Celeste Ng, LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:12]My daughter and I are here for a special announcement, which is that Momstone Have Time to Read Books was just nominated for a webby award in the arts and culture category for podcasts.
[0:22]So please, please vote by April 18, so that I can win the People's Choice component of this award.
[0:27]And now my daughter has a little something to say.
[0:29]Hi, I love my mom so much. She's been working really hard for this podcast to be on Instagram.
[0:36]And I also want you to do that in love first, so please, please vote for Zibi Owens.
[0:43]This is Momstone Have Time to Read Books, and I love my mom so much.
[0:47]Please vote for Zibi Owens, where the awards.
[0:50]The website is vote.webbyawards.com.
[0:54]Today's episode has been sponsored by cereal box.
[0:57]Cereal box delivers addictive book content in shortlisten or read installments.
[1:02]Designed to fit into today's fast-paced mobile lifestyle.
[1:05]Switch between listening and reading with a single click, picking up right where you left off.
[1:09]Learn more at cerealbox.com.
[1:11]S-E-R-I-A-L-B-O-X dot com.
[1:15]I am so excited to be interviewing Celeste Ang.
[1:18]Celeste is the author of best-selling novels, Little Fires Everywhere, and everything I never told you, which were number one and number two, Amazon Bestsellers.
[1:26]A graduate of Harvard University Celeste received her MFA from the University of Michigan.
[1:31]She's the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature at the ALAs, Alex Award, and the Medici Book Prize.
[1:42]Native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, she currently lives in Boston.
[1:46]Hi Celeste, thanks so much for coming on Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[1:50]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:52]I remember meeting you.
[1:53]I don't know if you remember.
[1:54]I came to a literary affairs event in Beverly Hills, maybe two years ago, a year ago.
[1:59]I do remember that event, because it was one of the most fun events that I've done, so it was really memorable.
[2:05]Oh, well, it was great.
[2:06]I remember making sure I was in LA, so I could meet you.
[2:09]So now it's such a pleasure to be able to interview on Skype like this.
[2:12]Well, thank you so much for taking the time.
[2:14]Of course.
[2:15]So lots of questions.
[2:16]I have so much I want to know.
[2:17]First, can we talk about everything I never told you your first novel?
[2:21]Sure.
[2:22]Okay.
[2:23]You open the novel with the sense.
[2:25]Lydia is dead, but they don't know this yet.
[2:27]You then go on to illustrate the havoc that this death wreaks, obviously, on the family.
[2:32]The mom, Marilyn, the dad, James, siblings, Hannah, and Nate, when the 16-year-old and the family dies.
[2:37]So what gave you the idea to write this book?
[2:40]And how were you able to do you think to so authentically represent this horrific life experience in their family?
[2:46]Well, the seed of everything I never told you came from a story that my husband told me,
[2:51]just offhand a little anecdote from his childhood, that he'd had a friend and they had a pond in their backyard.
[2:56]And at some point, his friend was a little kid, pushed his younger sister into the lake.
[3:00]And she was fine.
[3:01]They pulled her out.
[3:02]You know, friend got in trouble.
[3:03]Everyone was good.
[3:04]But I, for some reason, this stuck in my head.
[3:07]And I kept thinking, you know, what was that relationship like between this brother and sister?
[3:11]Before he decided to push her in, you know, were they just kids playing around?
[3:14]Or was there something more there?
[3:16]This is the writer's mindset where it was looking for trauma.
[3:20]And then I sort of thought, what was that relationship like afterwards?
[3:24]Did she hold that over her brother for the rest of his life?
[3:28]You know, what just, it got my mind kind of imagining.
[3:31]And of course, the book ended up going in a completely different direction than the real life story did.
[3:36]I started thinking a lot about what happens to families when they're sort of a favorite in the family
[3:41]and what happens when that sort of center of gravity of the family is taken away,
[3:45]you know, how the rest of the family kind of copes and how the shape of the family changes.
[3:49]And I just, I thought a lot about sort of loss and family relationships that I'd seen
[3:54]or, you know, my own family dynamics, which, you know, the books not based on them,
[3:57]but what would it be like to lose someone who was sort of the center of your world?
[4:02]And that's kind of how the story came about.
[4:04]Interesting.
[4:05]And in terms of the family relationships,
[4:07]I know it wasn't based on your family, but the mom, Marilyn, I know you've written about
[4:11]and this New York Times article that was so great about how, you know,
[4:15]your mom loved her Betty Crocker cookbook and yet was this brilliant scientist working in the lab,
[4:20]you know, killing rats during the day and sort of the juxtaposition of those two parts of her identity.
[4:25]And of course, there's a cookbook that plays a prominent role in your story.
[4:29]Also, did you base Marilyn on your mother or?
[4:32]You know, I didn't.
[4:34]I'm really fortunate that my mom is sort of a great role model for me.
[4:38]And in a lot of ways, she's the opposite of Marilyn.
[4:40]And so I guess Marilyn is sort of what maybe if my mom had not been as fortunate as she was and had not made the choices that she had made.
[4:49]You know, someone like my mom who had, you know, all this talent and ambition,
[4:54]but didn't get a chance to exercise it could have maybe ended up the way that Marilyn is.
[4:58]You know, she's had these dreams and she's frustrated in the novel.
[5:01]And that really kind of is one of the roots of the problems in her family.
[5:05]But I did give Marilyn the mom in my cookbook.
[5:08]My own mother's real life Betty Crocker cookbook because it was just too fabulous a detail to not use.
[5:15]It was the cookbook that we had when I was growing up.
[5:18]It was the cookbook that I learned to cook from.
[5:20]And when I was an adult, I looked back and I saw that it had all these little passages telling you sort of what kind of woman you should be.
[5:27]And you know, saying things like, make a cake just because you feel good today.
[5:33]Is there anything that gives you more satisfaction than, you know, a row of jellies and preserves that you made yourself.
[5:40]And it just struck me that how hard it would have been to be a woman at that time feeling already like you didn't get to fulfill your potential and having even your cookbook telling you what you were supposed to want and what you were supposed to not want.
[5:53]And so I took some of those details that I think my mom had to fight against in her life.
[5:58]And I gave them to Marilyn as sort of signs of what what oppresses her in her time.
[6:03]I loved how you weaved in Marilyn sort of longingly looking at her child's textbooks about physics and just all that sort of really deep down desire for knowledge that she couldn't figure out how to get in her life.
[6:17]Yeah, it strikes me because I grew up I think in sort of one of the first generations where, you know, our moms were working to think about what it would have been like to be one generation older and see your kids get all these opportunities but know that they had come a little bit too late for you and how sort of heart running that would be.
[6:36]And to you know try to put myself in Marilyn's place and imagine like you said how would you try and feed you know that desire for knowledge or you know how would you try and make peace with the things that you didn't get to do.
[6:47]That's tough.
[6:48]Yeah.
[6:49]You have Marilyn and I don't mean to spend the whole time time at Marilyn but I did find her to be a really fascinating character.
[6:55]Marilyn who is white marries James who you describe in one scene as the skinny Oriental man waiting next to her at the train station.
[7:02]This is when they meet Marilyn's mother and she gives Marilyn advice she's just not she's not sort of down with this relationship really and says you know you'll change your mind you'll regret it later think about your children where you live you won't fit in anywhere you'll be sorry for the rest of your life.
[7:18]Do you think Marilyn does end up feeling sorry about this decision.
[7:23]No I don't think so at all and I think I should clarify that you know that the skinny Oriental man waiting next to the train station is sort of what what Marilyn's mother sort of sees and I think that tells you a lot about sort of why she's so sure that this marriage is a bad idea and she's so sure that Marilyn will be sorry for marrying someone so different from her.
[7:42]mother doesn't really know how to react to her daughter falling in love with someone who just is of a different race has a really different family background he might as well be an alien to her.
[7:54]And so Marilyn's mother is just unable to imagine how they could have enough in common and I don't think Marilyn has quite the same troubles I mean she doesn't.
[8:03]She doesn't know everything about James but at the same time I think she knows that she loves him and he does love her.
[8:09]And for them that that makes it worth trying and for her mother she just can't imagine stepping outside of her own world in that way but I don't think that Marilyn is sorry I think that like in any marriage.
[8:21]They have their difficulties and they find that there are ways that you don't understand the person who you are closest to who you may be love the most.
[8:29]That was one of the things that I wanted to explore in the book and that sort of fascinates me how how much can we ever really understand anybody you know whether our backgrounds are the same or not you know what are all the things that you end up sort of keeping from other people even even your partner in life.
[8:43]Maybe I should I do need to get your husband in here and.
[8:47]Let's see if they're really interesting because I always sort of think like what do people who aren't writers how do they process all the things that happen in their lives you know how do they you know when they watch other people or they watch you know their family members or friends how do they.
[9:01]And like you doing something really different from what I'm doing how do they make sense of that you know for me it's it's on the page I was wonder how people who aren't writers and I guess aren't therapists deal with that.
[9:11]I think a lot of people don't deal with it at all frankly right that's right and I think that it shows in a lot of their resulting behaviors and.
[9:19]Unfortunately I think that's right I think one way that maybe people do deal with it is that books are sort of a safe space in which to kind of encounter new ideas and encounter.
[9:30]People doing things that are different from what you would do and that is one of the things that I think fiction does really well is that it kind of makes you ask yourself okay what if this were my life how would I feel it's a sort of.
[9:40]What if space that you can kind of help if you want to you can process that sort of stuff yeah maybe also visual mediums like I feel like people get really into their shows or.
[9:50]Yeah they can relate to on TV or in the movies where they see elements exactly where you you feel a connection to a certain character and you kind of watch them.
[10:00]process it and you might do what they do or you might not, but it's a way of sort of deciding
[10:03]what would I want to do?
[10:04]Yeah.
[10:05]Now I'm with you.
[10:06]I need to write everything down.
[10:07]I wish I were writing you these questions right now instead of talking.
[10:11]No, there's a lot in the book about sort of the sphere of losing your child and how now
[10:17]that it's come to pass, like how can you really protect your kids?
[10:20]I felt like it stemmed from that sort of place of anxiety and fear.
[10:25]Did you feel that based on like did you draw on some of your own, you know, relationship
[10:29]with your kids or?
[10:30]I did a little bit.
[10:31]I wrote the first drafts of the book before I became a mother and then I finished the
[10:36]book after I became a mother.
[10:37]And I do think that it added a different dimension for me to not just imagine but to
[10:42]actually sort of feel the terror of something happening to your kid.
[10:45]I think that for most of us, once you have a kid, you will do anything to protect that
[10:51]kid.
[10:52]You will do anything to try and make sure they're happy.
[10:54]You don't always know what that is, which is a hard thing to realize, but to really sort
[10:58]of feel that kind of visceral, it's beautiful, but it's also almost terrifying to think
[11:03]how to know how far you would go to make your child happy or protect your kid.
[11:08]And I think that becoming a mother and then sort of becoming aware of that side of myself
[11:14]where I'd known.
[11:15]But now I felt it.
[11:16]I think it was something that I definitely drew on in the last draft of the book to try
[11:19]and make the reader feel that too.
[11:21]My five-year-old daughter asked me last night at dinner.
[11:23]She's like, if you could have three superpowers, but only three, you know, how kids
[11:28]stuck.
[11:29]What would they be?
[11:30]And I was like, well, can I pick like protecting somebody else as one of my superpowers?
[11:34]Would I only get to protect three people?
[11:36]Yeah, that kind of work is, which kid would I not protect with my kid?
[11:40]Which kid feels, which kid do you think is okay to go on?
[11:43]Correct.
[11:44]Exactly.
[11:45]It's so funny.
[11:46]That's true.
[11:47]I mean, I think we don't realize sort of what that feeling is like when you're a kid.
[11:50]You don't sort of realize sort of all the things that your parents are doing.
[11:54]the things that maybe drive you crazy or the things that feel to you like oppression
[11:58]are often coming out of a place of love.
[12:01]And I think being on the other side of that relationship, so to speak, kind of open that
[12:05]up for me.
[12:06]Yeah.
[12:07]I try to tell them sometimes.
[12:08]I'm doing this because I love you.
[12:09]And they're like, whatever.
[12:11]Whatever.
[12:12]If you love me, why are you making me eat this broccoli?
[12:13]Yeah.
[12:14]Do you love me?
[12:15]Do you love me?
[12:16]Do you give me screen time more often, too?
[12:17]If you love me, you would buy me this ice cream.
[12:19]Exactly.
[12:20]And I think that's it.
[12:22]You can know that at a certain point.
[12:25]And then I think that it is a certain point you maybe switch to from knowing it to actually
[12:28]feeling it.
[12:29]Yes.
[12:30]And it's a big shift.
[12:31]Totally.
[12:32]I feel like you also deal with losing a mother's loss that same kind of feeling and issue
[12:39]a lot in little fires everywhere.
[12:41]You have the loss between Izzy and Mrs. Richardson.
[12:45]You have the McCulloch's loss, babies' loss, lexies, and might be mispronouncing these.
[12:50]So I felt like it was another vehicle you used to sort of illustrate this.
[12:55]How did you come up with the idea for little fires everywhere?
[12:57]And was that one of the central themes you wanted to tackle?
[13:01]Yeah.
[13:02]One of the interesting things I'm learning about writing another book and now as I work
[13:05]on my third is you start to learn all of your own obsessions that you maybe weren't aware
[13:10]of.
[13:11]The idea for little fires everywhere really came from wanting to write about my hometown.
[13:15]I grew up in Shaker Heights, which is where the book is based.
[13:19]And I had the experience of growing up there thinking, this is just like everywhere else.
[13:24]This is totally normal.
[13:25]And then when I had been away from home for about 10 years, I went away for college and
[13:29]then went out on my own, kind of looking back with a little more perspective and realizing,
[13:34]oh, actually there were some things about that place that were really strange and unusual.
[13:38]And then there were also things about it that were really wonderful that I did not recognize
[13:43]and appreciate when I was living there.
[13:45]You get both sides of that.
[13:46]So I really wanted to write about this community that was wonderful and a great place to
[13:51]grow up, but also infuriating in other ways and had all of these complexities.
[13:56]And so I made this family that would sort of embody that city, not Mr. Richardson's,
[14:00]you know, the sort of archetypal, perfect family that follows the rules, you know, picture
[14:04]perfect.
[14:06]And then I introduced this other family, Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl, who were kind
[14:10]of the opposite of that.
[14:11]And so when you put those two elements together, you know, story happens.
[14:14]And I realized as I started to investigate these characters that I was also really interested
[14:18]in exploring, like you said, sort of this relationship between mothers and daughters and
[14:21]the ways that you feel like you ought to be the closest people and you ought to know each
[14:25]other the best.
[14:26]And in some ways you do, but sometimes you're so close to each other that you can't see
[14:30]each other clearly and you're the worst person to try and understand or sympathize your
[14:34]father or your daughter, that kind of paradox is something that just fascinates me.
[14:38]It may end up showing up in the next books too.
[14:40]We'll see.
[14:42]Can you tell us what your next book is about?
[14:44]I am sort of ping ponging between two ideas right now.
[14:47]And I'm trying to see which one of them is going to kind of pull ahead and grab my attention
[14:52]more.
[14:53]But both of them I think are going to deal with mothers and children again and sort of
[14:55]just the ways that parents try and protect their children, but that children don't always
[14:59]understand that.
[15:00]Parents don't always understand their children.
[15:02]I mean, I think this is a, this is the well that I probably am going to keep going back
[15:06]to for some time because it's such a human dilemma.
[15:08]I think you have a lot of interest in drinkers from that well.
[15:10]I mean, I think people are thirsty for that no seriously, I mean, it's such an important
[15:17]relationship, right?
[15:18]It's one of the most fundamental ones.
[15:20]And yet it is also sort of one of the most confusing and infuriating and complicated ones.
[15:25]And it's just, and it's a new journal one too, right?
[15:27]They're always going to be parents and they're always going to be children.
[15:29]And we're always, you know, probably like cave people were also confused by their children
[15:34]and the teachers were probably confused by their, their appearance and it's still the
[15:39]same now.
[15:40]They're trying to sort it out by writing on the walls, like in their caves and everything.
[15:44]I don't understand why I had to draw this horse.
[15:46]You just don't understand that's really funny.
[15:50]I loved what you said, by the way, in this essay you wrote, this is a long time ago called
[15:54]stranger than fact why we need fiction in a world of memoirs.
[15:57]And you wrote, you don't question a memoir.
[15:59]You believe it's true when you pick it up, but you were told from the beginning that
[16:02]fiction is untrue.
[16:04]It depends on its power to convince you in spite of this knowledge and that belief when it
[16:08]comes is a complete transformation.
[16:10]I love that idea that you're trying to convince people to believe what is actually false.
[16:15]So tell me more about the allure of fiction writing for you.
[16:18]How did you get into it and what, what do you love about it?
[16:21]I just, it always just been interested in stories.
[16:23]I was a really early reader of as the kid who always sort of was off in the corner with
[16:27]her nose stuck in a book and I was really lucky that my parents really encouraged that
[16:31]actually.
[16:32]My readers and my sisters a big reader and I was always interested in making up stories.
[16:36]Basically as soon as I started reading I wanted to make up my own stories and I think
[16:40]partly it's just, it's fun.
[16:42]There's a joy, you're playing a little mental trick on people, right?
[16:45]You're kind of spinning this world and part of the fun of it is that you know it doesn't
[16:49]exist.
[16:50]And then what I started to realize is I got older is that even though this is a made up
[16:54]story, it's getting at something that feels really real.
[16:58]And like, like I was saying, for me, that's a way of processing the world.
[17:01]I have a good friend who's also a writer and she refers to fiction writing as life
[17:05]editing.
[17:06]Because she says that in life, events don't happen neatly.
[17:10]You don't always know why it happens.
[17:12]There's not always a clear reason, there's not always a clear lesson, but in fiction
[17:16]you can kind of rearrange things to make sense out of what happens to you in the world.
[17:22]And I think that's a really human instinct that we try and understand the world through narrative.
[17:27]So if something happens to you, especially something terrible, someone dies, you go, why did
[17:32]this happen?
[17:33]And if you can understand what the cause and effect were, you at least have an understanding,
[17:38]right?
[17:39]There's a reason that it happens, you can learn something from it.
[17:42]Otherwise life just feels really random.
[17:44]And so I think for me, one of the joys of fiction is that you can kind of arrange things
[17:49]in life and you can kind of look at life and make a story out of it and find some meaning
[17:54]in it.
[17:55]And it's a way that as it's happening, it's not always clear what's going on or what you're supposed
[17:59]to take from this.
[18:00]And in fiction, you can do that.
[18:02]It's really powerful sort of thing.
[18:05]And what's your process like once you get the germ of an idea for a story?
[18:10]I tend to really start writing from things that I don't understand.
[18:16]So what usually draws me into a story is when someone is doing something and I don't understand
[18:22]how they became this person or why they would think this was a good idea.
[18:26]And for me, the process of writing is then trying to understand how did they become this
[18:31]kind of person or what led them to do this?
[18:34]How do we get into this situation?
[18:35]How did this girl drown in a lake or why would this girl burn down her family's house?
[18:40]And I tend to go out of that through character.
[18:43]I approach getting to know my character sort of like you might approach getting to know
[18:47]a new friend where you start off saying, okay, where'd you grow up?
[18:50]What's your job?
[18:51]What do you like to do for fun?
[18:53]What TV shows are you watching?
[18:54]Oh, you like that.
[18:55]What do you like about Russian doll?
[18:58]And then as you get to know them more, you start to understand sort of how they were formed
[19:03]and what they think.
[19:04]And you start saying like, oh, are you close with your parents?
[19:07]Oh, how come you're not close with your mom and you get a sense of what their issues are.
[19:12]And once you know that, you kind of know how they would react to different situations.
[19:17]And for me, that's sort of where the story kind of takes on a life of its own.
[19:20]I know the characters well enough to know what they would do.
[19:23]It's almost a matter of sort of letting them go in the story and just seeing how it plays
[19:26]out.
[19:27]And then how do you tackle, like, do you, once you develop the character, do you have
[19:32]an outline for the twists and turns of the plot?
[19:35]Like, do you have it all in front of your visual type person?
[19:38]Do you, like, what does it look like, what does your desk look like?
[19:41]Like, how do you do it, actually?
[19:43]I wish I had it all written in front of me.
[19:45]For me, what I actually do is I spend a lot of time writing pages that never make
[19:49]it into the book.
[19:51]So I'll write from a character's point of view, you know, what her memories were, or what
[19:55]her side of the story is, or how she feels about these people, or how she...
[20:00]You know, all kinds of stuff that just kind of lets me know sort of like what's important about this story for her, and I'll do that for a bunch of the different characters.
[20:08]And after I've written, you know, it might be 100 pages that nobody ever really gets to see.
[20:14]I kind of know what the important parts are.
[20:16]And then I can kind of go back and actually just sort of say, okay, here's the important part for her point of view and the important part from his point of view and take out just the highlights essentially.
[20:26]I have, I mean around my desk right now, as I'm looking, it's mostly sort of like motivational sort of things right now that are sort of like reminding me to like keep going up until recently I had a map of shaker heights where little fires everywhere is set just for my reference because I would need to refer to street names.
[20:42]Sometimes I have poems up, I have little notes that, you know, my friends have sent me and things like that.
[20:47]But I do, after I've written the draft, that's sort of when I get a little bit more methodical about it. After I've written the draft, I will print it out.
[20:56]And then I'll make an outline from what I've already written. I don't outline first and then sort of follow that as a as a recipe, which seems like actually it would be a lot smarter.
[21:06]I'm glad to come with ideas. I'm only here to help, you know.
[21:10]I wish I could do that for me what tends to happen is if I write the outline first the book loses all of its surprise.
[21:16]I need to sort of be surprised or else I think the reader isn't.
[21:19]So instead I write this incredibly long messy draft and then I kind of look at it and I sort of make an outline of what I wrote and I look at what I did.
[21:27]And then I can see which parts are important and which parts maybe don't need to be there and I can cut those out.
[21:32]But for me I sort of go about it backwards in that way. It's a very sort of it's like feeling my way through a dark room.
[21:38]It's kind of like when you take a million pictures of an event and then you can go back and like craft the album at the end.
[21:43]That's exactly what it is because you don't always know sort of which shots are going to be the ones that say something, right?
[21:49]Because as you're in the moment of the event, you're taking pictures and you're trying to catch as much as you can.
[21:56]But you also don't know like, you know, if it's a wedding you're like, okay, we think there's going to be a great event at the cake cutting.
[22:02]But who knows maybe there will be a moment where there are you catch two little kids who are dancing and just having a great time and you didn't know that was going to be the case.
[22:09]And only afterwards can you go back and kind of find oh that was that was the moment that was the moment that I want to remember.
[22:15]Excellent.
[22:16]Who were in an MFA program? What did you take away that maybe you've used to help you write these books if anything? Hopefully something.
[22:23]I got a lot from my MFA program. I think it's not for everybody but for me it was really helpful.
[22:29]One of the really big things was just taking my writing seriously.
[22:33]It was the first time that anybody had ever really said to me, hey, we think what you're doing is important.
[22:38]We think you should keep doing it. We're going to give you time and resources to let you work on that.
[22:44]This is a really big thing psychologically for me because before that I had always thought writing was just this weird hobby that was on the side and it wasn't possible to do that as a job and it was maybe even like a waste of time.
[22:55]So that was a really big thing.
[22:57]I think another thing that I really got from it was finding a group of writers who are good readers for my work and who are now lifelong friends but also we read each other's stories.
[23:08]And we can give each other sort of feedback and I learned how to listen to those people.
[23:13]And when they say, I don't understand what's happening or why does she do this?
[23:16]It's hard to take criticism especially early on but when it's somebody who you know understands your work and loves it.
[23:23]They make the stories better and it was a really good experience to learn how to take other people's feedback and work it into my own work.
[23:32]You don't have to do it alone.
[23:34]Instead you had motivational stickers, motivational notes and you just do you find it hard to keep going sometimes?
[23:40]Is it hard? Imagine it's a solitary endeavor. You go about it your own way.
[23:46]It is. It's really hard because most of the time I'm sitting alone in my office and I'm working on this thing and I hope someone will read it and I hope it means something to them.
[23:54]But for a long time it's just me and these people that I made up in my head.
[23:58]And so it is, I definitely still have moments even now where I'm like, oh god I cannot do this.
[24:04]I need to go and get an actual job except that I have no actual skills.
[24:08]Like a terrible waitress. Like I don't, you know, I have no other, you know, I would not be able to make it through med school.
[24:14]Like, you know, I have no marketable skills.
[24:16]And so I do, I have, I have a little like I'm looking up at what I have here and I have like a cross stitch that somebody sent me
[24:22]of a Colson Whitehead quote, which is be kind, make art fight power. You know, just sort of reminders that like this thing that feels like a sort of crazy, ridiculous endeavor is actually worth doing that it actually maybe will mean something to people that it's not just me wasting my time and everybody else's by, you know, spinning fairy tales.
[24:45]But that it hopefully can, I don't know, open something up for people in some way that it can, it can give them new ideas or can ask them questions that that are important. That's the goal for me.
[24:56]I feel like you achieved the goal in finding your books and like number one and number two Amazon bestsellers like, you know, you've had so many prizes and success.
[25:05]How does it feel to go from like, you know, sitting in your office to then going all over the country on tour and having people from everywhere talking about what's like so private in your mind now.
[25:16]I mean, it's very surreal because honestly I'm still sitting here in my office right now. You know, I'm still me and I still, you know, I write things and I still go is anyone going to want to read this, you know, it's not a given.
[25:27]But it's also been really gratifying and really honestly humbling when I hear from readers, you know, when I go to a book of Andrew I get an email from a reader or letter.
[25:37]Where they say that this book meant something to them that it reflected something of their lives back to them or it illuminated something about their families or their friends or their children, you know, it's really powerful.
[25:49]And like I said, it's really humbling to have somebody say, you know what, this made me think about my relationship with my mom in a different way, you know, or this made me think about how I want to raise my kids.
[25:59]So what is it that I think is important like it made me start asking myself those questions. That's maybe the best compliment that a writer could ever have I think.
[26:07]And are either of these being made into TV or movies or they are they're both being adapted for film actually everything I never told you is being adapted into feature film Julia Roberts is attached to star as Marilyn.
[26:19]So excited I'm learning about the film process that there's it's just a very long and complicated process it involves a lot of moving pieces, but I'm really hopeful that that'll come together and I'm thrilled that somebody that I admire greatly also wants to kind of bring this to a to a new adaptation.
[26:36]And little fires everywhere is being adapted as a limited TV series by Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington Reese Witherspoon is going to star as Elena Richardson and Kerry Washington is going to star as Mia Warren.
[26:49]And so they're I think they've just moved into production as of right now so they've got the scripts I've gotten to see the scripts and I think they're doing an amazing job.
[26:57]So I'm really excited I've been really fortunate that all the people that I've been working with on both these projects seem to get the heart of the books and so I think they're doing an amazing job.
[27:23]So just to close what advice do you have to aspiring writers I would say read a lot.
[27:30]It's such a cliche but it's really true I think that that sort of how you figure out what stories are important to you you read a lot even if you don't think you're going to like it try it out if you don't like it it's like a new food take it take a taste if you don't like it you don't have to eat the rest.
[27:43]And then write a lot try just writing a lot of the different styles a lot of different forms is that's how you figure out what your voices and write the things that scare you write the things that obsess you write the things that just sort of bewilder you because I think those are the stories that you need to write some those are the stories that only you can write.
[28:04]Well thank you so much I could talk to you all day but I don't want to take more of your time good luck with the writing the rest of today and thank you so much for taking the time of course thank you.
[28:18]Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box S-E-R-I-A-L-B-O-X dot com cereal box dot com delivering addictive book content in short listen or read installments.
[28:28]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound for the audio editing and mixing.
[28:32]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.