John Kenney, Author of LOVE POEMS (FOR MARRIED PEOPLE) & TALK TO ME
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[0:34]I'm here today with John Kenney.
[0:36]John is the author of two novels, Truth in Advertising,
[0:38]which won the third prize for American humor and talk to me,
[0:41]which just came out on January 15th.
[0:44]His recent tongue-in-cheek poetry collection,
[0:46]love poems for married people,
[0:47]which came out on New Year's Eve 2018,
[0:50]is absolutely hilarious,
[0:51]and you should buy this now for your wife or husband for Valentine's Day.
[0:56]A former advertising copywriter,
[0:58]John has been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1999.
[1:01]He lives with his wife and two children in Brooklyn, New York.
[1:04]So welcome John to Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:07]Thank you. Thank you for the invite.
[1:09]Of course. So last to discuss today,
[1:11]and I know this is out of chronological order of how you wrote these books,
[1:14]but I wanted to discuss love poems for married people first.
[1:17]For many reasons, one, because it's like so ridiculously hilarious,
[1:20]and I loved it.
[1:21]And two, because Valentine's Day is around the corner,
[1:23]and this is such a perfect giftable item,
[1:25]and everybody should be giving it to their husbands and wives and everything.
[1:29]So how did you come up with the idea for writing this little collection of poems
[1:32]after your two novels?
[1:34]It wasn't my idea, actually.
[1:36]I had written a piece a couple of years ago for The New Yorker
[1:40]for shouts and murmurs called Valentine's Day Poems for Married People,
[1:43]and it had been passed around a bit.
[1:45]And I, last June, I was at a cocktail party at Penguin Random House,
[1:52]and I was chatting with my editor and a woman who I didn't know,
[1:56]and my editor introduced me as the guy who had written that piece,
[2:00]and she said, you know, I love that.
[2:01]we should do a book about that.
[2:03]And we all sort of chuckled about that.
[2:05]And the next week, I went in to meet with my editor about the novel,
[2:09]and she said that woman you were talking to is one of the people who runs Penguin Random House.
[2:14]She wants to do a book on this, so we're doing a book.
[2:17]And I said, great.
[2:18]And she said, the only thing is I would need a manuscript by August, first,
[2:25]which was about six weeks away.
[2:27]So I spent a goodly portion of the summer writing a lot of poems,
[2:31]many of which were terrible and didn't make the book.
[2:33]But yeah, so it was a real sprint.
[2:35]And in contrast to that, how long did it take for you to write your novels?
[2:38]I mean, I know there were so many more words and everything.
[2:40]Yeah, I would say start to finish the novel was,
[2:43]I would say two and a half, maybe three years.
[2:46]Wow, so six weeks is like...
[2:48]Yeah, six weeks was in that I was editing the novel at the time,
[2:52]but these were great fun to write, and I can't give enough credit.
[2:56]to my wife who read all of them, and she's a tough audience.
[3:02]So I would say she killed 50% of them, but yeah, there were a lot of fun to do.
[3:06]And didn't you have a goal like one a day or something?
[3:08]I did have that goal at the beginning that did not come to fruition,
[3:13]because it was very simple at the beginning I thought I've got this many days.
[3:17]I need 75, 80 poems because we'll kill 20 or 30.
[3:21]But there were many days where I stared at the blind page and
[3:24]wander around YouTube looking at old New England Patriots videos.
[3:27]You did such a funny impression of your wife reading your poems,
[3:32]because I feel like I do the same thing.
[3:34]Kyle gives me something my husband, Kyle gives me something to read that he thinks is hilarious,
[3:37]and I'll read it, and I don't usually laugh at loud and I'm reading.
[3:40]I'm just like, yeah, that was funny.
[3:41]And he said you didn't think when you said your wife does the same thing,
[3:44]he's like, that's just like you.
[3:46]I dated a comedian for a while, and she said when she would be writing material,
[3:50]if it didn't make her laugh, it wasn't funny.
[3:52]So when my wife says things like, that's really funny, it's not funny.
[3:58]And she's a tough old sort of Philadelphia wasp who, you know, you got to drag the laugh from her,
[4:03]but it really, if you get it, it means it's not so bad.
[4:06]And she reads everything out loud, right?
[4:08]Don't you have that?
[4:09]She reads everything out loud, which is great because it helped enormously with the cadence of it.
[4:14]I mean, I actually did go back and read a lot of poetry, because as ridiculous as the book is,
[4:19]I did want it to at least aspire to some kind of poem.
[4:24]I mean, they're terrible in terms of poems.
[4:27]No, but it's so funny.
[4:28]They're not terrible.
[4:29]I just wanted them to be funny.
[4:32]No, they're hilarious.
[4:33]Would you mind reading one of them?
[4:35]I would love to do that.
[4:36]Although I will say that my mother-in-law shared it with a friend of hers and an older woman
[4:42]down in Philadelphia who I think was under the impression that it was a serious book of poetry.
[4:48]And she was trying desperately to be polite in her critique and said,
[4:52]they're certainly different.
[4:54]So this one is called, why are you in the shower with me?
[4:58]Did the bathtub shrink?
[5:00]I asked, because here we are naked showering together like we once did all the time.
[5:05]Remember, at the beginning, we would stand and talk seals slipping by one another,
[5:11]a playful ease letting the other into the stream.
[5:14]Now, I'm not sure what you're doing in here.
[5:18]I'm freezing.
[5:19]They're shampoostinging my eyes.
[5:21]You just stepped on my foot for the love of Christ who flushed the toilet
[5:25]because I'm being scolded alive.
[5:27]Get out.
[5:28]Now, it was a nice idea though, honey.
[5:31]Could you close the door?
[5:33]So funny.
[5:34]I mean, they're all like so great.
[5:35]And they're just...
[5:37]They're funny because they're true.
[5:40]And was your wife?
[5:41]She was like, okay, I mean, you have to dig into your own.
[5:45]I mean, I don't.
[5:46]It's funny, we have some neighbors who live on our block
[5:49]and they're wonderful people, but they're pretty serious.
[5:52]And when I wrote the New Yorker piece, the husband stopped my wife
[5:57]because one of the poems was about baggy underwear or something like that.
[6:01]And he said, I'm so sorry.
[6:03]You know, your husband wrote that thing about your baggy underwear.
[6:06]He's this elderly gentleman.
[6:08]Yeah.
[6:08]She's like, oh, no, it's supposed to be funny.
[6:09]I'm fine with it.
[6:10]Yeah.
[6:10]I show her everything.
[6:12]And so I think she's okay.
[6:14]I mean, we're now just speaking through divorce attorneys.
[6:17]But I think she's fine.
[6:19]Her lawyer says she's okay.
[6:22]Well, anyway, as I told you like 20 times now,
[6:24]I gave it to Kyle for his birthday and we laughed like all day long.
[6:27]Thank you very much.
[6:28]Anyway, it's a great item and a perfect gift, so.
[6:31]And I know that that was sort of like an aside from your serious writing career,
[6:35]which you've written these great books.
[6:37]You won this humor prize and everything for truth and advertising.
[6:40]What was that like, by the way, when you wrote your first novel
[6:43]after years of the copywriter,
[6:44]went on to win this humor prize.
[6:46]Tell me a little more about that.
[6:47]That was a complete fluke thrill.
[6:50]So the third prize for American humor.
[6:52]We got shortlisted and Sally Kim, my editor at Putnam & Sons,
[6:58]said, you know, we're one of 18 or something like that.
[7:01]And I didn't think much.
[7:03]I mean, I was thrilled.
[7:04]And then it was one of nine, maybe.
[7:07]And then we got, it was one of three.
[7:09]And I got to go to the event, which was really fun.
[7:12]You have to stand up and do a little,
[7:13]it was that Caroline's comedy club.
[7:15]And you have to stand up and do a little 10-minute set.
[7:18]Read a little bit and try to make people laugh.
[7:19]And so those are myself and Liza Donnelly, who's an incredibly successful,
[7:25]hilarious cartoonist for the New Yorker,
[7:27]who's won a gazillion awards.
[7:29]And David Letterman.
[7:30]And everyone said, you know, Letterman's not going to show obviously
[7:33]because he's Letterman.
[7:34]So I wrote a bunch of jokes about David Letterman.
[7:36]Oh, no.
[7:37]Yeah.
[7:37]And so he showed with his monologue writer Bill Chef,
[7:41]nine-time Emmy-nominated writer.
[7:43]And they're sitting in the front row.
[7:44]Caroline's is very small.
[7:47]And they're sort of sitting there like,
[7:49]make us laugh, novelist boy.
[7:52]So, but, you know, I was sure that Liza would win,
[7:56]if not, you know, Letterman was retiring.
[7:58]And yeah, so it was a real thrill.
[8:00]And Letterman was incredibly gracious.
[8:03]He wrote me this note and it was really nice, so.
[8:07]That's awesome.
[8:08]Yeah.
[8:08]And what made you write that first novel?
[8:10]Had you always wanted to write a book?
[8:12]Was there just so much great material?
[8:14]How did it even come about?
[8:15]I did always want to write.
[8:17]I just wasn't very good at it.
[8:20]And I don't say that to be modest.
[8:22]I mean, I was always writing stories and sending them out
[8:25]and getting lots of rejections, which are wonderful things,
[8:29]because they push you.
[8:30]I mean, I really do think failure is a great teacher.
[8:34]And fortunately, I have had a lot of teaching in my career,
[8:37]but I was working in advertising.
[8:39]So I was writing and I started the whole marriage,
[8:42]children thing, light, so I had a lot of time to write.
[8:44]And I decided to get serious about it in my late 30s.
[8:48]I quit a job and I moved to France for a while.
[8:51]And I wrote a very long novel.
[8:53]I had the opposite of writer's block.
[8:55]I just couldn't stop writing, which probably isn't a good thing,
[8:58]because I don't think I knew what the book was about.
[9:02]And no one published it, which was, again, a good thing.
[9:05]And I went back about a year later, re-read it.
[9:07]I took a small section of it and turned that into truth in advertising.
[9:12]So that's how that came to be.
[9:15]And then which was it talked to me that you wrote during your lunch breaks?
[9:18]I did.
[9:19]Yeah.
[9:19]So there was a gap of like four years between what's the first one called?
[9:24]Truth in it.
[9:24]Truth in it.
[9:25]Truth in it.
[9:27]Just to see if you've read it.
[9:28]I'm paying attention.
[9:29]That's right.
[9:30]I'm focused.
[9:30]For those of you listening, Zibi has left the room.
[9:33]And I'm alone.
[9:35]Yes, who I adapted to the advertising into a screenplay.
[9:38]And that took me much longer.
[9:40]I thought, I'll bang this out in three months.
[9:42]But it was about like an 18-month process going back and forth.
[9:45]But then with talk to me, yeah, that's that.
[9:47]We can to finish that.
[9:49]So what happened with that screenplay and everything?
[9:50]That screenplay, there was a big star, Ryan Reynolds,
[9:55]who agreed to play the lead part.
[9:58]And we were all set to go.
[10:00]And then Deadpool came out and did very, very, very well.
[10:04]And Ryan was incredibly gracious.
[10:06]He said, look, I'm interested in this,
[10:08]but I have some other things on my plate, like Deadpool too.
[10:13]So this green place in limbo now.
[10:15]So not uncommon is my understanding
[10:17]of the Hollywood world.
[10:18]So we'll see.
[10:19]We'll see.
[10:20]Yeah, so we'll go back.
[10:20]No, not at all.
[10:21]So then I was looking for a new idea.
[10:24]And I'm fascinated by the media.
[10:26]If truth in advertising is about advertising,
[10:29]but also mostly about this very dysfunctional family,
[10:33]I think talk to me is about a man who loses everything.
[10:37]Ted Grayson is the most trusted man in network news,
[10:41]but he has everything stripped away from him.
[10:43]He makes a terrible mistake on the evening
[10:45]newscast one night screaming at a young assistant.
[10:49]And it goes viral.
[10:50]And his world comes crashing down.
[10:53]I think mostly the book is a love story
[10:55]between a father and a daughter who have lost their way.
[10:58]She's 28.
[11:00]She works in new media at a TMZ-like website.
[11:04]And she's tasked with writing a story about her father.
[11:06]From whom she's largely estranged and chaos ensues.
[11:12]And you have a lot of commentary on social media news,
[11:16]the way that people are consuming news through the book.
[11:19]It's like, if the theme of the father daughter
[11:22]is the biggest one, and this is the next,
[11:25]I feel like this is one of the things.
[11:27]And you have this really beautiful passage that you wrote.
[11:29]It wasn't merely an escape from the outside world.
[11:32]It was escape from ourselves.
[11:33]It was a muting of our inside voice.
[11:35]Once people sat after dinner on the back porch
[11:37]as evening gently overtook the day,
[11:39]watching the fading light,
[11:40]listened to the din or crickets to a dog barking down the road,
[11:44]a train going by in the distance,
[11:45]alone with their thoughts, the bravest thing.
[11:47]Today we would do anything to run from our own thoughts,
[11:50]the noise of our minds.
[11:51]So we checked the phone, the text, the email, the alert,
[11:54]while looking inside for the answers when you can look outside.
[11:56]Hey, look, a sailor J. Crew.
[11:58]Which I started laughing at,
[11:59]because that's like, exactly my inbox.
[12:01]I'm like, ooh, 25% up.
[12:04]But it's all of ours,
[12:06]and I certainly don't mean it as a criticism,
[12:09]merely an observation.
[12:10]I just, I'm the opposite of an early adopter
[12:14]at the begging of the publisher.
[12:17]I just got on social media.
[12:18]As I mentioned, even a couple of weeks ago,
[12:20]and it's a blast.
[12:21]It's fascinating, but it's also incredibly addictive.
[12:25]My son asked me the other day.
[12:26]He said, why are you checking Instagram again?
[12:28]I said, I don't know, but it's fun.
[12:31]And it does take us out of ourselves.
[12:33]And this is not new territory,
[12:35]but I'm curious to see what it becomes,
[12:39]because I do think this idea of,
[12:42]I think we're seeing the end of boredom,
[12:46]because if we choose from the moment we like to up
[12:49]to the moment we go to sleep, we can be entertained.
[12:52]And I don't think that was always the way.
[12:54]I mean, I'm older than you,
[12:56]but when I was a kid, TV ended,
[12:58]I talked to my kids about that,
[12:59]and like, what are you talking about?
[13:00]I was like, it ended, it went off.
[13:02]There was the national anthem,
[13:04]and then it was snow, or a test pattern,
[13:07]until 5 30 in the morning when the news came on.
[13:10]Mine went off after like Silver Spins,
[13:12]and different strokes went off in my house,
[13:14]but things used to stop.
[13:16]Yeah.
[13:17]Things used to end, things used to close.
[13:20]That doesn't happen anymore.
[13:22]Everything's open all the time.
[13:23]There's always stimulation, always.
[13:27]And while that's fantastic, right?
[13:31]In a way, it's fantastic, it's great.
[13:33]There are consequences to that.
[13:35]For us, personally, as adults,
[13:38]and in terms of our thinking and clear-headedness,
[13:41]and I mean, I don't know about you,
[13:43]but my struggle most days is to find mental space, right?
[13:47]To sit down and to get away from that device
[13:51]and try to put some words on a page.
[13:53]In the poll to those things,
[13:55]the poll to...
[13:56]It's always been hard to sit down and write.
[13:58]Right, that's not a new thing.
[13:59]I'll go walk the dog, I'll have lunch,
[14:01]I'll look out the window.
[14:03]But the poll now is vastly more powerful, right?
[14:07]I have to check a text, I have to look at something,
[14:09]I have to.
[14:10]Yeah, so.
[14:11]I know I always feel, especially with kids,
[14:13]like, well, I have to be sort of connected.
[14:14]What if, you know, what if?
[14:16]And even when I, like, if I sit down and try to write,
[14:18]which doesn't, I don't even get a chance to do that very often,
[14:20]but I have to immediately shut down everything else,
[14:22]right?
[14:23]Like, every window is closed on my computer,
[14:24]my phone is off, I have to focus.
[14:26]I'm like, but what if it's the school?
[14:28]Right.
[14:29]So I have to, there's that little sliver
[14:31]and then forget it, you know,
[14:33]then some other call comes in
[14:34]and then it's just, just forget it.
[14:36]It's like impossible.
[14:37]It isn't possible.
[14:38]The other morning, my daughter took my phone
[14:41]and hid it in a bag of hers,
[14:44]because she heard me coming up the stairs
[14:46]and she knew she wasn't supposed to be on the phone.
[14:47]It was the school morning.
[14:48]So she quickly hid it in, like, this bag near her desk
[14:52]and she has, like, 50 bags.
[14:54]And so I couldn't find, in the ringer was off.
[14:57]Mm.
[14:58]I couldn't find my phone until about,
[14:59]well, she, until she got home from school,
[15:01]because she had an after-school thing
[15:02]and she got home about 430,
[15:04]which means I was without my phone all day.
[15:07]It was fantastic.
[15:08]You were okay?
[15:09]You survived?
[15:09]It was fantastic.
[15:11]It's like the best day of your life.
[15:12]It was very interesting,
[15:14]because there were a couple of hours
[15:15]where I was a little sort of withdrawal kind of.
[15:18]Mm-hmm.
[15:19]And then it was like, oh, no one can reach me,
[15:23]which was kind of cool.
[15:24]The sad thing is I think I only had one message.
[15:26]So that was a little disappointing.
[15:29]Mm-hmm.
[15:30]And in terms of boredom,
[15:31]we were both just talking about this new essay
[15:33]by Pamela Paul in New York Times this weekend,
[15:36]let children get bored writing something that was called,
[15:38]about how important it is for kids to be bored,
[15:41]not just us, right?
[15:41]Like, to have the mental space that we need,
[15:43]but to let our kids just be able to do what they want
[15:46]and come up with these, like,
[15:48]make-believe situations and vent games,
[15:50]make-for-its-all that stuff.
[15:51]And this is well-tried territory,
[15:53]but I think it's really interesting
[15:55]because they do lead such structured lives.
[15:58]And, you know, inevitably they will find something.
[16:02]You know, my son was home sick this morning,
[16:04]and he knows he can't do screens,
[16:06]and he's sitting in our bed
[16:08]just sort of staring at the wall.
[16:09]Oh, I'm sorry.
[16:11]No, no, no, no, it's, it's, it's, oh, no, no, no.
[16:13]No, it's, we're on the sixth day of this.
[16:16]He's doing better, it's just,
[16:17]so I grabbed three books,
[16:19]and I plop them down in front of them,
[16:21]and he opened them, right?
[16:23]You know, a hungry kid will eat what's put in front of them.
[16:26]And I find that for myself too.
[16:29]I like being bored,
[16:30]because it does send your mind to a different place.
[16:34]This idea of constant entertainment and stimulation is,
[16:39]that's a really new thing in the history of the world.
[16:43]It's a really new thing,
[16:44]and it was interesting to see during the Super Bowl,
[16:48]you know, I'd bet $5 that most of those commercials
[16:51]were written by millennials,
[16:54]and there was a theme in a lot of them
[16:57]that technology was bad.
[17:00]So this is the first real generation
[17:02]who's upbringing has been defined really by technology,
[17:05]much more than television.
[17:07]And there were many commercials that poked fun at it, right?
[17:11]That it was this, there was the, I forget the,
[17:12]it was pretty funny that it was sort of an apocalyptic thing.
[17:16]So it's just, it's interesting to see their take on it.
[17:19]I like the one with Alexa when Harrison Porter
[17:22]was all the dogfish.
[17:23]Oh yeah.
[17:24]That was so funny.
[17:24]Anyway, but it is interesting.
[17:26]So back to the book for a second.
[17:28]So you included a lot of really poignant moments
[17:31]about this adult relationship, the father,
[17:32]with his, with his grown daughter,
[17:34]and also even with the mother.
[17:36]So the mom, Claire,
[17:37]they're both kind of have difficult relationships
[17:40]with their daughter, Franny.
[17:41]And she's so busy working that she doesn't have time
[17:44]to even have a cup of coffee for her mom.
[17:46]So her mom's kind of wandering around the city.
[17:47]And she's reminiscing about the time
[17:49]that she literally went into the MRI machine
[17:52]with Franny on her chest.
[17:53]The time she like sucked the snot out of her nose
[17:55]and a car trip, all this stuff that you just do.
[17:57]And you wrote, adapt and overcome as the marine say,
[18:00]and what was a mother, if not a marine?
[18:02]What wouldn't she have done for this girl?
[18:04]And now happy for Franny and her new life,
[18:06]her career, Claire, still smarted at the selfishness
[18:09]of not meaning for a coffee.
[18:11]So is this like an inevitability
[18:13]that you raise independent children,
[18:15]they grow up, they do their own thing.
[18:16]And it's good that they don't have time for you,
[18:18]or is there, is there some way to create a happy balance
[18:22]like with kids who are busy,
[18:23]but still have time for their parents?
[18:25]Like, well, I'd be completely forgotten
[18:26]is really the basis of my question.
[18:28]I can only speak as an observer
[18:31]because I still have little people
[18:34]who I can control their world.
[18:37]But I have five brothers and lots of nieces and nephews,
[18:41]20s, early 30s even, because they started really young.
[18:44]And it's been interesting to watch.
[18:47]I think what happens even in the tightest relationships
[18:51]is the relationship changes.
[18:53]And I think that's so heartbreaking for a parent.
[18:56]Because it's like your husband comes home one day
[19:00]and just says, I think we should just be friends
[19:03]after 18 years of marriage.
[19:04]It's like, I think we should just be buddies, right?
[19:06]I'm gonna live next door.
[19:08]It's like, wait a minute, you're changing the relationship.
[19:10]It's like, yeah, no, I know.
[19:12]I think that's what happens with our kids
[19:14]is 18 years of just everything you have.
[19:19]And then they say, thank you so much.
[19:21]I'll call you, I'll be in touch.
[19:25]And it's exactly what they should say
[19:29]and deep down that you want them to say,
[19:31]but it's also absolutely heartbreaking.
[19:34]I have a really good friend, a more sort of macho,
[19:39]tough guy you've never met.
[19:40]And he just dropped his son off at college in late August.
[19:46]And he was so proud of him.
[19:47]This is a guy who's working class kid
[19:49]and he got into Yale and his dad's drive in home
[19:53]and just he called me and he said, I was just sobbing.
[19:56]I was just sobbing.
[19:58]And he said it was a combination of,
[20:00]of incredible pride, but also this relationship's ended.
[20:06]It's ended.
[20:07]And that's quite a thing,
[20:10]but I do think they come back.
[20:12]I really do.
[20:13]I think they have to go do their thing.
[20:16]I'm sure you did it.
[20:17]I'm sure you went off to college.
[20:18]And, you know, your focus was the outside world.
[20:22]It wasn't back home.
[20:24]Although I did have one night at college
[20:26]because I went to Yale, it was not far away.
[20:28]And I called home, it was like five o'clock.
[20:29]I was really feeling homesick.
[20:31]I was like, what do you guys have me for dinner?
[20:32]Cause my brother was still at home.
[20:34]I was like, oh, we're having swordfish and roast potatoes
[20:37]and some string beans.
[20:38]And I looked in my watch and I was like,
[20:40]I'll be there by 7.30.
[20:41]I'll be, I'm on my way.
[20:42]And I like, ran to the garage.
[20:43]Joe home, head dinner.
[20:45]I got annoyed within an hour.
[20:47]It was time to leave again.
[20:48]And I drove back to school and went to bed.
[20:50]It was like perfect.
[20:51]And your parents went to bed that night and say,
[20:52]did that just happen?
[20:54]Did she come home?
[20:55]I don't know.
[20:56]I don't know.
[20:57]Anyway, I don't know that they were your family.
[20:58]I was even happy to see me.
[21:00]But yes, there's obviously this separation
[21:02]and that you have to go through as grown up and I don't know.
[21:06]Yeah, I also, I think it's hard for kids too
[21:10]because you're trying to figure it out and struggling.
[21:12]On the one hand, you really need your parents
[21:14]and want them, but you kind of can't say that in a way.
[21:19]Life is a series of miscommunications I find.
[21:22]How often do you say what you want?
[21:24]Have the courage to sort of say what you want to someone
[21:27]because in a vulnerability is scary.
[21:30]It's really scary, especially if you're 21 or 22 or 23.
[21:35]In terms of the book, the character,
[21:37]Franny, Ted's daughter is 28.
[21:40]And desperately wants a relationship with her father.
[21:44]But there are so many layers of pain,
[21:47]so much scar tissue that she just can't get to it.
[21:50]He's the same way.
[21:52]He wants nothing more than that relationship,
[21:55]but I'm Irish from Boston.
[21:59]And they say that the only thing that Irish Alzheimer's,
[22:01]the only thing you don't forget is the slights, right?
[22:05]And I think Ted's that way.
[22:07]He wants desperately to be with her,
[22:11]but he can't seem to forgive her
[22:13]and she can't forgive him, so.
[22:15]I love the scene when he was going through all her old stuff,
[22:17]when he was in the psych hardware house on my house,
[22:19]we're ready to cry.
[22:20]That's really awesome.
[22:22]So now you're at the stage of two books
[22:25]out at the same time.
[22:26]That's really cool.
[22:27]Are you?
[22:28]Are you overwhelmed?
[22:29]Is it like, what's it like to have two, but I mean?
[22:32]It's odd to have two books that are so different from each other.
[22:35]The novel, I hope there are light parts to it,
[22:38]but there's some fairly serious stuff
[22:41]and the love poems is just epically ridiculous.
[22:44]So it's really fun to have the two out at the same time.
[22:48]It's really fun.
[22:49]Not sure I'll do that again.
[22:50]And what do you have coming next?
[22:53]Or do you have more ideas for books, or?
[22:55]I do.
[22:56]I have an idea for a book, sort of a short, fast novel
[22:59]that leans really heavily into funny.
[23:02]So that's the hope.
[23:04]Awesome.
[23:05]And do you have any advice for aspiring authors out there?
[23:08]Learn a trade.
[23:09]LAUGHTER
[23:11]I am loved to give advice to anyone.
[23:14]I would do the opposite of what I say.
[23:15]Just know that it's hard.
[23:17]And I would try desperately to ignore the noise.
[23:21]Publishing has changed so dramatically.
[23:23]It's always been about business.
[23:25]But I do think it has become really commercialized
[23:31]and leans very heavily into the big sellers.
[23:36]I do think there will always be a space
[23:39]for the small, sort of quiet books, the tell stories
[23:45]that matter to people.
[23:47]And it's hard to get an agent.
[23:49]It's hard to get published.
[23:50]It's hard to get attention.
[23:52]A book can disappear into the ether really easily.
[23:55]Trust me.
[23:56]But write it even if someone's not going to pay you.
[23:59]Write it because you want to write it.
[24:01]And I don't want that to sound cliched
[24:03]because it's a very lonely business.
[24:05]It's a very hard business.
[24:06]It's a long slog.
[24:09]But if it really matters to you, stay with that, believe in it.
[24:14]And make it matter.
[24:16]Really make it matter because very few people
[24:20]are going to champion your book.
[24:21]You have to want to do it as if no one's going to see it.
[24:24]I know that's really hard to hear,
[24:26]but take it from someone who has published novels
[24:28]that almost no one has seen.
[24:29]But not you.
[24:31]But yeah, just try to ignore the noise
[24:34]and just stay with your book.
[24:36]That's awesome.
[24:36]Well, thank you so much.
[24:37]Thank you for having me.
[24:39]It's really a lot of fun.
[24:41]Thanks for coming up.
[24:42]Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box.
[24:44]S-E-R-I-E-L-B-O-X dot com cereal box.com
[24:48]delivering addictive book content
[24:50]in short listen or read installments.
[24:52]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
[24:54]for the audio editing and mixing.
[24:56]Thanks for listening to Momstone.
[24:57]Have time to read books.