Rebecca Sacks, CITY OF A THOUSAND GATES
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[0:53]Hi, I don't know if you guys know this or not, but I have an anthology coming out called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology.
[1:01]And it comes out on February 16th and has essays by 60 plus of the authors who have been on this podcast.
[1:09]So first of all, please pre-order this book. I think you will love it. I'm so excited about all the authors who are represented.
[1:16]Just to give you a few, Chris Bajillion, Jewel Parker Rhodes, Ashley Prentice Norton, Gretchen Rubin, Rima Zaman, Eileen Zimmerman, and that is just from the first page of the multi-page table of contents.
[1:30]So please pick up this book. Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology.
[1:34]It's available anywhere you buy books, Amazon, bookshop.org, and your local independent bookstore.
[1:39]So please pick up a copy. And also, I want to invite you listeners to my fundraiser slash launch party.
[1:49]The night it comes out on February 16th, the Tuesday at 7 p.m., full camped in and the children's
[1:55]museum of the East End are co-hosting it for me. And 50 of the authors who wrote essays in this book,
[2:02]as well as many of the amazing authors who blurbed this book, who wrote little praise worthy quotes
[2:08]at the front, will be there. And you can be there too. So if you go to my website zibbyowens.com
[2:16]and just click on anthology and go to book tour, you will see a whole fundraiser section.
[2:21]And for $50, you can attend. You'll get a copy of the book. And you'll get to shmooze on zoom
[2:30]with all of these amazing authors. This is like going to be the literary happening of February.
[2:36]So please come. I would love to see you all in person on zoom, I guess. But even see some of your
[2:42]faces. I know so many of you are really loyal listeners and that makes me really happy.
[2:47]All proceeds of the book and the fundraiser are going to the Susan Felice Owens program for COVID-19
[2:54]vaccine research at Mount Sinai Health System. And it is named after my husband's mother
[3:01]who passed away from COVID over the summer, which many of you followed along on Instagram as I
[3:06]recounted that horrific experience. So all the proceeds are going there. The cost includes the price
[3:12]of a book. So thank you for supporting this effort. And for supporting my book, I can't wait to
[3:18]see you there. Today's episode has been sponsored by author Joe Piazza's new podcast under the
[3:25]influence. Under the influence is a deep dive into the mom internet, a place haunted by aspirational
[3:31]marketing where it feels like every other moms is social media influencer trying to sell you
[3:35]something all while posed in white kitchens that never seemed to get messy with toddlers and cloth
[3:40]diapers that never ever leak, a bastion of carefully curated lives that are hashtag blessed.
[3:45]And behind this airbrushed perfection is money so much money, billions and billions of dollars,
[3:50]a multi-billion dollar industry we never talk about. Journalist and mom of two
[3:55]Joe Piazza brings a keen reporter's lens to examine how we got here. What it all means and how
[4:00]the commodification of motherhood is driving normal mothers to the brink. And through adults,
[4:05]she wonders if she should just join the ochre huge ranks of the moms to grammars. If she too can
[4:11]make thousands of dollars off beautiful photos of bath time, frolicking and fields of purple flowers
[4:17]and posing her newborn next to a beautiful latte. And if this is the future of content,
[4:22]check it out. Joe Piazza's under the influence. Hi everybody. Today is day three of the February
[4:29]book blast. And it is literary fiction Wednesday. So I hope you enjoy all of these authors and
[4:36]interviews. Sometimes so many collect that I have to just blast out a bunch all at once and that's
[4:40]what this week is all about. So if you missed memoir Monday or nonfiction Tuesday, you can go back
[4:45]and listen to those. And coming up is new novels Thursday and family theme memoirs Friday. So listen
[4:51]as much as you can. It's such a nice time talking to Rebecca Sacks. Rebecca is a graduate of the
[4:57]programs in writing at the University of California Irvine. She's the recipient of a 2020 Elizabeth
[5:03]George Foundation award, 2019 Canada Council for the Arts Grant, and at the Joseph F. McCrindle
[5:09]Foundation's 2019 Headfield Prize in fiction writing. She has been awarded fellowships from the
[5:14]Breadloaf Writers Conference, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and the Melon Sawyer
[5:18]Documenting War Seminar Series. After graduating from Dartmouth College, she worked for several years
[5:24]at Vanity Fair, which we talked about because I did too, before moving to Tel Aviv to pursue
[5:28]a Masters of Arts in Jewish Studies. She has written Dispatches from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for
[5:32]publications, including the Paris Review Daily, and City of a thousand gates is her first novel.
[5:40]Welcome Rebecca. Thanks so much for coming on moms. Don't have time to read books to discuss
[5:45]City of a thousand gates. Congratulations on this novel. Thank you. It is like a literary achievement.
[5:51]This is like a big deal, right? It's like interwoven, stories, people's lives intersecting,
[5:59]great prose, different characters. It's like an epic journey. Congratulations.
[6:05]So much. Thank you so much. I actually just got the like the bound copy, so I noticed it.
[6:10]Oh, let's see. Yeah. Oh, here. I don't think you can see.
[6:14]I know. I have someone who's like very attached to like the book as an object.
[6:18]You know, and so I just holding it and feeling like the texture of the cover. I noticed I've
[6:25]been dressing to match it ever since I got it. So these are great colors. In fact, this would be a
[6:33]great blanket, perhaps. I think this could be a sort of textile. You could evolve in your home.
[6:40]Yeah. I really loved the design. You know, Harvard did such a great job, my publisher,
[6:46]in really like listening to, I guess not just to like me as the author, but reading the book
[6:53]carefully and everything surrounding the book has like reflected that so much. And this is my first book,
[6:58]my first novel. I had no idea what to expect. And I actually, the cover to me is so it has that
[7:05]sense of like multiple narrative doors, opening and closing, lives intersecting. Like I was so
[7:13]taken with it. So I'm very grateful to them actually for, you know, I suppose hearing me and kind of
[7:19]reflecting the works of you to play. So yeah. So tell me about writing this book. And when you started
[7:25]it, I know you've had like multiple, what bread loaf, like you've gotten all these fellowships and
[7:31]retreats and you've been at this for a while and everybody obviously keeps identifying your talent.
[7:37]So when did this start and how did it change and take shape over the years?
[7:42]Yes. So it almost feels like we grew up together or something this novel and I'm 34 now.
[7:50]And I think in a way I started writing it, even before I knew I was writing fiction,
[7:55]I was about 26. I left New York City. I'd been working in magazines. I really looked out after
[8:02]college right after college. I got a job at Vanity Fair. It was like the best education you can
[8:08]ask for. I actually, I interned at Vanity Fair. Stop. I did. Yes. Oh my gosh. Wait, you probably
[8:16]were not even born. No, I'm kidding. I'm 44. I interned into my freshman year of college. So when
[8:21]was that 1995 that summer? So quickly, I asked like, were you working directly with anyone?
[8:29]I have no idea. No, I did. No, no, no. I rotated department. So I started in special events.
[8:35]And at that time, I had like no idea who anybody was. And I had to answer and learn.
[8:38]Was that was she? Yes. Terrible. Cool. Oh my god. Like Amy Bell would walk in. Yes.
[8:44]And I actually emailed with Amy Bell. I was like, recently, and I was like, I was an intern.
[8:49]And you were there. And she was, yes, did not remember me. But that's fine.
[8:54]And then I moved to features department for a little bit with Jane Sargan. Oh my gosh. I love Jane.
[8:59]Yes. Wonderful. And I remember so well, I'm sure she doesn't remember me either. I was there
[9:03]for like a week in her department. But she was, I'll never forget because she was on the phone as I
[9:08]was, I don't know, filing slides or I don't know what I was doing for her. And she was trying to
[9:13]schedule her C section based around the Hollywood issue. That's so that she must have a trial now
[9:21]that was born in. Yeah. Sure. Sure. She has. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And that. Wow. That.
[9:28]What? What a power move. Amazing. Well, I really admired everyone I worked with there. And I was
[9:35]probably really foolish to leave, but I did. And not long after I worked very briefly at a travel
[9:42]magazine was very cool. A lot of fun departures. And then I moved to Israel. I thought I was doing
[9:50]a master's in Jewish studies. I mean, I was doing a master's. I thought that's why I went.
[9:55]But I think really deeper down. I wanted to get lost. You know, I, I wanted to
[10:00]Just to get lost, I didn't know any Hebrew aside from like
[10:05]I grew up in a very secular home.
[10:07]My, you know, generally speaking sort of reform,
[10:11]but my mother wasn't born Jewish and didn't convert.
[10:14]We were just sort of raised in this like secular nebulous zone,
[10:19]I guess.
[10:20]So I didn't have strong feelings one way or the other
[10:24]on Israel.
[10:25]I didn't speak any Hebrew except I knew the Braha for the Hanukkah
[10:30]candles.
[10:31]Good to know.
[10:32]You're going to know any of them.
[10:33]That's a good one.
[10:34]That's a good one.
[10:35]And yeah, I think I wanted to get to go to a place where I had to
[10:41]articulate to everything anew to myself.
[10:44]I had to learn new languages and I spent years studying Hebrew
[10:47]and Arabic and I, you know, where there's all these boundaries,
[10:50]all these divisions and I had to sort of articulate them to myself
[10:54]and learn how to hear them and see them.
[10:56]And at that time I began writing essays for, for a couple
[10:59]of different outlets.
[11:01]The ones I'm most proud of for sure were published in the Paris
[11:05]Reviews website, The Daily.
[11:06]But in a way, I think I was sort of starting the novel at that
[11:10]point in the sense of I was coming to know and to explain to
[11:16]myself the landscape I was in.
[11:18]A lot of times I think when you're drafting a story or a novel,
[11:22]the very, very first draft is you telling the story to yourself.
[11:26]Later drafts become ways in which you are telling the story to an
[11:30]audience who are making it, you know,
[11:31]legible to an audience.
[11:32]But I think the first draft is a story you tell yourself.
[11:36]I think in the first drafts it was a story I was telling myself
[11:39]about a place that had, you know, at least two different names for
[11:42]everything, at least, you know, maybe one, you know,
[11:46]one in Hebrew, one in Arabic, one the UN uses, that's three, you know,
[11:49]at least different.
[11:50]And eventually I think I lost interest in myself as the
[11:57]center of these stories.
[11:58]Or I felt that I was so limited in the kinds of stories I could tell
[12:03]if I was the narrator and if my if my body was at the center.
[12:08]And so I did what I love most, you know, which is I got lost
[12:11]in other characters, in other lives.
[12:14]And so and that was sort of the story of the novel.
[12:18]And I think why it took, you know, a good, I would say,
[12:22]gosh, I don't know, I should have these numbers handy.
[12:25]Let's say six years to write maybe.
[12:27]And really a process of sort of learning to hear,
[12:31]learning to see, and then learning to to disappear into other lives,
[12:35]and to let these these these characters.
[12:37]And as you know, there are quite a few of them as novel.
[12:41]But let them tell the story of their lives in this place.
[12:45]Wow, that's amazing.
[12:47]So wait, tell me then, after you spent all that time,
[12:50]how you ended up selling the book, like the publication.
[12:53]So I'm sure like many people think that they are like, that they have the
[12:58]best agent.
[13:02]Okay, who's your agent then?
[13:05]Her name's Joy Harris and she's wonderful.
[13:08]And and she read this novel.
[13:12]I made a great decision in about 2016.
[13:15]I was living in Israel, I was living in Tel Aviv.
[13:18]And I thought if I had some, I had begun what I thought maybe could be a novel,
[13:22]but I didn't even really know what shape it would have.
[13:26]I almost just had some, some scenes that felt important to me.
[13:30]Some of them based on things people had told me or incidents,
[13:33]friends, siblings had told me about that I fictionalized.
[13:37]By fictionalized, I mean, maybe they had a narrow miss.
[13:41]What could have happened didn't happen.
[13:43]And so I fictionalized it by pushing it farther by, okay, well,
[13:46]what if the worst thing did happen?
[13:48]What would the consequences have been that kind of thing?
[13:51]But it was, it was all really just very early drafting.
[13:54]And I came to understand if I really wanted to do this,
[13:57]the best thing I could do for myself would be go to an MFA where I had full funding,
[14:01]where I could write for two or if I was really lucky and got into a three year MFA
[14:06]for three years with full funding, maybe get a little teaching experience.
[14:10]And that this would be the way that I would have concentrated time to work on the novel
[14:15]as opposed to doing it in the morning, you know, between 5 a.m. and 7 30 before I went to work,
[14:21]which I would definitely still have been writing it.
[14:23]Which, I mean, it's fine. That's, that's a very good way to write a book.
[14:26]I just, I wanted more, more time to devote to it.
[14:30]I wanted to get lost at, again, I suppose my, in the work.
[14:34]And so I applied to and got into the MFA at UC Irvine,
[14:39]just an orange county just south of where I am now.
[14:42]And it was, for me, there's a lot of debate in the right early world.
[14:47]You go to an MFA or not.
[14:49]What does that mean for how it shapes your writing?
[14:52]Who gets in?
[14:53]What are the problematics of these institutions?
[14:56]So all very worthwhile discussions.
[14:59]For me personally, it was the best thing I could have done for my work.
[15:03]I just, mostly because I had all of this beautiful time,
[15:07]you know, the ultimate commodity, I think, for a writer.
[15:11]But one of my teachers there, Michelle Letziole,
[15:14]she had told her agent about my work,
[15:18]which was very lucky for me because then when I eventually did send Joy,
[15:23]my novel, she was at least expecting to see it.
[15:26]I didn't have to, you know, wait a few weeks or even months till it,
[15:29]she got to it in her stack.
[15:31]So that was very, that was, that was nice.
[15:34]It was nice to sort of arrive at her, at her door, as it were, with a letter of introduction.
[15:41]But, you know, she became my agent because she loved the book.
[15:45]And she was one of the first people I'd spoken to who read it from start to end.
[15:50]She was actually the first person outside of my MFA program.
[15:54]And it was just amazing to be read exactly how I hoped I'd be read.
[15:58]And for her to hear, to someone who was reading the book with her heart,
[16:01]I could feel it.
[16:02]And I didn't think about it long.
[16:05]And she, you know, she's a pro.
[16:08]So she knew exactly where she was much more ambitious for the book than I was.
[16:12]I didn't think we would go to a big press.
[16:15]I mean, I don't know that just seemed outsized.
[16:18]I didn't have, that was just, I guess I was limited by my own imagination or ambition.
[16:24]But she had her own idea about, you know, we were going to go to Harper.
[16:28]And so I really, yes, I think.
[16:32]But when people ask me now, maybe like friends who are going through the process for themselves,
[16:36]of looking for an agent, I always say like, you want someone who is just in love with your book.
[16:43]Like, that's the most important thing.
[16:45]More important than maybe I know some, there's a lot of other considerations.
[16:50]And they're all important too.
[16:52]But the access that person has or maybe I don't know how long they plan to be working or
[16:56]or how long they have been working.
[16:58]And of course, like these are all considerations.
[17:00]But more than anything, you want someone who is just, who is in love with your book
[17:05]and who can share that with, with anyone that they bring that work to.
[17:09]So for anyone who's, who's thinking about agents or shopping, I would say,
[17:13]that's what makes your agent the best agent, you know, loving your work very much.
[17:17]Yeah, that's true.
[17:18]Yeah, you have to have some sort of meeting of the souls over a book.
[17:22]Oh, what a beautiful way to put it.
[17:24]Yeah, totally.
[17:26]Yes, yes, I love that.
[17:28]And we'll use it and quote you.
[17:30]Yes.
[17:31]Well, thank you.
[17:31]Great.
[17:32]Yeah, love that.
[17:33]I love that.
[17:35]That's awesome.
[17:35]So you are a citizen of Israel and the US and Canada,
[17:42]everywhere, you speak languages, you're like all over the planet.
[17:46]Tell me about your identity, like yourself, right?
[17:49]You're, you're like a world traveler.
[17:51]So how do you like, where do you find yourself at home the most?
[17:57]I was talking to a friend about this recently or what feels like recently,
[18:02]but time has been for all of us so slippery.
[18:05]So a few years ago, I was talking to a friend about this.
[18:08]And I was, I was asking, I was saying like, it's so hard to know where I sort of belong
[18:13]in a sense because I was born in New York City.
[18:17]I moved to Canada and first to New Jersey and then to Canada, all with my family.
[18:24]And then I went to college in the States and then I moved to Israel.
[18:30]And then I briefly left Israel.
[18:32]I thought I would go to Divinity School, not to become a member of the clergy,
[18:36]but to be an academic in religion.
[18:38]But it was so funny.
[18:39]I kept dropping out of my translation classes.
[18:42]This was at Chicago to take fiction classes with the novelist Voutran.
[18:47]So I was like, I think I need to rethink what I'm doing.
[18:50]But, but that was an important few months for me when I was living in Chicago.
[18:55]It was also when I formally converted to Judaism, even though I was raised in a, in a Jewish
[19:00]home to, I think I wanted to feel like I was fully embracing my, not just my Jewish identity,
[19:09]but I think my place in a Jewish community and of course, being formally a Jew is very important
[19:15]for things like being counted in a minion and which just, you know, it depends, of course,
[19:21]on your denomination, whether a woman would be counted, but I'm a conservative Jew,
[19:26]so that's all kosher anyway.
[19:29]So, so I think, but my converting rabbi, a wonderful man named Rabbi David Minkis,
[19:35]a really generous, thoughtful person who never sort of dangled his own power over me in this
[19:42]situation, which, in which you are vulnerable as someone converting and he, he was very,
[19:48]he said a couple wonderful things to me.
[19:50]One was, oh, you were always a Jew.
[19:51]I'm just making it official, which I'm not that was sweet.
[19:55]And another was, he's like, he said, it was very interesting.
[19:58]He said, you know, you'll always feel like,
[20:00]He's like, you'll always feel like an outsider
[20:02]because we all do, which I also thought was interesting
[20:05]that even when you make sort of official steps
[20:08]to be embraced by your community
[20:10]that everyone always everywhere feels
[20:13]a little like an outsider.
[20:14]And I think so do I at times,
[20:16]I've wondered if I feel most at home
[20:19]when I have one foot in and one foot out of something
[20:21]where I'm a little on the periphery,
[20:24]a little standing back watching the moment
[20:26]happen rather than inside the moment, for example.
[20:29]So I've wondered if that's where I feel at home.
[20:32]The friend I was speaking to about this,
[20:34]I was saying it was kind of funny,
[20:36]I was speaking specifically about my status
[20:39]as a Jewish person in Israel
[20:41]where according to, for example,
[20:43]the state of Israel, I am Jewish
[20:45]and I was granted Israeli citizenship
[20:48]through the law of return,
[20:49]which dictates who is eligible
[20:51]for Israeli citizenship based on Jewishness.
[20:55]And but not Jewish according to the rabbinical authority
[21:01]of the state, which is Orthodox.
[21:03]And so I'm sort of like in inside and outside there,
[21:08]which is an odd place to be as a person,
[21:10]but a perfect place to be as a writer,
[21:12]I have to admit, you know?
[21:13]So being being inside,
[21:16]having had one's full access
[21:18]and yet being a little excluded
[21:19]is sort of the ideal, I would say,
[21:22]positioned to write a novel from.
[21:24]But I was speaking to this friend of mine,
[21:26]his name's Benjamin Bayland,
[21:28]he wrote a superb book on the fate of Kafka's letters
[21:31]after, and papers after Kafka died.
[21:34]And he said, well, maybe you're at home in the text,
[21:36]and I don't know if it's true,
[21:37]but I love the way it sounded.
[21:39]That's long good, that sounds great.
[21:41]So yeah, so I think my identity
[21:43]is in some ways a little fractured, perhaps.
[21:45]And yet I think because I grew up very much
[21:49]between things, between countries, religions,
[21:53]at times, even languages, a little,
[21:55]I feel very purposeful in the choices I've made
[21:59]about the parts of my identity I've chosen to embrace
[22:03]and the communities I've chosen to make myself part of.
[22:06]None of it feels particularly incidental.
[22:09]It all feels like I sort of made choices
[22:12]about where I wish to belong.
[22:13]Oh, it's interesting.
[22:15]I grew up Jewish, I am Jewish,
[22:17]and when I was getting remarried,
[22:20]my husband converted to Judaism,
[22:22]because I have my kids are Jewish and blah,
[22:25]and so I am familiar with that whole process
[22:27]and what that's like and what you have to learn
[22:29]and go through in the commitment of it.
[22:31]But yeah, but we have not gone to Israel.
[22:33]I have actually never been to Israel in my entire life,
[22:36]which is really embarrassing to say.
[22:37]This is like on my wishes.
[22:38]Wow.
[22:39]It's hard, it's sometimes it's,
[22:42]there's so much going on and there's so many strong feelings
[22:45]that people have, I completely understand
[22:47]that almost like the instinct to put it off a little,
[22:51]like a difficult conversation,
[22:53]you keep kind of putting on it.
[22:54]I'm just going to blame my parents.
[22:55]They should have taken me.
[22:57]They should have.
[22:58]We went to Italy instead, I guess.
[22:59]I don't know.
[23:00]Wrong side of the military.
[23:02]Yeah.
[23:03]Although it was a great trip.
[23:04]I'm sure I'm sure.
[23:06]I'm sure.
[23:07]Well, when you go in and you want recommendations,
[23:10]please don't hesitate to ask.
[23:12]Thank you.
[23:12]Yes, you'll be my go-to on that.
[23:14]So what is coming, are you at work on another project?
[23:19]Or are you just like, oh my gosh, I finally finished this?
[23:21]And I'm putting it off to the side
[23:23]and taking a deep breath for a while?
[23:25]No, I need to be at work always.
[23:29]I, I, I, maybe that's where I'm at home.
[23:32]You know, I guess working, writing.
[23:35]I love that question.
[23:36]I think I'll think about that for the rest of the day.
[23:38]Where am I at home?
[23:39]But no, so I'm working on something new.
[23:42]And it's interesting.
[23:44]I'm writing in first person,
[23:46]which I haven't done in years and years now.
[23:48]It's like a very unused muscle.
[23:50]In fact, sometimes I'm finding I have to write in third person
[23:54]because that's just that, as the novel,
[23:56]just I should say to anyone, of course, who hasn't read it,
[23:59]yet that the novel is written in like a very close, close third
[24:02]where I'm switching to all these points of view
[24:05]and writing in first person, all these sentences with I.
[24:09]It's so, I haven't done it in a while.
[24:12]Did I even ask you to describe what the book was about
[24:15]to listen to us?
[24:15]Oh, we pleasure.
[24:16]Yeah, what a fun challenge.
[24:19]Start with that.
[24:19]But maybe I missed that question.
[24:21]No, we're listening.
[24:23]Tell me what I'm actually about.
[24:25]Now that we've talked about your entire life and everything
[24:27]else.
[24:29]Well, I've enjoyed the attention.
[24:31]Oh, good.
[24:32]I've had a pleasant time myself.
[24:35]So yes, OK, so the book is, which I'm holding again,
[24:38]because I'm just so far.
[24:39]I'm so excited to finally have it.
[24:41]It is set in present day, the present day, West Bank
[24:46]and Jerusalem.
[24:47]And so in a place where Israel and Palestine
[24:50]are always kind of in contact and in these places.
[24:56]And it is a narrative that is, I suppose,
[25:02]not unlike myself, quite fractured in that it follows.
[25:06]I think my last count was about 29 characters
[25:10]that were sort of following in the aftermath
[25:14]of two tragedies, two, I suppose, ethnically motivated
[25:19]murders, one of a 14-year-old Jewish girl,
[25:23]Yael, who lives on an Israeli settlement.
[25:27]And in retaliation, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy
[25:32]who has no relation to Yael's murder,
[25:36]who is brutally beaten in a mall parking lot.
[25:40]And these two horrible events reverberate an echo
[25:46]in the lives of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis
[25:51]and Americans in Israel and a German journalist
[25:55]trying to make her name on some newsworthy tragedy.
[26:00]And I think trying to show the echoes and the iterations
[26:06]of these events in the lives of different communities
[26:11]and families, I think especially concerned with family life.
[26:17]I think that's, and the way that the political enters
[26:21]family life and shapes it.
[26:24]And within marriages and between parents and children
[26:28]and lovers.
[26:30]And I think that's my, I mean, every family,
[26:35]I think, is its own little country in a way.
[26:37]So I love that.
[26:38]Well, that's a quote I will use.
[26:40]And I'm good.
[26:40]Good.
[26:41]So you can trade.
[26:42]We can trade.
[26:42]That's great.
[26:43]Perfect.
[26:44]You have just, as a last question, any advice
[26:47]for aspiring authors.
[26:48]And I know that you've already given a lot,
[26:50]particularly in regard to finding agents and not giving up
[26:54]and all this other stuff, but just what's your advice?
[26:57]Yes.
[26:58]Oh, yes.
[26:59]I mean, a few things.
[27:00]One is slow down in your telling.
[27:04]I think in actually writing so often,
[27:06]we have a place we want the narrative to get to.
[27:09]I do this as well.
[27:10]I have, I don't know how I'm going to get there,
[27:11]but I know I want these two people to have an encounter,
[27:15]you know, in this bus or at this checkpoint.
[27:19]And I know that's where I want it to go.
[27:21]And I can catch myself rushing in the writing to get there.
[27:25]But life happens in the moments on the way, of course,
[27:30]you know, in the sensual sensory details
[27:35]and letting yourself go, word by word, sentence by sentence
[27:40]to get where you're going and let the story surprise you
[27:43]and let yourself find some pleasure in that.
[27:46]You know, don't, it's not always, it's not always a rush.
[27:49]I would say that would be a device also to myself
[27:54]as I work on something new.
[27:56]It's a great, it's such an amazing,
[27:58]pleasure and honor to hold your own book.
[28:01]But take your time getting there.
[28:03]It'll be worth it.
[28:04]Lovely.
[28:05]Awesome.
[28:06]Oh, it's so nice chatting with you today.
[28:08]It's such a pleasure.
[28:09]It's such a pleasure.
[28:10]I don't know.
[28:11]Like, we were just off on some retreat or something.
[28:14]Like, take me out of my, you know, the sirens and everything here
[28:18]in the city.
[28:19]You know, I feel like you have like the sense of zen or calm
[28:22]to you in the way you speak.
[28:23]So feel much more relaxed now.
[28:25]Oh, thank you.
[28:26]Well, I can say for my part, I've loved this feeling of being sort of
[28:31]ensconced in your beautiful wooden library.
[28:35]There's such like a warmth coming from you and from this room.
[28:39]So, so thank you.
[28:40]I really enjoyed my visit.
[28:42]Oh, if you were in town, I wouldn't have had you over here.
[28:44]I used to do all these in person.
[28:46]Oh, I would love that.
[28:47]Well, when, you know, when that's possible again, I'll,
[28:50]I'll, I'll come by and I'll bring a copy of the book.
[28:53]Perfect.
[28:54]I will have one already, but I will take another one.
[28:57]Okay.
[28:58]Okay.
[28:59]All right.
[29:00]We'll have a great day.
[29:01]Thank you so much.
[29:02]Pleasure to meet you.
[29:03]Bye.
[29:04]Today's podcast has been sponsored by Under the Influence,
[29:07]a new podcast by author Joe Piazza.
[29:10]And just a reminder again, please pre-order a copy of my book.
[29:14]Moms don't have time to a quarantine anthology and go to my website
[29:19]under the anthology tab for the fundraiser.
[29:22]And I hope you'll buy a ticket and join me for, and I should have mentioned,
[29:27]um, I'll proceed to go to COVID-19 research.
[29:30]So please join me for the fundraiser.
[29:33]Thanks so much.
[29:34]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:37]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:42]Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club
[29:46]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[29:49]Thank you so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[29:53]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.