Anna Quindlen, WRITE FOR YOUR LIFE

[1:38]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. Am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings, but this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. Anna Quinlan is the author of Write for Your Life and many, many other books. Anna and I had this amazing conversation at the Stryker Center at Temple Emanuel, and there were over 500 people who watched us live and many more after. And now all the rest of you can hear our conversation. Anna Quinlan is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction, and self help bestseller lists. She's the author of many novels, Object Lessons, One True Thing, Black and Blue, Blessings Rise and Shine, Every Last One, Still Life with Breadcrumbs, and Miller's Valley. Her memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, published in 2012, was a number one New York Times bestseller. Her book, A Short Guide to a Happy Life, has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at the New York Times, she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections, Living Out Loud and Thinking Out Loud. Her news week columns were collected in Loud and Clear. She also wrote Nanaville about her adventures as a grandparent, which we talked about on our podcast another time. Hi, Anna. How are you? Hey, Sim. How are you? You're busy. A little busy. It's true. But that's okay. All good. When when does the Santa Monica store open? It opens February eighteenth and nineteenth. Yes. Called Zibby's Bookshop in Santa Monica, and I've lined up 40 authors to come sign books, like, couple authors each hour for Saturday and Sunday of that weekend.

[4:02]Anna Quindlen: I am very jealous. Someday I want Anna's bookstore somewhere.

[4:06]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. Well, make yourself a home at mine. Come anytime. Do any events, whatever you want. Thank you. Well, this is such a highlight, and I'm so excited to get to talk to you here today. There's so much to talk about. We share a massive love of reading and writing, and you have been a role model to me forever. I've been reading you since I read. And you the way you write about life, especially motherhood and loss and all of that. It's it's just amazing. These short essays that you compile and weave through perfectly into your books and all that. I don't know. It's been like a guidepost for me. So Thank you. So your latest book, Write For Your Life, why don't we talk about that to start, in case anybody here doesn't know about it because they definitely should. So why don't you tell everybody about Write For Your Life? Well,

[5:00]Anna Quindlen: there's lots of books out there about writing for writers or for people who aspire to be professional writers. But it seemed to me that what we'd lost over the last fifty or sixty years is a sense of writing for ordinary people. I mean, a hundred and fifty years ago, the only way that you could communicate with people who weren't in the room with you was to write them a letter. And most of the people who wanted to consider their own histories or their own thoughts wrote about it in journals or in essays. In a technological age, we've lost a lot of that. There's a lot of writing, but it's very evanescent. Right? The text the text seems important at the time. The next day, you can't even remember what you said in it. And so it seemed to me that one of the things that I needed to address was that need to pivot back to writing for ourselves, writing for our own mental health. I mean, one of the great things about writing a nonfiction book is that usually after the fact, in a variety of ways, you find out about the great material that you missed. For example, once Write for Your Life came out, the president of Barnard College, soon to become the first woman president of Dartmouth, Sian Baila, told me about a study that she had spearheaded as a psychologist. They took a group of students who had high anxiety about an upcoming math test, and they divided them into two groups. One group went off to study for the math test, and the other group sat down and wrote about their anxiety. Why this test? How did the anxiety manifest itself? What were they feeling? And across the board, the students who wrote about it did better on the math test. Sian told me about that, and I thought, oh, darn it. I wish I'd had that when I was writing the book because it's completely probative of what I'm talking about. And the other day, read the obituary in the New York Times of a psychologist who in who came up with this way of dealing with suicidal ideation in adolescence. She came up with it as a stop gap measure until real therapy could be put into place and asked them to come up with a written plan for coping mechanisms that they could use if they were really hitting the wall. What she found was that that wasn't a stopgap at all. That over and over again, people would tell her that when they were really in trouble, they would pull out that piece of paper. And it would help. Now, I mean, what more could you say than when people are really at the end of their tether that there's a piece of writing that can help them get over that? I don't want us to lose that. I don't want us to lose that sense of connection and amelioration that writing can bring.

[8:09]Zibby Owens: What I totally agree with that, by the way. I feel like writing is the only way to make sense of the thoughts in my brain. So I feel like for so many people, it's there's no better way. I'm like, what do people who don't who don't write do with all these jumbling thoughts? Well, except lots of people are intimidated by the idea of writing. And guess why? Because writing is hugely intimidating.

[8:32]Anna Quindlen: I'm intimidated by it every day. If I sit down and think, oh, come on. Does anybody really care about what I think or feel about this particular issue? And you have to get over that sense of intimidation. And I think it's slightly easier if you're writing for yourself Mhmm. Because you don't have to worry so much about the audience. And if you're writing a letter, of course, it's usually an audience of one, although letters have a way of hanging around and informing generations to come about how we live today. I mean, one of the things that's in the book is a letter from a nurse who has just had a patient die during the pandemic, except the pandemic that she's dealing with is a flu epidemic. And it's 1918. And as I read that letter, I thought, are we gonna have these kinds of records Mhmm. Of COVID? And if not, that's an enormous tragedy. We really need

[9:34]Zibby Owens: these ways of remembering what we lived through. That's so true. What are some personal things you've written lately? What well, like, what's the last letter you wrote to someone or the last journal entry you didn't show anyone or something like that? Oh,

[9:50]Anna Quindlen: gosh. You know, I've been doing copy edits on a new novel, and that's all I can think about. Am I going to write Stett? If if if I were to get a second tattoo, I got a tattoo for my seventieth birthday of a little of a little woman upset that my grandson had drawn. If I were to get a second one, it might say Stett, which of course, as any of us who have done books now means, no copy editor. We're not changing that. That's going back to the way I originally said it. However, I try to remind myself that first draft writing is often imperfect writing, and that therefore saying step too often means that I'm being what I tend to be in the editing process, which is a big honking baby, then I should sit back and consider that maybe some of the suggestions a copy editor has made are valid.

[10:50]Zibby Owens: Can we go back to the part about you getting a tattoo on your seventieth birthday? Yes. Okay. Is this is this in a in a appropriate

[10:57]Anna Quindlen: place to show on Zoom, or is this hidden away somewhere? No. I I I really I mean, I'd have to stand up and Okay. Forget it. From the side of my leggings, but it's a pretty great tattoo, I've gotta say. And what inspired that? Well, you know, I grew up as a very well mannered, on the surface, Catholic girl of a certain generation. And over time, I learned to unlearn all the folded hand stuff in part by being a newspaper reporter. I mean, there's nothing that that is more antithetical to the way I grew up than inserting yourself where you're not wanted and asking questions people don't wanna answer. And so I I I sort of tried to become slightly more of a renegade, slightly more of a renegade, slightly more of a renegade. And around 55, I started saying to the kids, you know, if I get to be 70, I'm gonna get a tattoo. And in the beginning, they all laughed because they thought I was kidding. And I think around 62 or 63, they realized, I meant it. And I went with my heavily tattooed second child, my son Christopher, who's also a writer, to a tattoo parlor that he liked and got a tattoo. And and the guys kept insisting that they were concerned about the pain factor. I finally said to them, listen. I've had lip fillers. This is nothing compared to lip fillers. People were we're letting it all hang out here at the Stryker Center. Yeah. Don't hold back.

[12:41]Zibby Owens: And of course, anyone who's read NANEVAL will not be surprised that you did something so such a huge gesture of love for your grandchild. Tell us a little bit more about your relationship and NANEVAL.

[12:53]Anna Quindlen: And is there a p is there a post, you know, postscript now coming for that? That's a little bit problematic, Zibby. I mean, when I wrote Nanaville, I only had one grandchild, eldest, my grandson Arthur. Quinn and Lynn were expecting Ivy, who has since burst upon the scene. She'll soon be four. And, Chris and Azora hadn't even begun to think about Jake, who is now two and a half. It reminds me a little bit of when Maria finally got old enough, that's my third child, to take a look at the columns in Living Out Loud, which is a collection of my columns that appeared in The New York Times under the rubric life in the thirties. And Maria was astonished and enraged to discover that she is not in Living Out Loud. And I had to say to her, that's because you hadn't been born yet. And instead of making things better, the idea that her brothers and I had had a life apart from her having been born made her even angrier. Luckily, I she was around for my op ed page column and my Newsweek column and so appeared in those from time to time. But Ivy and and Jake haven't shown up yet. Although, you know, I hope someday in some future

[14:21]Zibby Owens: writing they will. Well, I went back and reread Living Out Loud and some of the essays in there, which is still just so I mean, it it could have been written today. Like, it's it's just amazing. And the way you write about your own mom and how all of us as we become moms sort of have to reconcile with our own mothers as they parented us, right? And the passing of time and and all of that. And I thought I could just if I could just read like a little paragraph from that, if that's okay. So you had prior to this paragraph, you had been talking about, you know, your own mom and your relationship. And then you said, perhaps those conflicting emotions help reconcile ourselves to our mothers, make us able to apprehend the shadow of a human being who is just raising other human beings the best she can beneath the terrible weight of the concept. In the beginning, it is difficult. I have envied my friends who have had their mothers to help them with new babies then felt the envy evaporate at the distress and doubt my friends sometimes felt about who was really the mother here. No girl becomes a woman until she has lost her mother, someone once told me. And there was proof. There was the proof. Women reduced to children again in a way I never could be. Yet it is having children that can smooth the relationship too. Mother and daughter are now equals. That is hard to imagine, even harder to accept. For among other things, it means realizing that your own mother felt this way too, unsure of herself, weak in the knees, terrified about what in the world to do with you. It means accepting that she was tired, inept, sometimes stupid, that she too sat in the dark at 2AM with a child shrieking across the hall and no clue to the child's trouble. Most of this has little to do with the specific women involved. And then you said it has to do with mother with a capital m, someone we are afraid to be and afraid that we can never be. It has to do with a torch being passed, with finding it too hot to hold, with looking up at the person who has given it to you, and accepting that without it, she is no Valkyrie, just a woman muddling through much like me, much like you. Makes me cry. That's so good.

[16:21]Anna Quindlen: And so true. I mean, you know, I hope it's made me incredibly open and nonjudgmental with my daughters in law about how they do the very difficult job of raising other human beings. We just have to give people grace and space. And if we're gonna judge them, we should go into the shower and, wash our hair. And as our hair is being cleansed, we should say in a very small voice, I don't think she should do it like that. I don't think I'm doing it like that. It's not good to do it like that. And then we should rinse and condition and get out and not do that again.

[17:05]Zibby Owens: I did not know that was the trick. This is the secret weapon, the shampoo and conditioner treatment of mother-in-lawhood. That's amazing. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. I found lately, it's really hard because so many shampoo and conditioner and body washes, like the type is so small that I'm having trouble seeing because I have lost Oh, you're I have to wear reading glasses. And now I'm like in the shower like,

[17:35]Anna Quindlen: gee, I just washed my face with body scrub.

[17:38]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh. I don't know. I mean, if I ever come out with a line, I'll make it really big, you know, on the on the thing. But what you said also about being a journalist, and I have loud and clear here also, is that that that analysis, that sort of observational habit that you developed from being a reporter for so long kicks in all the time, even for things like I mean, not even for things, but especially for things like nine eleven, which you wrote about in the book and and how you could take something like your son saying, I just want to hear your voice and sort of turning that into some copy. Sort of a of a norefronism essentially.

[18:16]Anna Quindlen: Talk a little bit about that and even that moment in your life. Well, the thing that is really great about being a reporter and particularly about being a general assignment reporter in New York City, which is what I was for a number of years, is that it really requires you to see things. You know, in our daily life, our eyes go past. Our eyes glaze over. And I feel like I got the world's greatest double whammy. As a reporter in New York and and doing a column called About New York, which required me to come up with whatever I wanted twice a week, I had to really look at the city. I had to really look at the billboard. I had to really look at what was in the gutter. I had to really look at the buildings. And above all, I had to really look at the people. And then the second part of that, that so enlarged my life, and really enlarged my life as a writer, was becoming a mother. Because, of course, when you've got little kids, they really are looking at everything, and they're seeing everything for the first time. So, you know, for for most of your adult life, you haven't looked twice at an ant hill until you have a toddler. And your toddler is all bent over and staring into the ground and watching the ants go in and out. And suddenly, for the first time in decades, you're doing it too. And that double whammy of having learned to see the world as a street reporter, and then having reexamined, reimagined, re seen the world as a mother of young kids. It it it just was invaluable as a writer because, of course, really good writing is filled with telling details. But telling details only emerge in your writing if you're apprehending them. And that's that's what those two jobs did for me and and just made an enormous difference.

[23:16]Zibby Owens: Of course, having all those details also makes your fiction writing that much stronger. Tell us about this new book you have. What is what is this? You just casually threw that in there. I have a new novel coming probably this time next year. It's called After Annie,

[23:33]Anna Quindlen: and it it won't be any kind of a spoiler to say because it happens in the first sentence of the novel that it's about the death of a younger a young woman in her mid thirties and about the year after that, and how that year is negotiated by her daughter, her eldest child, her daughter, her best friend, and her husband. And it's about it is about loss, obviously. But in some sense, it's about how loss is a bit of a bait and switch. Because if I had to guess who most readers will find the most, tangible, knowable, understandable character in After Annie, it will be Annie herself, even though she dies in the first sentence. Because I do think that in some profound sense, people we love and know become more real to us when they're gone. That when when all we have of them is our memories, our past, our anecdotes, those become as vivid as anything on a page or on a screen. And I think that's one of the things that I wanted to communicate in the book, how her best friend Anne Marie at one point sort of feels someone at her shoulder the way this someone has been at her shoulder for really her entire adult life. And she thinks, if this is haunting, I'm all for it. You know? And I I do think that that that is the thing that gets us through loss,

[25:33]Zibby Owens: that they don't die, they just live inside of us. And that's really what the novel is about. Wow. That sounds amazing. I can't wait to read it. Where did that come from? Where did what germ what was the germ of that idea, and where did it or it just came to you?

[25:49]Anna Quindlen: Ideas don't really come to me in fiction fiction or or themes themes or anything like that. Although, after a while, they become they become quite clear, I hope. And often, they become quite clear after the book has been published when readers tell me I've written a book. Because I think sometimes you're so in it when you're writing a novel that you have no perspective on it. And then some wonderful woman comes up to you at a bookstore and says, ah, well, isn't this really about and you think, oh, yes. Oh, yes. How did I how did I not notice that until now? What I always start with are characters. And I I just had this very clear sense of Annie Brown in her kitchen keeling over, honestly, which is how the book begins. And I just had a really clear sense of her, and from her, I knew about Allie, her daughter, and Anne Marie, her best friend, and Bill, her husband. That I I I think I always start with a single character, and then because of what I know about them, I begin to know about who they would surround themselves with. And it it it's it's a little bit like the domino theory. You know? You get birth order. You get line of work. You get where they live, what they like, and and it leads to another thing and another thing and another thing. And that's how the novel gets built.

[27:24]Zibby Owens: Wow. In loud and clear, you talked about all of your procrastination and how. Back then, it was Tetris, and I don't even know, some computer game I've never heard of. Do you still find it hard do you still find it hard to get into the writing day and all that, or are you sort of sliding into it more easily now?

[27:43]Anna Quindlen: No. I have I have a a series of things that I do in order not to write. I mean I mean, I can't write now because I blew out my knee. Thank you, hospital for special surgery. You're always there for me. But I tend to walk four miles every morning. And so, you know, I I I have to I have to communicate to people who wanna write for a living that I find it so challenging and so difficult that I would rather exercise than do it. So, you know, there's always breakfast, and there's always reading the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And there's always that four mile walk, and there might be laundry on a good day. But the problem is that I'm an early riser, and by about nine or 09:30, I run out of things to do. And that's that's the moment when I say, oh, well, guess I should sit at the computer and think about stuff. But I you know, the idea that I, you know, I fly upstairs with light heart and say, ah, I have ideas. I'm 70 years old, and that hasn't happened yet, which makes me think it's never gonna.

[28:59]Zibby Owens: And yet you keep doing it, though. You could say, like, I'm done. I don't wanna do this anymore. But there must be some part of it that get I must say when both Philip Roth and Alice Munro

[29:10]Anna Quindlen: said, I'm done. Now both of them did it at 80. Said, I'm done. My heart did miss a beat. But you know what? I think the thing that doesn't get said enough about writing for a living is it is for a living. I mean, this this is there's this kind of and I talk about this in Write For Your Life. There's this kind of mystique that grows around it as though we do it because it's just wonderful. Right? And and the truth of the matter is, for most of the writers I know, part of the impulse is mortgage gotta get paid. And I think there's too little said or written about the fact that we really do do this for a living, and I do it for a living. But also, I was doing a speech. I'll always remember it where I was. I was at a girl's school in in Baltimore giving a speech, and the next morning, my grandson was born, which is how I I remember where exactly where I was. And this young woman stood up in the balcony, and and she said, I think I might like to to to be a and she's stammering, and I'm and I'm totally empathizing with her because she looks to me like 16, and I'm remembering myself at 16. But I put up my hand, and I said to her, I want you to say this sentence. I am a writer. And she said, I am a writer. And the way she said that sentence was in a completely different tone of voice, with a completely different affect than she had had up until that moment. And I I hope I'd like to think she will remember that moment in the same way that I remember the moment when in eighth grade, Mother Mary Ephraim said to me, Miss Quinlan, you are a writer. And that's why I continue to do it. It's not what I do. It's it's who I am. It's like I am a mother too. And there isn't a moment where I can say, you know what? This has been exhausting. They're in their 30s now. I'm done. I think some of us when we have a three or four year old think, Oh, when they're in their 30s, it'll be done. Uh-oh, it's just a rent.

[31:49]Zibby Owens: That gave me chills, your description of the the writer. I can't wait to see what happens to her. I hope one day we she writes this great American novel, and and we get to give a standing ovation to you for that. I know we were gonna trade some book suggestions. What have you read lately that you've loved?

[32:08]Anna Quindlen: Well, all fall, I was tub thumping, which is a term I really love for two novels. One is called Gilded Mountain by Kate Manning, which is a wonderful historical novel about marble miners in Colorado. But really, it's a coming of age story of this woman of oh my gosh. It's so beautifully written, and it's so vivid. I mean, the very best books. You know this. You don't read them. You live in them. Mhmm. I totally lived in that book. And the second novel is called The Lindbergh Nanny by Mariah Fredricks, and it's about the Lindbergh nanny, who I'd never even really thought of before. Again, it's a historical novel, and it's about the young woman who was taking care of little Charles Lindbergh when he was taken from his crib and subsequently died. And I think most of us know the broad parameters of that story. What she does so beautifully is to, again, make it feel lived in, the day to day of taking care of this little boy. And the other thing that I loved was, you know, the stories are always about the Lindbergh baby. First of all, he wasn't really a baby at that point. He was really kind of a toddler. But second of all, it makes him kind of nothing just being the Lindbergh baby. And one of the things a book does is really brings this little boy to life in a way that, of course, makes what happens truly, truly heartbreaking. So those were the two novels that I loved. And coming up is really a wonderful book. I'm sorry if you're out there and you're female. It's gonna make you furious. It's called the exceptions by Kate Zernigke, who is a reporter at the a very good reporter at the New York Times. And it's about a group of women scientists at MIT of all places, toodling along and doing that thing that we women do. You don't you don't get the promotion? Well, it's just me. You don't get the assignment? Well, it's just me. And it's a moment when this group of women scientists come together and start talking and realize, it's not just me. It's all the women at MIT. And eventually MIT is forced to admit that it has systematically discriminated against its female faculty. It's really it's a terrific book about women in science. It's a terrific book about doing science. And it's also a terrific book about this the small and nuanced ways in which we women get sidelined. It's called the exceptions, and it's really, really good. Wow. Those were fabulous recommendations. Gosh.

[35:07]Zibby Owens: Mine are a good about you? And mine are a little lighter hearted, I guess. But, one is called I'm wearing tunics now on growing older on Growing Older Better and A Hell of a Lot Louder by Wendy Arons. It's so funny. And

[35:22]Anna Quindlen: I just thought this was hilarious. I'm wearing tunics now too. Anyway,

[35:28]Zibby Owens: that's great. This is sort of a shameless plug because my publishing company is publishing this and it comes out next week. But it's great. It's called My What If Year by Alicia Fernandez Miranda, about a woman who is just not that happy with her life even though she has she's a CEO and has twins and blah blah blah. And so she takes a year off and tries four internships she always wished she tried. That's a great idea. Theater, hospitality, and in the art world.

[35:55]Anna Quindlen: So that's coming up soon. And then this one is also really funny. Will you send me a copy of that? I would love to send you a copy of this. I mean, even if we are really happy in our lives and despite everything I've said, I am happy in my work life and very happy in my personal life. But I think every one of us has thought about that road not taken. Yep. Gee, you know, mean, on my really bad days, I always say I should have taken the MCATs. But but the you said, oh, boy, that sounds like a really interesting job. If I had another life Right. I would do so this is like, I'm gonna try to have a little piece of another life and see what it feels like. That's a great idea. Yeah. And it's it's great. She's so funny. It's and it it really yeah. Inspiring.

[36:43]Zibby Owens: And then this is also funny. International bestseller, really good actually by Monica Hisey. And it's about a woman on the in the aftermath of her divorce and how she and her friend group sort of makes sense of of life and how she picks herself back up. So this is called Really Good Actually, My What If You're and I'm wearing tunics now. And then maybe they could fit your recommendations in the chat also. There's the exceptions. And

[37:12]Anna Quindlen: what I will say about all three of yours among other things is titles are so hard, and all three of those books have kick ass titles. I mean, you read the title and immediately start to laugh. Yes. And then and then think, yeah. I I I wanna really good, actually. I mean, how many times?

[37:35]Zibby Owens: Really good, actually. Really good, actually. You know, you're recommending, like, you know,

[37:40]Anna Quindlen: most intellectual. And I'm like, okay. Well,