Elizabeth McCracken, THE HERO OF THIS BOOK: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms. Don't have time to read books
[0:10]It is a daily podcast
[0:12]365 days a year and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career
[0:18]Their book their life and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself
[0:24]Although I wasn't when I started this podcast and you can get my new memoir book ends
[0:29]A memoir of love, loss, and literature wherever books are sold starting July 1st and my children's book prints is charming
[0:36]You can learn more about me at zimbyones.com
[0:39]But really you're here to learn more about the authors and that is what we're going to do
[0:43]Also be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the zcast podcast network
[0:49]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well
[0:58]Elizabeth McCracken is the author of the hero of this book a novel
[1:02]She's the author of three books of short stories one memoir and four novels
[1:06]Including this her most recent the hero of this book. She lives in Austin, Texas
[1:10]Welcome Elizabeth. Thank you so much for coming on moms
[1:13]Don't have time to read books to discuss the hero of this book
[1:16]I'll light it to be here very very meta title here the hero of the book and then
[1:21]Tell listeners about what this book is about how you came up with this especially now and like why why this book?
[1:29]So it's a novel it says it's a novel right on the cover. That's legally binding
[1:38]The narrator of the book is walking around London and
[1:42]remembering her mother who died here before and also remembering trips that she went on
[1:49]She went to London with her mother
[1:52]That sentence doesn't scan, but I'm not gonna go back
[1:55]That's great. No doubt
[1:58]You guys know what I mean
[2:00]and her mother lived into her early 80s walked with canes walked with increasing difficulty
[2:06]The older she got and she just sort of thinking about their relationship and her mother's life as she walks and why did I write the book?
[2:14]Yeah, why did you read the link? Well, you see I was once in London walking around
[2:19]thinking about my mother and the trips I've taken with her and my mother was a woman who walked with cane
[2:25]And with increasing difficulty as she got older so the book is
[2:30]The way I think about it now is that it's a novel about writing a memoir. It's definitely a novel
[2:36]there are made-up characters in it and
[2:40]And I wrote it as a novel
[2:42]I didn't write it and tried to decide whether it was a novel or a memoir
[2:45]But the mother is undoubtedly my mother. Her name is eventually in the book and
[2:51]There's just nobody who could be mistaken for my mother. So was the estate sale part did that happen?
[2:57]That did happen. I would say most of the events in the past happened a bunch of the stuff that happens in the walking around
[3:04]London did not so when were you writing this were you writing this in the pandemic reflecting or when did you did you write it beforehand?
[3:12]Or at what point in the rest of life did you work on it?
[3:15]So I started it takes post in 2019 and I started writing it in 2019, which is good because that could actually walk around London
[3:23]possible, right? And I wrote a big chunk of it and then
[3:29]Discovered not discovered was reminded by my wonderful publisher that I had promised to submit a collection of short stories for a deadline and
[3:37]I guess I hadn't taken it seriously or
[3:40]They said no seriously. We would like to publish the book that you said you'd like to have us published
[3:46]So here's your deadline
[3:48]So I had to put it aside and write a few short stories and then
[3:52]Honestly, just about as I was about to pick it out
[3:54]It was in about March of
[3:56]2020 and then I like a lot of people I know I didn't get anything written for a few months
[4:02]but then
[4:03]August rolled around and I had a leave for my job as a teacher and
[4:07]One, I knew that I would hate myself if I didn't get actual
[4:13]Major writing done while I was off and also my husband Edward Kerry and I he's also a writer and also an illustrator
[4:21]I'm not an illustrator that was confusing
[4:24]He is also he is a writer as well as being an illustrator
[4:28]We rented a little because we look at a small bungalow in Texas off the with some very large furniture
[4:34]We rented a little house and somebody's backyard and split it so that he because he was teaching
[4:40]And our kids were on zoom school and so we split the day and he would go and teach and I would go and write
[4:48]And that's when I mostly finished it
[4:50]I worked on it through 2021 because I had some a few hairbrained ideas that didn't pan out for the book
[4:56]Interesting how old are your kids?
[4:59]They're 15 and about to be 14 now
[5:02]so they were
[5:04]12 and 11 when the pandemic started
[5:08]I have 15 year old twins. Oh, you do wow. Yeah, and some little kids, but yeah, I was going through that same
[5:16]Same moments. Can we backtrack for a minute and talk about how you got started as a writer and a teacher and all the great things that you do
[5:24]Sure, I was one of those kids who always wrote and had very few other skills
[5:29]I mean quite seriously. I'm very good at sitting down and always have been
[5:35]And I wrote through high school and college and sort of didn't know
[5:40]What I really wanted to write whether I wanted to be. I thought it might be a poet
[5:44]I tried my hand to play writing that I was a very poor playwright
[5:47]and then I started to
[5:49]think I'd apply for graduate school and creative writing and
[5:52]Didn't the poetry and fiction and gotten in fiction and sort of never never look back and had very
[5:59]Luckily met my agent Henry do now when I was in graduate school
[6:04]I'm and then had solva book of stories and another great stroke of luck is that
[6:10]I got a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincen which is seven months
[6:15]And all you're supposed to do is write and one of the other fellows there was Anne Patchett who came in and has
[6:22]You know the greatest work ethic of any writer. I know and I
[6:27]I've said this before. I do think that I understood that I couldn't be friends with Anne if I wasted the seven months of
[6:35]Our fellowship that I really had to I had to work and her friendship was so important to me
[6:41]I just I loved your instinct mind that I actually do think of that in terms of getting work done was just a huge
[6:47]Huge lucky break for me. So basically put a friendship on the line
[6:51]And that you can get anything done. Well, I tell my graduate students that my biggest tip is to make friends with the hardest working writers
[6:59]You know because they will they will throw you on
[7:03]I love that so what was the first
[7:07]Big success that you had and that you were like, oh, maybe this could be my career
[7:12]You know, it's funny. I think
[7:14]Any writer's career you think continually
[7:17]Maybe this is really going to be it and then you think it's all over
[7:21]So I have this thoughts
[7:24]regularly. I
[7:26]sold my
[7:28]first coaching short stories
[7:30]My last week of graduate school and that was
[7:34]That is exciting
[7:35]So when you sit down to write tell me about what that looks like for you at non pandemic writing that or whatever
[7:42]But do you know where your characters are going?
[7:45]Do you like follow them along and they lead you places or are you like this is what I'm doing getting to line?
[7:52]It's changed over the years and
[7:54]At this point weirdly
[7:56]I'm writing a short story
[7:59]I know what's gonna happen. I sit down. I think about it for a long time
[8:03]Maybe even without taking notes and I sit down and I've read it draft of the short story
[8:08]With novels. I have no idea. I just which seems counterintuitive to me. Surely you should have a plan for the larger thing
[8:15]but I think part of it is that
[8:18]One of the things I like about novels
[8:21]Is the ability to go astray and to digress and I worry that if I think about it too much
[8:26]I just can't see that far ahead
[8:29]So I often have no idea where a novel is going to go
[8:34]Until I started with this book
[8:37]I knew a little bit more just because it is it's the only
[8:40]Really autobiographical piece of fiction. I've ever written so I did know
[8:45]And what was your relationship like with your mom and do you feel like writing this has changed anything that you've seen
[8:52]About the two of you in your mind. It has a little which sort of surprise made a lovely relationship with my mother and you know
[9:00]We occasionally grab each other nuts as you know is part of part of the familial contract
[9:05]But she was quite a remarkable person
[9:08]It's funny because when I started writing the book
[9:10]I did it with a lot of trepidation because my mother was a very very proud of person and she also
[9:16]Had strong opinions about everything including herself. She hated memoirs of parents
[9:21]And I really thought oh, this is she wouldn't she wouldn't like this. She wouldn't like me writing about her
[9:27]And once I finished I thought
[9:29]Actually, I think she would really really like it. She she loved and I
[9:33]Mean this in the best possible way. She loved being the center of attention. She was that rare person who really liked to be the center of attention
[9:41]For only good reasons, you know, she she liked to host parties. She liked to give speeches. She never did anything
[9:48]You know
[9:49]Never threw a fit never lost her temper and I think there are things in it. She
[9:54]Probably would go. Oh
[9:56]Really you put that in but I didn't put in any
[10:00]that I knew nothing distressing. I don't know if that's the word. Nothing that would have
[10:05]distressed her, I don't think. And my conclusion is, yeah, actually, she would have loved
[10:11]me to write a book about her. I think. What was it? We helped. What was one of the things where
[10:17]she would be like, oh, really, you put that in? I think sort of the two things is talks a lot about
[10:22]her house being very messy. She wouldn't like that. Even though I don't think it was such a huge
[10:28]secret. And I also wrote a little bit about her. She had a serious illness. Many years,
[10:38]both not many years, maybe six years before she died and then had an illness at the end. And I
[10:45]did write about her being in the hospital and being not herself. And that I think she would not
[10:52]have loved. But that's sort of what the people who have to cope with it have to wrestle with,
[10:59]right? It's more like your relationship to it than her going through it.
[11:03]It was one of the things that I decided, there's a line later in the book that says, surely,
[11:09]every person is in my story to truly everyone person is allowed to have their own story. And
[11:14]that was a moment where I could think, well, this is, I'm allowed to write about my own life. And
[11:19]that was part of my, my life, especially since you were contractually obligated to make it
[11:23]a novel. Exactly. Whatever you want it. What are you working on now? Not much.
[11:29]But at that way, I'm teaching and I'm reading a lot of student work, which is very exciting.
[11:34]And so at the moment, I'm sort of working on tricksters. I actually have a whole draft of this
[11:40]another small novel. And I said, I didn't want to waste my leave during my once most of
[11:45]during the pandemic. I wrote two little novels. And the other one is, it's quite flawed. I mean,
[11:53]anything I write is flawed, anything anybody writes is bought. But this one is like really flawed.
[11:57]And I haven't looked at it again. And I need to look at it. Because I think it could be,
[12:03]I don't think it's found its form. But I think it could be part of something thicker.
[12:07]So what, what makes a little novel versus a regular novel?
[12:10]Less than 50,000 words. Okay. What do you think? Do you have a word count that you have in mind?
[12:17]I feel like I had this one flight where I all I did was write for 11 straight hours.
[12:23]And I can't remember how many words, but it was something like 40,000 whatever it was.
[12:29]It was, I had to Google when I landed and it was a novella. So I know that novella has a particular
[12:35]length. You wrote 40,000 words on an airplane? And I wonder if that's crazy. That's amazing.
[12:42]Yeah. They were good. I should really pull that out again. So I'm not misrepresenting.
[12:47]I mean, yeah, whatever it was, I would like the vanilla. What's that? How long a flight was it?
[12:53]11 hours. Wow. I just didn't stop. I know. My wrist were hurting. It's amazing.
[12:59]Sometimes I mean, yeah, but I, I don't even know where that is. Yeah, it doesn't make
[13:06]it good, but I wanted to try something. But anyway, point is, novella has a specific length.
[13:10]I could Google it now. So you probably wrote it longer than novella less than a novel or something
[13:16]like that. Amazing. So when you're reading for fun, I'm assuming you must do at some point.
[13:22]What are some of your good two books or what have you read lately that you love?
[13:27]I have just started walking around listening to David Copperfield.
[13:31]Oh, okay. So both I read ages ago and I love it. And it's got my Betsy Prockwood in it.
[13:37]Here's my favorite Dickens character of all. And it's being just really, really pleasurable.
[13:43]And I've just started reading Ada Calhoun's also a palette, which I'm loving.
[13:50]I'm looking to my left because I just bought some books and I have this, which I'm really
[13:56]looking forward to here. By Alice Wong, I just got Danny Shapiro's home fires, which
[14:02]she goes like, yeah, sorry. Thank you. It's not. That's a good another book with fires in the
[14:08]title. And I think I'm very excited about that too. Amazing. What advice would you have for
[14:16]aspiring authors aside from find a hardworking friend? Find a hardworking friend is important.
[14:23]I also, you know, I think casting aside all of the things that you think that good writing is,
[14:31]all of the pieces of advice, people give such bad advice about writing. Except for me,
[14:36]I give good advice. I give bad advice too. But I feel pretty firmly that there are no rules
[14:45]for writing, that each individual piece has its own rules and when stories don't work.
[14:51]It's because they're in and novels too. It's because they're, they're breaking rules that
[14:56]they've set up and that those voices, sometimes in writing classes, they tell you, well, what will
[15:02]the reader think of this? And the problem is that if you ever make up a reader in your head,
[15:07]a specific reader, that guy is such a jerk. That guy is leaning over your head going.
[15:14]Well, in 1816, one, nobody would be wearing a dress like that on the streets of Baltimore,
[15:20]or, you know, you're talking about, or shouldn't there be like rising action and climax and
[15:27]a new mall right about now? And I think the work that means something to me when I'm writing it,
[15:33]and then also when I'm reading it, is the work that sort of gets lost in itself. That it,
[15:40]and that sort of respects itself and its own rules, that creates worlds and,
[15:45]and the characters who cannot be made up in steps. So my advice is to, is to really think about
[15:54]the things that are important to you and thrill you when you write. And to read, you know,
[16:01]and the old saw, which is true. And to just read good writing. It does something to the brain, I think.
[16:09]Yes. Never stop learning. How would your students describe you?
[16:15]They got horrible thought. I think they would talk about how I'm always telling them to think
[16:21]about their, to remember that their characters have bodies. I know that that's true, that they,
[16:26]they tell me that. I don't know. It's a strange thing to think about yourself as seen by other people.
[16:33]Makes my tummy ache. No, no.
[16:38]Okay, sorry. I'll take you. They call me short. That I know that for certain.
[16:41]I have to tell her you. Five foot tall. Okay. And five two. My ball in chain is five four. And we sometimes
[16:49]discuss the league of little writers. So you're welcome to join at five two year. I would love to
[16:56]more writers. Thank you so much. Very much. You know, my kids at school are like, you know, mom,
[17:02]like we're in the, towards the bottom end of like all, and I'm like, I'll give you lots of things,
[17:08]but I cannot give you height. You know, it's just not the cards. And they're like, look at her,
[17:13]and I'm like, look at her mom. You know, impossible. My 15 year old may be tall. I mean,
[17:18]he's by far the tallest person in the house right now.
[17:21]Yeah, my 15 year old. It's like five seven. I feel like you're pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah.
[17:29]So we'll see. We'll see what happens. And how do you navigate being married to another writer and
[17:34]illustrator? Do you know, it has seemed remarkably easy to me, but I think that that's
[17:41]a person in question and maybe me too. We are, it feels quite agreeable. We have some more schedules
[17:50]and when one or the other of us has a project that we need to put more time on the other person,
[17:54]we'll pick up more household stuff. I certainly, I mean, I know, we all know terrible stories
[18:01]about partnered writers, but it seems, yeah, so far, no, no major bumps.
[18:06]And you share each other's work. Like, is he one of your early readers or do you? Yeah, he is,
[18:11]he is. And every now and like, I once accidentally named a dog the same name as a dog in his
[18:18]fiction. And I was very embarrassed. That's like the worst of all God. And he had to gently say,
[18:24]he's still, it wasn't a major, it wasn't a central column of this story I was writing,
[18:29]that I had named a dog piece, which is French for flea, but he'd already done it and it's
[18:34]something that I had read. Well, you know, of all the things, it's not the worst. He's okay.
[18:40]What else do people know about this book that we haven't talked about? Is there anything else?
[18:45]There's actually a lot of writing advice in it, quite a bit of writing advice in it. And I had
[18:49]always sworn as a novelist that would never write a novel about a writer. And I, if you told me
[18:59]I'd write a novel with a name of snarader, I would have said, oh, I will never, ever do it.
[19:05]But when I was first writing the book to sort of flow myself into writing it, I think,
[19:10]originally I was going to have a lot of end notes or maybe I was going to have a marginal
[19:15]or I knew I didn't want footnotes that were sort of rock pieces of writing advice, sort of a craft
[19:20]book, even though I hate the word craft for writing for some reason. A craft book embedded in the
[19:25]book. And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't get it to work, no matter how I tried. I couldn't get it
[19:30]so that it felt like an organic part of the book that would give people pleasure to read and
[19:37]wouldn't interfere with the novel itself. So once I wrote a lot, and then once I realized it
[19:45]wasn't going to work, I pulled about 10% of that out and put it into this book. So now the
[19:53]narrator is a writer and talk, and doesn't talk about like a career about a writing, but gives...
[20:00]But I think is, again, just extraordinarily correct advice on writing fiction, very accurate
[20:07]and right advice.
[20:09]Amazing.
[20:10]Love it.
[20:11]When you are not writing, what do you like to do?
[20:14]When you're not writing teaching, doing all the things you have to do, what do you like
[20:17]to do?
[20:18]I love traveling.
[20:19]Here in Austin, we have a tweet about this a lot because I also love Twitter.
[20:27]We'll see if I continue to love Twitter in the coming weeks and months.
[20:31]But there's a giant spring-fed swing pool at the center of the city that is over near
[20:36]around called Barton Springs, and I wake up a little bit before five most days and go
[20:41]off and swim in the dark, and it is one of my greatest pleasures.
[20:46]That's very poetic.
[20:48]And I just sort of, I swim very, very slowly and bumble along, but I also like museums
[20:55]in theater and, you know, the usual, the usual things.
[20:58]The usual, cultured womanic, but it's quite ridiculous, but I can't say that I go to
[21:05]it on upper finicular every time I can.
[21:07]There's a finicular in my book, which makes me happy.
[21:10]Excellent.
[21:11]Well, Elizabeth, thank you for chatting with me today about the hero of this book, who
[21:16]obviously is you.
[21:18]No.
[21:19]My mother.
[21:20]My mother would disagree.
[21:21]I don't know.
[21:22]I don't know.
[21:23]You'll have a duel dueling on protagonist or something.
[21:26]Anyway, lovely chatting with you.
[21:28]Thanks for coming on Mom's no time to read books.
[21:30]Thank you so much, Sydney.
[21:31]Okay.
[21:32]Have a great day.
[21:33]Me too.
[21:34]Bye-bye.
[21:35]Bye-bye.
[21:36]Thanks for listening to this episode of Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[21:39]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans, and at Mom's Don't Have Time to
[21:43]Read Books.
[21:44]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[21:49]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[21:51]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing, and thank you
[21:56]to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.