EXPLICIT LANGUAGE: Jo Piazza, Author of CHARLOTTE WALSH LIKES TO WIN
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, and this is Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:33]Hi, listeners.
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[1:13]I'm really excited to be here today with Joe Piazza.
[1:16]Joe is an award-winning journalist, editor, travel writer, author, and podcaster.
[1:20]She has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Magazine,
[1:24]Elle, Glamour, Marie Claire, and many others.
[1:27]She has appeared on CNN, NPR, Fox, the BBC, and MSNBC.
[1:31]She's written seven books, both nonfiction and fiction, including her most recent Charlotte
[1:36]Walsh likes to win, and how to be married.
[1:38]She also recently launched a podcast with The How Stuff Works Network, which is now I Heart
[1:42]Media, entitled, Committed, in which she explores the factors that affect marriages.
[1:47]The graduate of University of Pennsylvania with a Master's in Journalism from Columbia,
[1:51]and a Master's in Religious Studies from NYU, Joe currently lives in San Francisco, but
[1:55]is moving for a little bit, and with her husband's an enlarged dog.
[1:59]So welcome to Joe.
[2:00]Hey, thanks for having me.
[2:01]Thanks for doing this.
[2:02]Your latest book, Charlotte Walsh likes to win, is timed just perfectly.
[2:07]Did you have the idea for this book in mind for a while, basically what happens to a woman
[2:11]running for the Senate, or did sort of the cultural zeitgeist push you in the direction
[2:15]of exploring the rise of the female candidates?
[2:17]How did you come up with this idea?
[2:19]You know, during the last presidential election cycle, I really started thinking that
[2:24]I wanted to do a book about a female candidate.
[2:26]And not just because of the female candidate, but because of all female candidates that
[2:31]were running and how the media treated them.
[2:34]So the original plan was for it to be kind of a satire, and then election day happened,
[2:38]and the entire world changed, and the world became a satire, and I couldn't really write
[2:43]that book anymore.
[2:44]I knew that it had to be a stronger character, driven narrative, so that we could really
[2:50]see women who lead and women who should be elected to office in fiction, because they
[2:55]just don't exist.
[2:56]We don't see them in fiction, we don't see them on TV shows, we don't see them in movies,
[3:01]female characters that are politicians tend to be one kind of person.
[3:05]They're kind of a shrew, a bitch, or they're an idiot, like a thief, and I wanted to show
[3:10]a real, ambitious, likable woman politician.
[3:15]And so that's to the book changed.
[3:16]It's a long answer to the fact that I had the idea, and then everything kind of went
[3:22]to shit, and the whole book became something different.
[3:25]I feel like most books tend to take a, you know, a meandering path like that, I don't
[3:30]know.
[3:31]There's always some story behind it.
[3:32]Oh yeah, no.
[3:33]I mean, I've never, ever finished with the book that I started out with.
[3:40]Outlines, you know, be damned, I guess.
[3:42]I've gotten better at outlining.
[3:44]I used to not outline at all.
[3:45]In the very beginning, when I first started writing, I would just sit down and just go,
[3:49]and now I'm like a pretty meticulous outsider.
[3:52]Well, it seems to be, whatever you're doing, it seems to be working.
[3:55]It's working.
[3:56]Yeah.
[3:57]People read in the book, so that's all we can hope for.
[4:00]Did you do a lot of research for this book?
[4:03]Did you talk to women, senators, or women running for office, or did you just sort of
[4:07]wing it?
[4:08]I did so much research for this book.
[4:10]I mean, I'm a journalist, my trade.
[4:12]So I approach all of my fiction the same way I approach my journalism.
[4:15]I actually interviewed more than 100 women who had run for office, were running for
[4:19]office, or who had run campaign.
[4:21]Wow.
[4:22]The book was super research intensive.
[4:25]But I think that that made it a lot better, because there's no way to wing politics.
[4:30]And one of my goals with the book, we first to show a woman candidate.
[4:35]But second was to make people walk away feeling a little bit smarter about the political
[4:38]process.
[4:39]I think that we're exhausted by the news cycle.
[4:42]And a lot of people, myself included, with the news cycle, we're just like, you know,
[4:45]I just want to check out, I'm just so sick of all of this.
[4:48]And I wanted the book to give people a reason to check back in.
[4:51]So it was really important for it to be accurate in terms of politics.
[4:55]And did you time it, intentionally knowing that the midterm elections were coming?
[4:58]Or is that just happen since?
[5:00]I did.
[5:01]I did.
[5:02]Yeah.
[5:03]I mean, I'm an evil genius.
[5:04]Is that right?
[5:05]I was just like, you know what, we are going to come out right ahead of the midterm election.
[5:11]And if all goes to my evil genius plan, our TV show version of Charlotte will come out
[5:16]for the in time for the presidential.
[5:17]Oh, I didn't know there was a TV version.
[5:20]That's exciting.
[5:21]There is going to be a TV version.
[5:22]We actually haven't announced it yet.
[5:24]And we will be announcing it, hopefully, in the next couple of months.
[5:27]But all of the TV cops are in the work.
[5:30]That is really exciting.
[5:31]Did you get a say of who plays Charlotte?
[5:33]I did.
[5:34]And I got my first choice.
[5:36]Awesome.
[5:37]She actually chose us, which was amazing.
[5:40]It all happened very organically.
[5:42]And hopefully, I can tell you more about that in the next month or so.
[5:45]Perfect.
[5:46]Even more intrigued.
[5:48]But having just having just the process was so interesting, because I had a ton of
[5:53]meetings in Hollywood mostly with men who would throw out names for Charlotte of women
[5:58]who were 30.
[6:00]And I'm like, Charlotte is a 47-year-old mother of three.
[6:03]And they're like, yeah, but this woman could play old.
[6:06]And I'm like, we're not going to work together.
[6:09]I've heard you have to be kind of stick to your guns and what you really want.
[6:12]It's easy to get pushed around.
[6:14]You really, you really do.
[6:16]I mean, I got it.
[6:17]Everyone in Hollywood looks the same age.
[6:19]But still, it was very important to me that the character of Charlotte was to be played
[6:22]by a woman who was actually Charlotte washes age.
[6:25]Well, now I'm going to start brainstorming who you picked, and I'm going to see if I'm
[6:28]right.
[6:29]You'll know.
[6:30]I'll listen to that.
[6:31]One part of the book that I found super interesting is Charlotte's relationship with
[6:37]her husband.
[6:38]I know you've also written a whole book on marriage, which was also fantastic.
[6:41]And I'll talk about that in a sec.
[6:43]How did you decide to illustrate this particular strain of tension between them?
[6:47]Like, despite how far women have come in so many ways, there always seems to be an issue
[6:51]when the woman is the breadwinner or the more powerful in the relationship.
[6:55]I felt like when Charlotte had her husband turned down that board invitation in Silicon Valley
[7:00]so that he could stick around in Pennsylvania more was like, and he was not really happy
[7:04]with that was such a, it's such a great scene.
[7:06]Another great scene when that magazine article came out about her and there was a photo
[7:10]of Charlotte looking all powerful with bright red lipstick, her kids at her feet, and then
[7:15]her husband's in the back cooking.
[7:17]And he is not at all happy about that.
[7:19]And it's like, what the fuck she makes me sound like a gigantic pussy and it starts like
[7:23]taking on an internet troll.
[7:25]How did you come up with this particular dynamic?
[7:27]Is that also research based from friends?
[7:30]Like, tell me all about that.
[7:31]Well, you know, I'm just seeing it more and more often.
[7:33]I'm just seeing more women who are either the breadwinner or they're in a position that's
[7:38]much more powerful than their husband and with a lot of them, you know, they're married
[7:42]to good men.
[7:43]They're married to men who would call themselves a feminist and yet it's still great for
[7:47]them.
[7:48]I had someone that I kind of flip flop back and forth between, you know, who has the big
[7:51]job and who does more of the stuff around the house and who takes care of the kid.
[7:55]And it's been hard for us too and my husband is like the most feminist guy you've ever
[7:59]met.
[8:00]He read like all the two people in books when he was a kid, he cried at blubber and still
[8:05]it's hard for him.
[8:06]And I wanted to show that dynamic and especially with a woman running for office, it's funny
[8:11]because the publisher originally one of the titles they wanted to call this was the candidates
[8:14]husband.
[8:15]And I was like, oh, no, no, it's not about him.
[8:20]But on the campaign trail, it always becomes about him.
[8:23]Much more so than when a man is running, no one really cares about his wife all that
[8:28]much.
[8:29]But when a woman's running, everyone wants to know what her husband thinks of her platform
[8:32]who's watching her children, you know, how does that happen to feel about her running
[8:36]for office?
[8:37]And so it was really important for me to show maxes side of the sick.
[8:41]A lot of marriages also don't survive the campaign trail.
[8:44]And I interviewed a lot of the husband of women who were running for women who had run
[8:48]in the past.
[8:49]And they said it was the hardest thing their marriage ever went through, harder than buying
[8:53]a house or having kids, which is usually the hardest thing in the marriage.
[8:56]What do you think about politics in particular?
[8:59]Is it just how exposed everybody is or just the kind of exposed everybody is?
[9:03]Yeah.
[9:04]I mean, it's just it's a fact that you just get your guts ripped out on a daily basis.
[9:08]And your whole family gets exposed to scrutiny.
[9:11]You have no privacy anymore.
[9:13]You become a very public person.
[9:15]And also the rigors of the campaign trail and you're spending 90% of your time fundraising
[9:21]on the campaign trail, which is a soul killing occupation.
[9:26]And I think that that just it wears a marriage down and a lot of marriages just don't
[9:30]survive it.
[9:31]Well, you certainly learned a lot in your book research for how to be married and going
[9:34]all over the world, learning from different women.
[9:37]I love your approach like, hey, I'm getting married.
[9:40]Let me get all the data I can from everyone, you know, it's like from everyone, everyone
[9:45]everywhere.
[9:46]Everywhere.
[9:47]Everywhere.
[9:48]Everywhere.
[9:49]Everywhere.
[9:50]Everywhere.
[9:51]Everywhere.
[9:52]Everywhere.
[9:53]Everywhere.
[9:54]Everywhere.
[9:55]Everywhere.
[9:56]The other day, now that we're three years in with a 16 month old.
[10:00]And I'm like, wow, those people sound so cool.
[10:04]Those people who were just traveling around the world
[10:06]without any responsibilities and kids.
[10:08]And but it also kind of holds up.
[10:10]Like the advice is helpful to me.
[10:12]And I'm the one who lived the advice three years ago.
[10:15]It was helpful to me, too.
[10:17]So he's good to like go through a little refresher course.
[10:19]You know, you get married and people
[10:21]give you some random advice here and there, like, I don't know.
[10:24]So he's so trite and this is such actionable advice.
[10:26]Like you even at the beginning, you write, you know,
[10:29]some of the things you picked up on, like, talk about things
[10:31]that make you feel uncomfortable and itchy and happy and sad
[10:33]and strange and walk around naked.
[10:35]But don't lie around in your sweatpants.
[10:37]And then you said, the key to it all is that a good marriage
[10:40]isn't about shit always going right.
[10:41]It's about the times when shit goes wrong very wrong,
[10:44]which I thought was really interesting and illuminating
[10:47]in some ways.
[10:48]I mean, you had a number of things go wrong, quote unquote,
[10:50]during your first year.
[10:52]Do you think you learn more from the people
[10:53]you talked to about it or from what you went through or both?
[10:56]I think both.
[10:57]I do think both.
[10:58]I mean, I think that our marriage comes out stronger
[11:01]every time the shit does go wrong.
[11:03]And sometimes it's just the worst.
[11:06]I mean, the newborn phase for me was the worst.
[11:08]And for Nick, it was hard for Nick to adjust to being a dad.
[11:12]And it was hard for me to adjust to being a mom
[11:14]and the lack of sleep made me a monster.
[11:17]And now coming out the other side of it, I'm like, oh, wow,
[11:19]I like you so much more now that we went through that.
[11:21]Like I know you so much better.
[11:23]But the advice was also good.
[11:24]And I love what you said, you know,
[11:26]because so much advice that you get about marriage
[11:27]is trite and lame.
[11:29]And people were really open and honest with me, which was nice.
[11:33]People also like to talk about their marriages,
[11:35]which is really interesting.
[11:36]Like you get someone going on marriage.
[11:38]And I've learned that from doing the podcast committed.
[11:41]And they'll talk to you for hours now.
[11:42]Or like you're never going home.
[11:44]You won't get away from that.
[11:46]Tell me about your podcast.
[11:47]It's amazing.
[11:48]I've listened to it.
[11:49]I like to listen to it as I'm like falling asleep.
[11:51]And I'm like totally in these relationships.
[11:53]It's amazing.
[11:53]How did you get into that?
[11:54]Was it your idea to sort of parlay the book
[11:56]into a podcast or how did it all come about?
[11:59]And how do you like it?
[12:00]I love it.
[12:01]Doing the podcast is the most fun
[12:02]that I've had in journalism in like 10 years.
[12:05]And how stuff works actually approached me.
[12:08]They were like, hey, we love your book.
[12:10]Would you want to do a podcast?
[12:11]And I was like, I think so.
[12:13]I had no idea how to do a podcast.
[12:15]I love podcasts.
[12:16]Podcasts in the first season of the West Wing
[12:18]got me through breastfeeding and pumping
[12:21]the first three months that I had my thoughts.
[12:23]But I also knew that if I was going to do a podcast,
[12:25]I wanted it to be a really good podcast.
[12:27]Because there's a lot of really shitty podcasts up there.
[12:29]Not like this.
[12:31]No, not, not, not like this one.
[12:34]It was in companies.
[12:34]OK, good.
[12:35]All right, good.
[12:36]Exactly.
[12:37]Both of the people having this conversation
[12:39]have excellent podcast.
[12:40]There we go.
[12:41]But I knew that I wanted to be really good
[12:43]and how stuff works agreed.
[12:45]And so they carried me up with this wonderful producer
[12:48]because I had no idea what I was doing.
[12:50]And they built me a podcast video in my storage unit
[12:52]in my basement, like literally where we store our skis.
[12:55]And taught me how to make a podcast.
[12:57]And it's been awesome.
[12:59]Like we have told some incredible stories.
[13:02]This week's episode was a guy who was
[13:04]about to propose to his girlfriend
[13:06]and then gotten a basketball accident
[13:08]and was paralyzed from the shoulders down.
[13:11]And we've gotten the most response
[13:13]from any episode from this week's episode.
[13:15]People are just hungry for real stories about real marriages.
[13:19]So it's nice.
[13:21]It's great.
[13:21]I really love the podcasting.
[13:23]I think sometimes people are more willing
[13:25]to open up about marriage to people they don't know as well.
[13:28]I don't know.
[13:29]I feel like with your friends and your circle,
[13:30]sometimes it's harder.
[13:31]Do you find that?
[13:32]I mean, I think if somebody came and asked me random questions,
[13:35]I'd be more inclined to talk about it
[13:37]than with another mom at my kid's school or something.
[13:40]Totally.
[13:40]Well, it's interesting, because not for me.
[13:42]Like I'm so used to talking about my marriage.
[13:44]Sometimes maybe I talk about it too much.
[13:46]But I was at dinner with a bunch of other moms the other night.
[13:50]I started talking about something about Nick.
[13:51]Like that he does the annoys me.
[13:53]Oh, the fact that he's like the trash, please.
[13:55]They're like, if I throw anything out,
[13:57]that he thinks is usable.
[13:58]He'll take it out of the trash.
[13:59]So I only throw things away when he's out of town.
[14:02]And I throw out these slippers.
[14:03]And he's like, what's all these slippers?
[14:04]And I'm like, their dead slippers.
[14:06]They're broken dead slippers.
[14:08]And he's like, I can fix these.
[14:09]And I was like, oh my god.
[14:10]And the other moms were kind of taken aback.
[14:12]But I was like slamming my husband to them.
[14:14]And so I guess I realized, I thought about it.
[14:15]I'm like, wow, they've never opened up to me
[14:18]about anything in their marriages.
[14:20]So yeah, I agree.
[14:21]I think that it's easier to talk to a stranger
[14:23]about your marriage than the people in your circle
[14:26]because you also kind of want the people in your circle
[14:28]to think everything is great all the time for damage.
[14:31]I just happen to be a person who points out
[14:33]all of the things that are wrong with my marriage
[14:35]all the time and the great thing
[14:37]because I think it's important to talk about the whole.
[14:39]And I love your story how you felt like you,
[14:41]what was the word you used that you like conjured up your husband
[14:44]that you like wished for him in so many ways.
[14:46]And then you just happened to meet him on some random beach
[14:49]and the rubers and they probably got that wrong.
[14:50]But I was like, no, I can't, I conjured him.
[14:53]I'm a witch.
[14:55]I met him actually on a boat in the Galapagos Island
[14:57]which sounds totally fake.
[14:59]Like sometimes I lie if I don't feel like telling the story
[15:01]and I'm like, oh, which is not up to there.
[15:03]But we were both journalists.
[15:04]Calvin is Galapagos.
[15:05]I was working for Yahoo.
[15:06]Nick was working for his own website
[15:08]and fell for each other on this boat.
[15:11]And then we got engaged three months later.
[15:13]It's like a crazy romantic comedy.
[15:15]And maybe it will be.
[15:16]I don't know.
[15:17]Is that in the works?
[15:19]I'm actually talking to people about both a scripted
[15:22]and unscripted version of how to be married.
[15:25]But that's a little bit, you know, I never trust
[15:28]or believe that anything is going to happen in Hollywood.
[15:30]I feel like Charlotte Walsh is a little bit further along.
[15:32]But we'll see if how to be married does indeed
[15:35]become a romantic comedy.
[15:37]I miss the older romantic comedies.
[15:38]And I'm so excited that they're starting to come back.
[15:40]I actually emailed my agent a couple of days ago.
[15:43]I wrote this really bad first novel.
[15:46]And I call it my practice novel
[15:47]from trying to see if I could write fiction called
[15:50]Love Rehab.
[15:51]And it's really bad in like an awesome way.
[15:53]It's pure chicklet.
[15:55]It's like kind of trashy, but also kind of feministy edgy.
[15:58]And now that the romcom is back, I emailed my agent.
[16:01]I was like, yeah, we should totally turn this into a movie.
[16:03]And she's like, all right, I guess we'll try.
[16:07]That's awesome.
[16:07]You said in an article for Forbes
[16:10]that you think podcast clubs might replace book clubs all
[16:13]over America and that you've started to see that happening.
[16:15]Tell me more about that.
[16:16]Yeah, you know, I see the numbers for how many books we sell.
[16:21]And I'm in a good position.
[16:22]Thankfully, people are buying my books and reading my books,
[16:24]but they're such a small faction compared to the downloads
[16:29]we get with the podcast.
[16:30]I mean, we were at a million downloads, I think,
[16:33]like three months in for a commitment.
[16:35]And so I just seeing that's where the audience is right now
[16:39]for storytelling.
[16:41]And I think that podcasts are a lot easier to digest.
[16:44]You can do them while you're doing other things.
[16:47]And I am seeing a lot of podcast clubs replaced book clubs.
[16:50]It's kind of the same muscle too, you know,
[16:53]in terms of absorbing a story.
[16:55]I don't think that book clubs are going anywhere.
[16:57]I don't think books, hopefully books aren't going anywhere
[16:59]because I have no other skills.
[17:01]But I am seeing an uptick in the podcast club.
[17:04]And I kind of love it because, you know,
[17:06]an episode of a podcast, they make you think the same way
[17:09]that books do.
[17:09]And they're a little bit more accessible,
[17:11]especially for busy moms, then sitting down
[17:14]and reading an entire book.
[17:15]So I'm all for it.
[17:16]Especially if people want to listen to committed
[17:17]and go talk about it.
[17:19]You, I'm sorry to jump around a little bit,
[17:20]but you wrote an essay for L called,
[17:22]I took a solo vacation from my new baby
[17:25]and it felt absolutely fucking wonderful,
[17:27]which I left out, just even reading that.
[17:30]So you left your three-month-old son for two nights
[17:32]under the pretense of finishing the edits on your novel.
[17:35]But really, as you say in the article,
[17:37]what I really needed were two nights of uninterrupted sleep
[17:39]to try to make my brain function the way it did
[17:41]before hormones and lack of sleep drove a truck
[17:43]through my prefrontal cortex.
[17:45]And you went on to say, parenting,
[17:47]I have come to learn is mostly about being terrified
[17:50]of doing everything wrong all the time,
[17:52]googling, maniacally, hating everything Google tells you
[17:55]and then winging it, which I just loved.
[17:58]That's just so perfect.
[17:59]I said by all those words that I wrote.
[18:02]And I've since left him, I went to New Zealand
[18:05]for two weeks and flew my mom to San Francisco
[18:07]and her and Nick took care of him.
[18:09]And he's fine, he's fine.
[18:11]And he ate some dirt, but he's all good.
[18:14]I fully advocate for getting ready for your kid for a while.
[18:17]I think it's really important.
[18:18]And do you think just the having independence
[18:21]to sort of maintain your own identity
[18:23]has helped you as a mom?
[18:24]I know there's all this controversy, like not controversy,
[18:28]but heated differences of opinions
[18:30]when it comes to being a mom and how to be a mom
[18:32]and everything by going away, do you feel like that
[18:35]just sort of set the stage for you
[18:36]and you knew how you wanted to do it?
[18:38]Yeah, I mean, everyone has an opinion
[18:41]about how you're supposed to be a mom.
[18:42]I think you're supposed to be a mom,
[18:44]however works for you and whatever keeps the baby alive.
[18:47]But I know for me, it's really important for me
[18:49]to still have my own life and my own passions
[18:52]outside of being a mom.
[18:53]I mean, we didn't have any childcare for the first year
[18:56]because we live in San Francisco,
[18:57]but like a land of no nannies.
[18:59]And since I traded him off for the whole first year,
[19:03]I was living so much that I didn't need some breaks
[19:07]to remember what it was like to be me.
[19:11]You know, I'm actually divorced and remarried
[19:13]and I get these like every other weekends off.
[19:16]I feel like I come back a different first day.
[19:17]It's hard.
[19:18]I mean, it's painful and it's hard,
[19:19]but I do sleep and I do.
[19:21]I'm sure kids, but like still like,
[19:24]I fantasize about that sometimes.
[19:26]I'm like, gosh, we're not that I want
[19:28]I want to divorce my husband,
[19:29]but I'm like, nah, can I get divorced
[19:31]and I would get like a break every other week
[19:32]and that could be great.
[19:34]But that happened to one of my girlfriends
[19:36]and then the guy that she married was like,
[19:37]I want to have a kid.
[19:38]So like she gets this break for them.
[19:39]And there's also a baby there.
[19:40]So yeah, you really have to hide that right.
[19:43]Yeah.
[19:45]I already had four kids.
[19:46]So there were no more kids going for me.
[19:48]But I mean, people actually don't like it
[19:50]when I joke about divorcing that.
[19:52]Like I get so many nasty comments when I say
[19:54]those kinds of things, I'm like, I know I have just joking.
[19:57]I totally think about it like once a week.
[19:58]It's like not a big deal.
[20:00]I can't tell you how many people have been like, well, that sounds like a good arrangement.
[20:06]I might have to think about, you know, I might have to think about leaving, you know,
[20:09]they'll even say in front of their husbands, maybe we should get to worst, you know?
[20:12]I'm like, are you kidding? You're kidding or you're not kidding? I don't know.
[20:15]There's always a little truth. Let's see how that goes for you.
[20:19]So you also wrote a lot about how you took a genetic test and found out that you are a carrier
[20:27]of the gene that your father ended up ultimately passing away from muscular dystrophy and
[20:33]that obviously, you know, when you're a carrier, you can pass it on to your child and
[20:36]you wanted to have a baby and get pregnant at the time and had a whole debate over what to do.
[20:41]And ultimately, as you have a baby, you decided to go for it, but you wrote about it so beautifully
[20:45]and openly and honestly like the rest of your work, I just wanted to hear more about, you know,
[20:49]you and Violet in the office finding out your results and the whole scene when you tried to
[20:54]process it and everything. Yeah, it was, you know, it was so hard. I mean, it was such a big moment
[20:59]and it's interesting now that it's three years later and I don't think about it as much.
[21:04]And I've shown no symptoms or signs of the disease so far, but I'm going to the neurologist
[21:10]next week just to check in about it. My dad started the show symptoms in his 40s and 38.
[21:16]We also haven't tested Charlie. We will at some point, but also probably not until
[21:22]the healthcare situation in his country is a little bit more eye-to-down because I don't know
[21:27]how I feel about him having a pre-existing condition on his record, you know, a pre-existing
[21:31]condition for something that may not even happen to him. He may never show symptoms of it,
[21:36]but that makes me nervous. But it was such a hard thing because we did think we're like,
[21:40]all right, we wanted to know our options. How could I not pass this gene on? And so we talked
[21:46]about doing IVF, but what we found out is that we wanted to be able to separate the embryos
[21:51]for this specific gene. So we wouldn't be able to test until 20 weeks. And at that point,
[21:56]I knew that I didn't, I personally just didn't want to terminate a pregnancy. So we wrote the dice
[22:02]and we don't know what's going to happen, but I'm okay with the not knowing. And we're just
[22:08]preparing it for me knowing that I'm a carrier. I just try to be as strong as I possibly can.
[22:13]I took care of myself a lot better than I used to before I knew. And so in that way, it's kind of
[22:19]of a blessing, the knowing. And it's like a whole new world with this ability to predict for
[22:24]yourself or your children. How much do you want to know? How much do you want to know about them?
[22:28]When should they pick what, you know, it's like, if we find out if we take all the tests for them
[22:32]when they're babies, like what if they didn't want to know? Yeah. And then I know there's just
[22:39]like so many two big questions to ask on like, you know, Thursday.
[22:43]Right. And how would you change your life? Knowing is the thing and like how would they change
[22:49]their life? Knowing. I mean, I think I think it is nice to have some things that are unknowable.
[22:54]I mean, but also with everything we know about genes now, there's still so much that we don't know.
[22:59]And so there's still genes that turn on or never turn on at all that cause a lot of these
[23:04]illnesses and you could just be disrupting your life for no reason. If it taught me anything,
[23:10]it, you know, just live your life every day because right now is good. So yeah, you know,
[23:15]I just can't worry about the future. Yeah. Plus all the people who not to be morbid,
[23:19]but I mean, you could get it by a car tomorrow and you just, I mean, then I would like,
[23:24]I think about this. And I'm like, I'm going to waste all this time worrying about, you know,
[23:27]early Alzheimer's and, you know, anyway, I don't know. I always like go back to this, but
[23:32]yeah, exactly. Nothing. And so I've just like, I've kind of decided at least for now, I'm like,
[23:36]I'm just not going to worry about that. And we'll let Charlie make that decision if he
[23:42]wants to be tested. He can as long as, you know, we have a sane person in the Oval Office
[23:48]or if we live in Canada. I think I'm not living in Canada a lot lately. I actually just found out
[23:52]that Canada allows for anchor babies. So if you have a baby in Canada, you can then get Canadian
[23:57]citizenship. So I'm like, all right, let's just go deliver in Canada. So I'm going to get pregnant.
[24:02]I mean, Whistler, you could go skiing at their great places in Canada.
[24:06]Right, right, right. So exactly. And just in terms of your writing process,
[24:12]I know we're almost at a time, but in terms of your writing process, when do you get all the
[24:16]stuff that you write articles and books you just have a new exciting two book deal that you just
[24:20]signed? When are you doing all this? What's your process like? For my novels, I'd make myself
[24:26]right between the thousand and four thousand words a day, depending on how fast the book has to
[24:31]be done right now. I'm at the thousand-word mark for the new book that I'm doing with Christine
[24:35]Pride for HarperCollins. And I just make sure that I get that done before I do anything else
[24:39]because there's only so many words that I have in me today. And then after that, I'll switch
[24:44]to like the next most important thing, which is whatever article I'm working on for magazine
[24:49]or newspaper. I just finished one today for the Wall Street Journal. And then after that,
[24:52]I'll do like kind of mindless crap. So emails, stuff like that. But I have to get the
[24:58]important words done first because I won't be able to do them later. I also, it's interesting,
[25:03]I read for about an hour some of the two or three before I go to bed. And I write a lot then
[25:09]because my brain kind of like goes into a state where I start getting ideas. And I write a lot of
[25:13]things long-hand and then the next morning, I'll put them in the document. I hardly ever hear
[25:20]that anymore. I mean reading else, but writing long-hand. Yeah, writing long-hand. And there's
[25:24]something I get a lot of interesting inspiration when I'm writing long-hand. So
[25:29]actual piles and piles of like yellow legal tabs by my bad while I'm writing.
[25:34]And have you read anything really great lately? Let's put you on the spot. Like, what are you
[25:37]reading right now? So I finished Curtis in Fails and Lauren Graff's short story collections.
[25:42]I usually hate short story collections because they usually just feel like someone's like,
[25:47]look at me and my MFA projects. They're about spectacular. Like, I love both of them. If I want
[25:53]to just relax before bed, I actually read a thriller because I don't write thrillers so I can
[25:59]just enjoy them and I'm not thinking about how am I structuring my next novel? I can just kind of
[26:04]like let my brain relax a little bit. I just read Cross Her Heart, which was the Book of the Month's
[26:10]pick. It was good, but I'm actually, I was going to email Book of the Month. I think they should
[26:14]have had a warning that it includes child rape and the murder of a two-year-old baby. He aches when
[26:19]you collected that as your book club pick because it didn't know and kind of freaked me out
[26:26]when I started reading it. Yeah, I get that. Well, just as a closing, do you have any advice to
[26:32]aspiring authors out there? Any failures you've overcome to achieve everything you have or just
[26:38]advice in general? I do. I actually gave this to someone last night who people tell me
[26:43]every day that they want to write a book. A lot of men tell me like powerful men in tech,
[26:47]tell me they want to write a book, but they're always like, oh yeah, you know, once I clip my big
[26:51]powerful tech job and I'll just go to a cabin in the woods, that's when I can really like write
[26:55]my novel and I'm like, I wrote my last novel with a newborn attached to my boob sitting on the toilet
[27:00]most of the time, so God bless you and your little cabin man. But the best advice that I give to
[27:06]anyone that says I want to write a novel is I'm like, okay, so I want you to sit down every day
[27:10]and write a thousand words a day and if you can do that for a month straight, then you'll be
[27:14]able to write a book. If you can't do it for a month straight, you probably don't want to be a writer
[27:19]because writing is a habit and writing is a muscle and you just get good by doing more of it.
[27:24]So that's really my best advice. See if you can do it before you declare yourself a writer.
[27:30]I actually didn't declare myself an author until like last year until I was seven books deep
[27:36]and now I'm finally comfortable saying, oh, I'm an author before that I just kind of thought
[27:40]like a fraud. Well, before I died to you, I mistakenly described another Jopiazza and he was not you
[27:47]and they're like, who says that? I was like, is this the author? Two of you hasn't like, oh no,
[27:51]that's someone else. So they knew they knew you were an author. They knew who you were.
[27:57]I love that Jopiazza.
[28:01]Anyway, well, thank you so much for taking the time to be on mom's don't have time to read
[28:05]books and share all your experience and I really, really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me.
[28:09]This is so much fun. Okay. All right. Thanks a lot. All right. Bye. Bye, Billy.
[28:13]This episode of mom's don't have time to read books has been brought to you by Nini's treats.
[28:17]niniestreats.com available also on goldbelly.com. Thanks to Ryan and Steve at texture sound
[28:22]for the audio editing and mixing. Thanks for listening.