Susan Conley, ELSEY COME HOME
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:12]Today's episode has been sponsored by Serial Box.
[0:15]Serial Box delivers addictive book content in shortlisten or read installments, designed
[0:20]to fit into today's fast-paced mobile lifestyle.
[0:23]Switch between listening and reading with a single click, picking up right where you left
[0:27]off.
[0:28]Learn more at serialbox.com, S-E-R-I-A-L-B-O-X dot com.
[0:34]I'm thrilled to be interviewing Susan Conley today.
[0:36]Susan is a self-described mainer, someone from Maine who has written four books, including
[0:41]a memoir called The Foremost Good Fortune.
[0:43]A novel, Paris was the place and a photography book called Stop Here is the Place.
[0:48]Her latest novel, Elsie Come Home, was recently selected by O The Oprah Magazine, as one
[0:51]of the 10 newly released books that will give you an excuse to stay indoors this winter.
[0:56]Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Paris Review, and other publications.
[1:00]A fellowship recipient from the McDowell Colony, the Breadloaf Rogers Conference, and others.
[1:04]Susan is on the faculty at the University of Southern Maine, and co-founded the Telling
[1:07]Room, a creative writing lab for kids.
[1:09]So, welcome, Susan.
[1:10]Thanks so much for coming on, Mom.
[1:12]Don't have time to read books.
[1:13]Elsie Come Home is an amazing novel.
[1:18]Can you tell listeners a little bit about what it's about?
[1:20]Yeah, Elsie Come Home is about this sort of secret that I started to realize many women
[1:26]that I knew were caring, which was that they couldn't be amazing mothers and have these
[1:31]amazing careers without compromising something.
[1:35]And Elsie starts to unravel, and her husband suggests that she go away to this so-called
[1:40]retreat in the mountains in China and try to get it together.
[1:44]And it's really about her sort of coming to terms with her own guilt and creativity.
[1:50]Hm.
[1:51]And how did you end up setting it in China?
[1:53]I mean, I know you've spent a bunch of time in China.
[1:55]Is that how you came up with this idea to put it there?
[1:57]Yeah.
[1:58]I've been saying, on book tour, that I've always seemed to want to get Americans out
[2:02]of America, and sort of pushed them into corners and challenged them and sort of subverts
[2:09]all these sort of expectations they have about the world.
[2:13]So because Elsie was already finding things untenable in her home life, China was a really
[2:20]good backdrop for her.
[2:22]Because it's so chaotic and amazing and wonderful and vexing as a place to live, I think,
[2:28]particularly for Westerners.
[2:30]And I had lived there.
[2:31]I lived there for almost three years, and I did go on something similar to what Elsie
[2:37]went on.
[2:38]I did go up into the mountains.
[2:39]I often say this is not an autobiographical novel because it's really not.
[2:44]But I had a moment on the mountain in the dark after a day of silence at the retreat
[2:50]where I thought, OK, this will be my next novel.
[2:53]That's amazing.
[2:55]What propelled you to go on the retreat?
[2:56]Was it anything related to what Elsie was going through?
[3:01]Just to really get it out there early in the conversation?
[3:04]Yeah, right.
[3:05]Just to bear my soul.
[3:07]Yeah, please.
[3:08]Go for it.
[3:09]We've known each other for five minutes, I think it's time to tell all to tell all.
[3:14]I was one of those sort of quasi-yoga people.
[3:19]I was trying to find my way, Beijing.
[3:21]And I had met this amazing teacher who had announced she was going up to the mountains.
[3:30]And everything about living in China for me with really young voices about taking risks.
[3:36]And I just said, what the hell, let's go.
[3:39]And I think that the part of Elsie that would be the closest to me would be the sense
[3:45]of what the hell am I doing here.
[3:46]I'm not a yogi.
[3:47]Oh, my God, someone gave me a taxi.
[3:52]And then it was fairly transformative.
[3:56]So yeah, the yoga retreat was about taking risks.
[4:00]And also I did really want to get stronger.
[4:04]I did want to go get better at yoga.
[4:07]So one of the most fascinating parts of the book for me is how you showed the effects
[4:11]of Elsie's alcoholism, right, but you did it in such a subtle way.
[4:16]So the reader had to slowly kind of figure it out because it's all from the point of view
[4:21]of Elsie at the mom herself.
[4:22]And she hasn't really admitted she has a problem.
[4:25]So I love how you did that.
[4:27]It was almost as if Elsie was writing in a journal and we're just hearing about it later.
[4:31]So tell me more about how you structured it that way.
[4:34]Yeah, thank you for going there.
[4:37]That was a really breakthrough for the novel when I realized that Elsie was going to be giving
[4:41]us this sort of very frank and her mind candid kind of accounting, really.
[4:48]She was accounting for her life.
[4:50]And she had this guy in Beijing who she quote unquote paid to ask her questions.
[4:56]She found this therapist.
[4:57]And those are rare, or they certainly were when I was there.
[5:01]of Western trained quote unquote therapists.
[5:04]But she found one, you know, I knew of maybe a few that were there.
[5:11]And he was pretty tough with her and basically said guilt get over it.
[5:17]You don't have time for that now and asked her to do this reckoning on the page.
[5:22]And she's this wobbly acclaimed painter.
[5:25]She'd never written before.
[5:27]And she sort of teaches us or tells us when she's writing the novel that she's not good
[5:32]at this.
[5:33]She doesn't know how to write.
[5:34]She's not used to getting to include everything.
[5:37]And we can see to your point that she's kind of hiding stuff or she's hiding stuff from
[5:41]herself.
[5:42]And I wanted her to try to kind of explain or contextualize her drinking for a while.
[5:50]So yeah, so the reader, it would kind of creep up on the reader and then have her kind
[5:54]of, I think her transgression, she has a transgression.
[5:58]I think there's one that really catalyzes her husband to say, let's go, let's go try
[6:03]to change things for you.
[6:05]But I guess I won't give that away right now.
[6:07]I hope I didn't give anything away, but I thought that was one of the main roles.
[6:11]No.
[6:12]I can take it out.
[6:13]No.
[6:14]Okay.
[6:15]No, no, no.
[6:16]So a big influencing event in Elsie's life is the loss that she suffered early in her
[6:21]own life.
[6:22]And I won't give that away.
[6:23]But it sort of isn't until she comes to terms with it that she can move forward.
[6:26]So I was wondering if you've seen this sort of real life effect of a loss like this for
[6:31]yourself or for someone close to you or if you just did this as some sort of literary
[6:35]device for Elsie.
[6:36]Yeah, you're picking up on all the good stuff.
[6:41]You're sort of true engines of the book that I call it the legacy of grief.
[6:49]And I think many of the people I love carry that legacy.
[6:55]Many families I know like the constellation of the family can have a legacy of grief around
[7:00]it.
[7:01]And I certainly have loved ones who carry that legacy.
[7:07]And it came to a point for me where I just really wanted to explore it.
[7:11]And so I gave that to Elsie.
[7:14]And I do think it shifts and shapes lives entirely.
[7:18]And I showed the book to some of the people who are very affected by grief.
[7:25]And they were so supportive of the book.
[7:28]And that really gave me more permission to keep going in that direction.
[7:32]Yeah.
[7:33]I find you can, I mean, I had a period of time when I went through a lot of loss in my
[7:37]life.
[7:38]And I feel that I can now almost sniff out people who have the same sensibility because
[7:43]of loss that they've had.
[7:44]Do you know what I mean?
[7:45]I feel like once you've gone through loss, there's just a new outlet.
[7:48]Like on life.
[7:49]And you can sort of see it in someone even as you're just chatting with them.
[7:52]Like, oh, okay, you know, you get it.
[7:54]It's like you get the plot almost.
[7:55]Yeah.
[7:56]That's so well said.
[7:57]No, that's it.
[7:58]Yeah.
[7:59]That's really it.
[8:01]You know, I'll also share, because here I will really tell all.
[8:05]I did have cancer when I was quite young when I was 40 and my kids were very young.
[8:11]And I think that part of me writing deeply into Elsie's grief was some kind of catharsis
[8:19]projection of the grief I felt had I lost, you know, had I not been able to watch my kids
[8:26]grow up.
[8:27]And so I definitely was orbiting grief when I was in China.
[8:31]And you know, there was a lot of uncertainty about my prognosis and the kids were so young.
[8:37]And I definitely think that sits over the book.
[8:39]And I haven't actually articulated that until now.
[8:42]Thank you for doing so now.
[8:45]I'm really sorry, obviously, to hear about your cancer diagnosis.
[8:48]I'm so sorry you went through that.
[8:50]But it sort of explains to me some of the context now of I don't know how you got to that
[8:54]so well.
[8:55]It's like you really got the reader to feel all that.
[8:57]So maybe that's where I don't know.
[8:59]I think thank you.
[9:02]Thank you.
[9:03]Yeah.
[9:04]I think to your really good point, if you've known grief and trauma, it kind of informs
[9:11]everything about how you live after that.
[9:13]So, you know, delving into Elsie's grief was scarily easy for me, I guess, I would say.
[9:20]And, you know, I'm also here to say I'm on the other side of that really immediate fear
[9:25]and grief.
[9:26]And maybe that's why I also could write the book.
[9:28]I wanted to give her, I gave Elsie a really manageable illness.
[9:33]I don't know if you realize or notice, you know, it's a thyroid condition.
[9:36]Yes.
[9:37]It's manageable.
[9:38]Yep.
[9:39]But I wanted her to just have that little hiccup, that little sort of vulnerability
[9:45]hit that sickness can give people because I just have, I'm also fascinated by how many
[9:52]people struggle, right, with some kind of illness or disease.
[9:56]And they just manage it.
[9:58]Yeah.
[9:59]Thank you.
[10:00]So I wanted to give her that as well.
[10:02]And you also did that when one of Elsie's daughter
[10:04]has a little health scare towards the end of the book.
[10:07]And you wrote, when you're in the hospital
[10:09]with a small girl, everything becomes clear.
[10:11]It really does.
[10:12]And it's like the same thing, right?
[10:13]Like everything else just stops
[10:15]and all the important stuff just comes to the front.
[10:17]So I love how you wove that in so many different ways.
[10:21]Oh, thank you.
[10:22]Yeah, you're right.
[10:23]That scene is so key to the whole book in a way, isn't it?
[10:26]That's when she starts to have some clarity and.
[10:29]Yep, yeah.
[10:30]And you also, another thing you did that I really like
[10:32]to, can you tell, I really enjoyed this book.
[10:36]So Elsie, she struggles to find the balance
[10:38]between her painting, right, her professional life
[10:40]and her children.
[10:41]And they seem to come from the same place inside her.
[10:44]So she feels in a way she can't do both.
[10:46]So you wrote, what I will say is that I couldn't understand
[10:49]how to be obsessed with my children
[10:50]and obsessed with my painting at the same time.
[10:53]I thought both called for obsession.
[10:55]And then later you say it was my sickness in a way,
[10:57]not to be in the painting when I was painting
[10:59]and not to be with the girls when I was with the girls.
[11:01]So tell me where about that.
[11:02]And I was also wondering if you felt that way
[11:05]with your writing.
[11:07]I think that what you just read
[11:09]is really the most resonant important.
[11:12]Those are the two most important lines in the whole book.
[11:15]I mean, those were the kernel, the seed of the book.
[11:20]Those feel so true to me when you read them out loud.
[11:23]And I can't tell you how many women I know
[11:26]who've read the book sort of quote those lines back to me
[11:30]or write those lines to me.
[11:32]And they don't have to be artists.
[11:34]They're just women having all kinds of very careers.
[11:38]And naturally, the secret that I was talking about
[11:40]when you asked me what this book is about,
[11:41]it's that obsession and not being able to really be obsessed
[11:45]with both.
[11:46]And that does ring really true to my life.
[11:49]I mean, I was thinking just yesterday
[11:51]we had a snow day in Portland, Maine.
[11:53]I love snow days.
[11:54]I have high schoolers.
[11:55]I still love snow days.
[11:56]What happened was I have another novel to deliver
[12:01]to my editor.
[12:02]And I wiped that day.
[12:07]Like there was going to be no creativity.
[12:09]The day was gone.
[12:10]Once we had the snow day, because,
[12:13]and I kind of articulated this to myself
[12:15]and I got ready for the day was the,
[12:17]and there's a word I'll see if it's for it,
[12:18]which is recklessness, the recklessness,
[12:21]the obsessive quality of hopefully giving yourself over
[12:24]is something other than your kids.
[12:27]That is gone.
[12:28]The minute your kids are all in a snow day.
[12:30]And I think it's really just this incredible
[12:34]high wire act that so many women do.
[12:36]And I know we hear it over and over,
[12:38]but it doesn't go away.
[12:40]This sense of parsingling out the day,
[12:42]parsing out the hours and wanting to be fully
[12:45]with our children, you know,
[12:47]fully giving of ourselves.
[12:49]And then also, fully giving to our ambitions.
[12:52]And it's really a hard, hard thing to figure out.
[12:57]For, you know, in this cuts across the class and race,
[13:01]this is about the fact that we don't have
[13:03]any good child care in America.
[13:05]You know, we could go on and on about how much,
[13:10]I think that it becomes unfortunately gendered
[13:13]in a lot of households,
[13:15]whether they're like heteronormative,
[13:16]household, you're not.
[13:17]It's like who's the emotional hub?
[13:20]Whoever's the emotional hub
[13:21]is also probably trying to work.
[13:24]And it's really hard.
[13:25]Yeah, that's very well said.
[13:29]Well, I'm sorry to have quoted the same lines to everybody
[13:31]quotes, but it was really, I mean,
[13:33]I felt like those head flashing lights
[13:34]around them when I was reading.
[13:35]No, I'm like, that makes me so happy that you quoted those
[13:38]because that's really the essence of the book.
[13:41]And I didn't really tell many women, you know, I knew it.
[13:44]I must have noted intuitively or I wouldn't have written
[13:47]a book, but how many women are sort of like, yep, there.
[13:51]That's it.
[13:52]Yeah, how do we do this?
[13:53]Yeah, or we could export further and say,
[13:55]how many women tamp down their ambitions
[13:59]and their obsessions, you know?
[14:02]Well, it's like, I don't know.
[14:03]It's like, if you have a piece of pie,
[14:05]if you have like a pie slice, I feel like as soon as you have
[14:07]the kids, they like take up everything, right?
[14:09]Like everything else becomes just this one tiny little slice.
[14:12]So how do you gradually, you know, take back more of that,
[14:15]maybe as they get older or, but I think they're going from pursuing
[14:20]whatever you were doing to just sort of having your brain fill
[14:24]with the need to take care of these kids,
[14:26]which is a pleasure, right?
[14:27]I mean, in a way that's like, I mean, it's like why you have kids,
[14:29]right? Like, you don't mind it at first,
[14:31]but then it creeps up on you.
[14:33]So anyway, I'm sorry for talking so much.
[14:35]And you know, it's a pleasure and it's also,
[14:37]I mean, it's so many things, it's also,
[14:40]oh, these children need to survive.
[14:42]Exactly.
[14:43]That's responsible.
[14:44]And then it becomes kind of meta because you right now
[14:50]are following this whole wonderful kind of creative calling
[14:53]to do this amazing podcast about moms.
[14:57]You don't have time to read while you're a mom.
[15:00]You just have time to read.
[15:03]It's really interesting to me.
[15:06]Right, but you know, now that I've like found the time somehow to put this
[15:10]back into my life, I'm being such a better mom.
[15:13]I mean, I miss it.
[15:15]I mean, I missed it so much.
[15:16]And I just couldn't figure out a way to do what I,
[15:20]I just couldn't figure it out before.
[15:22]How to make it all work.
[15:23]And now, you know, I do the podcast,
[15:25]but you know, I just went to my kids' school assembly
[15:27]and, you know, I'm at my desk.
[15:29]And then I, you know, I don't know.
[15:30]I think it's like a constant shifting struggle
[15:32]to find a way to fit it in.
[15:34]And, absolutely.
[15:36]Yeah, that's true.
[15:37]And so cool that you're doing it again.
[15:39]It's probably, I mean, so cool.
[15:42]I'm thinking that what it's really about,
[15:45]it's the figuring it out.
[15:47]And I think what Elsie learns and what she's talking about,
[15:51]because I learned a lot from her,
[15:53]because she was so blisteringly honest.
[15:55]I really had to kind of let her talk.
[15:58]Once you started talking,
[15:59]I realized she was going to say some stuff
[16:01]that I was going to be uncomfortable with,
[16:03]because of its candor and I was just going to let her go.
[16:07]But she has to forgive herself, you know?
[16:10]Yep.
[16:11]And that is a big lesson, I think, for a lot of us.
[16:14]You know, myself included.
[16:16]It's the prioritizing too, right?
[16:18]Like, do I have to do it now or could this wait?
[16:21]I mean, I feel like when you talked about Elsie's daughter,
[16:23]Myla's separation anxiety in the book,
[16:25]I'm just going to read this little passage.
[16:27]But it totally speaks to this, right?
[16:29]Like, is it worth it?
[16:30]Anyway, you wrote, it got so,
[16:32]and Elsie's talking about her daughter, Myla here.
[16:33]It got so that she'd asked me every morning
[16:35]if I was going out.
[16:36]And when I was honest and told her,
[16:38]yes, I was, it made things worse
[16:39]because she'd persevered on my leaving.
[16:42]Then I tried not telling her I was leaving
[16:43]until I walked out the door,
[16:45]and she'd shriek and throw herself at me so violently.
[16:47]I wanted to lie down on the floor with her and cry.
[16:50]I know it's not uncommon for children to fixate
[16:52]on a parent like this for a time,
[16:53]and it's better now, and I can see it more clearly.
[16:56]But I wonder what was so important
[16:57]about going out back then that I couldn't stay home.
[17:00]Like, that was so awesome.
[17:02]I mean, every parent, you know, has dealt with this.
[17:06]I mean, I assume.
[17:07]I mean, I've certainly dealt with this so much
[17:08]with this separation as I and the kids
[17:09]not wanting you to go.
[17:10]And I even now, like, look back with my big kids
[17:13]or almost 12, and I'm like,
[17:14]why did I make them have those tantrums?
[17:17]You know?
[17:17]Like, why, you know, was it worth it?
[17:19]On the other hand, you know,
[17:21]I can't have my kids hold me hostage, right?
[17:23]That's not good.
[17:23]So anyway, I loved that.
[17:25]I know.
[17:26]I know.
[17:27]It's amazing what the shifting vantage point does for it.
[17:31]Yeah, and I really wanted to, everything for Elsie
[17:34]in the novel is just a little bit extreme.
[17:37]You know, she's pushed to extremes
[17:40]so that we can see these things
[17:41]that we're all going through amplified.
[17:44]I remember my editor, my beloved editor,
[17:46]it cannot be said,
[17:47]Mom, are we worried about my life?
[17:49]Does she have a condition?
[17:52]You know, should they be getting like help?
[17:55]And I was like, no, sorry, it's very normal.
[17:58]Yeah.
[17:59]And I think that you're leading me to also
[18:04]this sort of feeling I had around the writing of the book,
[18:07]which was children, struggle.
[18:10]They have these obsessive patches.
[18:12]They go through these phases,
[18:14]and I wanted to normalize it a little.
[18:15]I wanted to, like, honor and celebrate
[18:18]the wonderful quirkiness of children.
[18:21]Because I do not know a mother who's child isn't doing
[18:23]something like wildly idiosyncratic
[18:26]and like crazy in that given week, right?
[18:29]Yep.
[18:30]And I think we all think everyone else is, you know,
[18:32]leading this very, very, like, quotidian life.
[18:35]I'm more than ones that are weird, but no, you know.
[18:38]And my life just keeps reminding everyone
[18:39]how, like, sort of audacious kids can be, I think,
[18:42]and odd and wonderful.
[18:44]It always helps when you read something
[18:46]and recognize that something that you struggle with
[18:48]in your own life is like, oh, someone else is having
[18:51]this problem too.
[18:52]So tell me a little more about your process of writing.
[18:55]Like, when do you write, when did you write this book?
[18:57]When do you usually write?
[18:58]Do you start with outlines?
[18:59]Like, tell me about how you do it.
[19:02]Well, this novel, the process will take us back
[19:05]to your first question, which sort of,
[19:07]how did you come to write this novel?
[19:09]What was the idea for this novel?
[19:11]So when I was at this wildly rustic yoga retreat,
[19:15]which is a stretch to even call the yoga retreat,
[19:17]in Beijing, it was we were really on a little forgotten mountain
[19:21]and there really wasn't very much electricity.
[19:23]And it couldn't have been more austere.
[19:27]And I had this little notebook in my room.
[19:31]And I wrote some just quick, little stream of conscious
[19:37]scene about what was happening.
[19:39]And I kept those for the better part of 10 years,
[19:43]the way writers hoard, we hoard our material,
[19:48]or we keep it.
[19:49]And I would just sort of be over on the side.
[19:50]And I would say, because I would, you know,
[19:52]you're often asked what's your next project.
[19:54]And I would say, I think I'm writing about expats
[19:58]in this kind of mashup.
[20:00]on a mountain in Beijing. But I thought it was going to be a triptych of three different strong
[20:05]women and they were each going to speak. You know, and I thought it would be Tasman and May
[20:11]and I'll see they are three characters in the book. But I'll see it took over. And then
[20:16]once you took over, it's the whole thing just really opened up. I write in the morning. I love to
[20:22]write and go from like the dream world right into the writing, which is really hard when you have
[20:27]children. So I often tell all my grad students and anyone I can that you have to banish the
[20:34]electronics, banish all sort of contact with the outside world, except like providing perhaps
[20:40]of the breakfast or the help of getting the children off my kids walk to school. And then like go
[20:46]right to the desk, go right back to the dream world imagination world. So if I get too caught up in
[20:54]what I might call like the secular world, I'm totally dead for the day. And I'm not a
[21:02]night person at all in terms of creativity. So it's morning for me. It's like gold. Yeah.
[21:07]And how long did it take to write this book? You know this book in some ways happened really fast.
[21:12]It's a kind reviewers have called it a slim novel. I love that phrase. It's a slim novel.
[21:19]I've wanted it to be short and pack a punch. I wanted it to move really fast seven days on a
[21:24]mountain. I didn't take probably more than a year to write. All told, you know, I did move it from
[21:32]third person in the voices of those three women into Elsie's voice. So that's a whole
[21:38]another iteration. Yeah. Interesting. And then yeah. And what? Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Sorry.
[21:45]No. I think I don't really know what else that's going to say. I wanted to just ask what
[21:50]your what the book that you referenced earlier is about your next book. Oh, in some ways it feels
[21:56]like a sequel right now as we're talking. It's working title as how to talk to wolves. And it is
[22:01]coming out with canops probably in 21. And it is a novel about a mother who is raising teenage
[22:11]boys in Maine on an island. And she comes. They come from a fishing family, fishing community.
[22:20]This is a world I grew up in. I know really well. And I'm really excited to shift my gaze fully
[22:26]to Maine. I haven't written, you know, Elsie kind of gets me halfway to Maine because in the novel
[22:31]she is from Maine. And I find that as I've aged, I have a lot more to say about Maine and the
[22:37]changing Maine. And I'm finally able to not take the reader out of America. You know, I feel like
[22:44]I'm able to kind of stay calmer and more patient here in Maine and say the things I want to say
[22:50]about class and culture in Maine. I think I can do it in Maine. And I actually have a draft of that
[22:57]novel. And it's actually on a good day. It's a really comedic novel because it's really comedic to
[23:03]live with teenage boys. It has to be funny. And one of the boys goes off the rails and the father
[23:11]becomes very injured and isn't really able to be part of the family. And so it's again very much
[23:18]about a woman and her strength and her power and her kind of reckoning with herself as a mother.
[23:26]This woman is a wildly acclaimed rock musician videographer. And she has gotten to know like,
[23:33]I'm having a lot of fun with it because she has been traveling the world really spending time
[23:38]with some of the great women musicians of our time. And then she's called back to Maine for a reason.
[23:45]And so it's about shifting ambition, shifting scope of your life as a woman.
[23:50]So awesome. I can't wait to read that. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors out there?
[23:56]Ah, let's see. Let me see. Yes. So I teach in this grad program called Stone Coast. And it's here
[24:05]in Portland. And I love it. I think I've been there for six years. And I have this, I say to my students,
[24:10]every semester, I come up with this new mantra for my seminar talk because I always give a seminar
[24:19]sort of talk on something every semester. And I used to think that it was about sentences.
[24:26]If I could only get my students to understand the beauty of sentences and sort of language.
[24:30]And then I would say it's about mining setting. And then I would give talks on pace and
[24:36]temporality. And you know, what I really think it's about and what I would want to encourage
[24:42]all writers to do is to trust yourself to create unique singular voices on the page. Because
[24:52]the voices have to kind of levitate off the page and speak to the reader. And you know, we can all
[24:57]talk about craft till the cows come home. But it's about actually trusting this emotional current
[25:05]that's carrying you to write and giving it to a character. So they have this voice. How's that?
[25:12]I'll take it. Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on mom's time to read books. Thanks
[25:19]for writing your beautiful novel. And I can't wait to read your next one. Oh, thank you,
[25:22]Vivi. Thank you for what you're doing. I love the podcast. And it's been a great treat to talk to
[25:29]you. Oh, thanks so much. I really appreciate that. Okay. Take care. Take care. I'll keep following.
[25:34]Oh, thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.
[25:38]Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box. S-C-R-I-L-B-O-X dot com cereal box dot com delivering addictive
[25:46]book content in short listen or read installments. Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound for
[25:51]the audio editing and mixing. Thanks for listening to mom's time to have time to read books.