Kerry Clare, Definitely Thriving, and Camille Pagán, Dog Person
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
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[0:45]Today is a two-in-one episode.
[0:48]Carrie Claire is the author of Definitely Driving, a novel.
[0:52]She is also the author of asking for a friend, waiting for a start-of-all and mitzi bites.
[0:57]She was the editor of the anthology, The M Word, Conversations About Motherhood, and hosts
[1:02]the book's Poe podcast.
[1:04]She lives in Toronto with her family.
[1:06]I was honored to interview Carrie for Totally Booked Life.
[1:10]Welcome to Totally Booked Life.
[1:12]I'm here today with Carrie Claire, the author of Definitely Driving, Congratulations.
[1:17]Thank you.
[1:18]Welcome.
[1:19]I love you.
[1:20]I love you.
[1:21]Thank you.
[1:22]Why don't you tell everybody what your book is about.
[1:24]My book is about a woman who blows up her life by getting into an entanglement with
[1:30]her next-door neighbors and all that happens before the book begins and that's the end
[1:38]of her lackluster marriage.
[1:40]It was the only way out and she resolves after that to build a new life from scratch and
[1:46]to become a woman of substance.
[1:48]And so she's only going to do serious things and make good choices, but she's a human
[1:52]being.
[1:53]So things don't quite go that way.
[1:55]She has inevitable complications.
[1:58]She decides the romantic part of her life is over, but then finds herself embroiled in
[2:03]attractions to two very different curious men.
[2:06]The book is about a woman who is determined to make her own choices and follow her own
[2:11]path instead of doing what she's supposed to be doing, you know, the marriage and the
[2:16]motherhood.
[2:17]And she decides she's going to listen to her heart for the first time and comedy ensues.
[2:21]It does.
[2:22]The writing of the book is so clever.
[2:24]I mean, it's funny, like, even ordinary moments become hilarious in your wit that
[2:30]like kind of understated almost like a British wit.
[2:33]What I love about the book is it's such a strong sense of place.
[2:36]So when the book opens, we have her moving into her own apartment after years of her
[2:42]married life.
[2:43]And here it is.
[2:44]And it's on top of this sort of dilapidated building, but it is hers.
[2:48]And she is free from her marriage and she does not care.
[2:51]She wants.
[2:52]She loves it.
[2:53]She's relishing it even though her family and her friends are like, it's kind of smelly
[2:56]and she's like, it's fine, you know, it's totally fine.
[2:59]And we watch as she then grows and she literally we watch her wander out like a newborn
[3:05]as she starts introducing herself to the local shopkeepers, which ends up completely changing
[3:10]her life.
[3:11]Talk a little bit about that and I noticed that you dedicated it to your neighbors, which
[3:14]is so sweet.
[3:16]Well, it is sweet, but sometimes I wonder if they might take it the wrong way because
[3:20]not everyone she encounters, you know, is true.
[3:23]She has all these cozy ideas of who other people are.
[3:26]And then when she goes into the neighborhood and meets them, she discovers that everyone
[3:30]has, everyone's the main character in their own story and she has to sort of grapple
[3:33]with that.
[3:34]And I think that is a challenge that a lot of us have to understand that the ideas we have
[3:39]about who other people are and how they should behave.
[3:41]They don't always comply with it and that can be frustrating.
[3:44]And so learning to accept other people and our neighbors as who they are rather than
[3:50]sort of fighting against it, that's something that I've had to work through in my experience.
[3:54]Just understanding I can't control everything and that people are who they are going to
[3:58]be and sort of finding the beauty in that is maybe the key to having a bit of mental
[4:02]health and finding some harmony.
[4:06]So yeah, she connects with some eccentric people and they end up being really important
[4:10]to her.
[4:12]Well, as she goes from store to store, she stumbles upon a very dusty, disorganized
[4:18]bookstore, which becomes a central place in the story.
[4:23]In fact, I feel like this would make such a good play because you could just have like
[4:26]a couple different sets like her room, the bookstore, maybe the place where they have that,
[4:31]you know, the flag sale, what do you call it, the Mayfair, the jumble sale?
[4:35]The jumble sale, sorry.
[4:36]Yeah.
[4:37]That was a British visit.
[4:38]My editor was like, wouldn't we call that a rummage sale or something?
[4:41]But for the Barbara Pim reasons, I insisted on the Britishism.
[4:44]Okay, jumble sale.
[4:46]So as she remakes her own life, she is also metaphorically and quite literally cleaning up
[4:53]the bookstore, organizing it.
[4:55]She's dismayed when women fiction authors have their own shelf and are not in the literature
[5:01]section with the other books.
[5:03]Talk about using books in the bookstore as this place where there is passion and growth
[5:09]and plot developments and then the books themselves.
[5:12]Well, you would know bookstores are everything, right?
[5:16]The whole world happens in these spaces and yeah, the one she encounters it needs some help.
[5:22]It doesn't really have many customers.
[5:24]It's not a very hospitable place.
[5:26]And yeah, the women are relegated to like a second shelf and she resolves to do something
[5:31]about that and it gives her a little bit of agency.
[5:35]She gets to reorganize the world a little bit.
[5:38]It gives not the dream to be able to organize the world and so she gets to do that in
[5:43]that dusty little corner and she finds love there and she finds friendship and she gets
[5:49]to set things right a little bit and put the women on the shelf where they belong.
[5:57]And you have a whole other life in book writing about books and your own shelves so to
[6:05]speak.
[6:06]There's a joke in here about somebody who color codes their bookshelves which I do so I'm
[6:10]trying not to take it personally, not all my shelves but definitely there's one main
[6:14]wall I have.
[6:15]I think if you're reading them it's fine.
[6:17]It's the people who have them just for the aesthetic I don't know why I have trouble with
[6:21]that.
[6:22]I mean I had read them.
[6:23]I didn't read them anymore.
[6:24]I mean they just anyway.
[6:25]Exactly.
[6:26]But they're there to be read.
[6:27]And they're beautiful.
[6:28]You get both.
[6:29]Yeah.
[6:30]Okay.
[6:31]Thank you.
[6:32]It's fine.
[6:33]We're friends now.
[6:35]Yeah.
[6:36]Okay.
[6:37]Take us to your own life and all the writing you do about books and how you got interested
[6:41]in books.
[6:42]What is your life story?
[6:43]Well like many bookish people I think I came into the world interested in books and engaging
[6:48]with stories and going to the library and you know showing a little bit of talent for
[6:53]creative writing like when I was like seven and I was like that feels pretty nice.
[6:57]And so you know I just I just kept going with that and books are my very favorite thing.
[7:03]It's a great way to engage with other people to connect with other people like talking
[7:08]about what people are reading is my favorite conversation to have.
[7:12]It's just either it's a book I love or I learned something new like it's just I those
[7:16]are my favorite conversations.
[7:18]So I think I engage with the world through books and reading and it's an escape but
[7:24]also it's not like they take us deeper into the world and like more so than my Instagram
[7:30]scrolling.
[7:31]Like when I am wondering about things like just I can go into a book and kind of get
[7:36]a little closer to figuring it out.
[7:39]So books are how I engage with everything.
[7:41]And so to have written a bookish book, it's kind of a long time dream of mine because
[7:45]I love bookish books.
[7:46]I love and fadamans essays about reading.
[7:49]I love books about books because I love books.
[7:53]So yeah like a lot of my favorite authors found their way into this book and you know
[7:59]my house is full of dusty bookshelves too.
[8:01]So I didn't have to reach very far for those references.
[8:04]The main characters, the leading men, so to speak, are quite different than what you
[8:10]might expect in a rom-com or a book.
[8:14]They're not necessarily well maybe one more than the other but one of them in particular
[8:18]is just someone who when she finally well I don't want to give anything away but when
[8:23]someone else meets this gentleman they're like wait him, this guy is the one he looks
[8:28]like an undertaker.
[8:30]Talk about making a leading man who is not particularly social, like very introverted allergic
[8:37]to literally everything and under the sun it's hard for him to sort of exist in the world
[8:43]like he is thin-skinned to a fault and also not particularly friendly or attractive.
[8:49]So anyway, talk about making him the leading man.
[8:53]So my main character is called Clemence and this is a moment in her life where she is
[8:57]in firm ownership of making choices that other people don't agree with and doing what
[9:03]feels right for her and she's not committing her life to Toby, this questionable character
[9:08]and she knows the ways in which she's not necessarily good for her but she's just following
[9:13]her heart and doing what feels right.
[9:16]He was sort of inspired by Tibby from Howard's End.
[9:20]When I read Howard's End it had the word dyspeptic in it and that's why I remember learning
[9:24]that word because he always had like a stomach problem and he was just really annoying
[9:29]and pale and whiny and I think he is a little bit of tribute to the questionable men
[9:35]that I found myself having crushes on when I was younger and also maybe not making the
[9:41]best choices but there was just something about like their neediness that I don't know
[9:46]I was like I can take care of you and then I grew up so that was good but you know
[9:51]I just I don't know like they talk about it in the book I talk about him being like
[9:56]like cheats because he kind of looks like he might have to.
[10:00]tuberculosis, and I don't know, maybe there's a time when I was into that.
[10:03]It's very literary, so yeah, you know, when I resolved, I was like, I'm gonna write a normal
[10:09]book.
[10:10]I'm gonna write a straightforward rom-com and then like five pages in, like I just steered
[10:14]right off the road.
[10:15]And so this book is a little off the beaten track, he's a weirdo, but this book also
[10:20]is about embracing weirdos and like understanding that the strangeness of other people
[10:26]like isn't a problem that needs to be sorted out.
[10:29]And he doesn't treat her badly in the end, I think he does redeem himself.
[10:34]He shows up for her, but yeah, just sort of making choices that are a little less straightforward
[10:40]than we're meant to do.
[10:43]That's what she does, and it pays off for her, and you know, I think she gets a good story
[10:47]out of it.
[10:48]Oh, we definitely get good stories, so that's true.
[10:51]You also show us through her two close girlfriends.
[10:54]We get a lot more perspectives on things, and we have a foil with a family that seems absolutely
[11:00]perfect, and then what happens with that storyline as well.
[11:04]How did you use friendship as a tool to drive the story?
[11:07]So I find friendship such an interesting tool as a novelist, because characters' friendships
[11:14]are the greatest way to establish who they are and who they've been and what they love and
[11:19]and what their conflicts are, like it's just a wonderful character development tool.
[11:23]But also, friendships are just the best relationships in general, and so I have so much
[11:29]fun writing about that, and I have two very close friends in my life, and all my characters
[11:34]end up having two very close friends.
[11:36]And in this one, my friends are quite thrilled, because they're like, that's not us,
[11:39]and that was nice.
[11:41]But I think friendships are as interesting to write about as romantic.
[11:45]I think they're more, because they're enduring, and they change, and they grow.
[11:50]So yeah, writing about friendships is, I love doing it, and writing about clemences
[11:57]friends who all, like there's three of them, they've all made very different choices in
[12:01]their lives, but they find their way to connect with each other and to try to understand
[12:06]each other, and then try not to talk to the other friend behind, because there's three
[12:10]of them, right?
[12:11]And I like, when one person's doing questionable things, they try to refrain from gossiping
[12:17]because-
[12:18]And siblings too.
[12:19]I mean, like all these little tiny ecosystems gossip, and you know, concern, and where
[12:25]is the line?
[12:26]Well, it is, it's data.
[12:28]People are so interested.
[12:29]That's how I justify, I think, my passion for gossip.
[12:32]You know, I'm just very interested.
[12:34]I guess.
[12:35]I have a curiosity about that.
[12:37]Right?
[12:38]Yes.
[12:39]Isn't that honorable?
[12:41]It's funny.
[12:43]So when you think about some of the messages of the book, and about starting over, and
[12:47]is it ever too late and all that, is one of the takeaways here that it is never too late
[12:52]to rewrite the story, or is it that, in so doing, you may find that the outcome is just
[12:59]completely different than you had planned.
[13:01]Or both.
[13:02]I think it's both.
[13:03]And this is the first book I've written where the character's life is so different from
[13:07]my own.
[13:08]I have two children.
[13:09]I've been married for 20 years.
[13:11]And I, so what Clemens does is in a prescription for what a woman should do to fix her life.
[13:19]But it is in a way because what she does is she just thinks very deeply about what she's
[13:25]done and what she wants.
[13:27]I think so many women don't know what they want.
[13:30]And so we think about what our children want, and we think about what other people want.
[13:33]is focusing on what we want and what we desire is sometimes it's staring into a void.
[13:41]And that's a really hard thing to grapple with.
[13:44]And so I think I've made more conventional choices in my life than Clemens.
[13:48]But I feel like the same deliberateness is there being thoughtful about it rather than just
[13:53]doing it by road.
[13:55]And so the prescription is don't have a threesome with your next door neighbors and blow
[13:59]up your marriage.
[14:00]It is figure out what your desire is.
[14:05]And prioritize that.
[14:08]I think women also are not meant to prioritize our own wants and needs.
[14:13]Like Clemens is a woman of appetites and I think that's really beautiful and inspiring.
[14:18]And so I think consider what your own appetites are and what you're desiring and follow
[14:24]that.
[14:25]And there's so many advice books in the world about how to lose weight and how to
[14:30]read more and how to write it.
[14:33]I don't think there's one answer ever.
[14:36]I mean, those books are helpful and we can read them, but in the end you have to find
[14:40]your own way.
[14:41]Any advice to aspiring authors?
[14:44]I became an author based on being a blogger.
[14:48]And I learned that you can write a little bit at a time and little pieces add up to
[14:53]something whole.
[14:54]And so I think that's my favorite piece of advice.
[14:57]You don't need like eight hours to sit down and craft your book all day long.
[15:01]Like if you can write 200 words, you know, in a little period of time and then return
[15:05]to it, it will add up to something.
[15:08]So just do that.
[15:10]Amazing.
[15:11]Carrie, thank you so much.
[15:12]Thank you.
[15:13]Thank you.
[15:14]Thank you.
[15:18]Great.
[15:19]Camille, it's the author of Dog Person, a novel.
[15:21]This is Camille's maybe third time on the podcast.
[15:25]I love her writing so much.
[15:27]Camille is the best-selling author of numerous novels about love and life's what-ifs,
[15:32]including dog person, good for you, and life and other near-death experiences.
[15:36]She has written for the New York Times, O The Oprah Magazine, for raid real simple time,
[15:41]and many others.
[15:42]When she's not working on her next story, you'll find Camille talking shop with writers
[15:46]hanging out with her two kids or trying to convince her husband they should adopt yet another
[15:51]animal.
[15:52]She and her family live in Ann Arbor, Michigan and spend as much time in Puerto Rico as possible.
[15:57]I was honored to interview Camille at Totally Booked Live.
[16:01]She was one of the first people I threw an author salon event for in, I think, 2019.
[16:06]So it was coming full circle about seven years later to see her yet again.
[16:11]Welcome to Totally Booked Live.
[16:13]I'm so excited to be here with Camille Pegan, who's talking about her new book, Dog
[16:17]Person.
[16:18]Congratulations.
[16:19]Oh, thank you, Sabie.
[16:24]Dog Person.
[16:25]Tell us what it's about.
[16:26]Oh, it is the story of Harold.
[16:28]He's an aging month based very much on my own aging month.
[16:32]And he was adopted by a romance novelist, gosh, 13 years earlier than when the book begins,
[16:40]and she has passed.
[16:41]And so he is trying to help his now owner, which was the romance novelist's partner,
[16:46]find love again, because that was the last thing that his owner told him to do before
[16:51]she passed.
[16:52]It is very much a weeper, but it's a witty weeper, and writing this book took me through
[16:59]a very difficult time and was just a wonderful experience.
[17:02]I'm very proud of this one.
[17:04]What was your difficult time?
[17:06]Oh, well, coming out of the pandemic.
[17:09]But I lost dear, basically a father, figure to me, who is the person who encouraged me
[17:15]to be a writer.
[17:16]I grew up in a blue collar town.
[17:19]My family said, go be an engineer, do something very practical.
[17:24]And this person in my life said, no, go do what you want to do.
[17:26]So I became a journalist.
[17:28]And when I was 30, I started writing novels, and he died by suicide, and it was really
[17:33]awful.
[17:34]Yeah, really hard, different kind of pain that I had experienced.
[17:38]I had lost people.
[17:39]This was different.
[17:41]And my dog, who's actually female, not a male, I had had her adopted her, gosh, 11 years
[17:48]earlier when this all happened.
[17:50]And she seemed to sense my pain in a way that was, I know dogs get us, but this was different.
[17:56]She would come sit on my feet.
[17:58]She would, if I was working too much, because I tend to lose myself and work as a coping
[18:02]mechanism, she would put her head under my hand where I was using the mouse and lift it
[18:07]up.
[18:08]She really just seemed to understand what I was going through.
[18:12]And I had already been thinking about writing a book about a dog, but this inspired
[18:15]really the story that became a dog person.
[18:18]And it turns out I did a deep dive in research.
[18:22]Dogs know a lot.
[18:23]In addition to words, they smell our emotions.
[18:26]They really understand humans in an interesting way.
[18:29]And so they became a book.
[18:31]Yeah.
[18:32]I'm so sorry for, thank you, your last complicated company degree, yeah.
[18:38]What do you mean smell our emotions?
[18:40]Tell me the research.
[18:41]I need to know what my dog is.
[18:42]So, you know, not a vet, I read a lot of research.
[18:47]My background is in health and psychology, and I just go down to research rabbit hole.
[18:51]But the way that we sense other people's pharaohs, you know, looking from mates, they
[18:55]can smell anxiety, who stress, grief, joy.
[19:00]They can actually smell the way that we are feeling.
[19:03]And of course, they also pick up on other cues.
[19:06]But I just thought that was fascinating because I'm thinking, how are you understanding
[19:09]what I'm going through?
[19:11]And in a way that their sensory experience is very different from ours.
[19:15]So that was a lot of the editing I did, was going through and thinking, well, this dog
[19:20]is narrating a story.
[19:21]He can't tell it like a human.
[19:23]I had to go back and put in a dog's way of looking at the world to the best of my ability,
[19:28]obviously.
[19:29]Wow.
[19:30]Yeah.
[19:31]Well, the way the dog internalizes the grief and the way you have him sort of notice,
[19:37]like, oh, you know, it hasn't been since my person did this and this, like, that he
[19:44]would smile or just like the way that he told the events of the world made us realize,
[19:51]like, oh, well, that's because this hasn't been shaped or, you know, whatever, all the
[19:55]little details.
[19:56]I'm not saying that very clearly.
[19:57]No, I'm following.
[19:58]It's a different way to.
[20:00]show, don't tell, in writing when you have a totally different perspective.
[20:03]Yeah. Oh, I love that. I wasn't really conscious of that, but yes, the dog is observing
[20:08]everything and seeing Miguel, who is his now owner, owns a bookstore. So this book is really all
[20:15]of the things I love. I think a lot of people I work with writers is like the second half of my day,
[20:20]and I just noticed I wasn't the only one going through a hard time. I think the last couple
[20:25]years have been tough on a lot of people for many reasons. And I kept losing myself in books,
[20:31]which you do all the time, but I just really was reading a lot of romance, a lot of uplifting
[20:38]self-help, and going to a lot of bookstores. And so in addition to my dog, there's these couple
[20:44]things that were really getting me through, and then I was like, I'll just put them all in a book.
[20:48]It was like all of my favorite things. Yeah, so I want my readers to get that too. Well, one of the
[20:54]things that happens is in this bookstore, there's a big deal author who's going to come speak,
[21:00]and Miguel gets the whole, you know, sells out the tickets, and there they are waiting,
[21:05]and big deal author never shows up. Right. And so Miguel decides he has to figure out
[21:11]what happens, and he's not content because he needs the money from the tickets to save the store,
[21:16]which was, you know, his beloved's dream. So he can't afford to let this happen, and he wants to go
[21:24]track her down, and we end up in this like adventure situation in downtown Chicago, I think.
[21:30]Right. Is that where it was? Yes. Where he's trying to follow clues and figure out who the author is,
[21:36]and so it's also like a mystery. Yes, we have the heaviness of the grief, and the
[21:42]creativeness of having a dog narrate, but it's also figuring out like what happened? What
[21:50]does it mean to be a talent? What does it mean to be an author? What do we have to do? What do we
[21:55]have to show up for? Yeah. Discuss. So the book is set in 2003, and I've worked in publishing my whole
[22:02]career, and during that particular era, there was kind of the male wonder kind literary genius
[22:09]moment going on, and which we still see today, but it was very much a thing then, and that was
[22:14]when I think a lot of authors had to reckon with the fact that you are a public person in the
[22:18]age of the internet. I remember a land before email, so it's very very different, and I just
[22:26]began thinking about who has the right to tell a story, who really has the right to be visible.
[22:32]I don't want to give way too much, but this book is about a male dog following a man around,
[22:40]a man around, but it is about female voices and literature. Very much. What do you make of
[22:46]freedom of fact and recent reveal that I only sent that article to a million people?
[22:55]Oh, I mean, good on her. I hope she didn't feel pressured to reveal that. I thought that was
[23:00]really interesting. Yeah. A lot of my writers who use pen names are the happiest I've noticed,
[23:06]because there's a layer between, fiction authors in particular, there's a layer between themselves
[23:11]the world. I did not use the pen name, and sometimes I think about that. Like, wouldn't that
[23:17]be nice to just have a remove? But then you couldn't post till the time. Could you? A lot
[23:22]of them, they become their public persona, at least within social media, which I think is fascinating.
[23:29]I'm referring, you all know freedom, McFadden, and the author. She was wearing a wig,
[23:34]and of the different name. I don't know. Anyway. All right. We have a long way to wear nails.
[23:38]On the discussion of authors and hiding, so to speak. Anyway, just come up.
[23:45]Okay. So when you were tracking down the author and flooding, you know, who are the co-conspirators,
[23:52]and who's going to come on the stride? And how is Miguel going to change throughout the course of
[23:56]the story? What was his path for you? Like, where did you want him to start an end?
[24:02]My agent kept telling me make him more likable, which I think is fascinating, because if there are
[24:06]any female novels in the crowd, that's something that we're often told about female characters.
[24:12]And I write away from that. In general, you'll find in all my books, I write very real people.
[24:17]Readers will often say, like, I wanted to shake her, and I'm like, I'm against violence,
[24:21]but I'm glad you felt something. And so the process of Miguel was very raw. It very much mirrored
[24:28]my own grief, but also just, you know, again, I have this privilege of working with a lot
[24:33]of novelists and hearing their stories. And as a journalist, I talk to a lot of people. And so just
[24:39]seeing what grief manifests as, we often think it's supposed to look a certain way, and it rarely
[24:44]does. So putting in his confusion how everyone around him could see the most obvious thing to do,
[24:51]and he couldn't see beyond his own nose, which I think is really common. He also had a complicated
[24:58]relationship with his in-laws, right? Correct. His late in-laws always makes, makes things a little
[25:03]harder, but very close with his sister. So that was good. Yes. It's interesting to see how family
[25:08]comes into play during times of stress. How did your family help you through that time?
[25:13]So interestingly, I relied more on my found family, which I think you'll find in this book, too,
[25:18]than my immediate family. I'm very close to my two sisters, so they showed up a lot for me,
[25:24]but it was my book community, my community, and Ann Arbor, where I live now. People just showed
[25:30]up for me in ways that I didn't know that I needed. I hit bringing meals over, and I'm not like a
[25:36]little, bring me food person, and they just be like, I brought you something. And it just acts of
[25:40]kindness. Something that Harold, the dog, observes, too, is the gift of listening to someone.
[25:46]And I just noticed people were listening to me. I'm usually the listener, and that was really
[25:53]moving to experience. Well, after reading your book, I now feel even more guilty anytime I don't
[26:00]bring my dog with me anywhere. I do. After writing it, do you feel like you were in a moderately
[26:06]better place with... Oh, by far. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a lot. I'm a big believer in
[26:11]therapy. I think if you're struggling, go see someone who is trained in that. But I very much
[26:18]wrote that book for me. All of my other books I've thought about one person that I don't
[26:22]know, a faceless person. And I think, because my books are really about making the most of life
[26:27]even though they're fiction. And I always think someone's going to need to read this. And this one,
[26:32]when I was through, I think the second or third draft, I thought, oh, this one is for me.
[26:37]It was a very healing. Yeah. How many novels have you written now? 11. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
[26:43]I love it. It's a compulsion. A compulsion. I can't stop it. Yeah. What are you working on now?
[26:49]My next one is called About Less Summer and it's out next April. So what advice would you have
[26:54]for aspiring authors? Wait for the voice that you can't ignore. Every one of my books that I've
[27:00]written has been some little nagging character speaking to me. And I do believe voices the piece
[27:07]you can't teach. I think you can learn plot. I have to relearn how to write the middle of a novel.
[27:12]Every book I write so hard. You can learn structure. You can unlearn the passive voice. I had to
[27:19]do that too. It turns out I don't ever use that as a journalist, but in my fiction, it's just
[27:23]littered with passive voice. But voice comes from your worldview. And there's no one who can teach you
[27:29]that. And so I think if we're willing to listen, this book, I think is a bit of my own
[27:35]unlearning, having been raised in a certain era where male voices were elevated. How many do
[27:41]you have? So I have everything like 20 novels at this point. At least five in a drawer that
[27:46]will never see the light of day, unfixable. But how do you then move past those and not feel
[27:52]dejected and discouraged? I didn't go to a MFA program and I went to a school where I took maybe two
[27:59]creative writing classes. It was all just studying literature and kind of that path. And I really
[28:05]do think of those drafts as my one woman MFA program. Yeah, that no work is wasted, which is so
[28:11]painful when you are, we've all been there, sitting there working on something, thinking this is it
[28:16]and you get to the end, you're like, this is not it. But that's just part of the job. And yet it's
[28:22]a job that only the bravehearted can really stick to, you know, truly. It is like running around a
[28:28]neighborhood in your underwear and asking everyone to tell you what they think of your body. It's
[28:34]terrible. Oh my gosh. Camille, thank you so much for coming out. Thank you. Thank you for listening
[28:42]to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books. If you loved the show,
[28:47]tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and spread the word.
[28:54]Thanks so much. Go and buy the books.