Cathleen Schine, THE GRAMMARIANS
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[0:49]I'm here today with Kathleen Schein, who's the author of the internationally best-selling novels,
[0:54]the three wise men's of Westport, the love letter, and the New Yorkers, as well as award-winning,
[0:59]they may not mean to, but they do, and other novels. Two of her books have been made into films.
[1:04]Her latest novel is the Grammarians. She's the winner of the Ferrell Gremlin Award,
[1:09]and is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books,
[1:12]a graduate of Barnard and a former New Yorker. She currently lives in Venice, California,
[1:16]with her partner. So welcome, Kathy. Thanks for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books.
[1:20]Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Also, I love the name. Moms don't have time to read books.
[1:26]Moms don't have time to do anything, so. It's true. But you can make it a time. That's what you have to do.
[1:33]And hopefully, Moms have time to listen to podcasts about books, so at least there's that. Absolutely.
[1:38]At least then, they can save some time trying to figure out what they can multitask. Yes, exactly.
[1:44]So you are the author of several books, including this new one, the Grammarians, which was
[1:49]so good. And I mean, I feel like the dictionary in this book and all of these things are so real to me
[1:55]still having put it down two weeks ago. Tell me what inspired you to write the Grammarians,
[2:00]which has been called an enchanting comic love letter to sibling rivalry and the English language.
[2:06]Well, what usually happens, inspiration is a very strange thing. I don't even think it's the
[2:13]the right word. I always feel like I'm sort of wandering around banging my head against things
[2:19]and one of them turns out to be a door that opens. And after every book, I've written 11 books,
[2:26]after every book, I think, okay, I've had 11 ideas. I'm not going to have a 12. And one of these
[2:34]days, it's going to be true that I'm not going to have an idea for the next book. But so far, they,
[2:38]you know, I bang my head around enough and an idea comes. This I really wanted to write about two
[2:45]people having a feud about language. And I wasn't sure what shape that was going to take.
[2:52]At first, it was going to be about translation, but the only language I know is English. So that
[2:58]didn't seem very practical. And then someone reminded me of Anne Landers and dear Abby, who were
[3:05]identical twins and had a long, long feud. They each had kind of warring advice columns.
[3:13]And so I first thought, no, I don't want to write about twins. It's too difficult. I don't
[3:20]understand them. I don't, I'm not a twin. I don't even know any twins very well. But then once
[3:27]that idea got in my head, it just kept, the twins kept, kept at me. And I thought, no, no,
[3:34]yeah, this is it. This is what I have to write about. And then I was given as a gift to kind of
[3:41]cheer me up because I was having a lot of trouble writing. And I was in a post-election funk.
[3:48]Someone gave me a book called English as they English as she is spoke, which is a hilarious book that
[3:56]was kind of viral. And it was a sensation in the 19th century. It was supposedly, it was a phrase
[4:04]book for Portuguese travelers in England. But every phrase was insane. I mean, it was so bad,
[4:11]which it was, it didn't make any sense. And it became a kind of comic sensation and Mark Twain
[4:18]wrote an introduction to it. And it was so funny. And it just made me realize I could write about
[4:24]one of my passions, which is language and linguistics and words.
[4:29]Did you have a dictionary like the one you write about in this book? I didn't. I was not a
[4:34]dictionary fiend. I did have, we did have the book of knowledge, which was about, I don't know,
[4:40]30 volumes. It was kind of an encyclopedia that I that I loved and used to sit and read. But my
[4:48]favorite word book, even more than the dictionary, which I do love now, is the, the sores.
[4:55]I keep it by my bed. I use it all the time, especially as I've aged. And the words are
[5:01]farther and farther field. And I'm desperately searching for the right word. But I just love reading it.
[5:07]It just, dictionaries and a the sores kind of open up all the possibilities, not just of
[5:14]plot or narrative, but of every single word. And a word can then kind of lead you to the next word,
[5:21]which then leads you to, oh, this is what the story is about. So when I at the beginning of
[5:27]each chapter of this book, there's a dictionary definition of a word from Dr. Johnson's dictionary,
[5:33]which was the first really important comprehensive dictionary in English. And I did that after I
[5:41]had finished the book. So when, so with each chapter, I then looked for a word in Dr. Johnson's
[5:48]dictionary that would work at the beginning of that chapter. And a lot of times what happened
[5:53]was after I found the word, that's when I understood what the chapter was really about and what
[6:00]it was doing. So it works both ways. Words can open up ideas and they can also encapsulate
[6:07]an idea that you weren't even sure you had. Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah, it was,
[6:12]it was fun too, that part. That was the best part. A good challenge for anyone writing a book to pick
[6:17]one word to sum up a chapter. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's also, it's very hard when people say,
[6:23]what is your book about? I always kind of stumble and bumble and I'm not sure what to say,
[6:30]because of course, well, for a writer, for the author in particular, I think it's hardest to know
[6:36]what the book is about for me anyway, because I don't start out with a theme. I start out with
[6:42]some characters and some kind of conflict that I want to or some kind of dynamic that I want
[6:48]to explore. So then when someone says, well, what is the book about? You know, I said, oh,
[6:54]well, it's about twins and words and family and relationships. I mean, it becomes rather
[7:03]life. It's about life. Yeah, life is a coming of age. Yes, it is. It's a funny coming of age novel
[7:10]in a way. And it's about in some ways, you could say, it's about a kind of authoritarianism versus
[7:16]kind of anarchy on the two most extreme ends of of language. And so there were a lot of things going
[7:24]on in my mind or in my subconscious as I was writing it, but so interesting. Yeah, mostly it's
[7:30]about words and twins and sisters trying to differentiate themselves from each other when they look
[7:37]exactly the same. I feel like the point of the book at which they really differentiate is when
[7:42]they have children and they decide to handle that in very different ways. I feel like up until
[7:46]then they've been running similar courses in life and yet one decides to be a stay-at-home mom,
[7:51]she's a teacher and says, okay, I love it. I don't want to miss a single word that my baby says
[7:55]and the other one has a child much later and it doesn't want to give up the rat race in a way.
[8:02]Right. And you said, I have some quote. So, Daphne, one of the twins says, having so much work
[8:07]to do was essential, she thought, because babies distort the mind. They tire you out and hypnotize
[8:12]you and trick you into superhuman efforts and sleep deprivation that wear you down even more until
[8:17]you are completely under their tiny thumbs and praying to remain there. And Laurel on the other hand
[8:23]is the one who doesn't want to miss a minute. So I was just wondering for you, did you identify more
[8:29]as a Daphne, the high achieving columnist or more as a Laurel who wanted to give it up to stay-home
[8:37]or some sort of mixture? Well, first of all, I think both of them are under the tiny thumb
[8:43]and want to stay there to a certain extent and the question is how much? For me, personally,
[8:50]I was very lucky. First of all, what I do, my work, I can do at home. So that's already a huge
[8:57]privilege. But I remember, well, my first book, let's put it this way, my first book took me one
[9:04]year to write. My second book took me seven years to write. And that's because I had two little
[9:11]children. And as I was sitting and working, I would hear the children playing with the baby
[9:16]sitter. And I'd think, no, no, no, this is wrong. This is the wrong, no. Why is she having all this
[9:24]fun with my children that I want to have fun with? And my deathless prose, the world can wait
[9:30]a few years for my next book. But this I will never be able to see again. Well, that's a huge
[9:36]privilege. And that was a blessing for me. Not everyone has that opportunity. So I realize that I
[9:46]know so many people who would love to stay home with their children, but can't. And I know
[9:51]other people who have enough of that when they get home from work. And it's a balance for each
[9:57]person, if economically you can.
[10:00]pull it off. And so those two things are, you know, a real conflict in the real world, but
[10:05]Daphne and Laurel managed to sort of inch their way over to the amount of time that they need
[10:12]with their children. And I think, and don't forget, both of them work at home.
[10:16]Right. Makes a huge difference. Yes. So it also means you're never done with your work.
[10:22]It means procrastination is everywhere. Opportunities for procrastination, you know, and suddenly
[10:28]you're doing the laundry, which you hate to do, but it's better than writing. And so there are
[10:34]pitfalls to that as well. It's, you know what? It's hard to be a mother and again, a privilege.
[10:40]I could talk all day. I'm not even going to like take up that ball and run with it because I want
[10:45]to hear more about you. But yes, I would agree with that. You know, it's funny, you start when you talk
[10:50]about the twin's own mother. And you say, Sally was a dominating mother when she could be, but it was all
[10:56]in self-defense, which was something the twins clearly understood. And I just love that line,
[11:00]thinking that like as a parent, you're just, you're just like trying to protect yourself, you know,
[11:07]it's so funny. Well, you know, I'm thinking about that question last night and I was thinking,
[11:12]well, maybe that's one I don't really want to go into. I don't have that much to say about it.
[11:17]But as I was thinking about it, it just made me laugh because as soon as I read it,
[11:25]the visual that came to me, the image was of me running around the house, chasing both,
[11:31]you know, screaming at them, doors slamming. And I thought, well, wait, is that defensive or
[11:39]often? So, you know, I don't, unlike Sally, the mother in this book, I did not feel excluded.
[11:48]My children did not have that kind of, the twins in this book have such a tight relationship
[11:54]that Sally is kind of baffled by them and feels a little bit excluded. And that changes,
[12:00]I don't want to give away the end of the book, but by the end of the book, she's kind of
[12:05]understood certain things that make that less painful. And when I finished the book, I thought, well,
[12:11]you know, one of the things I think maybe I was unconsciously doing in this book was making a statement
[12:18]to my own children, which was, you boys better be friends with each other after I die or I will come
[12:25]back and haunt you. Have you, have you let them know that? I've said it. What they have to say about that?
[12:32]They say, what they always say, oh, mom, are they friends now? They're friends, they're friends.
[12:38]Yes, they're getting over their childhood, which I call them. Missy guys, that is the right word.
[12:48]Actually, in the book you say, which align that I love, you said, this is what words do
[12:52]Laurel realizes. They call out from the page and force you to listen. No, they allow you to listen.
[12:58]So tell me about that a little bit. Well, I think words are very powerful. And I think they're
[13:03]powerful as you say them or write them, but they're also powerful as you hear them or read them.
[13:10]And for me, reading is as creative an act. And I think it is for most people. I think readers are
[13:16]as creative as involved in the same kind of creative act that writers are involved in because
[13:23]you're bringing everything you have to it and making of it what you will or what you can or what
[13:29]you need to. So I think what she's saying there is that if you can open yourself up to words,
[13:38]they have a tremendous amount that you're not even expecting to give you and to show you
[13:44]that they open up a whole world, words, worlds, either one. So people have called you a modern day
[13:51]Jewish Jane Austen. Thoughts on this? Well, I am Jewish. So that part's right. There was a period
[13:59]when I think if you were a woman, I mean, don't forget, I've been doing this for 30 years.
[14:04]So things have changed a little bit in the way. And that quote is from quite a long time ago,
[14:09]25 years ago, there was a period when if you were a woman and you wrote a funny comedy of
[14:16]manners, and it was good, you were compared to Jane Austen. That was the signal that this is an
[14:27]intelligent book and it's funny and it's okay for you to read it. And so of course, I'm
[14:32]immensely flattered to have had that said about me, but you know, there was only one
[14:38]Jane Austen. There will always be only one Jane Austen and we're all anyone who has ever written a
[14:44]book that is funny and about a family and has any insights at all, owes everything to Jane Austen.
[14:52]So I'll take it. So can I just like delve into your personal life here for a little bit?
[14:57]So when you were younger, you were in a horrible car accident.
[15:00]Yes, I was. And you almost died at age six. I broke my neck when I was 16.
[15:06]How, what happened? We went to the movies, some friends and I, and I'd already seen the movie.
[15:11]That's the part that still gets me. I didn't really want to see the movie.
[15:16]It was good by Columbus. And I'd seen it and it was good and that was great,
[15:22]but I went just to be, you know, just to hang out with my friends. And then on the way back,
[15:27]my boyfriend was driving and he was driving very fast. We weren't drunk. We weren't high.
[15:33]We were just having a good time and laughing and he was driving too fast and he hit a stone wall
[15:39]and I went through the windshield and then back again. But my favorite part of this story,
[15:45]which by the way, I've never really written about this particular incident. And I think it's just
[15:52]to, I've written around it. There've been, there's been a car accident. There've been things
[15:57]happening in different books, but it's not something I've ever used. Directly, I think it's just
[16:02]too, I guess, traumatic. I don't know. But, or maybe not traumatic enough to use, I'm not sure.
[16:09]But my favorite part is I wanted to go to Woodstock. Okay. It was 1969. I had to go to Woodstock.
[16:17]I was in the hospital. I was in traction. I had things screwed into my head because
[16:22]and the doctor said, no, you cannot go to Woodstock. And I said, yes, I have to go to Woodstock,
[16:27]put me in a cast, a body cast and my friends will put me in the back of their van and we'll go to
[16:33]Woodstock. And he said, you cannot go to Woodstock. You have a broken neck. And I said, no,
[16:40]I don't. I just broke C1 and C2. And he said, that is your neck. And that combination of
[16:51]ignorance and arrogance is, to me, kind of embodies what adolescence and being a teenager is all
[16:59]about. And I often think about that. And I think, wow, you were, you were an arrogant little thing,
[17:05]weren't you? But anyway, I didn't go to Woodstock, which I still regret, although it did rain.
[17:15]Muddy. You would have ruined your shoes. Yeah. Oh, and I was so upset. I was in the emergency room
[17:21]and I don't know. My mother was there and I said, just make sure they save my belt.
[17:30]Don't, it's my favorite belt. You know what? You were looking at me. Like my face was all
[17:35]cut up and, you know, and she just said, mm-hmm. It didn't say, dear, you're about to die from loss
[17:42]of blood. I'm not worried about your belt. She just said, yes, mm-hmm. Yes, she's a good mother.
[17:48]Yeah, I would not. She was in shock. Anyway, I survived. I survived. And then, but then you had
[17:53]another whole traumatic thing where you were taking prednisone to combat Crohn's disease and you ended
[17:59]up in the hospital for eight months when you were only age 20 because of some effect with your
[18:04]hips or something? Yeah. It's called aseptic necrosis of the hips. But anyway, I was in the hospital
[18:09]and in rehab in a wheelchair for a total of a year, which is a hugely long time when you're that
[18:17]age or any age. That day is a long time to do a hospital. Yes, it's true. It was horrible,
[18:24]but I did get to watch the Watergate hearings, which were at that time. This is how I
[18:29]you gave Forrest Gump of the Heart. This is how I date things. Oh, that operation. Yeah,
[18:37]that, and then I have written about that. So my first book was about that. It's a novel,
[18:42]but it's very autobiographical. And again, it's about a kind of arrogant, privileged,
[18:48]young person who is hit with this horrible thing. And somehow maintains her dignity by remaining
[18:59]an incredibly arrogant, privileged, young person throughout the whole thing. I mean, I think that's
[19:05]a kind of strength and it can also be a weakness. But in this case, that's how she kind of hung
[19:12]on to life. So during those stretches of time, did you turn to reading? Were you able to read?
[19:20]Did you learn to see things through? I mean, clearly this must have affected how you saw the
[19:27]world. I mean, I can't imagine despite how arrogant you may think you were. I'm sure like these
[19:32]experiences give you a unique lens on what happens in life. You know, it's interesting. The
[19:39]perspective was literally different because I was horizontal or I was low down in a wheelchair.
[19:45]And that taught me a lot about perspective in life, not just for writing because I had wanted
[19:52]to be a poet when I was in high school, but I kind of got scared off by by how, you know, fabulous
[19:59]everyone.
[20:00]was when I went to Sarah Lawrence and I thought,
[20:02]oh, I'm not letting these fabulous people see my poems.
[20:07]Get me out of here.
[20:08]And then I went to Barnard and studied medieval history.
[20:11]But yeah, my perspective, I learned about different perspectives.
[20:15]And I learned that one person can be suddenly
[20:20]in a completely different space and at a different level
[20:25]literally, which also changes the way you're treated.
[20:29]When you're horizontal, it doesn't matter how old you are,
[20:32]you're just considered this sick person
[20:35]with no dignity and no agency.
[20:39]And when you're young, on top of that, it really was horrendous.
[20:44]So it did teach me about that.
[20:45]And it was interesting in that way.
[20:48]I mean, it was awful, but looking back,
[20:50]I learned a lot about different kinds of people.
[20:53]I was at the Ruskin Institute
[20:56]with all these old people who had had strokes.
[21:00]And so that was very interesting.
[21:02]And people from all over the country, so I was exposed.
[21:06]I was exposed to a lot of different lives and perspectives.
[21:10]And that was important to me.
[21:13]But at the same time, I learned that you
[21:15]can maintain your own identity, whatever it is,
[21:20]even while you're sort of navigating
[21:23]all these different people and other people's perspectives.
[21:27]So it was an interesting time.
[21:31]Do you feel like you left with a sort of C's today,
[21:35]life is short mentality?
[21:37]Or was it more just getting through that experience?
[21:39]I think in a way, yes, to a certain extent.
[21:42]Because in a way, it made me almost more arrogant.
[21:46]It was sort of like, I believe you.
[21:49]It was sort of one, but I'm about the arrogant.
[21:51]And very, you know, I have no self-confidence.
[21:54]Those things sometimes go together.
[21:56]But in a way, I thought, I don't think I consciously thought.
[21:59]But I felt like I am a superior person
[22:03]because I have survived this.
[22:05]And you have no idea what this is like.
[22:08]And so all of these things give you a certain amount of strength.
[22:12]But at the same time, it has to be tempered
[22:15]as you get older.
[22:17]You start to realize that you are not a superior person.
[22:21]You're just a person like everybody else.
[22:23]And so age has tempered some of the, a lot of the arrogance.
[22:28]But I think the arrogance of youth
[22:29]is a really interesting topic.
[22:32]And I think young people are both arrogant
[22:35]and horribly, painfully, without self-confidence.
[22:40]And I think that combination is so poignant and interesting.
[22:45]So it made me think about things like that.
[22:49]So if we were to do a little timeline
[22:51]and put all your books on the little timeline of your life
[22:54]and then put your life stories on top of it,
[22:58]you started off married to a man.
[23:00]You have two sons.
[23:01]Yes.
[23:01]At some point, you get divorced.
[23:03]Right.
[23:03]Now you're married to a woman.
[23:05]Yes.
[23:05]When did all that happen?
[23:06]Like, put that on a little graph for me.
[23:08]Between which books?
[23:10]Let's see.
[23:10]Somewhere between Rema's niece and she is me
[23:16]that all kind of took place.
[23:19]And did that just change your,
[23:21]like tell me about that, tell me your life.
[23:24]Well, it was hard.
[23:27]It was very difficult.
[23:28]I'm very lucky in that my friends and my family
[23:33]were wonderful.
[23:34]Even my kids were amazing.
[23:36]My ex-husband is just the most wonderful person.
[23:39]We're very close still.
[23:41]So compared to what a lot of people go through,
[23:45]it was a piece of cake.
[23:47]But it was hell.
[23:48]It was, you know, I mean, you grow up thinking,
[23:52]this is what I want.
[23:54]I am so lucky.
[23:55]I have this.
[23:56]I had, you know, I lived in a wonderful place
[23:59]with a wonderful husband.
[24:00]I had these wonderful kids.
[24:01]And now I'm throwing this away.
[24:04]And so it was torture.
[24:07]But I wasn't throwing it away.
[24:08]I was just changing.
[24:10]And so luckily, I was,
[24:13]I mean, both David and I worked very,
[24:16]and Janet, my wife now, worked very, very hard together
[24:21]to make things work.
[24:24]And since we're all good decent people, it did work.
[24:28]It was kind of a miracle.
[24:29]Nora, everyone once said,
[24:30]I was not close friends with her,
[24:32]but friends with her, we both had sons named Max.
[24:34]So I got a lot of hand-me-downs.
[24:38]I have some friends with sons named Max.
[24:39]So if you continue this trend, just let me know.
[24:42]Okay, I have a little, oh, the cute little banner.
[24:44]The cutest little sweater.
[24:45]But she said, I remember David and I were divorced,
[24:49]but we went to a party together for someone
[24:51]that we both knew and Nora sort of, you know,
[24:54]laughed and said, you guys have the best divorce.
[24:57]And I thought, wow, coming from you,
[24:59]oh, that's a compliment, I'll take that.
[25:01]So we do, we do.
[25:03]So it was very hard.
[25:04]And it was the most painful thing,
[25:07]including everything that's ever happened to me
[25:09]because it's so difficult with your kids.
[25:12]And you're disappointing people.
[25:13]And it's like, look, any divorce is the end
[25:16]of a kind of dream that you have
[25:19]when you first get married.
[25:20]And it's a kind of death.
[25:22]And so no matter how well you handle it,
[25:25]it's very, very sad.
[25:27]There's a lot of mourning that goes on.
[25:29]But I'm very happy now.
[25:30]So, and so is David and the kids are great.
[25:34]That's amazing.
[25:35]Yeah, I love that.
[25:35]So what do you have coming next for you?
[25:39]I loved your little preview.
[25:40]We were talking in my kitchen earlier
[25:41]about some idea that Kathy had for a new bag.
[25:44]But yeah, I'm playing around with an idea.
[25:47]I was from reading a book by a 1930s,
[25:52]an emigrate screenwriter in the 1930s
[25:56]who wrote a lot of the screenplays for Greta Garbo,
[26:00]actually, from reading a memoir by her
[26:04]and also talking to a poet and rather tipsy conversation
[26:08]about Auden and about the idea of being minor,
[26:14]of a minor writer.
[26:15]I'm sort of piecing together, I think, maybe.
[26:19]You see how many?
[26:20]How I'm quite fine.
[26:22]Got it?
[26:23]It's just, I'm fooling around with an idea
[26:25]about writing something set in Pacific Palisades
[26:29]where the emigrate community lived.
[26:32]And many of them were ended up involved with Hollywood.
[26:35]And of writing about a fictional person in that milieu
[26:38]and with all of these very brilliant people,
[26:40]but someone who isn't as brilliant.
[26:43]Sorry for these sirens, by the way.
[26:45]Sure, in your Pacific Palisades book,
[26:47]they would not be at the same level.
[26:48]No, but if my mother's apartment on 96th Street,
[26:51]yeah, we got the size of this.
[26:53]My apologies.
[26:55]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[26:58]You know, yes, I think,
[27:01]which is don't take yourself too seriously
[27:03]in that if you see yourself as an artist as you start out,
[27:09]you will immediately start thinking you're a failed artist
[27:12]unless you're a jerk.
[27:14]And so, you know, it's good to kind of keep perspective
[27:19]and just say, I am putting some words on paper
[27:23]and either they'll work out or they won't.
[27:25]And I'm gonna write them and then when I'm done,
[27:28]then I will go back and make them really good.
[27:31]I think people get very hung up on their first draft
[27:35]or first sentence or first chapter and keep rewriting
[27:38]and feel bad about themselves.
[27:40]And for me, I feel like you have to write what you have to say
[27:45]and then you go back and you edit and make it really good.
[27:48]And also read a lot and read a lot of good books,
[27:50]not necessarily popular books,
[27:52]not even necessarily books that you like,
[27:55]but just books that open up different worlds
[27:59]and different ways of thinking.
[28:01]Not necessarily different kinds of prose,
[28:03]but just different ways of thinking.
[28:05]And that's the best I can do.
[28:07]I mean, my first book, I wrote one page a day, period.
[28:11]No matter what, not two pages, not half a page.
[28:14]I just, that was the way I controlled my fear and my ego
[28:19]was just, I'm doing this.
[28:21]This is my job and it is a job.
[28:23]That's the other thing that people really,
[28:24]if you wait around for inspiration, good luck to you.
[28:28]You know, inspiration comes,
[28:29]but you have to be sitting there doing your job
[28:32]for inspiration to bother to visit you, so.
[28:35]Somebody just said, there's no such thing as plumber's black.
[28:38]You can't get writer's black, like plumbers don't,
[28:40]you just, I had, for the first time in my life
[28:44]after over 30 years of writing books,
[28:46]after 2016, I had writer's block.
[28:50]And I was just so upset and so anxious and so distracted
[28:56]that anything I wrote just seemed irrelevant to the world
[29:01]and stupid and why would anyone be bothered
[29:03]writing this much and certainly not reading it.
[29:07]And the way I conquered that, it took a long time.
[29:10]Well, first why I went to New Orleans
[29:11]and visited some friends and being in New Orleans,
[29:14]which is a place so where death is so pervasive
[29:19]and being there when people are having parades about death.
[29:23]And I thought, oh, you know, if they can do this
[29:26]and have art and love and fun in the midst
[29:31]of all of this disaster, maybe I can do that too.
[29:35]So that was very inspiring.
[29:37]And then I sat myself down every day
[29:39]instead of sitting in the morning.
[29:42]Usually what I do is, you know, eventually I get to my work
[29:45]and I sit down and lie down in my case, I write in bed
[29:50]and start writing and or get distracted.
[29:54]And then two hours later, think, oh my God,
[29:56]I haven't written anything.
[29:57]You know, that whole procrastination thing.
[29:59]Instead of the...
[30:00]at four o'clock in the afternoon, I sat down on the couch with a little pad that I picked
[30:07]up and a pencil that I hate which you can hardly read because it's got such a hard
[30:12]lead and just wrote for about 40 minutes with a glass of bourbon on the side and I didn't
[30:18]look at it because I couldn't read it because it was so, you know, so difficult to read
[30:22]and I did that for about a week just to get something down without overthinking it and
[30:29]without judging it and by the end of the week I had a really good chapter which is actually
[30:34]in the book so sometimes you have to trick yourself and then but I yeah writers there
[30:42]is no plumbers block maybe but plumbers don't have to like imagine a whole new set of
[30:50]pipes and what they're made out of all new materials and different shapes and every single
[30:56]time so I didn't come up with that no I know and I've heard that before and I've always
[31:01]thought that because I've never had this problem before yeah but now I get it yeah now I
[31:06]know I've I've now I understand it but I also now I know how to get around it right
[31:12]with invisible ink while you're drinking bourbon perfect yeah perfect formula thank you so much
[31:18]for sharing everything with mom's and I'm time to read books thank you thank you so much
[31:22]for doing this is great this episode has been sponsored by book of the month club book of
[31:28]the month dot com enter code zibi to get your first book for five dollars thanks for listening
[31:33]to mom's don't have time to read books you can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
[31:38]to read books thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the sound editing and thank
[31:43]you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music thanks
[31:47]for listening you could always email me at zibi at zibi Owens dot com