Cecily von Ziegesar, COBBLE HILL
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[1:57]Cecily von Zagasar is the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Gossip Girl
[2:03]Novels, which inspired the hit television series of the same name. Her latest book is called
[2:08]Coble Hill. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. Welcome, Cecily. Thanks so much
[2:13]for coming on mom's dinner time to read books. Thank you. It's so nice to be here.
[2:17]See, that was so easy. I just asked a question. Not even. I said something, you said something back,
[2:23]right? I can do this. First of all, Coble Hill is so great and I was so excited to see that
[2:31]you had come out with a new book and it did not disappoint in the slightest and I love your
[2:36]characters and your sense of humor and the whole thing and I just had to say that from the
[2:41]outset that I thoroughly enjoyed it and needed like a fun escape that folks found it basically
[2:49]everybody and that was awesome. So thank you. Thank you. That's really nice to hear.
[2:54]I know that kind of like tender stage where I'm terrified about what people are going to think of
[2:59]the book because it's just, you know, people are just reading it now and so it's always nice to hear
[3:05]thanks. Thumbs up. So I know obviously you've written the gossip girl series and that was like,
[3:14]you know, smash hit, blah, blah, blah, TV show, fame, whatever. Now, how do you go from that
[3:21]and write another book and tell me how you came up with the idea for Coble Hill and we'll go from
[3:25]there. Well, it's been a long time. The first gossip girl book came out in 2002 and
[3:36]it's been a while. But I mean, there are also many of them and as you said, a TV show and I have
[3:41]actually written a couple of books in between that weren't really like why I'd be read. But I kept
[3:47]also getting distracted and pulled away from this idea. I other things, also my kids.
[3:56]The same, actually 2002 was when the first gossip book girl book came out but also when my first
[4:03]child was born. So she's starting a college now. So there you go. There's a good marker
[4:12]but so Coble Hill actually leads the sort of germ of the idea. It came about in a conversation
[4:19]or many conversations, paranoid conversations that I had with my kids elementary school nurse
[4:26]and after reading the book you'll discover that there is very definitely a school nurse in the book
[4:31]and she would send out these lights letters and I would just completely freak out.
[4:37]Minute I got the lights letter in my kids backpack or whatever. I'd just be like,
[4:42]they're all over me. I have light. They're like in the walls. They're everywhere. And so like,
[4:46]I would go and choose this really nice, just lovely person and I would just go into her office and
[4:53]start out talking about lace and then we would run up just like chatting about other stuff.
[4:57]And so I knew I wanted to write a book set in this neighborhood, the neighborhood that I live in but
[5:03]I was like, when in talking to her I was like, I have to have, I have to, you know, have lace in my
[5:10]book. I'm just, it was just so ridiculous the way, I mean it's even more ridiculous now if only
[5:18]lace were our problem. The only epidemic we were worrying about but so it sort of started with that
[5:28]and then I very definitely extrapolated, you know, wildly from there. I think another character
[5:35]the book is a is a writer and the longer that I worked on this I think I've been working on this book
[5:42]on and off for more than five years which is a really long time for me that gossip girl books I
[5:48]for, you know, two years. So the more I sort of worked on it and it moved away from kind of like
[5:56]the original just moms in the school year our type of book, it became about writing itself too,
[6:03]you know, I'm kind of like sort of make fun of myself like with all the agonizing that I was doing.
[6:08]When I was reading it, you had this one scene where is his name right Roy Roy sorry, so he's like
[6:15]walking around and you're like charting the streets and like should I go to this bar,
[6:18]should I go to this place, should I go here, should I go there and I'm like was she actually doing
[6:23]this like maybe that was her morning and this was the walk she took and then she sat down and
[6:29]then just wrote that up. Actually no, I did try, I've always like tried to find other places to
[6:37]write other than home and actually right now I'm in my daughter who went to college or her bedroom
[6:43]because I don't have an office in her apartment and so I don't know how happy she is about this
[6:48]but her room is in my office. Is she, is she finding this out right now on this podcast?
[6:57]The way she found out was I took, she didn't have a desk in her room at all. I don't even know
[7:02]how she got their high school without having a desk but she just had this big fuzzy pillow on the floor,
[7:06]you know, like and she would sit on the pillow and you know put her laptop in her lap and so
[7:11]like the first week that she was at college I took a picture of the fuzzy pillow which
[7:16]it looks like a dog pillow and it's really gross and bad out on the sidewalk like for the,
[7:22]you know garbage take away and I was like say bye bye to your phone, no!
[7:29]But I don't think she's too sad she just had lunch but so anyway I was throughout my sort of
[7:35]writing life I've been wondering you know like okay there are people who like work in the park
[7:41]or there are people who work in coffee shops and so I would try to you know I'd go to a coffee place
[7:48]and like bring my laptop fully intending to get something done and I don't know how people do that.
[7:54]I just, all I do is eavesdrop on other people I don't get anything done like it's impossible for
[8:00]me to do that so part of Roy's kind of you know journey and also it's also just procrastination
[8:08]right and he's like maybe I'll try this maybe I'll go here and like in the meantime he's not
[8:15]writing. He's just wandering around so but I tell my, I tell everyone like you know even when
[8:23]you're not writing you're writing right because it's all it's in your head and actually the more
[8:28]that is actually very true for me the more ones I sort of get going I feel like I am kind of
[8:34]carrying the whole book in my head and the characters are having conversations no I sound like
[8:44]I'm here Golly's voice in my head turns out I don't know
[8:51]but I mean it is actually true that and maybe you do have to be a little crazy to do that
[8:57]but once they kind of become fully formed characters they are talking in your head or my head anyway
[9:06]and I loved you I loved peaches the nurse character and how when she got to go through why
[9:12]am I blanking everybody's name in this book but the musician's hair when he came to sit down
[9:16]and someone little and she was like thank you God thank you mom thank you everybody who didn't
[9:21]let me drop out of nursing school for this moment right here it was all worth it I just love that
[9:27]yeah I mean she's a terrible flirt I guess but but I mean that's sort of part of what I
[9:36]tried to do with my reading I think I did that in Gossip Girl 2 you're kind of hearing every
[9:41]thought that every character has like is that sort of like off camera thing and it's sort of adds
[9:47]another dimension to them but and sort of you're but you're also seeing how the person they're
[9:53]talking to is seeing them you know it's a very complicated but it's
[10:00]I think part of what I sort of learned that I like to do
[10:04]in writing Gossip Girl was having that,
[10:06]the idea of that sort of perfect, you know,
[10:09]looking person and then you see how flawed they really are
[10:13]and insecure.
[10:15]So I had a lot of fun with that in Call of Hill too.
[10:18]I mean, I think hopefully it's amusing
[10:22]to hear how insecure these, oh, I don't know.
[10:27]I think a lot of it was also me, you know,
[10:29]wandering around my neighborhood and wondering
[10:31]what all these people are really doing.
[10:33]Like when they go home, these people who don't seem
[10:36]to have normal, 95 jobs like me.
[10:39]And you might be sitting on a park bench at 11 o'clock
[10:44]in the morning with their laptop or, you know,
[10:46]getting a coffee or just like walking around.
[10:49]And, you know, I think I became fascinated
[10:52]with like what those people really are doing
[10:56]and what they're wise really.
[10:58]I mean, I feel like it's human nature
[11:00]perhaps maybe more novel this nature,
[11:02]but to wonder like what everybody's thinking and doing
[11:05]and like what is everybody doing out?
[11:08]I remember working when I actually had like a nine to five job
[11:12]in marketing before I went to business school.
[11:13]And one day I got the day off
[11:15]and I like remember going to the reservoir
[11:17]and thinking that was like, oh, this is like the height
[11:20]of luxury that I can go running in the middle of the day.
[11:22]And I was like, who are all these people?
[11:24]How was everybody else out and about?
[11:26]Like what are they all doing?
[11:28]How are they all here?
[11:29]And your bugs like are the backstory
[11:31]that everybody is really wondering, you know?
[11:34]And you even have your like on a winterish character
[11:36]who's, you know, pretending like she's so busy at work
[11:39]and doing absolutely nothing.
[11:40]And I don't know.
[11:41]You just have like so many funny characters
[11:43]in different ways and it's just great.
[11:46]You poke fun at everybody from like the Latin teacher
[11:48]to the, it's just awesome.
[11:49]It's just like why not make fun of everybody
[11:52]in a nice, funny literary way.
[11:54]That's really what you do.
[11:56]Yeah, I hope I'm not.
[11:58]It's funny because the teenagers
[12:00]are two sort of main teenage characters as well.
[12:03]And I think they're like the more serious characters
[12:06]in a way and like I'm, that was sort of something
[12:09]that I maybe have discovered in my middle age
[12:14]that it's like just because you're a grown up
[12:18]doesn't mean you act like one, you know?
[12:21]And sometimes the teenagers are a little bit more responsible.
[12:24]I mean, they're, they're actually,
[12:26]I have so much sympathy for like my kids.
[12:29]I'm sitting, I'm like still in my bathrobe
[12:32]with my cup of coffee and it's like seven o'clock in the morning.
[12:35]And they're like completely dressed.
[12:36]My, you know, daughters eyelashes would be curled
[12:39]and all this, you know, and they're like facing the day
[12:42]and doing so much.
[12:45]And I'm like, bye.
[12:47]I'm like, I'm just gonna go write a book in my bathrobe.
[12:50]I mean, so a lot of it came out of that.
[12:54]Just realizing like how much shit they have going on
[12:57]in their lives and also that there's so much
[12:59]that you deal with in high school
[13:02]that if you're kind of in your like little neighborhood adult
[13:05]bubble, you know, you don't necessarily have to deal
[13:07]with that at all, you know?
[13:09]So there's a lot of that in the book too.
[13:12]Just this almost like that the teenagers are dealing
[13:14]with like what's happening in the world,
[13:18]like the world around them more than the adults are.
[13:23]So essentially you're, like,
[13:25]did you ever actually debate faking MS yourself
[13:28]so that you could stay in bed all day?
[13:29]Oh my God.
[13:31]Oh my God.
[13:32]This is, Mandy is actually like,
[13:34]oh, I think one of my favorite characters because she,
[13:38]it's funny, if first I was worried, like,
[13:41]are people just gonna pay you her because she's, you know,
[13:44]so indulged and she's just like saying your bed all day.
[13:48]And then, but then I became so envious of her,
[13:51]like, why not?
[13:53]Like why not just take a little time and stay in bed?
[13:59]And I feel like it's sort of a brave thing to do somehow.
[14:02]And she doesn't, like she gets through it.
[14:04]Like she actually sort of grows throughout the story
[14:06]and like she's kind of moving on
[14:08]but it was just something she needed to do.
[14:10]But I actually, I have a couple of friends who have MS
[14:13]and like, I don't know when they were just talking
[14:15]about their symptoms, this is so twisted of me.
[14:19]I was like, this is the perfect disease to fake, you know?
[14:22]Just be like, yeah, I don't, I think I just need to,
[14:26]like, take it easy right now.
[14:28]So this is just the way my completely crazy brain works.
[14:33]But like, I was just, I sort of had this idea
[14:36]while talking to my friend from college who has MS
[14:40]and just kind of went with it.
[14:44]But it also, it seems like she,
[14:48]I don't know, I guess I can ask you.
[14:51]Do you like, when you read about it where you like,
[14:53]oh, God, she's so lazy or you sort of like,
[14:55]that takes a certain degree of courage to just be like,
[15:00]I'm staying at bed.
[15:02]Well, at first I was like, oh, I wonder
[15:04]what's wrong with her?
[15:04]She depressed her, what's going on.
[15:06]And then first you hear about it from her husband.
[15:08]So then I like felt sorry, right?
[15:09]Then I was like, oh, no, this poor woman.
[15:11]And then you find out that actually she's faking it.
[15:13]And I was like, I cannot believe that she's faking it.
[15:17]I just couldn't, are we like spoiler alert?
[15:20]Like, I don't know.
[15:21]Are you supposed to know the whole time she's faking it?
[15:24]I love how I wrote the book and I can't remember.
[15:26]I feel like that was all very early.
[15:28]I mean, I don't know, did I ruin it?
[15:29]I could take that.
[15:30]I mean, it's all very early in the book.
[15:32]I don't know.
[15:33]She, you see the process of like,
[15:37]going what to, like what the symptoms are.
[15:39]Yeah, I wonder if there will be an outbreak
[15:41]of other moms being like, you know what?
[15:43]I don't wanna take my kid to school anymore.
[15:45]Like, I'm just just staying in bed.
[15:47]I love you.
[15:48]And you put like the bed in the living room.
[15:50]I feel like actually what it is,
[15:51]it's like every crazy stressed out mother's fantasy
[15:55]is basically what you wrote.
[15:56]Because it's like, you know what, I've had enough.
[15:58]Like, that's it.
[15:59]You know what, I'm just not gonna do this anymore.
[16:01]Let's see what happens.
[16:02]Right.
[16:03]Well, no, I mean, I'll sit on some of man
[16:06]and they're probably like all of her behavior
[16:08]kind of came from that moment where I'm like,
[16:11]saying bye to my family in the morning.
[16:14]It's just like me and the dog.
[16:16]And then I'm like, what if I just like took to my bed?
[16:19]You know, like, and they came home from school
[16:22]and I'm like, work, whatever.
[16:24]And I was just like in bed.
[16:27]How crazy would that be?
[16:29]Yeah.
[16:29]And so instead of doing it, I wrote it.
[16:33]There we go.
[16:34]I mean, why not?
[16:36]So, Cecily, how did you get into writing to begin with?
[16:39]Or maybe it's just a natural outgrowth
[16:41]of what goes on in your head.
[16:42]But how did you start the gossip girl series?
[16:46]Like, how did you become a published author?
[16:50]How did it begin?
[16:51]Oh boy.
[16:52]Okay.
[16:53]I mean, going way back.
[16:54]I mean, I was in high school, like,
[16:57]English was my favorite class.
[16:59]I had this wonderful teacher who named Christine Scott
[17:04]who is actually a published author,
[17:07]but she really encouraged me to begin with
[17:09]when I was a teenager to write out how to class.
[17:12]And so I think in my head, I always had this idea
[17:17]that it was like the only thing that I was really good at.
[17:20]And so in college, I was an English major.
[17:23]I took all the creative writing classes that they offered.
[17:26]I actually did both poetry and fiction.
[17:29]And so for my kind of senior thesis,
[17:31]I published a collection of short stories and poetry.
[17:35]Which is, it's actually funny.
[17:36]Like, I don't really write poems,
[17:39]but then when I'm writing a book,
[17:41]like Dan in Gossip Girl in the books is a poet.
[17:45]And he writes poetry.
[17:47]So it's like, it's kind of my,
[17:49]and then Stuart in Kyle Hill is a musician.
[17:53]And I mean, that's not poetry,
[17:54]but I did have fun with his little, like, one line.
[17:58]Kind of rhymes.
[18:00]Anyway, I started a master's in MFA in fiction writing,
[18:06]but I didn't actually finish.
[18:09]Maybe I could go back.
[18:10]I just did a year,
[18:12]because I sort of felt like I wanted to be like,
[18:14]living in the world and not in school anymore.
[18:17]And my first job was actually in publishing in England,
[18:23]like working for a children's book publisher.
[18:25]My husband is English, we met over here
[18:28]and then I went over there to live with him
[18:30]and got married over there.
[18:31]Hence Roy is British.
[18:34]And in Kyle Hill, and this is how I knew so much
[18:37]about English people, half of my family is English.
[18:44]But so I was, even a lot of living in England
[18:47]in my early 20s at that job,
[18:50]I sort of, it was like this weird,
[18:52]I don't know, I feel like a lot of people
[18:54]who have encountered this,
[18:55]like have this kind of editorial assistant job
[18:58]and I didn't really have enough to do.
[19:00]And so I would start writing my own stuff,
[19:02]like, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing.
[19:06]But none of that was ever published.
[19:08]It's all on like floppy disk.
[19:10]What do you do with those?
[19:13]And anyway, then we moved to New York
[19:15]and I got a job with a company called 17th Street Productions,
[19:20]which then was acquired by Alloy Entertainment.
[19:25]But they were a very unusual company.
[19:28]It was a book production company,
[19:30]which meant that they sort of came up with ideas
[19:33]for series, mostly young adult series.
[19:36]And the editors were really kind of in charge
[19:38]of like the content and what those series would be.
[19:41]So that was my job.
[19:43]And then they would outsource the writing
[19:45]and like higher writers who didn't get to use their own names.
[19:49]And one of the most well known series
[19:51]that they had done before I got there was Sweet Valley High.
[19:54]But I was tired to work on a course series
[19:58]because I had grew up.
[20:00]writing horses called Thoroughbred,
[20:01]and it was like about horse racing.
[20:03]And there was such a big series
[20:05]or I think we published like one book a month
[20:09]or something, it was crazy.
[20:11]Like I've never, I was insanely busy
[20:14]because I had to like come up with the plot lines
[20:17]for the stories.
[20:18]Anyway, I'm going on and on and on, like,
[20:22]so the company kind of wanted to develop
[20:26]and produce more kind of authentic fiction
[20:29]and they worked well with big publishing houses.
[20:32]And so one of the series that we came up with,
[20:37]one of my colleagues came up with,
[20:39]well, there was the sisterhood of the traveling pants.
[20:42]And at the same time, another colleague of mine
[20:45]after reading a newspaper article about a girl
[20:48]who kind of like exposed everyone in her class,
[20:53]some sort of scandal, but through instant messaging,
[20:56]he came up with this title, Gossip Girl.
[20:59]So the title was not mine.
[21:02]And then in this sort of development process,
[21:04]I was assigned this to like, you know,
[21:07]come up with like the characters and they're there.
[21:10]And so I just like,
[21:11]went completely crazy and I was like,
[21:13]I don't want this to be like anything
[21:15]we've ever done before.
[21:16]I don't want it to be like in this weird,
[21:19]made up place like Sweet Valley High.
[21:21]It's kind of, I grew up in Manhattan.
[21:23]It's kind of be about Manhattan teenagers
[21:26]like, you know, I came up with the whole cast of characters.
[21:28]I wrote like the sort of introduction
[21:32]and they sent it out to publishers
[21:34]and this one editor, Cindy Egan at Little Brown read it.
[21:39]And it was just like, this is amazing.
[21:41]This sounds exactly like the people
[21:43]that I went to boarding school with like,
[21:44]I'm gonna come and talk to you about publishing this.
[21:47]And she asked in the meeting who wrote this proposal.
[21:51]And I was like, I did, you know,
[21:54]still like kind of like a junior person there.
[21:56]And she was like, well, you're writing the books.
[22:00]And so her boss was like,
[22:02]well, we didn't usually do that.
[22:03]And she was like, no, she's writing the books.
[22:06]And I mean, she was really my champion.
[22:08]And so they gave me a shot at writing the first book.
[22:12]And she insisted that it had money on it.
[22:16]And then, I mean, it's sort of like to make a long story short
[22:19]by like the time this third book was coming out.
[22:22]It was like on the bestseller list
[22:24]before it even was published
[22:26]because people were like pre-ordering it.
[22:27]And I quit my job.
[22:32]And it was just writing basketball full time
[22:36]while also like nursing my newborn baby.
[22:40]And it's funny because the other thing
[22:44]that went as the books, as basketball became more and more
[22:47]popular, being pretty early on,
[22:50]because I literally gave birth from my daughter
[22:52]and the first book came out at the same time.
[22:54]And the second book came out like six months later.
[22:57]The publisher, a little brown, had told people
[23:01]like she can't travel right now
[23:03]because I like just given birth.
[23:06]But like somehow like I don't know
[23:08]with like God in this system.
[23:10]Like, especially once you guys heard doesn't travel.
[23:13]So like years later, people like I know you don't travel.
[23:17]But like I felt like I had this like weird reputation or something.
[23:21]And I was like, what do you mean I don't travel?
[23:22]I'll go anywhere.
[23:23]Like I'm a travel like, oh, God, I would love to travel.
[23:28]And it was all just because of the weird timing
[23:31]of that first book that like there was a idea that
[23:35]like I never traveled.
[23:37]But like, then the word that I was like,
[23:39]I'm going to perstale, oh, okay, look at her.
[23:43]If you want me, I'll go.
[23:45]So yeah, that was.
[23:47]And then how involved were you then
[23:49]with it being adapted as a TV show?
[23:51]So that happened, I don't even remember when the show came out.
[23:56]2007, is that right?
[23:58]Well, I wasn't involved in the writing of the show.
[24:03]But you know, I met with the creators of the show.
[24:06]I had lunch with Stephanie Savage at the restaurant
[24:09]in Barney's and then we went and I was like, well,
[24:12]you have to like shoot me.
[24:13]She's not a native New Yorker.
[24:14]She's actually Canadian.
[24:15]And we like walked around the reservoir and Central Park.
[24:18]And then we went to my school.
[24:20]And we watched the girls coming out of school.
[24:24]And I don't know.
[24:25]I felt like I can do some kind of like take her around
[24:28]the neighborhood where it all kind of happens
[24:31]just to like be sure that she I don't know.
[24:34]Like I think I was being a little crazy
[24:35]because then they wound up doing like an incredible job.
[24:38]And it was like way better than I ever could have imagined.
[24:41]But I was so nervous that it was going to be like filmed in LA.
[24:45]You know, I just, I mean, I didn't know at that point.
[24:48]So and they were also very generous with me.
[24:51]Like I was able to like, you know, go on set whenever at any time.
[24:56]And I was, they asked me to be to do a little cameo
[25:00]and like one of the later episodes.
[25:02]So I had a line that was really fun.
[25:07]So I mean, the whole, this show was really amazing.
[25:10]It was really different from the books.
[25:12]Like it sort of started out with the first book
[25:15]and then completely.
[25:16]I mean, they went, they had to go beyond the time frame
[25:19]of the books, but it was, it was really amazing.
[25:23]Well, I think I watched probably every episode of Gossip Girl
[25:28]over the years.
[25:29]And now my daughter, I have four kids and my daughter is 13.
[25:33]She's like, well, my friends are talking about the show.
[25:35]I'm like, I don't know.
[25:36]I don't know.
[25:37]Do I want you watching it?
[25:39]It's funny because my daughter's friends,
[25:43]I think she was a little bit nervous about it
[25:45]or something or it was just sort of like in her life.
[25:47]But she didn't, you know, because of that,
[25:49]she didn't really like pay much attention.
[25:51]And then her, you know, somebody would find out, you know,
[25:55]in like middle school, it like sort of seventh day,
[25:58]great, say the same age as your daughter.
[26:00]And then, you know, they'd be like, oh my God, tell your mom,
[26:04]I want to sign.
[26:05]So she'd end up having to like bring signed copies of the book.
[26:08]The book.
[26:09]And sometimes teachers would ask to like, so, and then,
[26:14]yeah, it would just get out in school.
[26:17]And she was kind of like keeping, trying to keep it on the load
[26:20]out a little bit.
[26:21]But she, I think she has pretty much watched all of the episodes
[26:26]of the show.
[26:27]I don't think she's read all the books, though.
[26:29]So maybe later, it'll be her like escape from school.
[26:37]And as I, so I know you worked on couple of Hill
[26:39]for on enough for five years.
[26:40]Are you, do you have another project
[26:42]that you've already been working on or deviling in
[26:45]that you think might come next or you're just not sure
[26:47]what's up after this?
[26:49]Well, I don't want to like get anyone too excited
[26:52]because it's not done deal.
[26:54]And I know I don't really know what my involvement is going
[26:56]to be, but I'm trying to just as almost like an experiment
[27:01]at the stage to adapt couple of Hill for television.
[27:05]So it would be really fun.
[27:07]I think it like, it lends itself very much to a TV show.
[27:10]But I wanted to try to take a stab at writing this time,
[27:13]writing it myself.
[27:15]The problem so far has been that every single thing
[27:20]that you do when you're writing a book is not what you do
[27:24]when you're writing for television.
[27:26]So all that, what I was talking about earlier,
[27:29]all that interior monologue, all that off camera,
[27:33]kind of what she's thinking and what he's thinking
[27:36]when she's talking and all that stuff.
[27:38]You can't do any of that.
[27:40]So it's just dialogue.
[27:43]So I'm finding it very challenging.
[27:46]And I also have this weird impulse to like get up
[27:51]and try to like act it out myself.
[27:53]You know, it's like, well, well, I mean,
[27:55]you're just like the little things like
[27:57]that you have the sort of staged directions, you know?
[27:59]So it's not so awkward.
[28:01]Anyway, it's a fun experiment.
[28:03]I don't know if I give it to somebody
[28:05]they're just going to be like, yeah, just stick to books.
[28:09]We'll see.
[28:12]Well, what advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[28:15]I know this sounds, it's like everyone tells you this,
[28:17]but reading to me is more helpful than anything else.
[28:23]And I read kind of a cross like all genres.
[28:28]And I even, maybe this is crazy too,
[28:32]but there are even like little like his books
[28:34]that I love like picture books.
[28:37]I love the language.
[28:38]I mean, it's funny that the cover of Cabo Hill
[28:41]looks a lot like that Richard Scary book,
[28:44]what do people do all the air or whatever?
[28:47]And there's, there are some lines in that book
[28:49]that I really like, but there's a sort of like cadence
[28:54]to some kid's books that somehow it is sort of like poetry
[28:59]and it really, that kind of just like really reading
[29:03]for the kind of like the music of the sentences to me
[29:07]is really important.
[29:08]And sometimes I'll just pick up a book
[29:11]that I know really well because I've read it a few times
[29:14]and just like read a few lines
[29:16]and then that gets me like going again.
[29:18]But I'm also just sort of, I'm a book nerd.
[29:22]Yeah.
[29:24]And I also, I had guilty of the fact
[29:27]that I'll like start.
[29:30]I'm always reading like five of her books at the same time.
[29:32]I don't know, do you do that?
[29:33]Like I have your percentage of that.
[29:36]It's also like, I think I feel like the author's new
[29:40]that I was doing that to be like, what are you doing?
[29:42]You're not just reading my book.
[29:45]But yeah, reading really, I mean, and sometimes it'll just
[29:48]be like a magazine or something like,
[29:50]but just to get kind of like, I don't know,
[29:52]warmed up somehow, I always need to be reading.
[29:55]But the other thing that I do is,
[30:00]Well, I'm sort of an insomnia, but I was just part of the reason why like staying in
[30:04]that all day makes sense to me. You know, okay, just if you don't sleep, you may as well just like
[30:12]be somewhere relaxing. But I keep a, I keep a pen or a pencil and like these paper next to my bed.
[30:19]So like in the middle of the night in the dark, I'll just like scribble down something because,
[30:24]you know, and usually in the morning, I can't read it. But every once in a while is worth
[30:29]a while. And it's not even literally might be just like a word or something, but like I do sort
[30:35]of take notes on scratch the paper napkins, post it's just, I'm always just like scribbling something
[30:42]down. This isn't good advice. This is just illustrating how crazy I am. Great advice.
[30:47]I think reading is great. I think scribbling things down is great. I think opening up a book
[30:53]and getting inspired just by a couple of sentences is awesome. I mean, why not? That's great. I think
[30:59]it's all great advice. The other advice I have is like, I know like after years of doing this,
[31:04]that like, I don't, my brain doesn't really work that well until like three in the afternoon.
[31:11]Some people are morning people. Some people, I'm definitely not a morning person. So I don't make
[31:16]myself do anything that, I mean, I probably wouldn't keep anything that I, if I sat down at
[31:24]and not at the end of the morning and like made myself right, it wouldn't be good. So I do
[31:29]everything else beforehand. And I think that's also like, I mean, I exercise and I do all the
[31:36]like chores that I need to do. And I, you know, and read and all that stuff that I, in the first
[31:42]part of the day. And then all of a sudden, I'm like ready to go. And it's, it has always been a shame
[31:49]for me that three o'clock in the afternoon was like when people would start coming back into
[31:55]the house, you know. So last time, I'm like, sorry. And I can, I can also work, you know,
[32:03]I can be working at two o'clock in the morning. I think ideally, like if I didn't have a family,
[32:08]I would work from probably at three in the morning until, I mean, sorry, three in the afternoon
[32:14]until 11 o'clock in the night. But that doesn't, that doesn't really work when you have other
[32:20]people in the house. But I do, it's nice when you can just kind of give yourself the liberty of being
[32:29]like, I don't, you don't have to, you're not gonna write for eight hours. You're not gonna like,
[32:35]it's not like a normal job. So you have to, I mean, what works best for me anyway is just being like,
[32:44]okay, I have to like, I'm just like literally just take a couple seconds to like write this down,
[32:50]you know, scribble this down and somehow like I managed to piece it all together when I, when I do
[32:58]have that time and then my brain is in the right place and then I'll write 20 pages that it's
[33:03]sitting, you know, like it's, but you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, don't force it,
[33:09]try to try to force something that isn't happening. Just like, go take a walk or go running or
[33:15]go read something if it's not because you can't like make yourself beepier wander around
[33:21]Cobble Hill looking for. Well, thank you, Cecily, thanks so much for coming on my podcast.
[33:28]I know you're not a big podcast person, but you should listen to it because you're a big book lover
[33:32]and you might enjoy it. I'm like, it's so funny. I'm so, I'm just like old-fashioned. Like,
[33:40]I'm just starting to discover podcasts and so I'm excited. Like, this is good. I somehow,
[33:47]I thought like podcasts were for like the people who are like wired, you know, like they're
[33:54]and they're not. They're for everyone. Well, you can experiment with your own. Anyway,
[34:08]all right, we'll have a great day and thanks so much for doing this.
[34:12]Thank you, Xavier. It was really fun. Okay, bye bye.
[34:17]Thanks so much to Farrity brand for being my sponsor this week Farrity brand.com
[34:23]and her code Zibi for 25% off. Thanks for listening to this episode of moms don't have time to read
[34:28]books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at moms don't have time to read
[34:33]books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[34:38]lots of authors on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for
[34:43]the sound editing. And thank you to Morningland Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[34:48]now trim music.