Sandra A. Miller, WEDNESDAYS AT ONE: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:06]This 30-minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, 365 days
[0:12]a year for about 30 minutes.
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[0:20]and memoir.
[0:21]Our books are already out now.
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[1:04]So excited because today is Sandra Miller's launch day for Wednesdays at One, which is
[1:10]being published by our publishing company here at Zippy Media.
[1:13]Zippy Books.
[1:14]Congratulations to Sandra.
[1:17]And I am so excited.
[1:18]I met Sandra when she wrote a memoir called Trove and came on my podcast for that.
[1:22]And I just loved that book.
[1:24]And when she submitted her unagented manuscript for Wednesdays at One, I was so excited
[1:31]because I loved her writing style.
[1:33]And then we bought it.
[1:34]And here it is.
[1:35]Amazing.
[1:36]Here's Sandra's bio.
[1:37]Oh, but first, we have a special thing going on, which is that Sandra's book is the first
[1:42]book of ours to partner with Moleskin.
[1:44]We're doing this amazing partnership with Moleskin.
[1:47]And you can get 15% off all paper products and bags along with free personalization with
[1:54]the purchase of a notebook with code Zippy, if you go to Moleskin.com, M-O-L-E-S-K-I-N-E-D-D-D-D-D-Dcom
[2:04]and use code Zippy.
[2:05]Back to Sandra Miller, though, Sandra, a Miller.
[2:08]Here's her bio is the author of the award-winning memoir Trove, a woman's search for truth
[2:12]and buried treasure.
[2:14]She has written about relationships and self discovery for the Boston Globe, the Christian
[2:17]Science Monitor, and many other publications.
[2:20]Her essay about her unconventional love story with her husband was made into the short
[2:24]film Wait, directed by Trudy Styler, starring Carrie Washington.
[2:28]She teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts Old, and lives outside of Boston
[2:32]with her husband, with whom she has two grown children.
[2:35]So again, by the way, as you listen to this episode, Moleskin, 15% off all paper products
[2:41]and bags, along with free personalization with the purchase of a notebook.
[2:47]Visit Moleskin.com and enter code Zibi-M-O-L-E-S-K-I-N-E.com.
[2:53]Congrats, Sandra.
[2:54]Welcome, Sandra.
[2:55]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Turn-of-Time to read books your second time, the
[2:59]first time for Trove, which, as you know, I loved.
[3:02]And now for Wednesdays at one, which we're publishing at Zibi-Bucks, how cool?
[3:06]Thank you, Zibi.
[3:07]It is so fun to be here a second time and to be working with you on this book.
[3:13]Yay.
[3:14]Okay, Sandra.
[3:15]Well, listeners, what Wednesdays at one is about.
[3:18]Sure.
[3:19]So Wednesdays at one is a literary suspense set in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
[3:25]It's the story of a clinical psychologist Gregory Weber, who is burdened by the memory
[3:32]of this horrific thing he did as a teenager, something that no one else knows about.
[3:39]So now he's in his 40s, he lives a privileged life with his wife and his two children,
[3:46]but he's carried this lie of omission into his marriage.
[3:49]So it is really infected his marriage that nobody else knows this thing.
[3:55]And then one Wednesday at one o'clock in his therapy practice, this beautiful disarming
[4:01]woman appears, her name is Mira, and she seems to know things about Gregory's past.
[4:07]And he is his life is thrown into turmoil and by her presence and her knowledge of what
[4:14]he'd done.
[4:15]And what eventually happens is he becomes very vulnerable to her beauty and her probing questions
[4:22]and the therapy roles reverse and he becomes the client desperate to uncover his connection
[4:29]to Mira and maybe find some redemption for his troubled soul.
[4:34]And the central question of the novel is who is this Mira, is she an avenging spirit related
[4:39]to his past sin, is she a femme fatale, a wannabe psychologist, or maybe a manifestation
[4:46]of Gregory's pain?
[4:48]So that's what really drives the novel.
[4:50]So cool.
[4:51]Where did this idea come from?
[4:53]Well, it's sort of a funny and horrible story that about 27 years ago my husband and
[5:01]I were just dating, we've been married 25 years.
[5:04]And he called me one day from work.
[5:06]He's a clinical psychologist like Gregory, but he does not bury any horrible burdens
[5:10]from his past that I know about.
[5:12]But he called one day and he said, shut the windows and these were landline days and
[5:17]I ran over shut the window and I came back and I said, what what is going on?
[5:20]He said, a client just came into my office and she knew things about me.
[5:26]He's probably been listening like through our open windows at night.
[5:32]And it turned into a four year stalking horror story, honestly.
[5:38]But the seed of this novel was planted that day.
[5:41]I wasn't interested in telling the story of a stalker who felt proprietary toward my
[5:48]husband's home life.
[5:49]But I was very curious about this idea, about a psychologist who one day a client comes
[5:56]into his office and knows things about him that she shouldn't know.
[5:59]What if the psychologist has a buried secret?
[6:02]And this person comes in and starts talking about it.
[6:06]How would the tables turn?
[6:08]How would he become vulnerable?
[6:10]When usually the psychologist is in control and the client feels very vulnerable.
[6:15]So I love this idea of this role reversal.
[6:18]I tried it in a lot of iterations over the years.
[6:21]Again, this was 27 years ago that this happened.
[6:24]I couldn't quite find a way to tell this story.
[6:29]But it stayed with me.
[6:30]It always intrigued me this idea, this concept.
[6:33]And then it was the pandemic.
[6:35]It was 2020 and I got a terrible case of vertigo.
[6:39]And it was it lasted through the spring of 2020.
[6:41]And I couldn't write.
[6:42]I couldn't look at my computer screen.
[6:44]But you might know, Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, that beautiful book that talks
[6:50]about morning pages where everybody she was on, she was on my podcast.
[6:54]Right?
[6:55]She's amazing.
[6:56]Amazing.
[6:57]I love her.
[6:58]She's simply amazing.
[6:59]And that was 50 years ago, she wrote that book.
[7:01]It's still so beautiful and so relevant today.
[7:04]And I started doing the morning pages because I couldn't look at my computer screen.
[7:08]So I would just close my eyes in the morning and scribble out a couple pages in my notebook.
[7:14]That was my writing for the day.
[7:15]In my head, I thought, oh no, this is it.
[7:18]I'll never write again.
[7:19]I'll never look at a computer screen again.
[7:21]But that's not actually what happened.
[7:23]The vertigo lifted in the summer of 2020.
[7:27]And with it, I think post morning pages came this clarity of this story, of this psychologist,
[7:34]Gregory Weber.
[7:35]And I sat down and I knew how to tell this story.
[7:39]It came to me almost fully formed like a download.
[7:42]And every day for the summer of 2020, you'll recall there was nothing to do.
[7:46]Right?
[7:47]We couldn't go to parties.
[7:48]We couldn't talk to people.
[7:50]We lived in our pods.
[7:51]And every morning for that summer, I wrote a thousand words a day.
[7:54]And it was weirdly easy.
[7:57]This might be my one off as far as easy books go.
[8:00]But by 90 days later, I had a 90,000 word manuscript that became, that was Wednesday's
[8:06]at one.
[8:07]It was very, the book that is coming out now is very similar to that original book.
[8:13]So there are other complexities over the years that have influenced this story.
[8:18]But really, I think it's been a, it's been like a 27 year journey.
[8:23]Oh my gosh, wait, the two things I want to go back to, first of all, the vertigo, was
[8:29]it caused by COVID?
[8:31]I think it was, I think it was caused by, I did a yoga technique.
[8:39]And I might have just been a little bit vulnerable to it, but it really left me spinning
[8:45]my head dizzy.
[8:46]If you've ever had vertigo, it's terrible, you can't.
[8:51]I had, because I had COVID and I had vertigo when I had it.
[8:54]And I was like calling doctors and they're like, no, this isn't a side effect.
[8:57]Maybe it's your inner ear.
[8:58]I was like, it's not randomly my inner ear, the week I got COVID.
[9:01]I have COVID.
[9:02]I'm really sick.
[9:03]And now I have to hold onto my walls to get to the bathroom.
[9:05]Like I'm on like a moving ship.
[9:07]It was the worst.
[9:08]And I'm like, people live with this all the time.
[9:10]How did they live with this?
[9:13]It's terrible.
[9:14]I was asking myself the same question.
[9:16]The first few nights that I had it, I thought like, I can't, I can't live with this.
[9:21]And then it slowly started to lift and there are some techniques and I had some good
[9:25]therapist and doctors who helped me, but that was a challenge.
[9:28]But to then come out of it with the gift of this book, I think that they are inextricably
[9:32]linked honestly.
[9:33]I think morning pages, the dark night of the soul that was COVID and then opening up
[9:41]to possibility, I tend to frame things in a spiritual context anyway.
[9:47]And so I absolutely believe that sometimes what we see as truly our biggest burdens end
[9:53]up being a big gift.
[9:55]And this was one of those cases.
[9:56]That sounds really easy to replicate those conditions.
[10:00]have no problem moving forward.
[10:01]You know, I'm knocking on wood, man, never going to go again.
[10:06]No, I literally, I think I had it for two days.
[10:07]It was like the worst thing ever.
[10:09]And now let's go back to this four-year stocking of your husband and you
[10:13]what on earth? Tell me where about that?
[10:16]Oh my goodness.
[10:17]It was the word is, I guess, nuts.
[10:20]So a client became obsessed with him.
[10:23]And again, this is nothing to do with the actual plot of the book.
[10:26]My mirror is not obsessed with Gregory in the book.
[10:30]There are different reasons that she's pursuing him.
[10:32]But in real life, she just, I just, a client who became obsessed with my husband
[10:38]and started stealing our mail and showing up at our doorstep, coming to the
[10:45]house when we weren't there, listening in the bushes.
[10:48]And so it culminated four years later with a high-speed police chase in our
[10:54]neighborhood after she tried to draw attention to herself by, say, threatening
[10:59]suicide on our front porch.
[11:01]And she ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
[11:05]There was a time a few years later, our son was born and my husband was driving
[11:09]with our son in the back and he looked in the rear view and he saw her and he
[11:14]right to the police station and that ended that.
[11:18]So it was, but the interesting things to be is I never really, I wrote a few
[11:26]essays about this, but it was so disruptive to our lives that I, I never
[11:31]wanted it to find its way into a longer piece of work because it was, it was truly.
[11:37]We were beginning our relationship.
[11:39]This was the beginning of our marriage.
[11:40]And every time we came home answering machine days, the entire tape of the
[11:45]answering machine would have run out by her phone calls.
[11:49]We changed our number.
[11:50]We did everything.
[11:52]Oh my gosh.
[11:54]It was, that's insane.
[11:55]Why did it take so long for it to stop?
[11:58]Like, can you not need to get restraining orders?
[12:02]And there were some issues because my husband was her therapist.
[12:06]So he had to do it very carefully.
[12:09]But finally, it became a court case and it's, um, gratefully, you know,
[12:16]there were, there were years that I would pick up the phone and I'd just be
[12:18]traveling.
[12:19]But, oh my gosh, wow, where is she now?
[12:24]Do we, do you know?
[12:25]I don't know.
[12:26]I don't know.
[12:26]I don't want to know, but I just know that we're fine.
[12:29]And again, I'm knocking on one, not again, what a lie in this conversation.
[12:33]Yeah, where she seems, everything seems to have resolved and it's been,
[12:37]it's been a couple of, it's been one of years, maybe now that things have been
[12:42]clear and clean and fine.
[12:43]So did you ever question your husband in the beginning?
[12:46]Like, was she, it was there ever anything like to the Gregory, you know,
[12:51]model?
[12:51]I don't know.
[12:52]Was there ever any question that you've gotten?
[12:54]That's an interesting question.
[12:56]What I thought is, and this kind of speaks to the book a little bit,
[13:00]I thought I would know how to handle this.
[13:03]Like, you know, here's my husband, a train, you know, Yale psychologist with a
[13:08]BHD and I decided that I would, if this happened to me, if this situation
[13:13]happened to me, I would absolutely be able to take it.
[13:16]You know, bring it under control and that, that wasn't the case because we're
[13:19]dealing with, um, you know, a very mentally ill person.
[13:24]And so that wasn't the case.
[13:26]I would not have known how to handle it.
[13:28]And so I didn't question my husband as, what did you do?
[13:31]I questioned him as, are you handling this correctly?
[13:34]Of course he was.
[13:35]So I mean, I feel like everybody questions if their spouse is handling something
[13:40]correctly.
[13:40]Well, that's maybe they don't.
[13:42]Maybe I, and you know, in the book Gregory's wife lives questions, there's, oh,
[13:49]you're seeing this woman, she's the, she's your patient.
[13:53]Well, what is going on with her?
[13:54]What are you not telling me?
[13:56]Are you handling this strangely?
[13:58]So there are ways that I think as, as the life of a therapist, you always have
[14:04]ideas about how things might be done or, you know, wife or spouse of a therapist,
[14:10]say, wife.
[14:11]So, um, did you ever consider becoming a therapist after you saw that, like,
[14:16]one of those things, like, well, I could totally do that.
[14:19]I might as well just like, go off and become one.
[14:21]Well, I've always joked if Mark ever missed work, which he doesn't, um, I could
[14:26]definitely pinch hit.
[14:27]I have, I have what I call a pillow talk understanding of cognitive
[14:30]behavioral therapy, which is what he practices.
[14:33]So at night, when I can't fall asleep, I'll tell him to bore me to sleep.
[14:37]He'll tell me session, like, details of session dynamics, not actual dynamics that,
[14:44]you know, not with real people, but just general therapeutic technique, session
[14:48]dynamics, he'll say, if we're dealing with somebody with OCD, maybe what we would
[14:55]do is have them touch the bottom of their feet and not wash their hands.
[15:01]Like, he'll tell me in this very groaning voice to bore me.
[15:03]So my pillow talk understanding of session dynamics has led me to believe that
[15:10]he's out for a couple of sessions I could go in and, you know, figure it out with
[15:14]a client, but it's funny.
[15:16]Honestly, my, when I went to college thinking I would be a therapist as many
[15:22]people who grew up in dysfunctional families do.
[15:25]I think that's often a path because we are so desperate to understand our
[15:30]families or resolve the issues and the dysfunction.
[15:33]My sister's a wonderful social worker.
[15:36]She took it all the way, but I was in college thinking, I'll be a psychologist.
[15:40]I'll be a therapist.
[15:41]And then then I'll get my life straightened out and my mothers and my fathers.
[15:46]And fortunately, a wonderful, the chair of the English department handed me back
[15:52]my first paper for literary analysis, you know, English 101.
[15:57]And she, she whispered as she handed it back.
[16:00]She said, you're a very good writer.
[16:02]You should be an English major.
[16:04]And I thought, OK, that sounds good.
[16:07]Like, and then everything turned on that moment being seen by this very brilliant
[16:12]professor who was the chair of the English department and still a friend today.
[16:16]So just like that, all of my dreams of my therapy dreams ended.
[16:21]Oh my gosh.
[16:22]Well, they all got to live out in writing the specs.
[16:26]And there you go, it's like, it's very true.
[16:29]Tell me a little more if you don't mind.
[16:31]And if I'm praying that you don't have to talk about it, but about your
[16:34]dysfunctional family growing up.
[16:36]Well, I think what happened is I was a very creative child who was really
[16:42]interested in the arts and writing and theater.
[16:46]And I grew up in a very stained middle class family, which emphasized being a good
[16:52]Catholic girl and behaving yourself and not causing trouble and not bragging
[16:59]about yourself or not, you know, not being creatively effusive, which I was.
[17:03]So it was very, very hard.
[17:06]It was there is a lot of violence in my home.
[17:09]And as soon as I could, as soon as I went on to college and then beyond college,
[17:16]I just needed to escape and see the world and just sort of stretch my
[17:22]creative muscles.
[17:23]And interestingly, my dad was much older.
[17:26]He had been in World War II in Japan.
[17:28]And right out of college, I worked in publishing for a few years.
[17:32]And then all I wanted to do was go to Japan and understand where my father had
[17:38]been in World War II, my father died when I was in college.
[17:41]And so as far as the dysfunction goes, it was oppressive.
[17:46]And it was burdensome to me all my life.
[17:51]And yet at the same time, I really wanted to understand it.
[17:56]And I explored that intro of my memoir that felt important to me to figure out
[18:01]who I was, what I was looking for, the loving connection to my family that I
[18:06]never had.
[18:07]And so the beauty of dysfunction is if you work with it, if you take it into
[18:16]your creative life, you can transform the dysfunction into something
[18:20]creative like a book.
[18:22]And my case, I'm very proud of my memoir because instead of going around
[18:28]saying, well, that childhood sucked, I said, let me understand what
[18:35]that was who were my parents.
[18:37]My father had terrible burdens as a man growing up who went to war.
[18:41]My mother was a 50's housewife also probably had some creative dreams
[18:45]that had to be repressed at the time because, you know, women weren't allowed
[18:50]to explore themselves to the full extent of their abilities or interests.
[18:55]So I do think that, and I tell my students this because I teach creative
[19:01]nonfiction at UMass Lowell.
[19:03]And I tell them all the time, one of the great gifts of this writing process
[19:07]is when you take a very hard story and you turn it into something beautiful,
[19:13]you've made art out of your hardships.
[19:17]And I can't think of a better way to, to work with, with our burdens and to
[19:25]make them something creative and productive.
[19:27]And do you think that takes the burden of the dysfunction off, like
[19:31]turning it into art, does it for you?
[19:33]Does it I think so?
[19:35]I think it does.
[19:36]I think while you're in it, for example, while I was writing my memoir,
[19:40]I had to re-traumatize myself daily at my desk,
[19:44]remembering the stories, remembering the violence, how unseen I felt,
[19:48]the shame that I carried out of that family.
[19:50]And at the same time, I can hold that book in my hand and say, I, I worked that through.
[20:00]I did that work and I wrote my way through that.
[20:05]And I think it's clear to me.
[20:07]I think that's why people love to write.
[20:10]I think that's why memoir is so popular now
[20:12]because I think a lot of women for sure
[20:15]who are exploring their lives in middle age
[20:18]and want to make sense of something,
[20:20]whether it's been hardship, divorce, struggles,
[20:23]or just a beautiful life.
[20:25]And I think there's something very liberating
[20:29]about that, the writing process,
[20:32]as well as a finished product.
[20:36]So in a way, it's like you have become a therapist,
[20:39]all those people.
[20:40]Thank you, Sammy.
[20:41]That's what I was hoping you'd say.
[20:43]Oh, good.
[20:44]I'm so predictable.
[20:46]I do love that.
[20:47]I love when somebody reads my memoir or even the novel
[20:51]and says, oh, those characters,
[20:53]I got to think about shame and guilt
[20:56]and what we carry into marriages
[20:59]and the struggles of a long marriage.
[21:01]So maybe we're all sort of psychologists as writers, right?
[21:06]Yeah, right.
[21:07]I was also a psychology major.
[21:08]I wanted to be a psychologist.
[21:10]I went to spend a summer at a psychiatric hospital
[21:13]and I don't know what that reveals about my family origin,
[21:16]but I'll just leave it there.
[21:17]Okay, so I won't ask any other questions.
[21:20]You know, one of the interesting things about Wednesdays
[21:23]is one, many, well, there are many,
[21:25]but it's that you are writing so effectively
[21:28]from the point of view of a man
[21:30]and you are obviously not a man.
[21:31]And so this is something that doesn't always happen.
[21:35]Nowadays, it's come under the microscope spotlight,
[21:39]whatever, of is this sort of okay to do?
[21:42]How do we all feel about this collectively?
[21:44]Who can you write about?
[21:44]What race can you write from?
[21:46]What gender, how do you feel about this discussion?
[21:50]Well, I think it's a very long discussion,
[21:54]but I've heard some people talk about it
[21:56]and this is the line I take right now.
[21:59]I think that is fiction writers.
[22:01]We have the right to explore the characters
[22:06]that we want to explore that come to us.
[22:09]And yet there's a moment right now in time
[22:12]that we need to be very sensitive to this issue
[22:17]and be aware that we are not making assumptions
[22:21]about other people, about other cultures.
[22:23]So I feel like if we do this, if we take on a character
[22:27]that doesn't relate to our own identity,
[22:31]that we have to be do it very consciously,
[22:35]very thoughtfully, with oversight of readers
[22:39]of that background.
[22:40]And I hope the tables are turning a little bit
[22:43]that this is opening up for fiction writers
[22:46]because that's the beauty of fiction.
[22:48]I tried to write this story from a female perspective.
[22:51]I tried to write it from the perspective of the client
[22:54]and the story really happened when I inhabited
[22:58]Gregory's brain and mind and psychosis.
[23:02]And that's when I knew I could tell this story.
[23:05]And so what a loss it would be
[23:08]if we think we have to tell a story a certain way
[23:10]that aligns with our identity or eliminate characters.
[23:14]I have a lesbian couple in my story.
[23:17]One of the women is Puerto Rican.
[23:20]I grew up in a very predominantly Puerto Rican town.
[23:24]I have a lot of experience with the backgrounds
[23:27]that I write about.
[23:28]And I hope that I do it responsibly.
[23:30]And I hope that all writers do it responsibly.
[23:33]Not everybody has, but I do think it's a moment
[23:35]that we have to take a moment right now
[23:37]to reflect and really be conscious as we go forward
[23:41]writing about different identities.
[23:43]When you teach your creative non-fiction class,
[23:46]what other pearls of wisdom do you impart to your students
[23:51]that maybe can benefit listeners here?
[23:53]Well, first of all, when they come into class,
[23:55]I say their phones are attached to their hands.
[23:57]All their phones are attached to their hands.
[23:59]And I make them peel them off their palms
[24:02]and turn them off and put them into their backpacks
[24:04]and they look at me like,
[24:06]oh, can this possibly be so that we can't,
[24:10]we can't look at our phones for 60 or 90 minutes?
[24:13]And so that I give the lecture about
[24:16]buying your minds and how you're gonna hear your own stories
[24:20]if you're always obsessed
[24:22]and scrolling through other people's stories.
[24:24]And that's, I think that's very important
[24:27]for this generation.
[24:28]I would absolutely never be a writer
[24:31]if I hadn't started repeating in the late 80s
[24:33]before the internet, before social media, maybe I would've,
[24:38]but I'm not sure I could have done it.
[24:41]I spent two years in Tokyo.
[24:43]That was the basis for the first writing that I did.
[24:46]I was there from 88 to 90.
[24:49]The phone calls were $1 a minute.
[24:51]Letters took two weeks.
[24:53]The TV only showed you how many programs.
[24:56]There was no computer, no screening, no movies to distract me.
[25:00]I had books and my journals, that was it.
[25:06]And that quiet, that going inside,
[25:09]the lack of distractions, I think is really key for a writer.
[25:14]And if you can't turn off the noise,
[25:17]you're going to struggle to hear what your characters
[25:19]are talking about.
[25:21]So that's what I tell them.
[25:23]And then, you know, the time is up and their phones
[25:27]are glued to their hands again, minus two.
[25:29]But I hope that when they go out
[25:32]and actually try to, you know, maybe try on this writing
[25:35]thing in a serious way, I hope that they can learn to quiet,
[25:39]the distractions because I don't think it works otherwise.
[25:42]Or it's reflected in the writing.
[25:45]So interesting.
[25:47]It's true.
[25:47]I know I think about even like the only times
[25:50]that when I was at summer camp or something
[25:52]where I would go for eight weeks and read all these books
[25:55]and write all these letters.
[25:56]And I don't know, do people have that space
[26:00]in regular life?
[26:01]I don't know.
[26:02]I think it's the challenge of all the generations to come
[26:06]right now.
[26:07]And unless we learn how to do it, it'd be in trouble.
[26:10]But I'm not one of these, oh, the olden days.
[26:14]I know, I know.
[26:15]But I do think that we're pretty distracted right now.
[26:19]When writing takes an intense amount of quiet concentration
[26:23]and focus, good writing.
[26:25]And by the way, I'm going to Japan.
[26:28]This will air later, but on your pub day,
[26:30]but I'm going to Japan on Friday.
[26:33]You would have heard.
[26:33]I am.
[26:34]I'm going to Tokyo with all the kids.
[26:36]Yeah.
[26:37]Really?
[26:38]Yeah.
[26:39]You'll have to, I don't know.
[26:40]We're doing a lot of Pokemon related things.
[26:43]But that's fun.
[26:47]If you have any recommendations,
[26:48]we can take this up on email or something for sure.
[26:52]So aside, last question aside from all this amazing advice
[26:56]you've already given with the distractions,
[26:58]if you had one piece of advice for aspiring authors
[27:01]in general, what would it be?
[27:03]Maybe for novelists, or I don't know.
[27:05]Tell the story you want to tell and tell it your way.
[27:11]And I feel like that's a little bit time-worn,
[27:13]but nothing could be true.
[27:16]Even as I was writing Wednesdays at one,
[27:19]I thought, no, is this weird?
[27:21]I dabble in the speculative.
[27:24]Is this marketable?
[27:25]And when I put aside those doubts
[27:27]and just let the characters play on the page
[27:30]and trusted my own instincts, it worked.
[27:34]And as we've talked about this,
[27:35]it's a slightly hard to characterize book
[27:38]because it's not quite a psychological thriller.
[27:40]It's, you know, it sort of has rich characters
[27:43]and rich family drama.
[27:45]But I find like that's what's interesting about it.
[27:48]So don't just write to the genre
[27:51]because you think that's what's expected
[27:54]or don't write because you're gonna fill some gap
[27:57]in the literary canon right now.
[27:59]Write the story that really only you can tell.
[28:02]Who of them?
[28:03]Sandra, I have so much respect for you.
[28:05]I really do.
[28:06]And I loved this episode, but mostly I've really loved
[28:11]working with you.
[28:11]And I'm so excited for your book to come out.
[28:14]And I feel honored you chose us.
[28:16]And it's like meant to be.
[28:17]I'm really excited.
[28:18]It has absolutely meant to be.
[28:20]I've thought that all along.
[28:22]I was so thrilled when I had just finished my book
[28:24]and you had started publishing house.
[28:26]And I had such a good experience
[28:28]on this podcast the first time with my memoir.
[28:30]And as soon as I saw that, I was like,
[28:32]Kismet and sent it off to you.
[28:35]Oh, yeah.
[28:37]Here we are.
[28:38]So exciting.
[28:39]Oh my God.
[28:40]Okay.