people telling
[9:27]me where I'm going to go.
[9:28]I don't want people to tell me where I'm going to go.
[9:29]Like, this is not for me.
[9:31]Oh, yeah.
[9:32]I mean, I think I was never really like a newspaper beat reporter.
[9:37]Like I was never the person who they were like, go down to police headquarters.
[9:40]Right.
[9:42]But that's, I mean, that's an, that's a, that's a really hard job to have to do that.
[9:49]So I always had so much like admiration for people who did that job.
[9:53]Okay, Kate, tell your book just came out.
[9:56]Congratulations.
[9:57]Thank you.
[9:58]Go tell listeners about.
[10:00]but your buck and what it's about and all of that.
[10:03]We're in a New York minute is it's my first novel
[10:06]and it is a romantic comedy set in New York City
[10:09]but it starts in an incredibly unromantic way
[10:12]in which our main character, Franny has just been laid off
[10:16]similar to Dory's experience.
[10:18]And she's rushing to get back on the subway,
[10:21]her hands are full, she makes it on a packed train
[10:25]at morning rush hour and just when the train takes off
[10:28]out of the station she realizes that her dress
[10:32]is not only stuck in the closed subway doors
[10:35]but it has ripped down her back.
[10:37]And there's of course a moment of wardrobe malfunction panic
[10:40]and then a very handsome stranger steps into help her.
[10:44]And they have what looks like a very adorable meat cute
[10:47]that is documented by people around them
[10:49]and put up on social media.
[10:51]But in reality, their interaction was very awkward
[10:54]and they do not hit it off
[10:55]and they leave thinking like they have nothing in common
[10:59]and then they meet again and have another very awkward
[11:01]interaction but of course thanks to the magic
[11:04]of New York City, my former hometown,
[11:07]they're brought back together again and again
[11:09]and by the end they do realize
[11:11]that they actually have a lot more in common
[11:13]than they initially thought.
[11:14]NPS, she's wearing a thong, right?
[11:17]I believe she, I think she's in her last,
[11:21]her embarrassing, it's either her embarrassing period underwear
[11:25]or like the thong that she never wears
[11:27]but she hasn't done laundry.
[11:29]She hasn't done laundry
[11:30]and now it has come back to haunt her
[11:31]in this moment on the subway.
[11:34]Worst nightmare.
[11:35]Based on, you know, that part of not doing laundry
[11:38]definitely based on my own life.
[11:40]I have not had a wardrobe malfunctioned like that
[11:42]but we've all had moments.
[11:45]I'll head moments.
[11:46]I remember once in high school I walked like
[11:49]from the 86th Street Crest Ambus,
[11:50]I must have walked five blocks before I realized
[11:53]that my, you know, my skirt had been tucked up
[11:55]in my eye.
[11:56]I know, I still, I'm still mortified
[11:58]and look at this.
[11:59]Oh, 45 years old, so yeah, can't get over it.
[12:01]No, I once went to apply for a hostessing job
[12:04]when I was 18 at a restaurant in Burlington, Vermont
[12:06]wearing a white skirt and they told me they weren't hiring
[12:09]and then the woman was like,
[12:10]just so you know, I can see your underwear
[12:12]through your skirt.
[12:13]It was so humility, it was so humiliating.
[12:17]I've never, yes, I've never forgotten it.
[12:19]Oh my gosh.
[12:20]And Kate, I didn't have time to go back
[12:23]and read your memoir also.
[12:25]The Dead Moms Club.
[12:26]I'm so, I mean, tell me what, tell me about that,
[12:30]what happened to your memoir?
[12:31]My mom died when I was 27.
[12:33]She was 55 and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
[12:36]and she died nine months later.
[12:39]And it was a real shock to my system.
[12:43]I had lived a very privileged blessed life
[12:46]in which I had just assumed my parents would live
[12:49]till they were, you know, 95 and then like die in their sleep.
[12:52]And so it was a real shock.
[12:54]And when I came out of that experience,
[12:58]looking for kind of community or books
[13:01]that captured what I was feeling as like a young adult
[13:04]who's just lost a parent, I really didn't find much.
[13:07]I was the first of my friends to lose a parent.
[13:10]There wasn't a large kind of grief community yet
[13:14]that like, you know, that has really kind of blossomed,
[13:16]I think, thanks to social media, which has been amazing.
[13:18]So I really wanted to write a book,
[13:21]not just about my experience kind of in the aftermath
[13:23]of grief, but a book that could also kind of help people
[13:27]or feel like a friend or someone who had been there,
[13:30]obviously grief is such an individual experience.
[13:34]And, you know, my experience losing my mom is different
[13:37]from the next person, but I do think there are some kind
[13:40]of universal feelings or moments or experiences
[13:45]that come with grieving that we can all connect to.
[13:49]And so that is what I hope to capture.
[13:51]And it's been, I mean, amazing is the wrong word,
[13:54]but it's so moving because I hear from people,
[13:57]you know, almost daily, who have just lost,
[13:59]mostly it's their moms, but other people they love
[14:02]and have somehow found my book and, you know,
[14:06]they feel connected in that way
[14:07]and that was extremely, or has been
[14:10]and continues to be really gratifying.
[14:12]So my husband's mom passed away from COVID.
[14:15]Yeah, I'm too lazy.
[14:16]So now I was thinking, is this a good book for someone
[14:20]who's recently lost a mom?
[14:22]Like is this good or is this more like you want
[14:23]to reflect back later or?
[14:25]No, you know, it's so interesting
[14:27]because I get asked this question often of like,
[14:29]should I give this?
[14:30]No, no, I think it's a really good question
[14:32]because it's hard to know, right?
[14:35]Like, should I give this to my friend who's mom just died
[14:37]or, you know, and I'm like, gosh, I don't know.
[14:39]I want to say yes, obviously because I love my book,
[14:42]but what if they read it and it's too much for them?
[14:45]But I think, yes, I think it's helpful just to have,
[14:49]I mean, books are such a support system
[14:53]for any, you know, any book.
[14:54]Like for me, I read a lot of romance when I was grieving
[14:57]and that was my support system.
[14:58]But I think it's nice just to have a book there,
[15:01]whether or not the person ends up touching it.
[15:03]Like you never know one day,
[15:05]they might just like turn to their bookshelf
[15:07]and see the title and be like, oh, that's what I need today.
[15:10]So I'm gonna go out on a limb and say yes.
[15:12]I think it would totally be appropriate
[15:14]and I would be honored to share it with him
[15:17]because it's, you know, what I've learned
[15:19]is I've gotten older is that no matter how old you are,
[15:22]grief is the most, you know, losing someone
[15:26]is such a painful experience.
[15:27]No matter if you've had them in your lives,
[15:29]you know, for 90 years or 50, you know,
[15:32]my mom was only 56.
[15:33]It just, it always hurts deeply.
[15:37]I'm so sorry for your loss.
[15:38]Oh, well, I'm, I'm, I'm,
[15:40]I'm no, I'm looking forward to your memoir.
[15:42]I'm excited to read it.
[15:43]I'm, thank you.
[15:45]Yeah, I know you've written about grief too.
[15:46]And so I, I think your work has the same impact.
[15:51]I need more arcs.
[15:52]I need to like, I want to send it to every single person
[15:55]because it's so hard, right?
[15:57]Maybe I'll just start emailing,
[15:59]you know, PDFs or anything.
[16:00]But like, like, don't forward this,
[16:03]but you need to read this right now.
[16:04]Yeah.
[16:05]Oh my gosh, wait.
[16:06]Okay, so then talk about how the two of you
[16:08]started your podcast and how it's blown up
[16:11]and become this whole successful full-time thing.
[16:15]So talk about that.
[16:16]Well, I think we need, we need to start by saying
[16:18]that we met on the internet.
[16:20]We met on Tumblr.
[16:21]A true modern love story in 2008.
[16:26]We were, we followed each other on Tumblr
[16:28]and kind of became friendly on the internet,
[16:30]but we didn't meet Hyrule until we both lived in LA.
[16:34]Not was around, I moved there in 2013
[16:36]and Cated moved a couple of years earlier.
[16:39]Anyway, and then fast forward a few years
[16:41]and Kate texted me, do you want to start a podcast
[16:45]at skincare and then it wasn't like this.
[16:47]I came out of nowhere.
[16:49]Like we had definitely been having these conversations
[16:51]with each other, like whether it was over text
[16:53]or, you know, on Facebook or wherever.
[16:56]And we felt like there wasn't,
[16:57]there weren't people talking about skincare
[16:59]in the way that we wanted to like hear those conversations.
[17:02]And kind of like I was mentioning earlier,
[17:05]like a lot of these conversations were being had
[17:07]by people who were very young, at least younger
[17:11]than much younger than we were,
[17:12]who had different lifestyles,
[17:15]different skincare needs.
[17:17]And we thought like where are the people talking to us?
[17:20]And so that was kind of the impetus for it.
[17:23]And I think it also emerged out of like a very particular
[17:26]political moment when, you know,
[17:29]Trump had been president at that point for almost a year.
[17:34]And I think a lot of people were feeling a sort of despair
[17:38]and people who had never been interested in beauty
[17:42]were suddenly like turning to skincare
[17:44]as this sort of salvation, like just, you know,
[17:49]this mode of self care that felt like a refuge
[17:53]in the face of so much turmoil.
[17:55]And so we kind of wanted to capture a little bit of that.
[17:58]And then just sort of evolved.
[17:59]Like now it's kind of evolved into more self care
[18:03]sort of broadly defined, okay, what else, what else?
[18:07]I think you summed it up perfectly.
[18:09]I mean, I think what we've,
[18:11]what we quickly learned, I think within the first few months
[18:14]of doing the podcast is that self care is such an umbrella
[18:18]term and can mean so many different things
[18:21]and different things to different people
[18:22]based on their life experiences.
[18:24]And it's just been an incredible learning experience
[18:28]to get that we've spoken to so many interesting people
[18:32]and to really get to deepen our understanding
[18:36]of what it means to practice self care.
[18:38]slash get a lot of really great skincare
[18:41]and beauty recommendations, which is always so fun
[18:45]because we'll be talking to someone about, you know,
[18:47]a very serious topic and then we'll,
[18:50]at the end kind of switch gears and be like,
[18:51]by the way, what is your morning skincare routine?
[18:55]Because we need to know, you know, these things,
[18:58]we contain multitudes.
[18:59]So I think, you know, I think both Dory and I, you know,
[19:02]we don't believe that things like skincare
[19:05]or taking baths are frivolous.
[19:07]They can really help at a crucial time in one's life,
[19:12]but we also have really come to understand things
[19:15]like community support, mental health support,
[19:18]financial stability,
[19:20]though these things are also a huge part
[19:22]of what it means to take care of ourselves.
[19:25]I love that.
[19:26]And do you both live in LA now?
[19:28]We do.
[19:29]We're both, we're both from Boston,
[19:32]lived in New York City, and now live in LA.
[19:35]We've just been kind of following each other
[19:38]across the country, but only really met as adults,
[19:41]which is another really kind of lovely thing
[19:43]to get to explore what it means to have a friendship
[19:46]that you make as an adult.
[19:48]Because so I know a lot of my close friends I met,
[19:50]you know, by the time I was 18.
[19:53]So that's been really,
[19:54]I feel like a really rewarding part
[19:55]of our partnership as friends and podcasts hosts.
[19:59]Well, I actually,
[20:00]I'll be an L.A. for these two events for my princess charming book on May 15th, 16th that weekend.
[20:06]Do you want to come out on Friday at the village well in Culper City and then once that Sunday, I don't even know what the date is.
[20:13]It pages in Manhattan Beach.
[20:15]It's great.
[20:16]You guys live in, but cool.
[20:17]I mean, everything is far away from you and L.A.
[20:21]You know, like, there's no, you never live close to anything.
[20:25]So one will be doable for sure.
[20:29]Okay, so on the book side, what is coming?
[20:32]Are you guys working on independently new books?
[20:34]Are you going to do a book together?
[20:36]What's the plan?
[20:37]I am working on my next fiction book, which is also in the romance genre.
[20:43]That is my favorite genre to write in and to read.
[20:47]And that should come out sometime next year, the manuscript is with my editor at the moment.
[20:53]Congratulations.
[20:54]Thank you.
[20:55]Does it have a title yet?
[20:56]It doesn't have a title.
[20:57]That is, that is a hot topic on an email chain.
[21:00]But it is, it is a kind of second chance romance set at a sleepaway camp and New Hampshire between two, two adults who met his kids and are reunited.
[21:12]Again, as grownups.
[21:13]Oh, my grandparents met as counselors at a summer camp.
[21:17]Thank you.
[21:19]The summer camp love stories are my absolute favorites.
[21:22]So I'm channeling all that energy into this book.
[21:25]I love it.
[21:26]That'll be a great summer read.
[21:27]What about you, do I?
[21:28]Well, so I wrote a novel that came out in 2017 called startup.
[21:33]And I think writing a memoir.
[21:37]I don't know if you have found this as well to be, but I found writing a memoir to be extremely draining and overwhelming.
[21:45]and I am planning on returning to fiction.
[21:49]Awesome.
[21:50]So.
[21:51]I didn't find it draining because I at least knew what I had to write about.
[21:55]Jamie, I feel like fixing.
[21:56]Totally.
[21:57]Over what?
[21:58]Yes.
[21:59]Right about anything, not even in the universe.
[22:01]That is true.
[22:02]That is true.
[22:03]I think it was just that I was.
[22:05]I was revisiting.
[22:07]I hadn't quite like when I decided to write the memoir, I hadn't quite like realized that I would be going over some like very painful episode.
[22:14]So it's in my life.
[22:15]And I would have to be going over them like many, many, many times as I wrote and re wrote and edited.
[22:20]And that was just a little like.
[22:22]Oh, okay.
[22:23]We're going through this again.
[22:25]So anyway, I have some ideas floating around.
[22:28]And hopefully we'll figure that out in the next few months.
[22:31]Awesome.
[22:32]I love it.
[22:33]So cool.
[22:34]Okay.
[22:35]Any advice for aspiring authors from the two of you?
[22:37]My advice is based on something that we hear a lot from podcast listeners,
[22:42]which is I don't I don't want to do X thing because it's already been done.
[22:48]And I think that is like the biggest thing to just kind of get over and try to move past because if you start thinking that way,
[22:57]you're going to you'll never write anything because you'll feel like every story has been told.
[23:02]And that's just not true.
[23:04]Like your story has not been told.
[23:06]So that's what I tried to tell people who feel this way.
[23:10]I have definitely felt that way. Like I'm not immune to these feelings either. But yeah.
[23:14]I think for me, one of the greatest my own personal learning experiences now having published a couple of books, having another one on the way,
[23:23]is how true and Le Mans chapter and bird by bird shitty first drafts is.
[23:30]And I read, I go back to that book and to that specific chapter so often in my life because.
[23:38]I think we expect to the things that we write to be perfect and polished on the page instantly.
[23:43]And I think that's probably because, you know, we're reading books that have gone through incredible revision processes, but we don't we don't see that we just see the finished process.
[23:51]So there's a lot of this internal pressure for this kind of the things that we are writing to be quote good instantly.
[23:59]And I truly think like anything you have to really build a piece of work and it's got to start in the most bare bones basic.
[24:10]It can feel so bad and it will it will read it could be terrible.
[24:15]But there's you cannot you cannot revise or make something better unless you have words on the page.
[24:22]And that is a painful thing I have to learn every time I sit down to write this is an ongoing journey. And I think it is for most writers.
[24:31]But I think a lot of times we let that stop ourselves from from doing the works were like this is so bad I could not, you know, good, good Lord, but truly that is how every great thing starts.
[24:43]Very cool. Do you have a exciting guest or two or favorite episode to to plug for forever 35.
[24:50]Oh my gosh. I mean, we we it's sometimes I look back and I scroll through all our guests and I cannot believe how lucky we are to talk to some of these to all of these people.
[25:03]You know, we did interview Madeleine Albright, which I think was a personal highlight for both of us and having her recently passed kind of just reignited my love for that interview.
[25:13]I was like nervously quaking and almost in tears sitting in my closet trying to record it in the pandemic.
[25:19]And Elizabeth Gilbert's episode is really wonderful. And then another one that I know door and I both love as we talked to Santa Herby who's also a writer and she's just so funny and brilliant and also came in with some great product recommendations.
[25:35]Do you have any others that I mean there's it's like endless. I mean, those we're so lucky. Those those were definitely some some highlights that like that I remember.
[25:45]And, you know, we get to talk to so many great authors like Danny, you know, I was saying about Danny Shapiro's interview the other day, like I just I just I feel I really do feel like hashtag blessed.
[25:57]Yeah, same same way that we've gotten to talk to all these people. So amazing.
[26:03]Love it. Great. Well, I'm happy to come in your podcast if you ever wanted another.
[26:07]Yeah, you got it.
[26:08]You got it.
[26:09]That would be amazing. I would love. We got to hear about the bottom of the barrel or anything.
[26:13]Got to hear about your two minute skincare routine slash your mascara recommendations.
[26:18]Yes.
[26:19]There's a lot to talk to you about don't worry. We will keep you for like two hours to really pick your brain.
[26:26]I know your episodes are long. I'm impressed. They are we could gap. I mean, there are some days during I could just chat all day.
[26:34]We've been doing this for four years and we sometimes are just yammering as we say. I love it. That's great. It's awesome.
[26:40]All right. Well, it's so great to meet both of you and to spend time with both of your books and get to know you and all the rest. And I'm sorry I didn't get to your first memoir or your first novel.
[26:50]But anyway, please.
[26:53]It's so fun.
[26:54]Thank you so much for having us. Yeah. Thank you so much.
[26:57]I really hope to meet you. Not even at an event, but just some time in LA. I would love it. I'm out there a lot. So likewise.
[27:02]I'd be great.
[27:03]Yeah.
[27:04]Yeah.
[27:05]Okay. All right. Take care.
[27:06]Okay.
[27:07]Thank you so much.
[27:08]Thank you.
[27:09]Bye bye.
[27:11]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:14]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:19]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:26]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan Heck, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[27:30]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.