Elizabeth Wetmore, VALENTINE
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[1:25]I had such a nice time talking to Elizabeth Wetmore, who's the author of Valentine,
[1:30]which is the hashtag readwithjenna today show pick. Elizabeth also came to my virtual book club,
[1:37]which was so much fun. And if you want to join, just go to the link in my bio or my website at
[1:43]zivio and stockcom and sign up for the book club. Anyway, Elizabeth Wetmore is a graduate of
[1:48]the Iowa Writers Workshop. She's the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for
[1:53]the Arts and two fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, as well as a grant from the Barbara
[1:58]Deming Foundation. She was a Rona Jaffee scholar in fiction at Breadloaf and a fellow at the McDowell
[2:03]Colony. In the spring of 2015, she was one of six writers in residence at Hetchbrook, a native of
[2:10]West Texas. She currently lives in Chicago. I'm sorry to catch you. Hopefully this can just be
[2:16]a minute of downtime in your crazy day. I'm so excited to get to talk with you. I was telling
[2:22]Samantha my agent that I felt like we had just gotten started. And I think as much as anything
[2:28]else that has to do with both my inexperience with podcast and with live events and my sort of
[2:35]Texan sort of propensity for, you know, rambling on and just sort of, you know, beating around the
[2:41]bush. So I'm so glad we get a chance to do this again. A little might be repetitive. I'm so tickled
[2:47]without all of this is going, you know, in part because I've just, I've really come to understand
[2:53]in the last week. I'm a bit of a hermit in my regular life, like actually really a hermit.
[2:58]And I've been, and I've always thought that I wrote mostly for myself and my own sort of amusement
[3:05]and you'll hear writers talk about who, like, their ideal reader is and, you know, my ideal
[3:10]readers like me. And so I've been kind of, I've been so blown away at how what a breaking
[3:17]honor it is and how and how touched I am that to be learning that so many people are reading the
[3:24]book, you know, and how meaningful that is to me. And in particular, you know, to be hearing from
[3:30]people who are sending messages, you know, via Instagram or whatever, saying that they've been
[3:35]moved by the book. And, and, and they're all amazing, but the ones that are most amazing are the
[3:41]ones who are coming from women and girls who know that part of the world and who are so delighted
[3:47]to see characters who are so familiar to them, you know, in literature. I mean, they're so not that,
[3:53]you know, I mean, I don't know if this is literature. I mean, I'm just such a lofty term. But,
[3:57]you know what, you get my point. And so like one woman sent me an email and it was a three
[4:02]sentence email. And it said, I've lived here my whole life. You nailed it. Thank you for writing
[4:08]this book. And I was just like, I just, I know, right. It just moved me to tears, you know, I mean,
[4:13]like, I was like, oh, right. This is amazing. Like, this is what it's all about too. It's not just
[4:19]being alone in your room, you know, spinning stories, but, you know, sharing it and having people
[4:25]be moved, you know, so it's, it's really what remarkable days these all
[4:33]because, you know, all this and, you know, I mean, in a million years of all the ways that I would
[4:39]imagine the world would be going right now, you know, as my book was coming out, you know, this is
[4:44]so, you know, it's just, it's these are such strange days, you know. And there's this little part of
[4:49]me that you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, the pandemic pandemic, like, let's not
[4:54]talk about the book. How are you doing, you know, how are your children? Are you well, you know,
[4:57]are you safe, you know, but, but it's a good thing to be able to, to set it aside for a few hours
[5:03]and be involved in, in a book and to think that my book is actually like doing for a few people
[5:09]here and there, like what books have done for me my whole life, right, is just heady.
[5:15]And wonderful. So, did your family have a good holiday weekend? And we did. Thank you for asking.
[5:26]I think that the thing that's so great is that now we can't go outside and connect, right,
[5:32]but connecting through stories is what's connected people forever, right, for generations before us
[5:37]and generations to come. And you and the people who have books out now, they're like the main
[5:42]form of communication for many people. And so it's like, I don't know. It has this extra weight
[5:48]to it. And I think people are particularly grateful because especially your book with so many
[5:53]different stories of so many different types of people at different life stages, you can touch
[5:58]so many people. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really, I'm blown away by how all of this is
[6:03]going so honestly. So, so, so back up a little bit and talk about when you started this book,
[6:09]I know when I did our quick Instagram live, you talked about that you're, you were pregnant,
[6:14]right, with your son. And so tell me about starting it and how it started a short stories and
[6:18]how it became what it is now is Valentine's fully formed novel. Yeah. You know, well, yeah,
[6:24]I started it when I was pregnant with Hank and I kind of a few things sort of all came together
[6:30]at once. I was teaching composition. And so this was 2004. So this wasn't the 2008 crisis,
[6:37]but this was the 2004 Illinois crisis in which adjunct faculty were just laid off wholesale.
[6:44]So I got laid off for my composition teaching job and found out I was pregnant two weeks later.
[6:51]So I lost my healthcare and I found out I was pregnant. And, and I had been thinking about these
[6:57]stories for, you know, my whole life. And I thought, well, you know, this is a great time to just sit
[7:03]down and sort of hammer out these stories. This is going to be a piece of cake I've been gone
[7:08]for long enough. You know, I actually imagined that I would, that I would finish it before I had
[7:16]Hank, which like now I look back on that and I just think, wow, what a, what was I thinking?
[7:23]And so I thought that I would sit down and sort of hammer out these stories pretty quickly and
[7:27]that it would be a done deal. And, you know, I would have my son and, you know, and look for work
[7:32]and sort of, you know, go back to things. And what I discovered, of course, was that it was so
[7:38]much more of a Pandora's box that I was opening than I ever realized. And not just because it was
[7:44]hard, because writing is hard. And it's, and I mean, writing is hard for everyone. I'm no different.
[7:50]I'm probably a bit slower than a lot of people. You know, you hear these stories of like
[7:55]trial up or whatever would finish a book in the morning and then start as next book after lunch,
[8:01]and God bless them, you know, but that's not me ever. I'm terribly slow. I have to think about things
[8:07]for a long time. I spent a lot of time staring out the window and I revised constantly. So I
[8:13]thought this was going to be a piece of cake. Of course, it wasn't. It was so much harder than I
[8:17]expected. And at the same time, you know, I realized after I finally did get a draft, which was when
[8:23]he was about four years old, that I was telling a more sort of overarching story that this
[8:29]wasn't just a collection. And I don't want to say just a collection in a disparaging way,
[8:33]because I happen to love short stories. That's actually the form I'm most comfortable with. And
[8:38]I think I probably started with short stories as much as anything else, because I love them,
[8:43]but also because I had no idea how to write a novel. And so once I realized there was kind of an
[8:48]overarching story to it, you know, I went back and sort of started treating it accordingly.
[8:53]But, but at the same time, you know, I was always working. My husband and I, you know,
[8:58]have always kind of hung on to the sort of lower end of the middle class. You know, he's a high
[9:04]school English teacher for an independent school. And I was an independent copy editor and, you know,
[9:10]sort of taught adjunct for a while. And so, so as I was writing the book, I often set it aside
[9:17]for long periods of time, either just for practical reasons, you know, we just raising a child,
[9:23]or for frankly emotional reasons, which was that I found the book hard to write and sort of
[9:29]inspired not having been there for a really long time and thinking that I finally maybe had the
[9:34]perspective I needed to to be able to write this book when I actually got into it. I often had
[9:40]to step away for long periods of time because either I wasn't seeing the characters clearly,
[9:45]or according them the kind of dignity that they deserved, you know, or because I frankly just lost
[9:51]my nerve. And then, of course, there were just the practical parts of living, you know,
[9:58]Georgia and I were doing the gig a couple.
[10:00]on a me before they even like called it such a thing, you know?
[10:03]And my work life, you know, I left home at 18
[10:06]and with really no money and no survival skills at all
[10:10]for being out in the world outside of West Texas.
[10:14]And so, you know, I have always waited tables
[10:18]and driven calves and bartended and, you know,
[10:22]and waited tables and bartended.
[10:25]So I've, you know, I've always kind of,
[10:27]writing has always been something
[10:28]that I've, with the exception of graduate school,
[10:31]writing has always been something
[10:32]that I've squeezed in around the edges of my life, you know?
[10:36]So, and so on the one hand, it makes for a slow going.
[10:40]And on the other hand, I think it probably gives me
[10:43]a lot of empathy for the kinds of working class characters
[10:47]I'm writing about, you know,
[10:48]I would joke with some of my girlfriends
[10:50]that if I ever write a book that's about a college professor,
[10:53]you know, who's who's who's suffering
[10:56]from some kind of terrible midlife on we,
[10:58]like just shoot me, you know,
[11:01]because, and those are great books.
[11:03]Don't get me wrong.
[11:04]But I mean, the characters I'm interested in, you know,
[11:07]are characters like Jenny, you know,
[11:09]who who who longs for beauty and holds up in her bathroom
[11:14]looking at library books of paintings and museums
[11:18]that she's never even heard of, you know,
[11:20]and I think a lot about that.
[11:22]Characters who somehow don't think they have a right to
[11:26]or that these things, you know, beauty aren't really
[11:29]for them, you know, and those are really the characters
[11:32]I'm interested in.
[11:33]So, so slow going on the one hand,
[11:35]but on the other hand, hopefully it gave me a kind
[11:38]of empathy and compassion, you know,
[11:40]for these characters that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
[11:44]So, long answer to a real, are you going to be,
[11:46]are you going to be editing this?
[11:47]Oh my gosh, it was a great answer.
[11:51]They're way.
[11:51]I'll edit it all.
[11:54]But that was a great answer.
[11:56]And so just to book in this, your son,
[11:59]who you were pregnant with when you started,
[12:00]how old is he now?
[12:01]He is 15.
[12:03]So I sold the book when he was 13.
[12:05]So yeah.
[12:06]And how did that, how did that happen?
[12:08]Well, you know, for all the talk about the time it took me
[12:11]to write the book, actually, to be honest.
[12:14]And it was pretty easy.
[12:16]I got really, really lucky.
[12:18]I had an amazing agent who believed in the project.
[12:21]And once I finally finished the damn thing,
[12:23]it actually sold really quickly.
[12:26]And that was amazing.
[12:29]I, the week we submitted it in early August.
[12:33]And of course, by then, I understood a little bit more
[12:35]about the publishing industry.
[12:37]And so I thought, well, nothing's going on in New York.
[12:40]It's August, everyone's elsewhere.
[12:42]And so I'll brush off my resume and start thinking
[12:45]about what's next, the book is done.
[12:48]And it sold very, very quickly and even in August.
[12:51]And so it was pretty magical, honestly.
[12:54]Well, it's so well-deserved.
[12:56]It's a really fantastic book.
[12:57]It's an amazing editor.
[12:59]So who I love dearly and has been just brilliant in every way.
[13:04]So now you're a debut novelist at age 52.
[13:07]How does that feel?
[13:09]It feels great, not going to lie.
[13:11]It feels great.
[13:12]And it feels right.
[13:13]You know, I think that it can be really easy,
[13:17]especially in the arts, to sort of put yourself
[13:21]on a timeline of when things are appropriate and when
[13:25]they're not.
[13:26]And of course, for those of us who don't come from backgrounds
[13:29]where art making is prized, or even really
[13:34]considered to be an option as a way of earning a living,
[13:38]I think it can be really easy to sort of hit your 35th birthday
[13:43]and no book and your 40th birthday and no book
[13:47]and your 45th birthday and no book and to think, OK,
[13:50]this is over.
[13:51]This is not happening.
[13:52]It's time to sort of set it all aside and go on to my quote
[13:58]real life.
[13:59]And for me, I definitely had those moments.
[14:04]I've had my dark nights of the writer's soul for sure.
[14:08]But every time I thought about giving up on this book,
[14:10]I was filled with such sorrow at the idea
[14:14]that these women and girls stories, I mean, of course,
[14:18]someone else could have written this book.
[14:20]I mean, it's not like I'm the, you know,
[14:22]and these women and girls could have told their own stories.
[14:24]It's not like I'm doing any of these characters
[14:27]a big favor or whatever.
[14:29]But when I did think of abandoning it,
[14:31]it really filled me with such sorrow to think that I couldn't
[14:35]do it, that I think even when I set it aside and thought,
[14:40]this is it, this is over.
[14:41]I always found myself going back to it
[14:43]and feeling a great sense of relief when I did.
[14:48]And I know you said before that the characters
[14:51]were fictional characters, but they were somehow
[14:53]based on types of people you know,
[14:55]and that Lark's Berlin is not a real street,
[14:58]but it mimicked the street that you were on.
[15:01]Tell me about sort of taking your whole experience
[15:05]and mashing it up and making it fiction.
[15:07]And which part of it did you really want to get out?
[15:10]Like which part of the story, there were so many characters,
[15:14]like whose story did you feel most compelled
[15:16]to get out into the world?
[15:19]Oh gosh, I felt compelled to get all their stories
[15:22]out in the world.
[15:23]I think, Glory and the terrible sort of miscarriage
[15:30]of justice and the terrible sort of racism
[15:34]that I witnessed growing up.
[15:35]And I was a working-class middle-class white kid,
[15:39]so my experience was pretty in retrospect,
[15:42]pretty sheltered in a lot of ways.
[15:44]I mean, I think a lot of the reason it took me so long
[15:46]to write the book was that I just did not see my hometown
[15:49]clearly for a really long time, you know?
[15:52]But Glory's story was one that I felt most drawn to
[15:57]in a lot of ways, because I knew from the beginning
[15:59]that she wasn't gonna see any real justice,
[16:01]you know, at least not in a quarter of law.
[16:04]And I was so heartbroken by the reality of her life, you know,
[16:07]that this was a girl who had endured this horrific experience.
[16:10]And then, you know, almost immediately on the heels
[16:13]of that, you know, her mom,
[16:15]who is an undocumented worker, you know,
[16:17]is caught up in an immigration raid
[16:19]and, you know, deported back to Mexico.
[16:22]So now she's going through this without, you know,
[16:25]the one person in her life who could, you know,
[16:28]probably have offered her a great deal of comfort.
[16:31]The relationship, I mean, as you've, you know,
[16:33]you've seen the book.
[16:34]So I'm pretty obsessed with the relationship
[16:36]between mothers and daughters, you know,
[16:38]and all of their complications and glory
[16:42]and, you know, and difficulties.
[16:44]So she was probably the character in a lot of ways
[16:47]who most touched my heart and whose story
[16:49]I really, really wanted out there.
[16:51]She was also the, and at the same time,
[16:53]she was also the character I was most terrified to write
[16:56]for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is that,
[16:59]you know, I'm a middle-aged white lady in Chicago,
[17:02]you know, trying to write from the perspective
[17:05]of this young woman who's endured a horrific crime.
[17:09]So survived this horrific crime.
[17:11]So, but all of them really were so important to me
[17:16]every step of the way.
[17:17]And I tried as best I could eat in each character's story
[17:23]to fully inhabit them, you know, in every possible way
[17:27]to always be asking myself who they were.
[17:29]And I guess maybe in a lot of ways,
[17:31]the reason it took me so long too is that I was really trying
[17:35]with each character to give her her page time
[17:38]and her just, her justice, I guess.
[17:42]So.
[17:43]You know, I was struck.
[17:44]I haven't stopped thinking about the scene
[17:46]with Mary Rose when she goes to get an abortion.
[17:49]And I hate to even bring this up in case this is controversial
[17:52]in any way, but when she has her daughter with her,
[17:55]the daughter has to wait while she goes through this
[17:57]excruciating sort of emotional process,
[18:00]but she's thinking she can't handle another child.
[18:02]And then she has this experience
[18:04]and then gets immediately pregnant again afterwards.
[18:07]I just, I just keep thinking, like you wrote it so clearly
[18:12]that I felt like I was in there.
[18:14]I was like in the waiting room with them.
[18:16]And I just, my heart broke when she got pregnant again.
[18:18]And anyway, I just wanted you to like talk about
[18:21]putting that scene in and where it came from,
[18:24]or I don't know, it may be just the dead-endness
[18:27]of life for some people.
[18:30]I don't know.
[18:31]Tell me what you had in mind.
[18:32]Well, and also the incredible humanity of the way women
[18:35]find a way, right?
[18:37]Like regardless of how few resources they have,
[18:39]how little money they have, you know, they find a way.
[18:42]I mean, one of my favorite parts of that scene
[18:44]is that she has to take her daughter with her
[18:46]because she has nowhere else for her to be, you know?
[18:49]And when she gets to the clinic in New Mexico,
[18:52]you know, the woman behind the counter, you know,
[18:54]offers to keep an eye on her daughter for, right?
[18:58]And so I love that chapter and I love that scene.
[19:02]And it was a scene that I thought about
[19:04]for a really long time.
[19:06]In part because it's historically accurate, you know,
[19:09]in 1976, in spite of it being three years post-Rovie Wade,
[19:14]you know, women in my hometown still had to drive
[19:17]about 350 miles to get an abortion, you know?
[19:20]And what that meant for them then is that they had
[19:23]to find a way to absent themselves from their lives, you know?
[19:27]And for a lot of women, that was not possible
[19:30]and they became mothers, you know?
[19:32]There's another character later in the book.
[19:34]Carla, you know, who when she gets pregnant,
[19:37]she can't figure out a way, you know,
[19:39]to get there.
[19:39]She can't figure out a way, she's, you know, teenager.
[19:42]She doesn't have a car, you know?
[19:44]She doesn't, she's never really been out of her hometown,
[19:47]you know, she's afraid.
[19:49]And somehow, you know, the clock just keeps ticking.
[19:52]And by the time, you know, she realizes that the window
[19:55]is closed for her, you know, she's, she's going to become a mom,
[19:59]you know?
[20:00]And I think a lot about how many women in rural areas, women who don't have a lot of resources,
[20:05]women who come from backgrounds that are deeply religious and anti-choice, you know,
[20:10]and how motherhood is a thing that really can be thrust upon them.
[20:15]And some women, you know, recover from that beautifully.
[20:19]And some women, it sort of haunts them for the rest of their lives.
[20:22]You know, the doors that they see slamming closed at the age of 18 or 19 years
[20:29]old, you know, one of the things that I didn't realize when I first started writing this book
[20:34]was how terribly young all of these women are, you know, or not all of them, Mrs. Shepard's,
[20:40]you know, he's an old lady, but, you know, but, you know, these women in this book are 25 years old
[20:46]and they have nine-year-old daughters, you know, and so I thought about that. And then,
[20:50]you know, and I hear you, I'm not wanting to be controversial, but, you know, at the same time,
[20:55]I mean, the sad reality is that that was true in 1976 in my hometown.
[21:02]And that is true today. You know, if you're a young woman in Odessa, Texas, right now,
[21:07]and you need access to an abortion, you know, you better hope you can get into a car
[21:12]and drive at least 350 miles, you know, and disappear from your life for a couple of days
[21:20]to be able to pull that off, you know, so the money, the way to get there, you know,
[21:25]the ability to disappear from your home life, you know, and as we speak, I mean,
[21:31]this state of Texas has just declared abortion and optional surgery during the pandemic.
[21:38]So, you know, they have, I mean, this is in court right now. They have suspended all abortions
[21:45]in the state of Texas during the pandemic, and the deeply cynical way it's being presented is
[21:50]that they need those masks and those medical supplies. And when in fact, that is not at all what's
[21:54]going on, what they're doing is they're punishing women, you know, and denying them, you know,
[22:01]access to medical care in the midst of a pandemic. And, you know, let's not kid ourselves
[22:07]for a moment about who the women are, who will be affected by this, you know,
[22:12]women of means, you know, will be fine. As they were in 1976, you know, the women who are
[22:18]going to find themselves thrust into motherhood in the midst of this pandemic are poor women,
[22:24]you know, women in rural areas, women who are in abusive relationships, women who already have
[22:31]children who can't find a place for them to be, women who don't have money, women who don't have cars,
[22:36]and so, you know, it's still really sadly, it's true now, you know, as true today as it was in
[22:43]1976. But then you see the effects of the flip side when you have young mothers, like Jenny,
[22:49]who end up saying, I can't deal with this anymore and just, you know, driving off. And then you see
[22:54]what happens to her daughter as she's left behind. And the sadness of waiting for her mom to come home,
[22:59]I mean, oh my gosh, it's just like there's no good outcome sometimes. Yeah. And yet the book,
[23:05]the book is so inspiring, but I just mean like sometimes and for the teenage moms,
[23:10]I don't know, just seems like, yeah, very difficult. Yeah. And yet the human spirit prevails,
[23:15]right? Even in the midst of like the most sort of dire moments, there are these tiny little
[23:21]moments of kindness, the man who fixes her car. Exactly. The woman who, you know, volunteers to watch
[23:28]Amy while Mary Rose has the surgery, you know, so, and that was something that always kept me
[23:34]going in this book was, you know, understanding in a real visceral way, the way people who don't
[23:39]think of themselves as heroic manage to step up to the plate, you know, again and again and again,
[23:45]when the, when the moment calls for it, you know, so. Wow. So what do you think is going to happen
[23:52]with your life next? I mean, you're sort of at the beginning of this huge meteoric rise with
[23:58]the being picked as a book club pick on the today show and all the rest of it. I mean,
[24:02]do you, are you still writing in your spare time? Are you just like full-on focused on trying
[24:07]to get this book in the right hands? What, what's on your plate? Well, I am, I am a fan of the note
[24:13]book about five years ago. I started writing in long hand again because I was having a particularly
[24:18]sort of nasty case of writer's block and I decided to pick up a notebook, these little dollar 50,
[24:24]you know, meet notebooks and start writing long hand again. And what I found is that I almost
[24:29]always start things long hand now. So I'm about to finish this notebook. I'll probably finish
[24:34]it today. It's got like two pages. And I'm going to tell you, I was joking to George last night
[24:39]that this is one to burn in the backyard because I, if there are five or six pages that are
[24:44]salvageable for fiction writing, I will be lucky. Mostly this notebook is just me rocking back and
[24:50]forth in the corner, long hand. So yeah, but I am, I'm working on a couple of short stories,
[24:57]which is really one of my passions. And, and while I was writing this book, I actually wrote
[25:02]two complete collections of short stories that are unrelated to this. The, all the one is still
[25:08]set in West Texas. So I guess it's related in that way. And I'm eyeballing the first hundred pages
[25:13]of the next book, which is going to be set in Odessa with some of these same characters,
[25:18]only a bit older. And it begins in the fall of 1982 at the peak of the oil boom. And ends in the
[25:26]spring of 1983 when the entire bottom has fallen out of the market, which is a whole different
[25:33]book, right? Valentine is set at the cusp of an oil boom. An oil bust is a really different animal
[25:39]in that part of the world. Suddenly, you know, houses are foreclosed upon unemployment shoots
[25:44]through the roof. It's a terribly desperate time. And at the same time, there are odd, there's an odd
[25:51]beauty to it because the town clears out. And so things become very quiet, you know. And I've
[25:56]been thinking about that a lot. So that's the next book. Deborah Ann will be a bit older. And I think
[26:02]she'll probably take a much larger role in the next book. Some of the other characters who are
[26:07]major characters in this book will be more in the background, I think. And I mean, as you can see,
[26:13]I'm still like sorting it out, you know. But I'm really excited to know that at the end of this book,
[26:18]we don't have to just say goodbye to the characters. Because as I said, they are so real and
[26:23]became so invested in them and what happened. So I'm thrilled to hear that that's the plan.
[26:28]I thought I was done with them too, but no, I am not done. I, in fact, this may be where I land
[26:36]for the rest of my life is these women and these girls, you know, hopefully it won't take me 14
[26:41]years. Do you have, do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[26:45]I do. I have a ton of advice. I guess the first thing I would say to writers is you're not alone.
[26:53]You know, I think that there's this kind of lore for writers about, you know, the brilliant writer
[27:01]who holds up in the room alone and just by force of will and their own genius and their own
[27:07]willpower and, you know, unwillingness to give up and smarts, you know, an imagination.
[27:14]Who turns out this beautiful work and that has not been my experience at all. You know,
[27:18]my experience is that my book would not exist without the love and support and faith of friends and
[27:27]family. You know, from, from, from women who took care of my son for a few hours when he was a little,
[27:33]you know, so I could just hammer out a few sentences to my husband who made, who's a beautiful poet
[27:40]in his own right and made the sacrifice of taking on a second job for several years. For several
[27:47]years he taught high school English all day and then went and tutored, you know, up on the north
[27:53]shore of Chicago after work so that I could work as little as possible for money. So I guess the
[27:59]first thing I would say is you're not alone and the second thing I would say is ask for help. I
[28:04]think it's really hard to, to ask people to make sacrifices for you and your artwork and I think
[28:10]that's particularly hard. Maybe for women, although I'm sure it's hard for male writers as well,
[28:15]but I think for women asking your family to sacrifice for you to, to be able to finish a book is,
[28:21]is very hard. And often what happens instead is they don't, they don't ask for people to sacrifice
[28:27]for them. They just try to muddle through as best they can. You know, I, I wrote a lot, you know,
[28:33]and the hours between midnight and three o'clock in the morning, you know, but I guess the other
[28:37]thing I would say is, you know, you're not on anyone else's timetable. You know, some of us
[28:43]just don't have lives that lend themselves to getting our first book deal, you know, in our mid 20s.
[28:49]I mean, we just don't. And, and American literature is poorer for it when we don't have
[28:55]working class writers, you know, telling their stories. So, you know, everyone's on their own
[29:00]timetable. And then finally, I guess what I would say is be good to yourself. This is so hard. It's
[29:05]hard under the best of circumstances. But if you're juggling two or three jobs and raising children,
[29:11]you know, it's, it can feel almost impossible. And so I think there's a, a really fine line between
[29:17]being kind to yourself without bullshitting yourself. You know, I guess I would say be kind to yourself,
[29:23]you know, the work we're doing matters. These stories matter. I'm so
[29:28]honored that, that, that, that stories of these women and girls are out there in the world. And I
[29:34]think they're important. And, and it took me a long time to do it. But I don't think the book
[29:38]would have been as good as it is, you know, if it hadn't taken me that much time, you know, and
[29:45]hopeful. I mean, I guess you never really know if your work is good. But, you know, in so far as,
[29:50]I think it's pretty good in places, you know, I know that the time that I put in was crucial. So,
[29:57]you know, I guess so. Yeah, I guess that's my advice. You're not
[30:00]along. I also like to imagine, you know, that in some tiny little way, every time I sit down to
[30:06]write that all the like, you know, souls and spirits of all the writers that I've ever loved
[30:13]or somehow like sort of perched on my shoulder whispering in my ear, keep going, keep going, you know.
[30:19]And so yeah, that's, I guess that would be my advice. Hang in there. You know, if you have faith
[30:24]in your work and you know, you've got a story to tell, you know, it doesn't matter how long it
[30:30]takes, you know, and do you have the right to do it? You know, my kid, the last couple of years I
[30:35]worked on my book. I don't know if I volunteered at all at my kid's school. I was really intent on
[30:46]finishing the book there at the end. So well, honestly, I am so happy for you. I know I'm just
[30:52]getting to know you, but I am so happy for you and congratulations and I'm just going to sort of
[30:58]watch in the wings as you take off and I just could not be more excited for you. So thanks for
[31:03]sharing your time with me. I feel the same. I am so hopeful that when we're all free to move
[31:08]about the cabin again that I'm able to get out to New York. And when I do, let's, let's go celebrate
[31:13]with a glass of wine. I would love that. I would really love it. And like I said, my screen is like
[31:19]completely black now. So I can't see your beautiful face. Thank you. But this has been such a pleasure
[31:24]and I love the work you're doing. So, you know, moms are my favorite people. I'm not kidding.
[31:31]Well, thank you so much. I think moms are pretty much the most marvelous people on the planet.
[31:36]And yeah, it's an honor to get to do this and talk with you. So thank you. Thank you too.
[31:40]All right. We'll take care. And we'll be continued in person one of these days.
[31:45]Good indeed. And good luck. And I hope you and yours all are well and to know able to get
[31:50]outside here and there and get a little fresh air. Are you in New York?
[31:54]No, we're out on Long Island. Oh, okay. Oh God. Okay. So yeah, y'all've got your own thing going on
[31:59]out there right now. One thing to give you. I have so many dear friends in New York and it's such a
[32:04]beautiful city. My heart aches for everything that y'all are going through right now. So anyway,
[32:09]thank you, Zibi. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. We'll talk again soon. Okay. Bye.
[32:15]Thank you for listening to moms and have time to read books with Zibi Owens. Please make sure
[32:19]to sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com to get more updates about episodes like these
[32:24]and also lots of live events. Thanks to Recliner and YC for being a partner. We're giving everybody
[32:30]a discount of 20% off with the code moms X Recliner. And for partnering with me after I loved your
[32:37]product so much. You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time to read books. Thanks so
[32:42]much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morningmoon
[32:47]Productions for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music. Thanks for listening. You
[32:51]could always email me at zibi at zibiowans.com.