Sheila Heti, ALPHABETICAL DIARIES
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[0:09]I am an author, my latest is blank, puffed date march first and novel.
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[0:33]Sheila Hetty is the author of Alphabetical Diaries.
[0:36]Sheila is the author of 11 books, including the novels Pure Color, Motherhood,
[0:40]and How Should a Person Be, which New York deemed one of the new classics of the 21st century.
[0:45]She was named one of the new Vanguard by the New York Times book critics.
[0:49]Who, along with a dozen other magazines and newspapers, chose Motherhood as a top book of 2018.
[0:54]Her books have been translated into 24 languages.
[0:56]She lives in Toronto.
[0:58]Welcome, Sheila.
[0:59]Thank you so much for coming on mom's and her time to read books.
[1:02]Now to discuss alphabetical diaries, which is so creative and the coolest idea for a book ever.
[1:10]So why don't you tell, tell us in a reason how you came up with this?
[1:13]I'm not really sure how I came up with it, but in 2010, I started this project, and it was,
[1:19]this question of like, what would my diaries look like if they were alphabetized by sentence,
[1:24]if I sort of broke it apart, broke apart the chronology and just read like, yeah,
[1:31]I hate him, I hate him written like over 10 years.
[1:36]And yeah, so I was trying to look at the past years of my life and see what the patterns were,
[1:42]what the repetitions were, sort of try to understand something about change and like,
[1:48]who I'd been in that time, but not by reading through the diaries chronologically,
[1:53]but yeah, alphabetically. Do you think doing it this way, there's anything lost,
[2:00]like versus someone who sat down and read your diaries straight.
[2:04]I mean, I think it's just different. It's more, it's more about the essence of a person.
[2:09]And again, like the kinds of things you think about over and over again,
[2:14]more that than narrative scenes. So it feels more like being inside somebody's mind,
[2:21]I think sort of tracking thought and tracking like the mundane thoughts and the more
[2:28]philosophical thoughts and the thoughts about sex and the thoughts about close to buy,
[2:33]but just like you kind of see what your life contains by doing it this way. Whereas if you read
[2:38]scenes, it's just a very different, I mean, it's a completely different thing. Yeah. Well,
[2:44]it was interesting because some of the sentences, like, whereas if you're crafting it from scratch,
[2:50]you might explain like the transition from one to another, but we can't tell in the book if it's
[2:56]something that came right after it or if this was from a different diary or am I jumping a couple
[3:02]years here or not? And does it even matter? I guess is really the point of it all, right? It
[3:06]doesn't matter. And it sounds like you're saying it doesn't really matter because it's all me.
[3:10]Yeah, it's surprising that you can have a sentence from 2007 beside its sentence from 2012,
[3:17]besides its sentence from 2005. And it reads very continuously and it reads like the same person.
[3:24]And yeah, it's it's a mysterious how static the self is. That's kind of what I realized.
[3:29]You know, your circumstances change, but not as much as it feels when you're going through it.
[3:35]And you change, but not nearly as much as you think you're changing. It's interesting. I mean,
[3:40]I think it first, I think it's kind of sobering, you know, like you kind of had this idea in life,
[3:44]like that the point is change. And after doing this project and like editing it for 10 years,
[3:48]like kind of feel like I've supported not to change. And that's not that the point is not to
[3:52]change, but like change isn't the essence of life. Like the essence of life is this self that you
[3:57]can't help but being sort of no matter what. So funny, I read this diary I had out loud this
[4:03]travel. I was on a trip and I was taking a similar trip with my kids and I was like, oh, I'm going to
[4:07]read you this from when I was about your age, which was crazy because I felt like I was sort of
[4:11]introducing myself at that age to my kids at this age. But anyway, as I was reading, I'm like,
[4:16]oh, that's so funny. Like I still say that all the time or like that expression I still use or
[4:21]I still always write about, you know, what I had for breakfast or whatever it was, right? I'm like,
[4:25]that's not so different even though I was only 11 years old. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Yeah,
[4:30]I guess we are kind of who we are at the core. So the diaries you edited it for 10 years,
[4:37]how long a period of time did the diaries encompass? Like from when to when? Like 2005 to 2014,
[4:45]basically. So I started the project in 2010 and then after a few years of working on it, I just
[4:50]thought I'll put all the diaries for the last few years in it. And I write my diaries on the computer.
[4:53]So it's not that hard to do. I didn't have to like type them all out. They're there. I don't write
[4:58]every day in a diary just sort of when I feel like I need to. So but it ended up being about half a
[5:03]million words altogether. And then who about 60,000 words? But 90% of it was gone. But I think that
[5:13]10% that remains, it really is representative of what was there. I wasn't like cutting to save
[5:18]myself embarrassment. I was cutting because how much repetition do you need? You know, was there
[5:23]anything you were embarrassed to include? Yeah, of course. It's very intimate. It's a diary. It's
[5:29]yeah, I think when you publish such a book, you don't really know what you're revealing. Like
[5:33]you're like, what kind of person is coming across in this book? You can't tell. Like when I write my
[5:37]novels, I sort of have a sense of the character I'm trying to create. But when it's you,
[5:42]you can't really see yourself. You know, it's like looking in the mirror. You're like,
[5:45]am I pretty? Am I ugly? What do I even look like anything at all? Like somebody sees me? Like
[5:51]how do they recognize me? Like they're just you're just kind of invisible to yourself. And it's the
[5:55]same thing with the diary. It's like, the person that comes across is sort of invisible to me.
[6:00]And that's kind of scary. It's scary to publish something like that. But also, what are you going
[6:04]to do? That's, you just have to publish what you're what you've finished, what you've been working
[6:09]on, what you're interested in. And I would argue that for the reader, it's the opposite of
[6:13]invisibility. I mean, you're literally entering somebody else's head and it's all your own
[6:19]all you do is see it. So there you go. Yeah. Well, have you, do you read it back? Have you ever read it
[6:26]back to yourself? Just like straight through start to finish? No, no, no, I've got better things to do.
[6:33]I've got to read other writers, you know. And I mean, once in a while, I might dip back in
[6:39]like say say today's February 23rd, which it is, which is my mother's birthday. I might be like,
[6:45]what was I doing on February 23rd 10 years ago, you know, and with any luck, I'll have a diary
[6:49]from that day or around that day. And it'll be interesting to see, you know, but I don't really go into
[6:54]it very often in your diary on your computer. Do you have each sentence isolated?
[6:59]I know that's it just like, do you write it like sort of like poet? No, no, no, I got, I went in and
[7:05]and did a friend and replaced and put every sentence on its own line. No, oh my gosh.
[7:09]It's just such a cool idea. It's just like, I don't know, I like couldn't get over it.
[7:13]It's such just the coolest idea and it keeps going on every single letter. Like,
[7:17]did you find you were attracted to a particular letter when you're like, oh my gosh,
[7:21]like R was the best chapter ever. No, I didn't. I thought I was the worst chapter ever because
[7:27]in a diary way too many sentences begin with I that was the hardest one to edit because
[7:33]it could have just taken over the whole book if I hadn't, you know, reigned it in. But you know,
[7:37]every sentence has exactly its own place in the book because there's only one place every
[7:42]sentence can be because it's alphabetical by the first letter, second letter, third letter,
[7:46]fourth letter. So there would be these sentences that I'd want to keep in, but more important than
[7:51]keeping that sentence and was having, you know, this sentence over here chronologically in this
[7:56]sentence over here chronologically, chronologically next to each other. And so I would have to cut
[8:00]that one in the middle that I really liked because it was more important to have those two next
[8:03]to each other to create, to create a joke or to create some weird juxtaposition. So all it was just a
[8:09]a very different way to edit than I've ever edited. Wow. Do you alphabetize everything in your life?
[8:14]Like, are all your books? Just know my books are a mess, everything, this is the same thing.
[8:21]Maybe this is like your search for control in a crazy world. Do you know what I mean? Like,
[8:26]way to make sense and put order into things that have no logic. Yeah, I think when you put chaos
[8:33]inside a container, you can see it, you know, in a certain way. And so this was definitely like the
[8:39]chaos of a diary and the fluctuations of a diary within an ordered regulated shape. You know,
[8:45]like, can I bring a scientific approach almost? Or can I bring like an analytical or, yeah, can I bring
[8:51]a control control approach to looking through 10 years of the self? So who's diaries? Would you really
[8:59]like to read? Who else like what other person famous or not? I mean, I don't think most people keep
[9:06]diaries. So theoretical theoretical diaries. Let's pretend if everyone in the world living or
[9:13]deceased or anything, I don't know random question, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just, I haven't thought
[9:18]it's thought this through. I mean, when you're a kid, the diary you would want to see is like,
[9:23]you know, grade six, the diary, you want to see is like the boy you have a crush on being like,
[9:26]I'm writing so much about him. Is he writing anything about me? I mean, I think in some way you're
[9:31]interested in the people and that you love you're interested in their thoughts about you,
[9:36]but like it would probably be the worst thing possible to read those. So I don't know. I mean,
[9:40]a lot of writers who I admire are right there diary. It's not something that I do as much as I
[9:45]used to do it. You know, when I was young, I would sort of read writers diaries in my 20s to sort of
[9:49]see like, how do you make a life as a writer? Like, what are the things they thought of they think
[9:53]about? What do they do every day? Now, I'm really not answering your question. I don't know.
[10:00]It stopped. I don't know. I was thinking, as I was asking it, I was like, what
[10:03]I haven't answered that. I don't know. Part of me feels like I would want to read
[10:06]the diaries of people I love who have passed away. All right, just
[10:09]chance to get closer to them again and remember their voice and what
[10:13]things they would say that maybe have been slipping out of my mind or
[10:16]something, them. Yeah. I think the person I would at least want to read, well,
[10:20]no, I shouldn't say that. Never mind. You're going to say your husband or your
[10:25]children. Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. We don't want too much truth. Yeah.
[10:31]I don't think I could handle it. Oh my gosh. Well, what other projects are in
[10:37]the works for you now? Well, I've just been on book two of the last two weeks
[10:41]through the US and Canada and so I haven't been working. I've just been
[10:44]meeting friends and meeting people and I guess now that I'm back, I have to
[10:48]start thinking about what's next. But I think I'm like giving myself a couple
[10:52]days. I only got back yesterday. So I think I'm like, I didn't mean like you had
[10:56]to say this week. I thought maybe you had another like years-long project
[11:00]that you put a pause on to go on the book tours and like, I mean, everything.
[11:04]I have some things, but there's so influx that it's not. Yeah.
[11:08]It's not worth talking about. It's not. It's just it's just it's like I'm
[11:13]visualizing like cake mix. You know, it's like batter. It's just it's not right to eat.
[11:19]I mean, sometimes the batter is the best part. That is true. That is true.
[11:22]That is true. But if it has an egg in it that you don't like it. So it's more like
[11:26]cake batter than cooking the egg. Yeah. Okay.
[11:29]You know, my daughter's making chocolate cookies downstairs and I was like
[11:33]yelling out like, save the dough and then I'm like, no, I shouldn't tell her to save the
[11:36]dough. I shouldn't. I'm like this. So what was the book tour like? Were you surprised by
[11:43]anything? Or it was great. There was really good attendance and people enjoyed hearing me read
[11:48]from that. And it was fun. I mean, yeah, it's exhausting, but it's I enjoyed that hour that I'm on
[11:53]stage. I don't really love the lead up to it. And I enjoyed the actual conversations I had with
[11:59]people. Was anyone's reaction? Was there anyone who was said something and you were like, well,
[12:03]this is this is this makes it all worth it. Yeah. Like some of those comments. Yeah. I mean,
[12:08]people liking the book makes it feel exciting. I got some emails from writer friends that were
[12:13]really enthusiastic about the book. You know, it's gotten better reviews. I think than it I
[12:18]than any of my other books. So it's very positive reaction, which I'm very excited about
[12:22]because it's a weird project. But I think when you edit something for 14 years, hopefully it's
[12:27]good by the end and I had an opportunity to publish in 2013 and I felt like it wasn't quite ready.
[12:33]And not only was it not quite ready. It was 10 years for being ready. And I'm glad I didn't publish
[12:37]it then because it feels done and good now and like kind of in the perfect shape. So yeah,
[12:43]well, it's so neat. Well, I feel like it's like art. It's it's part book, but it's really part
[12:50]art in the way that you can use letters and words and order senses of order and you know,
[12:55]the systems that we that we turn to make sense of our lives and and how that we I don't know,
[13:01]it's just the coolest. It's like the coolest conceptual idea. And of course, you know,
[13:06]in actuality as well. But you know, you know, getting these like little glimpses of your life
[13:10]all throughout and being like, oh, yes, and then next. And then it's something, you know,
[13:14]anyway, it's just very cool. Of course, you know, but I just thought I would say I appreciate
[13:18]you saying that. Thank you. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? Just read widely,
[13:24]you know, read old books, read contemporary books, read books by people who are like you who are
[13:29]different from you. Just get a sense of what's been done, what can be done, what hasn't been done,
[13:36]I just think that's that's really the best that's important. That's really important. Don't just
[13:41]read the one little genre that you're interested in or, you know, only books in the last 10 years
[13:46]because you think you're not going to relate to a book that was written hundreds of years ago or
[13:51]you know, 2000 years ago. I mean, I just think that the more you read, the more you kind of can see
[13:56]where you would fit into literature. Like what is there that you can say, what can you bring to
[14:02]the conversation? Because it's a conversation with living people, but it's also a conversation
[14:06]with all the books that have ever been written. So yeah, I have this book coming out called blank
[14:11]and that's exactly what my character does. She publishes a book that's blank as a commentary on
[14:15]all the books that have come before it to sort of make a statement about how a lot of times it's
[14:19]marketing that dictates what books people buy and it's not even a bow. It's inside the book. So
[14:24]that was my whole like jumping off-wave. And is the book become a bestseller? That's the goal.
[14:29]Yeah, they started into a bestseller. So I won't give away the end, but it's interesting to think
[14:36]in the way that art does that, right? Everything is a conversation with what comes before it and
[14:40]how does literature do that and how can you actually make a difference in the most crowded field ever?
[14:45]I mean, there's so many books and how can you stand out? You can reorder your sentences. You can
[14:51]hand it in with nothing there. So yeah, it's just like what is there to express that hasn't been
[14:58]expressed that you feel in life. Like, you're like, this is something I feel in life that I don't
[15:03]think has been put on the page, but you have no idea what that you wouldn't know what blanks
[15:08]to fill in if you don't know what has been written and how. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, Sheila, thank you
[15:17]so much. Thanks for coming back on and go rest after your tour. Having me on again. Okay. Take
[15:24]care. Okay. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[15:30]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[15:36]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[15:41]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the
[15:45]sound editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[15:50]now trim music.