Kate Hope Day, author of IF, THEN
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens and you're listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:34]I'm really excited to be here today with debut novelist Kate Hope Day.
[0:38]Kate is a former associate producer at HBO.
[0:41]A graduate of Brynmar with a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pittsburgh, she currently
[0:46]lives in Oregon with her husband and two children.
[0:49]Let's talk to Kate about her novel if then.
[0:52]So welcome Kate, thanks for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:55]Thank you so much for having me.
[0:57]This is delightful.
[0:58]Oh, so good.
[0:59]So, now's the time to tell people what your book is about.
[1:04]Hopefully I won't forget.
[1:08]So if then is a novel about four neighbors who share a cul-de-sac in a fictional town in
[1:19]Oregon called Clearing, and it follows these four people as they're going about their lives.
[1:25]One of them, Ginny is a surgeon, and she lives with her husband, Mark, and they're 11-year-old
[1:30]son Noah.
[1:32]And Mark is a wildlife biologist, and he studies how animal behavior can potentially predict
[1:38]natural disasters, which was very interesting.
[1:41]I had no idea.
[1:42]Is that true by the way?
[1:43]That is real science.
[1:44]Wow.
[1:45]And I can talk a little more about them.
[1:46]Okay, so I'm sorry to interrupt, so I know it's a cool, yeah.
[1:50]The first, I just made it up, and then I went and looked, and there's some real science.
[1:56]That's awesome.
[1:57]So, interesting.
[1:58]So, they're in one house, and then in the other house is Cass, who's a new mother,
[2:05]and she's struggling to still maintain her work, which is being a philosophy scholar.
[2:13]And then in the other house is Samara, who has recently moved back home after her mother's
[2:18]staff, and she is a sort of fledgling real estate agent.
[2:23]And those are the sort of four main characters.
[2:28]And so, they're going about their lives the way we all do, you know, trying to balance
[2:34]career, kids, friends, and then some strange things start happening.
[2:41]They begin to see visions that they don't entirely understand.
[2:45]And as the book unfolds, we begin to realize that they're seeing glimpses of an alternate
[2:51]reality, which is like their lives, but with some sort of startling differences.
[2:57]And that's my little-
[2:58]That's not my sense.
[2:59]That's not my sense.
[3:00]That's not my sense.
[3:01]That's not my sense.
[3:02]Okay, fast attention.
[3:03]I didn't even have to look at them.
[3:05]Oh, my goodness.
[3:06]No, that's neat.
[3:07]Well, the book was really interesting, and it lets you sort of think about, like, what
[3:11]if, like, of course with your title, but, like, what if your life went in a different
[3:15]direction?
[3:16]The whole sliding doors movie phenomenon, which is like one of my favorite movies, and
[3:19]because you always think, like, these little things in our lives, what if I had done this
[3:24]or that, like, what inspired you to write this?
[3:27]I mean, to start off, I think it's a universal thing, and I think we all have those things
[3:32]in our minds.
[3:33]These sort of, like, imagined or ghost lives, like, if I had taken a different job or had
[3:39]married someone else, or if I had had one more kid, that's a perpetual one for me.
[3:44]It's sort of, like, well, what if I'd had girls?
[3:46]I have two boys.
[3:47]What if I'd had a third child, but to say a little bit more, I mean, be more specific.
[3:53]The book really grew out of sort of two forks in the road for me, which were having
[3:59]my first baby, and then moving to Oregon right after I graduated from my PhD program.
[4:08]So I was in this very strange space of not working for the first time in my life, being
[4:15]home with a new baby, and my husband was working long hours because this first job out
[4:22]of residency.
[4:23]And so I was quite isolated the way my character castes.
[4:29]And I definitely thought a lot about my old life.
[4:35]And I sort of, the book started, I think, the sort of emotional impulse behind the book
[4:41]was just trying to understand this feeling of being split in two when you have a baby.
[4:46]And I think of that in terms of both, like, linear time you were a person before, and then
[4:53]you're a person after, and there's some differences there, and it's hard to hold on to who
[4:58]you were before you had kids.
[5:01]But also just this perpetual, and this never goes away, right?
[5:04]This perpetual needing to be in two places at once, you know, you want to be with them,
[5:10]but you also want to do whatever it is that your passion is.
[5:13]For me, it was like making things, telling stories.
[5:18]And so that was sort of the emotional impulse behind it.
[5:20]But I will say, you know, this in the soup of ideas where the book came from.
[5:27]I also had been studying the philosophy of counterfactuals in graduate school.
[5:32]And so I had some of those ideas in my head.
[5:36]This idea of his particular philosopher David Lewis, who is the real life inspiration for
[5:42]Robert Kells in the book, he wrote several books where he posited that any counterfactual
[5:49]statement that you make any if, then statement or scenario that you can pose actually
[5:56]exists in the multiverse.
[5:58]So if you can pose a scenario in which you did the other thing that you always thought
[6:04]maybe you could have done, you know, that if I had worked out this morning, I would not
[6:15]be so jittery.
[6:16]Yeah, exactly.
[6:18]And you know, that you exist because there's a multiplicity of realities.
[6:24]So I had that, so there was sort of the emotional impulse behind the book and the kind
[6:28]of intellectual ideas that I kind of picked up on.
[6:31]And those two things came together and it started with Cass and then I kind of looked
[6:37]right in Ginny and Mark were in the house next door and I looked left and Samara was
[6:41]in the house to the left.
[6:43]There you go.
[6:44]Yeah.
[6:45]Let's talk about Cass a little because she was one of my favorites because I just so related
[6:50]to her, you know, stuck in the car and sending desperate text or her husband who was far
[6:55]away and just having the baby.
[6:57]I mean, I started with twins, but just having your life sort of be enveloped by kid
[7:01]dumb after being a normal functioning member of society.
[7:04]And there's a link to have a conversation and like finish the thought.
[7:10]Yes.
[7:11]And where's clothes?
[7:12]Yes.
[7:13]It really takes a really nice, exactly.
[7:17]So you mentioned this a minute ago, but you had this great quote in the book about Cass
[7:21]and you said her life is much smaller since she had Leah and less free.
[7:25]But it's also much more than it was all at once, all at the same time.
[7:29]She has to be more than one thing now.
[7:30]She has to be two, three, four.
[7:32]It seemed impossible at first, but now maybe it's not.
[7:36]So I feel like you added a little bit of hope in that moment.
[7:39]Do you want readers to feel hopeful that this time was that?
[7:43]I mean, I think it's definitely like that time will pass and it does.
[7:49]And what's so strange about reading this book out loud is that when I wrote it, I was
[7:54]like Cass is me like that's was true.
[7:56]I mean, so authentically like just came out of me in that moment.
[8:01]And that's where I was when I was writing the book.
[8:04]But now I read it and my kids are more held at your kids school age, they're eight and
[8:09]just turn five.
[8:10]So I've one kid that's still in preschool, but he goes to preschool and he has hours away
[8:17]from me.
[8:18]It's not that sort of like physical nursing where they're always on you.
[8:24]So on the one hand, I think it passes and it becomes something else.
[8:28]But I also think you get better at it.
[8:31]I mean, you sort of say, oh, I can't do this.
[8:33]I can't do this.
[8:34]And then you realize no, I actually know I don't have four arms.
[8:39]But I sort of metaphorically have four arms.
[8:42]Like you just figure out how to be in two places at once in a way and little work
[8:50]around and then other people in your life step up and you adapt.
[8:56]And then you and if you're lucky enough to have a partner to do it with, then the two
[9:01]of you, you do, you get better at it.
[9:04]And I mean, I managed to write this book.
[9:06]It was so impressive.
[9:08]So you did it.
[9:09]I think there is a way to hold on to the parts of yourself that are most important.
[9:16]I also think part of it is letting go of things that can be let go of like when people
[9:21]ask me, well, how did you write this book?
[9:24]And I try to be honest because I don't want it to seem like magical.
[9:28]I gave up a lot.
[9:30]There's a lot of things I don't do.
[9:31]I don't I have no like I don't keep an organized record of my kid's photographs.
[9:38]A lot of the things that other moms I know do at night, they call like good friend on
[9:43]the phone.
[9:44]I don't really do that anymore, you know, I'll send texts.
[9:47]I try to stay in touch with friends, but you know, I don't have hobbies.
[9:52]I have my kids and I have writing and that's totally fine for me and that's not necessarily
[9:57]a choice.
[9:58]I don't have any questions to make, but part of it.
[10:00]if it is like figuring out like,
[10:01]what are the things that I just,
[10:03]I have to do?
[10:05]Obviously loving your kids and being with them
[10:08]is something you have to do,
[10:09]but what's that like other thing,
[10:11]for some people it's like riding their horse,
[10:13]or you know, but for me it's like I have to,
[10:17]right, I have to like tell stories.
[10:20]So just, I can sort of shed the other,
[10:22]I mean, my house is not very organized.
[10:24]That's a confession come out.
[10:26]You're just taking in, you know, my car is mess usually,
[10:31]but that's okay.
[10:32]I see, you know, I look around and I'm like,
[10:34]this is not what I would want,
[10:37]but that book exists.
[10:39]Yeah.
[10:40]You should get one of those cars where,
[10:41]you know, it's like the buses where you have like,
[10:43]wraparound decals.
[10:44]You should just like put that on the outside of your car
[10:47]and anybody who says anything is like,
[10:49]no, this is like, you know.
[10:50]Yeah.
[10:52]You had this line by the way and I was like,
[10:54]I have a feeling that the author just felt this way
[10:56]herself when he wrote it because probably.
[10:59]Cat thought she would be okay to leave.
[11:00]She wants to leave to get back to the notes.
[11:02]She just typed.
[11:03]She's going to leave.
[11:04]She's soldering her lap dog bed.
[11:05]She's waving goodbye.
[11:06]She's leaving.
[11:07]She's doing it, but it feels awful.
[11:09]Will it feel this awful every time?
[11:10]This has been cast was like trying to leave to go to work.
[11:12]Yeah.
[11:13]And I was like, how great to have a job
[11:14]where you can then just sit and sort of reflect
[11:16]on the fact that you had to leave to go to your job.
[11:19]Yes.
[11:20]It's like kind of like this, that's true.
[11:21]Anyway, I thought it was, I just love that.
[11:24]You also, Samara, the neighbor.
[11:26]You wrote really movingly about the loss of her mother
[11:30]and how she was working through that,
[11:32]which is sort of like another part of motherhood,
[11:33]sort of the being the daughter
[11:35]and then seeing that relationship sort of anyway.
[11:37]And when her dad was starting to give away
[11:39]some of her mom's possessions,
[11:40]that daughter, Samara was sort of like,
[11:42]don't do that and she thought maybe he was secretly
[11:44]thrilled about it.
[11:45]And then you wrote this line which I just like starred
[11:48]because I just loved it.
[11:49]His face sags and the dad says,
[11:51]I'd carry every object in this house on my back
[11:54]if it meant I could have one more day with your mother.
[11:56]Oh, I know.
[11:57]It gets me too and I'm right.
[11:59]I am yourself.
[12:01]The two of them together, I just find, yeah.
[12:04]Did that come from a place in your own life?
[12:07]Where did that come from?
[12:08]Yeah, I mean, I think things are hard,
[12:11]especially things that belong to someone that's gone
[12:15]or even things that belong to someone
[12:18]that in your relationship with that person has changed,
[12:21]they were like weighted in a way.
[12:23]And I did, you know, I witnessed like the struggle
[12:26]that my mom and my uncle have had with my nana things.
[12:30]Sort of, it's not, it's a lot of stuff.
[12:34]And it's a house full of things that she loved
[12:38]and you don't wanna sell it
[12:40]and you don't wanna give it away,
[12:42]but it has to go somewhere at some point.
[12:46]And I think there's such a craze right now
[12:48]for reducing stuff, which I think is great.
[12:53]But I think sometimes in that conversation,
[12:55]some of like the meaning behind things
[13:00]generationally gets lost in some of that conversation,
[13:04]especially since like I'm just a couple generations
[13:07]from like Italian immigrants coming on a boat.
[13:09]And so for my nana, like a lot of those beautiful things
[13:12]that she had and it wasn't, you know, anything
[13:14]that was worth all that much, but it meant a lot to her
[13:18]and they, you know, were chosen with care.
[13:21]And those things meant that like she had made it,
[13:24]you know, and she was an American.
[13:26]And so it's sort of like, if you give all that stuff away,
[13:30]do you lose that, you know, sense of history
[13:33]and the connection to her?
[13:34]And I think it's the same thing.
[13:36]And Samara's like really in it
[13:38]because her mom has just died.
[13:41]And it's sort of like how can you shed, you know,
[13:46]the stuff that is for Samara, her, right?
[13:50]But as the book unfolds, you realize that you start to find out
[13:54]that the dad and her mom had this whole other plan
[13:57]and they were gonna be on another life.
[13:59]And he's sort of has bar allegiance to that.
[14:02]So it's sort of like these competing ideas
[14:04]of the people that we love.
[14:05]She has one idea of her mom and her father has another.
[14:09]And it's in a way we all have different realities
[14:12]like all the time, right?
[14:13]Because I'm one way with my mom
[14:16]and one way with my husband, you know?
[14:19]So we're all, we always have like sort of competing selves.
[14:23]Yeah. Yeah.
[14:24]My son is often better behaved, not around me.
[14:27]And I'm like, I'm just gonna cling to the fact
[14:29]that other moms say it's really polite.
[14:31]And he goes over it.
[14:31]Oh, that was it.
[14:32]Yeah.
[14:33]I don't think so.
[14:34]I don't think so.
[14:35]It's so interesting.
[14:36]It's sort of like as long as he has another side.
[14:38]There's another side.
[14:39]And I've done part of my job.
[14:41]And I have one kid that's a bit of a challenge at home.
[14:47]But then at school, his teachers tell me,
[14:49]he's just the best listener.
[14:53]And I say, totally.
[14:56]That's so interesting.
[14:58]I've had some surprising conferences over the years.
[15:01]I'll stop with that.
[15:03]So another one of your central characters
[15:06]is Mark, who's married to Jenny.
[15:08]And they end up having these marital issues
[15:10]throughout the book.
[15:11]And Mark has this sort of single-minded focus
[15:14]on basically managing his anxiety
[15:17]by fortifying himself in some ways.
[15:19]I'm making a bunker, whatever.
[15:20]I don't want to give anything away.
[15:21]But just his emergency preparation goes to extremes.
[15:25]And I wanted to know how you saw that sort of playing
[15:29]into their relationship.
[15:30]Did that cause the demise?
[15:32]Or is it just sort of where they just
[15:33]signed different pages?
[15:34]Or?
[15:35]Yeah.
[15:36]I mean, I think with Mark, it's sort of,
[15:39]I think this very human impulse to want
[15:41]to try to protect the people that you love,
[15:44]your spouse, your kids.
[15:47]And he's got this personality where he
[15:49]wants to try to control things.
[15:51]And even things that probably really can't be controlled.
[15:56]But his wife is in the medical field.
[15:59]And I know from being married to someone
[16:01]that's in the medical field that they
[16:03]sort of have a different attitude about bad luck
[16:07]and accidents.
[16:08]And it's not so much that they just
[16:12]don't believe that you can completely avoid it.
[16:14]It's sort of like, it's not like, if something bad's
[16:18]going to happen to you, it's like when.
[16:20]And hopefully it won't be really bad.
[16:23]And part, like the most important thing
[16:24]is figuring out how to live through it.
[16:27]And they just have that that's sort of like that,
[16:30]the ER doctor, surgeon, sort of attitude
[16:34]that you just kind of grin and bear it.
[16:36]And you move through it.
[16:38]And I think Mark is in some way more like me,
[16:41]where I'm kind of like running interference,
[16:44]trying to keep the bad luck at bay.
[16:47]And I think that in fairness to my husband,
[16:50]and I think this is so relevant for kids too,
[16:54]yes, you can try to protect yourself,
[16:57]but from bad things happening to you,
[16:59]whether it's like an earthquake or something much smaller.
[17:03]But it really sort of walls you off from some, like,
[17:08]maybe scary, but also like incredibly rewarding experiences.
[17:12]And it goes, it's the same thing with kids, right?
[17:15]You want to protect them.
[17:16]But then you also want them to experience the world.
[17:19]And so in part of experience the world,
[17:21]is there's always some danger involved.
[17:24]So I think, I'm not sure I totally
[17:27]can tell you, I think, their marriage split up for this reason.
[17:32]But to me, that's the tension between the two of them.
[17:35]And they haven't really been able to understand
[17:38]each other in that way.
[17:40]And I think they each sort of have started
[17:44]to live separately in a way in their own minds
[17:48]and aren't able to communicate in a way
[17:50]that the other person sort of gets what's preoccupying them.
[17:55]I thought you did also such a great job
[17:57]of depicting a couple in the midst of sort of having
[18:00]the doctorhood be another part of their marriage.
[18:03]I haven't been ever in a relationship
[18:06]with somebody in the medical field.
[18:07]And just even hearing what it's like at night
[18:09]or the exhaustion or when you have to go in and sort
[18:13]of the double life even of being a doctor in such an intense
[18:16]environment.
[18:16]I always wonder when I go to a hospital or like,
[18:19]how do you feel?
[18:20]They don't belong to you 100% ever.
[18:23]And I think I went into it knowing that.
[18:26]And because I met my husband when he was in medical school,
[18:29]so it was like, I truly knew what I was signing up for
[18:32]because we were together for a long time
[18:34]before we got married.
[18:35]And he had me watch this truly horrifying documentary
[18:39]about Harvard doctors and how they all get divorced.
[18:41]Oh, no.
[18:43]Just to kind of like, listen, it's not going to be super easy.
[18:47]Yeah, that's a decision.
[18:48]But yeah, luckily that did not happen.
[18:51]Like they could sort of couldn't get through residency
[18:53]without splitting up.
[18:54]And that is like, it was tough.
[18:57]But I think you have to just be okay with the fact that
[19:02]it's someone who has cancer is going to sometimes go ahead
[19:05]of you.
[19:06]And sometimes that wears on you.
[19:09]But most of the time, it's such a rewarding career for him
[19:13]that that outweighs the middle of the night.
[19:18]It's not like he's up working on a PowerPoint presentation
[19:22]or something.
[19:23]No.
[19:24]It's a self model or something.
[19:25]It's like saving someone's life is just a little bit.
[19:28]And his patients are just so wonderful and grateful.
[19:32]And yeah, that's good.
[19:34]Constantly bringing him gifts.
[19:36]Oh.
[19:38]So I'll be here for the brownies.
[19:39]I can't be mad at them.
[19:41]I'm calling in the middle of the night.
[19:44]So tell me a little more about your process.
[19:46]I read somewhere that you had a Google calendar
[19:49]that you kept for each character
[19:50]so that you could keep their timeline straight.
[19:52]That's intense.
[19:53]Yeah.
[19:54]So I'll say a little bit about some of the things
[19:56]I did with if then.
[19:58]And then maybe I'll say a little bit more.
[20:00]are about my process generally,
[20:01]because I just finished my second book.
[20:03]Oh, congratulations.
[20:04]And I mean, if then, I hadn't ever written fiction before.
[20:09]So there was a lot of trial and error,
[20:12]and it took me a while, because I was teaching myself
[20:14]how to do things like dialogue.
[20:17]How did you do that?
[20:18]There are.
[20:19]Do you like Google it, or are you trying to do that?
[20:21]I'd like to take a class, or I know I'm joking around,
[20:23]or you just tried it.
[20:25]I experimented.
[20:26]I read novels for seven years in graduate school.
[20:30]And one of the things that I studied was narrative structure.
[20:34]And I used to work with my students a lot,
[20:37]like we would plot, print, and produce on the board.
[20:39]So I mean, that was already a part of my DNA.
[20:43]And so some things, you just, you know,
[20:47]like you might not know how to do it,
[20:49]but you know when you're not doing it, like, well.
[20:52]Because you can sense like what it should be,
[20:57]and you just have to like, but in chair,
[21:00]keep, you know, just keep working,
[21:03]keep writing that scene, or write a different one,
[21:05]and then come back to it.
[21:07]But I did take some classes.
[21:10]I mean, I would say the best thing I ever did
[21:12]was find my wonderful critique group,
[21:15]which is like seven years going.
[21:17]And they don't lie to me,
[21:20]like if something's not working, they say.
[21:23]And at first, most of us really didn't know
[21:25]what we were doing.
[21:27]But now we've like, another member has been published,
[21:30]actually by my same imprint.
[21:32]But they've always been extremely sort of astute
[21:35]with like this particular thing isn't working.
[21:40]So I did that, and I did some conferences,
[21:43]like 10 house and Squaw Valley.
[21:46]But mostly, I just read, kept reading,
[21:50]all the things, things I don't like,
[21:53]things I do like, like things that are,
[21:56]I mean, I was trained as a Victorianist,
[21:59]so I still go back to those books all the time,
[22:01]things that are coming out now,
[22:03]but, oh, back to the Google calendars.
[22:06]Oh, yes, please, sure, yeah.
[22:07]So if then was unique in the sense
[22:10]that there were four points of view,
[22:13]and then they were seeing, you know,
[22:15]other versions of themselves.
[22:17]So technically there were eight timelines
[22:20]I needed to keep track of.
[22:22]And I also, my editor and I did some work
[22:25]to make sure that there was some real, specific continuity
[22:31]across the points of view.
[22:33]And one of the things we did was make sure
[22:36]that the weather lined up in a very precise way.
[22:39]And so I had a Google calendar for each character,
[22:45]and then I had a weather,
[22:47]and I'd make sure that, so there's a hail storm
[22:50]at one point.
[22:51]I mean, to make sure that that's happening
[22:54]at the right time when you switch into another point of view.
[22:57]So yeah, I had a lot of tricks with that book
[23:00]to keep track of the different points of view
[23:02]and the different glimpses they were seeing
[23:05]into another reality.
[23:07]But I'll say more generally the way I like to work
[23:12]is I will write very freely
[23:16]for, and this is sort of how my second novel
[23:19]came about, right, very freely for about 30,000 words
[23:23]to get a sense of voice, main characters, like the world.
[23:28]And I don't add it.
[23:29]Like it's just what it is.
[23:31]And it's probably not very good,
[23:33]but I don't worry about that.
[23:35]And then I'll go back and I'll start really thinking
[23:38]about structure.
[23:39]So I do a lot of visual things.
[23:42]Like I have plot charts, I have character arc charts.
[23:46]I'll do like a thematic chart.
[23:49]And once I have some visual of what I think the book
[23:53]should look like in terms of how the characters develop
[23:57]or they change or what are the major plot points
[24:00]or thematically how do we go from sort of one idea
[24:03]to where you're supposed to end up at the end of the book,
[24:07]then I'll go back and I'll try to make those 30,000 words
[24:10]into something that's actual scenes.
[24:15]And then I try to write through to the end.
[24:18]But I'm always like redoing my plot charts.
[24:22]Okay.
[24:23]I'm always going back, just a visual person that way.
[24:27]So I'll have them like right here, we're at your desk.
[24:32]Yeah, I have a bulletin work.
[24:34]Yes. And I would all have like a chart
[24:36]of what the book should look like structurally.
[24:40]And so I'm always sort of like referencing that
[24:43]to make sure like have I gotten to the midpoint?
[24:46]Is something happening in the midpoint?
[24:48]Are characters changing?
[24:50]All those things.
[24:51]Very cool.
[24:52]What can you say what your next book is about?
[24:54]Yeah.
[24:55]So I just finished it in the sense that I gave it to my agent.
[24:59]And it's also going to be forthcoming from Random House.
[25:02]This is exciting.
[25:03]Yes, with my same editor.
[25:04]So I'm pretty thrilled about that.
[25:07]So it is an imaginative retelling of Jane Eyre,
[25:11]set in the near future.
[25:14]So cool.
[25:14]And my agent calls it the book
[25:18]about the ultimate STEM girl, STEM as in, you know?
[25:25]So sometimes I call it Jane Eyre meets the Martian.
[25:28]It's been really fun to write.
[25:30]It's very different from my first book.
[25:33]But it has some commonalities in the sense
[25:36]that there's a character in it that's
[25:39]trying to figure things out in the same way
[25:40]that Cass is trying to figure something out.
[25:43]And I've gotten to learn about things like fuel cells.
[25:48]Just like for the first book, I learned about frogs.
[25:52]Never did I love that stuff where you're not allowed to do it.
[25:55]No, no, no.
[25:57]So what after this, are you going to do another book?
[26:00]Are you, is it too early to say I know you already
[26:03]have so much in progress?
[26:05]I have an idea for my third book in my mind.
[26:07]The way it's worked for me is characters
[26:10]sort of take up residence in my mind.
[26:13]And before I ever, like for about six months, two years,
[26:17]before I ever write a word.
[26:18]And if they stick around that long,
[26:21]then I know that has to be the book.
[26:23]So my retelling of Jane Eyre was like that.
[26:26]It was, I didn't let myself write anything
[26:28]because I was going to finish if then.
[26:32]But then once I, if I hadn't finished it then,
[26:36]seriously, then I couldn't have written the Jane Eyre.
[26:39]I kept wanting to like switch to something else.
[26:42]But I have a great member of my critique group
[26:44]who was like, you have to finish it.
[26:47]Otherwise, when you get to that part of the next book,
[26:49]you won't know how to do that part.
[26:51]Like the end part or the final edits.
[26:53]And so I'm very glad I took her advice on that.
[26:57]So yeah, I'm excited about that book.
[27:00]What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
[27:03]I've been thinking about that quite a bit
[27:05]because I was just at Denmark College
[27:07]and there were a lot of undergraduate writers.
[27:10]And I mean, I think of myself as starting
[27:13]from very little six years ago
[27:16]when I started this book.
[27:17]But I had an academic background.
[27:19]I had work experience, life experience.
[27:22]I've had kids.
[27:23]And they're like, really at the start
[27:25]and sort of what are the most important things.
[27:28]And I mean, I think I've mentioned them.
[27:29]You need to read a million books
[27:32]and know what you like in terms of, you know,
[27:35]on the page at the sentence level.
[27:37]Do you like writing that's layered?
[27:40]Do you like more clean spare writing?
[27:42]But also like what are the stories
[27:45]that you can't stop talking about?
[27:47]You know, what do they do?
[27:49]Are they about for me?
[27:50]They're often about characters trying to figure something out.
[27:54]Or, you know, anything that you just can't get out of your mind,
[27:58]you should probably read that book multiple times.
[28:01]And that's my other thing I like to say
[28:04]is I feel like rereading has been the best thing
[28:07]I've ever done for my writing.
[28:09]Because that you reread things that you love.
[28:12]And sometimes it's not,
[28:14]maybe it's not like the best book.
[28:16]Like, you know, the highest literature.
[28:18]I'm not necessarily talking about that.
[28:20]I think that's great too.
[28:22]But a book that's just like under your skin
[28:24]and you don't know why.
[28:25]I think if you read those books,
[28:28]they just sort of become part of your DNA.
[28:30]And once you like sit down to start working yourself,
[28:34]those books are like in you.
[28:36]And you don't need, it's not a craft lesson.
[28:38]It's just like part of you at that point.
[28:41]And it comes out just like the movie sliding doors.
[28:44]It's just part of me.
[28:47]Because I've watched it so many times.
[28:49]I don't think I really thought
[28:51]I'm gonna write a book that's in that vein.
[28:54]But that book, I mean, that movie was like
[28:57]just hanging around in my brain.
[29:00]Yeah.
[29:01]Because I've watched it so many times.
[29:04]And then the other thing I would say is just,
[29:07]it's amazing, you know, what can happen
[29:09]if you just sit, sit down and you keep at it.
[29:14]You will get better.
[29:16]So button chairs kind of like the best,
[29:19]totally correct.
[29:20]Yeah.
[29:21]Well, thank you so much for coming on most of the time
[29:24]to read books.
[29:25]It's so much fun chatting with you.
[29:26]And I'm seeing you all the best.
[29:27]I can't wait to read the next one.
[29:28]Thank you.
[29:29]So glad to be here.
[29:31]Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box.
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[29:41]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
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[29:45]Thanks for listening to Momstone,
[29:46]have time to read books.