Sheila Grinell, THE CONTRACT
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[0:53]The sponsor for this whole Labor Day book last week is FirstBook.org. Obviously, the pandemic is crippling education for millions of students, especially those in low-income communities.
[1:04]The widening digital divide and extended quote unquote summer slide due to COVID is devastating.
[1:10]Apparently, 40% lack access to reliable internet and functioning digital devices they can use for online
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[1:28]By providing its network of more than 475,000 educators serving children in need with free
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[1:51]to help writing is a second act for author Sheila Grinnell. She led the team that opened the Arizona
[1:56]Science Center as the CEO, which welcomes nearly 400,000 visitors a year and by the way is one of my
[2:03]favorite places to take my kids when we go out and visit my mom and stepdad during the winter months.
[2:08]A graduate of Bronx Science High School and Harvard University as well as the University of California
[2:14]Berkeley. Sheila currently lives in Phoenix and has written two books, the contract and appetite.
[2:21]Welcome Sheila. Thank you so much for coming on momstone. Have time to read books.
[2:25]My pleasure. I have to ask first, I read that you were born in a taxi. Is that true?
[2:30]That is true. It even says so on my birth certificate. Oh my gosh. Tell me the story behind that.
[2:36]Well, it's the end of the World War II and my father who was stationed in the United States
[2:42]was not present. So my grandfather took my mother downstairs into a taxi cab. I was the first
[2:49]child and my mother said the baby's coming. The baby's coming and oh no no no. So he took her
[2:54]downstairs in New York City into a taxi and they called a taxi and the taxi's moving to the hospital
[3:01]and my mother says oh the baby's here and evidently my head emerged and my mother had the presence
[3:07]of mind to reach down and close my nose because she didn't want me to breathe. The taxi pulls
[3:13]up into the hospital yard and my grandpa runs out gets a nurse the nurse runs back and completes
[3:20]the delivery in the back seat. Oh my gosh. And then I when I was old enough to understand all this
[3:26]I said to my grandpa grandpa what did you do and he said I gave the driver a big tip.
[3:30]Wow. It wasn't good for my mom because you know this is a long time ago and since I was
[3:38]contaminated they put me in a separate room. My mother went to the maternity ward and she wasn't
[3:43]allowed to see me for almost a week. Oh no that must have been so hard. Right I know when I had my
[3:49]baby that was out of the hospital two days. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh well that's quite a story.
[3:56]I also just read your piece about how you feel now that you're in I don't know what to call it
[4:01]assisted living or in continuing care. Continuing care retirement community. Continuing care
[4:06]retirement care. All right CCRC CCRC because your husband has Parkinson's which I was so sorry to
[4:11]read about and yet you are not. Well tell me just tell me about writing this piece and what it's been
[4:17]like for you having to sort of transition to this type of living arrangement to help with his care.
[4:22]Well you know Parkinson's is a very slow nasty disease. It's not only movement it's also cognitive
[4:29]and emotional and infectious seeing and you're hearing and you speech everything but it is slow.
[4:35]My husband was diagnosed in 2011 but it's been creeping up and I got to the point where I knew
[4:41]that something's going to have to change. Everyone says if you're going to move into one of these
[4:45]places move early so you can enjoy it together before you can't enjoy it together anymore.
[4:51]So we did just about just about a year ago and it's actually at first it was really wonderful
[4:58]because my husband had some blessings that he didn't had before he hadn't driven in three years
[5:03]and here he could just walk to the bistro and get a burger when he wanted or he could take the
[5:08]exercise classes and chat with the ladies. There are far more women here than men and a lot of
[5:13]them are widows and my husband is charming. Great time just see and they all go we'd walk
[5:20]together and they all go hi Tom hi Tom hi Tom hi Tom so he felt invigorated and I was
[5:28]relieved because there's always somebody around he has a little alarm button he presses the button
[5:34]somebody's here in five minutes they have it set up to take care of people who are old and
[5:38]infirm and in the future I know I'm going to need more help I'm not going to be able to wash him
[5:43]and move him around I'm not big but he's bigger so we're set up and I was enjoying it and then
[5:50]COVID came and they even though we're an independent living we're not in a nursing home there is
[5:54]a nursing home on the campus so they use the nursing home rules for all of us which meant no visitors
[6:01]at all no more communal dining they bring a meal to our door somebody drops it off at our door and
[6:08]rings the bell and runs away but they're keeping the disease away so we have to do with it so I'm
[6:14]okay when everything got quiet I was actually able to concentrate on the next book I'm writing
[6:20]my next book oh yeah let's talk about your writing tell me now that you've mentioned it what is
[6:24]the next book about and then let's go back and talk about the previous two weeks okay the next one
[6:29]is a story about a pioneer young woman who comes west contemporary binary pioneer she comes west
[6:36]to find a better life and she winds up in Phoenix where I am and it's post pandemic I'm writing
[6:42]as if it's three years from now hallelujah I hope it's post-pestemic and people's lives will
[6:48]have been changed they'll be expecting different things and my young woman falls in with a developer
[6:53]real estate developer that's the name of the game here for the last 20 years 30 years 40 years
[7:00]the whole metro area has grown tremendously and it's real estate developers who have a vision
[7:06]of the future they decide where you're going to live what you're going to want where the transportation
[7:11]is where the schools are where the parks are are there any other amenities they decide all
[7:14]that and some of them do it with a great deal of vision and respect and some of them are unethical
[7:21]and some just want to make the buck in summer cheats so I'm clapping this young pioneer woman into
[7:26]this post pandemic environment where people are designing the future and we'll see what happens
[7:31]wow even just the exercise of imagining the post pandemic world again and how this will have
[7:36]affected things is an interesting exercise in and of itself yes and that's why I'm only going
[7:41]three years out because I think beyond that is beyond me yeah wow and now let's go back to the
[7:48]contract and how you decided to tell me about well tell everybody the plot of that book as well
[7:54]and what inspired you to write to write that story it's about a bunch of children's who seem
[8:00]designers Jo and Eve men and wife Jo is around 48 and she says you know I've got to make my mark now
[8:08]and she thinks that if they're invited to bid on a contract in Saudi Arabia in Riyadh and she thinks
[8:16]this is it I'm going for this and it's going to make my name and he is a different kind of person
[8:22]she's got all the balls he's got the soft side he just wants to stay home and make things
[8:28]but they go and it doesn't turn out the way she thought she learns a lot about her culture
[8:34]about her work about her marriage and about herself and what it means what she can tolerate
[8:41]and what she can't and that's why I wrote the book because in this day and age I was thinking
[8:47]mulling over how did people come tolerant shouldn't they when what makes it what makes it happen
[8:54]what are the impediments and this was in my back of my mind and I wasn't even quite aware
[9:00]that it was the back of my mind and then I met my friend name not to be announced
[9:05]met a friend wonderful woman she was a professional kind generous very thoughtful and she
[9:12]her sister came to visit and the way she talked to her sister shocked me she's completely
[9:19]and I said to myself wouldn't you have learned by now to tolerate her and then I realized oh
[9:26]I can use my experience in Saudi Arabia if I'm going to write that tolerance that's one extreme
[9:32]yeah so of course my my Joe and I have my designer couple they live in Oakland, California
[9:37]so I have both extremes well how did you use you've had a whole career in museums and the
[9:43]whole museum life and you were able to bring that in to inform all the details of this book
[9:48]so what made you start writing to begin with and I know you have another book as well but how did
[9:52]you transition or how did you incorporate this element of creativity into your professional life
[9:58]okay
[10:00]The contract had to be set in, had to be set in the museum world because my own experience in Saudi Arabia is the museum world and I had to make it real because you can't make up stuff about Saudi Arabia. It's just too far out doing back to how did I become a writer. Well, I didn't.
[10:18]I just thank you back to the beginning. I had a whole other life. Yeah, go back. Okay, the beginning is in high school. I had a marvelous teacher.
[10:27]You know, I hope you had the one teacher who changes your life. A lot of people have them. It was one of a math teacher, Dr. Doty's had him for three years. So I went to college thinking I'd be a mathematician.
[10:39]And I got there and they had made me take physics and mechanics was okay, but then when they got to electricity and magnetism, I didn't know what was going on.
[10:48]So I said, I can't do this. I have a scholarship. I have to do well. I'm going to have to go home. And a friend of mine said, well, what do you like? And I said, well, I like my English composition class. She said, so major in English. So I did. And then not being so intellectually greedy. And then I went to graduate school and I got a master's degree in social science and sociology. So after my education, I was prepared for everything and nothing practical.
[11:18]So I was in Berkeley, California at the time. And I ran into it. This is 1969, which is time of great social unrest like now will be very positive. It was free speech and anti war and the beginning of women's liberation. It's exciting time.
[11:32]Alternatives were big. So I ran into a physicist who was starting a science museum and he wanted it to be an alternative, not telescopes and steam engines behind glass cases, but light and sound that you could actually play with.
[11:46]And I thought, who sounds great? It's science, math and science. It's humanities and it's an alternative social institution. I'm going to do this.
[11:56]So I started my first job. I joined Frank Oppenheimer. We built the Exploratorium, which has been widely emulated around the world. So my first job turned into a career and I worked in it for 40 years.
[12:09]It was fabulous. I helped start museums in different places. I wrote a book about museums. I instructed people all over the world and then I moved to Phoenix in 1993 for one last shot.
[12:21]Now I was really going to from scratch. I really liked the from scratch starting things up. So moved here got the Arizona Science Center up and running made it a little bigger, had mentored my successor thought about things and then suddenly it was for years and I was done.
[12:38]So I started consulting. And then the university intervene. My mother had a stroke. She was living back east with my sister and I went to visit her and I saw her in May.
[13:03]And I said, Mom, you don't seem to really know who you are anymore because, you know, as the stroke multiplies, she was really losing the personality.
[13:12]Mom, you don't know who you are anymore. Do you want me to tell you your story? And she said, yes. I said, okay. So I told her life story in 45 minutes. I cleaned it up.
[13:22]And I finished and she said that was interesting and I said, well, you won't remember, but I'll tell you again. So in May, I go to see her. Mom, would you like to hear your story?
[13:31]Yes, I would. And I started to tell her story, but she couldn't pay attention for 45 minutes. So I told her a few chunks.
[13:39]And she said, oh, that was interesting. And I said, okay, well, you won't remember. I'll tell you again. So I go to see her in June.
[13:45]And I start to tell her her story. And she couldn't even put the chunks together. She was out of it. And I took a walk and it was like somebody stabbed me in the belly. I said, I have to write her story.
[13:57]In retrospect, I think as I was mourning her in advance, I was trying to keep her because she was going away.
[14:03]So I came back to Phoenix and I wrote a story and I went to the Piper Center here and got an editor and I finished it and I shared it with a few friends.
[14:12]And then I realized I wanted to write more. I think the old English major came back and I enrolled in community college here.
[14:21]And it was such fun. It was so different from everything else I had done for my business life.
[14:26]You know, there were sort of sad lost 20 year olds and a bunch of other older people trying to recharge their batteries.
[14:34]And it was ball. I had a wonderful time. So I kept taking classes. And I'm in my third short story class.
[14:40]And I'm looking at the story in my hands. I want to say, it's too big. It's not going to fit in 20 pages.
[14:46]And the guy sitting next to me said, so write a novel. And I went, okay.
[14:52]And that's the starting me on the journey in my first novel, appetite. I think it was possible. I didn't have a writer's block, which was a tremendous blessing.
[15:01]And I think it's because I already had a successful life here. I was already an asset to the community.
[15:09]So if I screwed up, it wouldn't matter.
[15:14]That's what at least that's where I told myself. And it worked. I worked the way at it. It took some time because I was still consulting.
[15:21]And then got it going and realized this is really what I want to do.
[15:25]And I'm continuing to do the only there's a bunch of advantages to having other to having another career besides just having the freedom to fail.
[15:36]I realized that a lot of the skills from my past life still pertained. I know how to commit myself to a five year project with an uncertain outcome.
[15:46]I know how to stick to a schedule and budget. I know how to not to stop second guessing myself all the time.
[15:53]And I knew how when I was in over my head to go get some expert help. All of this was kosher and I used all those skills in my writer life too.
[16:03]The big disadvantage about my second life is that it's going to be shorter than the first one.
[16:09]And I got a hurry up.
[16:12]It works under my belt. But I don't think that way. Every project is why every book is its own thing.
[16:18]And you just live in that book for the years that you're in it and then the next one comes up.
[16:23]That's amazing.
[16:24]So how did it feel to publish a novel? How old were you if I may ask? You don't have to answer, but when the when appetite came out, you don't have to say it.
[16:30]It's fine.
[16:31]Very old.
[16:32]Okay, I could be your mom.
[16:34]I started writing in my 60s.
[16:37]Okay, that's fine. Started writing in your 60s. And then you had a novel published. What did that feel like?
[16:43]And I know as you've said, you've accomplished so much professionally in other areas.
[16:46]And by the way, I love the Arizona Science Center and have been there many, many times. So anyway, love it.
[16:52]But how did it feel like when it first came out or you first saw it on a show for like to have that happen and just feel that what was it like?
[16:59]I can only imagine.
[17:00]I was living in a different world.
[17:02]When you were writing, you're writing, but I'll give you an example.
[17:05]I had a changing handbook.
[17:07]If you know Phoenix, maybe you know changing hands, wonderful independent bookstore.
[17:10]I had the launch there.
[17:12]And just before the launch, I was so nervous.
[17:15]I had called a friend of mine who's a personal trainer.
[17:17]And I said, work me out.
[17:19]In my other life, I would stand up in front of a room full of 1500 people and by force of will make them shut up.
[17:28]It's not possible in the new life.
[17:31]Because it's different.
[17:33]When you're standing up talking about science museums, you have the museum, you have the board and the donors and the staff and the visitors.
[17:40]You have all these people behind you.
[17:42]When you're standing up to talk about your book, it's just you.
[17:45]Art is so much more personal.
[17:47]So I had to make a shift from a more public persona into a private one and revealing that private one.
[17:55]And that was different.
[17:57]Exciting.
[17:58]And a little scary.
[17:59]But now I'm much more used to it.
[18:01]And I think it's a privilege to be able to plumb your own depths in a way that makes sense for other people.
[18:08]It's amazing.
[18:09]I love that.
[18:10]Having gone through this journey, what advice would you have for aspiring authors of at any age?
[18:15]Yes.
[18:16]Most people when they start something think about the reasons not to.
[18:19]There are reasons not to and they're probably valid but ignore them.
[18:22]There are reasons too.
[18:24]And the main reason is because you can, you don't lose your old skills in your old personality, but you can exercise it differently.
[18:31]I feel like I'm still engaged with the world, but I'm exploring it in a different dimension.
[18:36]It's how it feels.
[18:37]And my advice would be, oh, go for it.
[18:40]Whenever I give talks or readings, people come up to me afterwards.
[18:44]And you can tell by a look on their face that they want to be writers and they're looking for help.
[18:49]And they say, I have this great story or I have this wonderful and fantastic experience.
[18:54]And I just can't seem to get to it.
[18:56]And I say, make yourself a promise.
[18:58]21 days.
[18:59]One hour a day for 21 days because that science says that 21 days is what it takes to form a habit.
[19:05]And also my other piece of advice is to work on your craft.
[19:10]Because if you can't massage a sentence into what you want it to be, you won't really be able to tell whether you're expressing your story.
[19:18]You're not.
[19:19]So work on your craft.
[19:21]You can take classes at a community college if you have one.
[19:25]I was lucky enough to have one right by.
[19:27]Or you can find a critique group.
[19:29]Go online.
[19:30]There's tons of them.
[19:31]Do whatever you do, but write.
[19:33]Work on your craft and then see what you have to say.
[19:36]Wow.
[19:37]That's so inspiring.
[19:38]I love this.
[19:39]It's so encouraging because it's just so encouraging.
[19:43]You take everything every skill in your brain.
[19:46]And you like melted it all together.
[19:48]And then now you're producing like in little installments.
[19:51]Novels and delight and entertainment for so many other people.
[19:55]It's really neat.
[19:56]It's really neat.
[19:57]So thank you.
[19:58]I'm very impressed.
[19:59]Great.
[20:00]I hope when you read the next one that I've got it right, that it is accurate post-pandemic,
[20:06]but also delightful.
[20:08]I can't wait. I can't wait.
[20:10]Well, thank you for sharing all your stories and for coming on my podcast and for all your great
[20:14]writings. Thank you so much. And so if you have to tell, you must be the nicest person in the world.
[20:19]What can you do for books and readers and writers and stories is just splendid?
[20:24]Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for saying that.
[20:28]All right. Bye bye.
[20:29]Take care, Sheila.
[20:31]Thanks so much to firstbook.org for sponsoring this Labor Day book blast.
[20:36]Please consider giving to firstbook.org to help their network of 475,000 educators serving
[20:43]children in need. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[20:47]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[21:01]Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[21:06]this fantastic intro and outroom music.