David Duchovny, THE RESERVOIR: A Novella
[0:04]Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Be Books with Zippy.
[0:07]I'm the host, Zippy Owens.
[0:09]I am an author, my latest is blank, pub date march first and novel.
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[0:33]David de Covenant is the author of The Reservoir, a novella.
[0:36]He is an award-winning actor, writer, director,
[0:39]New York Times best-selling author, and singer-songwriter.
[0:42]With an acting career spanning more than three decades,
[0:45]de Covenant is a two-time Golden Globe winner and four-time Emmy nominee.
[0:49]He is the author of four previous novels, Truly Like Lightning, Holy Cow,
[0:54]Bucky Effing Dent, and Miss Subway's.
[0:57]de Covenant adapted his novel, Bucky Effing Dent, into a film he also directed,
[1:02]which premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.
[1:05]As a musician, he has released three studio albums,
[1:08]Heller, High Water, every third thought, and gesture land.
[1:12]The Reservoir is his most recent book.
[1:14]Welcome, David.
[1:14]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:16]Don't have time to read books to discuss the reservoir and novella.
[1:19]Uh-huh.
[1:20]Well, I, you know, I have the Moms in mind, because I know they don't have time to read books,
[1:24]but maybe they have time to read a novella.
[1:27]Totally. I was like, oh, this I can do, for sure.
[1:32]If I can't get through a novella, one time I was on a plane and I wrote,
[1:35]like, you know, this whole long thing.
[1:36]And I was like, is this a book?
[1:38]How do I know if it's a novella?
[1:39]And I was searching, I mean, how many words is a novella versus a book?
[1:44]Yeah, it's not a rule by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a thing.
[1:48]Like, yeah, I did the same thing because I was like,
[1:51]or hey, or I know it's not a novel, but is it a long short story or
[1:57]novella is such a nice old fashioned kind of term.
[2:00]I like a novella.
[2:01]It's like a like a popsicle, you know, like a diminutive of something.
[2:06]I like it.
[2:06]Totally.
[2:07]I think novella is need to make a comeback actually because you're right.
[2:10]I mean, you could read them faster.
[2:12]They fit in your back.
[2:12]Yeah, you can put it in your back.
[2:14]Get like your JD sound or short stories, you know, just totally.
[2:18]You just feel more literary, just even holding it.
[2:21]Yeah, just put on your table.
[2:24]We were just talking about the reservoir itself.
[2:27]And I am being from New York, grown up going to the reservoir,
[2:30]which plays a central role in the story.
[2:32]And I remember my lacrosse team in middle school,
[2:36]we had to like, you know, create a fall like running around the entire reservoir.
[2:39]I've been there many, many a time.
[2:42]Yeah, sure.
[2:43]As all New Yorkers pretty much she have because it's such a pretty place,
[2:47]but it takes a very dark role in your story.
[2:50]Talk a little bit about what the reservoir is about,
[2:54]and when and why and how you were inspired to write it.
[2:57]Well, I grew up on 11th Street in the second avenue.
[3:00]So I was I was not really a park guy, like,
[3:04]but I did go to school as I mentioned to a collegiate,
[3:06]which was on the upper west side.
[3:09]So I played baseball on the park.
[3:11]I got to know the park a little bit in high school,
[3:13]even though, you know, it was really just hanging out with my new friends
[3:16]from high school who lived up there.
[3:18]But it was never like a central part of my life.
[3:21]It was really when I when I moved, you know, I raised my kids
[3:25]and when we moved to New York and I lived on such a park west there.
[3:28]And I had that view of the reservoir.
[3:30]And I and I really got to know the park a little better
[3:32]that featured somewhat in a novel.
[3:34]I wrote called Miss Subway's.
[3:36]And so I was kind of it was kind of like,
[3:39]I always kind of feeding my imagination from that point on,
[3:42]because it was this weird thing.
[3:43]And I haven't grown up, as I said, downtown.
[3:45]I've just wasn't really part of my life.
[3:47]And then, you know, realize you have this this huge thing in the middle
[3:51]of this, you know, asphalt jungle, right?
[3:54]And it's just it's a it's hard to imagine the city without it.
[3:57]And yet it's not it's not really a place for people who are outside the city.
[4:02]Maybe it's a nice place to take a walk or whatever,
[4:04]but it's not really what people come to for New York.
[4:06]But I think it's really what people live in Manhattan,
[4:09]rely on it in many ways.
[4:11]It's kind of like a safety valve or just like to release pressure in a way.
[4:16]And so I really began to kind of get into it that way.
[4:19]And then I was during the pandemic and I had this great view of the reservoir
[4:25]and of Fifth Avenue across the way.
[4:26]And during the pandemic, there was really nothing much to do,
[4:29]but would look out that window, right?
[4:31]And I was just just kind of the stories just kind of came to me,
[4:34]you know, in bits, you know, like old rear window,
[4:38]like what if somebody was in one of those windows Fifth Avenue across the way?
[4:44]And then, you know, the the pandemic, the nature of the pandemic,
[4:48]reminding me of like death and Venice and, you know, all the all the all the discussion and the
[4:54]awareness of like the proximity to actual people, you know, six feet,
[4:59]was this magical kind of a distance.
[5:01]And it was just very it was very new, obviously, to all of us.
[5:05]But you know, not historically, right?
[5:07]There've been plagues or whatever.
[5:09]And people have a lot of literature has come out of plagues, you know, like
[5:13]a Canterbury Tales is like in the backdrop of that is it's a plague.
[5:17]They're going on a pilgrimage during a plague.
[5:19]Castled across destinies by Titalo Calvino is kind of set in a castle during a lockdown of sorts,
[5:26]you know.
[5:26]And obviously, death of Venice, you know, that it,
[5:29]Ashenbach, the protagonist of that doesn't really heed the lockdown.
[5:33]You know, he's he's kind of pursuing his obsession of of toggio, the, the,
[5:38]the uncolish kid in Venice and not paying heed to the fact that he shouldn't be eating
[5:43]no strawberries or, you know, hanging out at all, you should go back home.
[5:47]So that all just kind of, you know, just kind of coalesced into some kind of,
[5:52]you know, modern day story of a lockdown, you know, it kind of helped me, you know, because it
[5:58]it seems like whenever we go through things these days in terms of the media, everything
[6:02]it seems like, oh, it's the first time this has ever happened, you know, we kind of tell ourselves
[6:06]we're in uncharted territory when I'm not sure that that's true, you know, most of the time.
[6:11]And so it wasn't true this time and I thought, well, there's some old wisdom there,
[6:16]there's some, there's some old, there's stories to be told through these kinds of times,
[6:21]you know, that relate down the ages and relate to ourselves now.
[6:23]So that's kind of just what I thought I was doing when I started it.
[6:27]Interesting. It doesn't have the same feel though as a typical like, this is about lockdown
[6:33]because it's so much the interior life, right? This is about sort of your grasp on reality and
[6:38]what happens when it starts slipping and and the city of New York and so much more and you even
[6:45]link it with 9-11 and just other things that have brought the city to its knees and how we keep
[6:50]recovering. So well, also was, you know, that what's different about lockdown in our ages that
[6:57]we have, you know, in the old literature has people have locked down telling each other stories,
[7:03]you know, that's kind of like the way into the work is, okay, we're all sitting around a campfire
[7:09]and we can't go anywhere. We've already exposed ourselves to one another so, you know,
[7:15]this is where they're going to die or we're not. So let's tell each other stories.
[7:20]And the difference between this lockdown was that we had our screens and we had connection to
[7:27]the outside world and, you know, an unprecedented intense way, you know, where we had
[7:34]more information in 30 seconds than people would have gotten in a lifetime, you know, some other
[7:40]some other age. So that's the, that's the different reality that we do live in and so
[7:46]that spawns obviously that had spawned and that continues to spawn conspiratorial, you know,
[7:52]thinking and basically conspiracies to me are just stories that people are telling. So
[7:58]it's very similar, you know, people started telling stories during lockdown by talking about
[8:04]conspiracies, you know, fictionalized, trying to make fictionalized sense of what they saw going
[8:09]on around them. So I thought, well, this is interesting to kind of go inside,
[8:15]the lockdown, you know, we're all kind of locked down in our own minds anyway, right? That's
[8:19]maybe live. We're isolated in some way. And then, till what do you allow in, you know, aside from
[8:26]being six feet away can't allow the physical in. But, you know, what's what's your screen for
[8:32]the screen? You know what? And this guy, you know, as, as he gets lonely or psychologically
[8:39]sicker, he also gets physically sicker. And there's, there's all these kinds of, you know,
[8:44]symptom or symbol is a question in the book. So there's all these kinds of like, well, what is
[8:49]an actual sickness and what is a mental sickness and, you know, all these kinds of questions that arise?
[8:55]Yeah. And of course, the pandemic sort of makes all of us go out of our minds a little bit.
[8:59]I mean, I can't even imagine without the phones, although I feel like there was quite a
[9:04]negative perception of the phone in the story and how it ends up, you know, absolutely. No,
[9:09]I mean, I have, I, you know, I'm an old buddy daddy that way, you know, I'm from a different
[9:15]generation. So it's like not native to me. I keep in the way, you know, my kids treated
[9:20]as different from the way I treat. I mean, it's sure it's convenient, everything. But I can't
[9:25]imagine a way in which it's made my life better. I mean, if I got into trouble somewhere,
[9:30]I need to make a call. That would be great. It hasn't happened yet. You know, like put in the
[9:35]story. Of course, like when he is in trouble. He's like, I know my kids like taught me what am I supposed
[9:40]to press like two buttons? What am I supposed to do? Well, it, the phone does come in handy because
[9:45]it throws it to the guy and he hits him. Of course, I know. So I think the way a phone can really
[9:50]come in handy is if you use it as a weapon. Yeah. Only the fans of that. Okay, defensive
[9:56]weapon. Yeah. Well, I don't even know why I carry me.
[10:00]I mean, it's like a total waste.
[10:02]Don't eat that bear, just eat it.
[10:05]I'll let I found.
[10:07]Exactly.
[10:08]You had, can I read a passage that I thought was so awesome.
[10:11]OK, this is about New York again.
[10:13]You say thousands of windows lighting up now,
[10:15]like rectangular hearts beating,
[10:17]contagious to one another, multiplying exponentially
[10:20]until it seemed the entire ghostly lock down city.
[10:23]And all its cordoned off lonely people
[10:24]had begun communicating again, crying, I see you, I see you,
[10:29]reaching out to one another across the dark mode of a park.
[10:32]It struck him as beautiful to behold.
[10:34]The city confusing itself for a Christmas tree,
[10:36]seeking connection through the speed of light,
[10:38]tired of this smothering killjoy pandemic
[10:40]and its careful, puritanical distances.
[10:43]Ridley elementary back stroked cheerfully as an otter
[10:46]and glancing down south.
[10:47]He watched in awe as the empire state building
[10:50]winked at the Chrysler building
[10:52]and the Chrysler winked and flirted shamelessly back
[10:55]that mile high glamorous silver art deco couple,
[10:59]like a strange royalty reuniting before his eyes.
[11:02]The city was falling in love with itself again,
[11:04]coming back to life and he felt honored to bear witness.
[11:08]That's gorgeous.
[11:08]That is a gorgeous passage.
[11:10]Thanks, I'm thinking when I was listening to it,
[11:12]I was like, yeah, it's a lot of adjectives, buddy.
[11:14]You know, but really?
[11:15]Oh my gosh, I thought you would be thinking, wow,
[11:17]did I write that?
[11:18]That was so beautiful.
[11:19]Oh, it did.
[11:20]It gave me goosebumps kind of,
[11:21]just because I like that, not necessarily a writing,
[11:25]but I like the idea.
[11:26]Like it reminds me of that moment or those days
[11:30]or that month or that year when the city just started
[11:33]to come out of the pandemic, you know,
[11:36]and there really was a, you know,
[11:39]because New York is, you know,
[11:40]we complain about everything about New York.
[11:43]We claim to love it,
[11:44]but we just complain about it.
[11:45]And at that point it was just like love.
[11:48]You know, it was just like, yeah,
[11:49]we're out on, you know, the streets are fucking filthy
[11:51]and crowded and it's all great, you know, but.
[11:54]Yeah.
[11:55]So there's that moment when you've lost everything
[11:58]and you realize, hey, you know, things were pretty good,
[12:00]things were pretty good then.
[12:01]It's true.
[12:02]Fall back, it's like falling in love again,
[12:04]which is what it says in the past, you know?
[12:06]Yeah, beautiful.
[12:08]Well, you also, as I mentioned before,
[12:09]you talked about 9-11 and how everything
[12:12]that was important to us became so clear, right?
[12:15]It was so front of mind.
[12:16]Like, oh, this is what's important.
[12:17]And then like a year or two later, you're like,
[12:19]oh, well, I've kind of lost hold of that.
[12:22]Everything's just back to the way it was
[12:24]and you lose that sense.
[12:25]Yeah, that's just human nature, I guess, you know,
[12:28]that we, you know, and I guess in 10 times 10 to make you
[12:32]focus on survival and what you, what's important.
[12:37]So you cut back on the luxurious things
[12:40]or you cut back on the extraneous things
[12:43]and you realize, oh, yeah, you know,
[12:45]all I need is a peanut butter jelly sandwich
[12:47]and I love one, whatever, you know what I mean?
[12:48]So, and that's great.
[12:50]You know, if we could hold onto that, that'd be fine,
[12:52]but all of a sudden we're like, yeah,
[12:55]and I'm really like being up better, you know?
[12:58]I feel like this is a good conversation
[13:00]because I've been complaining so much lately
[13:01]about the city and how it doesn't change lately
[13:04]and everything's going out of business
[13:06]and like there's garbage everywhere and like, oh,
[13:09]and I'm always like, should I move?
[13:10]And I'm always like, I'm never gonna move.
[13:12]I don't think you talk about this.
[13:14]Yeah, I moved, you know, I mean, what I grew up,
[13:17]well, you grew up there too.
[13:19]So yeah, for me, it was, it was enough already.
[13:22]You know, it was like, I'll always enjoy going back,
[13:25]but I like to clean slate after a point too.
[13:27]I think it may be when my kids are in college.
[13:30]Well, that's what it was.
[13:30]I didn't leave until my kids were gone.
[13:34]Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've got quite a bit to go.
[13:36]Yeah, but that's okay, counting down.
[13:40]Yeah, day by day, bye-bye.
[13:42]And another funny thing that you did in the book
[13:45]is even though, you know, your main character is
[13:48]cremudgingly in a way.
[13:49]He also sort of defies the typical grandfather stereotype
[13:53]where you think like, oh, the grandparents
[13:55]will be so happy when I call.
[13:56]But here he's like, the grandkids are so annoying.
[13:59]And the last thing I want is for them to get on FaceTime
[14:01]and pretend that they want to talk to me.
[14:03]Yeah, I love that.
[14:06]Yeah, I don't have any grandkids,
[14:08]but I imagine they won't want to talk to me when I'm on my mind.
[14:11]Oh, that's so funny.
[14:13]My kids bear like me.
[14:14]So I can't imagine my grandkids want to talk to me.
[14:17]That's another interesting part is his relationship
[14:19]to his daughter.
[14:20]And, you know, as she worries, and obviously he's
[14:23]descending his own mental stuff, but, you know,
[14:27]wanting to figure out how to preserve that relationship.
[14:30]And then there are observations you have just about life,
[14:33]like when you have him sitting on the ground
[14:36]and thinking, how did people like dig graves
[14:39]when the ground is this hard?
[14:40]And there were no machines.
[14:42]And I'm like, yeah, right.
[14:43]How did they do that?
[14:44]They were just tougher than us.
[14:46]I guess so.
[14:48]Yeah, you know, if you've ever tried to touch the ground
[14:52]in Central Park in the middle of winter,
[14:53]you're like, yeah, just pull your nail right off.
[14:56]So yeah, it was the same where he's digging for, you know,
[14:59]he's trying to find something to throw it that guy before he
[15:01]thought it was the iPhone at him.
[15:03]Trying to find a rock or a pebble.
[15:05]And it's just hard kind of slady, slady soil.
[15:09]I'm embarrassed to admit I did not know
[15:11]that it was once the Central Park was once used
[15:13]as the burial ground for slavery to people.
[15:16]And I'm sure that I do that.
[15:19]Maybe I knew that.
[15:20]I mean, did you, did you make that up or is that true?
[15:24]I'm pretty sure I didn't make it up.
[15:25]I know it was a potter's field at some point,
[15:28]which is, you know, for unclaimed bodies
[15:30]or unknown deceased.
[15:34]Yeah, I'm sure I, I'm sure I researched that,
[15:37]but I didn't know it.
[15:38]I think I was just just researching general facts
[15:42]about Central Park, you know,
[15:43]I think I was researching the reservoir.
[15:45]You know, when I was really last used
[15:47]and, you know, what's the deal with it and all that stuff.
[15:50]So yeah, it's very interesting to,
[15:52]to, well, the history of New York's very interesting.
[15:54]You know, it's any kind of history is,
[15:55]but a big city like that.
[15:57]Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, that's kind of,
[16:00]the story is kind of getting that too if you think of
[16:02]like the city as a person.
[16:04]You know, it has this kind of repressed history unconscious,
[16:08]whatever things it would rather not think about
[16:10]that it did in the past, things like that.
[16:12]Like if it's a father, you know, mistakes I made,
[16:15]things like that.
[16:16]So the city has kind of a repressed return of the repressed
[16:19]or an unconscious that when the city is sick,
[16:23]like during the pandemic,
[16:24]then the city also is having hallucinations.
[16:28]You know, that's kind of,
[16:28]he's like the conduit for a city hallucinating in a way.
[16:32]I'm just making that up right now, but it sounds good.
[16:34]That's, let's go with it.
[16:35]I like it.
[16:36]That's what I meant to do.
[16:37]That's what I meant to do.
[16:39]So what do you want the reader to take away
[16:41]from your story?
[16:43]Hmm.
[16:44]She that's, you know, it's like not something,
[16:46]it's a good question, but it's not something I've asked myself.
[16:48]It's like when I'm writing something,
[16:50]it's just like I'm trying to service the thing itself.
[16:53]You know, what does this thing want to be?
[16:55]I'm not really thinking of the reader.
[16:58]I think I really wanted to kind of have a sympathy
[17:03]for the conspiratorial mind, you know.
[17:06]Like I think it's all bullshit, you know,
[17:09]all the Trumpian kind of stuff out there.
[17:12]But I wanted to kind of investigate how it's comforting
[17:16]and how it's attractive, you know,
[17:20]how it can seduce.
[17:22]Well, in this case, a sick guy, you know,
[17:24]who's nearing the end on some level knows that
[17:27]and wants the answer, you know,
[17:30]the part of us that wants the answer, you know,
[17:34]and I wanted, you know, the answer is not Jewish space lasers,
[17:38]you know, but I get why I want to write a story
[17:42]in which I had an intelligent man kind of fall prey
[17:46]to the need for it to make sense, you know,
[17:50]because the truth is there really isn't one bad guy.
[17:53]There's not even like a cabal of 10 bad guys, you know,
[17:56]it's just groups of people trying to do their best usually
[18:00]and some people not doing, you know,
[18:02]some genuinely bad people doing things,
[18:05]but they're not organized.
[18:07]You know, there's no organized conspiracy
[18:10]and that's just movies and TV and we want that.
[18:14]We clearly want that, you know,
[18:16]because we want to blame a bad guy,
[18:18]we want to have a hero, we want to have a good guy.
[18:21]But I guess that's what I wanted to do
[18:23]is like show how when you get lonely,
[18:27]you're susceptible to wanting the kind of comfort
[18:30]of the big A answer, the big T truths or whatever.
[18:35]I got it, I got it.
[18:36]Now I can move on, you know, just saying.
[18:40]I just answered that to your question.
[18:43]I read this interview with Joyce Carol Oates
[18:45]where she was saying very intelligently, you know,
[18:47]like I just answered your question.
[18:48]I never thought of that and I don't even know
[18:50]that I believe what I just said.
[18:52]No, I make it because you're just kind of trying it out.
[18:56]Yeah, so what do you think?
[18:57]How did it sound?
[18:58]I don't know, okay.
[18:59]It sounded good like next week, I might go,
[19:01]yeah, and then I wasn't it, you know?
[19:03]Okay, let's let me know, I'll delete it.
[19:08]Are you working on anything new?
[19:10]I just started, yeah, I'm going to do an acting job
[19:13]in Europe today actually, which is why I was late
[19:17]and just forget, forgetful.
[19:19]And I am, I just started a podcast yesterday.
[19:23]I'm going to do a 10 episode podcast
[19:26]with Lemonada, the podcast company.
[19:29]And so I just did my first one yesterday,
[19:31]I was in your position and it's different.
[19:33]I'd never, I'd never been the interviewer on it.
[19:35]It's a learning process like I, it wasn't quite as smooth
[19:40]as I thought it was going to be, you know.
[19:42]Definitely, I mean, maybe if you think back
[19:44]when you started to where you are now
[19:46]and you probably have learned a few tricks.
[19:50]I used to write down all my questions
[19:51]in some kind of time.
[19:53]I would write, I would do quotes, you know,
[19:55]like I was kid in school and send all the questions.
[19:58]I did that for years until final,
[20:00]someone came on and was like, why do you send the questions? And I was like, oh, just, you know,
[20:04]to prepare and let you know. And he was like, I think I'll be a lot more fun if you didn't send
[20:08]questions. And then I was like, all right, that would save me some time. Yeah. So then I stopped,
[20:13]but it helps for a long time, not that you need that, but it helped me. Yeah.
[20:16]Yeah, mine's called fail better. It's kind of about failure. Oh, it's my, you know, the glory and
[20:22]necessity of it and that kind of stuff. And you know, I don't know what it is. Do you think people
[20:28]think, I don't think of you and failure in the same breath. We're just, you know, well, that's kind of
[20:33]what I'm talking. I mean, I'm not just talking about myself, but it's, you know, my sense is always,
[20:38]it's never exactly what you thought it was going to be or what you had in mind, no matter what the
[20:44]creation is. I mean, that that that's failure in art or whatever this failure in life, there's all
[20:50]different kinds of failure. But I was, I kind of had this idea that I wanted to be talking about,
[20:55]you know, how to how to shift the perspective on failure as not something to fear, but something to
[21:02]embrace in a way because I see only way the same way you move forward really, or you could just do
[21:08]the same thing over and over and succeed at that. And you know, you can live your life's that way
[21:11]if you want, but that felt kind of lonely. And I guess not a way to go. So yeah, that's just like
[21:18]the vague idea that I have the discussion I want to have. So it's not like I've got,
[21:24]I'm not saying your job is easy, but like you've got the one folks that you're going to ask about
[21:27]this, right? It's like, for me, I'm just like, it's very hazy. So like, it was an interesting kind of
[21:34]feeling like it should I get back to what this is supposed to be about, but this is interesting,
[21:38]you know, that's, yeah. Well, it's your show. You get to do whatever you want. Yeah, well, I forgot that
[21:45]in the moment. And what is your, what is your acting thing in London? Can you say?
[21:51]It's an Amazon limited series called Malice. And it's kind of wealthy people behaving badly.
[21:58]I don't have a deal. You know, it seems to be what people want these days.
[22:02]I'll take some of that.
[22:05]And do you write while you're in the midst of acting, shooting, whatever?
[22:10]I don't generally find it hard. I mean, just physically hard, just strategy, mentally, very hard
[22:19]to be able to shift focus like that. I guess no, the only time I ever wrote while I was acting
[22:25]was when I was doing the X files, but then I was writing. I was writing like X files. So it kind of
[22:30]was in the same headspace in a way, even though very different kind of
[22:35]motor skill to do one or any other. But generally now, no, because when I write, I kind of write hard
[22:42]and fast and focused. I'm not like a slow, slow writer who can do it over. I'm more of a sprinter
[22:50]when I write. So I can't be carrying something else when I'm spreading. Got it. Well, now maybe you can
[22:57]just go back to a short story. We can get shorter and shorter till then you have poems, just poems
[23:01]through the end. I do have a bunch of poems that I thought about publishing just because
[23:06]it would make me seem like I'm being more productive than I am. Because if he's in
[23:12]poems that I've written over a lifetime, really, and I don't know. I've got to find somebody who
[23:17]would be interested in publishing. Obviously, that's not a market. It's got to be, there's like
[23:26]the literary poetry market, which is, you know, you sell 20 copies and it's a hit. And there's the
[23:34]popular poetry market, which I think is basically just Billy Collins and maybe Amanda Gorman.
[23:41]And then I don't know what happens in the 20th. I guess you could find out.
[23:47]Yeah. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Well, I mean, the most obvious advice is
[23:55]just, you know, sit your ass down, you know, and write. Because it really is, it is a marathon.
[24:01]And it, it is a muscle, and it is a way of life, you know, so you're big and tired.
[24:15]And you really love it, don't you?
[24:18]Well, there's nothing better than having done it, you know, like I would say that I, I don't
[24:23]really love writing, but I love having written, you know, like when you come out of it, like if you
[24:28]just in the space and you're, you've been typing away for a couple hours and you realize
[24:33]that was a couple hours, you know, where I was elsewhere, you know, and it's, even if it's a dark
[24:39]place, you're doing dark work or whatever, it doesn't matter. It feels like a vacation of some kind
[24:44]of just, just to be out of your, well, to be off the screen for one thing, be out of whatever the
[24:49]loop is of the news of the day and all that stuff. And it's just good to keep your own company.
[24:56]Very true. Well, thank you. You're a beautiful writer. And
[24:59]thank you. I enjoyed the story and the conversation. So thank you.
[25:02]Thank you. Like, love. Have a good trip. Thank you. Sorry. I was late.
[25:06]No worries. No worries. Thanks. Bye bye.
[25:09]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[25:13]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibioens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[25:23]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[25:28]for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[25:32]fantastic intro and outro music.