Susanna Hoffs, THIS BIRD HAS FLOWN
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[1:03]Susanna Hoffs is the author of The Novel, This Bird Has Flown.
[1:08]She is one of pop's most beloved voices.
[1:11]She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in art.
[1:14]In 1981, she co-founded The Bangles, with whom she recorded and released a string of chart
[1:20]topping singles, including Manic Monday, Walk Like an Egyptian, Hazy Shade of Winter,
[1:27]an eternal flame, which she co-wrote before embarking on a critically acclaimed solo career.
[1:32]She also wrote recorded music for and appeared in the Austin Powers movies and played
[1:36]herself on season one of The Gilmore Girls.
[1:39]This bird has flown as her first novel.
[1:41]She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, filmmaker J. Roach.
[1:45]Welcome Susanna.
[1:46]Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read books to discuss.
[1:50]This bird has flown.
[1:52]It's great to be here with you.
[1:54]Yay!
[1:55]Your book was so fun and so great.
[1:57]Your voice, I am like obsessed with the voice in this book.
[2:00]It's so awesome.
[2:02]Anyway, congrats.
[2:03]I loved it.
[2:04]Really loved it.
[2:05]Oh, that thrills me.
[2:06]It makes me so happy.
[2:07]It was such a joy to write and a pleasure and to kind of channel Jane's voice as the
[2:14]sort of first person narrator of the book.
[2:18]And I found it endlessly fun because I just, you know, I know that I would hear her thoughts
[2:26]in my own head.
[2:27]I was obviously thinking those thoughts, but the experience of that is so different writing
[2:33]a novel than writing a song, even though both channel, you know, some aspects of experiences
[2:41]that you've lived, but also, you know, just things that spring to life in your imagination.
[2:48]That whole idea of, it's a kind of psychosis in a way that characters talking to you.
[2:56]And you, and you need to kind of quickly catch what they're saying.
[3:01]And that was a big part of the process that I found somewhat unexpected.
[3:05]But now I realize in talking to other authors that's sort of what the process is that,
[3:11]I mean, some people have different ways they go about things.
[3:15]But for me, a lot of times I like to grab a walk in the morning to just kind of get
[3:19]my mind sort of sharpened and I always play music and the music would really just stimulate
[3:26]the characters to start talking and the story.
[3:29]Now I kind of had a sense of what I wanted the themes of the book to kind of touch upon.
[3:36]And I used the books.
[3:38]I studied the books, Jane Eyre and Rebecca, the Daphne Jamari book, a lot because I liked
[3:44]the idea of ghosts of our past could haunt us or haunt us or might ruin our chances of
[3:50]ever making a deep connection with another person, like a love relationship.
[3:56]And so I was playing around with those things, but the characters would just go and just
[4:02]start chattering.
[4:03]It was fun.
[4:04]I love it.
[4:05]I just heard a novel myself that's coming out in March and I was just talking to my editor
[4:09]before this.
[4:10]And I was like, well, what if we did like a continuation book next?
[4:13]Because I really kind of miss writing in this voice.
[4:16]I finally just got it like down by the time the book ended.
[4:19]So like, now what do I do with that skill?
[4:21]I mean, the exact same moment as you then because I have just started the beginnings of,
[4:28]I mean, it's not the formal.
[4:29]I haven't like opened Word doc or a doc, you know, and started page one, you know, but
[4:36]I've been collecting.
[4:38]Yeah, I'm feeling a related universe in mind or not, not universe, but like related.
[4:45]I don't want to, I'm not ready to give up my characters.
[4:48]They're not ready to stop hanging out with them.
[4:50]So I started to conceive of this next book and man, it's so fun.
[4:55]So we're in this, and I spoke with my editor, but she's like great in my, and Sarah
[5:02]Burns, who was the one who, you know, my friend Margaret Stahl was an novelist insisted
[5:07]I send my big fat manuscript that I wouldn't let anyone see, but I finally had let her
[5:13]see it.
[5:14]And yeah, so it's a fun, it's a whole new career for me, I guess you could say.
[5:18]And I love it.
[5:19]But you're right in that same moment too.
[5:22]I know.
[5:23]What do you do with the voice?
[5:24]I actually just started a, I started an Instagram account with the character's name.
[5:29]And now I want to start posting as her, but it's like running out of time is, yeah,
[5:35]only, only, um, thing to keep in mind is not wanting to give spoilers away.
[5:40]I know, but her, but her voice could just be running that page.
[5:45]That's her Instagram page.
[5:47]Yeah.
[5:48]You can totally take the idea and run with it.
[5:51]You can make, you can make an Instagram page too.
[5:54]They can be friends.
[5:55]Maybe they could, they could be friends.
[5:58]They can hang out in a conversation.
[5:59]They're connected.
[6:00]Exactly.
[6:01]Exactly.
[6:02]Perfect.
[6:03]I love it.
[6:04]Oh my gosh.
[6:05]But it's almost amazing because you're, like, most people are super talented in like
[6:11]one big way, but for you to be talented on the music side.
[6:15]And then just like dabble in the literature side, which some people spend their whole life
[6:20]just trying to accomplish.
[6:22]And you're just like, this looks, this sounds like fun.
[6:24]Like, tell me a little bit about, I know it's all related, right, music and I know it's
[6:28]all related.
[6:29]But tell me about crossing genres more.
[6:32]And if you like, did you ever as a little girl, like, want to ride a book or was it always
[6:36]about music or what?
[6:37]Well, it was always all of it.
[6:40]I mean, all, both of those things I grew up as, as a young girl, I was an obsessive reader.
[6:46]My mom would take me to the Brownwood Library and I'd sit on the floor and it was, you
[6:50]know, kind of stories about, there were almost that like stories about female witches
[6:56]or girls who had magical powers, there was some, I have some memory, I can't think of
[7:01]the names of those books, but it always seemed like there were lots of those kind of stories.
[7:06]And I think for kids, there is something in that where you feel so helpless as a child.
[7:12]You have no power, you're at the mercy of whatever your parents are older or adults tell
[7:17]you to do teachers, parents.
[7:20]And so I don't know why I have some memory of sitting on the floor at that library and
[7:24]just going through these books that had something to do with magical powers for young girls.
[7:30]And I may have just invented that memory, but it always comes back to me that it was somehow
[7:36]like that.
[7:37]So then I feel like songwriting to pivot to that is the differences between novel writing
[7:43]and songwriting, they are very different to me.
[7:47]And I mean, I think we love stories, we connect as humans through stories.
[7:53]And I think that there are stories in all art forms.
[7:57]And because I was raised in a sort of Bohemian household where my mom was an artist and
[8:03]my dad was a psychoanalyst, there was some way in which those influences, you know, kind
[8:10]of freed my own way of thinking about things and wanting to find ways to express those things
[8:18]and connect with other people that way.
[8:20]But songwriting, I actually find in some ways a particularly lyric writing really challenging
[8:27]and I found the freedom, even though people think, oh my God, a novel, that's like the
[8:33]huge commitment.
[8:34]I mean, you can sit down with someone or just by yourself, another co-writer and write
[8:40]a song fairly quickly, but there's a kind of constraint due to the fact that you tend
[8:47]to want to have rhymes and rhythms and it just feels more like a puzzle, like how do I
[8:56]I fit this idea into this, this couple it here, like it's kind of, and then put a melody
[9:05]to it.
[9:06]It's very, it's a bit tricky where I found with the process of writing, once I started
[9:12]to get the arts of like the sort of overall predicaments and arcs that I thought were the
[9:19]overarching arcs in the book, I just, they just, the characters would sort of take over
[9:24]my brain and I would start envisioning everything that was going on, that would be going
[9:31]on in the book and I had to have post-it notes by the bed or my phone to throw the idea
[9:36]in there because I did learn early on that if you think something's a great idea and
[9:41]your conventional never lose that track of it, it goes, poof, it goes out of your brain,
[9:48]you know, it gets pushed aside by another idea and you have to store them, you have to
[9:52]catalog them somehow.
[9:54]So that was a big part of my process, but it was fun, um.
[10:00]You know, and you know, being a writer, I had to kind of give myself a pep top, you know, I really
[10:05]stopped touring and stuff like that. And then there was the pandemic. So that gave me a lot of
[10:10]time at home. But I had to kind of give myself a, okay, do this thing, face around. And it was
[10:17]permission to stay in my pajamas most of the day, because I did a lot of writing during the
[10:23]pandemic. And so I just would figure out where I was in that moment or what what my task was.
[10:31]And then finally, you know, as, you know, having an editor then when a publisher gets involved
[10:37]at the process, that was just really fun to have another human being who's really invested in
[10:45]your, your story commune with you about it, because you know this too that it's a very solitary act.
[10:53]writing a novel. So that was so interesting. That part of it when that happened.
[11:00]Yes. Awesome. Welcome. Although every time I got edits back, I was like, okay, should I open the
[11:08]document? I don't know if I can face this round. I don't know. Like how much time do I have to budget?
[11:12]And I would like almost like be like my eyes would be half closed. You know, like you're just peeking,
[11:17]like, oh, yeah. I know. And what about the moment when they send you the book jacket artwork?
[11:23]Did you have a moment with that? Were it so nice? I haven't gotten the cover art for the novel yet.
[11:28]I got that from my memoir and actually that took a little bit because I didn't like the first
[11:33]covers at all. And I was like crying. And I was like, there's never going to be right. And this isn't
[11:36]me. But anyway, so I'm I also you have yet to have that with your novel. Yeah, I know. Oh, it's really
[11:44]exciting. I I got really lucky because apart from like the smallest, smallest little thing
[11:51]that got tweaked and slightly changed, like that's the cover. Yeah, the cover. And so it was just like
[12:01]momentous because you really have no idea what your publisher's art department will come up with.
[12:08]We I had it up. This reminds me now, I had a few sort of conversations with my editor just kind of
[12:16]you have some kind of nebulous vision in your head about it, but it's not it's sort of hard to articulate
[12:22]and you don't want to impose something because you kind of want to see what an outside
[12:28]you're so invested in your book. You're so deep in it that you kind of need a little perspective.
[12:34]I found that that was an interesting moment of seeing what someone else would do with it.
[12:40]Yes, very true. Well, your cover is amazing though. I mean, it's so cool. Thank you. It's like art.
[12:47]You could just like, you know, could be like coasters or something. You know, I feel like it should
[12:54]be more places than just on this book. Thank you. Anyway, very cool. So when you were in the in the
[13:02]flow sort of a writing day or whatever and you're in your jamies, like how long could you write for?
[13:08]Like, did you have like words that are certain number of hours or like like what were your days
[13:12]like or how did you know you were done? Yeah, there were long hours. Like I could go from say
[13:19]10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a snack break or a lunch. Yeah, I went I and then when I was at that
[13:26]point where you're editor you're supposed to turn in a draft after some notes or editorial notes.
[13:33]There were times where I just went even longer like I it was but that was when I felt like this
[13:39]has to be sent so they wake up and have that draft in New York Los Angeles. But I really got lost in it.
[13:47]I lost track of time when I was I describe it often as it is almost like I went through a portal
[13:55]into another universe and then I get to be with these people that are imaginary but they feel so
[14:01]real as you probably feel in your novel writing experience too. You really feel like you're
[14:08]you're somewhere else and you're with them. Yeah, because once I would be in that mode,
[14:14]I it's a magical place to be. I can't even it's been a while since I because then you get to
[14:20]the phase where you're on these very very detailed line edits and you're going through revisions
[14:26]and they're just it's all sort of minutia kind of stuff mostly at that point. But when you're just
[14:32]free writing and you know you kind of know where you're meant to be or you're right in the moment of
[14:39]the earlier phases where you're just it's all just happening and you don't know why it is
[14:45]and how the story is unfolding because I mean that's at least the way I did it. I had a kind of
[14:51]kind of basic idea of the arc of the story. But during the course of the book
[14:57]some things changed and new things inserted themselves and a few places I because it's somewhat of
[15:06]a fish out of water story with a girl from LA who ends up in England and has to kind of work her way
[15:13]into this whole new universe of human beings and people who are academics at Oxford and
[15:19]you know she's so I there was a lot of sort of scenes that I had in my mind but how do you connect
[15:26]these moments and scenes and into like something that flows properly. So there was that and in a
[15:33]couple cases I moved some chunks around yeah so I'm sure you've encountered that in your work too
[15:39]I was all new to me like a song can live in a three-minute space of time and it's really is more it
[15:49]has to be so concentrated that it's a concentrated whereas a book it kind of unfolds like a movie in
[15:57]a way more or a series you know. Did you have like any insecurities or doubts about trying it
[16:04]just throwing myself into trying to be a novelist. Yeah you know what the passion just sort of like
[16:10]knocked all that stuff aside. I found such pleasure in it and I found that I loved the challenge
[16:16]of it and I did a lot of reading as I always do but I went and did a lot of rereading of books
[16:24]that in some ways because of the style of the prose was it was very compelling to me so I would
[16:31]return to certain books like which ones. Well like Rebecca and Jane Eyre although Rebecca's
[16:38]more modern I mean it's still an older book but the style of Charlotte Bronte's writing and Jane Eyre
[16:44]is you know is this sort of what we think of as somewhat more antiquated language you know.
[16:50]Yes I mean there are so many classic books like Madame Bauvery but and those books that are older
[16:56]books but I also revisited you know I'm really a big John Uftite fan which most people you know
[17:03]are I don't know he's I love his writing it's very lyric and beautiful like extraordinary to me
[17:11]but there are some women I've had encountered in my life he was like he's too macho or something
[17:16]like that. But I love his writing and Nabokov you know I mean that like I and and Fitzgerald I love
[17:26]and Thomas Hardy you know a lot of the protests of the Durberville's those the some of those books
[17:31]were the writings somewhat I sometimes describe it as voluptuous or delicious you know it's not
[17:39]sort of Hemingway kind of by the book man like like very plain but beautiful and moving. I just
[17:47]I tend to go for the slightly more I don't know just more voluptuous. Now I'm sort of feeling a
[17:54]ashamed because I mostly read contemporary fiction and memoir like I don't go back to the classics
[18:00]I read them in school and all that but yeah my go-to is like what's coming out and well you know
[18:06]what what helps me make sense of my world today based on how everybody else is sort of living it
[18:11]like as my guide posts if you will you know. Yeah but I aspire to that to be honest because during
[18:18]the writing of this book I focus so much on a few pieces that I felt were helpful let's
[18:26]in how I approached this bird has flown but now now that I'm like in book world I'm literally like
[18:35]going on you know kindle and buying books and going you know and having the physical copies and
[18:42]just amassing a great collection of new authors that I'm discovering and it's so fun to be part
[18:48]of the community after those years of kind of study it was so much like studying those old books
[18:56]and and somehow the ones that from my childhood had sparked a connection I just kept being drawn
[19:04]to those as it relates to this bird has flown for whatever reason yeah just saying did you know
[19:12]at all how we would end like did you know like the big some of the twistier elements and all that
[19:18]like did you know that was coming or yeah I mean I don't want to give any spoilers away for readers
[19:25]I'm not giving any spoilers I think did you have the end did you know did you have it all planned
[19:30]I think yes I knew I think that I can't remember at one point in the journey of years
[19:38]write the book but that I conceived of the ending and and then I conceived of a little
[19:46]postscript sort of bit too but yeah I mean I just stumbled upon I was sort of organizing my computer
[19:53]I stumbled upon some really early drafts and the evolution is was math
[20:00]So to get to where I ended up, just for people who are daunted in some way by the idea
[20:06]of taking on writing something like a novel, like something that with the commitment of
[20:12]a novel versus a short story or something. Yeah, I mean, it for me, because I'd never done it
[20:19]before, I had to work through many iterations of the story and even the tense. It used to be
[20:25]in present tense, for example, maybe I'm in. Oh, interesting. It used to be in present tense,
[20:30]but first-person present tense can be difficult in a way. Yes. More so than in past tense,
[20:37]but there was a point where a couple of years in actually, I was like, okay, I got a note
[20:46]from someone I really trusted my literary agent who had come from editing and edited the lovely
[20:51]bones and looked up books that I had loved. I said, okay, I'm up to the task and I just went
[20:58]through the whole thing and there was something a little more grounded in it. Then I love
[21:04]first-person present tense, but it's with my character's level of how fast her mind works and
[21:13]how she's constantly processing things so tangibly. She feels things so, she's, everything's so
[21:21]at the surface in her emotions. It just felt like a little more grounded to read it in the past
[21:28]tense. Yeah. Yes. I think that works. I think sometimes first-person present, and by the way, I
[21:34]experimented with this too. I was like, I'm gonna write first-person present. I'm walking in the room.
[21:39]I see this. I do that, but I feel like after a while it becomes more of a literary novel in a way,
[21:45]because it's, you're so focused on the words because you have to be versus like, I think in the past
[21:51]tense, it's just an easier consumption as a reader. Yeah, because that was the thing that my
[21:58]editor had mentioned was that it's, there was like a breathy, you know, G2 it, and it,
[22:05]and there, because there was the sense in my character that she's sort of running through
[22:11]all these things, because her, her mind is always clicking and worrying, worrying, not like worrying
[22:18]that worrying. Yeah. So it felt like the book kind of settled in a little bit for people who
[22:25]weren't having five cups of coffee. She was on massive caffeine. It felt like when it was the present
[22:32]tense, I don't know. It's so interesting how I was just changing the tense. It took me a second.
[22:39]I just did the first chapter and then I read it aloud to my best friend who, who is the novelist,
[22:46]who helped me connect me with Sarah Burns. Her daughter happened to be in the room and I just
[22:50]read it out loud. Like, I would just do that, you know, to just see like, does this work. I would
[22:55]often read, while my kids were still on high school, actually my, my younger son was still on
[23:00]high school at that point. And I would, his friends would come up and I'd just be like,
[23:04]want to hear some stuff. Oh, you read the book. And actually,
[23:08]first, back that are young high schoolers that I read to read the book too. This was one of the
[23:14]best moments ever in the experience of the book. She read the book and loved it. She ended up going
[23:20]to Yale, very bright, worked really hard in high school and, you know, was really dedicated to her
[23:28]studies. And just to get that feedback from a, a 20 something kid now made me feel so exuberant,
[23:36]so happy and so that's the thing about folks and stories they connect us. It's so fun, isn't it?
[23:43]It's so fun. I've literally like started this whole company based around this notion because I'm so
[23:48]obsessed with books and how they connect people and everything. Yes, I could not agree more 100%
[23:54]preaching the choir. Love it. If you had to pick something that was most like you and most
[24:01]unlike you about Jane, what would those things be? Most like me would be her determination to
[24:08]believe in love, despite all the things she's gone through, all the heart breaks and to love
[24:16]music, despite being watched at one hit wonder, despite how awful the music business has been
[24:24]in her experience. Despite the two things, those two things, and that's why I think I just one day
[24:31]came up with the dedication for the book to music lovers and lovers everywhere. I think those two
[24:37]core things I relate to, you know, that music is the best and safest drug in the world.
[24:46]You know, or whatever, whatever form of art you want to take in, whether it's looking at a painting
[24:51]or, you know, listening to a song or watching a movie like communicating the human experience
[24:58]through art, massive to me, massively important, and also just the human connection, you know,
[25:05]with always in which we try to connect and how hard it is when we can't, you know, and when it
[25:11]doesn't happen. Yes. Well, I just, everything you're saying, like, yes, that, yes, yes.
[25:20]What advice would you have for aspiring authors? Well, I would just say that the thing that's
[25:26]worked out for me in my entire life that I'm really now at age 64, recognizing whether it was
[25:34]just something internalized, but I would say don't wait for permission to do the thing you love.
[25:40]So if you want to write a book or a short story or whatever it is, you know, and I didn't take
[25:48]classes in it. I just learned by reading or by doing. So you don't even have to wait around. You
[25:56]can if you want, you can study in any fashion that you want. But if you really want to do it, don't
[26:03]tell yourself you can't. Give it your, you just jump in, jump into the deep end and just
[26:10]you'll figure out how to swim somehow. You'll figure out it may take a while, but you'll,
[26:16]you can learn and there's so many ways to learn by reading by, you know, just
[26:22]starting to see the craft and things starting to notice things that maybe you just took,
[26:29]you just took for granted because you just, you love this movie. You don't, you don't break down
[26:33]what, what, what was it in that movie and that storytelling there that, that, that, that,
[26:40]you know, art flutter or made you cry or made you laugh or made you feel like when you next saw
[26:48]your parents, you were going to give them a hug and hold them for a long time, you know, or whatever,
[26:54]you know, whatever it is. You're not really 64 though, right? Yes, yes, I am. You can't possibly be.
[27:02]I am. No, you look so young. Thank you. I think it's just doing things that having the great
[27:10]luck of being able to do these things and to feel happy about them. I mean, I feel happy and
[27:16]I'm doing these things and I'm 46 and I look like much older than you said. I need your like
[27:22]dermatologist or something. I don't know. I need to do something. I posted better on Instagram.
[27:27]It's just things in your kitchen you can use to moisturize your skin like a drop of olive oil.
[27:33]I put a drop of olive oil on. I'm probably really greasy here. No, it looks amazing. I can't believe
[27:40]your skin. That's amazing. Okay. Well, I did, I was all over your Instagram, but I did not notice
[27:45]anything about dripping olive oil on your face. So I will go back. Close that I put up. Oh, I didn't
[27:50]look today or yesterday maybe. So I don't know. I guess I got a little behind. Okay, I'll check it out.
[27:55]I'll check it out. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're in. You know, I have a bookstore that I opened in
[27:59]Santa Monica. What? Yeah, it's called Zivi's bookshop on Montana Avenue and 11. Yeah, it's on
[28:07]Montana 11. So if you want to if you want to do an event there sometime. We I'd love to have you
[28:14]want to do it. Yeah. Okay. And if you if you put together what and we can talk about times not
[28:20]on the zoom if you want. Yeah. We'll do it. Yeah. I'll email your publicist or whatever. Yeah. And then and
[28:25]then I'll be and we can be directly connected. And then we can I would love to do that. So fun.
[28:32]All right. Amazing. Let's do it. Okay. That'd be great. I'm so excited. Yay. All right. Perfect. Okay.
[28:39]Do we continue? Thank you so much. And thanks for this fabulous fun entertaining. Awesome read. I really
[28:46]was so just so taken with that in your voice. Really, really. So great job. So much. And to be
[28:52]continued to be continued. Okay. Great. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't
[28:59]have time to read books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at moms don't
[29:04]have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual
[29:09]book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan
[29:13]in fact, texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to morning moon productions for providing
[29:18]this fantastic intro and out trim music.