Kate Doyle, I MEANT IT ONCE: Stories
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[1:03]Kate Doyle is the author of, I meant it once.
[1:06]Kate's short stories have been published in no tokens, electric literature, a public space,
[1:11]split lip, wig leaf, and other publications.
[1:13]Originally from New England, she is a former bookseller, and a 2021, a public space writing
[1:18]fellow.
[1:19]She has lived in New York City, Amsterdam, and Ithaca, New York.
[1:21]Welcome, Kate.
[1:22]Thank you so much for coming.
[1:23]On mom's don't have time to read books to discuss your short story collection.
[1:27]I meant it once.
[1:28]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:29]I'm very excited to be here.
[1:31]And I'm also really excited you'll be doing an event in Sydney's bookshop on August
[1:35]22nd.
[1:36]Really excited.
[1:37]I would love her work, so that'll be it.
[1:41]Yeah, I'm excited.
[1:42]She's awesome.
[1:43]I'm sorry I won't be out there then, but I'll watch on live stream and everything.
[1:47]So tell listeners about the collection.
[1:50]So exciting.
[1:51]Yeah.
[1:52]Tell us everything there is to know.
[1:53]Why did you write a short story collection?
[1:54]When did you start writing?
[1:56]What is this about?
[1:57]Why should people read it?
[1:58]Just go ahead.
[1:59]Yeah, I meant it once is a collection of stories about being a mess in your 20s and also
[2:05]more universally about time and memory and the ways we live with past versions of ourselves,
[2:12]past versions of other people.
[2:13]There are some sibling relationships and several of the stories.
[2:17]Dynamics are the younger versions of ourselves, sort of color the present and the present
[2:22]mixes we consider the past.
[2:24]And I started writing, I didn't really know I was writing a short story collection at
[2:29]first.
[2:30]I was writing individual stories and just trying to figure out how to do that and at a certain
[2:34]point, I realized some of the themes that had in common and that's nice.
[2:36]It was consciously started gathering them together into a book and I love, but I love what
[2:41]the story collection has a form can do in terms of giving a reader an experience that's
[2:45]different than following a plot through a whole novel, but giving kind of different ways
[2:49]of looking at the same thing through multiple lenses, multiple characters, the way the stories
[2:53]can then kind of complicate each other or echo each other.
[2:58]So I'm a big fan of the form.
[3:00]Actually interviewed Tessa Hadley yesterday about her short story collection after the
[3:04]funeral.
[3:05]Have you read that?
[3:06]Me too should be in conversation too at some point and she's, I mean, she's such a pro.
[3:10]She's been doing this forever and she was saying she uses stories as like almost interstitials,
[3:15]you know, between her novel writing and to take a break, she'll write a short story,
[3:20]which I know.
[3:21]I know.
[3:22]I know.
[3:23]I know.
[3:24]I know.
[3:25]I know how to do the novel thing.
[3:26]So I'll aspire.
[3:27]She's been doing this for a long time though, so let rest assured.
[3:30]So where did your interest in writing come from when did it start?
[3:34]I always I think since I was a little kid, like kind of worked things out a bit through
[3:39]writing, I have a lot of memories of writing as a way to process some period of life
[3:44]when we're in other and which in many ways I think is what these stories ended up being
[3:47]about is like the ways.
[3:49]There's like an idea of the short story or a story in general as having always having
[3:54]a resolution or a transformation occurs, a change occurs, that that's the occasion for
[3:59]telling the story, but these are a lot about stories we tell because we haven't figured
[4:03]them out or we don't have resolution on them and, you know, we're telling to ourselves
[4:08]to try to understand why something.
[4:10]So a lot of these characters have a memory that's really like the kind of stuff on it and
[4:13]they're driving those crazy because they don't really want to think about this, but it keeps
[4:16]coming back to me and they keep trying to figure out why.
[4:19]And then in my 20s, I was writing, I kind of like went to a writing program partly because
[4:25]I kind of felt like I needed structure in my life and I was, you know, I had sort of come
[4:30]out of the period of being in college and life being very structured and I was, you
[4:35]know, I was like working at a restaurant, I couldn't get a, I couldn't like, I kept trying
[4:40]to find a job that would feel more like a life path than what I was doing and it wasn't
[4:43]happening.
[4:44]I'll go to, I'll go to school for writing, I'll be in school, I love school and, and
[4:48]that, you know, not everyone needs to go just to a graduate program by any means to do
[4:53]this, but for me, it was really to be around a lot of other writers.
[4:56]It just, but we were all trying to do the same thing was just such a uplifting experience
[5:01]of, and very motivating to really dig into getting really serious about this and then
[5:06]when that program finished, I just kept, I similarly kept sort of nothing, I mean, nothing
[5:09]else to sort of landing as I had it, I worked at a, I was a receptionist at a meditation
[5:14]studio and I had this like terrible, tough job at a hedge fund and then I just, the
[5:18]book thing that had a lot of kept feeling like a lot of gave me more, I had a lot of meaning
[5:23]in it for me and so I just, I'm a slow writer, but over many years I just kept picking
[5:27]up and working on it and now there's a book.
[5:29]Yes.
[5:30]Wow.
[5:31]When did you know it was done?
[5:32]Like when did you decide, okay, I have enough stories, I'm going to take this out and
[5:35]then what was that whole path like for you?
[5:38]I, I write slowly and so I do think I was sort of like kind of one, the moment when I was
[5:41]like one time I looked for an agent was kind of like I had done a little like Googling
[5:44]of like, what's like a good length for story collection to see that as kind of in striking
[5:47]range of that.
[5:48]Okay.
[5:49]Okay.
[5:50]I think I, I think I can try to do this and I had a wonderful writing group of all women
[5:52]at the time.
[5:53]I lived in New York and so I, I gave them the draft I had at that point and just passed
[5:58]them to like tell me if they thought it was, you know, time to do that and they said yes.
[6:02]And so I queried, I got my agent by like cold querying and then we, we started working
[6:08]at the beginning of 2020.
[6:09]So that was like a complicated time to be trying to go on submission with, with stories.
[6:13]And of course like there is this idea in publishing that short stories are hard and that
[6:17]readers don't want them in the same way they want to novel.
[6:19]So you're trying to up against that too.
[6:22]So it was quite a long, sometimes process of trying to find the right, the right home for
[6:27]this book and it was just telling the story of that last night.
[6:30]But my editor, Betsy Edel Ganko and she and I had a phone call and the phone call is sort
[6:34]of like a, you know, you kind of, you know, but you sort of mutually interview each
[6:38]other a little bit and then they kind of decide if they think they want to move forward
[6:41]or not.
[6:42]And I thought, I thought to myself, well, this is about to be over one way or another.
[6:45]Like it's horror or it's not, you know, a big reassessment needs to happen.
[6:48]And so I thought either way I'm, I'll know in a day or two, I'm like, she waited six more
[6:52]weeks.
[6:53]And so I went during that time in the New York Times for an a recipe for a cake called
[6:58]Gato Helen, Helen cake and Helen is his character that records on the stories.
[7:02]So I went out and bought all the ingredients to that cake and I said to myself, I'm just
[7:06]going to put them in the cupboard and it's going to work out.
[7:08]And I'm going to bake that cake on the day that it happens.
[7:10]And now I know that Betsy's a baker.
[7:12]So I think that's why my magic spell worked.
[7:14]If you will, it will come something like that.
[7:18]Oh, that's great.
[7:21]So did you had a cake turn out?
[7:22]It was great.
[7:23]It was great.
[7:24]I just did it again for to celebrate the book launch.
[7:26]Oh, so exciting.
[7:28]And tell me about like planning your tour and how you found that and which authors you
[7:32]decided to be with.
[7:34]I know there were many I saw that have been on the podcast like Jennifer Seffron Kelly
[7:39]and papers was great and more.
[7:42]So tell me about that and who you're touring with and about the writer community in general.
[7:46]And I know you said it was great in your writing group, but how you found sort of other
[7:50]more established writers welcoming in a newbie writer and that whole thing.
[7:54]Um, yeah, I mean, the fact that it did take me many, many years to write this book.
[7:59]I think lent itself to that.
[8:00]I had writing teachers and I would sometimes go to like a writing conference.
[8:03]I went to 10 house.
[8:04]It kind of always like just meeting people and you meet such I think I've just experienced
[8:10]meeting so many kindred spirits through writing.
[8:12]It's felt very people stay into touch and support each other.
[8:14]And in the case of Jen Seffron Kelly, we hadn't met, but we were both living in the same
[8:17]town.
[8:18]And it just happened that our books sold.
[8:19]So I'm going to like within a few months of each other.
[8:21]So that kind of felt like fate and it's been really, that's really great in general.
[8:25]And with the tour.
[8:26]So I live in Amsterdam now because my partners work and we were so like coming back for
[8:32]a wedding of the being this summer, wedding at the end of the summer, we kind of thought
[8:35]it doesn't make sense to fly back and forth a lot.
[8:36]And I just was like, you know, let's just like travel to every friend or family member
[8:40]we can and just like try to do events that book shops in between.
[8:44]And so, you know, everywhere I'm going is somewhere where I have friends or family,
[8:47]a little bit of the community and some of the writers I was last night at an event with Lynn
[8:51]Stair Strong on my back, yes, that one was a case where like some of them are people
[8:55]that I knew and my other event in LA is with Tuscanti, who actually was on that writing
[8:58]group that I was just talking about when she was on the national board.
[9:02]That's so exciting.
[9:03]Yeah.
[9:04]But yeah, in the case of Lynn, I mean, it was so so amazing.
[9:07]Like I read that I read her book want and like the summer of 2020 and she had done this
[9:10]interview in Electric Literature a few months before and it was how I heard about her.
[9:13]And she was just talking about friendships between young women.
[9:17]And I write have several stories in the book about that is a very interesting to me as a
[9:20]a theme and her thinking about it was so, so smart and interesting and moving.
[9:24]And so I like eagerly waited that book and I read it and I loved it.
[9:28]And when we were sort of starting to do like looking for blurbs for the book, it just
[9:32]happened that my agent knew her agent and I didn't even know at that point that she
[9:35]lives in Maine now, which is where my family is from.
[9:38]So I always knew I was going to tell you a few months ago I got to like, you know, not
[9:41]everybody would say yes to like reading it and doing a blurb and she did and a few months
[9:44]ago we got to say matter for the first time a few months ago we took a beachwalk and I was
[9:48]really fun.
[9:49]And so last night doing an event with her was like that I was just like thinking about
[9:52]me three summers ago and not knowing this would ever be a book and just reading her book
[9:55]and loving it.
[9:56]And it was like you thought to me you're honored I was like I'm not going to I'm very
[10:00]Oh, I love that so much.
[10:02]I went to my Brandon Taylor.
[10:04]He also blurbed.
[10:05]Yeah, Brandon Taylor several years ago
[10:07]accepted a story of mine to electric literature.
[10:10]And then at the AWP conference in Philadelphia
[10:15]like a year or so later, like I've been kind of,
[10:17]I was asking, like, yeah, I know Brandon Taylor's
[10:20]doing it about like maybe I'll run into him at some point.
[10:21]Like we never even all our communication events
[10:23]from my agent.
[10:24]So I didn't know him, know him.
[10:25]And we all had our name tags on.
[10:27]And he came up to me and was like,
[10:29]are you Kate Doyle?
[10:30]And I was like, well, it's just like the coolest thing
[10:33]that's ever had.
[10:34]Really, really nice.
[10:35]And yeah, blurbed the book and wrote me
[10:38]a really wonderful verb.
[10:39]So he's been very as well.
[10:40]Yeah.
[10:40]I mean, all these people are amazing.
[10:43]Clearly not as well.
[10:44]I don't know.
[10:45]I don't usually talk about blurbs, but Kevin Wilson.
[10:47]So they're in stress.
[10:49]Oh, my gosh.
[10:49]So cool.
[10:50]I mean, it's just amazing.
[10:51]So exciting.
[10:52]He's the visor in grad school, actually.
[10:54]Oh, wow.
[10:55]That is great.
[10:56]You're the best way back one, yeah.
[10:57]Oh, my gosh.
[10:58]Well, let's talk about some of the stories.
[11:00]So tell me about I figured we were doomed.
[11:03]I have not read all the stories.
[11:04]I have to admit to you, although I do love the format
[11:06]and how you have these short sections,
[11:08]which I really appreciate as a busy reader.
[11:11]So take me through that one or pick a story
[11:13]you want to talk about and how it came to be.
[11:16]Yeah, I'll tell you about the figure in that story.
[11:19]I had been they usually come from a place of like something
[11:24]in my life and then they change a lot,
[11:26]but that's usually kind of the jumping off point.
[11:27]And then it becomes very much changed.
[11:30]But I had my boyfriend's roommate,
[11:33]I had my still boyfriend, but his roommate at the time
[11:36]had a dog.
[11:36]And we really connected like the dog felt like our dog,
[11:41]because we were all in this apartment all the time.
[11:44]And we used to take the dog, like my boyfriend,
[11:45]and I would like if we were going on a trip.
[11:47]And we could bring the dog.
[11:48]We would bring the dog with us to get him out of the city
[11:50]and stuff.
[11:50]And then when they stopped living together,
[11:54]and it was like, I just remember the feeling
[11:56]of like, I had this bond with the dog.
[11:57]We're not all like never.
[11:58]It's sort of like having this funny feeling of like,
[12:00]in some way someone would call this like, not that important.
[12:03]And I can tell myself it's not that important.
[12:05]But I'm really like having this feeling of loss.
[12:07]And so the story ended up, so I started out
[12:08]just like trying to write about someone's relationship
[12:10]with someone else's dog, basically.
[12:12]And then being about this couple.
[12:15]And then all the memories that this character has
[12:18]of this time in her life that is now over
[12:20]and the last time the story is anyway, it didn't work out.
[12:23]I think I was almost like a door closing
[12:25]on those memories.
[12:26]And I think, you know, many of the stories in the book
[12:28]are like this where it's kind of about something where
[12:31]you're preoccupied by it and you're telling yourself,
[12:33]I should sort of be over this.
[12:35]But I'm interested in like what happens
[12:36]when these characters let themselves
[12:39]obsess about the thing that obsesses them
[12:40]and what they find out from that,
[12:42]which some of them get more resolution than others
[12:45]are willing to face things one of the others.
[12:47]In the case of this one, I don't think
[12:48]she really gets resolution.
[12:49]There's sort of dwells in this like sweet memory.
[12:52]And she talks a lot in the story about whether or not.
[12:54]Thanks to herself as a good person,
[12:55]which comes up in a lot of the stories,
[12:57]but there's kind of a feeling of she's almost wondering,
[12:59]she's sort of dealing with missing this period of her life
[13:03]and this person by kind of saying,
[13:05]like, oh, maybe I don't,
[13:06]maybe I didn't deserve it or something.
[13:07]I think it was the text down.
[13:09]Well, you should read, there's this personal essay
[13:12]by an author named Jane Radcliffe.
[13:14]And it's all about this,
[13:15]how she was going through really hard time
[13:17]with chronic pain and all this stuff in her own life.
[13:19]And her neighbors were like a young couple
[13:22]with a dog and kids and all that stuff.
[13:23]And she became the person to take care of the dog all the time.
[13:26]So for three years or something,
[13:28]it was essentially her dog,
[13:29]right? Like she took care of it all the time.
[13:31]And the dog got her out of all this pain.
[13:33]Right? It like renewed her faith sort of in life
[13:36]and made her feel better and got her walking
[13:38]and all this stuff.
[13:39]And then the family ends up moving away and taking the dog.
[13:41]I know, it's like heartbreaking.
[13:43]The essay was so good.
[13:44]I guess it went viral somewhere or other.
[13:46]I don't know.
[13:46]I found it on her subject.
[13:48]But anyway, but I think of that a lot
[13:49]because you can certainly love things
[13:51]that are transient in your lives,
[13:53]whether they're animals or people.
[13:54]I mean, it's like the whole friends that move away.
[13:57]And I mean, it's something that happens to kids.
[13:59]And no, it's good to, I mean,
[14:01]I would take away that it shouldn't make me upset thing,
[14:04]you know, because it is one of those things.
[14:06]Well, I think in a lot of the stories,
[14:07]I mean, and this has to do with like the fact
[14:09]that they're mostly narrated by young women.
[14:11]Like I think there are things that these young women
[14:13]have been told about like what is important
[14:15]and what isn't and what's like a significant concern
[14:18]and what's not.
[14:19]And a lot of times they've sort of grown up
[14:21]feeling like their feelings aren't that important.
[14:23]So I think it's a lot about, yeah,
[14:25]the ways that they, you know, in the first story,
[14:28]the narrator has given,
[14:29]she's gifted a basket of heart-shaped scones
[14:32]as a breakup gift.
[14:33]And then found the cookie cutter,
[14:35]like in the drawer and obsessing with her friend Tom,
[14:38]and we gotta love it.
[14:40]And like she's like, you know,
[14:42]like what's more, I think,
[14:43]I'm feeling is like what's more anonymous
[14:45]than a basket of baked goods.
[14:46]They're literally shit like hearts,
[14:48]but like there's something about it
[14:49]that also like feels so bad to her.
[14:52]But people around her kind of keep being like,
[14:53]why are you talking about this?
[14:54]Like can't you get over it?
[14:56]And then, and I think that applies like a lot of things
[14:58]in like the friendships between young women
[15:01]that are ending.
[15:02]There's kind of an idea that I found myself thinking a lot
[15:04]about like if you're that age
[15:05]and you have like a romantic breakup,
[15:06]like people who are at any age,
[15:07]you have a romantic breakup,
[15:08]people like expect you to grieve.
[15:10]And the case of a friendship,
[15:12]especially I think that young women where this is idea
[15:14]and you're 20 that maybe it's like not your real life
[15:15]or something.
[15:16]And like you're not like really yet.
[15:18]And they're like really sad to have lost this friend.
[15:21]And there isn't like a space in our culture
[15:23]to prove that the feeling that they're kind of gathering
[15:25]this idea of like just move on,
[15:27]just get over it, just get a different friend.
[15:28]So, and in the case of the skeletons,
[15:31]like she obsesses and she obsesses
[15:32]and then at a certain point in the story,
[15:33]we realized that like years have gone by.
[15:35]And she's not totally wrong to obsess.
[15:37]Like she eventually realizes there's something in there,
[15:41]in the memory about like being treated as disposable
[15:45]by a man.
[15:46]So much clearly so much more comfortable in the world
[15:48]than she has or has been since then.
[15:51]And that she also has seen this like repeat
[15:53]in a few different ways in her life.
[15:54]And that's why the memory has stuck with her so much.
[15:57]I said it in such a good way though,
[15:59]about why breakups and how this one was so funny
[16:02]when you said, I thought this was unkind and funny.
[16:05]Well, this is what when you were talking about the class.
[16:07]But anyway, but I said how it was not about loss,
[16:10]rather about humiliation,
[16:11]about being treated as disposable, about human decency
[16:14]and also how it isn't fair to tell a person
[16:16]you're breaking up and those words precisely
[16:18]when you have not in fact really been dating.
[16:20]You have only done things like make out in the back stairwell
[16:22]of the literary society dorm,
[16:24]the stairwell where we kept the communal vacuum cleaner,
[16:26]a stairwell he told me no one ever uses,
[16:28]which did not even turn out to be true.
[16:30]Natalie from the third floor had appeared
[16:32]descending on her way to make oatmeal cookies in the kitchen.
[16:34]I had been unable to disentangle my feet
[16:36]from the hose of the vacuum.
[16:38]I love that.
[16:39]Thank you.
[16:41]It's true.
[16:42]I mean, there's when someone breaks up with you
[16:44]or you end a relationship or something,
[16:45]it's like, is it okay to just be like cast aside?
[16:48]Like that's okay, you know?
[16:50]Right.
[16:51]It's like outrage, really.
[16:53]Yes.
[16:54]Yeah.
[16:55]And then I think like she gets this little older
[16:56]and she has like a bigger breakup and more real breakup
[16:58]where it was a more serious relationship
[17:00]and it's that pattern repeating.
[17:02]And yeah, that, yeah, outrage that apple said.
[17:06]Any breakups you've been outraged about?
[17:09]No, yeah, for sure.
[17:11]My editor would always, when she's editing the scone story,
[17:14]she's always writing when you,
[17:15]instead of the narrator say, you, I guess you can tell.
[17:19]I guess I guess I guess I'll come clean about this.
[17:21]Like the scones are strange on the fiction.
[17:23]Like the story's not true,
[17:24]but like the heart shape breakup scones are all too real.
[17:27]I could not have made up a detail like that.
[17:29]It's to be used.
[17:33]Did that particular person,
[17:35]has that person reappeared on your book tour
[17:37]or in your life in any way?
[17:38]Yes.
[17:40]Oh, you never know.
[17:42]No, never know.
[17:43]So funny.
[17:44]So you referenced earlier,
[17:46]you might be trying to write a novel.
[17:48]Is that true?
[17:49]How is that going?
[17:50]What's it about?
[17:50]What's the roadblock?
[17:52]Spill it.
[17:52]I'm into an album, but I took a while to get there.
[17:54]It's been, I always kind of had the idea
[17:57]that I would want to write a novel
[17:59]after writing this collection.
[18:01]But I didn't totally anticipate though,
[18:03]I should have how much publishing stories
[18:05]would kind of come with this like there is an idea
[18:07]that it was communicated to me very clearly,
[18:09]like your publisher will want a novel next for sure.
[18:13]And there was a version of it that I wrote that,
[18:16]because there was a point when we thought
[18:18]we might try to do a two-book deal.
[18:19]And I was like furiously writing this,
[18:21]not like we're going to do like a partial novel.
[18:22]I was like furiously writing it.
[18:23]And then thankfully, like I'm correctly,
[18:26]they were like, we just want these stories.
[18:28]And I was like, okay, that's for the best.
[18:30]And that kind of gave me permission
[18:31]to put that novel down for a while
[18:32]and think about like, I felt so,
[18:35]I was doing it so much from a place of like these stories
[18:37]won't, what if these stories won't be able to exist
[18:38]in the world without like a finished novel next to them?
[18:40]So, you know, there was a lot of like fear and anxiety in it
[18:43]and putting it down and just like letting myself for a while
[18:46]be like, what do I, like why do I artistically really,
[18:49]what do I want to do with a novel?
[18:51]And what did I get to do in stories
[18:52]that I feel is like missing from writing a novel?
[18:54]So I realized that I had been kind of trying to,
[18:57]it was almost felt like I was trying to stretch out
[18:58]one short story.
[18:59]And so much of what I'm interested in in the story collection
[19:02]is like being concise, being precise,
[19:03]the way like little memories in like paragraph form
[19:06]it can be juxtaposed against each other
[19:08]and how that creates momentum.
[19:09]And just like the way I was writing a novel
[19:10]didn't really make any room for that felt very baggy
[19:13]and the full of like just extraneous writing.
[19:16]And so I have like a new form now
[19:19]where the chapter is kind of operate internally
[19:21]more like the stories in this book,
[19:23]but then the way they are in relationship
[19:25]with each other accumulates like a novel.
[19:27]And I also realized that I haven't tried to write more
[19:29]about like being in this time of life in your 20s
[19:33]and you know, part of the urgency of that for me
[19:35]in those years was like I was living those years
[19:38]and feeling a lot of feelings
[19:40]and having a lot of questions about how to be in the world
[19:42]that I was working through by writing stories.
[19:45]And I think I was like,
[19:46]oh, I have to like make these characters.
[19:49]I have to make them older.
[19:49]They need to be like for me to feel that again.
[19:51]Like they have to be where I am now
[19:52]which is I'm in my 30s and you know,
[19:55]the questions are different.
[19:56]And so yeah, that's it's about Helen.
[19:59]It's about Helen.
[20:00]and her siblings who have heard and several of the stories about them.
[20:03]Wow, that's exciting.
[20:05]And what is it like living in Amsterdam?
[20:07]I was just there for a wedding and it's beautiful.
[20:10]And I was trying to imagine what it would be like to live there.
[20:12]Like who are the people living these houses?
[20:14]What is this like?
[20:15]So what part of Amsterdam are you in and what is it like?
[20:18]A little bit east part of the city.
[20:20]And it's a neighborhood called as an American.
[20:23]I'm a transitive water graph smear, but it's a smaller craft smear.
[20:26]And it's cool.
[20:28]It's part of the city that used to be centuries ago.
[20:30]Like when it took a long time to much longer to travel.
[20:32]It was like actually like a town outside the city where people went in the summer.
[20:35]Now it's very much part of Amsterdam.
[20:36]And I can sort of bike into the middle in 20 minutes or so.
[20:39]But because of that, it has this kind of quiet feeling.
[20:42]And it's really nice.
[20:43]And I love living there.
[20:44]I think the experience of just lending somewhere new and figuring it out.
[20:49]And all of the little details is so.
[20:51]But like brings the world alive to you in a way that I think for art is so productive.
[20:55]And so it's like you're in the grocery store and like brands of toothpaste.
[20:58]Or like really interesting and fascinating and different in a way that they just wouldn't be at home.
[21:02]And so yeah, I'm really loving it.
[21:05]And it's been yeah.
[21:06]And I to meet people there, I sign up for there's like a big.
[21:10]Some people from like the Chicago improv community 30 years ago went to Amsterdam and started an improv theater.
[21:14]So I joined like an improv class like the week I got there.
[21:17]And I've been doing it since then.
[21:18]And that's been really a really cool way to meet people who are in different ways creative.
[21:22]Some writers, but some not and some professionally creative, but some like do something totally different professionally.
[21:27]And.
[21:28]But I think for writing it's been very fruitful because it's like it's very collaborative in a way I love.
[21:31]But I think it's like the same same muscles of kind of like just make something up and see what happens and try to make sense of that as you go and see what it's offering you that you can use.
[21:39]What can you do with that and.
[21:41]Yeah, that's been cool.
[21:42]I made a point to go to the grocery store in Amsterdam.
[21:46]When I love going to grocery stores anywhere I go and like see what are all the different things.
[21:50]And yeah, we had the best time course.
[21:52]My kids that I'm getting like M&M's or something like ridiculous.
[21:55]But we got a few new snacks.
[21:57]You're just in Tokyo.
[21:58]We got the best snacks there.
[21:59]I don't know.
[22:00]You just never know what the local stuff is.
[22:02]And I agree.
[22:03]Looking at things in a new way.
[22:04]Makes all the regular things have a new hue to them.
[22:07]Something like that.
[22:08]Like being enrolled in noticing something where you're like, they have this tradition that.
[22:12]It was like around the end of the school year.
[22:14]We were seeing like people would have put the Dutch flag out with a backpack on the end of it.
[22:17]And you know, we're just a black around seeing it everywhere.
[22:20]I mean, my partner just thanked each other like, what do you think this is about and trying to guess.
[22:23]And like, I don't know.
[22:24]My instinct.
[22:25]I think as an American.
[22:26]I was like, is it a protest?
[22:27]Like protesting something.
[22:28]And it was like, it's what they do.
[22:30]If a senior graduates from high school or whatever the equivalent of a senior,
[22:33]I just like to put their backpack on the flagpole and then like,
[22:35]neighborhood knows they finished their exams.
[22:37]And it was just like stuff like that where something you would never have heard about.
[22:41]Except that like you're walking on the street and you come face to face with it.
[22:43]It's really fun.
[22:44]No, like now we've all heard about it.
[22:46]So how cool is that?
[22:49]What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
[22:51]I would say make writer friends.
[22:53]You know, people that you meet through writing like stay close with them and keep reading each other's work.
[22:58]Those relationships have been both emotionally and professionally very important for me in bringing this book into the world.
[23:04]And I would also say for me,
[23:07]submitting these stories to literary journals along the way was like,
[23:10]such a like as much as you can like put your work in front of an editor.
[23:14]Have a conversation about it.
[23:16]Incorporate at it.
[23:17]Think about it more.
[23:18]And it's you know, it's both.
[23:20]You become a better writer, but also like every single one of these that I published over the years.
[23:23]Like it was just like a little burst of encouragement to keep going.
[23:26]And I really think like when I think about if I have been writing a novel and I was just sort of, you know,
[23:30]you know, not in a novel, you can't necessarily break into pieces that way and have that experience.
[23:35]So I definitely feel very grateful that that was part of my process of writing this book.
[23:40]And I definitely recommend like pursuing that kind of thing in any way in any way possible.
[23:44]Yeah.
[23:45]Awesome.
[23:46]Well, Kate, thank you so much for coming on.
[23:48]It was so fun to chat with you.
[23:50]Congrats.
[23:51]Yeah.
[23:52]I'll be following along.
[23:53]Can't wait to see what happens next.
[23:55]Thank you so much.
[23:56]And yeah.
[23:57]Thanks, take care.
[23:58]Okay.
[24:00]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:03]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:08]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:15]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:19]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.