Matthew Quick, WE ARE THE LIGHT: A Novel
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[0:58]Matthew quick is the author of We Are the Light a novel Matthew is the New York Times best-selling author of the silver linings
[1:04]Playbook which was made into an Oscar-winning film the good luck of right now love may fail
[1:10]The reason you're alive and four young adult novels his work has been translated into more than 30 languages
[1:16]received a pen Hemingway award honorable mention and was a Los Angeles Times book prize finalist a New York Times book review
[1:22]Editor's choice and more the Hollywood Reporter has named him one of Hollywood's 25 most powerful authors
[1:28]Matthew lives with his wife the novelist Alicia Vasette on North Carolina's outer banks
[1:33]Welcome Matthew. Thank you so much for coming on mom's don't have time to read books to discuss
[1:37]We are the light your latest novel
[1:40]Thanks so much for having me. It's absolute pleasure
[1:42]First of all your book is funny at the same time as being devastating and thought provoking
[1:49]It has like all the good things. Oh my gosh when
[1:53]When Lucas is like putting the mail through the slots and being like well, I'm just you know, I just happen to be walking by
[1:59]So I'm gonna just put these letters here
[2:01]We just like all these things I I was like chuckling and then the next paragraph would be something horrific
[2:06]So it made for quite a ride beautiful, but amazing
[2:11]Thank you. Thank you. It's great to hear. I'm glad you took something from it
[2:14]So why don't you tell listeners a little bit about
[2:16]What we are the light is about and and how you came up with this idea? Well, we are the light is a novel about a small town
[2:24]By the name of majestic in Pennsylvania that experiences this horrific tragedy in a movie house and out of the aftermath our hero Lucas good game
[2:35]He reaches out to his analyst his young in analyst who abandoned him on page one
[2:40]So we start to write these letters to his analysts and as we see the letters unfold
[2:45]We really get to look at how Lucas's psyche is protecting him by using story and really holding him in this very careful way
[2:54]And he constructs this narrative that is like almost like a womb for him
[2:58]Why he heals and we get to see how the town rather than puncturing that that protective bubble really holds it in his very gentle way
[3:07]Until Lucas can can heal his healing process can finish I came up with this novel
[3:12]I've been trying to write this novel since 2014
[3:16]The shooting and Aurora Colorado
[3:19]Really affected me. I'm a big movie goer and movies has always been like a church to me. It's like a sanctuary of story
[3:27]And I was also a teacher and it's interesting because
[3:31]Columbine didn't affect me as much as the movie theater and I remember going to the theater afterwards and for the first time
[3:37]I like looking over my shoulder and you know checking exits who's sitting next to me and so
[3:43]I did this event in
[3:44]Ambular Pennsylvania where I actually spoke at a movie theater in front of a packed house
[3:50]And I remember during the talk which went really well
[3:53]Addressing this wonderful community who is loving and kind and that that part of me was right there
[3:57]But there was another part of my brain that was thinking am I safe?
[4:01]It was this really weird
[4:04]Almost paranoia that kind of developed about movie houses and I always say with my mental health problems
[4:10]I take them into the creative writing wrestling ring and try to rest them down onto the page
[4:14]But the second part of this story I worked on that novel for years
[4:17]And I just could never get it right and then I got sober in four years ago and in my great reward for getting sober
[4:25]It was crippling writer's block
[4:27]And uh, congratulations
[4:29]It was wonderful
[4:31]And ego fought that really hard, you know, ego said you can just bull your way through
[4:36]You can loan wolf it just sit down at the computer every single day and try to write
[4:41]And I would work every day for eight hours and sometimes I wouldn't be able to write a single sentence
[4:46]And a year would go by and I'd have 10 pages and I would show them to my wife is a novelist
[4:51]And she'd come back to me almost in tears because not because they were good
[4:55]But because you were so afraid that I just had completely lost their ability to write and so
[5:00]After three years of banging my head against my desk and not succeeding
[5:05]ego was completely defeated and I entered into Jungian analysis
[5:10]And very early on in my analysis
[5:13]I became very attached to my analyst and it's very profound and scary way
[5:19]And he was helping me I knew that
[5:22]But this sick part of me kept thinking oh when is he gonna abandon me when is he gonna disappear
[5:26]And what happens if he gets sick and he goes away
[5:29]And so I took that paranoia to the creative writing wrestling ring and I thought
[5:34]Wait a minute what if I combine this with my movie house idea and that's how the novel was born
[5:39]By combining there's two things
[5:41]And when I sat down and started to write we had a light and I wrote this first two words dear Karl
[5:47]It was like a magic spell my writers block had been lifted and I couldn't stop writing
[5:52]I was writing 10, 12 hours a day just go go go go for this six weeks of bliss
[5:58]It's like being able to breathe again after four years of not breathing
[6:02]But it was very strange and you know my analysts would say that
[6:06]Psyche shut me down until I would go through this process and I was
[6:10]Emotionally spiritually mentally ready to write this book and I think that that's true
[6:16]Wow in your relationship with your analyst did he say I love you because that was another really funny line
[6:22]Can you guys never happen with Lucas and his therapist?
[6:25]I made a rule that I'm not going to talk specifically about things that happened in my analysis
[6:30]But I will say that the novel is very much inspired by my experience with my analyst who didn't abandon me
[6:38]Thank goodness, but I think that's as much as I want to say
[6:43]I did not
[6:44]I don't mind you asking. Yeah, well there were so many parts about surviving a tragedy that we're in here from
[6:51]Lucas feeling sort of shunned a little bit by the survivors because he didn't want to get into the activism
[6:56]That was required or he felt it was required afterwards, which I thought was interesting and how do you be the right kind of survivor in your community
[7:04]When you're all still there every day
[7:06]If you don't sort of drink the cool aid on wanting to fight
[7:10]Like he he very much didn't want to fight in fact his relationship with the brother of the
[7:16]perpetrator of all this is sort of ostracized him in a way
[7:19]So can you talk about sort of this notion of like how do you be how do you be the right kind of survivor?
[7:24]What does that mean or are you so do you have to be part of this whole group if you feel differently than everybody else?
[7:30]Well, I'll start by saying that as an introvert
[7:33]I face this dilemma all the time because I think as an introvert a lot of very complicated things go on inside me
[7:40]All the time that are very private and I think we live in an extroverted world and particularly lately with social media
[7:47]We're expected to extrovert everything all the time and when it comes to activism sometimes
[7:53]There's great pressure to you know say the right thing join the right side and I think
[7:59]Sometimes a little more complicated than that sometimes there's a lot of things going on in people
[8:03]But there's a quote from young and that I love and I am not someone who memorizes quotes
[8:08]So I will summarize it now. I know I will get it wrong
[8:10]But the gist of it is
[8:11]Where there is love there's no will to power and when there's willpower
[8:15]There can be no love because the two are the opposites of each other
[8:18]They're the shadow of one another and so I think that Lucas his response to the tragedy is all out love and
[8:25]Sandra coattles responses all out power and
[8:29]Because they're the shadow of one another they're very attracted to each other
[8:33]Like Lucas once Sandra did join the movie crusade Sandra once in to join the actors
[8:37]And so in some ways they're kind of the same person or just the shadow of each other
[8:42]And so why I was writing of course I was inhabiting Lucas's mind
[8:47]So I was kind of on team Lucas
[8:49]But as someone who steps out of the novel and not a writer anymore just observing
[8:53]I'm very sympathetic to both, you know
[8:56]I completely understand why Sandra feels that the way that she does
[9:00]But I also feel again as an introvert
[9:04]We live in a time
[9:06]Where it's very prescriptive
[9:07]And we say everyone has to act this way everyone has to have the same response to a tragedy
[9:13]Everyone has to have the same political opinion
[9:16]And I think that that is is dangerous because we relegate the opposite side to shadow
[9:21]Or we other the opposite side and so I really wanted to write a novel where the response to this problem
[9:27]Or my character's response was this radical love and this radical inclusion
[9:32]Which feels in some ways transgressive and in the current climate
[9:36]Yes, but I think that there's a hunger for that
[9:39]And as I raised this to consciousness through the novel
[9:43]I see people responding in ways that let me know that
[9:46]There are a lot of people out there that are hungry for an inclusive kind of love
[9:51]Particularly men I would say
[9:53]There's a lot of men out there that are hurting that are looking for a way to find the ability to be loved
[10:00]and to love other people.
[10:02]That's beautiful.
[10:03]And it's really important that you say that.
[10:04]So that's great.
[10:06]Thank you.
[10:06]Lucas' love transcends this world, actually,
[10:10]and goes to his recently deceased wife, Darcy.
[10:15]Darcy, right?
[10:16]Yep, Darcy.
[10:17]Yeah, Darcy, yes.
[10:18]It's a good one.
[10:19]It's like he said one time, Dar, sometimes I
[10:21]draw off the last syllable or something.
[10:23]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[10:25]But he's really convinced that he is with an angel
[10:29]and that there are feathers that he collects
[10:32]and puts in a baggie that he says this is proof that she
[10:36]is here.
[10:36]And he feels bad for other people who don't see that,
[10:42]and feels like he would be cheating on his wife
[10:45]if, you know, for the nights that other things start
[10:48]to happen.
[10:49]Talk about that.
[10:50]And what are your, if you feel comfortable,
[10:52]like your views on what happens after death
[10:55]or what you were trying to show by what this relationship
[10:59]was that he continued having with his wife after she
[11:01]passed away?
[11:03]Well, I'll start by saying what happens after death
[11:05]is probably above my pay grade.
[11:08]I'm not going to make any problems.
[11:10]I'm not going to make any problems.
[11:11]I wish I knew the data.
[11:13]But I think Lucas, you know, as we learn through the novel,
[11:16]has a very complicated relationship with his mother.
[11:19]And he has a very complicated relationship
[11:21]with the feminine.
[11:22]And Darcy comes into his life as a young man
[11:26]and really helps him form a new type of relationship
[11:29]with the feminine that is very healing and beautiful
[11:33]and positive.
[11:35]And she really holds him in this way
[11:37]that is very healing to his masculinity.
[11:40]And so when he very suddenly loses her, he's in crisis.
[11:44]And so he elevates his wife psychologically
[11:47]to the role of the divine feminine.
[11:49]You know, she becomes a goddess to him, literally.
[11:51]She's an angel.
[11:53]And that archetype is something
[11:55]that he needs in order for his psyche not to fracture.
[11:59]And so of course Darcy's best friend, Joe comes in
[12:02]and starts to help him reorient to the feminine in the,
[12:07]I don't want to say the real world, but in the physical world.
[12:09]You know, because Darcy exists in the mental world.
[12:12]But it's this question of these powers
[12:14]that are greater than us.
[12:15]And, you know, young was very curious about this.
[12:18]You know, whether we're talking about archetypes
[12:20]or whether we're talking about the luminous,
[12:22]the divine.
[12:23]And so Lucas, and I think most people
[12:26]who go through horrific tragedy,
[12:28]like these forces that are greater than us to send upon us.
[12:32]And the only way that we can fight back against them
[12:35]is to find something that is of that level.
[12:38]And I know for me with my sobriety early sobriety,
[12:42]it was really soft to fight that
[12:44]because it was this huge thing.
[12:46]Until I started thinking through the young and analysis
[12:49]about the archetypes and the power within me
[12:53]and the connection to psyche and the connection to the self,
[12:56]then I could start fighting back
[12:57]because I had something as powerful.
[12:59]Ego can't fight those things.
[13:02]Ego is very brittle.
[13:03]And, you know, so Lucas, I'm sure we're very much,
[13:06]as Ego would very much want to say,
[13:07]I'm powerful enough to stand up to this level of tragedy.
[13:11]But of course it's not.
[13:12]None of our egos are that strong that can withstand that.
[13:16]So we need something more.
[13:18]And I think that's where love comes in.
[13:19]I think that's where the defined feminine comes in.
[13:21]I think that's where community comes in.
[13:23]I think his relationships with other men,
[13:25]particular Isaiah, his really positive masculinity
[13:29]with these men who love him unabashedly,
[13:32]who touch him, who hug him, who tell them they love him,
[13:35]who act in ways that are incredibly positive.
[13:38]All of this is really necessary for Lucas to begin to heal.
[13:42]And in many ways, even though I didn't suffer a tragedy
[13:45]of that magnitude ever in my life,
[13:47]getting sober and kind of having my psyche fracture
[13:51]and realizing that I had to reinvent myself
[13:54]and get to know myself again,
[13:55]was this really tremendous thing?
[13:57]And I had to rely on the kindness and love of my wife,
[14:00]my closest guy friends really rallied around me
[14:03]and showed up repeatedly everywhere,
[14:06]every week in very simple ways,
[14:08]having lunch, phone calls, we started movie club.
[14:12]But those things and those acts of love
[14:15]that steady showing up every week
[14:18]really held my psyche together in a way
[14:20]that got me through the writer's block
[14:22]and got me through early sobriety.
[14:24]And the beginning of that felt like I was against,
[14:29]these huge forces I didn't understand.
[14:32]And so those simple things,
[14:33]and those people rallying around me,
[14:35]and then the work I did through Jungian analysis
[14:37]really gave me the tools to kind of fight back
[14:39]against these, let's felt like incredibly dark forces
[14:42]at the time.
[14:43]So you've essentially written a thank you to.
[14:45]Yes, yeah, I think even in letter form, it's perfect.
[14:49]Yeah, and I think, you know, I think it's a thank you letter.
[14:53]You know, I don't want everyone to be didactic
[14:55]when I'm writing fiction,
[14:57]but in some ways it's an instruction manual too,
[15:00]you know, for these times.
[15:02]And I didn't mean it to be that way,
[15:03]but as I look back and I usually write in kind of
[15:08]a fever dream, you know, I'm an intuitive creative.
[15:10]So when I write, I just kind of let go.
[15:12]that almost feels like channeling.
[15:14]And then of course I go back and cycle analyzed myself
[15:16]and you know, my analyst reads my book and told me
[15:19]what I was doing.
[15:20]And you realize that wow, like I was very unconscious
[15:23]of a lot of the material that was moving through this novel,
[15:26]but the unconscious was also sorting all of this stuff
[15:30]for me as well.
[15:31]So the writing process was very much a healing process
[15:34]for me.
[15:35]I felt that at the time,
[15:37]because it felt like this self was a line
[15:39]with this project, so it was very euphoric.
[15:41]But I didn't really understand what was happening
[15:44]in real time.
[15:45]It's only a couple of years later that I look at it
[15:48]and I can see what psyche was doing,
[15:50]what the unconscious was doing,
[15:52]and how my ego kind of got knocked off line
[15:54]to allow this book to move through me.
[15:57]Well, so interesting.
[15:59]I feel like maybe your therapist needs to analyze lots of books.
[16:02]Yeah, if you're a novelist,
[16:05]you need to know that if you are an analysis
[16:08]or you're in therapy,
[16:09]but they will get a lot of information out of your work.
[16:12]Wow.
[16:13]And those of us with the right eyes and ears,
[16:15]to see an ear, I think we could do that to any artist, really.
[16:18]I mean, this could be your side hustle, you know?
[16:21]And a lot of the other ones.
[16:23]Another novel.
[16:24]Yeah, I don't know.
[16:25]I don't know if you feel comfortable talking about this,
[16:27]but was there a moment, like a bottom type of moment
[16:30]or a moment where you decided to get sober
[16:32]that, or did you try repeatedly
[16:35]and like what was it that led you at this point
[16:38]four years ago?
[16:39]I've flirted with sobriety for a while,
[16:41]and I think in my early 40s, I had some health scares.
[16:45]I went to the doctor and I had really high blood pressure.
[16:48]I was about 60 pounds heavier than I am now.
[16:51]And he told me that I had gout,
[16:53]and I thought, wait a minute.
[16:54]People who get gout are 80 years old,
[16:56]like how could I possibly have that?
[16:58]There was another moment too,
[16:59]where we were at the Wright Brothers Memorial,
[17:01]which is a couple of miles down the road from where I live,
[17:04]it's this flat open space.
[17:05]And the course of Memorial is like straight up
[17:07]and basically a whitening rod.
[17:09]And so the whitening came and it's always risky
[17:13]in the outer banks.
[17:13]You got to get in.
[17:14]And so I started to try to run to the car
[17:17]and I ran about 20 feet and I realized I couldn't run anymore.
[17:20]And it was this moment where I thought, okay,
[17:22]this is, this has got to stop.
[17:25]And there was another moment too,
[17:26]where I'd gone on vacation and people had taken pictures of me.
[17:30]And I looked at them and I literally didn't recognize myself.
[17:34]I thought, who is that first?
[17:35]And I thought, oh, that's you.
[17:36]And so was this moment where I realized how kind of,
[17:40]just out of control, I had gotten with it.
[17:43]It was never a rock bottom moment
[17:45]where I woke up in a gutter.
[17:46]I got fired from my job, right?
[17:48]It was more just kind of,
[17:50]I wasn't seeing what was happening
[17:53]because alcohol is something that numbs.
[17:56]It in alcohol is kind of like a womb.
[17:58]It numbs you, it puts you in this very passive state.
[18:02]And I enjoyed that for a couple of decades
[18:04]until I didn't anymore.
[18:06]And so when, how did silver linings playbook fit into everything?
[18:10]The success of that, the movie that was that a celebration?
[18:14]Like, did that amplify the negative forces
[18:17]or was that like how did that affect your life really?
[18:20]Well, I'll be, you know, from a career standpoint,
[18:23]it was amazing.
[18:24]Well, yeah, no, I mean, you're emotional.
[18:26]I mean, your mental health and all that.
[18:28]But from a mental health standpoint,
[18:30]it was very resilient to go from an unknown writer
[18:33]to talking to Harvey Weinstein on the phone every day
[18:36]and having him send any places
[18:38]and tell me to write things and do things.
[18:40]So that end of itself just dealing with Harvey
[18:42]was a mentally straining situation
[18:46]for all the reasons you might imagine.
[18:48]But also too, you know, when you're in the MFA,
[18:51]grad school, you have all these friends
[18:52]and you're all writers and you're all in the same place.
[18:55]And then you get a movie deal
[18:56]and though you're no longer in the same place
[18:58]and you don't have peers anymore.
[19:00]And of course, my friends were very gracious and wonderful
[19:03]but they don't know what it's like to do that.
[19:06]And so it's very disorienting
[19:09]and expectations were really high
[19:10]and I'd never been media trained.
[19:13]So all of a sudden I'm in a room
[19:16]doing satellite interviews for hours.
[19:18]And I feel that I did the best I could at the time.
[19:21]And I think that I did well,
[19:23]but I was also, you know, on Clonopin
[19:25]and I was drinking heavily
[19:26]and, you know, all of the things that I hadn't dealt with
[19:29]and analysis were all there bubbling up
[19:32]and I just was pushing it down and pushing it down.
[19:35]And I do think that ratcheted things up.
[19:38]And I remember going to the Oscars
[19:40]and just feeling so much anxiety to the point
[19:43]where I just wanted to leave.
[19:45]But the funny thing was that there are plenty
[19:47]of extremely famous people that I won't name names
[19:50]that looked exactly like I did when the cameras were off.
[19:54]And so it was one of these things
[19:55]that you think you know what you see
[19:58]when you're seeing on TV.
[20:00]in the movies. And then you see what it's really like behind the scenes. And it's a very, very
[20:05]different experience. Those people work extremely hard and they're in under incredible amounts of
[20:10]pressure that I think the general public doesn't appreciate. And my level was nowhere near what,
[20:16]you know, the A-listers were going through. But it was one of those moments where you realize that
[20:21]you're so privileged to be there. And everybody is looking at you as though, like you've
[20:27]quote unquote made it. And yet I felt like I was falling apart inside. So it was this very
[20:32]strange separation between what people were seeing on social media and what was really going on
[20:37]privately with me. And so maintaining that persona, if you will, took a lot of bandwidth. And I
[20:44]think that kind of led to my crash as well. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. People always think, you know,
[20:51]grass is always greener or whatever. Like if only our movie star, if only this, but people don't know.
[20:56]No, and I think everybody has their own private battles. They're going through whether you're
[21:00]an A-lister in Hollywood or, you know, the person that lives down the street, you know, we all
[21:04]have that drama in going on in our head. Yeah. You all have hurts. We all have pains, you know. So
[21:11]well, just because your famous doesn't mean you're not like a person. I think people forget
[21:14]that famous people are people. I think too. And I think the other thing that I've thought a lot about
[21:21]is how do you get the drive to become famous? Or how did I, speaking from personal experience,
[21:26]how did I get the drive to become a New York Times bestseller or to go to the Oscars? And I
[21:32]think that it was, it was born the engine of that was tremendous pain. You know, it's psychological
[21:37]pain and trying to prove my worth, trying to figure out who I am, trying to understand why it was
[21:44]that, you know, some people could go into a high school and teach for 20 years and feel fine. And for
[21:49]me, I went in and felt like my head was going to explode. Like, why was that? What was going on with
[21:54]me? And so that drive to figure that out really is what created the art. And so in some ways, it's
[22:01]to gift an curse. And so a lot of these genius actors or directors, like, they have that
[22:06]engine going on as well. And that's not what we see when we see just the glitz and the glamour,
[22:12]you know, but I think most creative types, they pay a price for, for, you know, the spark that,
[22:18]that allows them to put something on the page or up on the screen or to inhabit a character.
[22:24]And oftentimes people are quick to admire the so-called rewards of that, but they're not so
[22:30]quick to acknowledge the price of that. And I think that's my analyst always says about anything
[22:36]that I do. Like, are you willing to pay the price for that? And I think that's not something that
[22:40]we really talk about openly in the current zeitgeist. But there's always a price.
[22:45]I feel like there's a so obvious and politics to be on, not that I want to talk about politics,
[22:50]but just the personal cost and all the things you have to be willing to sacrifice has never been
[22:56]more obvious than some of the recent events. But it's absolutely true. Do you feel like now that
[23:02]you've done all this work, you can point to the pain points of your own life that led you
[23:08]down these paths? Like, do you feel like you've processed it all and you're like, okay, it was
[23:13]a combination of X, Y, and Z. And that's kind of what did it or is that overly simplistic?
[23:18]I don't think it's overly simplistic. I think it's the work of a lifetime. So there's a moment
[23:24]early on in my analysis. So I had a couple months under my belt and I said to my analyst,
[23:30]are we almost done? Am I going to be able to write? I feel like we've done a lot of work here.
[23:35]And he's just very wisely said, well, I don't know. When I did my analysis, it took 20 years.
[23:41]But you might think yours is going to take two months. It seems a little
[23:46]brazen to say that. But we can explore and then I realize I needed to come to this with more
[23:52]humility. I think I have learned a lot about my own personal psyche and my pain and what was
[23:59]driving. And I can look back. I don't know if I'm going to get into all of this right here.
[24:03]No, no, I don't mean I just wondered if you had figured it out, not that I want you to share it.
[24:08]I mean, that's not what I wasn't going for that. Is it possible to pinpoint,
[24:14]you know, we all obviously have so much that makes up who we are today. And it's just
[24:19]yeah. And I think it's you know, it's pale on your layers. And again, it's the work of a lifetime.
[24:24]And I think that can sound daunting. You know, like we'll never get, but then there's always
[24:28]something to get up and do tomorrow. You know, there's always there's always more work to do.
[24:32]So I look at it in a positive way. And how are you feeling about
[24:36]work going forward? Are you still able to write like, did did the spigot close after this novel
[24:41]came out? Or is it still dropping? Or are you is it pouring out? I will knock on wood here because
[24:47]I don't want to jinx anything, but I actually just finished my my next novel yesterday. So
[24:53]I'm very happy. I got the rough trap down before the book tour. And so that moment. Thank you.
[25:00]Yeah. So it's still going. Can you say anything about that book? No, I cannot. Okay. All right.
[25:05]Good try. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I'm really happy for you. That's good. Thank you.
[25:11]Thank you. Like, there's always the sphere that, you know, the well will dry up again.
[25:15]Oh, they're still that fear. I'm delighted to hear that. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[25:21]I think the best advice is to not try to be someone else and not try to be the thing that
[25:30]your agent or whoever is trying to make you be, but to get quiet, to go inside and do the work,
[25:38]to get to know yourself the best that you can. And then ask your soul or your psyche like,
[25:44]what is the story that wants to come through me? And I remember doing the MFA and having very
[25:51]brilliant and wonderful teachers and they would tell me, I try this or try it. And I would do
[25:55]all of it. Almost like a workbook because I could learn. But I wrote the Civilianics Playbook
[26:01]in secret and I didn't show it to anyone because that was the thing I that was going to be me.
[26:06]And so I think you need to be humble enough to learn from other people and glean from the masters,
[26:13]but you also have to have a sense of self and know when to break away and do the thing that
[26:20]you're meant to do. And then to find the people who get that thing and love it and will help
[26:25]grow it. I think that I also think another great piece of advice that was given to me early on was
[26:32]be professional. And I think to be grateful and to really be good to the people that come around and
[26:38]shake your hand, shake their hand back and staying humble. It's hard, you know, over the long haul,
[26:43]you know, and if you don't stay humble, you will be humble. And I've learned that, you know,
[26:48]my writers black taught me that. So stay humble work hard and know who you are.
[26:52]My last question, do you feel more comfortable now going to the movies?
[26:56]I do. Yeah, I would say that I feel more comfortable going out in general through my analysis.
[27:02]You know, there was an early sobriety. I became very hermit-like and I would only go into the
[27:08]woods and run and that's in my house. And so I branched out next week, I'm going to be on a plane
[27:13]every single day. So it's going to be a, I know it's going to be a big transition for me,
[27:18]but I've done a lot of work to prepare for that and I'm feeling good about it.
[27:22]I had a therapist when I was telling them how little I like to leave my house. She was like,
[27:26]I feel like you're actually borderline agoraphobic. And I was like, I thought I just liked being home,
[27:32]you know, I just remember it's like being home too. The fine line.
[27:38]That is, yeah. All right. Well, congratulations on your next book and share the light and I wish you
[27:43]all the best on tour. Thank you. All right. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye.
[27:51]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[27:55]follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for
[28:00]my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom
[28:05]every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing.
[28:10]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.