Anna Quindlen, AFTER ANNIE
[0:02]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens and I am the host of this podcast, Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:07]I am also a newly minted USA Today best selling author of the novel, Blake, and created
[0:14]a whole community of book lovers around this podcast, a publishing company, reading retreats,
[0:20]a bookstore, and more, learn more at ZiviMedia.com or follow me on social at Zivi Owens
[0:26]or join the community at ZiviReaders.
[0:32]Anna Quinlan is back on the podcast.
[0:34]I am such a huge fan as anyone listening to this podcast.
[0:38]Nose, I am just over the moon excited in love with everything she does after Annie
[0:43]is her latest novel and it is my Zivi's book club pick.
[0:47]So on March 22, if you are in LA, you can come to Zivi's bookshop and see her in person
[0:53]with our book club there with the local chapter and she will be part of the Zivi's virtual
[0:58]book club which you can learn about on bookclubs.com when you find Zivi's virtual book
[1:04]club or on ZiviMedia.com go to the book club section and you will find the information
[1:10]and I'll also probably post about it so anyway.
[1:13]Anna Quinlan is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared on fiction, nonfiction
[1:16]and self-help bestseller lists.
[1:18]She is the author of many novels, object lessons, one truth thing, black and blue, blessings,
[1:22]rise and shine, every last one still live with breadcrumbs and Miller's Valley, her memoir,
[1:27]lots of candles, plenty of cake published in 2012 was a number one New York Times bestseller,
[1:31]her book, a short guide to a happy life, has sold more than a million copies while a
[1:35]columnist at The New York Times, she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections
[1:39]living out loud and thinking out loud, which by the way, if you have not read, you should
[1:43]go back and read because although they were written years ago, there are timeless messages
[1:48]that everybody should read, her news we call them is reflected in loud and clear.
[1:52]Welcome Anna, thank you so much for coming back on mom's don't have time to read books
[1:55]we were just joking.
[1:56]I feel like you've been on the Sandra Times already to discuss after Annie, which is
[2:00]my ZB's book club pick.
[2:01]I'm just love this book so much, I love you writing so much and oh my gosh, everything
[2:07]about it.
[2:08]So thank you.
[2:09]Well, thank you.
[2:10]Thanks so much for picking it, Debbie.
[2:11]I'm so honored and pleased and I can't wait to do the book club meeting with you.
[2:17]Yay.
[2:18]Also the color.
[2:19]I feel like I dressed for you today.
[2:20]I'm wearing a light blue sweater, you know, I can just loan it to you if you want to take
[2:24]it on the road.
[2:25]Let's say I love the cover of this book and we fought pretty hard for it.
[2:29]There were a lot of different iterations, you know, cover art is hard.
[2:33]Yeah, well, this is about, you know, it's so much interior life, right?
[2:38]This about relationships and the intimacy is in the effects of one thing, but it's about
[2:43]a person, you know, I would imagine this would be a tough brief, you know, because it could
[2:47]go in so many ways for the cover, but it's really gorgeous.
[2:52]And speaking of that.
[2:53]So can you tell listeners what after Annie is about?
[2:56]Sure.
[2:57]I don't feel like it's a spoiler because in the first sentence on the first page, Annie
[3:02]Brown dies and she's a young wife and mother.
[3:06]She has four young kids.
[3:09]She's been married quite happily to a guy named Bill and her best friend is named Anne
[3:15]Marie and the book is about the first year in their lives without her, how Bill copes
[3:24]or doesn't, how Ally, who is 13 years old, has to step up and how Anne Marie is completely
[3:34]lost without her closest friend.
[3:37]But I think the, what I wanted to communicate with the book and what I, I feel pretty happy
[3:43]about succeeding at is Annie dies on the first page and she's the most alive person
[3:49]in the book.
[3:51]And I think that that's something that we don't often appreciate about grief and loss.
[3:57]That when we have beloved people in our lives, it's sometimes easy to overlook them on
[4:03]a day to day basis.
[4:05]Yes, there she is, the bedrock of everything that I do.
[4:10]And then if they die, when they die, they loom larger somehow in our minds, in our hearts,
[4:18]in our daily lives, then they might have done when they were actually there.
[4:23]And I think that's what happens for all three of these people.
[4:27]The way that they get through this first year is Annie is still very much there for
[4:33]all of them.
[4:36]Well, writing about it, reading it as a mom of four myself and everyone who reads it,
[4:41]you can put yourself in the shoes of basically every character, right?
[4:45]That what would happen if, if you, you know, what would happen if we, what would happen
[4:49]to everyone we love when you're, or if we were to disappear like today, right?
[4:55]How would everybody react?
[4:57]Would they be okay?
[4:58]And I feel like there's so much of that worry, you know, are your kids going to be okay?
[5:02]What are they going to think about?
[5:03]And this is like, it's almost like an exercise in handling anxiety, right?
[5:08]Like if this were to happen, what would, and would everyone be okay?
[5:13]Well, and, and I think what you realize and certainly what's true in the novel is that
[5:19]people get through in different ways.
[5:21]I mean, each of the four children responding quite different ways to what has happened.
[5:28]Bill is almost frozen, not only because he loved his wife so very much, but because he
[5:35]has overlooked the fact that basically their entire life is engineered by her.
[5:42]Hello, do we all live with this?
[5:45]And, and Ann Marie just has never been able to imagine a life without any writing shotgun
[5:52]with her since they were both kids.
[5:56]So everybody has to, everybody has to try to recover some different piece of themselves.
[6:03]And I think that's what happens in, in life when, when in a family, a man loses his
[6:10]wife, children lose their mother and friends lose the person who held them all together.
[6:16]Yeah.
[6:17]Oh my gosh.
[6:18]Well, I know sadly you lost your mother at a younger age.
[6:22]How much of that was a piece of this?
[6:25]You know, it wasn't at all a piece of this and it's been so long.
[6:29]I was 19 when my mother died.
[6:31]I'm 71 years old now.
[6:33]You may or may not be able to figure out that this book is dedicated to my mother.
[6:38]It just has her initials, which is how I wanted it.
[6:42]I sort of felt like it was time to put that overweaning influence to bed, even though
[6:50]will be an overweaning influence until the day I die.
[6:55]But this grew much more out of that sense that you develop as you get older, that the
[7:01]landscape of your personal earth starts to shift.
[7:06]I mean, I am 71 years old, which means over the last 10 years, a fair number of my friends
[7:12]have died.
[7:13]And that's challenging and you think about how we get on without them.
[7:19]And I'm also always interested.
[7:22]The only thing that really interests me as a novelist and actually it was the only thing
[7:26]that really interested me as a reporter in a columnist is the ordinary lives of ordinary
[7:33]people and having said that the ordinary lives of ordinary people, which are often lived
[7:39]with a valor and a courage and a depth that gets overlooked amid the literati, the
[7:50]intelligence.
[7:51]Yeah, I'm not interested in writing about people who have lives of that sort.
[7:58]Although there are very good books written about them, I'm really interested in the
[8:03]everyday pushing of the rock uphill.
[8:06]Interesting.
[8:07]Like that's your everyday sometimes, just like getting through.
[8:11]Yes, absolutely.
[8:13]I loved I saw an Instagram somebody was interviewing, was it a wreath of Franklin?
[8:19]I think it was a wreath of Franklin and asked what her greatest challenge was, I'm going
[8:25]to get this wrong.
[8:26]Yeah, what her greatest challenge was and she said, it's trying to figure out what to
[8:32]make for dinner every damn night.
[8:34]Yes, Rita.
[8:38]It's not, it's not that my upper register is narrow or that I can't figure out where to
[8:45]perform.
[8:46]It's what to make for dinner every damn night.
[8:50]Oh my gosh, I love that.
[8:53]This is so great.
[8:55]Oh my gosh.
[8:56]So do you feel like this is when you were writing it, were you trying to give a sense
[9:02]of hopefulness and that yes, we all have these losses.
[9:06]We have people who will come in and come out of our lives and our lives will continue
[9:10]to shift.
[9:11]But ultimately, we have the ability to adapt in some way, even though it's not always
[9:16]pretty looking or is it that we need to take the time to acknowledge those we've lost
[9:22]and kind of sit with it a little bit and just, you know what I mean?
[9:25]Like what do you want, what do you want the reader to leave with?
[9:29]Well, all of the above, but the difference between how the reader sees a piece and how
[9:35]you, when you're very much in it see a piece is really interesting to me.
[9:40]I mean, I often say that readers tell me things about my own work that hadn't even occurred
[9:46]to me and then I, oh, yes, of course.
[9:50]So when I went into the first meetings with the people, Random House about this book, they
[9:56]were all talking about how the book is about resilience and how the book is about.
[10:00]hope and how the book is about how we can lift each other up. And I went,
[10:05]the book is about grief and loss. And they all said, yes, yes, yes, but. And that but made me
[10:13]think about what I'd done here in a way that that I hadn't thought about it before, except
[10:20]for the fact that at the very end, there's clearly a moment where there's hope,
[10:26]hope with a capital H and hope with a small age. And that was, I think probably my way of saying
[10:34]in different ways for better or worse, everyone will survive and even thrive, but maybe not
[10:42]right now and maybe not for all of them right now. So I think, I think that reaction that that
[10:51]the book was about successfully pushing the rock uphill made me look at it in a slightly
[10:57]different way. Do you have an Ann Marie in your life? Oh, yes. And who is who is your Ann Marie?
[11:05]Her name is Janet Masland. She was for many years the chief film critic and then the chief book
[11:12]critic of the New York Times. And she is definitely my Ann Marie, although I haven't known her
[11:17]as long as Ann Marie and Annie have known each other. I mean, those friendships where you've
[11:23]known each other since elementary school, well, I think you have one, don't you? I do. Yes.
[11:29]Yes. Those those are powerful because they go way back to before you were you in some kind of way,
[11:38]or maybe when you're seven and eight, you're more you than you are at 17. And then you've become
[11:43]you again, but those are really powerful relationships. And most of the women I know have,
[11:50]if not a best friend, then several best friends. And certainly the ones I know who are living their
[11:57]best lives have a coterie of girlfriends that are critical to them. This is this whole like
[12:06]is marriage important? Like, should we all just go live with our girlfriends forever?
[12:10]As you don't type of, you know, like there's this movement, like a gallon, I don't know,
[12:15]I just read about it somewhere too. Like people are just deciding, I'll just live with my girlfriends
[12:19]forever. And like, why not? Well, I think the piece of the whole attitude towards marriage now that
[12:23]I find a little perplexing is the whole, my husband is my best friend because I feel like your best
[12:30]friend plays one role in your life and your spouse plays a different role. It's not more or less,
[12:38]it's just different. And I find that whole best friend's spouse conflation a little confusing
[12:46]from my point of view. But I think the living with your best with your girlfriends thing
[12:53]also arises when you get older because the truth is that women tend to live longer than men.
[12:59]I'm part of a women's travel group. We just got back from Rome. I love them all so much.
[13:05]And we talk all the time about the home. The home will be one of our second homes. And then
[13:12]we hire, there's apparently plans for a male massage therapist. Definitely a cook. Maybe a nurse,
[13:23]if we need it and all of us just sitting around, you know, being snarky. I mean, I feel like
[13:30]that could be your next book. Well, actually, no, the book, the novel I'm working on now has
[13:37]a four woman book club in it. But the rule of their book club is that you cannot read the book.
[13:44]Everybody gets the book, but you can't read the book. Book club is just to sit around and talk
[13:50]about what's going on in your own life. And I'm kind of charmed by that idea. Even though I do
[13:56]love book clubs, read the book because sometimes they read my books.
[14:02]I was somewhere recently and somebody like got up to ask the author a question and she's like,
[14:07]well, I haven't actually read your book. But blah, blah, blah, blah. And the author was like,
[14:12]you know what? You bought it. That's great. I don't care if you read it.
[14:18]It's so different to me. Don't be embarrassed. You help me out. It's so funny.
[14:23]Well, after you write a book like this where Anne-Marie and Bill and the kids and everybody is so
[14:29]real that you feel, I mean, as a reader, I feel like I know them intimately and as the creator
[14:35]and whatever, however, imagination works. Like, do you feel sort of a drift? Do you imagine like what
[14:41]they would do in certain situations in your life? Like, do you, do they kind of, you know,
[14:47]prince along with you as you as you go about the day in some way? Or do you just put them to
[14:51]bed and close the book and sort of set it aside? I feel a little bit like it's like moving
[14:58]from one town to another. When you move away and you sort of keep in contact with people, but
[15:05]it's not the same kind of contact. And after a while, it usually ebbs and dries up. I sort of feel
[15:14]like I moved to another town. Having said that, when they're real, they're real. I mean, I remember
[15:21]being at a stoplight in the car with the kids one day and this woman in a nurse's uniform with red
[15:27]hair walked across the street. And I reflexively thought that's Fran Flynn. Now, Fran Flynn is
[15:35]a protagonist of black and blue. She is a nurse. She does have red hair, but she does not actually
[15:41]exist outside of the pages of that book in my imagination. And yet in some ways, during the course
[15:48]of writing that novel, she had become so real to me that as a matter of course, I thought I could
[15:54]identify her on the street. And I sort of feel that way about Annie. Sometimes I drive past an
[16:03]assisted living place out here in Pennsylvania where I live sometimes. And I don't exactly,
[16:10]I'm not exactly that specific, but there is this sense that Annie's working there,
[16:15]that kind of thing. So there's peripheral moments that kind of come out of nowhere and hit you.
[16:22]Interesting. You also sort of tackle addiction in part in this book. Yeah. Talk about that. And
[16:28]you know, what are we even to do with the rise of, you know, so many people struggle with
[16:33]this all the time. It impacts so many families and relationships. Well, it's one of the things that
[16:37]I love the most about Annie that Ann Marie can't snook her her, that if she were a lesser person,
[16:46]at a certain point, she would cut that cord. And of course, that's a real temptation to just say
[16:55]enough. I can't take any more, you know, but Annie is such a good person and such a good friend
[17:02]that she's the person who really grapples with this and pulls Ann Marie out of a hole. And I love
[17:10]that. I love that about her. And of course, then later on after Annie's gone, Ann Marie really
[17:17]is in ahead to relapse. And it's only some sense of a possible future that brings her back from
[17:26]the brink. I mean, all addiction, all addicts are different. And one of the things that you worry
[17:32]about creating a character like this is that people are going to say, oh, but it's not like that.
[17:39]She couldn't get over it by acts or she couldn't work it through it by why. I mean, this is
[17:45]this is one woman who has fallen into a pit that a lot of other people have fallen into
[17:53]and by dent of great love manages to surmount it. One hopes, I'm think crossing my fingers here
[18:05]forever, but forever is a long time, especially when you're Jones and I love Annie's creative approach
[18:12]to basically making her, she's such a hard type sometimes. That's what I like about her that every once
[18:20]in a while. You know, she's being nice and she's doing things and everything. And then every
[18:25]once in a while, she's just like, okay, stop that right now. She's pushed to the edge of herself. And
[18:34]I love that about her. Anything. You've been writing your whole career. And you're still coming up
[18:41]with new characters and new ideas and speaking with passion about your projects. Like is this
[18:47]just who you are deep down that you will? Oh, this is just sort of part of you, a big part of you
[18:54]is just this continual creativity and storyteller storytelling. And you know, how does it does it ever
[19:03]end? Do you ever say like, well, I don't know. I don't want to do this anywhere. You know, how do you
[19:07]feel about it? Well, as you know in my remarks at your Zippy event, I indicated quite strong
[19:16]ly that I find this very difficult. Yes. I do not love it. I'm always I'm always a gog at all
[19:22]those writers who are like, this is my happy place. No, my happy place is my happy place is with a
[19:30]cup of coffee. And, you know, the crossword puzzle. And that day, I think I said something that
[19:37]I've come to very slowly over a period of time, which is that one of the reasons I keep going
[19:44]because of course, I don't really run out of ideas. I mean, the world of human beings is an
[19:51]infinite place, which gives you a lot of characters to work with. But the work is hard enough
[19:57]that what keeps me going.
[20:00]is that I don't feel like writing is something I do.
[20:03]I feel like writing is the way.
[20:06]But then I thought about it in a whole different way
[20:08]this week in this inter-regnum right before publication,
[20:13]which is just a horrible period.
[20:16]Can you brand that more?
[20:18]Could that just become the term that everybody uses?
[20:21]The inter-regnum?
[20:22]Oh my gosh, I love that.
[20:24]Love it.
[20:25]You know, when the book is sitting there,
[20:27]when my box of books is sitting there
[20:29]and I'm thinking, will anybody care?
[20:32]You know, it's, it's, pre-publication is just horrible for me.
[20:36]But in this inter-regnum,
[20:37]I was reading a series of mystery novels by a woman
[20:40]who has been somewhat lost in the mist of time
[20:44]called Elizabeth Daly.
[20:45]She wrote a series of more than a dozen novels
[20:49]starring a document's guy named Henry Gamaj.
[20:53]The last one was published in 1950
[20:55]and she was always said to be Agatha Christie's
[20:58]favorite mystery novelist,
[21:00]which makes you wonder why she's been lost in the mist of time.
[21:04]Anyhow, I finished one the other night
[21:07]and I went to get the next one
[21:09]and there isn't an next one.
[21:11]And I thought, wait, you know, I've been,
[21:14]I've been with Henry for a month now.
[21:17]What's going on?
[21:18]So I looked up her bio thinking,
[21:21]oh, this is terrible, Elizabeth Daly finished this book
[21:23]and then she died.
[21:24]But she didn't, she lived for another 17 years
[21:27]and I have no idea why she gave up on this series.
[21:31]But what it made me think about was that every writer,
[21:35]whether they wanted or not, whether they honored or not,
[21:38]whether they accepted or not,
[21:42]has an intimate relationship with readers.
[21:46]I mean, when I sit at the computer and work,
[21:50]I felt this particularly keenly when I was a columnist.
[21:53]It's like, I'm in a conversation,
[21:56]but I can't see the person on the other side
[21:58]of the computer screen.
[22:01]And realizing that I wanted more of these books
[22:05]and that I somehow felt it wasn't fair
[22:08]for Elizabeth Daly to have left me in the lurch in this way.
[22:14]I realized that part of why I continue to do this
[22:18]is that I have a relationship with readers
[22:21]that I've built over almost 50 years.
[22:26]And I almost have an obligation to maintain that relationship
[22:32]and I've never thought of it that way before.
[22:35]Although, I'm surprised I haven't thought about it
[22:38]when I'm on book tour because I meet so many readers
[22:40]and it's so gratifying to talk to them
[22:44]about what they see in the work.
[22:46]Wow.
[22:47]So you just feel obligated, basically.
[22:49]This is all just, you know, you might as well.
[22:51]Yeah, no, I'm kidding.
[22:54]I see what you're saying, obviously.
[22:56]And it's true.
[22:57]I mean, I would be very disappointed if you stopped writing.
[23:01]Look, I mean, when both Philip Roth and Alice Monroe
[23:05]announced at age 80 that they were done,
[23:09]I kind of envied them.
[23:11]Now, I mean, both of them had won endless prizes
[23:15]are considered near the top of the canon.
[23:18]Are both writers whose work I admire greatly?
[23:21]But I thought, gee, you know,
[23:23]what's Alice going to do?
[23:24]Is she just going to like knit and, you know, other friends?
[23:30]More trips to Rome.
[23:32]Oh, no.
[23:34]Yeah. Well, also, I mean, don't you feel in part
[23:37]that all of this lends life a greater sense of purpose
[23:41]in a way?
[23:42]Or is that just, you know, like there's like a reason?
[23:45]I don't know.
[23:46]Of course, I mean, I remember, I can't remember how many years
[23:50]ago it was meeting with the financial advisor.
[23:53]And he said, now, at what age do you anticipate retiring?
[23:57]And then he took one look at my face and said, OK,
[24:00]next question, because I can't imagine that.
[24:04]Now having said that, I have lots of other moving parts
[24:08]to my life that take up a lot of time.
[24:10]I mean, I'm on a couple of boards.
[24:12]I really, I really believe in public service.
[24:15]And I try to always put my body where that belief is.
[24:20]And obviously, I have children and grandchildren
[24:23]and a great group of friends.
[24:25]And I'm an inveterate reader.
[24:28]I mean, it's basically my favorite thing to do,
[24:31]except to hang out with my children and my grandchildren.
[24:34]So I have lots of other things to fill parts of my life.
[24:38]But I'm very invested in work.
[24:41]And I think probably I will be doing it.
[24:45]I didn't finite them.
[24:47]Do you ever think about, and I know you're more active now
[24:50]on Instagram, which I love getting these little sneak peeks
[24:52]and you're funny saying, you know, all of that.
[24:54]I don't want to, did not want to do that.
[24:56]10 years ago, we had a panel said, you've got to join Twitter.
[25:00]And I was like, I'm not joining Twitter.
[25:02]I, I drew a line in the sand.
[25:04]And then with this book, they said, and with right for,
[25:08]actually, it was with right for your life.
[25:10]You've got to join Instagram.
[25:12]And I sort of drew a line in the sand.
[25:15]And then my daughter said to me, mommy, you should do Instagram.
[25:19]It's not like Twitter.
[25:20]It's, it's not mean spirited and it's kind of fun.
[25:23]And, and then she said, the magic words.
[25:26]And you'll be able to promote other people's books.
[25:29]And I thought, that's it.
[25:31]I'm promoting other people's books.
[25:33]And I actually enjoy it a lot more than I expected to,
[25:37]although I spend way too much time looking at these.
[25:42]They are cute.
[25:45]My kids do that all the time on my phone.
[25:47]So my feet is all, you know, unlike what I'm like, you know,
[25:50]they must think I'm so crazy with all my kids start looking at it.
[25:54]And I start looking at it.
[25:55]Oh my gosh.
[25:56]But anyway, aside from Instagram, when you used to write a column
[26:00]and have that relationship and conversation,
[26:03]do you ever think about doing more of that type of the immediacy
[26:07]of the like daily life chronicling that is not just really
[26:10]daily life, it's really about so much more than that?
[26:12]No.
[26:14]I mean, I feel like, I feel like I wrote a column to the best
[26:17]of my ability first when I was doing life in the 30s.
[26:20]And then when I did the op-ed page column for the times
[26:24]and the back page of Newsweek.
[26:26]But I'm really thirst for more of that kind of material
[26:31]from younger people.
[26:33]And just I feel like we baby boomers have clogged every pipeline
[26:37]imaginable as we now can all tell by how the presidential race
[26:42]is shaping up.
[26:43]And that really I want to hear from people in their 30s and 40s
[26:47]and 50s from all kinds of backgrounds about what their lives are
[26:52]like.
[26:53]I feel like, you know, I did my bit.
[26:56]I communicated with readers in that way.
[26:58]I communicate with them now through fiction and the occasional
[27:02]nonfiction book.
[27:04]But in terms of that kind of column and essay work,
[27:07]I want to hear from from younger, more diverse voices.
[27:11]Great answer.
[27:12]OK.
[27:13]Last thing, advice to aspiring authors.
[27:16]Maybe the 30, 40, 50-year-old who is trying to get out there
[27:20]in the way that you're suggesting.
[27:22]First of all, I feel your pain.
[27:24]Oh my god.
[27:26]Well, I mean, I was, I had a real leg up here
[27:30]because I was working at the times.
[27:33]And I was doing this column.
[27:34]So Random House never said, gee, you know, can she write a sentence
[27:40]that people will read?
[27:41]And they never said, can she bring it on home?
[27:44]Because I brought it on home, you know, twice a week and all that.
[27:47]So I had that as my underpinnings to any kind of book deal.
[27:54]But what I would say first of all is the reason they call it
[27:59]voice is because it's supposed to sound like the way you talk.
[28:03]I see way too much pros where somebody feels like this
[28:08]is what writing sounds like.
[28:10]It sort of smacks of the MFA program or the writing workshop.
[28:16]And in the process, the person has lost what makes them unique.
[28:21]I mean, what makes you unique is the only thing really worth
[28:25]publishing because there's so much out there.
[28:28]So don't lose, don't lose sight of your own voice.
[28:33]What may be your own quirkiness, your own craziness?
[28:36]Oh my God, is anybody going to publish this?
[28:38]Well, David Foster Wallace got published.
[28:42]So, you know, quirky, crazy, whatever.
[28:46]And the other thing is you can't, you know, we were talking before
[28:49]about doing the work.
[28:51]You can't spend too much time blue skyness.
[28:54]You got to sit down every day and you got to look at the screen.
[28:58]And if you're like me, every time you look at the screen,
[29:02]you are seized by insecurity, self doubt and fear.
[29:08]It won't be good.
[29:09]I can't do this.
[29:10]What, what am I doing?
[29:12]You know, and then you just have to start to type.
[29:16]You just have to start to type.
[29:18]And you know, as I've said in the past,
[29:21]my experience is that sometimes bad writing leads to good writing,
[29:26]but not writing doesn't lead to anything.
[29:29]And it's just really important to just sort of, sort of pound it out.
[29:35]And then my senior year at Barnard in the creative writing program,
[29:41]the BJ shoot, the novelist who was teaching us,
[29:45]gave us our first assignment for all waiting by Manila envelopes.
[29:51]We were not expecting that.
[29:53]And by Manila envelopes was so we could send things out.
[29:57]And we weren't expecting that either.
[29:59]I think.
[30:00]All of us thought, oh, we're writers. We're writing none of us thought you put it in the envelope
[30:04]and you send it to a magazine and they send it back to you with a form letter that says
[30:11]you're a terrible writer. I mean, it never says that, but that's what you think it says.
[30:16]So you got to get used to the idea that you're going to try to go out there either on the internet
[30:23]through a zine, through a publishing house, and find readers. And you've got to get used to
[30:29]the idea that person, after person, after person is going to turn you down. I mean, you know,
[30:36]the first Harry Potter book was turned down by how many Jane Austen's father sent out the manuscript
[30:42]of Pride and Prejudice, which he was going to pay to have printed, okay, to a London publisher,
[30:49]returned by post. I think it's that are returned by returned on receipt by poster site. It was
[30:54]just like, it was like they hadn't even opened the envelope, you know, and there's a book that
[31:01]hasn't been out of print for 200 years. So, you know, there are people who will say to you,
[31:07]don't want it, don't like it. It's only one person's opinion, again, pushing the rack up hell.
[31:14]I'm in full circle. I love it. Oh my gosh. Well, and thank you so much. Congratulations.
[31:23]And I had one thing, Zibi. Of course. Okay. So six or seven years ago, 10 years ago,
[31:31]the conventional wisdom was a book publishing was on the skits. And at the same time,
[31:38]the conventional wisdom was that independent bookstores were all going under,
[31:43]and being a bookseller was impossible. And in between that time and today, you started a publishing
[31:51]house and you opened a bookstore. And guess what? The conventional wisdom was wrong. And I think that
[32:00]when you buck conventional wisdom and win, you should walk around every day thinking,
[32:08]uh huh. So that's what my last word to you today, Zibi, is you should walk around today going
[32:18]on behalf of all of us who write. Okay, I'll do that.
[32:26]I can't. Yeah. And I'll just keep going into the wrong trending businesses. This is
[32:30]I guess. Yeah. Maybe I'll take on, you know, the typewriter market next. Okay. Thank you so much.
[32:39]Okay. I'll see you soon. I'll see you soon. Okay. Okay. All right. Bye.
[32:46]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books. If you love it, please leave a review
[32:50]and follow us on social at Zibi Owens and at Zibi readers.