Monica Heisey, REALLY GOOD, ACTUALLY

2023-01-28  ·  22:07  ·  Monica Heisey  ·  Podcast Audio

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[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, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
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[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, 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 Z cast podcast network. You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Monica Heisey is the author of really good, actually, a novel. We actually got to do this episode in person.
[1:04]We share PR guru named Paul Bogard, who is in the room as we recorded, and Monica is sensational. Her book was so funny.
[1:12]Well, anyway, listen, Monica is an SAS comedian and screenwriter from Toronto. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times,
[1:19]Vogue, Elle, The Guardian, Glamour, New York Magazine, and Vice, among others.
[1:23]She has written for television shows like Shitz Creek, Working Moms, and everything I know about love. She lives in London.
[1:29]Welcome, Monica. Thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss really good, actually.
[1:35]Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Is everybody like making the same joke that it's really good? Almost every headline.
[1:42]I feel so bad. I know. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm making the same joke that everyone's going to make it, but I cannot make it.
[1:48]Honestly, I've set you up for that. You did, right? That's on me. Ultimately. I appreciate that.
[1:55]Okay, tell listeners about really good, actually. Tell me how it became a book, how you thought of the whole thing. I would reflect your own life and all that.
[2:04]So really good, actually, is a novel that a young woman named Maggie who's 28 years old and is finding herself unexpectedly in the midst of a divorce after her very recent marriage.
[2:14]And it's set during the first year of her life as a single person and kind of her first year as a single adult ever.
[2:22]It was inspired by I went through a divorce with a young age myself and even kind of in the earliest days of it when it was still pretty miserable, pretty regularly.
[2:32]I sort of could tell there was something funny about it and that I might want to write, I'm a comedy writer mostly for television.
[2:39]So I'm sort of used to taking things that have happened in my life for friends lives or just that I've seen around and turning them into comedy.
[2:46]And I thought, even though this is quite miserable experience, there's definitely something funny in it.
[2:52]It was my attempt to turn something a little bit grim into something funny. It was so funny. I told Paul, so Paul was here in the background.
[3:01]But anyway, it was like I don't want to finish. It's so funny. I've like laughed out loud. It's like amazing. I would dog you're in a couple of hearts that I wanted to read.
[3:09]Well, not all these are as funny, I guess.
[3:12]I'm totally kidding. I totally get it.
[3:20]When we were married, John rarely stayed out late. On the few occasions he did, I would enjoy my evening until about two.
[3:25]Then lie awake staring at the ceiling thinking about all the things that could go wrong. What if the power went out and I needed to know how to interact with that big box in the basement.
[3:32]Our back door was rickety and unreliable. No matter how carefully I closed the bolts checked and double checked that I'd done it fear would keep me awake.
[3:39]I'd get up to redo it ten times in the night in case someone was about to break in and kill me. I didn't worry about that anymore. Maybe someone will break in and kill me. I'd think perfect.
[3:49]And let's see how this is so funny. All the songs I'm singing about are heartbreak and the raw emotion of my recent experience informs each number.
[3:56]People are so moved. Some of them are weeping. Much of the audience is enthralled strangers. All of whom find me mysterious and alluring that friends I came with are dumbstruck.
[4:04]No one can believe that I've been hiding this voice that I've been so humble about it. We thought all her grief would be for nothing when whispers do another. But look what she's done with it. She's like Nora Efron. If Nora Efron had the voice of Adele.
[4:16]Now one of Maggie's many diluted fantasies that sort of pepper the book is this idea that people want to watch you doing karaoke.
[4:26]I think all of us have indulged a couple of times. The part about the hamburgers when the delivery man is outside. Not that it's like a plot.
[4:35]But it's just so funny when she's ordering in like paperless posts or whatever it is. And the delivery man is accidentally calling her ex every time in the middle of the night.
[4:44]Yeah, a friend of mine found out a couple of years ago that for two full years her ex boyfriend was getting an email every single time she ordered rotisserie chicken Canadian rotisserie chicken chain.
[4:59]And she was like, it's not that embarrassing, but I just felt so exposed. And I think that's that's something that Maggie feels sort of throughout the book is just very exposed.
[5:10]You wrote it is so funny. I mean, those I think you wrote those were like emails to customer service. Yeah, right. I mean, you could have said that in so many ways.
[5:18]But the mix of forms in the way you handle the material and presented and some is like Maggie and her friends just hanging out and others with these funny letters or whatever.
[5:27]So tell me about how you structured the story and all the different characters and the choice of different form elements like that.
[5:35]I think when I set down to write the novel because I knew it was going to be so intensely said inside one character's head.
[5:42]And because she was experiencing things that were inspired by my own emotions, but that I wanted to be really fictional events.
[5:49]I thought I really need to get to know this person and the ways where we overlap in the ways where we really diverge.
[5:55]So I wanted to do a lot of character exercises to kind of get to know Maggie. So there are all of these short form pieces kind of scattered throughout the book. Google search history is so funny.
[6:07]Personal fantasies and you know emails and you know dating up conversations and all of those were kind of my first attempts at getting to know this character and building up her voice and my sense of her worldview.
[6:20]Even the list that opens the novel which is a list of reasons that Maggie and her husband John broke up.
[6:26]That was almost the first thing I wrote in the book to kind of try and get my head around who this person was what her relationship meant to her and the ways that it was going to kind of go very wrong for her.
[6:38]So yeah, the short form pieces were kind of my some things that I wasn't starting with the blank page. So I felt on solid footing that I understood who this person was.
[6:46]And then I'm a big outline girl. So then I did a big outline of kind of the plot as it would transpire after I had the short form pieces and kind of a character grounding.
[6:56]So go back to how you got your start, even in TV writing and writing in general.
[7:02]Where are you from? Like give me some questions.
[7:05]How did you show up here in the hell are you?
[7:08]I am a writer I started in Toronto where I'm from and I've always kind of written and also always kind of been involved in comedy performance as well.
[7:20]University even was like part of the school newspaper and like in an improv troupe and stuff. So those have been passions of my for a long time.
[7:28]And I wrote a book in 2015 that was based on like a joke advice column I had for a website called She Does the City in Toronto lovely local website and it was sort of joke advice and kind of personal essays, but also had some of those little short form humor pieces as well, which are sort of.
[7:44]I think where I kind of got my start is writing like odd humor pieces for like independent websites like the hairpin the best website ever now to fun and also like the New Yorker shots and murmurs and stuff.
[7:55]And then off the back of that book.
[7:57]I was promoting that book and I met some amazing women at a comedy show where I was kind of being interviewed and they were doing improv based on the interview answers.
[8:07]And they were just setting up the first season of their sketch show called Baron s fun sketch show which is a great Canadian comedy show that ran for five maybe six seasons.
[8:16]They asked if I had any samples look like sketch comedy and I had just come back from doing a summer at the end of a friend with some friends.
[8:23]So I did.
[8:24]And that was my first TV job and then the book also led me to Shitz Creek which is my second TV job.
[8:31]Just the luckiest person in the world to have those be my first two jobs. Someone had given Dan a copy of my book and again they reached out and asked if I had a sample and I didn't have a half hour narrative sample, but I said that I did.
[8:42]And I wrote one over the course of like a frantic weekend.
[8:45]Oh my god.
[8:46]I'm just looking for the final.
[8:49]Just like I'm going to reformat it.
[8:52]So I was really, really lucky and then really fell in love with writing comedy for TV and I've been doing that for most of my career.
[9:05]Oh my gosh.
[9:06]Wait, go back to starting.
[9:07]Okay.
[9:08]So you send the sample.
[9:09]Yeah.
[9:10]Finally.
[9:11]They obviously love it.
[9:12]And then so did you go into a writer's room or like explain like how long did you work on that and which episode or how many episodes or attempt letter.
[9:19]Yeah, I was on season three and four of the show as a writer.
[9:24]One small part of the big team and it was just, I mean it was where I learned how to kind of do any of it.
[9:31]And it was such a good introduction because we had an amazing mix of like we had some really old school pros and then a couple people who are new like me.
[9:40]And then Dan has always just had such a clear vision for what he wanted the show to be.
[9:44]And have a sort of strong leader like that. I feel like it's just a pleasure to kind of help figure out how to like enrich their original but very clear vision or build towards what they're looking for.
[9:56]So there were about eight of us I think.
[9:58]And I think it's such.
[10:00]It's just such an intuitive and smart way to get to make comedy, to get a bunch of people together
[10:06]in a room who can kind of support each other's ideas, or equally pick kind of holes in them,
[10:10]be like, oh, I'm not sure that this works, but what if it was like this? It was a real pleasure.
[10:15]What do you think it is about comedy? Like, I think if you've got eight novelists in a room
[10:18]together, it might not. And like, why can set, why can that form be done communally so much better?
[10:26]God, that's a really good question. I think part of it must be the immediate response.
[10:32]Like, it's so easy to doubt yourself when you're writing alone as to whether something's funny,
[10:37]but a laugh is like an instinctual reaction that you kind of have no control over. So if you can
[10:43]elicit laughs from a room full of people that you know you're kind of on the right path. So it feels
[10:48]really, like, really helpful kind of live and immediate feedback. Definitely writing the novel
[10:54]a really intense shift to be like, oh, it's just me for now. I mean, obviously, I was so lucky
[11:00]to find my editors. I have two amazing editors, one in the UK and one over here. We all worked on
[11:05]the book together. But before I found them, I had to write the entire thing by myself, which was
[11:11]so unexpectedly confronting because I only really had my own sense of humor to go off. And I'm
[11:18]used to having like a room full of people that I can be like, is this anything? And they can tell
[11:23]me if it is or isn't, but it's just me. So it's just how hard you were making yourself laugh.
[11:27]But yeah, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. How crazy I looked in my in my office laughing by myself.
[11:34]Why even try a novel like your TV creators taking off why like this route? I think because
[11:41]this story is so personal, I did want it to be kind of something that I was at the helm of.
[11:47]And also it's very interior story. It takes place a lot inside Maggie's head and deals a lot
[11:54]with feelings of criticism and feelings of self doubt. And I thought it would be easiest, I think,
[12:01]to kind of really get into the depths of how she was feeling by being able to just write it all
[12:07]out rather than find ways to kind of show it, although now we've optioned for TV. So I do
[12:13]find what those ways are. And also I think I really wanted to try to challenge myself and do
[12:18]something different. And it was a genuine challenge. It felt really difficult, but it was also
[12:23]really worthwhile. And I feel like I learned a lot while doing it. I bet. And are you going to write
[12:27]another novel? Yeah, I'm working on one right now. Yeah. Was it, did you already sell it? Like,
[12:32]was it a two book situation? Yeah. What is that about so far? It's about a group of friends in Toronto
[12:39]and they're all in their late thirties and they're, don't hold me to this because it could all
[12:43]change. And now one of them is a TV writer. No, I want it to be even sort of farther from my life,
[12:49]you know, and also to, again, to try and challenge myself in a different way. Tell multiple
[12:55]perspectives and people who are much farther from me than Maggie is, you know, so I'm in the
[13:01]outlining stage of that. And I think the outline is going to be quite, quite a kind of swear.
[13:07]Go for it. Why not? I was going to say quite a bit. All right. That's now I feel weirdly like shy about it.
[13:13]My, have you seen the musical six? I don't know if you have. No, it's such a big deal of London though.
[13:18]You should go see it. Yeah. It's hard to like, I don't really like our musicals really or
[13:22]anyway, it's so good. But my kids are obsessed with it. And one of the song is like, bring out the
[13:27]bitches. Whoof. And so they sing that all the time. Because they're like, now we can say the B word
[13:34]because it's in the song. This is history. Mom, we're allowed exactly. Anyway, I just had
[13:39]that's what that makes me think of. So that's a fine one to say. Like totally sanctioned forever.
[13:44]So which of the character study exercises are you doing for your new characters? Give us some
[13:49]of the tools all the aspiring writers out there that like, if you're developing a character,
[13:54]it's really helpful to do. Oh, that's a good question. One thing I've been doing is like,
[14:00]have you seen the L word on Showtime? No, they have a big sort of hook-up chart of who's hooked up
[14:06]with who and kind of like what everyone's links are. And I've made a couple charts not related to
[14:11]who's hooking up with who, but just different kinds of relationships and dynamics. So like who's
[14:16]jealous of who or who secretly has a crush on who and kind of like just kind of trying to,
[14:21]it's very messy and it looks like the work of a serial killer. But it's really useful for me to
[14:25]kind of visually plot all that stuff out. I took a painting class from my friend Laura DAW in the
[14:32]early stages of writing this book that really opened up how I was thinking about writing it and
[14:37]I'm going to do the same thing. I think for this new book, which is she showed us how she paints
[14:42]these beautiful still lives and she sort of blocked in all of the big colors first and then did
[14:48]shadows and then did highlights and detail comes so much later. So for so many stages of the creative
[14:54]process, it doesn't look like the thing that you're trying to make at all. You have to sort of
[14:58]have the faith that these are important layers. And that was really like emancipating for me to not
[15:03]have to have a draft that was ready to go. But to be like, I have the shapes in this draft,
[15:09]you know, I have the highlights in this kind of outline. I've been trying to think about that way
[15:13]and not not put too much pressure to get the detail right until much later. I feel like if I were
[15:18]going to write a writing guide, it would be like pretty sentences come last. It's so counterintuitive
[15:24]because you need the sentences to write it to begin with. I know it's the same thing with with writing
[15:29]for TV. I was really as a young writer. Like I don't understand what we have to spend all this time
[15:33]outlining. And now I'm like, oh, if your story is an airtight, then the whole thing falls apart
[15:38]and all your funny lines have to go in the bin anyway. So I feel like I'm very dedicated to
[15:43]having a strong outline that can hold interesting. So when you're not writing for TV or writing
[15:50]novels or talking to your friends about wearing a chicken, what do you do? Like when you're not
[15:57]work? Like what's your life like? I have almost no work-life balance. But I should ask myself more.
[16:05]What do I do? I live in London and I love just like walking around one of the things I love
[16:11]about it is that it's really walkable city. All the neighborhoods are like these little villages,
[16:16]where you kind of can, well, not all the neighborhoods, but a lot of the neighborhoods are like these
[16:20]little villages where you can kind of get everything you need within like a 10, 15 minute walk,
[16:25]and there's a nice park. So I'm a big fan of sort of walking into like a little bookstore and then going
[16:31]and sitting. I've lived there a long time, but I still just feel like very romantic about the city.
[16:38]So I just like sort of walk around and listen to music and reading cafes and get a bit
[16:42]main characterary about it. That's perfect. You just like cast yourself in a role. You're like I'm
[16:48]gonna just leave out the life of the novelist in London. Thank you very much. Oh my gosh. Why do
[16:54]you live in London by the way? I moved there in 2010 to study Early Modern Literature, did an MA
[17:00]there. I figured I think it was like never going to be advanced degree that actually did anything
[17:08]professionally. So I just thought I should like make a real experience out of it and go to the
[17:13]place that they have such amazing like archives and stuff over there. And you're walking around
[17:18]the streets where the stuff you're studying actually happens. So for very nerdy reasons I moved
[17:22]over there. And then I just really fell in love with the city. I went up to the Edinburgh Fringe,
[17:28]not really knowing much about it. And it's just this incredible, enormous, creative, cultural
[17:34]like explosion. And they have really engaged audiences for comedy. I just felt like I had really
[17:40]found a place where I could do the things that I wanted to do at the level that I wanted to do
[17:45]them. And with the group of friends that really make me laugh. It's awesome. And pubs are amazing as
[17:50]well. Fish and chips. Yeah. I'm like, Wimbledon. So that was what I didn't know my honeymoon. We
[17:57]went to Wimbledon. Did you? Oh wow. Yeah, chic. That's pretty awesome. I have to say my husband
[18:02]did you really feel a little hat? I wore a very pretty dress. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, I felt very chic.
[18:07]It's like the last time I dressed up to watch a sporting hat. What about movies? Are you
[18:12]doing any interest in writing movies? Yeah, I would love to write a movie. I'm a big romantic comedy fan.
[18:17]I love the classics. I feel like I watched one Harrymaid Sally. My boyfriend calls one
[18:21]Harrymaid Sally the film because I watched it so often. I'm just always in the mood for it.
[18:27]It's like a favorite movie. Number one. Number one favorite movie. Yeah. It's just like she just really
[18:32]nailed it. Yeah, all of it. I mean, yeah. The friend group I'm obsessed with. This is my whole thing
[18:39]is like if you can write a good dinner party, that's the real test of a good writer, particularly
[18:44]I think in movies like The Bridge of Jones' Diary Dinner Party, where they all kind, she makes
[18:49]the total crap dinner and then all of her friends do a toast quoting Mark Darcy and he's there.
[18:54]Mug married. Perfect. Yeah. Awesome. Any authors you're obsessed with these days? Yeah.
[19:01]I mean, I'm always obsessed with Heidi Julevitz. I read the folded clock like every year. I feel
[19:07]what am I reading more recently? It has come out recently. I'm really excited to read the survival
[19:13]ists but I haven't read it yet because I'm a colleague. Yep. I'm really, I have it if you want to do
[19:18]it. I did bring it up. I am really obsessed with Sheila Hetty, her narrator whose name is Sheila,
[19:26]but isn't her and how should a person be? Says you have to know where the funny is. If you know
[19:31]where the funny is, then you know everything. And I'm always just looking for writers who know
[19:36]where the funniest of which she is definitely one, I'd say. I just interviewed her about her children's
[19:41]book. Did you? Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's not love to shoot off. No, it's very dark. It's about like a
[19:47]dead bunny. But it's a way to teach kids about loss and whatever. But you know, so in their way
[19:55]it's not dark. It's actually light at the end. It's actually, it's great. It's beautiful and
[19:59]but it's not.
[20:00]It's not humorous.
[20:00]Let me spit at that one.
[20:01]Fair enough.
[20:02]I mean, I guess there's a time and a place.
[20:03]Yes.
[20:04]Not when you're teaching kids about this.
[20:06]Yeah.
[20:06]Not the time to joke necessarily.
[20:08]Yeah.
[20:09]Anyway, number one piece of advice for inspiring author.
[20:13]Oh, I think probably the thing I said about the shapes
[20:16]like don't be afraid to just start
[20:19]so that you don't have a blank page in front of you.
[20:21]Because I think it's very intimidating to me still.
[20:26]And I think working in TV and having to get
[20:28]drafts out on kind of tight turn around
[20:30]so you don't really have time to criticize yourself.
[20:33]It really is just about making sure
[20:34]you don't have time to criticize yourself.
[20:36]So just getting something out there
[20:39]and then leaving it for a second.
[20:41]And then when you go back, it's never as bad as you think
[20:44]it's going to be.
[20:44]I like the advice to say so busy.
[20:46]You don't have time to criticize yourself.
[20:48]That's awesome.
[20:50]I think I've maybe done that with my own life.
[20:53]Right.
[20:53]Right.
[20:53]Yeah, that's well.
[20:54]So last question, because my older daughter,
[20:57]whose I'm a 16, is like obsessed with Shitz Creek,
[20:59]is there anything you can tell her that she'll be like,
[21:01]oh, I had no way.
[21:04]I'm trying to think.
[21:05]I feel like I don't know what's like a little Easter egg.
[21:07]I think this is probably like well-known by now.
[21:09]But Annie Murphy wrote a little bit of Lexus song herself
[21:14]and choreographed it herself, which is pretty amazing.
[21:19]And also just that everyone is lovely.
[21:22]You know, I feel like everyone's like, oh my god.
[21:24]Was it as fun as it seemed to work in it?
[21:25]And, you know, yeah.
[21:27]Awesome.
[21:30]More fun than a room full of eight novels.
[21:32]Thank you so much for coming on Monica.
[21:34]Really excited for your next book.
[21:36]And good luck.
[21:37]Thank you for having me.
[21:38]Pleasure.
[21:40]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[21:42]Don't have time to read books.
[21:44]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at Zebioans,
[21:47]and at Moms, don't have time to read books.
[21:49]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebioans.com
[21:51]and sign up for my virtual book club
[21:53]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[21:56]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[21:57]in fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[22:00]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[22:01]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.