Claire Gibson, BEYOND THE POINT
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[0:33]So I'm here today with Claire Gibson.
[0:36]Claire is a writer based in Nashville, Tennessee,
[0:38]born and raised at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
[0:41]Claire went on to study political science and Asian studies at Furman University
[0:45]where she was recruited by Teach for America to be a middle school history instructor.
[0:48]In 2012, she left the classroom to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer.
[0:53]Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Tennessee and Marie Claire,
[0:57]Entrepreneur Magazine, and many others.
[0:59]Beyond the point, it's her debut novel coming out April 2.
[1:02]Welcome, Claire.
[1:03]Hi.
[1:04]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:06]Oh, this is such a dream.
[1:07]So I have to say Claire and I met by happenstance at Bookster Magic,
[1:11]Bookstore in Brooklyn when we were both there to see John Kenney and Courtney mom talk,
[1:16]and I recognized Claire from Instagram and my husband and Insta,
[1:20]so it was ridiculous.
[1:22]It's nice to be connected and everything.
[1:24]No kidding.
[1:24]I mean, I was just there that night from Nashville for that one night,
[1:27]and I popped into Bookstore Magic, and then there you were, and now here I am.
[1:32]It's the gift of book people.
[1:38]So beyond the point, which as I've told you, I truly loved could not be done,
[1:42]read like a movie like went so fast, and so so many scenes just like had stayed with me completely.
[1:49]How did you come up?
[1:50]I know you said it took you about four years to write.
[1:52]How did you come up with the idea for this book?
[1:54]So I wish I could say that it came to my head in some brilliant dream or something,
[1:59]but that's obviously not the case.
[2:01]This book is based on true stories of women that attended West Point during the
[2:06]2000 to 2010 decade.
[2:08]So I grew up at West Point like you said before, and so I had all this setting in my mind,
[2:13]and I lived there for about seven years in my childhood from age 10 to age 16.
[2:18]So the cadets there and the life there had really made a huge impact on my experience as a child,
[2:25]but I didn't know if I could truly write a novel set there because I wasn't a cadet.
[2:29]I never attended West Point, and so there were parts of that experience that I had a chance
[2:34]to see, you know, behind closed doors.
[2:36]So in 2013 after doing some freelance writing, some women that I had known when I was in middle
[2:41]school and high school contacted me, and they had gone on to do great things in their military
[2:46]careers and careers outside of the military, and they asked if I would be interested in interviewing
[2:51]them. And those interviews over many, many years turned into this novel that I'm really,
[2:57]really proud of, and I'm so grateful that you enjoyed this fantastic.
[3:01]Yeah, and it's really a tale of female friendship, right?
[3:04]Regardless, I mean, it's about the military and the way it can sort of
[3:08]pervade the deepest sort of recesses of your life and your heart, but also about how these women
[3:14]sort of grew up together, right, and how relationships evolve over time.
[3:18]Right, that was really important to me because I grew up as a military brat, but even now,
[3:23]when I walk into a bookstore, if I see a book with a woman in uniform on the cover,
[3:28]it's not necessarily the first book I'm going to go for. And so it was really important to me
[3:32]that this was a story about friends first and that war, as important as it is to the story,
[3:37]it's also kind of a backdrop. It's not the center. And I think that's true for these women
[3:43]that I interviewed their lives are way more impacted by friendship than about this,
[3:47]you know, one element of their lives. So at the beginning of your book, you write one of the
[3:52]women, Hannah, is married to a man named Tim, and they go through this long distance marriage.
[3:57]This is after they've graduated from West Point because your book not only starts there,
[4:01]but tracks the characters post college and beyond. And you say you have Hannah realized that
[4:07]the sacrifice, the sacrifice of them living apart, the sacrifice was part of the sacrament.
[4:13]Tell us more about what you mean by that. Yeah, I think, you know, anyone that's in a marriage,
[4:19]I think experiences that day-to-day slog of, you know, kind of, here we are again eating steak
[4:25]and bag salad. That's my life. And you just kind of go through the motions of that day-to-day
[4:32]living. But for these women that I interviewed that were in dual military marriages,
[4:37]it's an extremely challenging experience. And, you know, their paths are in and out and
[4:44]crisscrossing and the army doesn't necessarily put you in the same place just because you're married.
[4:49]They try often, but sometimes training or deployments can disrupt, you know, those plans.
[4:56]And so I think for Hannah's character, she really felt like those sacrifices that they were making
[5:02]in that time apart made their time together all the more important and all the more sacred. And
[5:09]I think it also helped me realize, as I was interviewing these women, that there was something
[5:14]really special about being in a team with your spouse and feeling like you're both kind of going
[5:21]after a similar mission, even though in the book Hannah and Tim are going to different combat zones,
[5:27]they both are experiencing the same thing at the same time. And there's something really
[5:30]special about that in a marriage when you have that common goal. And that I know in my marriage,
[5:36]we've really worked hard at figuring out, you know, what is our common goal going to be? Because we
[5:40]don't have, you know, pretty much we have a humdrum life. So what are we going to do that really
[5:45]unites us? Because I think that makes a marriage all the more special and it makes it meaningful.
[5:52]But you wrote so beautifully about your marriage and your adoption of your son in
[5:57]beautiful essay. So I feel like you and your husband, I'm just going to jump in and comment on your
[6:02]marriage here. Thank you. I do. I do do this common for you because you made it through so much
[6:07]together. And obviously it's not the military, but it was a war. It was a war of our own for sure. And
[6:12]I think we worked at it, you know, like we were just talking about this just before we started
[6:18]recording, but it's marriage is, it is hard work and it is messy. And there's a lot of it that
[6:24]people don't see. And thankfully, I think my husband and I, we worked really hard to get through
[6:31]those trenches and figure out how to be a common team, but it wasn't something that came naturally.
[6:38]And I think for Hannah and Tim's character because they had this common purpose and they met at
[6:42]West Point and they both kind of knew what they were getting into. They went into their marriage
[6:47]already knowing they had a common purpose, which Patrick and I just had to find along the way.
[6:52]So you had this other scene later in the book not to jump around here, but you have the scene
[6:56]with Avery. So you had these three main girls. Hannah is one. Avery has very different
[7:00]relationship to men, to the men in her life and her self image and everything. So she is in a scene
[7:06]where she's really depressed about things that have happened recently with the guys in her life.
[7:10]And she says to herself, it's your fault. This is what you keep getting because this is what you
[7:14]deserve, punishing herself like that. Tell me more about how you got into the Avery character
[7:20]and why you felt like that punishment. I don't know. Yeah. Not a good question. You let me know there.
[7:26]You're right. I mean, Hannah and Avery are very different in this book. So for folks who maybe
[7:29]haven't read it yet or getting ready to pick it up, Hannah is sort of the typical apple pie American
[7:35]girl that meets her college sweetheart and and they go on to have their dual military marriage.
[7:40]And then Avery is this character who is a rebellious homecoming queen, like wanting to prove
[7:45]everyone wrong. It doesn't love authority, which is funny that she ends up at a place like West
[7:49]and yeah, has really like a bad pattern of relationships. And you know, you picked out that little
[7:55]quote there from a part in the novel where she's really trying to grapple with why do I keep getting
[8:01]you know, the same situation handed to me with men. And why do I keep experiencing these
[8:06]crummy relationships? And I dated a lot. I dated a lot. And I you know, there's one, well,
[8:15]I got to be careful here. There's one relationship in my past in particular where I just
[8:19]remember all of these red flags happening in the relationship. And I just kept telling myself to
[8:26]squash them. You know, gosh, I remember the guy. I'll tell this one little story. He knew me when
[8:31]I was a little kid. And he was like, oh, you were always a little snot. And I just was like,
[8:36]ha ha, that's funny. Let's move on. But it was this red flag where I'm like, you know, that's mean
[8:41]actually don't say that to me. And only later once we had broken up, thank goodness that I
[8:46]realized there were all these red flags about him that I just didn't allow myself to notice
[8:50]because I didn't want it to be over. I wanted it to work out because I really liked him. I like
[8:55]the parts of him that weren't crummy, which were only a few parts. But anyway, so I think Avery's
[9:01]character, you know, she's the same way. Like she has these red flags. She sees in these guys,
[9:05]but she so desperately wants to be loved. She so desperately wants something to work out and to feel
[9:10]like she has a future with a solid relationship that it's easy for her to kind of push those
[9:16]red flags aside. And at one point in the novel, she has to kind of come face to face with
[9:21]her feelings of self worthlessness where she's like realizing maybe one of the reasons why I'm
[9:26]ignoring those red flags is because I think what they're saying is true, which that's a really
[9:31]scary place to be in as a woman to realize I need more like deserve more than this. And I need to
[9:37]believe that I'm worth more in order to get out of this pattern. And I wanted that for her
[9:42]character badly because she was so, she's an awesome girl. So, yeah, so Danny is the third in this
[9:51]Beyond the Point Triumvirate of Powerful Women, an African-American former, well, they're all former
[9:56]basketball stars, but she was like head and shoulders above. Right.
[10:00]in terms of talent and leadership and everything.
[10:02]And she ends up going, because of,
[10:04]I don't want to give anything away,
[10:05]but she ends up taking a job in market research,
[10:08]which I found so interesting.
[10:10]So you have her going into doing, you know,
[10:12]from West Point and all the training
[10:14]and all the drama to like bathrooms watching men shave.
[10:19]Right. Which was such a contrast, which I love.
[10:21]But you have this one moment.
[10:23]And I was like, I feel like this maybe
[10:24]is why you were writing about this.
[10:25]You have this one subject guy
[10:27]who's looking in the mirror after he's taken a shower
[10:29]and he says, it's not like if I shave really well one day,
[10:32]the hair won't grow back.
[10:33]No matter how good a job I do today,
[10:35]I know I'll look in the mirror tomorrow
[10:37]and have to shave again.
[10:38]And she took that as this sort of gem
[10:41]that can form the rest of her research.
[10:43]And I took that as part of what the commentary
[10:46]on the military was as well, right?
[10:48]Because it's one day after another,
[10:52]one battle, one scene, it never ends.
[10:56]And they just have to keep doing it and keep fighting.
[10:59]It's not like, I mean, individuals can graduate
[11:01]from the military.
[11:02]Sure, go on.
[11:03]But as a unit, as a force, we're constantly fighting back
[11:07]against our enemies.
[11:07]It's true.
[11:08]And I think that was an interesting storyline.
[11:11]It's real, you know, the girl, one of the women
[11:13]that I interviewed for this novel did work
[11:15]for a massive consumer goods company.
[11:19]And part of her job was watching men shower.
[11:23]And in the name of research, kind of jotting down
[11:25]where do they keep the shampoo bottles?
[11:27]And do they face the shower?
[11:29]Do they face away from the shower?
[11:31]What do they think about while they're
[11:32]getting ready in the morning?
[11:33]And if you think about it, it's an interesting time frame
[11:35]because the men's grooming explosion kind of happened
[11:39]in the last 10 years or so.
[11:41]And so that's what she was researching about.
[11:43]How do we get men to care more about what they look like?
[11:45]And yeah, I think that quote in particular,
[11:48]we're all constantly fighting the chaos
[11:51]that just comes into life naturally.
[11:53]You know, like my house, every day I clean it
[11:56]and at the end of the day is I mess, you know,
[11:59]and you can let it be a mess
[12:00]or you just constantly work at keeping the chaos at bay.
[12:04]And I think that that's part of our human experience
[12:07]is learning how to make the most of the space that we have
[12:12]and whether that's creatively as a novelist
[12:14]trying to make things work or in the military,
[12:17]you know, constantly fighting against enemies
[12:20]that would like to, you know, make our country less safe
[12:24]or in the case of that character.
[12:27]Shaving every day just to kind of keep your performance
[12:29]and your face looking professional.
[12:31]So it was a fun fun to write those scenes for sure.
[12:35]So as a novelist yourself, tell me a little more
[12:38]about your process and how you went about writing this book.
[12:41]You said there were fits and starts,
[12:42]but totally had it.
[12:44]Oh my gosh.
[12:45]Where and when did you write?
[12:45]So many fits.
[12:46]So many started to take care for me.
[12:48]Sure, so I started in 2013
[12:51]and I started with the research process.
[12:52]So I interviewed women a lot like this,
[12:54]sometimes in person and sometimes over the phone
[12:57]or over Skype.
[12:58]And I started actually by using spiral notebooks
[13:01]and I would just write scenes by hand,
[13:03]which I don't mean to, you know,
[13:04]it's not very glamorous or anything,
[13:07]but it just helped me get things down
[13:08]without editing too much.
[13:10]And then once I had those scenes written down by hand,
[13:13]the next day I would go in and type them out
[13:16]and kind of edit as I went in typing them, transcribing them.
[13:19]And that really helped me kind of get the ball rolling
[13:21]on some things.
[13:22]And there are a lot of early scenes from those spiral notebooks
[13:24]that made it into the final copy,
[13:27]which I think is interesting,
[13:28]but I had a lot of trouble with chronology.
[13:30]And at first I was gonna do a lot of flashbacks.
[13:33]And there are still some flashbacks in the novel,
[13:36]but for the most part, I tried to keep it chronological
[13:39]because you already have a lot going on
[13:40]with three different points of view.
[13:42]And I wanted people to be able to follow the storyline.
[13:45]And there was also a fourth character at one point.
[13:48]Okay.
[13:49]Sad, you know, she's gone.
[13:51]And I felt like I needed to get rid of her
[13:55]so that there could be more space
[13:57]for these three characters to really come to life.
[13:59]And I write every day from about eight a.m. to noon.
[14:03]And particularly when I was writing this novel,
[14:06]my husband and I didn't have our son yet.
[14:09]And so I was writing a lot every day.
[14:11]And I can't work from home.
[14:14]I'm not very good at that.
[14:15]And so the dishes call my name too loudly.
[14:18]So I have a little coffee shop in my neighborhood
[14:21]called Ugly Mugs.
[14:22]And they're really kind to give me my $2 coffee
[14:25]and not give me the side eye when I'm there six hours later.
[14:28]So Courtney and Jared are super kind.
[14:31]But writing is, it's crazy.
[14:33]It's hard and I'm just grateful that I get to be here.
[14:36]And it's really crazy that this novel is finally out
[14:40]in the world.
[14:41]I mean, I remember at one point,
[14:42]someone asked what would success look like.
[14:44]And I said, I just want it to live outside my computer.
[14:47]Even if I just printed out one set of critics
[14:49]like just to be outside of my computer would be great.
[14:53]And now it's definitely outside my computer.
[14:55]Amazing.
[14:56]You said something great at lunch when you said,
[14:59]you have to listen to which nose,
[15:02]have to figure out which nose to pay attention to,
[15:04]which ones are the right nose.
[15:05]Yes, tell us.
[15:07]Tell me more about that.
[15:08]Right.
[15:09]Yeah, I think, you know, we went to lunch.
[15:11]We were talking about, I'm not doing a very good job.
[15:14]Let me be more professional.
[15:15]We were at lunch recently.
[15:16]And we're discussing feedback from editors and agents
[15:22]and how in the writing field there is constant rejection,
[15:26]but that's just part of it
[15:27]because they're not necessarily saying it's not good.
[15:30]It's just maybe it's not for them.
[15:32]Or maybe it's already different.
[15:33]Or maybe it's not ready yet.
[15:34]So part of it, Claire was saying is it's important
[15:37]to know which nose to really pay attention to
[15:39]and which to kind of skirt over.
[15:40]Right, exactly.
[15:42]Profound and very inspiring.
[15:43]Thank you.
[15:44]Well, I mean, I think it's true.
[15:45]You know, everyone knows writing comes with rejection.
[15:48]If you sit down and you've written any number of words,
[15:51]you're already fret with nerves of, is this any good?
[15:54]And then you send it out to an agent or 12
[15:57]and then you get all these opinions back if you're lucky.
[16:00]And those opinions can be similar
[16:02]or they can be contradictory.
[16:04]And I remember there was an agent I really, really
[16:07]wanted to work with that told me to get rid of the West Point
[16:11]years altogether and only focus on the years after West Point.
[16:15]And I felt like, okay, well, maybe I could do that.
[16:18]But then another agent was like, no, no, leave the West
[16:21]Point years in.
[16:21]And then there were other agents that said,
[16:24]in big fat, no, like big fat, no, I'm not interested.
[16:27]And it's hard to know when you're in the midst of all that
[16:29]rejection and opinions, who's opinion to listen to
[16:33]and who's opinion to disregard.
[16:36]And I think for me, I've had to learn how to,
[16:39]one, walk through the doors that are open.
[16:42]So like don't resist when doors start to open.
[16:45]Like follow where there is the least resistance
[16:48]because that's a good thing to listen to.
[16:50]And then also to trust my own gut when it comes to,
[16:54]which nose feel like they're right and which nose feel like
[16:58]they're just, you know, mosquitoes in your ear
[17:00]that you need to kind of let their go their way.
[17:02]And we were talking about, you know, when my agent finally
[17:05]did send Leon the point into the world,
[17:07]she had this whole Excel spreadsheet of publishers
[17:09]that she had sent it to and all of their feedback.
[17:13]And sometimes it's hard to even look at that
[17:15]and see the, you know, people giving their opinions
[17:19]and, you know, you come to a point where you really have
[17:22]to kind of trust the process and trust your own instincts
[17:25]because it's your work in the end and it's your name on it.
[17:28]And so sometimes you just have to push through
[17:31]and disregard people or go back to the drawing board.
[17:34]I mean, this took me four years to write.
[17:37]And like I said, there were a lot of drafts
[17:39]that ended up in the trash can.
[17:41]And even my agent and I worked together for about a year
[17:44]polishing it before it was ready to go to out to publishers.
[17:46]So it's a lot longer of a process
[17:48]than anyone, you know, wants to believe myself and glitted.
[17:52]But now it's coming out with hypercolons
[17:55]and it's been optioned as a TV show.
[17:57]That's right.
[17:58]That's the first time I'm talking about it.
[18:00]I know, I know it's been optioned for television,
[18:02]which is weird and exciting.
[18:04]And you know, we'll see what happens.
[18:07]They can go forward and try to make it in a television show
[18:09]or they can sit on the option that I hope in that they don't.
[18:12]And I think it would be great for the big screen,
[18:15]mostly because West Point is such a beautiful visual place.
[18:19]And I hope to, I got a bad across on the page,
[18:22]but it always is so stunning when you see it in real life.
[18:25]So now I think the way you wrote it was so sort of cinematic
[18:28]in a way, just like, so visually,
[18:30]like I could see it all in my head.
[18:32]Well, you know, someone told me when I was learning
[18:34]how to write, they were saying try to write
[18:36]the way a director looks at the camera lens.
[18:41]So I was like, imagine the scene from the director's point of view.
[18:45]And that really unlocked stuff for me
[18:47]because I was able to think about it in terms of like,
[18:49]what is my lens looking at?
[18:51]And is this a close up on her necklace?
[18:54]Or is this, you know, what are the actual concrete visuals
[18:58]versus being in the character's head a lot?
[19:01]Right.
[19:02]Which I think is a trend right now in a lot of literature
[19:03]to kind of have a lot of internal dialogue.
[19:06]But it helped me think about it more cinematically.
[19:09]If this was a scene in a movie, how would it go?
[19:13]And then I started writing from that perspective,
[19:15]which helped me kind of get through some crags.
[19:19]I think that's why I was so hard.
[19:20]Every time I was reading, I finished reading this on an airplane.
[19:23]Every time one of my kids was like,
[19:24]tat me on the shoulder or something,
[19:25]I felt like I had to press pause.
[19:27]I'm like, I feel like I'm in the most intense scene of a movie.
[19:30]And everyone keeps making me pause it.
[19:31]Like if there was a screen, you would know not to do this.
[19:34]Right.
[19:35]Because it was, it's really meant to really like that, man.
[19:37]I'm meant to go, you like jokingly, you know,
[19:40]give the cross-end to yourself.
[19:41]And I wanted to talk about faith a little bit
[19:44]because I feel like faith played a large role in your book.
[19:47]You had this character, Wendy, as this older influence
[19:50]who often brought in scripture and sort of had
[19:54]that influence over the girls' lives
[19:56]as they were navigating all these painful issues.
[19:58]And at one point, you wrote,
[20:00]So she couldn't understand this is from Wendy's point of view.
[20:02]She couldn't understand how a person could just end.
[20:05]The more her mind circled around the drain,
[20:06]the more she felt the beginning of a battle.
[20:08]She would someday have to fight with God.
[20:10]But for now, I'm sorry, this was Hannah, right?
[20:13]But for now, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
[20:14]But for now, she couldn't sleep
[20:16]unless she held onto her cross necklace
[20:17]and prayed, begged, for a moment of rest,
[20:19]a moment to forget.
[20:21]Were you trying to have some sort of commentary
[20:24]on God's role in war or is this the importance
[20:28]of clinging to faith or tell me what you're thinking?
[20:31]Yeah, so I'm a person of faith,
[20:34]you know, my background and my heart,
[20:37]I believe in Jesus.
[20:38]And I think there are a lot of people
[20:41]within the military that call themselves Christians
[20:44]or have some kind of faith understanding of their own.
[20:47]And I hope that this book comes across
[20:49]as very realistic and not like preachy or anything like that.
[20:52]But the reality is a lot of the women
[20:54]that I interviewed, faith was a huge driver
[20:56]for why they chose to go to West Point
[20:58]or why they chose to serve our nation
[21:00]because they felt like God had a mission for their life
[21:04]and something that he wanted them to accomplish.
[21:06]And Hannah's character very much believed that
[21:09]and believed that God had a plan for her life
[21:12]and that West Point was a part of it.
[21:14]And I think kind of like Hannah,
[21:16]I felt like there was sort of a plan for my life
[21:18]that I was trying to follow
[21:19]and trying to listen to what God might have for me.
[21:22]But the problem with that thinking a lot of times
[21:25]is that when that quote unquote plan
[21:28]that you thought was happening goes awry,
[21:31]it can begin to just topple all of the thoughts
[21:33]that you had about God in the first place.
[21:36]And so that quote that you said about,
[21:39]she felt that there was this coming battle with God.
[21:42]That was very true in my life.
[21:44]And I know it was true in some of the women
[21:45]who I interviewed where maybe they started at West Point
[21:49]very strong in their faith,
[21:50]but after experiencing something like war,
[21:53]your faith, it's so hard to hold together.
[21:57]How do I deal with these things that I've seen
[21:59]in the horror of what's happening around me
[22:02]with this belief that there's a God?
[22:04]And then you go through all of the questions,
[22:06]is there a God?
[22:07]And if there is, what happens after we die?
[22:11]And it's all of those questions that are so,
[22:13]so hard to grapple with,
[22:15]but that I think people that are in the military
[22:18]don't get the benefit of skipping out on.
[22:21]You're young and a lot of 24-year-olds
[22:24]don't have to deal with those questions yet.
[22:26]But these 24-year-olds did.
[22:28]And I appreciated growing up around women and men
[22:32]who weren't shying away from the hard questions in life.
[22:36]And whether they landed on faith or not
[22:39]was beside the point.
[22:40]It was like they were at least dealing with those questions.
[22:44]And I find that really compelling
[22:46]when people are open about what they believe or don't believe.
[22:50]And I love having conversations with people
[22:52]that think differently than I do about those things.
[22:55]And Wendy's character, she's talking to these three women,
[22:58]I think, kind of serves as a place for them
[23:01]to kind of grapple with those questions.
[23:04]So was that like you at West Point in the house
[23:07]like outside?
[23:08]Was that like your family?
[23:09]Very much so.
[23:10]Yeah, so Wendy's character in the book
[23:12]is this kind of mama hen figure for these girls in college.
[23:15]And it was definitely very much inspired by my mom,
[23:18]who is a very hospitable woman
[23:20]and a great cook.
[23:21]And I didn't write myself into the novel at all.
[23:24]But I definitely was there as a child watching
[23:27]from upstairs as my mom was having these conversations
[23:30]with these college girls about what's going to happen now
[23:35]that 9-11 has changed the course of our lives.
[23:37]And I think it really made a huge impact on me
[23:42]to see that my mom and my dad were investing
[23:45]in these other kids, even though they had three kids upstairs,
[23:48]they had enough space in their lives
[23:50]to care for these other college girls too.
[23:53]And not really impacted me.
[23:58]So what is next for you after this?
[24:00]Tell me, oh man, so much.
[24:03]Ooh, hopefully a lunch facility is a TV.
[24:07]All right, you have a new book idea, you're trying to run.
[24:10]I do kind of have a new idea.
[24:11]I'm, I loved writing this novel
[24:14]that's inspired by true stories.
[24:16]And I think that has worked for me
[24:18]and I want to kind of lean into that.
[24:21]And so I've been interviewing some new potential friends
[24:25]that may turn into book context
[24:29]and might turn into some new ideas.
[24:30]And I am a new adoptive mom.
[24:33]My child, our child was born a few years ago in Florida
[24:37]through adoption.
[24:38]We were able to bring him into our family.
[24:39]And so adoption has been really interesting to me.
[24:41]And I've been interviewing some women
[24:43]who have recently reconnected with their adoptive families
[24:47]and their biological families, excuse me.
[24:50]So that is sort of inspiring me right now.
[24:53]And I think you talked about this before
[24:55]that authors don't ever want to jinx there.
[24:57]You know their work, but I'm in very early stages
[25:01]with the novel, but I'm really having fun.
[25:03]It's different now with the blank page.
[25:05]It feels way more free and exciting
[25:08]than it did in the middle of writing beyond the point.
[25:11]It's nice to be at the beginning again.
[25:13]That's good.
[25:14]I feel like other people have said they've had
[25:16]some second book down.
[25:17]So I was like, this is more freeing for you
[25:19]without the pressure of trying to publish.
[25:21]Exactly.
[25:22]Yeah, I think the first novel,
[25:24]I mean, it was just so much, it's just okay.
[25:26]Is this good enough?
[25:27]We'll just ever go anywhere, blah.
[25:29]Like am I wasting my time?
[25:32]And I'm sure I'll have days that feel that way again.
[25:34]But for now it feels exciting
[25:36]to just look at a big blank page
[25:38]and think of all the possibilities.
[25:40]So it's kind of fun.
[25:41]Do you have any parting words of advice
[25:43]for aspiring writers?
[25:44]I need to give in so many throughout this conversation.
[25:48]I mean, I'm definitely not the person
[25:50]to be taking advice from.
[25:51]But of course, I mean,
[25:52]everyone's journey is so different.
[25:54]Yeah, that's true.
[25:56]It's so true.
[25:57]I mean, I think one thing that someone taught me along the way
[26:01]was that I love Flannery O'Connor.
[26:04]She's one of my big influences.
[26:05]And there's another writer in Nashville named Jonathan
[26:09]Rogers, who teaches writing courses.
[26:12]And I've taken a few of his courses
[26:13]over the course of the last few years.
[26:15]And there's a story about Flannery O'Connor.
[26:18]And she wrote this character.
[26:20]And one of her readers asked her,
[26:22]hey, why is he wearing a black hat?
[26:24]Did that black hat have some symbolism
[26:27]because he was evil or whatever?
[26:28]And Flannery O'Connor responded and said,
[26:31]no, people in my neighborhood just wear hats
[26:33]and most of them are black.
[26:35]You know, and so what Jonathan taught me
[26:37]through that story was that my job as a writer
[26:40]and I think our job as writers is not
[26:43]to try to put meaning into something.
[26:45]We're not trying to make a successful book
[26:49]or get a TV deal or whatever.
[26:53]We just start, our job is to sit down
[26:55]and write things the way they are,
[26:57]not trying to put some extra layer of meaning into it.
[27:02]So that is where I land, you know,
[27:04]now that I'm back to the blank page again,
[27:06]you know, just closing my eyes,
[27:08]imagining the scene and really writing it as it is
[27:12]and not trying to infuse it with something extra
[27:15]or some pizzazz because it's easy
[27:17]in the writing process early on to want it to be,
[27:20]you know, great, you want it to be so good.
[27:22]But in the end, you just need to look at the scene
[27:25]and write it really concretely.
[27:27]And I think that makes the strongest writing.
[27:29]So yeah, and then I mean, everyone says this,
[27:32]but just kind of keep going, keep going.
[27:35]Like it's so frustrating
[27:36]and there's so many, you know,
[27:37]forks in the road and discouragements that come along.
[27:40]But particularly you and I have been talking about things
[27:43]you have working in so I just want to say keep going.
[27:45]Like always especially keep going with this podcast
[27:47]because it's so great to listen to
[27:49]and I think all creative work is just so inspiring to me
[27:53]and this podcast has been really helpful to me
[27:55]over the last couple months just listening
[27:57]to different authors advice.
[27:59]So thank you for what you do to bring this to bear.
[28:02]Thank you, glad it's so nice.
[28:04]Oh, thanks for coming on, Mom.
[28:05]Stone out time to read books.
[28:06]Thanks for having me.
[28:08]Today's episode was sponsored by cereal box.
[28:11]S-E-R-I-E-L-B-O-X dot com cereal box.com
[28:15]delivering addictive book content
[28:16]in shortlisten or read installments.
[28:18]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
[28:21]for the audio editing and mixing.
[28:22]Thanks for listening to Momstone,
[28:24]have time to read books.