Rachel Levy Lesser, LIFE'S ACCESSORIES
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the Webby-nominated podcast.
[0:12]Moms don't have time to read books. Book of the Month Club is this week's sponsor.
[0:16]They're offering listeners their first book for only $5 with code Zibi, Z-I-B-B-Y. Again,
[0:22]that's code Zibi for your first book for $5 to book of the month club, which by the way is amazing.
[0:29]I subscribe every month. I get to pick from five of their favorite books. Most of the time,
[0:34]one of them is by an author I've had on my podcast, and then it just arrives. I've given it as a gift.
[0:41]I adore it, and you will, too. Think of it for gifts, and for sure go on bookofthemonth.com and
[0:48]subscribe yourself. I'm excited to be here today with Rachel Levy Lesser, who's the author of
[0:53]Life's Accessories, A Memoir and Fashion Guide, a former marketing and PR exec for magazines and
[0:59]Rachel has written four nonfiction books. Her essays have been published on glamourparenting.com,
[1:05]vellar, modern loss, scary mommy, and other sites. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania,
[1:10]she received her MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She currently
[1:14]lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. So welcome, Rachel. Thanks for coming on
[1:17]mom's don't have time to read books. Thanks for having me, Zibi. So can you please tell us,
[1:23]what life's accessories is about, and what inspired you to write it? Sure. Life's accessories is
[1:27]a coming-of-age memoir told in 14 essays, which come together as 14 chapters to tell a complete story,
[1:34]but each essay is represented by an item of either clothing or jewelry or an accessory or something
[1:42]in my closet in my life that serves as a lens into the experience that I've gone through,
[1:48]the lesson I've learned, the people I've met, and kind of my life, and included also in the book
[1:52]at the beginning of each chapter slash essay is a sketch of each accessory, and I think they did
[1:57]a really good job with the sketches. So give me an example. You're sitting here today with the
[2:02]Elsa Freddie Hart. Yes, I wore it today. Two pictures devoted. Yes, so there are a couple examples.
[2:06]The Elsa Freddie is a good example. The Elsa Freddie Hart-Nuckles, which a lot of women and girls
[2:11]are age had, was given to me on my sweet 16, and I kind of used it to tell the story of how I
[2:16]wore it every day throughout my teenage years, kind of wishing and hoping for that boyfriend to come
[2:22]along, and the boyfriend finally did come along in college, and then like many college boyfriends
[2:27]or high school boyfriends, he ended up breaking my heart, and that story is told in the book through
[2:33]the heart necklace, and you know, it's a story that so many people can relate to on so many different
[2:37]levels. I write about the black nylon Kate's feedback that a lot of women had in the 90s, and how
[2:43]that represented my want to be married, Tyler more working girl image, and how it helped me deal
[2:49]with the crazy bosses I dealt with working in a magazine company and the highs and loads of that,
[2:54]so things like that. So how did you come up with this idea? So this is actually my fourth book,
[2:59]and I've been thinking about it a while actually, and I feel like although this is my fourth
[3:04]book, this is probably the book that I've had in me the longest. It just took me a while to get
[3:08]all these thoughts and feelings and experiences out of my head and onto paper. And I think maybe
[3:13]perhaps I had to go write those first three books first. And I also in the process of writing
[3:19]the other books and writing essays for various publications and from my own blog discovered
[3:24]that I have this weird memory to remember everything I ever wore at different points in my life
[3:28]and other people too. And I realized I could use this weird memory of mine to sort of serve as an
[3:33]outline to tell this coming of age story. And once I had the idea for it, the accessories in the
[3:40]fashion items just kept coming. And I was able to create this life story, I guess, to say, which
[3:45]is really my life story, but the way it's represented in the accessories I think made it doable
[3:50]for me. And interesting. And it's such a particular time and place story, like you tapped into
[3:56]my, like, so many people. You just bring it right back. So it's almost like watching a movie of
[4:03]like a time where like my memory is not as good as yours. So it would really like, but it comes back,
[4:08]you know, it's like a brown out or something. Like, would someone mention it? The memory comes back,
[4:11]but I guess pull it up and say that's like what your book did for me. A lot of sort of the early
[4:16]readers have told me that too. So quickly your other books. Yeah. So my first book is a memoir,
[4:23]and they're all in the nonfiction genre. I'm trying to maybe move into fiction later. But
[4:27]the first book is called Shopping for Love. And that really came out of, I wrote it very soon
[4:33]after my mother passed away from cancer. She died 15 years ago. She was 57. I was 29. And I had
[4:40]a brand new baby and I was a complete mess. I mean, a mess is an understatement. And I was going
[4:45]to see a therapist. And the therapist kind of recommended that I start to write down my thoughts
[4:49]and feelings and memories of my mom just because I was such a mess. And at that time I was working
[4:54]in marketing and PR, I wasn't even an author yet. And all of these thoughts and feelings and
[5:00]memories of my mom, a lot of them came together in memories of a shopping together. And I sort
[5:04]of developed a thesis. I always liked to have a thesis like from writing in school. And the thesis
[5:09]was kind of that shopping helped to extend the length of my mother's life. I really do believe she
[5:16]fought cancer for six years. And she had this very, very little disease where most people
[5:19]only live for six weeks. And I do think that not just the shopping, but the being with her family,
[5:25]the hope for the future really helped her along. So I kind of went back and revisited all
[5:30]these shopping experiences with her. And my second book is a children's book, which people always
[5:35]ask me, are you going to write another children's book? And I really would like to. I just have
[5:39]to get there. And that came out of real life too. And this was years ago my daughter, whose name is
[5:44]Rebecca came home from school one day when she was in preschool and said, I have three
[5:47]villains in my class. And I thought that was like the funniest thing to say. I mean, we had like
[5:51]seven gens or Lisa's. And then she was talked about a Jordan the boy and Jordan the girl.
[5:56]And I started thinking about all these names and about her name, she's named for my mom. So from that,
[6:01]I developed as narrative in my head and then on paper about a little girl named Rebecca Rom who
[6:06]doesn't like her name. And she has to do a project for school about where her name comes from. And
[6:11]she does all this research. And she learns that everybody's name for something or someone. And
[6:15]there's some historical stuff in there. And she learns to eventually love her name.
[6:19]Yeah. And I don't know if the third book is like the third book was also many years in the
[6:25]making a nonfiction that came out of a lot of conversations I was having with my girlfriends. A lot
[6:30]of us worked either full time or part time out of the house. And we ended up employing babysitters
[6:35]or nannies to watch our kids. And we used to always say, you can't make this up. And we started to
[6:41]discover particularly me that I ended up in many ways working for my babysitters because I just
[6:46]wanted them to stay so that I could go to work and do my job. And my kids could be okay. And
[6:52]sort of the stuff you put up with from a babysitter or nanny working for you, you would never
[6:57]put up with that kind of stuff in an office environment. But it wasn't. And some of it was funny,
[7:01]some of it was crazy. And some of it was really heartfelt in terms of the relationship that the
[7:06]mothers develop with the babysitters because it's not like a regular person, you know, who you work
[7:11]within an office. So I interviewed 15 women across the country, working moms about their experiences
[7:17]and put them together to tell a narrative. That's awesome. Yeah. I could not live without my
[7:21]babysitters. I love them. They're right now. And even, you know, my kids are older now so I don't
[7:25]have that. But we still keep up with our babysitters. And we always joke that one day my kids
[7:30]are going to babysit for their kids. Oh, yeah. So sweet. Yeah. Like us. Okay. So let's go back to life
[7:35]success. Okay. But I feel like hearing about your books gives you a better picture of who you are,
[7:40]which is why I wanted to have you talk about it. But anyway, okay. So you talked about in life
[7:45]accessories in the beginning that you were this, which I find hard to believe sort of outcast,
[7:49]loaner type girl in your new school. You went to Lawrenceville. You had come from a very small
[7:55]Quaker school that you felt very comfortable in and you go to this new environment and felt like
[7:59]a fish out of water, basically. And you described how you have to adopt the uniform that everybody
[8:04]there, not like quote unquote, you know what, which was Laura Ashley Long Skirts and Sabego penny
[8:10]loafers that you put real pennies into. J. Crew cable knit sweaters. I would say like a little
[8:16]bean sweaters and like blue karmachosons were like part of the uniform for my school. But so I wanted
[8:21]to know, did changing your outside like the packaging of you actually help you fit in better.
[8:26]Did it just make you feel better? And would you handle that situation the same way today?
[8:31]Yeah. It's funny. People do say that I can't imagine you being alone or like that
[8:34]because I don't feel that way now in my grown-up life. But I feel like we've all had that
[8:39]experience at some point in our life, right? And for me, I really did feel like a fish out of water.
[8:45]I was 13 years old. And by the way, in this book, it is not a critique on the school. It is a
[8:49]critique on me. I felt a little funny about saying that. Or just sort of a re-examining those high
[8:55]school years. And by the way, I always tell my kids you don't want to peek in high school.
[8:58]So I feel like that's a good lesson that I took out of it. Or sixth grade. Or sixth grade.
[9:03]Yeah. My husband and I always joke that we're still peaking. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
[9:07]It's always good. My grandmother has almost 96 that she's never looked better.
[9:11]Right. Every year, she gets more comfortable within the last second.
[9:14]You never know. So, but that was a painful to revisit because I really did feel
[9:20]so out of place. I had no confidence. And so to answer your question about,
[9:25]did the uniform that I put upon myself help? I mean, in some ways, yes, I've always,
[9:31]as is a little bit evident, been pretty observant about what people are wearing and clothing.
[9:36]And so I sort of in my 13 year old mind thought to myself, well, if I could dress like them,
[9:40]maybe I could be like them. And maybe it would give me some kind of confidence whether false or not
[9:45]to try to make new friends and try to blend in. So to some extent, it did help. But as in the case of
[9:52]anything, I wish I could go back and do it differently. I mean, first of all, I wouldn't have gotten
[9:57]the perm. And it's helped my job at all.
[10:00]The time she has great straight here,
[10:01]I say never get a perm.
[10:02]I don't know if people get perms anymore.
[10:04]I don't know either.
[10:05]But that was a big mistake.
[10:06]And then for that, that was a very thing to do.
[10:10]That was the thing, yeah.
[10:11]And that was just bad timing.
[10:13]But I wish I could have been more of myself.
[10:17]But when I say that I kind of mean myself knowing me now,
[10:19]I didn't know who I was then.
[10:21]And probably when I look back on it,
[10:23]there were so many people who didn't know where they were.
[10:25]And I still, you know, I write about one very good friend
[10:27]who I met who I still keep up with closely.
[10:29]And I still go to reunions.
[10:30]And when I see people, I mean, this is kind of maybe
[10:33]for kids out there, like it doesn't matter.
[10:35]All that stuff goes away.
[10:36]And everybody is just trying to figure out who you are
[10:38]when you're 13, 14, 15.
[10:40]And even later on in life, yes.
[10:42]I remember, like, I would go to a dances
[10:44]and I was so nervous and wearing my like,
[10:47]long or Ashley stripes.
[10:48]Which is like, not cool for me.
[10:49]Which by the way, I feel like someone had to stop
[10:51]his back in style.
[10:52]Laura Ashley is now being made for urban outfitters.
[10:55]And I saw on anthropology the other day,
[10:57]the drop waist dresses are back in.
[10:59]Awesome.
[11:00]Yeah, it's all coming back.
[11:00]Shoulder pads, here I am.
[11:02]But anyway, at the time, I remember my mom's advice to me
[11:04]when I went to a dance, it's just be yourself.
[11:06]Yeah.
[11:07]I was like, I'm 12.
[11:08]Did it, like, I have no idea what that even means.
[11:10]So I ended up like standing in the corner
[11:12]and not speaking because I don't know what did that mean.
[11:14]But anyway, so I relate.
[11:16]And I think many people can relate.
[11:17]And many people can relate with their kids now
[11:19]going through the same thing.
[11:21]You know, I'm always like, should I let my daughter
[11:23]buy the same thing that all her friends have?
[11:25]Because I know how important it is to feel
[11:27]like you fit in, but then do I really
[11:29]have to buy this new backpack?
[11:30]I mean, does it, do you have a good enough backpacks?
[11:32]Oh, I know.
[11:33]There's a fine line in there.
[11:34]So anyway, but I relate.
[11:36]You started one chapter with the line.
[11:38]I met my husband at a party.
[11:39]I almost didn't go to.
[11:41]Which is just always how it works in life.
[11:43]So I just wanted to hear more about that situation
[11:45]and how you developed with your husband over time
[11:48]because you did such a nice job of talking about all
[11:51]the things that sort of happen in life
[11:53]and how you happened to stay together, not
[11:55]happen to sort of develop in the same way.
[11:58]And how could you have known that you would be lucky enough?
[12:00]It's like, you put a lot of luck into it.
[12:02]So just tell me your view on that.
[12:04]That's very true.
[12:05]And it always happens that you end up
[12:07]meeting somebody at a party you almost didn't go to.
[12:10]And I really almost didn't go to that party.
[12:11]It was like a Friday night.
[12:13]I worked a long week.
[12:14]I was tired.
[12:14]It was rainy.
[12:15]And my friend convinced me to go to this party.
[12:17]I met my husband, Neil, who, by the way, is so private
[12:20]and doesn't like, you know, this whole publicity stuff.
[12:23]But he, you know, sorry, Neil, don't let it work.
[12:26]It totally works.
[12:27]We're going to give you a little more here.
[12:28]And so when I wrote about him in the chapter on him,
[12:32]the mainly focused on him, I do think there is luck involved.
[12:35]First of all, I don't think there is one person
[12:37]for every one person.
[12:39]I think a lot of it is timing.
[12:41]Maybe if I didn't go to that party, I wouldn't have met him
[12:43]or maybe that night.
[12:44]But maybe I would have met him another night or maybe,
[12:47]but I do think there was luck involved in the sense
[12:49]that when I met him, I was 22 and he was 23.
[12:53]I was 25.
[12:54]He was 26 and we got married, which by today's standards,
[12:57]East Coast, it's very young.
[12:59]And now we've been together for over 20 years.
[13:02]And I write about this in the book.
[13:04]We grew up together and we grew together.
[13:07]And I appreciate that.
[13:08]And I recognize that we totally could have grown apart
[13:11]by no fault of anyone just by life.
[13:14]And I've seen it happen to people that I know and love.
[13:16]And I'm kind of amazed it doesn't happen more.
[13:18]So yeah, that definitely, there definitely was luck.
[13:22]But I also think when I met him and getting to know him
[13:25]as I got to know him, there were things
[13:27]that we had similarly aligned values.
[13:29]Our friends got along.
[13:30]Our family got along.
[13:32]He made me laugh.
[13:33]I made him laugh.
[13:34]And then life, as I write in the book, did throw stuff at us.
[13:38]And I write a lot about my mom.
[13:40]But he's been through challenges in life, too.
[13:44]And I've supported him in his career.
[13:45]He supported me in my career.
[13:47]One of the things, not that this is like a self-help
[13:49]and marriage, because it's not.
[13:51]But one of the things that I try to remember a lot,
[13:53]which is something that my aunt told me who's very wise,
[13:55]which is to remember to compliment each other.
[13:59]So I'll say to her sometimes, oh, Neil did this.
[14:01]And she said, well, you should tell him that,
[14:02]that you appreciate that about him.
[14:05]Because I think sometimes we forget to compliment
[14:08]or say something nice about the people that live in our house.
[14:11]So that's good advice.
[14:12]Yeah.
[14:13]Very good advice.
[14:14]Thanks, Tyrion.
[14:15]Yeah.
[14:16]You mentioned a few times about the loss of your mother
[14:19]and you wrote about it so beautifully.
[14:21]And my heart was just breaking for you.
[14:23]You also wrote about it in the context, also, of clothing.
[14:27]One thing you said was how fast your baby weight fell off.
[14:30]And you said the baby weight fell off
[14:31]because your mother was sick when you had your daughter.
[14:34]So my son, I'm sorry, you're sick, sorry.
[14:37]I can't even remember my own kid's gender now.
[14:39]I know.
[14:40]The baby weight fell off freakishly fast,
[14:42]because I was a freak.
[14:43]I was a brand new 29-year-old mother
[14:45]who was more concerned with the tumors
[14:47]growing inside my 57-year-old mother
[14:49]than I was with the growth chart of my brand new baby.
[14:51]And you said I was a calm mother, I think,
[14:54]because I was a nervous daughter.
[14:55]Yeah.
[14:56]That line resonated with me and with a lot of other people.
[14:59]And I actually just wrote an essay called
[15:01]Calm Mother-Nervous Daughter in Preparation and Promotion
[15:04]for this book.
[15:04]So I think about that a lot and that timing of it.
[15:08]And there's one thing that I think about a lot.
[15:11]I actually have this little scar on top of my left eye,
[15:13]which I can only see when I'm looking in that mirror
[15:15]to put on eye makeup.
[15:16]And that was from Halloween in 2003.
[15:19]I will not forget this.
[15:20]My baby was only like six weeks old.
[15:22]My mother was very sick.
[15:24]And I was just leaving the farmer's market in her town.
[15:26]I bought her all this fresh fruit and produce and stuff.
[15:29]And because I was deaf.
[15:29]You're not very your daughter.
[15:30]My mother.
[15:31]Because I was like, maybe she has greens and kale.
[15:34]It'll help fight the cancer.
[15:36]I was just grasping at straws.
[15:38]And I was buying all this stuff for her
[15:40]and trying to help her out, even though she
[15:42]wasn't asking for it.
[15:43]And I had my baby with me.
[15:45]He was six weeks old.
[15:46]He was in one of those bucket car seats.
[15:47]And I was getting the fruits in the car.
[15:49]And I was getting him in the car.
[15:51]And I was so discombobulated.
[15:52]I slammed the door basically right here above my eye.
[15:57]And I was bleeding.
[15:58]I mean, luckily he didn't hit my eye.
[16:00]And I just remember I got the baby settled.
[16:02]I was like, all right, I drove to the ER.
[16:04]I brought my six week old child into the ER,
[16:06]which you're probably not supposed to do.
[16:08]And I met with a doctor.
[16:09]He stitched me up just two little stitches.
[16:12]And then I was like, all right,
[16:14]done with that, time to bring the fruits over to my mom.
[16:16]I have the baby.
[16:17]So the point really there was that I didn't have time
[16:20]to worry about my baby.
[16:21]And I don't know which came first.
[16:22]If it was cause or effect, he was a good baby.
[16:25]He slept well.
[16:26]He didn't cry that much.
[16:28]And I didn't worry about stuff like tummy time
[16:31]or play classes or developmental goals.
[16:34]And he seemed to kind of reach them.
[16:37]And I'm not saying I did it the right way.
[16:39]I did it the only way that I knew how.
[16:42]And that's something that I think about a lot.
[16:45]I keep it in perspective.
[16:46]I mean, it's been 15 years since my mom died.
[16:48]And my kids are now teenagers.
[16:50]And I have the perspective of the loss,
[16:53]but I also worry about the little things now
[16:55]in a way that I guess I didn't have the luxury of
[16:57]or the time to do it back then.
[16:59]And maybe there was some benefit to that.
[17:01]Maybe there was.
[17:02]I feel like if I didn't worry so much, my kids.
[17:04]Like, I worry so much less with my last two kids.
[17:06]And it's funny, you develop friendships
[17:10]with mom friends over the years.
[17:11]And that's in the book a little bit too.
[17:12]And sometimes we talk about what it was like
[17:14]when they were babies.
[17:15]And I don't really remember a lot
[17:17]because I was so busy with my mom.
[17:19]Or even after she died, just dealing with the loss of that.
[17:23]So it was a weird time.
[17:25]And it just, you know, it happened the way it happened.
[17:27]You had this one seen in the book
[17:29]where you're in the shower and you scream out loud,
[17:31]like, what the, I'm not going to curse,
[17:32]but what the f about, because how could you be a mother
[17:35]without having your own mother?
[17:37]Yeah, that feels, I can remember
[17:41]what that felt like.
[17:42]I've written a lot about grief.
[17:43]And I've actually even taught journaling workshops on grief.
[17:46]And the one thing that I do know about grief
[17:48]is that sometimes when you're really in it,
[17:50]it actually physically hurts.
[17:52]And that night that I was in the shower, it hurt.
[17:54]That's probably why I took a shower.
[17:55]Because whenever I feel achy or sore,
[17:57]I'm like, oh, take a shower, I'll feel better.
[17:59]And I yelled that out loud to nobody.
[18:01]And the thing that I think was so tough for me
[18:04]was the timing.
[18:05]Now I realize that a lot of people lose parents
[18:08]or people that they love when they're much younger than I was
[18:12]or with a lot less support or under different,
[18:14]maybe harder circumstances.
[18:16]But for me, the best way that I can describe my mom
[18:19]for people who didn't know her is that I could never
[18:21]get enough of her.
[18:23]And so, you know, when I was in college or living in New York
[18:26]and working, she would come see me from whatever she was.
[18:29]And she would, I don't want to make you cry.
[18:31]You're about to.
[18:32]And she would take me out to lunch
[18:34]and we would have a great visit.
[18:35]And then a few hours later that night,
[18:37]I would call her to tell her something else.
[18:40]And I just couldn't get enough of her.
[18:42]And so it felt particularly sad for me
[18:46]that she died, that she left me,
[18:49]which is what it felt like at a time
[18:51]where I had just moved to the area where my parents lived
[18:54]to be with her, where I just had a baby.
[18:57]And I mean, you probably know this from your mom.
[18:59]I think when you have a baby, it's a time
[19:01]where you can reconnect with your mom on a different level.
[19:04]And it just seemed so unfair that that was the time
[19:07]when I was losing her.
[19:08]And so in the shower at that moment,
[19:10]I think I was thinking,
[19:12]how am I going to do this without her?
[19:14]And I've done it without her.
[19:16]And, you know, I don't know what she would think
[19:19]of the job I'm doing.
[19:20]I hope she'd be proud of it.
[19:21]But I still, I don't feel like saying what the F anymore.
[19:25]But even actually this morning,
[19:26]I was talking to a friend of mine from college
[19:28]about some teenage stuff with my kids
[19:30]and schools and things.
[19:31]And I said to her, I just,
[19:33]I wonder what my mom would say.
[19:34]And she said, I'll tell you what she would say.
[19:36]And she was right.
[19:37]So I can, I had such a close relationship with her.
[19:40]And I know how she parented me
[19:42]that I sometimes know what she would say.
[19:43]I'm going out of tangent here.
[19:44]No, I love it.
[19:45]But I also know that it's okay.
[19:48]And maybe listen, I wish she was alive.
[19:51]But maybe because I lost her,
[19:53]maybe I became a different kind of parent.
[19:54]Not better or worse.
[19:56]But maybe I was able to make my own decisions.
[19:59]And.
[20:00]maybe not live in her shadow and be a parent like she was in the good ways and maybe not
[20:04]do the bad stuff, maybe do worse stuff. I don't know. But I think about it a lot and I look to
[20:09]my friends and their mother sometimes for advice or to my aunt or to older friends of mine or
[20:15]my mother-in-law but there's no one like your mother and there was no one like my mother. I mean
[20:19]as is evident. When I see when I see mothers and daughters together I'm always a little envious
[20:24]but you know people have that with other things too. So I didn't mean to be like well with me
[20:30]because you're not being well with me. You lost your mom. Another thing about my mom too is that
[20:35]she did say to me when she was sick. Don't ever use me as a crutch. And go about your life and live
[20:40]a happy life. That was another inspiration to this book. I looked back at my life and I'm
[20:44]you know I'm in midlife. I'm 45 but I realized you know what I am this like happy well-adjusted person
[20:49]and when I was 29 I really wasn't and how did I get there? And that was part of you know writing the book too.
[20:55]Yeah. It's also beautiful. I'm so sorry that you had to go through that but I can't imagine
[21:00]it should be anything but proud of you. Thank you. Thanks for saying that. I mean.
[21:08]So this book you said it's been in you for a very long time. When you're going through all this
[21:13]emotion and reliving these sort of painful memories but also finding and inspiring sort of take on them
[21:19]where did you do this? Like tell me you mentioned these Starbucks lattes. Yes. So anyway I'm addicted
[21:25]to Starbucks. Indoor scarves. So there is a chapter in the book called indoor scarves and how I became
[21:32]a writer and that is an example of how I started wearing these. Basically when the temperature drops
[21:37]below 75 I'm wearing a scar from my family makes fun of me for that. You know these fun funky scarves
[21:42]that are soft and I figured out that that was also the time when I started wearing them when I was
[21:47]35 that I left my career on marketing and PR to become a writer full-time. So I wonder if there was a
[21:51]connection to that kind of you know tongue-in-cheek but related to that. So you know like I said I wrote
[21:57]the first book and it got published and then I wrote more and more and more and I eventually left my
[22:01]day job so to speak and became an author. So this book I wrote a lot. I would say I wrote a lot
[22:09]in my house. I have a makeshift office in my living room which is becoming more of an office I
[22:14]actually redid at the summer and it looks great and kind of you know my day-to-day life is my kids
[22:19]get off to school and I write I'm a morning person so I'll write at home. I like to wear a scarf. It
[22:23]keeps me cozy. I'm always accessorized and then usually around mid-day I will head over to Starbucks
[22:29]because I like to get out. There's a lot of just sometimes other coffee houses but usually Starbucks.
[22:32]There's a lot of distractions in my house and sometimes people say how can you focus in a coffee shop
[22:36]but I just put my air pause in and then I'm usually out and about so I can pick up a kid or do
[22:42]something that I need to do and when I'm really that's how I wrote this book it took me about a year
[22:46]to write and when I'm really writing I am into it and I won't stop. I don't stop a lot to edit
[22:52]I write and then I go back and edit. It's kind of how the process works for me. Have you thought about
[22:56]your next writing project? I have so I said before that I've written all nonfiction and I always
[23:02]said to myself I can't make fiction. I'm not creative enough. I don't know how to do that and I was
[23:05]actually having coffee with an author friend of mine a little over a year ago and she was she felt
[23:11]the same way and then she wrote a book and a fiction book. I shouldn't just say a book and
[23:17]she kind of inspired me a little bit and I went back and I've outlined a book. I have these
[23:23]characters in my head. I started really writing it last fall and I think I might get better
[23:29]than writing memoir and nonfiction because I feel like there's not a lot of rules. The truth is
[23:36]that all the characters that I sort of you know make up are everything sort of based on real life
[23:42]but you don't have to in memoir what happened to me is what happened to me. You can't make it up
[23:46]so I really am into this idea. I love these characters. I feel like now when I'm working
[23:52]I play with them. It's like I'm playing with my imaginary friends in my head. It's a little weird.
[23:55]I think about them at night but for now I tabled that for a while because this book is coming out
[24:00]this fall and I got really busy with promotion and marketing and events and I'm kind of focused on
[24:06]that right now and I have to say I love that. I mean I like being a writer because I love writing
[24:12]and I like the solitude of that but I love people and I love getting out and talking to people about
[24:16]it. So once you know this whole book tour and stuff dies down a little bit I will definitely go
[24:21]back to my friends and my head and write work and write fiction. Do you have any advice to aspiring
[24:28]authors? Yeah well a couple things like funny what I just said about being a people person
[24:34]in when I work a lot at Starbucks. A lot of people say oh I have this idea. I have this friend.
[24:39]Could you call you? And I used to be a lot more open to that not to be like mean about it
[24:43]or now but I found sometimes I would meet people and they'd be like yeah this idea.
[24:48]It's kind of like button chair. You have to sit down and write it and you might think it's horrible
[24:53]but you got to start somewhere and you got to write it. And then once you have something
[24:58]I think you have to be able to take criticism which was a hard lesson for me to learn
[25:02]from an editor or somebody you trust or an agent. And then you also you have to be able to put
[25:08]yourself out in the world and put the book out in the world. I mean I think the world of publishing
[25:13]is changing so much as you know. You're doing amazing things to get people out there but
[25:17]say yes to everything. Like do podcasts talk to people go to events. I'm doing events that
[25:24]aren't necessarily traditional book events too. So that kind of runs the gamut from like beginning
[25:28]middle and end but I think there's a lot a lot in there. That's awesome yeah. Well thank you and I
[25:34]forgot to ask you about your chocolate tube cookies and Rachel was so sweet and brought me chocolate
[25:39]tube cookies today after I had been asking her about her references in the book and an article
[25:44]she'd written. Yeah I wrote an article about the Huffington Post about my chocolate tube cookies.
[25:48]I made them famous. You did. Yeah they were amazing so thank you that made my day too. Thank you I'm glad
[25:54]you enjoyed them. Thank you so much for having me on. Thanks for coming. Bye.
[25:58]This episode has been sponsored by Book of the Month Club. Book of the Month.com and
[26:02]your code Zibi to get your first book for $5. Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[26:07]Books. You can follow me on Instagram at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much to
[26:12]Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morningmoon Productions
[26:17]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music. Thanks for listening. You could always email me
[26:22]at Zibi at Zibiowans.com.