Mary Laura Philpott, I MISS YOU WHEN I BLINK
[0:09]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the Webby-nominated podcast.
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[0:39]I'm really excited to be interviewing Mary Laura Silpat.
[0:42]Mary Laura is the author of, I miss you when I blink, a memoir written in essays, which
[0:47]was chosen as number one on the indie next list by booksellers nationwide.
[0:51]She also wrote an illustrated penguins with people problems.
[0:55]She is contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times, O, The Oprah
[0:59]Magazine, and many others.
[1:00]She is the founding editor of Music, the online magazine of Parnass' books, and is the
[1:04]Emmy-winning co-host of the literary interview show, A Word on Words on Nashville Public
[1:09]Television.
[1:10]She currently lives in Nashville with her family.
[1:12]So welcome, Mary Laura.
[1:13]Thanks so much for coming on Monster and have time to read books.
[1:16]Thank you for having me.
[1:18]This is great fun.
[1:20]We met at The LA Times Book Festival when I basically accosted you on stage if you remember,
[1:24]and I was like, you have to be on my podcast.
[1:26]I was just trying to think back to where we met.
[1:29]I was like, I know it was an event, and you came up after, and I traveled so much so
[1:36]quickly that something started to run together, and I couldn't picture the place, and that's
[1:39]where I was.
[1:40]That's where it was.
[1:41]Which was great.
[1:42]That was a fun panel.
[1:44]That was great.
[1:45]Oh my gosh.
[1:46]Yeah.
[1:47]That was a good group.
[1:48]We had for people who are listening.
[1:49]We had Heather Haverleski, who is one of my favorite essayists of all time.
[1:53]Cathy, could you say that?
[1:55]Sure.
[1:56]She's so good.
[1:57]But if this were enough, and then Lori Gottlieb, who wrote, maybe you should talk to someone
[2:03]which came out the same day in my book.
[2:05]And then Cathy, guys white, like Cathy, the cartoon, the real person, Cathy, was there.
[2:11]That was so fun.
[2:12]That was so fun.
[2:13]And Cathy and Lori both are on my podcast also.
[2:17]I'm like, go and go into the panel.
[2:20]You did it.
[2:21]Thank you.
[2:22]So your book, a collection of essays slash memoir called Different Things in Different Places,
[2:28]is fantastic.
[2:29]And I felt like it was so relatable.
[2:32]I felt like I could have written this up.
[2:33]You were in my mind.
[2:35]So anyway, could you please tell listeners what it's about and what inspired you to write
[2:39]it?
[2:40]Yeah.
[2:41]Yeah.
[2:42]OK.
[2:43]So I always feel like I should say the beginning what it is.
[2:44]So I miss you when I'm like, is a memoir told an essays.
[2:47]So you could pick it up and put it down at any point.
[2:50]And any single essay would make sense on its own.
[2:54]But they're arranged in such a way that if you read it from start to finish in order,
[2:57]there's a narrative arc to how these stories stack up.
[3:00]So you kind of see at the beginning how I became a baby perfectionist as a child.
[3:06]And then quickly how I took those tendencies into adulthood and tried to apply them to real
[3:11]life as if there is any such thing as getting a right answer to anything in adulthood.
[3:17]You see me trying again and again to get things right to be the best student, the best
[3:23]worker, the best friend, the best artist, the best parent, everything.
[3:27]Because there's something, as I figured out and writing these essays, there's something
[3:30]a little broken in my brain that tells me if I can just do the best job, if I can do
[3:37]the best of everything, I can earn the love of everyone around me.
[3:40]And I can finally feel some kind of peace.
[3:43]So some of these stories that I tell me that is not true.
[3:47]It does not work that way.
[3:49]Are you sure?
[3:50]Okay.
[3:51]Yeah.
[3:52]I just keep crying.
[3:53]I'm like, this will be the damn.
[3:54]So some of the stories in these essays are funny because obviously perfectionism just
[4:00]lead does lead to some hilarious mistakes.
[4:04]Some are more sad, but it all kind of reaches a climax when I get really depressed and
[4:11]I have to figure out how to move forward and maybe learn to let go of living my life
[4:16]like a checklist.
[4:19]So that's what it's about.
[4:20]That's what it is.
[4:21]The title, which I love and I can say I love it because I didn't make it up, it's borrowed
[4:26]from something my son said when he was little and now he's huge.
[4:30]He's 16 and he's like a foot taller than me.
[4:32]But when he was six years old, and I was feeling like I should give a disclaimer too
[4:37]because whenever I say, this title came from something my son said when he was six people
[4:41]or like, oh, that's so sweet and I assume it's going to be a book about raising young
[4:47]children, like a really sweet motherhood book and that is not what this book is.
[4:51]That does come up in the book, but it's not a, like don't go to this book and go here.
[4:57]She told me this would be about raising young children, that's not what it's got.
[5:00]But when he was six and I was whatever age I was when he was six, I was working, I was
[5:07]a freelance writer then and I was sitting in my office in our home working working toward
[5:11]a deadline and he wanted to go to the park and so I made this deal with him and said,
[5:16]all right, we can go to the park when we both finish our writing.
[5:18]So here's a notepad for you.
[5:20]You write some stuff and I'm going to keep writing, I was writing like a brochure about
[5:24]suitcases and something.
[5:25]This is when I was a film copywriter.
[5:27]So something really glamorous and so he starts kind of chitter chattering to himself while
[5:34]he's writing on his little notepad.
[5:36]And I hear him say, I miss you in the sink and I miss you in a skating rink and I miss
[5:42]you when I blink and it just caught my ear and I turned and I was like, wait, what did
[5:47]you just say?
[5:48]He said, I miss you when I blink and he was so proud because he had gotten my attention.
[5:53]And when we left to go to the park that day, I took his little scrap of paper and I stuck
[5:56]it up on the wall of my office and it stayed there for years.
[6:00]So every day when I would walk down to my little basement where my office was, I would
[6:04]walk past this piece of paper that said, I miss you when I blink.
[6:09]And I was in a phase of life in those years where time had started to feel like it was
[6:15]speeding up and I was really aware of how I was getting older and my kids were getting
[6:20]bigger.
[6:21]My parents were aging and it felt like it was all just moving too quickly.
[6:24]And at the same time, I was also starting to feel kind of unsettled like the daily life
[6:30]I was living didn't quite fit me anymore.
[6:33]And I, you know, being that checklist person, I had made all the steps that led me to
[6:37]where I was and I'd been very happy in that life for a while, but I was feeling pulled
[6:42]towards something else.
[6:44]And as I tried to consider who I wanted to be going forward, I was also doing a lot of
[6:49]looking back at who I had been and how I had gotten there.
[6:53]And all of that is what I'm writing about in this book.
[6:57]And so that little phrase, so cute that I stuck on my wall that stuck in my head for
[7:01]all these years, that at first I just loved because it was cute, came back to me when
[7:05]I was thinking about titles for this book and I thought, that's it.
[7:08]The I miss you part gets at the sort of I miss myself and I miss who I intended to be.
[7:15]And then the when I blink sort of gets at how time goes by so fast, you know, every time
[7:21]you blink, it's like a year or two years or a decade is just going by.
[7:24]So I took this adorable thing that he said as a six-year-old and I applied it to my, my
[7:30]memoir about being a frustrated, depressed, middle-aged woman.
[7:35]Perfect.
[7:36]Yeah.
[7:37]I'm going to follow my kids around with a little notebook and be like, my title is
[7:40]going to come out of whatever you say.
[7:41]I'm going to have like a sticky note fest on my wall with everything my six-year-old
[7:46]says for the next year.
[7:47]And I'll be like, she said I could do it this way.
[7:50]How are you?
[7:51]They say amazing things and they have just enough nonsense still left in their language
[7:56]that their language is really sort of unintentionally poetic.
[8:00]So I used to write down all the things they said.
[8:02]I've got a little book in my house of just saying that they said when they were teeny
[8:06]a little, when you go back and look at them, I wrote them down because they were cute
[8:09]but they're also really profound.
[8:12]Yeah.
[8:13]You know, the stuff that children observe in the world and how they say it.
[8:17]So true.
[8:18]One of the things I was struck with with a few of your essays was how you felt that you
[8:23]almost didn't deserve to be unhappy in parts of your life.
[8:27]You have an essay called Everything to Be Happy About, another essay called Ungrateful
[8:31]Bitch.
[8:32]And you write, you know, you wrote even, I didn't want to tell anyone I was unhappy because
[8:37]it didn't make sense.
[8:38]And I, like, completely, I wrote this essay on Medium Oleo called Too Lucky to Cry on
[8:43]Easter.
[8:44]I'm like, how could I cry?
[8:45]I'm so lucky.
[8:46]What do I have to cry about?
[8:47]Like, no one would understand.
[8:49]How can I feel sad?
[8:51]But you really tap into that and you talk about, at the end, you say, even the people
[8:55]who have no terrible obvious burden to carry can find themselves staggering under the
[9:00]weight of a dull, constant dread.
[9:01]It doesn't add up, but it's true.
[9:03]Talk to me about all that.
[9:06]I mean, you get it.
[9:07]I get it.
[9:08]Sitting there at, you know, your beautiful Easter with the beautiful brightly colored eggs
[9:11]and everything is good and everything is great.
[9:13]Oh, my God, you're not feeling great and good at what, you know, when you have that feeling
[9:17]of like, everything is good around me.
[9:19]Why don't I feel good?
[9:20]I'm broken.
[9:21]What do you wrong with me?
[9:22]Like, am I the most ungrateful person ever?
[9:29]The world we live in right now is a little bit of a garbage fire.
[9:32]Things are a mess all over the place.
[9:35]And I often find myself feeling like the world is such a garbage fire that where I should
[9:40]be putting my time in attention if I'm a good person is on trying to fix all the things
[9:45]that were wrong.
[9:46]I need to solve climate change and I need to fix the health care system.
[9:52]I need to figure out what to do about all the horrors that so many human beings are
[9:57]enduring all over the world.
[9:59]Those are.
[10:00]the things that are important.
[10:01]You know, it can't possibly be important
[10:04]that I, a healthy, financially stable woman
[10:08]in a safe, clean home full of healthy, living family members,
[10:12]it can't possibly be important
[10:14]that I feel mental or emotional distress.
[10:19]And that I've worked myself into a state of frustration
[10:22]or exhaustion.
[10:23]I shouldn't think about how I want to live my life
[10:26]in a more meaningful way.
[10:28]Because some people don't even have clean water.
[10:30]I, you know, I shouldn't want to find mental
[10:33]and emotional peace because some people don't even have peace
[10:38]like they don't live in a place that has peace.
[10:40]And like you said, there's a whole chapter
[10:41]in this book called Ungrateful Bitch
[10:43]because at my lowest points,
[10:45]that is what I would call myself.
[10:47]I would look around at my life and go,
[10:49]I have everything to be happy about
[10:51]and I'm not happy.
[10:52]I am an ungrateful bitch.
[10:54]And what I had to continually remind myself of
[10:57]what I was working through and writing this book
[10:59]and what I still have to remind myself of.
[11:01]And I remind friends of this,
[11:03]I remind readers of this.
[11:05]Excuse me, I wrote an advice column the other day
[11:08]for Bussleware.
[11:09]This was the advice that I was giving the person who wrote
[11:11]and you can care about lots of things.
[11:14]You can care about the big important things in the world
[11:17]and your own life and your own mental and emotional peace.
[11:22]You don't, it's not either or.
[11:24]It's not like either I care about the things I should care
[11:27]about or I try to get my life right.
[11:29]So you can care about the big things that matter
[11:32]and you can look at your own life and say,
[11:33]okay, I think it's time for a change here
[11:35]and I need to pay attention to what I'm doing.
[11:38]But I also think that beating yourself up about it
[11:40]is unproductive too.
[11:41]Right, I feel like it's such an ambitious cycle.
[11:44]Like I shouldn't feel bad.
[11:45]Now I feel bad and I feel guilty.
[11:48]Right, now I feel bad and I feel selfish
[11:51]and I feel this or you know.
[11:53]Right, right.
[11:54]And when you feel ashamed of your own feelings,
[11:58]then you lock them up because you're like,
[12:00]oh, I can't let anyone know I feel this way.
[12:02]Then you feel lonely.
[12:03]Right.
[12:04]Because you're trapped inside your own brain
[12:06]and loneliness compounds every problem.
[12:09]And so.
[12:10]And you've said you really enjoy writing sort of analyzing
[12:13]the difference between being alone and feeling lonely
[12:15]and how sometimes it happens at different places
[12:17]and times and.
[12:19]Yeah, you can feel really, really lonely
[12:21]in a room full of people.
[12:23]And you can feel really not lonely when you're by yourself.
[12:26]I love being by myself.
[12:28]I mean, you and I are both in a phase in life
[12:30]where we don't get as much time by ourselves.
[12:32]Yeah, I'm like, oh, I'm myself.
[12:33]So have it.
[12:34]No.
[12:35]I think I've been in my apartment by myself
[12:37]like once for five minutes and I like
[12:38]didn't know what to do with myself.
[12:40]Yeah.
[12:41]Weird, a quiet house is a really weird, weird thing.
[12:45]You also wrote this, it's an essay in your book
[12:49]and also in the New York Times called
[12:50]a letter to the type A person in distress.
[12:53]Another thing that I felt you wrote to me at the end.
[12:56]So you say to the perfectionist after you say like,
[12:59]you know, stop with your to do list and your color coded
[13:01]and now you've done them in three different ways.
[13:03]And I have a pie chart and just, you know,
[13:05]you say you wish you could take a break
[13:07]from carrying everything.
[13:08]It's also heavy.
[13:09]You were so fucking tired.
[13:10]I know and I know you can't help it.
[13:12]I know how much you need to hear this.
[13:14]I can never hear it enough.
[13:16]That was not the best summary of that article.
[13:18]But what was the response to this essay like from readers?
[13:22]Because you basically hit the nail in the head
[13:24]for anyone who's just trying to go, go, go
[13:27]and like be the class mom and get everything right
[13:30]and, you know, have everybody's socks aligned
[13:33]or whatever it is.
[13:34]And just like not let any balls drop
[13:36]and that you are finally telling people like, it's okay.
[13:40]Yeah.
[13:41]Oh my gosh.
[13:42]I love doing that piece live at readings.
[13:45]There's always somebody like when I look up in the end,
[13:47]there's always somebody in the crowd sitting there
[13:49]with tears just silently streaming down their face.
[13:53]You know, somebody who just gets it and was like,
[13:55]oh, that's me.
[13:57]And then there's always somebody with like a great,
[13:59]really loud laugh.
[14:01]You know, that just kind of comes out of nowhere.
[14:03]There's a line in that essay about how if you're,
[14:05]if you're a really work-driven person
[14:07]and you hold yourself to really high standards
[14:10]in your work, but you have to work alongside people
[14:12]who aren't that way.
[14:13]And maybe they cut corners
[14:15]or they don't really work with great integrity.
[14:17]It can just drive you absolutely mad.
[14:19]And I'd say something like,
[14:21]you get to the point where you just wanna throw
[14:23]your laptop at someone's face,
[14:26]which is a ridiculous line,
[14:27]but you can hear it in the laughs in the crowd
[14:30]who those people are who have had that exact feeling.
[14:33]Because they're just like,
[14:34]ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
[14:36]I didn't know other people wanted to throw their laptops
[14:39]at someone's face.
[14:41]You know, I don't really believe that all people
[14:44]fall into two categories, a type A and a type B.
[14:47]I think like most human tendencies,
[14:49]it lies on the spectrum,
[14:50]but I borrowed those labels for the purposes
[14:53]of highlighting some behaviors.
[14:55]And it's been really funny to hear people
[14:57]who do identify as type A go,
[15:00]oh my gosh, this is me.
[15:01]How did you get in my head?
[15:03]And for the people who don't identify that way to go,
[15:08]oh, you don't always thought type A people
[15:10]were just annoying.
[15:12]So, I suddenly kind of understand why they do the things
[15:17]they do.
[15:18]It's the same reason anybody does the things they do.
[15:21]It's because somewhere deep in our wiring,
[15:24]we believe we have to do whatever it is we do
[15:26]to prove where we're the of love
[15:28]or that we're even worthy to exist.
[15:31]And you said also about this whole type A nature.
[15:35]You would hand patch it who owns Parnassus books.
[15:38]The co-own said that part of the type A nature
[15:42]is you said to her that it's sensing a ticking clock
[15:45]in everything you do.
[15:46]Basically you're always counting down.
[15:48]Howdy and she actually gave you this pretty blue hourglass
[15:51]that you posted along with the article, right?
[15:54]It was that it was that just an image, right?
[15:56]Anyway, I was wondering do you use the hourglass
[15:58]to remind you of the time passing?
[16:01]Or did that whole thing just like come and go
[16:03]and you never thought about it again?
[16:05]It's so funny.
[16:06]So she gave me the hourglass.
[16:08]Early on when I was writing the book
[16:09]and she was asking how it was going.
[16:12]And I was like, it's going as hard as writing always goes.
[16:16]But one of the additional difficulties I was having
[16:18]was finding big blocks of time to write.
[16:21]Because when I sit down to write,
[16:22]there's this whole chunk of time
[16:24]where I just sort of stare out the window for a while
[16:27]and like remove myself from the rest of the world
[16:30]to get to the mental place where I have to be to write.
[16:33]That takes some time.
[16:34]And then I actually start writing.
[16:35]So I need big blocks of time
[16:37]and I was kind of complaining about that.
[16:39]And she gave me this hourglass and she was like,
[16:42]so here's what you do.
[16:43]You just flip this hourglass over
[16:45]and you tell your kids, don't bother me
[16:46]until this hourglass is empty.
[16:48]And that's how you make writing time,
[16:50]which is hysterical because of course kids
[16:52]don't really work that way.
[16:53]But later when she had read the finished book
[16:56]and she read about how obsessed I am with time running out
[17:00]and how that gives me such terrible anxiety.
[17:02]She said, oh my God, I can't believe I gave you
[17:05]but I'm so sorry, but I love it.
[17:09]It's beautiful.
[17:10]It's a lovely hourglass.
[17:11]I don't really use it to flip it over
[17:13]and measure time, but it's beautiful.
[17:16]It's in my office.
[17:17]I think it's, I think the time running out thing
[17:20]is just a natural part of growing up.
[17:23]Every year passes faster than the year before it.
[17:26]And mortality starts to feel more and more real.
[17:29]So the older I get, the more I have that feeling like
[17:32]I gotta make time count.
[17:34]And I feel the same way.
[17:35]I like it anxious when I flip it over and pick Schenary.
[17:38]You know, those little counters, right?
[17:40]I'm like, anyway.
[17:43]And I feel like at this age, like in my 40s,
[17:45]like all the things I wanna do,
[17:47]I'm like, I'm gonna run out of time to do all these things.
[17:49]When am I gonna fit it in?
[17:50]Like how many more years do I have?
[17:52]How many more vacations can I take?
[17:54]Like, what?
[17:55]There aren't, it's so funny how there are these milestones,
[17:59]or these milestone years that seem to happen.
[18:01]Get into your 40s is one of them
[18:03]because I think your 30s just fly by in a,
[18:06]man, I shouldn't say your 30s.
[18:07]For me, at least my 30s flew by in a flash.
[18:09]And I kind of looked up like, whoa.
[18:12]I've got some adult have left here,
[18:14]but I need to pay attention to how I use it.
[18:16]I've also noticed just in responses
[18:19]that I've gotten from readers and messages
[18:21]that I've gotten on social media from readers,
[18:23]there's something about the 30th birthday these days
[18:27]that is really throwing people for a loop.
[18:29]A lot of women in particular are looking up at 30
[18:32]and going, oh, when did this get here
[18:34]and having kind of a panic about time?
[18:37]Okay, well, that's good.
[18:38]It's not just in our 40s then.
[18:39]Okay, okay, good.
[18:40]I feel better.
[18:43]You're also, in addition to this fantastic book,
[18:45]you're right for the Pernassus books using literary site.
[18:52]You host a show, do you still do this?
[18:54]A war on words on Nashville public television,
[18:57]which I watched one that you did with Danny Shapiro,
[18:59]who's one of my favorite authors in it.
[19:01]Now, a friend and it was so good.
[19:04]This is like my dream to have a show like this, too.
[19:06]Tell me about how you balance all these things.
[19:10]Tell me a little more about musings and about musing
[19:13]and also about your TV show
[19:15]and how you're trying to access writers
[19:17]and sort of bring them to everybody.
[19:19]Yeah, so it, I didn't set out to go,
[19:22]I'm gonna have multiple jobs within the same industry
[19:25]and be a total workaholic.
[19:27]It just sort of happened.
[19:29]So at Pernassus, at the bookstore,
[19:32]musing is our digital magazine
[19:34]and that's been running that site has been my job
[19:37]for the past five years at Pernassus.
[19:38]I created the site so that the store would have a way
[19:42]to kind of extend its footprint beyond just the shop floor
[19:47]and a way to amplify the voices of all the people
[19:49]who come in and out of those doors,
[19:51]the authors, the booksellers who are all so smart
[19:54]and such big readers.
[19:55]Readers and customers, I wanted to find a way
[19:57]to share the Pernassus.
[20:00]as this experience with people who aren't here in Nashville.
[20:04]So we publish a piece every week, sometimes two,
[20:06]and sometimes it's an author interview
[20:09]or a book excerpt or some kind of little fun
[20:12]behind the scenes, look at the book store life,
[20:14]but my favorite pieces,
[20:16]the ones where I think it really, really shines,
[20:18]are once a month we do staff recommended reading lists.
[20:21]And it's basically we round up all the book sellers,
[20:23]my job to nag them to do this,
[20:25]and they write little blurbs about their favorite new books
[20:28]that are out.
[20:29]And those are by far our most popular pieces.
[20:34]So that's that job.
[20:36]And then for Nashville Public Television,
[20:39]I'm a host of a show called A Word on Words.
[20:41]And I'm actually a co-host.
[20:43]There's another host who her name is J.T. Ellison.
[20:45]She writes thriller, she lives here in Nashville.
[20:48]And that's a fun job
[20:49]because it is actually produced entirely
[20:51]by Nashville Public Television.
[20:52]So I am the quote unquote talent,
[20:55]which means it's my job to read the books
[20:57]and show up and do the interviews,
[20:58]but I'm not in control of every little bit.
[21:00]I don't have to do the scheduling.
[21:02]I'm not involved in the editing.
[21:04]And the neat thing about that show is
[21:07]we record about 25 minutes of conversation,
[21:09]but what you actually see in the show
[21:11]is only I think they're like four minutes long
[21:14]or three and a half minutes long.
[21:15]It's an interstitial, which means it's a tiny little show
[21:19]that comes on in between other shows on Public Television.
[21:22]On Public TV, as you probably know,
[21:24]there aren't, you don't have ads
[21:26]cutting into your shows all the time
[21:27]like you do on Network Television.
[21:29]And so if you have, say, a 22 minute show
[21:33]airing in a 30 minute block,
[21:35]they have this chunk of time to fill
[21:37]before it's time for the next 30 minute block.
[21:39]And so they fill that with original programming.
[21:42]So we're the show between the shows, which is kind of fun.
[21:45]And I don't know how I balance it.
[21:47]Like when people go, how do you do it on?
[21:49]I'm like, hey, it looks a little bit different every day.
[21:53]Like the nice thing about the show
[21:55]is that we do 15 episodes a season
[21:57]and I only shoot half.
[21:59]So that's seven of those.
[22:02]So those are spread out.
[22:04]Music is obviously rolling every week all the time.
[22:07]And that is a lot.
[22:08]I don't know yet if I'll stay involved at that level
[22:12]with music or if we may need to move some things around
[22:16]within the store.
[22:16]I want to keep contributing to it.
[22:18]I don't know, I've been traveling a lot this year.
[22:22]And I'm going to keep traveling for the book, which is wonderful.
[22:24]And I want to be able to do it.
[22:25]But I don't want to do any job that I can't do well,
[22:29]as you know, that is my problem.
[22:32]So I've got to talk to the store and kind of figure that out.
[22:35]We may move some things around and have somebody else kind
[22:37]of run the site on an ongoing basis.
[22:40]And maybe I just contribute something once a month.
[22:42]I don't know.
[22:43]It's a lot.
[22:44]Yeah, but it's all fun.
[22:46]Does Parnassa still have the bookmobile?
[22:47]I saw pictures of that.
[22:49]Yeah, that is amazing.
[22:51]The cute little blue bookmobile.
[22:52]It has been doing really fun work with schools.
[22:57]The bookseller who runs at Kevin does outreach to schools
[23:02]and book fairs and things.
[23:04]And kids love it.
[23:06]Kids are also the perfect customers for a bookmobile
[23:09]because they can stand up inside it at full height.
[23:12]So I'm pretty sure I could probably do it too.
[23:14]But yes, I had most kids.
[23:18]Anyone who will listen or who cares
[23:21]if they ever ask me my next dream trip.
[23:23]It is going to Nashville where I've never been.
[23:26]I'm like, I want to go to Parnassa's books.
[23:27]I want to go to Blackberry Farm.
[23:29]That is my number one on the list.
[23:32]So Blackberry is still nice and fancy.
[23:35]Well, maybe I'll go for lunch or something.
[23:36]I don't know.
[23:37]There you go.
[23:38]But I'm keeping an eye on the event.
[23:40]So maybe I could tie it to some great authors coming
[23:43]who I love or something.
[23:43]There you go.
[23:45]But that's so exciting.
[23:46]You also have written a lot about book clubs.
[23:48]So you wrote a piece in the Oprah magazine.
[23:50]Oh, the Oprah magazine, which was great.
[23:53]And you wrote how sometimes the magic of books
[23:55]comes after you finished reading them
[23:57]and how it connects you to other people.
[23:59]And I just wanted to do to talk more about that
[24:01]because I completely agree with that.
[24:03]Oh, yeah.
[24:04]Well, I could see why you would agree with that.
[24:06]I mean, that's like what that's what you do
[24:07]is you're connecting people in conversation
[24:09]about books after they've read books.
[24:10]Yeah, so hopefully I enjoy that.
[24:12]Yeah, so I mean, I'm like you have always been a big reader.
[24:17]I love books.
[24:18]I love the private connection that happens
[24:20]between the words on the page and my own mind.
[24:24]Like that's its own relationship between a reader and a book.
[24:27]But then there is this whole other conversation
[24:30]and this whole other level of appreciation
[24:32]that happens after you've read a book
[24:34]when you go talk about that book with other people.
[24:37]And that particular issue of Oprah's magazine
[24:40]was a tribute to book clubs.
[24:41]And so what I was saying in that essay
[24:44]is whether you have a formal book club,
[24:47]like a regular book club,
[24:48]since down every month that talks about the same book,
[24:50]or you just have a group of friends
[24:52]or a group of internet friends, whatever who discuss books,
[24:55]connecting with each other over a book
[24:58]is a way to connect with each other as human beings
[25:01]and to live richer lives.
[25:03]So there's a whole world of appreciation
[25:06]and conversation that happens after the book is over.
[25:10]And when do you find time to read?
[25:13]Oh, man.
[25:14]I read, the best time to read
[25:17]is when I can't be doing anything else.
[25:20]Cause you know, I like to always be doing something productive.
[25:23]So on a plane, in a waiting room, in the car,
[25:28]you know, there's this weird time in our evenings right now
[25:31]between like when the kids tell me they're going to bed
[25:36]and when they actually do go to bed
[25:37]and they're actually marching around the house,
[25:39]like taking their medicine and looking for their socks.
[25:42]It's like a half hour every night of mild background chaos
[25:46]and nothing else can really be happening.
[25:48]And I just sit on the sofa and read
[25:50]and they'll swing by and go,
[25:51]wow, I can't find this piece of paper or whatever.
[25:53]I'm like, all right, great.
[25:55]Like that time, every night,
[25:57]I read whenever I can't be doing something else.
[25:59]That's what I think is some of the,
[26:01]that's like the best part about reading.
[26:02]It's like the only thing I do
[26:03]where I'm not totally distracted
[26:05]and I can't multitask and my brain can just like slow down.
[26:11]It's a good feeling.
[26:12]I was just talking to my interview somebody
[26:14]who wrote a book called How to Break Up with Your Phone
[26:16]about how we can be addicted to our phones.
[26:18]And I actually was saying, you know,
[26:19]how people can use the phone
[26:22]as sort of a self-medication in a way, right?
[26:24]And then I was like, oh, well, I read.
[26:26]And then I was like, oh, no, maybe I'm like addicted to reading.
[26:28]Like maybe I'm like dependent on,
[26:30]this is probably not good.
[26:32]This is like another issue,
[26:33]but I'll just like keep this under wraps.
[26:35]Oh, well, the good thing is like a book is not doing.
[26:39]I know, I'm not, I know.
[26:40]I'm setting you free from that.
[26:42]Okay, you are not so hot.
[26:43]Yeah, you're good, you're good.
[26:47]So what is coming next?
[26:49]Are you gonna compile, are you writing more essays
[26:51]with the goal of compiling them?
[26:52]Are you, and you also wrote,
[26:54]I didn't even talk about penguins with people problems
[26:56]which you wrote and illustrated.
[26:58]Oh, yeah, that was my crazy little,
[27:00]my funny little first book that was such a fluke
[27:02]that it was never, it wasn't like I intended to write a book.
[27:05]I was just drawing weird cartoons
[27:07]and putting them on the internet
[27:08]and a publisher called and said,
[27:10]can we make that a book?
[27:11]And then I, it was like a total backwards,
[27:15]backwards from how the way book deals usually work.
[27:17]Like someone just came to me and said,
[27:18]I want to make that a book and then I had to go,
[27:20]they were like, put us on the phone if you're agent.
[27:22]And I was like, great, I'll be right back.
[27:24]And I was like, I'm kind of an agent.
[27:26]Exactly, it's a delightful way to find an agent
[27:28]when you already have a book deal in the internet.
[27:30]Yeah, I met.
[27:32]You're like, I just need you to negotiate this for me.
[27:35]That came out in 2015.
[27:39]And it's still out there.
[27:40]It's still selling.
[27:42]It's just a cute little happy animal cartoon book.
[27:45]It's so different.
[27:46]It's so different from, I miss you when I blink.
[27:48]And when people have said,
[27:50]oh, as I miss you when I blink, your first book,
[27:52]I'm like, well, it's not technically my first book,
[27:54]but yeah, it kind of is because it's the first book
[27:58]like this that I have done.
[28:00]Once you had your agent, anyone ever say to you
[28:03]because I've heard that it's not as easy
[28:05]to sell collections of essays as it is for full-on memoirs.
[28:08]And I was like, see, she did this, and it works.
[28:11]Like, what do you mean?
[28:14]No, it's everybody says that.
[28:16]And it's not, look, it's not crazy.
[28:18]I mean, I love essay collections.
[28:21]I, like as a reader, I love them.
[28:22]Me too.
[28:23]And I see readers come into the book store all the time
[28:26]and buy them, but I do understand like
[28:28]from a business perspective.
[28:30]If you're just talking about popular commercial genres,
[28:33]essays, you're not at the top of the list.
[28:35]Like, they're not the hottest selling thing there is.
[28:38]And I think, you know, when people,
[28:42]readers in general think, oh, I got to grab a book
[28:44]to take to the beach.
[28:45]They're typically thinking a novel
[28:47]or some really juicy nonfiction thing
[28:51]that's on a particular topic.
[28:53]So I know that in general, the people in the world
[28:56]are not walking around, go and gotta get my hands
[28:58]on a hot, new essay collection.
[29:00]But just because not the most popular thing
[29:03]does not mean that it's impossible.
[29:06]But it is, it's tricky.
[29:09]It's not the easiest thing to sell.
[29:12]And I will say it's also not, at least in my case,
[29:15]and I can't speak for everybody,
[29:17]it was not an easy thing for me to try to sell
[29:20]before I had written it.
[29:22]So I had a couple of false starts in this process.
[29:24]Like at one point I thought, I'm gonna write a proposal
[29:28]and I'm gonna sell this book based on the proposal
[29:31]and get a book deal and then I will finish writing it,
[29:33]which is not uncommon at all in nonfiction.
[29:35]That's really very common.
[29:38]But my proposal drafts were just bad.
[29:40]They were bad because I am the type of writer
[29:45]who does not know what I am writing until I have written it.
[29:47]And I could not summarize a book that didn't exist.
[29:52]There's a part of the proposal where you're supposed
[29:54]to go chapter one and chapter two, chapter three.
[29:57]I couldn't tell you, I couldn't say what the chapters were
[30:00]gonna...
[30:00]And it'd be because I hadn't sat down to write them yet.
[30:02]And I also couldn't say what the overall message
[30:05]or vibe or narrative of the book was
[30:07]because I hadn't written it, and I didn't know.
[30:09]So that was a period of frustration
[30:12]that I went through where I was like,
[30:13]I can't write a proposal.
[30:16]I'm never gonna sell this book.
[30:18]And once I let go of that and sort of set myself free
[30:22]from that expectation and said,
[30:24]okay, I clearly can't summarize a book.
[30:27]I haven't written it yet.
[30:28]The only way to do this is to just go write this thing.
[30:31]And I took a couple of years and I just went off
[30:33]and I wrote the whole damn book.
[30:34]And then the proposal wrote itself
[30:38]because I'd written the book and I knew what it was.
[30:40]And it's very easy to summarize essays you've already written.
[30:43]And it's very easy to look at a collection
[30:46]or a memoir and go, oh, this is what this is about.
[30:49]And then it's sold really fast.
[30:51]So I will say selling a collection of essays
[30:56]maybe tougher if you don't know what they're about yet.
[30:58]Good advice, excellent advice.
[31:04]Do you want to write another book?
[31:07]I do.
[31:08]I really, really do.
[31:09]I'm so mad that my book that's out now
[31:13]can't just write the next book.
[31:14]I wrote you, now you write the next one.
[31:17]Like that's the tough thing.
[31:18]It never gets any easier.
[31:20]So I'm back to square one of like,
[31:22]what do I wanna write about?
[31:24]Let me try to figure out what that book will be.
[31:26]And I know darn well that I won't know until I've written it.
[31:30]So I've got to try to set aside some time to write.
[31:34]And it's frustrating right now
[31:35]because there's just not enough hours in the day.
[31:38]And I want to be doing what I'm doing right now,
[31:40]which is traveling a lot and talking to people about the book.
[31:44]But I also know that that eats up some of the time
[31:46]I would use for writing.
[31:47]So I'm telling myself that that is okay,
[31:49]that I'm not writing again yet.
[31:51]It will happen.
[31:52]I need to live in this moment.
[31:54]You know, I will release you from that guilt
[31:57]as you have released me from my own guilt.
[31:59]There is plenty of time to write another book.
[32:01]Thank you.
[32:02]You can just live in the moment of this amazing other book
[32:05]that just came out and is so fantastic.
[32:06]So, well, thank you so much for coming on.
[32:10]Mom, I'm starting to have time to read books
[32:11]and sharing your all of your life with listeners.
[32:16]Thank you for all that you do to help people.
[32:20]You help, you're a good matchmaker.
[32:21]You help people find the book that they need when they need it.
[32:24]So I appreciate you doing that for this one.
[32:26]Oh, thank you.
[32:28]All right.
[32:29]Take care.
[32:30]Haha.
[32:32]Thanks again to my sponsor, Mermaid PillowCo.
[32:35]Mermaid PillowCo.com slash zibi.
[32:39]Enter code zibi for 10% off.
[32:41]Thanks so much.
[32:42]Check out those really awesome giftable pillows and blankets.
[32:45]Thanks for listening to Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:48]You can follow me on Instagram at momstonehavetimetoreadbooks
[32:52]and at zibi Owens and my new podcast at kids do have time
[32:56]to read.
[32:57]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[32:59]for the sound editing.
[33:00]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[33:02]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[33:05]Thanks for listening.
[33:06]You can always email me at zibiatzibiowens.com.