Elizabeth Ames, THE OTHER'S GOLD
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens and you're listening to the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:13]Please sign up for my newsletter at zibiowens.com for weekly updates about my podcasts, events, and more.
[0:20]Also, follow me on Instagram at zibiowens and also at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[0:26]And finally, join my virtual book club called Zibi's virtual book club,
[0:30]which meets every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. Eastern Time until 3 p.m.
[0:34]And features half an hour of book club discussion, followed by 30 minutes of Q&A
[0:38]with the author whose book we've just discussed.
[0:41]You can sign up on my website zibiowens.com under the virtual book club section,
[0:46]or even on Instagram, under the link in my bio.
[0:49]I hope you'll find me in all these different channels and enjoy this podcast.
[0:53]The sponsor for this whole Labor Day book last week is firstbook.org.
[0:58]Obviously, the pandemic is crippling education for millions of students,
[1:02]especially those in low-income communities, the widening digital divide,
[1:05]and extended quote unquote summer slide due to COVID is devastating.
[1:10]Apparently, 40% lack access to reliable internet and functioning digital devices
[1:15]they can use for online learning, making the need for physical books and resources to prevent
[1:20]further educational backsliding absolutely critical.
[1:23]First book breaks down the barriers to education for children living in low-income communities
[1:28]by providing its network of more than 475,000 educators, serving children in need with free
[1:35]and affordable new high-quality books, educational resources, and basic needs items
[1:40]through the award-winning first-book marketplace nonprofit e-commerce site.
[1:44]They need your support to ensure these children have what they need
[1:47]to learn during this critical time.
[1:49]Visit firstbook.org to help Elizabeth Ames is the author of debut novel The Others Gold.
[1:55]A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the Helen Zell Rogers program
[2:00]at the University of Michigan. Elizabeth has lived in Seattle, France, and Rwanda
[2:04]since leaving the Midwest. She currently lives in a Harvard dormitory with her husband,
[2:09]two children, and a few hundred undergraduates, or at least it was that way until this year
[2:14]when everything is going virtual. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thank you so much for coming on
[2:18]Momstone. Have time to read books. Thank you so much for having me. I'm particularly
[2:22]excited because I feel like we've been trying to plan this for like five years or something
[2:26]ridiculous, right? This is one of my longest to do podcasts that I've had on the list.
[2:30]I know my book has been on for almost a year, but I really appreciate your flexibility.
[2:34]I'm happy to be on any time. I'm sure it was my fault. I'm not trying to say it's not.
[2:41]You know, it was a year basis. We were back and forth and there were so many,
[2:44]you know, obviously we all had quarantine time and there were sort of like,
[2:48]maybe that's only gonna last a few weeks, maybe it's kind of
[2:51]last indefinitely. We don't know. So I'm just glad we found a time. Me too.
[2:56]And I know we're doing video and audio, but for the podcast listeners only,
[3:00]you're in this gorgeous library at one of the houses at Harvard. Just tell me a little
[3:05]a bit about it and about writing the other's gold in that library. It must have been amazing.
[3:10]Yeah, people who aren't familiar with Harvard has, I think 12. I don't want to get it wrong,
[3:15]but I think it's 12 undergraduate houses outside of the freshman houses.
[3:19]It's all funny to talk about or not funny, but strange to talk about now thinking about like,
[3:23]how will it be this coming fall? And but last year or any year before when I wrote this book,
[3:29]I was living. I moved into this house, Quincy house with my husband in our then six-month-old.
[3:34]And I guess I'm taking it too far back. The point is I'm like, no, go back, go back.
[3:39]Okay, I mean, this beautiful library, every house has its own library and this is the Quincy
[3:45]house cube that I'm just, it ducked in for this short time to chat with you, but
[3:50]beautiful. But wait, keep going back. I like that. So your husband's a professor and you
[3:54]never heard what is he teach? He's in the department of folklore and mythology and his PhD is
[4:00]an African and African-American studies and anthropology. So his classes fall. It's going to be
[4:06]like the art of emergency storytelling in the time of after I'm going to get the title wrong,
[4:12]but it sounds like it sounds like a very timely class. It's very telling in the time of trauma.
[4:18]I'm not, I've got this, I've got to look at this. Yeah, the department of folklore and mythology,
[4:22]I just think it's a it's a cool department. Yeah, gosh, I want to go back to school.
[4:27]I'm just taking classes. Should I learn about this? Or should I learn about that? Like,
[4:31]you know, education is so wasted on the young because at the time I was like, well,
[4:34]you know, if I drop French, I can go out Thursday night and I'd see that.
[4:38]Anyway, I'm like, I have to get up. I know. But yes, when we moved here, I have this vantage
[4:43]from this library where the students work and I could look out over the courtyard. You're just so
[4:47]idyllic, you know, it's so manicured in green and students would be walking to class and so I always
[4:53]say like, I love campus novels and I always hope I'd write one, but then when we moved into a dorm,
[4:58]I thought like this is the time. If I'm ever going to read a campus novel, I have to do it now when
[5:02]I'm sort of like, have this really useful perspective for a writer that I'm not, I'm an outsider
[5:08]and then I'm not a student at Harvard and I don't really have much of a formal affiliation with
[5:12]the university, but I live in one of the buildings and work with all these students and I was
[5:18]really like a privilege and a joy to live amongst them while they were going through this really
[5:23]intense time of being away from home and I was going through this really intense time of becoming
[5:28]a parent, you know, living here with a six-month-old. That was what got me thinking about the book
[5:32]was like, this is so weird to be a new mom amongst all these sophomores. I lived mostly amongst sophomores
[5:39]and seeing them, you know, be dropped off at school by their parents and their parents just being like
[5:44]looking at me with my baby so longingly, you know, giving me the like, it goes so fast and I
[5:49]I believe that from like day one, but I also obviously seeing parents drop their kids up on college
[5:54]just like really while you're wearing your baby you're like, if you weren't already weeping, you
[5:58]will be any minute. Oh my gosh. Well, tell listeners what the other school did to that. The other
[6:06]school, it follows four friends, Alice, Laney, Gson, and Margaret from when they meet at Fresh
[6:12]their freshman year at a fictional college, Quincy Hallford College and since I just mentioned Quincy
[6:16]House, the college is named in part after Quincy House, but it is an invented college in New Hampshire,
[6:22]they meet their freshman year and it follows them from that time to kind of like when they start
[6:27]having children or not. So it's like a 13 year time period and it's structured around the worst
[6:32]mistake made by each of the four friends during that really intense and transformative 12 years.
[6:39]I was particularly drawn to Alice and her situation with her brother and the accent and how she
[6:46]talked about it and processed it and wanted to tell her friends, but didn't want to tell her
[6:51]friends and how you sort of go through life with secrets. Like I feel like that's one of the
[6:55]most powerful things in books is sort of like what do people do with their secrets and you know what
[7:01]causes people to do things and doesn't matter if you're young or old and what makes something
[7:06]forgivable and not and all the rest. So I was just wondering about developing her character in
[7:11]particular if you could talk a little more about how you decided on her sort of narrative trajectory
[7:17]well. Sure, I think she came, I always feel like you talk about characters who start to sound like so
[7:23]nutty because you're like she came to me, but I do think she came to me maybe like bird or even
[7:28]fourth, but I think how does a character come to you? I'm so sorry that actually feels like magic to
[7:34]me like of the things about writing that are like hard to sort of, I think there's a lot of things
[7:40]that are you can try to you know invite characters into your mind, but sort of they just kind of
[7:47]of come knocking and then you start thinking about them and then I feel like when you get really
[7:52]into it then suddenly everything's grist for the mill you know you'll hear people talking and
[7:56]I remember at one point actually speaking of Alice because she becomes a doctor I was sitting by
[8:01]these two doctors at a coffee shop listening to them talk and they kind of were talking about
[8:04]children and one who hadn't had children and she had wanted to you know they were just having
[8:09]this pretty intimate conversation about their careers and their lives and I was just thinking Alice
[8:13]Alice like oh you know because she's a doctor she struggles with her fertility and those were
[8:18]just strangers in a coffee shop but I think when once they the characters sort of arrive at your
[8:22]doorstep then the inspiration for them starts you start to see them everywhere you know they're like
[8:28]really present. Did you have a college experience anything like this like did you have three
[8:34]girlfriends that you've ruined with like did you base the windows seat off of a dorm room there
[8:39]like how how real to life at all if at all is the book or parts of the book? I always say like
[8:45]I feel like I could count the actual things that came from my life on one hand but no I didn't
[8:51]know I went to a large state school the University of Wisconsin Madison which is a great school
[8:55]but I think part of my fascination with small liberal arts schools is probably fueled by the
[8:59]fact that I didn't go to one the idea of the kind of like this on sweet dorm room and the
[9:05]smaller sometimes foster fabric environment I think my curiosity about that partly fueled the book
[9:12]and I'm not I've been very lucky with the long-term friendships I've had but I've never been part
[9:16]no of like a quad like that I'm a force and so I think that partly inspired the book too was just the
[9:25]the curiosity I have about those kinds of friendships where you're living together taking classes
[9:29]together eating together dating breaking up you know sometimes going on to marry each other or not
[9:34]it's just such an intense time your your bond is forged so intensely and then you know I would
[9:40]see these groups of students just like completely inextricable and I would so I was sort of curious
[9:45]about that how that friendship forms and then how it's whether it and tested once you're not in
[9:51]the environment that totally supports it my sophomore year I lived in a room very similar to that
[9:57]we had like a common room and I had two little
[10:00]We had two little rooms with two of us,
[10:01]each with bunk beds.
[10:02]It was like so tight.
[10:03]You couldn't even like open the dresser drawer
[10:05]without sitting on the bunk bed.
[10:07]And the four of us were like a pet,
[10:09]like we did everything together.
[10:10]I remember my dad got married.
[10:11]And I was like, well, I have to invite everybody.
[10:13]I'm roving at this, like this is my, you know what I mean?
[10:16]Like that's like, you know, non-negotiable.
[10:19]But it is so interesting to see
[10:20]even if you took this little group of us,
[10:22]what's happened over time.
[10:24]And you could take any cluster really.
[10:25]And I think that's so great about books.
[10:27]Like, I mean, my group of friends,
[10:29]it's just some little microcosm, right?
[10:31]It could happen to anybody because life is so random.
[10:34]So it's like any characters you beg.
[10:36]All these horrible things and great things are gonna happen.
[10:39]And it's just like a mishmosh,
[10:41]like a commentary on life, I don't know.
[10:43]That was a ramble.
[10:44]Are you still friends with the three people
[10:47]who were your number mates?
[10:48]So my roommate, so there were two,
[10:50]like I roomed with one girl and then there were other two.
[10:53]And they had actually, the two in the other little room
[10:56]went to St. Paul's together.
[10:57]So they had been friends before.
[10:59]I'm still close to them.
[11:00]We go on girls' trips once every other year at this point.
[11:04]Now I don't know when we'll see each other again.
[11:05]One of them lives in Denver.
[11:07]One of them lives in Hong Kong.
[11:08]And then my roommate died on September 11th.
[11:10]I'm so sorry.
[11:11]I think I've actually read your essay about that.
[11:13]Oh, sorry.
[11:14]No, it's okay.
[11:15]But we were friends after school
[11:17]and we lived together after school.
[11:18]And when she was 25, when it happened.
[11:21]But I have so many of those memories
[11:23]and all of us on campus together
[11:26]sort of just totally embedded the way you're saying.
[11:28]Like we wouldn't have gone, like if there was a social
[11:30]or whatever, it was us with the guys.
[11:32]I don't know.
[11:33]It was just that time.
[11:34]But yeah, to lose someone in the group is also,
[11:38]when you go back, it changes the way you look at sort
[11:40]of everything that it happened, right?
[11:42]Even when we go to reunions, it's all like looking around.
[11:45]It's just not the same.
[11:47]Anyway, but it took me back to that intensity.
[11:51]Because you don't get that with anyone.
[11:53]I feel like at this age other than,
[11:54]I mean, there is an intensity that comes
[11:56]with sort of parenting and the trenches together
[11:59]that's similar, right?
[12:00]Because you're like in it and you're stressed
[12:02]and you don't know what you're doing.
[12:04]And there's too much to do in the same way
[12:06]that I felt like it was at school.
[12:08]So I think you do get that with some new parents,
[12:11]especially first time around.
[12:12]But not in that many other junctures, I feel like.
[12:15]Or maybe if you're working in a really intense environment,
[12:18]which I didn't really have that like,
[12:19]I don't know, big corporate setting
[12:21]where you might bond with people in your class
[12:22]or something, but I don't know.
[12:25]No, I think you're right.
[12:26]I think that's what's interesting to me
[12:27]about that span of life.
[12:28]Because you're like, as adults, it is unusual
[12:31]to have that kind of same intensity of the circumstance.
[12:35]But I felt like because I was becoming this new parent
[12:37]alongside these students who were like,
[12:40]kind of forging their own new families,
[12:42]it did highlight for me,
[12:43]similarities around like your identity changing.
[12:46]Like when you come to college
[12:48]and you're sort of like figuring out who you are.
[12:50]And so much of that, I think,
[12:52]is forged as a result of who you befriend
[12:55]and which can be totally random,
[12:57]but you're sort of like, I wanna be like this person,
[12:59]I wanna not be like this person.
[13:00]And then that kind of ratchets up through college.
[13:04]And then I think the moments I tried to choose
[13:07]in the book like around kind of getting married
[13:09]or not career choices or other kind of touchstones
[13:13]where you're thinking about your identity.
[13:15]Like what does it mean if this person
[13:17]marries someone who I really love
[13:18]or what does it mean if my friend chooses not to have kids
[13:21]or another friend can't have kids
[13:22]or all these times you kind of define yourself
[13:26]against even your closest friends.
[13:29]And like you said, when you're new parents,
[13:30]your identity is that's a complete upheaval.
[13:33]The first time especially when you're just,
[13:34]I feel like the most people I know
[13:36]who that first that change from like
[13:38]not being a parent to being a parent is huge.
[13:41]So I felt like those moments kind of book-ending
[13:44]the leaving your family, starting a family,
[13:46]they felt even though they felt so different,
[13:49]they have some things in common.
[13:51]Totally, totally agree.
[13:52]We can't family, I'm sorry,
[13:53]you can probably hear my son screaming in the background.
[13:55]Oh, I'm kind of politicized for that.
[13:58]Like that's the side effect of this zoom light
[14:00]that people are kind of like have to be aware
[14:02]that children exist in some working people's lives, you know?
[14:07]So you've been up there, have you been there
[14:09]the whole time at Harvard with your,
[14:11]well, now it's not a baby?
[14:12]Now he's not a baby anymore of it.
[14:13]No, yeah, I've been, well, I moved with my husband
[14:15]and first baby when she was six months old
[14:18]and now she's four and a half.
[14:20]Oh my God.
[14:22]I know, I've been in, so yeah, it feels like a college,
[14:25]you know, like the students who started when we started,
[14:28]they already graduated, but yeah,
[14:30]it's been like, I guess this'll be the start
[14:32]of our fifth year and a very strange year.
[14:35]And we've, I've since had a second child
[14:37]who's only ever lived in, it's in the Harvard house
[14:40]and it's a really amazing community.
[14:42]I always say I was like kind of wary
[14:44]about moving into a dorm as an adult with a baby, you know?
[14:48]Like I lived in this apartment
[14:49]in a kind of like sleepy, really child friendly neighborhood
[14:52]of Cambridge, like known for being family friendly
[14:54]and I didn't have kids and then I moved into Harvard Square,
[14:57]which is like, that's family friendly and it's only,
[15:00]but it's also more like you can go out and do stuff
[15:02]that isn't as easy to do when you have a new baby.
[15:05]But it's so, there are other families,
[15:06]there are dogs, there are, the students are amazing.
[15:09]I feel really talking about it and I just feel sad
[15:12]because I think like we don't know what it's gonna look like
[15:14]this year and even if there are some students in this house,
[15:16]they won't be, you know, we won't be eating in the dining hall,
[15:19]they won't be like having the kind of casual interactions
[15:22]with students that make it feel so kind of warm
[15:26]in community like and with other tutors and other families and pets.
[15:30]So that's just a big, like so much around education.
[15:33]It's just a big question mark.
[15:34]But I have really, I think this is a really special place
[15:37]to have kids and I felt so lucky for the people
[15:40]that my kids have met.
[15:41]I bet they have like the best babysitters ever.
[15:43]I mean, you have access to like every,
[15:46]the most brilliant, awesome babysitters.
[15:49]I feel like I should just come there
[15:50]to poach some sitters or something.
[15:52]They're so busy though.
[15:53]Like yeah, the ones we've had are so amazing,
[15:55]but they're also, they have a lot going on in the school year.
[15:58]I mean, that's true.
[16:00]So when did you write, like how long did it take to write this book?
[16:03]And did you outline, I mean, I know you were talking
[16:06]about the sort of organic nature in which the characters
[16:08]developed, but how did you have like a structure of,
[16:12]or did you start with that timeline of what the book ends
[16:15]that you just mentioned?
[16:16]Was that like a do not change type of thing
[16:19]from the outset or how did you start it?
[16:21]No, I started actually, again kind of college.
[16:23]Like it was like a kind of four year start to finish.
[16:26]Like I was just thinking about this
[16:27]because I started like taking notes,
[16:29]like emailing myself notes that have kind of notes
[16:32]when my first child was born.
[16:33]And I just wanted to like jot down some of the feelings.
[16:36]Wasn't even like fictional yet.
[16:39]It was just like I got to figure out
[16:41]how to write about some of this really just intense feelings.
[16:46]I want to write it down now while it's so fresh.
[16:48]And then we moved here and I started really getting
[16:51]to work on it once we started having some childcare.
[16:53]So when my first child was like eight months old,
[16:56]we had a very part time nanny share
[16:58]and I did some of this like tentative first steps
[17:00]on this book.
[17:01]And then when she was like a year and a half,
[17:03]I think she was 19 months.
[17:04]She started at this little preschool daycare.
[17:07]And then I really got cooking.
[17:08]I was like, wrote, I had been working on the book
[17:11]but not in such a consistent way.
[17:14]like in a very piecemeal way,
[17:16]but always walking around thinking about it
[17:18]and but not just actually banging it out.
[17:20]And then when she started at this daycare,
[17:22]I really figured out how to prioritize my time
[17:25]and be more efficient.
[17:26]And I would drop her off and oftentimes
[17:28]go to this coffee shop that was really nearby
[17:30]that has no internet.
[17:31]And I would just get to work.
[17:33]And so that took me, it was maybe like a year thinking,
[17:35]a year of writing and then selling the book
[17:37]and then doing some revisions that year.
[17:39]And then it came out.
[17:40]So it was kind of fast.
[17:41]I had written a book before this that isn't published
[17:44]and took a really long time.
[17:45]It was a lot more labored and protracted.
[17:47]And this book came much more quickly.
[17:50]I felt a lot of joy, not necessarily with the content
[17:53]but with the, what is it called a flow?
[17:55]Like when you really get into a project
[17:56]and you're just feeling like the flow.
[17:59]So I think that helped make it happen faster.
[18:01]And the fact that I was just so conscious of my time,
[18:04]I always say I closed my tab sooner
[18:06]because I always have so many tabs open on my browser.
[18:09]And once I was working on this book
[18:11]I knew how precious my time was
[18:14]away from my young baby.
[18:16]I was just like,
[18:16]close these tabs, open word, get to work.
[18:19]Love it.
[18:20]That's good.
[18:21]So much of me answering answer, sorry.
[18:22]No, that was great.
[18:23]I love that.
[18:24]It's true because it's like,
[18:25]I feel like sometimes the last time I have the more
[18:27]I get done in that time, right?
[18:28]Because I have to maximize like every second of an hour
[18:32]but if I have like four hours
[18:34]then I might like, I don't know.
[18:35]Well, I must have time to time.
[18:37]I'll go read the paper at all.
[18:38]I don't know.
[18:39]I wrote an interview with Helen Phillips
[18:41]at the Boston Book Festival
[18:42]and she talked about that same thing
[18:43]how she's had like increasingly
[18:45]or like decreasing time with each book
[18:47]but she feels like she's become a better writer
[18:50]and like makes better use of this time
[18:52]and her writing's become like more concentrated
[18:54]and powerful and public is quoting her
[18:55]but I felt like so I feel so encouraged
[18:57]when I hear people talk about it in that way
[18:59]because I think like, well, you wrote this book,
[19:01]the need when you were, when you had this little time
[19:04]and you were doing it in these chunks
[19:06]and it's so incredible.
[19:07]So I love to hear when people
[19:09]and I was sort of like totally diluted.
[19:11]I felt like when I was in graduate school at like 24
[19:14]I thought you have to publish a book
[19:16]before you have a baby or you never will.
[19:18]Like obviously there's evidence throughout time
[19:21]that that's not true.
[19:22]But I just had this like notion
[19:24]that if you didn't publish a book before you had a baby
[19:26]it was like all over for you.
[19:28]It's so archaic.
[19:29]I don't know how I got this idea
[19:30]but it really kind of stuck with me
[19:32]and then and for me it was the opposite, you know?
[19:34]I got so much more productive
[19:36]and my career as a writer didn't really take off
[19:38]until after I had a baby.
[19:40]So I think it's helpful for people to hear
[19:42]especially moms don't have time to read books
[19:44]like that it isn't always the derailment
[19:46]that you might fear.
[19:48]I can't speak to this during times of no childcare
[19:51]but certainly when childcare is involved
[19:54]people with small children can still do a lot.
[19:57]Well, it's a whole new set of life experiences.
[20:00]drawn and include and I mean the perspective of living through it versus just knowing about it
[20:05]informs the writing in such a richer way I think. So yeah I mean if you can find the time
[20:12]when you're a mom for sure it's not over. Are you working on anything now?
[20:17]Not much. I'm doing I'm back to like emailing myself and even like it's degraded to like texting
[20:22]myself at this point. So jotting notes and things and I need to get more organized because I'm like
[20:26]texting emailing these notes are everywhere. I gotta start pulling it all together but not too
[20:31]much I think if we have a little bit more childcare in the coming weeks or months then or if I just
[20:37]get more you know people also get up really early and riot or they write in the night it's
[20:42]possible. Also I've just been so distracted and all the things that we're all I think feeling
[20:47]during this time yeah. I mean that you had to say that you're doing like so I have some very
[20:52]scattered. I like to call like the filling up stage like you're filling up and then you're going to
[20:56]like put it out. It's really so important. I mean how can you make sense of stuff if you haven't
[21:02]processed it. I don't know. It's all it all is part of it I think so don't feel bad.
[21:08]You're like the 500th person who said the same thing so don't worry about it.
[21:12]I know I listened to the podcast and I'm like of course like all of us I'm
[21:16]distraught and stressed and all these things is very intense time and it is encouraging I
[21:21]even prior to this time I felt like hearing from people who talk about like the rhythms of
[21:26]their work as being like some people write every day and are super regimented and some don't and
[21:31]then there's just like seasons in your life as with all things where you're like super productive
[21:36]or you're more fellow and I guess you just have to hope that I think that a lot of writers think
[21:40]if they're in a fallows season it's like well this is it's it's like new parenting it's like
[21:45]a similar mindset where whatever trouble you're having like especially those early days like your
[21:50]child is having all these sleep interruptions you're like this is my life now I don't I guess I
[21:53]never sleep I just I don't sleep and then a couple years later or you know hopefully for some
[21:58]people a month later you're like oh I've totally forgot about that time so I think it's similar
[22:02]with writing in the sense that people I'm confident when I hear about people whose books I
[22:07]revere having like forgotten how to write a book between books so like each one invents itself
[22:13]maybe the difference is just that they did they knew they that you know you know you can do it
[22:20]you don't necessarily know how but you know you can do it so hopefully you can do it again
[22:26]I feel like you've already like sprinkled in all this advice and inspiration but just
[22:30]do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors? Sure I think one piece of advice would be like
[22:37]to prioritize your work in the way that it is like in your heart if you can prioritize it that way
[22:44]in your day that can be really meaningful like I feel like I always put writing below a lot of
[22:50]obligations for a long time like my day job and obviously that's a huge privilege to be able to
[22:55]move writing up the list but if you can at any point and for some people that's grad school or a
[23:01]fellowship or just like doing worse at your day job then you know honestly like just doing a
[23:07]worse job at your day job and better with the thing that your your passion is really for
[23:13]I think that's something that was useful to me like for me that meant like starting the day working
[23:18]on my book instead of getting to it after other things and the other piece of advice that I was
[23:24]thinking because I feel like I don't know the target advice not knowing what someone's doing but
[23:30]for me I think having a baby I would walk around with her so much to try to get her to take a nap
[23:35]and I I wasn't listening to my headphones because I was like I felt like you know she's brand new
[23:41]and I need to be like very alert and not distracted and that was really good like that was really
[23:47]useful for me I love I listen to podcasts I love podcasts it's like weird advice to get on a podcast but
[23:51]for me finding some time that's like generative can be walking or even in the shower or swimming
[23:58]just sometime when the voice in your head is the one for your book and not other voices or music or
[24:06]other other things I think that can be like an actual practical tip to try like see what happens if
[24:13]you just only listen to your own thoughts for a walk if you're stuck you know yeah
[24:19]sometimes I don't want to hear my own thoughts
[24:21]that's why I was getting I know I'm here these jobs but
[24:27]someone I can't remember who it was but somebody said that part of their writing process was that
[24:32]on their commute to work every day no like no radio allowed like that was her time to think
[24:38]about what she would maybe want to write at lunchtime you know I'm forgetting who that was this is
[24:42]anyway my brain is just falling apart but it's like what you were saying like she had that
[24:46]protected time when yeah I mean she was driving but you know whatever part of your brain that
[24:50]that uses is only like a tiny bit compared to you know imagination so my isn't it well but that
[24:56]sounds like oh it sounds so boring like don't you want to have the radio on you know it my impulse
[25:00]is like turning on but I guess that being bored being bored is like so crucial for creative work
[25:04]you have to be bored yeah and we're all you know we don't we're not bored as much or we haven't
[25:08]been maybe with yeah these these days but yeah so planned a boredom episodes I think that's our new
[25:14]same year yeah we got the time for some boredom making time for boredom yeah yeah there we go
[25:22]well thanks Elizabeth thank you so much for coming on mom's downtown trade books and for sharing
[25:27]your experience and for letting me feel like I got to spend a half an hour in a library this morning
[25:31]which is like oh I know it's great but it's in thank you so much for chatting with me it was a pleasure
[25:36]I love even though I just spoke out again you know total silence on your walk I love listening to
[25:41]podcast so it's a pleasure to be part of it oh thanks you too okay have a great day
[25:48]thanks so much to firstbook.org for sponsoring this labor day book blast please consider giving
[25:54]to firstbook.org to help their network of 475,000 educators serving children in need
[26:00]thanks for listening to this episode of mom's don't have time to read books don't forget to
[26:04]follow me on instagram at zibi Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books also sign
[26:09]up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors
[26:14]on zoom every other week thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the sound editing
[26:19]and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music