Jane Ferguson, NO ORDINARY ASSIGNMENT: A Memoir
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[1:03]What Ferguson is the author of No Ordinary Assignment, a memoir.
[1:06]Jane is a Polk, Emmy, Peabody, OPCA, and DuPont award winning foreign correspondent for PBS
[1:12]NewsHour, contributor to the New Yorker and McGraw professor of journalism at Princeton
[1:16]University.
[1:17]Now based in New York City, she has over 13 years of experience living and reporting in
[1:21]the Middle East and reporting from the Arab world, Africa, and South Asia.
[1:25]Her work focuses on U.S. foreign policy and defense, conflict, diplomacy, and human rights,
[1:30]with an emphasis on in-depth magazine-length broadcasting, Jane's reporting is characterized
[1:34]by exclusive groundbreaking access, thoughtful storytelling, and character-driven reporting.
[1:39]Welcome, Jane.
[1:40]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone.
[1:41]Have time to read books.
[1:42]Just discuss No Ordinary Assignment, a memoir.
[1:45]Congratulations.
[1:46]Thank you.
[1:47]Delighted to be here.
[1:48]Jane, can you tell listeners why you decided to write this memoir?
[1:53]I write at the very, very start of it, you know, that I'm what I wanted to do was write
[1:58]a memoir that was brutally honest about my industry and about why we do this kind of work.
[2:05]You know, I get sometimes uncomfortable with, you know, journalists today were often demonized
[2:11]or totally lionized as these grand heroes.
[2:14]And so, you know, I wanted to answer the question that I get asked all the time, why would
[2:20]you do this kind of work, like, war reporting, what makes someone do that?
[2:25]And I ended up kind of joining the dots backwards and backwards and backwards, right
[2:29]to the earliest days of my life, to try to understand and get under the skin of it.
[2:35]I read a lot of memoirs by, I mean, I grew up reading them, they inspired me to become
[2:40]a journalist, these memoirs, but very often they, A, had a flawless upward trajectory
[2:45]in everyone's career.
[2:48]And he was, you know, we lean into sometimes a lot of the sort of noble reasoning behind
[2:54]what we do, which is absolutely real and true.
[2:57]But there's a, there's a duality, there's also a sort of a second storyline that's usually
[3:02]very personal that causes people to run towards chaos and somehow seem to be able to perfectly
[3:07]function in it.
[3:08]Amazing.
[3:09]You start out by telling us a lot about your upbringing during the troubles.
[3:13]And I mean, you write about it rather swiftly, but it sounds deeply traumatic, the relationship
[3:20]with your parents and, you know, you tell a story of when you were dressed up for confirmation,
[3:24]I think it was or some holiday and your mom was just, you know, kind of ripping you to shreds.
[3:30]I feel tear.
[3:31]I felt so bad for the little you in that situation.
[3:33]And I'm like, this is not a small thing that having parents who are unpredictable, particularly,
[3:39]you know, when you can't count on the person who's supposed to love you the most, what
[3:44]does that do to you as a person?
[3:45]So I don't know.
[3:46]Speak to that a little bit.
[3:47]Two things you say, they're really strike me.
[3:49]This is not a small thing and it's not, you know, I mean, it is, it's everything at that
[3:54]age, right?
[3:55]I mean, not entire self image or entire sense of ourselves in the world is shaped by how
[4:01]we feel as little children.
[4:04]And for me, it was an extremely turbulent environment, really unpredictable and certainly
[4:11]not a loving one.
[4:13]Where I was encouraged to be brilliant, to be the best.
[4:16]So, you know, but at the same time often motivated by a sense of sort of inner shame
[4:23]and a kind of deep inadequacy in me as a little girl.
[4:27]But also I would argue that, you know, it seems over the years it really did inspire
[4:32]a stronger sense of empathy and compassion.
[4:35]It made me softer as well as harder.
[4:39]And that was something that I put to good use.
[4:42]I mean, it actually made me this extraordinarily anxious kid.
[4:45]I had extreme anxiety and I write in the book about how feel the physical sensations
[4:50]of anxiety.
[4:51]It's essentially walking around in the world in fear.
[4:55]And I thought that was totally normal, it's sort of like the fish doesn't see the water.
[4:59]And then, and then I find myself having to have a relationship with fear when I'm in extremely
[5:05]dangerous places and having a much more familiar sense of it.
[5:10]And so, strangely, that became a strength.
[5:14]I think it also increased my sense of not quite belonging and throughout the book, there
[5:20]is a theme of sort of searching for a sense of belonging and that, and that being something
[5:24]that leaves me emotionally, totally opens the places that I'm in, you know.
[5:28]And in a weird way, being unmoored geographically in your life and sometimes, you know, emotionally
[5:36]not really feeling like you have a home to go to, makes me commit more to the places that
[5:41]I'm in.
[5:42]You know, sometimes to a fault, I'll look around and think Afghanistan is my home or
[5:46]think Yemen is my home, but it opened me up completely when I'm in those places.
[5:51]And you know, I do write that many of us in the industry are wandering souls.
[5:56]And I would argue there's probably a fair few unhappy childhoods in there too, but people
[6:01]who have found their purpose and turn these things into sort of alchemy on the road.
[6:06]Well, it's like if your own home isn't your home, then any potential other place could
[6:11]be it.
[6:12]Right.
[6:13]So you have to try them out.
[6:14]It's like, you know, Goldilocks, essentially, like is this it, is this where I'm going
[6:17]to really find my place because it should have been there, but it's not.
[6:19]So it must be here.
[6:21]Right.
[6:22]Exactly.
[6:23]And conversely, you are totally used to feeling out of place.
[6:27]You know, people have to know all the time, what must it be like someone who looks
[6:30]like you's showing up in the street and cobble or sun hour, anywhere.
[6:34]And I'm always like, well, I just become completely used to being the outsider who is actually
[6:39]treated with great hospitality.
[6:41]And you know, alongside partner alongside that personal story in the book is the story
[6:47]of these places that I do make home.
[6:50]Unfortunately, their their tragic decline over over the years that I was in the Middle East.
[6:54]You know, many of the places that I came to know and love have had the most devastating
[7:00]15 years since I first started traveling there.
[7:03]So, you know, that is there's a sense of loss, nation that struggled post revolution or
[7:11]civil war.
[7:12]And so that's sort of happening at the same time.
[7:14]Wow.
[7:15]Well, yes, you've come a long way from sort of feeling out of place that you're boarding
[7:19]school to like world wonder.
[7:22]Right.
[7:24]Huge huge shift.
[7:25]You know, I was reading really carefully about how, because what you said is so true.
[7:29]Why do people take these jobs?
[7:31]Why does someone like you end up there?
[7:33]So I was like, where is the answer in her childhood?
[7:36]Where is it in growing up?
[7:38]And when you take these assignments, you see, of course, all of it is a combination of timing
[7:43]and luck and opportunity and direction.
[7:45]And you see that here so much when you are covering like Victoria's secret matches and
[7:53]dress for an usher concert or whatever you said and feeling like, well, this isn't it.
[7:57]You know, this is not quite where I want to be like, I must have to, how do I get to
[8:02]the next step?
[8:03]And then the fact that you were just like, you know what, all of this is wrong.
[8:06]I'm just going to like buy a plane ticket and go check out these remote far away worlds
[8:11]and see what happens.
[8:12]I was like, she did what?
[8:15]So tell me more about a little bit about that period of time.
[8:20]Sure.
[8:21]I often tell people the story of getting out of college, what it was like, a lot of
[8:26]people forget what it was like to graduate in the financial crisis.
[8:30]I mean, this was, you know, for every single industry, no matter what, it was, it was
[8:35]catastrophic.
[8:36]And so for my generation, you know, we get out of college.
[8:39]I'd known I wanted to be a journalist my whole life and that was, that was a real blessing.
[8:43]You know, I didn't sort of, I didn't, I wasn't unsure about my future about what I wanted
[8:48]to do and just desperately struggled to find work.
[8:52]And I certainly wasn't someone who could afford to sort of wait around.
[8:56]I didn't have an income.
[8:57]And so I, I was lucky enough to get a job in Dubai working at a newspaper and I didn't
[9:03]care what I would be covering at that stage.
[9:05]This was a paying job in a newsroom where I could actually eventually after, you know,
[9:11]being a very, very, very lowly sub editor correcting spelling mistakes, I could be a writer.
[9:16]And, you know, this is great.
[9:17]And again, like you say, I would try to fit into everywhere every role that I had.
[9:22]And I didn't want to be ungrateful.
[9:23]Like it was a, it was a great opportunity.
[9:26]I was a business reporter, had a nice life in Dubai, but it was absolutely nothing like
[9:32]what I had dreamed of when I was a little kid watching the BBC.
[9:36]And every day in the newsroom at this newspaper, we'd have the TV screens all up and it
[9:41]would be like CNN International, BBC.
[9:43]And it would just, I would just see all these reporters doing exactly what I'd wanted
[9:48]to be doing, but here I was, you know, reporting on, you know, car prices and banking
[9:53]credit card offers and like, you know, and that was great, but it wasn't what I wanted.
[9:58]And I didn't really care that it paid by...
[10:00]for a 24-year-old. So I don't know. I just had this one moment in a Mazda car dealership where
[10:06]I was just totally exhausted. You know, there's nothing more exhausting than being
[10:10]than when you're not. Okay, wait, I have that section right here.
[10:13]Here, let me read it to you because I love that. Two weeks later, oh, here, I'll start here.
[10:17]Let's see. I looked around at the faces in the room and wondered what it would be like to go
[10:21]on embed in Afghanistan with American forces. Maybe I can just go there for a couple weeks and see
[10:26]about finding a freelance post. I thought pushing chunks of blackened caught around on the plate
[10:30]in front of me with my chopsticks. Two weeks later, I had a moment. I was sitting on a folding chair
[10:34]inside a Mazda showroom among a group of about a dozen reporters and Japanese car executives
[10:39]watching a promotional video for their latest car release. I had been tasked with grabbing one of
[10:43]their executives, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you say, I was utterly miserable and late,
[10:47]but stopped out for a cigarette nonetheless. I don't want to be here. I thought part of me felt deeply
[10:52]uncomfortable and on easy that day. And I just couldn't put my finger on why. And then you say
[10:56]the sooner I got it over with the sooner I could go home. And then you said the feeling of wasting
[11:01]time craps through me. The spot is close to the airport. I thought, terminal two, that's where all
[11:05]the flights go to Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan. I mean, I think that what really permeates the story
[11:14]of my, my young careers, this idea that I had no, there was no roadmap, you know, like, and so
[11:20]whenever you sort, it's sort of like you get out of college and you're not hired by a graduate
[11:25]program. And therefore, you kind of off piece, though your whole career. And you're trying to figure
[11:30]that out. And so the only thing I knew was that if I at least just acted, I had to do something
[11:37]to move forward. I couldn't wait around my whole life. I've known I couldn't wait around for
[11:42]someone to give me a job. And so I decided that I would, you know, throughout my, my whole life,
[11:49]I found that the one thing that has worked is being did like take some sort of action and then
[11:54]see what happens and take the next step and the next step and the next step. And I thought if I could
[11:58]just go there, then I would somehow figure it out, which sounds, you know, people are like, wow,
[12:04]that that's absolutely insane. But the reality is that if you are very young and you don't have
[12:11]any dependence or relationship and you just have this one massive dream, then you're not really
[12:16]risking anything. You know, the only risk is to sit around and let it die.
[12:23]Wow. That's powerful. But meanwhile, then you do go and, you know, you're in the most
[12:29]horrific situations. And next thing you know, you're, you know, PTSD and maybe not diagnosed,
[12:35]but let me read your first really emotional reaction where you're talking about this is in
[12:42]Syria. You said the moment was what I always wanted, but I felt like a fraud staring at my reflection
[12:47]in the mirror as a staffer blew up my hair. I was haunted by questions. If I had stayed longer,
[12:52]perhaps done more stories would have made a difference to the UN vote. Did I take this
[12:55]assignment for my career or a way to tell the story? Maybe it was just vanity and foolhardiness that
[13:00]sent me into Syria. What if I was not the right person? What if a better braver reporter had gone in
[13:05]and stayed longer? All the while, I continued to feel fear physically in the frantic swirl of
[13:10]edits, hair and makeup on set appearances and meetings with management. I vibrated with fear.
[13:15]I had yet to come down from the adrenaline. And I knew that after several days, this was not normal.
[13:19]PTSD is flashbacks psychosis. I thought, this is not that. I perched on it. I'm almost done.
[13:25]I've heard done a desk in an unused meeting room and using my sore feet out of my heels. I dialed
[13:28]the number for Al Jazeera's teletherapist service. Do you feel suicidal at all? Turp to female
[13:33]voice on the other end? No, I don't. I answered. I'm not really getting much sleep. She told me
[13:37]to rest up and call back if it didn't go away. Even in 2012, the thin line between fine and
[13:42]suicidal and frontline journalists was not something news organizations were ready to contend with.
[13:48]So tell me about that, how your own emotions and how to manage them and those services received
[13:54]and how to cope and all of that. Sure. You know, Syria is such a big pivotal moment for me. I was
[13:59]27. And I thought it's a moment where I changed. I grew up. And I understood more about fear
[14:09]and that it wasn't always just some sort of thing that I could overcome. And that my only value
[14:14]in this work was the fact that I was brave. You know, that was the only thing I had to offer, I thought.
[14:19]And so I had had a moment, I suppose psychiatrists called this existential dread. In Syria
[14:25]where I wasn't just afraid, but I was quite certain I was going to die. And it was really,
[14:29]really a feeling I would not wish on my worst enemy. And so I had sort of run in trying to get
[14:36]out of the country. And my whole time there, there's just an alarm had gone off in my body that was
[14:41]just like, you need to leave. And I know that people would say, well, yeah, of course.
[14:46]But I had gone through, you know, the battle of Mogadishu. I've been reporting in many, many
[14:50]dangerous places, but this was different. And the interesting thing was I got back to the headquarters,
[14:54]I'd done this reporting, which was pretty groundbreaking because not a lot of people had been able
[14:58]to do this. And I brought the footage back and we put together these stories. And it was very,
[15:02]very timely and important as the Assad government was was increasingly cracking down on our own people.
[15:09]But I, I was so ashamed because I'd left early. I had meant to spend up to a week in Syria. And I
[15:17]had left early. And I felt like a failure. I thought that, you know, I should have just
[15:22]topped it out and stayed longer. I get back to to-do have, I remember my hotel room and I just
[15:26]can't sleep. And the feeling is not, it's not flashbacks. It is an extraordinary level of physical
[15:35]fear at all times. But I'm still able to talk like I'm speaking to you. I'm still, I look fine.
[15:40]But I'm also utterly paranoid. And I think that there are Assad like Syrian regime agents
[15:46]out there to get me bearing a mind and a totally different country by the stage.
[15:49]So I can't sleep. At one stage, I get up in the middle of the night and check my wardrobe
[15:55]for agents. Like, and that's when I'm like, okay, I am not okay. And, and I think that
[16:02]speaking to a sort of teletherapist at the time, the issue was that I think, you know,
[16:08]I don't think we had, and I still think we have a lot of work to do. An idea in the industry of
[16:13]how people need to come down from these experiences, you know, to decompress. I mean, I had,
[16:19]a terrible, like, really, really horrible fright. And I needed support. I needed to talk about it.
[16:27]I didn't need to be like, so, you know, so I didn't need a clipboard person like, you know,
[16:32]saying, what are your symptoms? Do you have this? Do you have this? Do you have this? If not,
[16:36]you're probably okay. No problem. You know, it wasn't a rash. And so I really needed to come down.
[16:43]And I, as soon as everybody had said, okay, well, it's not PTSD. So, you know, you probably
[16:48]just need to rest up. And, and, you know, and I think that I think that I was lucky enough,
[16:52]I was able to fly to Istanbul and spend some time with my partner at the time. And that's
[16:57]what we really, really, really decompressed. Just sitting in a cafe on a chilly, you know,
[17:03]winters afternoon, talking about what had happened to someone who has, you know, done similar work
[17:09]who understood was like, I could literally feel the adrenaline start to drain out of my body.
[17:14]And I was still pretty jumpy for months afterwards, but I was okay. And I knew I'd be okay.
[17:19]And just to end what actually ended up happening in, in Turkey in Istanbul was that I,
[17:25]I found out that the next journalist who had gone in, I knew who it was. It was Marie Colvin. I'd
[17:31]actually read her final dispatch in a, in a, in a newspaper. I was able to pick up a newspaper
[17:35]at a new stand in, in the airport. And that she had been killed. And I learned this in the news.
[17:43]And then very quickly, the activists called me on Skype crying and saying, you know,
[17:48]how do we get our body out? And it was, it was just such a dreadful way to learn this
[17:53]awful, but I learned in that moment to trust my gut that my body had known somehow inside of me,
[18:00]I knew this was a, a two dangerous and I had to leave early. And I guess, you know, the full
[18:07]hearty, you know, young female who wanted to prove herself to all the guys had, you know,
[18:13]almost learned the hard way, you know, that sometimes things really are two dangerous and sometimes
[18:19]you do have to get out. Oh my gosh. So fast forward to now, even, even post book, how did you get
[18:27]from there to here? And what is your daily life like now? Well, right now, my daily life is a
[18:35]different, you know, there's no sort of set routine because I feel like I'm taking life in chunks.
[18:40]Since the book came out this summer and the whirlwind around book promotion, I've actually started
[18:46]teaching at Princeton. I'm there as a professor for the fall semester in the journalism department.
[18:51]So I am lucky enough to teach these pretty amazing undergrad students. I need to stop calling
[18:59]them kids. They're not. Yeah, and I teach them on, I actually teach a course on conflict reporting.
[19:05]So obviously I can't, you know, take them to, to, to, to conflict zones. But, but we look at the
[19:10]old greats. I bore them to death about, you know, Edward R. Moreau and Martha Gellhorn and,
[19:16]and then, and then we know we looked at like all through like Vietnam and the, the, the war
[19:22]in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so, and then also reporting today. And so I, so I bounce between
[19:29]my home in New York City, where I'm married to a very, very nice New Yorker, which is probably
[19:35]going to be a little bit of a spoiler in the book and, and Princeton. So that's, that's going to be
[19:38]my life until Christmas. I do a lot of, of public speaking as much as I can. And right now that,
[19:44]that's kind of that, that's where I am. I still write as much as I can. This all ends come Christmas
[19:51]and I need to figure out either heading out on the road again or, or probably probably trying
[19:56]to build the next chapter of my career, which I hope.
[20:00]remains in media, but it might be off camera.
[20:02]Interesting.
[20:04]Do you feel like, especially when things that are going on in news like now, do you feel
[20:09]that itch to be out there and to talk to people and report and all that or do you look
[20:14]at all of the reporting in a much more critical way and think, well, this isn't this
[20:20]is skewed or this or that or like, how do you intake media at this point?
[20:25]Most of those things are true.
[20:27]It has been very hard to be here and not there.
[20:32]I am trying to, you know, was messaging with another much, much more famous world reporter
[20:39]than me who retired from that work yesterday.
[20:43]And he was sort of like reassuring me, you know, it's okay.
[20:46]The sense that you're kind of breaking free from that life because there's always one
[20:50]more war.
[20:51]There's always one more big story that needs me to be there.
[20:54]And it's very hard to break away from that muscle memory of, well, if I was there,
[21:01]here's what I would do, right?
[21:02]We need to call this person and this person, we need to get access through there.
[21:05]And these people are not being interviewed.
[21:07]And yes, you know, it's hard, it's hard not to view the media.
[21:12]I guess I should, I want to be careful because I don't want to feel like I'm sort of judging
[21:16]from a distance, but the early days of conflict and war are always some of the worst
[21:22]reporting.
[21:23]It's always where misinformation gets picked up.
[21:26]It's always where journalists are under pressure, they're live, there's, there's a real
[21:32]scramble to be the first to break this story.
[21:36]And so I feel like that has been very much so magnified by social media.
[21:42]And this current situation, just tragedy is happening at a time when, you know, social
[21:49]media is actually at its worst, you know, in terms of, in terms of fact checking in terms
[21:54]of, of trying to, to, to mitigate hate.
[21:58]And so I worry about that a bit.
[22:00]I also think it's worth pointing out that, you know, the industry, certainly the TV industry
[22:05]has been for quite some time and now it's really, really ramping up in pace is, is a,
[22:10]is an existential crisis.
[22:11]And I mean, the business model does not work, hasn't worked for quite some time.
[22:15]And we've seen the coming collapse starting effectively this summer.
[22:21]So I think that this is all, that's all happening in the background of a lot of the coverage.
[22:26]And so yeah, it's, it's very, very difficult.
[22:28]I do have this weird through pure luck, have this sort of, sort of new role where I'm actually
[22:34]teaching young people and I'm like, okay, here's what we've seen.
[22:38]What do we know is confirmed, you know, is this additive, is this good quality reporting?
[22:42]Is this balance?
[22:43]Is this, you know, how are they sourced?
[22:46]Why would those sources have told them that?
[22:48]And so I think that that goes some way to making me feel like I can be additive to the situation.
[22:55]I mean, that's 100% additive.
[22:58]It's all additive.
[22:59]Otherwise, no one has that perspective.
[23:01]Like, someone like you has to teach everybody else.
[23:04]I feel like you should teach more people.
[23:05]I feel like you should do like a master class and, and analysis and take us through what's
[23:09]going on and point out things that you would notice that we as like lay consumers of, of
[23:15]media might not notice.
[23:16]Like, so to help us become critical, more critical thinkers of what is being fed to
[23:21]us.
[23:22]That's a good idea because people ask me all the time.
[23:25]They're uncertain.
[23:26]They're like, I don't know what to believe.
[23:27]I don't know, like, you know, what's true or what's at least exaggerated, like, who
[23:33]should I be hearing from?
[23:34]Who can I trust they come to me?
[23:36]And it is kind of great to be able to say to students, okay, well, you know, what you want
[23:40]to look at is sourcing.
[23:42]Do they have name sources?
[23:44]Do the sources they have have ulterior remote?
[23:46]Like, do they think they've vetted those sources?
[23:50]You know, have they been there themselves?
[23:51]Did they see it themselves?
[23:53]Or are they quoting someone else?
[23:54]And so, but, you know, to be honest with you, like, I empathize with the public, like,
[24:00]they shouldn't have to do our jobs for us.
[24:02]You know, that's where the trust that was built up over decades and decades is supposed
[24:07]to be.
[24:08]You know, you're supposed to trust that the journalist checked.
[24:10]You're supposed to, you know, also, I think there's a huge amount of emotion in reporting
[24:15]at the minute.
[24:16]You know, we're living through an era where, you know, understandably, people want
[24:21]to feel more connected.
[24:22]They want to feel like there's more of an authentic emotional connection.
[24:25]And we, you know, people share more.
[24:27]But there's, there used to be when social media started a bit more of a line in the
[24:31]sand between what, you know, you might put on social media and what would be the
[24:35]report.
[24:36]Mm-hmm.
[24:37]So you might do, like, some reflections on your phone you might talk about, well, this
[24:41]is how it felt or here's a person that I met and here's some more backstory to them
[24:44]or here's the team, here's what we're going through and what it's like to report this.
[24:48]But the actual report that you would present to the public, your additive work would
[24:52]be quite different.
[24:53]It would be a factual, you know, up-to-date story.
[24:58]And so I think that those lines have become quite blurred where it's sort of like an
[25:01]experiential, an experiential type of reporting, which can actually be very, very effective
[25:08]when you're doing certain stories.
[25:10]Mm-hmm.
[25:11]But if you're doing highly emotional, divisive, you know, a terror attack, it's, I don't
[25:18]think that's always quite as additive.
[25:20]And I think that we're sort of learning as we go along as an industry.
[25:23]Yeah, you're absolutely right.
[25:24]You know, this is the first, is it the first time?
[25:27]I feel like I'm getting most of my news from social media, for sure.
[25:32]Like in my husband will tell me what he saw in social media because everybody's feeds
[25:35]are different.
[25:36]Right?
[25:37]I'm like, I didn't get that.
[25:38]You got that.
[25:39]And even watching people like Matt Gutman, who's over there now, he was on my podcast
[25:42]recently and seeing him and I'm like, oh my gosh, what is he doing?
[25:45]Like, careful.
[25:46]You know, you just want to be like, but, you know, I know you know that feeling.
[25:50]But on the other side, the process of writing this memoir for you, by the time you got
[25:56]to the end, how are you feeling about the whole thing?
[25:59]And did you feel like you left the process with a newfound understanding of your own motivations?
[26:06]Absolutely.
[26:07]Beyond description, you know, I mean, I found it unbelievably cathartic and kind of beautiful.
[26:14]You know, what I loved about the experience and my writing experience is very intense.
[26:20]You know, I would, I would go to a library and that was sort of like dark and wood paneled
[26:24]and had very strict rules against, you know, thones and stuff.
[26:27]And so I would really, really get immersed in the writing every day, last summer.
[26:33]And what I loved, what was kind of beautiful and very emotional for me was that I would
[26:36]look at this young girl and over the months of writing, she would sort of become, you
[26:41]know, like, you know, there would be separation between me and her.
[26:44]It doesn't feel like you're writing about yourself anymore.
[26:48]And you can, you know, have an incredible amount of tenderness.
[26:50]You look at this young person and you're like, my God, she was just trying her best.
[26:54]And she was so hard to herself.
[26:56]And so I did enjoy being able to make peace with things that I think for years, I've
[27:03]maybe felt insecure about, you know, like, or, you know, you grow up sort of uncertain
[27:08]of yourself and trying your best and, you know, trying and falling down and getting back
[27:13]up again.
[27:14]And it was lovely to look back and celebrate that as opposed to feel like, well, that was
[27:20]scrappy.
[27:21]I suppose you did okay.
[27:22]You know, and I really loved that.
[27:24]So by the time I got to the end, I was so exhausted, like, it's amazing how physically exhausting
[27:30]it is to, to, to walk through the corridors of your, of your mind and your memory and to
[27:36]figure out how best to communicate those experiences, but felt incredibly cathartic.
[27:42]And I handed it in to HarperCollins and we did our edits over a period of a couple of
[27:48]and then it goes away for six months.
[27:49]And in those six months, you know, panic grows and I was like, I was so open about everything.
[27:59]And so, yes.
[28:00]So from like, basically January to July was just a, just a growing code red of utter
[28:06]panic about how this book would be received.
[28:10]And I was absolutely petrified and I've, and I've said to quite a few people in the
[28:14]last, like, few months that publishing this writing the book was one of the most
[28:18]rewarding things I've ever done, publishing it was by far the most frightening thing I've
[28:22]done in my life.
[28:23]And I've done some stuff.
[28:25]I find that hard to believe that I've read some of those writing situations you were in.
[28:30]But wow, that's saying a lot.
[28:32]Well, Jane, thank you so much.
[28:34]Thank you for coming on.
[28:35]Thank you for sharing and being so open because of course that's how we're able to connect
[28:39]with you so much and root for you.
[28:41]And so I'm like, what now, you know, I just want to keep this story going.
[28:44]So yeah, congratulations.
[28:45]Thank you.
[28:46]Great job.
[28:47]Thank you so much.
[28:50]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:53]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebiowens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[28:58]Books.
[28:59]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[29:03]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:05]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan, fact, texture sound for the sound editing.
[29:10]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outram
[29:13]music.