Lauren McBrayer, LIKE A HOUSE ON FIRE
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now
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[0:54]Laura McBrayer is the author of like a house on fire
[1:01]She is a graduate of Yale with a law degree from UC Berkeley a working mom of three
[1:05]She is the head of business affairs for an entertainment company in Los Angeles
[1:09]Like a house on fire is her adult debut
[1:12]Welcome, Lauren. Thank you so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss like a house on fire
[1:18]The novel. Thank you so much for having me. I don't think I've read another book lately
[1:23]Where within just a few pages and like oh, I would be friends with that person writing this book
[1:30]When there's a scene in the beginning where you have one of you have like this job interview and the
[1:36]Frasled mom is like I just need to get out of the house
[1:39]Can you hire me so I can like just get out of the house and I was like that is perfect
[1:44]Well, and I think that the people experience. I've had talking to readers is women who are doing the juggling act
[1:52]To have kids who have careers or had them or trying to figure out, you know, what to do
[1:57]Maybe they're going back to work. There is an affinity for the experience
[2:01]And but I find that readers who there there are plenty of readers who don't have that experience of merit who sort of think
[2:08]She's all over the place or she's really selfish or why does she have this internal monologue that she doesn't communicate
[2:15]You know to her husband, you know straightforwardly
[2:18]But I think moms who are in it or so we recognize ourselves in her at least I hope
[2:24]That was the entire there are people without internal monologues
[2:28]Is that a thing? I think there are and I think there are people who don't
[2:33]Want to acknowledge and bevelance about parenting, you know, I mean we all have our kids
[2:38]We love I mean maybe we don't all our kids. We hope that most of everyone loves their kids
[2:42]I love my kids, you know, but there are moments when it's a real
[2:45]It's a real struggle for a personhood and identity and sort of sanity and mental quiet and all these things
[2:52]So I think that merit is a woman who's just
[2:55]With us the reader really honest about her experience and I think that there are women who relate to that and and some who maybe don't or find that
[3:04]You know challenging or off-putting or whatever
[3:07]And the other great part is that her perspective boss and then her boss finds it hilarious
[3:13]That's the other good thing and that she's like hysterically laughing and like texts are for drinks immediately and I you know that she
[3:19]I mean it could have gone the wrong way. Right. I guess is what you're saying. She could have been horrified, right?
[3:24]But if you
[3:26]No, she gets it. I think the thing that I'm trying to
[3:29]To do in that first interview scene
[3:31]So, you know setting up for people listening. No merit. Yes. I'm sorry. Lauren. What is your
[3:36]I'm sorry. Can you please tell us in there is what your book is about? Yes
[3:40]I
[3:41]Have been lately calling like a house on fire a midlife coming of age
[3:46]It's the story of a woman named merit who's in her late 30s when we meet her. She's the mother of two very young kids
[3:52]And she's coming back to the workforce after taking several years off to both raise her two boys
[3:58]You know who who her little and then also pursue a career and fine art which is her passion or creative
[4:04]Joy that she set aside in her 20s to be an architect
[4:09]And when she had kids she wanted to get back to doing a great of things
[4:12]So she leaves the workforce to paint and raise her kids and
[4:16]Neither of those things work out quite as she thought she has a failed gallery show
[4:22]She fails as a painter and she realizes that if she stays home with her two kids who she does love very much
[4:27]She might go insane
[4:28]So she decides to go back to work in part for those reasons
[4:33]But also because her marriage is struggling a bit with the financial pressures her staying home has caused
[4:40]And so she thinks going back to work as an architect will reinvigorate both her own life and also her marriage
[4:46]And so she the first chapter
[4:48]She's in the interview with this new job working for this incredible Danish architect named Jane
[4:53]Who's 20 years older and fabulous and has no kids and you know lives sort of this
[4:59]From marriage perspective aspirational liberated life
[5:02]So the tour and odd pairing and the novel is a story of their relationship and intimacy that develops between women
[5:10]When there is no expectation which is what I wanted to create these two characters who on paper will not be close friends
[5:17]And certainly will not be friends outside of work and certainly won't potentially fall in love
[5:22]But anyway, so that first scene with Jane, you know, Mera is bringing her tired mom self her kids have been up all night
[5:29]She says she feels like her eyes have been washed in bleach and what happens in that interview is without really trying
[5:36]Merit wins Jane over and I there wasn't a lot of effort. Merit's not like amazing in the interview
[5:43]She doesn't say anything particularly, you know, funny or witty or smart
[5:47]But Jane just gets her from the outside and they just have they click, you know
[5:52]The way people some people do so that's the beginning of their relationship that develops over time and involves wine and oysters and cake pops and
[6:02]Did you have a art are you having an event or did you have an event already with all of those elements in
[6:07]Not the cake pops. I should have I should have done. That's a great idea. So we thanks for taking could you tell me that before though
[6:13]I mean, that's why I would have gone is for the cake pops
[6:16]And in the novel they're laced with pot at one point. So you should have done that. No, just kidding. Yeah. Well
[6:25]Two different seconds of the party
[6:29]Okay, so how did this novel come to you? This is your first novel
[6:33]Tell me about the whole thing. Tell me about like did you always want to write where did this come from?
[6:38]Is this your first novel actually or just the first published novel?
[6:42]It is not my first
[6:44]Novel actually and also not my first published novel acted in truth. I published three young adult novels. Okay. I'm like it looks
[6:51]I said it says it's her name. Thank you. Well, they're clever. They say adult debut
[6:55]I wrote three young adult novels under my maiden name
[6:58]After she came out in 2017
[7:01]They were Harper teen books. They were
[7:03]radically different than this novel and so
[7:06]You know this felt really different voice-wise and totally and content-wise
[7:11]So we you know it is my adult debut, but also it's just so different that it felt like the right thing to do for the marketplace too
[7:18]I didn't want any you know 12 year old teen girls picking up this whole year warning. It's four adults
[7:24]So I'd written these three young adult novels and after my third which came out in 2017
[7:29]I knew I did not have another Y book at me. I just I felt just with clarity
[7:34]Whatever I'd been doing or saying for the teen readers, you know, there just wasn't their story in me and
[7:40]There was a bit of a creative desert that happened after that and and I think part it was in part
[7:46]It was the book come came out and part it was that I just had my third child and you know with every kid
[7:52]It gets exponentially harder as moms know and so I was dealing with that and sort of the depletion that came after that
[7:58]And I just wasn't sure what I wanted to write and I was I had this feeling that I wanted to write a memoir
[8:04]But I didn't have anything to write about like I wasn't what the memoir would be and I
[8:09]They did I wasn't so important enough to think like oh people need to hear from me
[8:12]But I just it was this this instinct to sort of write something
[8:16]That was deeply personal and I was on a girls weekend with some women one of whom was a close friend and the rest I didn't know very well
[8:23]And I fell asleep by the pool reading conversations with friends actually and woke up with these two characters
[8:31]Merit and Jane in my not my head like I could hear them speaking to each other clearly
[8:36]Their names were different then but they they were so
[8:39]Fully formed as characters and I saw
[8:42]What I thought was the arc of the novel it was you know
[8:45]The same sort of set up and they meet and the age difference in in my head initially was sort of like a one night
[8:51]They cross over and then realize the friendships too important. That's what I thought I was writing
[8:56]So you know, I just was like this is interesting. You know this feels different and I started writing and it literally
[9:03]Just poured out. I mean, it was just it was very clear. I knew what I was
[9:07]Doing I didn't need to plot it or outline it the way I had with my YA novels which were you know
[9:12]heavily plotted and I knew everything that was going to happen ahead of time
[9:16]This just organically these characters told me
[9:19]Who they were and how they felt about each other and and also that their relationship would not cross over for just one night
[9:24]They were like what do you think we're doing here?
[9:28]So in the process maybe like six months in it took me about a year to write this book
[9:33]Six months into it. I
[9:36]Could no longer ignore that there were some deeply personal strands in my own life that
[9:42]Had been completely in myself conscious
[9:44]I mean, I don't even I'm not exaggerating to say I literally had no idea that there would be anything
[9:50]Personal in my own life that would be motivated by this book
[9:54]And so there came to a point where I realized oh, I'm writing a memoir of the future
[10:00]like I'm reading something deeply personal that hasn't actually happened. I mean, and it's not
[10:05]something that will happen, but so I guess it's like an alternate history or my alternate history or
[10:09]something. And it un-live into me. I mean, that's the only word I can think of. I mean, I
[10:15]came alive in the process of writing this book, which was extraordinary, but, you know, in the wake
[10:20]of it has been some dramatic life changes, similar to the ones where it makes in the novel. So,
[10:26]yeah, so that's it was sort of it was birthed out of the desire to write a memoir. And I thought
[10:30]in the beginning it was the biggest leap, you know, creatively I'd ever taken. I was like,
[10:35]I'm going to write about a woman who falls on the woman. Like, I don't know anything about that,
[10:38]you know. And by the end of it, I was like, oh, she's me. Why didn't anybody tell me that along the way?
[10:45]That is just me and you who fall in love with the woman. I haven't fallen in love with the woman,
[10:49]but I have left my marriage to a man of 15 years and dating women. And I'm living life like
[10:56]as a queer person, which I never would have imagined. I came up with the idea for the book three years
[11:02]to the day before it came out. My pub date, you know, selected by Putnam was April 26th,
[11:08]April 26th, 2019 was when this idea, you know, these women arrived in a thunderclap in my mind.
[11:14]And you know, in three years, I went from one version of myself to a radically different one,
[11:20]all motivated by a book. You know, I wrote myself, I gave myself permission through the book to
[11:24]explore the questions I would have been terrified to ask in real life. And so I think that's
[11:29]the gift of writing. I mean, I just, I encourage people to just write the story and write it,
[11:35]you know, metaphorically, write it completely fictional. You like, just give yourself permission
[11:40]to like, let your imagination run wild and see where it takes you. I mean, you prepared
[11:45]my tenure, you don't exact, but anyway, that is amazing. It's like a novel of, of,
[11:51]it's like finding your voice through these women's voices. And then you actually act it on,
[11:57]like that's so great. That's amazing. Well, and you're thinking of people, you know, as another
[12:03]sort of like, warning to people, there is infidelity in the novel. And as you can imagine,
[12:08]people have strong feelings, you know, about infidelity. There were some publishers actually as
[12:14]my advice to like, do you have advice to aspiring writers? I was like, don't write about affairs
[12:18]hard on yourself. But the infidelity for me in the novel was a, it's a, I mean, not a device that's
[12:26]sort of, minimize, minimize it. But I needed merit in J&T, like I said, have no expectation.
[12:32]You know, if you think that someone you meet, there's a potential for a romantic future,
[12:36]all of your decisions are guided by that, meaningfully, even if it's just in the back of the
[12:41]head. And I think, you know, the old, when Harry MacSally concept of men and women can't be friends,
[12:47]you know, if it had been a male boss at a female employee, you're always thinking, is there
[12:52]something in them, you know? So I needed merit to be married. I needed J&T to be married at the
[12:57]outset. You know, I needed merit to never have considered that she could fall for a woman or
[13:02]certainly be attracted to one or so it sort of was became the constraints of the novel to
[13:07]allow me to give these women that complete lack of expectation that they would end up together.
[13:12]So anyway, I mentioned that just because it's, it's funny that it, there is a, there is
[13:18]infidelity at the center of the novel, but it's not really a novel about an affair, or at least
[13:23]that hasn't wasn't how I was constructing it, if that makes sense. I feel like there are so,
[13:28]I feel like there's so many books with infidelity. Is it because it's written by a woman? Like,
[13:34]what, or is it because the infidelity is with a woman? Like, I feel like that's such a common thing
[13:40]in movies and in books and, you know, that's one of those devices. So that, well, I mean,
[13:47]Esther Porell says, you know, estimates are like, could be in the 80, 80% that people who have an
[13:53]affair. So it's a very active part of the human experience. I think, yeah, there are tons of stories
[13:59]with affairs. I think there are publishers understandably or editors in particular that are really
[14:05]reticent. I mean, actually, at Putnam, the first editor we submitted to was like, this is an
[14:09]amazing story. I don't publish infidelity. Here's a colleague who I think will like it. Interesting.
[14:14]Yeah, sorry. A little step or a little time. Writers. Wow. So how do you feel? You have a whole new
[14:22]life. You're an adult novelist. You're dating. You're not the mom at home wondering what to do.
[14:28]You're like, what? Now what? How do you feel? Like, are you excited? Are you scared? Are you happy?
[14:36]All of the above. It is. It's a terrifying, but exhilarating experience. You know, I think like
[14:43]merit, I didn't feel like I had any reason to be unhappy, you know, five years ago, three years
[14:50]ago. I had three healthy, wonderful kids. I have a kind and decent, hardworking husband. You know,
[14:57]friends, a community, a life, you know, a job, all these things. And I was really asleep at the
[15:04]wheel. But I couldn't look inside because I didn't want to figure out why I was so unhappy.
[15:12]I'm sort of predisposed to happiness. So I'm not a melancholy person. I'm, you know, so I'll start
[15:16]like, it's all fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.
[15:20]But speaking of a monologue, a turning point for me was an early 2017, actually, maybe, maybe
[15:26]early 2018, I went to a family fun night at my kid's school. My, my older two were involved in the
[15:34]alcohol infestivities. I, it's madness. It's one of those followers. You know, they have like the
[15:40]Yes, we all hear about toxic things. Surely this can't be good for their lungs. It's like
[15:46]artificial colors spread all over them. They're screaming. There's loud music. It's hot,
[15:51]because it's, you know, summer and LA or May and LA. And I had my youngest in a stroller
[15:57]and I'm pushing them around. And I realized, and I have never felt completely at home with
[16:03]the moms who stay home full time because they have time to network and to chat and spend time
[16:08]together. So they have a close knit group. And then there are the really busy high-powered,
[16:13]like career moms who, you know, work all the time and sort of have a support system for them.
[16:19]I was kind of this flexible schedule creative, but I also had a day job. I just never felt like I had
[16:26]school moms who were close friends. So anyway, I'm pushing the stroller around at this event. Everyone's
[16:30]talking. People seem happy laughing. And I realized all of a sudden that I had no thoughts in my head.
[16:36]I was like, who am I? Where did I go? I'm not thinking anything. I'm just pushing the stroller
[16:45]and looking at these screaming children. And it kind of woke me up because the realization I was
[16:53]like, this isn't me. I'm not this person pushing a stroller with no thoughts who just
[16:57]sudden shuffling around and like bad jeans. This is where did I go? And I think a lot of moms have
[17:02]that moment, you know, of sort of like, this has been great. I love being a mom. I love being
[17:07]wrapped up in my kids' lives. But then at some point I've gone too far and I've lost myself in
[17:13]these roles. And I think particularly if we're a wife and a mom and we have a job and we have a creative
[17:17]pursuit and we try to be a good friend. And you know, we show up for people. We have involved in
[17:22]charities. It's like we're so involved and we're playing so many roles that the kind of the
[17:27]meanness, the meanness of me, I think got kind of lost. Anyway, for me in that moment it was like,
[17:33]who am I? I need to get myself back. And I think that was the beginning for me to really start
[17:39]to ask questions. And I think that's why I wanted to write a memoir. You know, it's like, I need
[17:43]something that's deeply mine. You know, I need to feel like I have something to say.
[17:48]Anyway, so life now is it's in a lot of ways the same. You know, I'm still the same mom. I have,
[17:53]you know, my parents have had a more difficult time with the transition. And I'm sort of like,
[17:58]I'm not going to suddenly present as a different person. I'm still the same. You know,
[18:03]so things feel different. But in a lot of ways, the same, you know, doing the same stuff,
[18:07]working job, doing the writing the books, raising the kids. What is your day job
[18:13]beside from this? Yeah, I work in the TV business. And I do what we call business affairs,
[18:18]which I was a lawyer, went to law school and did, you know, legal for film and TV for many years
[18:23]and then crossed over to the business side. So I negotiate, I basically buy books for TV shows
[18:28]and negotiate the deals for writers and directors and actors. So business side of TV and then
[18:34]creative side of publishing. So I think, well, maybe I'll send you my memoir. And you can see
[18:39]what you think. I would love it. I would love it. And I'm anxiously awaiting to be clear.
[18:43]Well, we have, there are a lot of sort of thematic similarities in our stories of life,
[18:49]which went into literature. I didn't write a memoir. You know, you said, I didn't think,
[18:53]you know, I didn't want people to think I had, I was important enough. I felt like I needed to
[18:58]write the memoir too, not because I was important in any way. I wasn't, but just that there was
[19:01]something about the story I had to get out. Right? I feel like people were relieved to and all that.
[19:07]And, you know, also, I mean, I'm 45 now, but I made all these big life changes just before 40.
[19:14]And I always wonder, you know, it's like the sliding doors of my own life. What if I had stayed
[19:19]on that path? Like I'm on a radically different path. I certainly wouldn't be here doing a podcast
[19:24]talking to you. Do you know what I mean? Like there were so many experiences and people I've met
[19:28]and, you know, and then it just makes me think like all the people listening who can be inspired
[19:34]by a book like yours, like a house and fire. And the stories of people who, I mean, there's so
[19:39]many people, like you say, who are sleepwalking and feel trapped or just it's, you know, what was me?
[19:47]You know what I mean? Like, okay, everything's fine. But is it? But is it? And like, we only get this
[19:52]one chance. I don't know. We'll know. And I, I mean, I so appreciate, appreciate that about you,
[19:57]of sort of, and I can relate to this too. And I see it.
[20:00]Like, oh, I, I, that's, I get that.
[20:02]The sort of like, I came up with an idea today.
[20:05]I mean, I saw your, gonna bring back that,
[20:07]and I'm like, wait, it's sort of like,
[20:09]I came up with an idea today.
[20:10]There is no time like the present to do this thing.
[20:13]Cause I could be like, oh, that would be cool
[20:15]if I brought that podcast back.
[20:16]Maybe I'll do that next year when I'm less busy.
[20:18]It seems like I'm a little busy.
[20:20]I mean, Zivia once is never less busy,
[20:22]but it's sort of thing of like the moment is now.
[20:24]And this is my life I have.
[20:26]And I have to seize, you know, seize the moment.
[20:28]And I think for women,
[20:29]I mean, it was definitely true for me.
[20:31]40 was the thing.
[20:32]I mean, 40 was the year.
[20:34]I told my husband, I wanted a divorce.
[20:36]40 was the year, you know, I moved out.
[20:39]I mean, all these things I think happened to women
[20:42]at this point in life because it's this,
[20:44]this kind of reawakening for so many of us after we've done
[20:47]all the things that society was supposed to do.
[20:50]We got married.
[20:50]We earned money or did something to contribute to a family.
[20:54]And then we had children.
[20:56]And so it's like, now we're set.
[20:57]and we're going to ride that out for the rest of our lives.
[21:00]And for some people, I think that's perfectly satisfying.
[21:04]And the rest of us are like, oh, wait,
[21:05]but I'm happy I did those things,
[21:07]but there's so much more I need to do it.
[21:10]And I think for a lot of people,
[21:11]they can do it in the context of the existing marriage,
[21:13]you know, things just to point.
[21:15]But for me, I needed to make these changes.
[21:20]You know, I needed to make these changes
[21:21]in everyone and my family is more alive now.
[21:24]You know, we were all a little bit,
[21:26]even the kids, you know, the subtle sort of like deadness
[21:29]of a mom with no internal monologue.
[21:31]I think I mean, I just, anyway,
[21:33]people worry a lot about my kids,
[21:34]my kids are doing great.
[21:35]Yeah.
[21:37]I mean, I probably,
[21:38]when I told some people that I was first,
[21:41]you know, getting divorced or whatever,
[21:42]they were like, ah, but your kids, you know?
[21:45]And like, my kids are amazing right now.
[21:47]My kids are great.
[21:48]They're better than ever.
[21:49]Like, I mean, who knows, right?
[21:50]But I don't know if they're having a happy mother,
[21:54]happy fulfilled, like, you know, excited.
[21:57]Like, I wake up excited every day.
[21:59]Like, I can barely even sleep, you know?
[22:02]And, you know, that's not lost on kids.
[22:04]Like, and also the potential also
[22:06]that you can just do whatever.
[22:08]Not, I mean, and I don't mean it like that
[22:11]that came out wrong.
[22:11]But just that like, you know,
[22:13]you know, we're liberated.
[22:14]I mean, that women and their parents are there's a freedom
[22:18]there and not a freedom to, you know, behave badly
[22:21]or make bad choices or hurt people,
[22:23]but sort of that nothing, you're not stuck in life.
[22:27]And I, you know, even just the creative side of it, you know?
[22:31]Even just like, look, you can write a novel.
[22:34]Like, look what I just did.
[22:35]I just wrote this thing and now it's out in the world.
[22:37]Like, you guys can do this too.
[22:39]Like, if I could do what you can do it.
[22:41]Like, how, I mean, it's a powerful message.
[22:43]So anything we connect to, I think the people
[22:46]who are responding, you know, really well to my novel
[22:49]and the people who are responded to book ends,
[22:52]this idea of you're not trying to be aspirational
[22:55]in like a prescriptive way of like,
[22:57]what you should do if you're unhappy
[22:58]in your marriage is fall in love with the woman and leave.
[23:00]No, you're like, here's my unique story.
[23:02]And I don't mean, you know, it's not a memoir,
[23:04]but here's the slice of a character in her journey.
[23:08]And the thing you connect to is desire.
[23:11]And I don't necessarily even mean romantic desire.
[23:13]It's like, if you're a woman who decided
[23:15]what it was that she wanted, it wasn't what people told
[23:18]or what she wanted, what she should do.
[23:19]It's not the societal roles prescribed to her.
[23:23]Oh, this is a thing I want.
[23:25]Whether it's a new career, it's a person.
[23:28]It's like to go live in Paris, you know, whatever it is.
[23:32]Right.
[23:33]There's something that connects of like seeing a person
[23:35]identify what it is they want
[23:37]and who it is they really want to be.
[23:40]And I like, like you said, I think it trick happiness
[23:43]is contagious or content in it anyway.
[23:46]So I also think people respond a lot more
[23:49]to hearing a story, whether it's a novel or a memoir
[23:52]or just sitting there telling your story.
[23:54]Like that inspires more change, I think sometimes
[23:59]than like, here are the six steps
[24:02]to, you know, making your life better.
[24:04]People are too smart for that.
[24:06]You know, not just, I mean, that is good too
[24:08]because people need to know the path to achieving things,
[24:11]like not to rain on the parade of those
[24:14]prescriptive type things.
[24:15]But I do think there is something
[24:17]from the dawn of time, right?
[24:19]Where storytelling is the thing that connects us all
[24:24]in a way and really, you know, hits home.
[24:28]So I mean, that sounds so obvious and stupid.
[24:29]But no, I mean, but it doesn't.
[24:31]And I think that the grayness of stories
[24:35]that things can't be black and white in a story,
[24:37]it's not as simple as Du X, Y, and Z
[24:40]and all these amazing things will happen.
[24:42]I mean, there's a line in the novel where Jane says
[24:44]to merit, you know, there's beauty and loss
[24:46]in every direction.
[24:47]And I think that that's true in life
[24:50]when we make decisions.
[24:51]And it's that you have to accept the loss with the beauty.
[24:54]And so I think what stories do for us
[24:56]is they allow us to really sit in the nuance of,
[25:00]there's no right or wrong, at least in my perspective
[25:04]of what merit should do.
[25:05]It's just what she did.
[25:06]And it's just who she is.
[25:07]And you know, sometimes we become the worst of ourselves
[25:11]in order to eventually be the best.
[25:12]And you know, I believe that about people.
[25:14]And you know, one at one event, you know,
[25:16]a reader raised her hand and said, you know,
[25:19]I love this book and I love to merit was when she was with Jane,
[25:22]but when she was home with her kids and with her husband,
[25:24]I just really didn't like her.
[25:27]And I was like, great.
[25:29]Glad you had a emotional reaction.
[25:30]Also, merit didn't really like herself.
[25:33]So at the point, she didn't want to be like the whiny nag,
[25:36]like shuffling dishes and snapping at her kids
[25:38]and rewarding them with TV when they haven't earned it
[25:40]just to make them like be quiet.
[25:42]You know, but that's her life, at least it is in my house.
[25:47]It's we're not always exemplars.
[25:49]We were human.
[25:50]And I think there's something beautiful in that.
[25:53]So anyway, totally.
[25:55]Okay, I know we're on a set of time,
[25:57]but I feel like I want to like sit and have coffee with you
[25:59]or whatever.
[26:00]Maybe we'll have to continue the offline in some ways.
[26:03]Get up.
[26:04]Are you working on another novel or project now?
[26:07]And then what's your advice for aspiring authors?
[26:10]I am working on a new project now.
[26:13]It is the hardest thing I've ever done
[26:16]because it's not unlike like a house on fire.
[26:19]This one is dancing in front of me sort of illusively
[26:22]as I'm trying to grasp it and be like,
[26:24]wait, what is it?
[26:25]What is it?
[26:26]I'm trying to let this story idea just reveal itself.
[26:32]And I'm trying to be very patient.
[26:34]It's the story of a woman who like merit,
[26:37]but different her whole world falls apart.
[26:39]And for this character, it was not of her own doing.
[26:42]And she's left to kind of figure out her own personal history
[26:45]and who she wants to be.
[26:46]But the key for this book I'm working on
[26:48]is the backdrop of California and using colonialism
[26:54]and how religion impacted the history of California
[26:58]and indigenous people and how that's a metaphor
[27:02]and a parallel to the patriarchy.
[27:05]And women's bodies are colonized by male-dominated society,
[27:10]just like California was colonized by male-dominated
[27:14]religious society and just the parallels between those things.
[27:18]I just wanna look at ways in which we assimilate
[27:22]as women and as conquered people
[27:25]and what that does to culture.
[27:26]So that's the book.
[27:27]It's the monster, but I'm working on it.
[27:30]And my advice to aspiring writers
[27:32]would be, you know, believe in the story.
[27:37]And I've never actually given this advice,
[27:38]but it just came to me now.
[27:40]It believe that the story is worthy
[27:44]and exists outside of you.
[27:47]And that you're not responsible to figure out what it is.
[27:51]It's responsible to tell it the best that you can.
[27:54]And I think the problem with that is I get in my own head,
[27:57]I'm trying to muscle it.
[27:58]I'm trying to figure out, I'm gonna figure out.
[28:00]And every time, like every experience of writing anything,
[28:04]whether a short essay or a novel, it reveals itself.
[28:07]Just if you sit there and you're patient
[28:10]and you're a student of the idea
[28:12]and you ask it questions, you know,
[28:14]it'll reveal itself.
[28:14]It's not really up to you.
[28:16]Your job is to just button share, right?
[28:19]As many words as you can
[28:20]and then come back the next day and do it again.
[28:22]And just trust that the story will live, you know,
[28:26]whether you figure it out or not.
[28:28]It'll figure it itself out.
[28:30]I love them.
[28:31]As my husband says,
[28:32]it's all unfold organically.
[28:35]It feels great honey.
[28:36]Yeah.
[28:37]Everything has to shake.
[28:38]Everything has to shake.
[28:39]Well, Lauren, this has been so fun
[28:42]and I'm so glad to have, you know, stumbled on you
[28:47]and your book will not stumble.
[28:48]I mean, you know what I mean.
[28:50]Connected with both the book and the person.
[28:53]And anyway, thank you.
[28:55]This has been really interesting.
[28:56]Thank you for that.
[28:57]Thank you.
[28:58]My pleasure.
[28:59]Bye.
[29:01]Thanks for listening to this episode
[29:03]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:05]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens
[29:08]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:10]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[29:13]and sign up for my virtual book club
[29:14]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:17]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[29:19]for the Sound Editing.
[29:21]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:22]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.