Michelle Wildgen, WINE PEOPLE: A Novel
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[1:03]Michelle Wellden is the author of Wine People a Novel.
[1:06]This is a zippy books title and I am so excited about it.
[1:11]Lee Newman, who co-founded zippy books with me originally acquired this book and has known
[1:16]Michelle for a long time as we discussed in the episode.
[1:19]And we just cannot be more thrilled to have it be released into the world.
[1:23]It was already picked by Oprah as one of the best books of summer, which is amazing.
[1:29]Michelle Wellden is the author of The Novels You're Not You, adapted into a feature
[1:33]film starring Hillary Swank and Emmy Rossum, but not for long and bread and butter.
[1:38]She is the editor of The Anthology Food and Booze.
[1:40]Well, Jen's award winning reviews, essays and stories have appeared in publications including
[1:44]The New York Times Book Review, Modern Love Column, O The Oprah Magazine, real simple.com,
[1:50]salon.com, Best Food Writing, Best New American Voices, Trichorderly, Story Quarterly and
[1:55]Elsewhere.
[1:56]Normally executive editor of Tinhouse, Wellden is now a freelance editor and co-founder
[2:00]with novelist Susannah Daniel of the Madison Writers Studio.
[2:05]Check out all sorts of behind-the-scenes information on our website, learn about Michelle.
[2:11]Go on tour with her.
[2:12]She's doing so many fabulous events and that includes RZV Retreat, which is happening
[2:17]in Selvang, California in celebration of wine people and all of our books we are partnering
[2:23]with Moleskin.
[2:24]You can use code divvy to get free personalization and take 15% off of journals and
[2:32]notebooks and everything else they have to offer.
[2:34]Use code divvy for 15% off.
[2:37]Welcome Michelle.
[2:38]Thanks so much for coming on momstone.
[2:39]Have time to read books, but especially as a divvy books author for your novel wine
[2:43]people.
[2:44]Thank you.
[2:45]I'm delighted to be here.
[2:46]Michelle, can you tell listeners what your book is about?
[2:50]Absolutely.
[2:51]Wine people is about two women in the wine importing business and they start off as colleagues
[2:57]and kind of rivals and slowly become allies and then friends and even partners.
[3:02]Business partners I should say.
[3:04]And it is about ambition and it's about a difficult kind of male dominated workplace,
[3:09]but it's also about travel and about all the things that keep people coming back to the
[3:13]wine business over and over again, which is, you know, the beautiful places and the incredible
[3:17]food and the conviviality of, you know, routinely just sitting down with other people and
[3:21]paying attention to the wine that somebody has labored to make before you.
[3:27]How did you become so interested in this industry?
[3:30]When I was in college, I think I got really interested in food and wine and I wanted to
[3:34]write about it, but I knew when I tried to write about it, I just had no idea what I was
[3:38]even talking about.
[3:39]And so I thought, well, I know a lot of people will go travel around the world for a year
[3:43]or two and I didn't have that option.
[3:45]So I said, I'm just going to go get a job at the best restaurant I can and I'm going
[3:48]to hope that they teach me more about food and wine.
[3:51]And it actually worked.
[3:52]So I went to a restaurant called Le Chual, which is still around and it's one James Beard
[3:56]Awards and the chef at the time was considered like the Alice Waters at the Midwest.
[4:00]And I got a job as a back waiter and they really did expect us to learn about the food
[4:04]and about the wine and about dining and all that good stuff.
[4:08]And in the course of working there, I encountered things like wine dinners, which is, you
[4:11]know, where they have the winemaker come and they have a whole meal that is designed
[4:15]around showcasing the wines.
[4:17]So that was a really fascinating thing for me to start to think about the people who actually
[4:20]made the product.
[4:22]And also that was where I first encountered somebody whose job was to import the wine.
[4:25]And so all of that just sort of has stayed in my head for like 20 years.
[4:28]Wow.
[4:29]And this, of course, is not your first book.
[4:31]Right.
[4:32]So tell me about what happened in your life from when you worked at the restaurant,
[4:36]like basically until now in terms of writing and food and wine and all of the whole journey
[4:41]to getting here.
[4:42]Yeah.
[4:43]So after I left the restaurant, I went to grad school and, you know, got my MFA in fiction
[4:47]and all that good stuff and started to work at a literary journal called Tinhouse.
[4:51]And I took over the food and drink writing that they had there that was like literary
[4:55]food and drinks.
[4:56]And so that was really wonderful because I got to focus on editing food and drink writing.
[5:02]And it got me thinking about my own.
[5:03]So I did some of that as well.
[5:05]And it just always stayed in my head and was always a thread that came up in my first novel,
[5:09]my second novel, my third novel.
[5:11]And at some point, maybe I'll write about something else.
[5:13]But I just still love how I love how you can use that to talk about people and how,
[5:18]you know, you can write about a tense meal or a beautiful meal or a really terrible one
[5:22]and they all are so revealing.
[5:24]So it was one of my favorite tools, basically.
[5:27]And maybe the most recent one that really dug into it was bread and butter, which was
[5:32]my third book.
[5:33]And that was actually about three brothers in the restaurant industry.
[5:35]So that was pretty direct.
[5:36]Wow.
[5:37]This is the secret to writing well about food.
[5:40]And this is such a broad question.
[5:41]But, you know, how much detail do you go into, which parts of the meal are the most important?
[5:47]And how do you make sure you're not like totally distracting the reader?
[5:49]It's the same thing you would get asked really for like historical fiction.
[5:52]Like how do you make sure you're not overwhelming the reader with unnecessary facts and
[5:56]don't know.
[5:57]But like, but really with food and wine writing, like what are some of the things that
[5:59]you keep in mind the most and that even when you're editing, you like look out for
[6:03]do's and don'ts type of thing.
[6:04]I think, I mean, the biggest thing is just paying attention, right?
[6:07]If you really are looking at what you are eating, you start to notice all the little details.
[6:11]Like one of the sensory exercises I give students sometimes is I'll say like, you know,
[6:15]if you are describing a donut, right?
[6:17]You can tell that like it's got all these different textures and usually the frosting has
[6:21]a slightly different little crust on the top and then it's creamy inside like we see all
[6:25]of this.
[6:26]We just have to train ourselves to notice it.
[6:28]And in the same way as with historical fiction, you want to give the details that actually
[6:31]serve the moment, serve the story.
[6:33]Every single meal gets a page of description.
[6:36]Even I will start to wonder if maybe we could cut back even though invariably I'm happy
[6:40]to have more food description that other people are.
[6:43]But ideally that's kind of the rubric is like, is it revealing something about the person
[6:47]who made it or the way that people are eating it or is it a meal that is, you know, different
[6:52]than another meal would be?
[6:54]And all of that can really help.
[6:55]So just paying attention and making sure you have a reason for it.
[6:58]And tell me more about Ren and Thessaly and where they came from.
[7:01]So Ren is from Wisconsin and she grew up in kind of a difficult childhood.
[7:07]She had a father who never really got sober and then her mom went back to nursing
[7:11]school and raised her single-handedly and she just happened to encounter the restaurant
[7:15]business a little bit similar to me but you know kind of different but she fell in love
[7:19]with it the way I also fell in love with it.
[7:21]And so she winds up in New York through that restaurant business connections she got
[7:25]a job at a wine importer and so she is definitely one of those people with some imposter
[7:29]syndrome who feels like, I'm not really sure I should be here.
[7:32]I don't necessarily fit in with these other people who are really well educated or, you
[7:35]know, they may have grown up traveling and she did not do that.
[7:38]So she is always seeking some kind of like safety in the form of her own expertise.
[7:42]You know, she really takes responsibility for it.
[7:44]And Thessaly is kind of the opposite.
[7:46]You know, she grew up the daughter of some grape growers in Sonoma and she grew up in that
[7:50]wine making world doing the travel, doing the dining.
[7:53]And so she's perfectly comfortable in that world but she's not entirely sure that she
[7:57]can do what her parents once did.
[8:00]And so that is kind of the ongoing source of uncertainty for her.
[8:03]Where did they come from in your own consciousness?
[8:05]Like when you set out to write this novel, was it the two women like what was the germ
[8:09]of the idea for you?
[8:10]The germ of the idea originally was that I just knew that the wine importing business
[8:13]was really interesting and I wanted to find out about the world before I had any idea
[8:17]what the story was going to be.
[8:18]So I just started talking to people and I was able to turn to a good friend of mine actually
[8:22]from my late 12 days who had gone to work for an importer and asked her about 6,000 questions
[8:27]or so.
[8:29]And I took a lot of her life story and sort of put it into rents in different ways.
[8:34]And she's one of those people who, you know, sometimes you ask people questions for
[8:37]research and they just aren't on the same wavelength.
[8:39]They don't notice the same things.
[8:41]They're not interested in what you're interested in.
[8:42]And that was not the case.
[8:43]This was like anything I wanted to ask my friend.
[8:46]She was right there and had these wonderful stories and memories that I could use.
[8:50]But I didn't want to just have her kind of walking around because it wasn't interesting
[8:53]enough.
[8:54]And so I wanted kind of a foil for her.
[8:57]And one of the people that through Friends of Friends, I had come across was a winemaker
[9:02]named Jasmine Hurt.
[9:03]She actually is in Sonoma and she has a very respected, great growing family.
[9:08]And she was the one who said, let's make wine.
[9:10]And so now they make these beautiful, I think they make Pinot these beautiful wines.
[9:14]And just the brief ways that she talked about growing up in this world and about her family,
[9:18]I was like, oh, that's that's who I want this other person to be.
[9:21]And so I have no idea if this woman has anything whatsoever in common, that's Olivia
[9:25]on that.
[9:26]She probably doesn't because I made her up, but that's where the idea came from.
[9:29]Interesting.
[9:30]For those who don't know the difference between necessarily the wine importing business
[9:34]versus like where does it fall in the whole spectrum for just the recreational wine drinker?
[9:40]Yeah.
[9:41]I mean, you know, the recreational wine drinker doesn't have to think about any of this
[9:43]if they don't want to obviously, but it's actually a little bit like publishing in a way.
[9:48]So because somebody out there is producing the product, you know, the same way like a writer,
[9:51]we write a book and we just hope somebody will love it.
[9:54]Somebody out there is growing the grapes and making wine and that's their product.
[9:58]And then the importer is the one.
[10:00]who goes around the world to their various regions,
[10:02]and each new vintage, and you know,
[10:04]sees how the past bandages are aging,
[10:05]and all of that stuff, and decides
[10:07]which things are going to serve their market.
[10:08]And so they literally just paid to get it all brought over,
[10:11]and then it is their job, or a distributor's job,
[10:14]to go around and sell it.
[10:15]And so then you have all of these people going
[10:17]to the different venues, like the stores,
[10:19]and the restaurants, and trying to sell
[10:21]all of the different wines in that book.
[10:24]But I think of the importages being like publishers,
[10:26]or like agents, because they're the ones who are kind of saying,
[10:28]here's this beautiful thing.
[10:29]I understand it.
[10:30]I think if I explain to you why it is special,
[10:32]and I find it the right people for it,
[10:34]you're going to love it.
[10:35]Wow.
[10:35]So there's a new market opportunity for frustrated agents
[10:39]to become quite important.
[10:40]That's right.
[10:40]They can all go into the one business.
[10:42]Yeah.
[10:42]That's perfect.
[10:43]How hard can I read?
[10:45]What is your own personal relationship with wine?
[10:48]I like almost everything, because it kind of just depends,
[10:51]like what time of year is it, and what are we eating,
[10:53]and all of that good stuff.
[10:54]But I think the go-to things that I especially love,
[10:57]when I went to the restaurant business,
[10:58]I had no idea that you could just order a glass of champagne
[11:00]to start any old meal.
[11:01]And I was like, well, that's a lifestyle I want.
[11:03]So now I want champagne to be in my life,
[11:05]regardless of whether it's a special day or not.
[11:07]I love a really bright citrusy white,
[11:11]but I love them all, honestly.
[11:12]And if anything, I spend a lot of time just trying
[11:15]not to overdo it, because I could drink wine every night.
[11:17]And I'm like, OK, I'm getting older.
[11:19]We don't really have the capacity to be drinking
[11:21]a couple glasses of wine a night.
[11:22]So I try to be a little bit more
[11:24]more of a genius about it, and really enjoy it
[11:26]when I do have it.
[11:27]Well, Rennetesle both come into the book
[11:29]with their own series of loss or complicated relationships
[11:34]and their own families and everything.
[11:36]When you were crafting that, did you bring in
[11:38]any of your own stuff to these characters?
[11:41]I know the friends for the background,
[11:43]but in terms of family relationships or any of that,
[11:47]what if anything do you take from your own life?
[11:49]I feel like a lot of times, they all have parts of me, right?
[11:53]And what I think it breaks down to is they often
[11:55]have my insecurity parts, the things that I'm not so great with.
[11:59]And then I give them the things that I wish I had more of.
[12:02]So I love Ren's really steely determination and ambition.
[12:07]I just love that about her.
[12:08]And I feel like she is tougher and more intense about it,
[12:12]I guess, than maybe I am.
[12:14]And with Fessily, I just love her confidence.
[12:16]I feel like she can walk into any room and sort of hold her own.
[12:19]And she doesn't mind arguing with people.
[12:21]And she can sell.
[12:22]And so that's something that I love about her.
[12:24]But I understand her insecurity about,
[12:27]can I do the things that I saw other people do?
[12:29]Do I really have it in me?
[12:30]So I understand anything that makes these two uncertain
[12:33]or not sure if they can move forward,
[12:36]like I completely identify with that.
[12:38]What are your biggest insecurities, would you say?
[12:41]Oh, darn, I opened the door for that one.
[12:43]And of course, I shouldn't have to go with that.
[12:45]You know, I mean, I think just all the normal things,
[12:47]of like, am I good enough at what I do?
[12:52]Do I write the books as well as I want them to be written?
[12:55]Am I as good an editor as I want to be?
[12:57]Just all of the normal things that I think we do.
[12:59]And then after a while, I'm usually like,
[13:01]okay, no, you did this well.
[13:03]You did your best and you've got to feel confident in it.
[13:05]And so then I feel better, you know?
[13:07]That's chiff.
[13:08]That's a good framework.
[13:10]It went okay.
[13:11]You know how to go with that.
[13:13]Exactly, yeah.
[13:14]Who are some of the influences for you
[13:17]and wine and food and wine writing and editing?
[13:20]And do you like people like Ruth Reichle,
[13:22]who famously writes in that world
[13:26]or more of the chefs writing about their own experiences
[13:29]or all of the above?
[13:30]Or what do you like?
[13:32]I do kind of like all of the above,
[13:33]but I think I started with M.F.K. Fisher.
[13:35]Have you ever read anything by her?
[13:36]Yeah, so she kind of created food writing
[13:39]the way that a lot of us think about it nowadays,
[13:41]because she would talk about food
[13:42]as a way to tell a human story,
[13:44]you know, rather than recipes.
[13:46]And so she was the one I really kind of,
[13:48]who sort of blew my mind, you know, when I first read her.
[13:50]And then I also, I love Laurie Coleman,
[13:52]who has been dead for decades
[13:55]and we're still reading her and still reassuring her books
[13:57]because, you know, she wrote about food in fiction
[13:59]and nonfiction and this really,
[14:02]like she's passionate about it.
[14:03]She knows a great deal about it.
[14:06]And she's very precise,
[14:07]but she has a lot of warmth and a lot of wit
[14:09]in the way that she approaches all of it.
[14:11]And so I really love that about her.
[14:13]And one of my other sort of seminal food texts
[14:16]is Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood Bones and Butter,
[14:18]which I don't know if you read it,
[14:19]but they had that beginning
[14:20]where she talks about like the lamb roast
[14:21]and she has this beautiful passage
[14:23]about sitting on her mother's lap after dinner
[14:25]that I just think is one of the best things I've ever read
[14:28]and I return to it all the time.
[14:29]Are you a re-reader?
[14:30]Yes.
[14:31]You can tell if I didn't love something,
[14:32]if I'm like, I only read it once.
[14:34]Oh, wow.
[14:35]I can't get away with that.
[14:37]It doesn't happen as much now as it used to be.
[14:38]Yeah.
[14:40]What are you working on now?
[14:41]Are you working on a new book?
[14:42]I'm kind of like, it feels like I'm sort of putting
[14:45]the layers on it, but I'm starting, yeah.
[14:46]The beginnings of a new book and figuring out,
[14:48]I'm at that stage, like I described with Ren and Dessly,
[14:51]we're like, what are the oppositions going to be?
[14:52]What's causing trouble for these people?
[14:54]So it's really early on, but I'm enjoying
[14:56]just thinking like, where do I want to set this?
[14:59]What's going on with them, you know?
[15:00]So I think it's going to be taking place
[15:02]in the wellness industry
[15:04]and also more like the actual neurological,
[15:08]like well-being research kind of thing.
[15:11]I sort of want those two oppositions talking to each other.
[15:14]Interesting.
[15:15]I love how you go at it as like what you want to learn.
[15:18]It's so great.
[15:19]It's a unique way to like approach each book.
[15:21]What do I want to know more about?
[15:22]And then just be like, OK, I'm just figuring this out
[15:25]and then I'll make a story around it.
[15:26]It sounds obvious, but yeah, the research thing
[15:30]is kind of that developed along the way in my career.
[15:33]I don't know that I started with it, but then I discovered
[15:36]that the kind of research I love to do
[15:38]is where you just talk to people and ask them about their lives
[15:40]and what they do.
[15:41]And when they walk into their office,
[15:43]what's the first thing they do and whatever it might be.
[15:45]And I end up finding a lot in that.
[15:47]It turns out to be a really fun process for me.
[15:50]What are the things most people do with first thing
[15:52]in the office?
[15:54]Well, it depends on what the job is,
[15:55]but like my first book was about a young woman who takes a job
[15:58]as a caregiver for a woman with ALS.
[16:00]And so I had a friend who had done that,
[16:01]and I said, OK, so when you get to her house,
[16:03]like what are the first things you do?
[16:04]Because I think that's what helps the fiction writer,
[16:07]the most, is we have to be able to picture our character
[16:09]in a room and know what they are going to do
[16:11]before we can figure out all the other stuff that's really
[16:13]crucial.
[16:14]You have to have this comfort in the world.
[16:15]So often that's where I start is day to day,
[16:18]like how do you spend your time?
[16:20]And tell listeners about all your other books.
[16:23]Yeah, so what you're not used about a college student
[16:25]who gets a job as a caregiver for a woman with ALS.
[16:27]And she becomes really involved in her life and in her marriage.
[16:31]And basically, it's kind of transformed
[16:34]by this period of life with her.
[16:36]My second book was called But Not For Long.
[16:38]And that was about a bunch of people living in a co-op
[16:41]in Madison, Wisconsin.
[16:42]And basically, fearing that the world might be ending,
[16:45]but they're not entirely sure.
[16:46]Basically, it starts with a blackout.
[16:48]And there's no real explanation for the blackout.
[16:50]And so it just kind of keeps on going on.
[16:52]And then the third one was about three brothers
[16:54]in the restaurant industry.
[16:55]And that was really fun, because I made up a whole city
[16:57]for them.
[16:57]And I loved just being able to invent it.
[17:00]That was a really enjoyable thing.
[17:02]And there are two brothers on a successful restaurant.
[17:04]And their younger brother comes home.
[17:06]and wants them to work with him.
[17:07]And so it's about all of them sort of transforming
[17:10]their relationships with each other.
[17:11]And then, of course, there's this one, which is about the two
[17:13]women in the wine industry.
[17:15]Have you been watching the bear?
[17:17]Yes.
[17:18]I love it.
[17:19]Have you been watching?
[17:20]Yes, I am.
[17:21]Yeah, have you seen all of these in two?
[17:22]I haven't.
[17:23]Actually, it was Meghan.
[17:24]We heard in Jarvis one of the same receptors
[17:26]who I don't know why everybody else had told me about it.
[17:28]But when she was like, I'm dying over this season,
[17:31]I don't know.
[17:31]I just had to watch it.
[17:32]I haven't gotten to season two yet,
[17:34]but I'm working my way there quickly.
[17:36]But it's intense.
[17:37]It is.
[17:37]And I'm only part way through it.
[17:38]But it's really true.
[17:40]Like all these people were like, oh, they got the restaurant
[17:42]industry.
[17:42]They know what it feels like.
[17:43]They just have it.
[17:44]It just feels fully inhabited.
[17:46]And it's so true.
[17:47]They just, it feels just dead on.
[17:49]I mean, there's some collaboration.
[17:51]That would be nice.
[17:52]Oh, my God.
[17:54]I know.
[17:54]I think the bear also speaks to the fragment and attention,
[17:58]the lack of attention spans that we all have right now
[18:01]because it's just so immersive.
[18:02]Like you cannot be distracted watching this.
[18:05]It's like you're hitting, you're literally
[18:07]like being up with that with the frying pan.
[18:08]It's like, OK, I'm here.
[18:10]I'm watching.
[18:11]I hear it.
[18:12]Yeah, and I watch it on the treadmill too.
[18:14]So that's kind of perfect because time flies
[18:15]and you just don't even notice.
[18:16]And you're like, oh, that's right.
[18:17]It's been an hour.
[18:19]That's smart.
[18:20]I should work out.
[18:20]But anyway, OK, good reminder.
[18:23]Don't think about that.
[18:24]But I can tell you that the reason I started using the treadmill
[18:26]was because I would watch like old lawn order reruns on it.
[18:29]And I was like, well, this is how I'm going to make myself
[18:30]be on the treadmill.
[18:31]I will use any kind of TV.
[18:33]So like the way I see it is the worst, the TV,
[18:36]the better because I still have the net gain
[18:38]of doing exercise.
[18:39]So I feel free to watch anything I want.
[18:41]I like it.
[18:42]It's like discovered time, anything during that time.
[18:45]It's also sanctioned, so it's an angle.
[18:49]Who are you most excited to read wine people?
[18:52]Like when you think about it being out in the world?
[18:55]I think just anybody who never thought
[18:57]about this part of business, you know,
[18:59]because a lot of us enjoy wine, you know,
[19:01]it's a varying degrees.
[19:02]We might not really care, but just enjoy the occasional glass
[19:05]or you might really love it.
[19:07]But I think there's something fascinating
[19:09]about anybody who never really considered
[19:11]how it got from there to there, you know,
[19:13]and to discover like what people put into it
[19:15]and how interesting the world really is.
[19:17]So I love that idea.
[19:20]And I always love the idea of people who actually
[19:22]do know the world getting to read it
[19:24]and see if hopefully it's reflected, you know,
[19:26]and that's, I turned to a lot of those people
[19:28]and do a lot of research with them.
[19:29]So I'm excited for them to read it
[19:31]and also always nervous because you hope you got it right.
[19:34]Love it.
[19:34]Next bottle of wine, you're gonna drink any idea.
[19:37]Do you have one queued up for tonight?
[19:39]I don't have one queued up for tonight,
[19:41]but I think actually I have a bottle that I'm holding on to
[19:45]and it's this Italian variety called Peraconne
[19:47]and it's from Sicily and my friend got it into her store
[19:51]and was like, everybody has to try this.
[19:53]And it is this like beautiful red, ripe, juicy,
[19:56]like, fruity, but it's kind of balanced.
[19:59]It doesn't feel like.
[20:00]tweet or anything like that, and it's delicious.
[20:01]And every time I poured for somebody,
[20:03]they're always just like, oh my God, what is this?
[20:04]So I don't know when I'll drink it,
[20:07]but I've got my eye on it.
[20:08]And actually I bought a bottle for my mom
[20:10]because she had done something for me.
[20:12]And my friend was running out,
[20:13]and I was kind of like, do I have to get this bottle
[20:15]to my mom?
[20:16]What can I do?
[20:17]And then I sealed myself, and I gave it to her
[20:19]before I could keep it for myself.
[20:21]That was very gracious of you.
[20:22]It wasn't it?
[20:23]I felt very generous.
[20:25]So many people who I've met since we've announced
[20:30]your book and all that stuff.
[20:31]So many people are like, I love Michelle.
[20:34]Or I know Michelle from this.
[20:35]Or I know Michelle from it.
[20:36]Like people just flock to you and are such a huge fans.
[20:39]No, I'm serious.
[20:41]I'm glad to be here.
[20:42]I go, even today on Instagram.
[20:43]Somebody randomly was like, I love Michelle so much.
[20:46]Great.
[20:47]So anyway, I don't know.
[20:48]Your footprint in the world is vast.
[20:51]Well, that's exactly what happened.
[20:52]I feel like a lot of that, when you work
[20:54]for a literary journal for as long as I did,
[20:56]you work with a lot of different writers.
[20:58]And hopefully they had a good time working with you.
[21:00]So I'm going to tell myself that that's it.
[21:03]But that's really, that was the most fun part for me.
[21:06]It was that I just got to encounter all these incredible
[21:08]writers and work with them on something great.
[21:10]And do you miss that at all?
[21:11]Do you want to go back to Food and Wine, anything or no?
[21:13]Well, I feel like I get to do that.
[21:15]I do a lot of freelance editorial work.
[21:16]So I feel like I do get to do it.
[21:18]And the only part that I miss about that
[21:20]was that I did get to say at the end of it.
[21:22]And here it is.
[21:23]It's coming out.
[21:24]It's being published.
[21:25]And so now, as a freelance editor, I don't get to say that.
[21:28]But I do get to hear from the writers
[21:30]when something we worked on together finds a home.
[21:32]So it's the same kind of thing.
[21:33]It just takes a little longer for it to happen.
[21:35]Were there any students of yours or clients or people
[21:39]who wrote essays at Tinhas who have gone on
[21:41]did become really big deal, whatever?
[21:44]Yeah, I mean, one of the first things I worked on back in the day
[21:47]was an essay from Lee Newman.
[21:48]And that was a long time ago who, you know, you know well,
[21:51]I do too.
[21:52]And she's incredible.
[21:53]There's been a lot of them.
[21:54]Like Kate Christensen, I worked on some early things with her.
[21:57]And I think she had not really done any food writing.
[21:58]Before I noticed that in her novel The Great Man,
[22:01]she wrote about foods so well.
[22:02]And so I got in touch with her and said hey,
[22:03]do you want to write about food?
[22:05]And she said yes.
[22:05]And she later said like, oh, no, that's
[22:07]how I started writing these food memoirs
[22:09]because you asked me to.
[22:10]So that's like really exciting to me.
[22:12]Yeah.
[22:13]But there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of really wonderful
[22:15]writers that I worked with who I started maybe early.
[22:17]And with them, not because I did anything special,
[22:20]I just noticed that they were incredible.
[22:22]And it happened to luck out.
[22:23]And they went on to become a really big deal.
[22:25]That's awesome.
[22:26]That's really great.
[22:28]Any advice to aspiring authors?
[22:30]Oh, so much advice.
[22:31]I'd say a mix of keep doing what you're doing
[22:34]and always improving your craft.
[22:36]But also one of the helpful things to me
[22:38]about building up a few years in this
[22:40]is that I think you really benefit from a thick skin
[22:43]and a certain amount of distance from all the rejection
[22:46]and all the difficulty.
[22:47]Like it's going to happen.
[22:48]It's not personal.
[22:49]It's just a difficult industry.
[22:51]And the numbers are mean that you're
[22:53]going to face a lot of rejection.
[22:54]But I did learn from being on the other side of that
[22:56]that when I did have to reject things,
[22:58]it wasn't because I was like, I despise you as a writer
[23:01]and I want you never to do this again.
[23:02]It was just like, don't remember.
[23:04]But as a writer, you feel like, no, you're saying,
[23:06]like, I hate you and I want you to never talk to me again.
[23:09]So it was really helpful to me to realize
[23:10]that what that actually looks like on the other side.
[23:12]And it made me a lot more calm about sending things out
[23:16]and having a rejection.
[23:17]You're like, OK, well, that's too bad.
[23:18]But I understand where this business is going.
[23:21]So I think you just have to be really resilient.
[23:23]And I guess the other thing I would say
[23:24]is that it's so uncertain whether your piece will find a home
[23:28]in the world that you should write really what you want to write,
[23:31]because it's the only thing in your control.
[23:32]And we do this for love, right?
[23:34]And we do it because it is a craft in an art that we adore.
[23:37]So you might as well do the way you want to do it.
[23:39]And give me a quick visual on your writing process
[23:42]and where your favorite places to write are.
[23:44]Let's see.
[23:45]I can write kind of, I would say almost anywhere as long
[23:48]as I have some white noise on my earbuds.
[23:51]I discovered that during the pandemic,
[23:52]like a lot of writers, when we were all at home,
[23:54]and I was like, OK, I'm just going to download a white noise
[23:56]app.
[23:56]And that's how I'm going to ignore everybody wandering around.
[23:59]But I don't have to be in a nice place to work.
[24:01]Somebody once came to take a photograph of my workstation
[24:04]and I opened the door and they're like,
[24:05]oh, let's pick a different room.
[24:06]So it's just like the shades are down.
[24:09]And it doesn't look anything special.
[24:11]But I do love every now and again.
[24:13]I'm smart enough to book some kind of cabin with a friend.
[24:16]And we drive an hour.
[24:17]And you just spend a weekend writing there.
[24:19]And I love having the memory of doing that work in that place.
[24:23]So I think I need to do that again.
[24:24]That sounds nice.
[24:25]I would like to hold myself up in a cabin every second.
[24:28]Yeah, that's kind of perfect.
[24:30]Oh my gosh.
[24:31]Well, Michelle, I was so excited.
[24:33]I can't wait for this book to come out.
[24:34]When this airs, it'll be pub day or close to pub day.
[24:37]So congrats.
[24:38]And I hope you're having fun to future you.
[24:40]And thank you for doing this.
[24:43]Thank you so much.
[24:44]I'm so excited.
[24:45]It was a long time researching and writing
[24:47]and revising.
[24:48]And it's really amazing to have it like actually find people
[24:51]in the world and come out.
[24:52]So thank you.
[24:53]Awesome.
[24:53]All right.
[24:54]Well, thanks so much.
[24:54]Thank you.
[24:56]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[24:59]to Read Books.
[25:00]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens
[25:03]and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:05]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[25:08]and sign up for my virtual book club
[25:09]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[25:12]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan.
[25:13]In fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[25:16]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[25:18]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.