Kristin Van Ogtrop, DID I SAY THAT OUT LOUD
[0:01]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[1:51]Kristen Von Ogtropp is the author of Did I Say That Out Loud, Midlife Indignities, and How to Survive Them.
[1:58]This, by the way, is one of my favorite books lately.
[2:01]Kristen is the author, also, of Just Let Me Lie Down,
[2:05]necessary terms for the half insane working mom.
[2:08]The former longtime editor-in-chief of Real Simple, and the amateur columnist for time,
[2:13]she is now a literary agent at Inkwell Management.
[2:16]Her writing has appeared in countless publications, and the New York Times bestselling collection, The Bitch in the House.
[2:21]She is a wife and mother of three, but sometimes loves her dogs more than anybody else.
[2:26]Welcome, Kristen. Thank you so much for coming on mom.
[2:29]Don't have time to read books.
[2:30]Oh, it is my immense pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
[2:33]As I've just been telling you, I keep recommending your book already, even though it hasn't come out yet,
[2:38]because I read it while I was in bed with COVID.
[2:41]And I tried so hard to read books and keep my interest,
[2:44]but I was having a really hard time focusing.
[2:46]And your book was perfect, because the essays were bite-sized and so funny that I was literally like laying there in bed.
[2:54]Anyway, I really appreciated the humor and the wit and just the way you packaged up all these essays and tied them up at the end.
[3:04]And it was just great.
[3:06]Well, thank you. You know, there are writers who really love writing and then there are writers who really love publishing.
[3:13]And I'm a writer who really loves writing like I just, you know, we have something in my family called a self chuckle, which I'm accused of all the time, which is basically like when you do something to make yourself laugh.
[3:25]And so I think writing for me is the best part sometimes is when there's like a little self chuckle that my family can make fun of me later for, but I don't know.
[3:35]It was a lot of fun to write that sad sometimes because there's some sad things in the book too, but, but, but fun a lot of fun.
[3:42]I love that the self chuckle because I literally just said to somebody yesterday at this desk. I was like, I think I just do all this stuff to make myself laugh.
[3:51]Well, you know, if you can't write like what is life for like if you can't make yourself laugh and if you can't laugh at yourself, like I mean, I mentioned this a little bit in the book.
[4:00]My dad is a very funny person who laughs a lot like, you know, I listen to your podcast to be an I hear you have so much laughter in your voice, you know, and my dad is the same like he laughs a lot.
[4:09]And he laughs the hardest at himself when he does something really stupid and, and it's just such a nice quality in a person, you know, to be able to laugh at yourself when you're an idiot with this a lot of time.
[4:21]Your dad is like my favorite person. I want to name him. He sounds so funny the way he handled when you swallowed the fork and he was like, can I could I just leave a fork on your pillow and you're like, no dad, you cannot do that.
[4:33]That would not be funny. And then he's like at the parking garage or he's like, yeah, this is my daughter. She swallowed a fork.
[4:40]He just like he and well, I don't know like I could go on this forever and I'm telling I'm proving the point as I'm saying this to you, but like, my dad can talk to anybody and we'll talk to anybody about anything and won't stop.
[4:55]And unfortunately, I've inherited that characteristic, which while there's my children to no end. So he sends so much like my stepfather Howard who is the same way like you'll turn your back and next thing you know, he knows everything about like the caties mother and you know, you know, like everybody, he just knows he finds out things about everybody and he's like, everybody loves Howard.
[5:16]Yeah, he's like one of those guys. Yeah. Well, we had a few, but see, I try to tell my children who, you know, your mom before like I write about like kids fair around in the book and like when you went and their boys.
[5:29]So they don't, they have kind of a reluctance to talk to people sometimes right and not to sex stereotype, but I'm going to do it.
[5:38]I'm always trying to tell them like when you talk to people you learn things right like you talk to strangers and you learn things, but we had this, we had this thing a few summers ago we did a house swap with the cousin of mine who lives in Holland.
[5:50]She came and lived in our house in New York and we lived in her house and outside of Amsterdam and by like day four my oldest son said mom, if you tell one more person that we're doing a house swap with your cousin.
[6:01]I'm going back to New York because like ever like the cheese shop in the wine shop like just well, anyway, it's not a total.
[6:09]It can be a great city, but it can be a really awful trade too and I own both.
[6:17]Well, I like that trait and my future my well, this is I didn't even know how to say it's my father in laws fiance is also from Holland and they were they stayed there for the entire quarantine and I've been hearing nothing but Holland story.
[6:31]So the fact that you were there I feel like.
[6:34]Yeah, this is like all these different parts of my family okay so tell me the part I really loved in particular I mean I loved a lot of the different parts and I loved this the opening story was just like one of the funniest things ever but.
[6:47]The parting scene when you're leaving the magazine and how you talk about sort of the rise and fall of the magazine industry.
[6:53]And as someone who loves magazine still and like I interned a vanity fair back in like at a 1990 something because I'm really old and just someone who's like watch this whole thing happens in dismay.
[7:05]The way you wrote about it was so poignant from your perch sort of at the top of the whole thing so I was hoping you could just talk a little more about that and even like.
[7:14]wherever you're hugging everyone and crying and like hoping your boss falls off the stage like that whole thing just maybe talk a little bit about how you feel about what's happened with with magazines in particular.
[7:29]So I'll start by saying we still read magazines in this house right although it's interesting to look at I mean your kids are younger than my my oldest is 25.
[7:38]And I've watched him mature as a reader and I look at him and I think you're the reason the magazine industry is you know it is on the decline.
[7:49]as people his age I mean he reads like novels on this phone like it's bananas to me anyway so so I do still read magazines and as you and I were talking about a couple minutes ago like just that tactile experience of you know and we used to say of holding something in your hand and.
[8:07]There's just something in the connection between your brain in your hand it's very satisfying and we used to say a real simple or sorry no well two things real simple has this matte paper it's printed on matte paper and.
[8:20]When you would go to focus groups the readers would basically like pet the page it was like they love the paper because it felt it wasn't shiny it didn't feel like it was yelling at them you know so it's so reinforced the mission of what that magazine does which is to make.
[8:34]Women feel calm women and some men feel calm and but Dick Parsons who was the CEO of time Warner when I first got to time make said as long the magazine industry will will survive as long as the three bees remain.
[8:50]Bed bath and beach which was it was something I think we quoted a lot and he said a lot although now we've all found clever ways to like you know take digital devices to all three of those places.
[9:02]So anyway, it was just you know it was the greatest it was such a great job.
[9:08]I mean I worked as I talk about in that essay in the book you know I talk about how I landed in magazines after like being an incredibly clueless like 20 something you know just.
[9:21]I was like I just kept throwing stuff at the wall to see what was going to stick and and and I ended up the vote because I met somebody at a wedding I don't I mean I don't write about this in the book but like the reason I ended up having an interview though was so rant totally random.
[9:34]And but when I got there not knowing anything about fashion or caring about fashion I was like oh my god like these are my people not like fashion people so much but like.
[9:44]it like to be a magazine editor certainly at that time you're like a professional deal of time which is amazing right so like if you're a person who's got kind of a short attention span which I think I do sometimes.
[9:57]But and it's interested in a ton of stuff it's.
[10:00]The great, I mean journalism is a great career for that,
[10:03]but the magazines,
[10:04]and if you combine that with like a strong visual sense,
[10:09]anyway, this is kind of a rambling answer, so I worked
[10:12]in a bunch of different places,
[10:13]and then I ended up at real simple,
[10:14]and the thing for me that was so great about that job
[10:17]was it took kind of who I was as a person
[10:22]being raised by a home economics major's mom
[10:26]who taught me how to bake a cake, right?
[10:28]And like, trim a hamster's toenails,
[10:30]or guinea pigs toenails,
[10:32]and then, but someone who was like relatively ambitious
[10:36]and loved going to an office,
[10:38]and then professional dilla time,
[10:39]and combined all those things,
[10:42]and it was just like, it was like that magic thing
[10:44]where the thing you're doing and your skill set
[10:48]are like so perfectly aligned, you know?
[10:50]And I feel so blessed to have had that job,
[10:54]and the thing about when I left was just, you know,
[10:59]I knew, I mean, maybe the added blessing of the job
[11:03]was when I was in the job, I knew how blessed I was,
[11:06]like I knew how amazing a job it was for me.
[11:09]And I mean, there were frustrations,
[11:11]sure as there are in every job, but like I really,
[11:13]like I had a ball, and so,
[11:16]but the reason that essay is, well, I don't know.
[11:20]I think it is the only kind of angry essay in the book,
[11:24]because by the end, I was just like super pissed off.
[11:27]You know, like I looked at my company,
[11:30]which was run by men,
[11:32]even though the products we were creating
[11:34]were mostly consumed by women,
[11:37]and looked at the decisions they made based,
[11:41]I thought often on their kind of personal preferences
[11:44]and biases in terms of where they were investing money,
[11:47]you know, to grow different brands.
[11:50]And I felt like my brand, because we published recipes
[11:55]and, you know, we're about did so much
[11:58]that was in the domestic sphere,
[12:00]was regarded as kind of less than or something.
[12:04]But we made, you know, I don't know,
[12:07]are we allowed to curse on your podcast?
[12:09]Curse away.
[12:10]We made a shitload of money for that company,
[12:12]and I thought, okay, you know, like give us some love.
[12:15]And anyway, so it was, I'll just say one last thing,
[12:19]but like for a long time, in my time,
[12:21]we had a female CEO,
[12:24]and the way real simple was regarded in her years
[12:26]and more was her name, was really different
[12:29]than when we had a male CEO.
[12:31]And that just felt really, really frustrating.
[12:35]But, you know, by the time she left
[12:38]and the men took over more fully,
[12:41]I also had been in the job for a long time,
[12:44]and just felt like I wasn't as good at it anymore.
[12:49]Like the challenges that arose toward the end
[12:53]of my time at real simple,
[12:54]were not ones that I either had the energy
[12:56]or the skills to face and overcome.
[12:59]So it was time for me to leave both for me personally
[13:02]and for the sake of the magazine.
[13:04]And, you know, now there's a fabulous editor,
[13:06]Liz Vacarellio, or I'm probably mispronouncing her last name,
[13:09]but she's a lovely woman, and she does a great job.
[13:11]And she's just the right person to be running the magazine.
[13:14]Well, it sounded like you were up against a lot.
[13:17]The job cuts you were forced to do,
[13:18]and the painful goodbyes.
[13:20]And it was just so nice to see that real connection at work,
[13:24]because people don't often talk about the real relationships
[13:28]that you have with the people you work with.
[13:30]And how it is, like, you know,
[13:32]people are like, oh, it's my work family.
[13:33]But, you know, your essay really spoke to the heart of it.
[13:37]And you could tell that it was a special place to work.
[13:40]And you could tell the pain in having to let people go.
[13:42]And I don't know, it was just, yeah, it sucks.
[13:45]There's a real human cost to all of this.
[13:48]It's a human cost on relationships,
[13:50]and just how you feel about yourself and all of it.
[13:53]It's not money, you know, I don't know.
[13:55]It was just a nice way to highlight that element of it.
[13:58]Well, I loved, I loved the people that I worked with there.
[14:01]No, you could tell.
[14:02]Anyway, to switch gears a little bit,
[14:04]I just wanted to read this quote from you,
[14:05]if you don't mind, because I loved this paragraph
[14:07]that you wrote about aging and life.
[14:09]And like, I feel like this sums up so much
[14:12]that was in your book, but you said,
[14:13]he eats new that things fall apart
[14:15]and the center cannot hold.
[14:17]My center cannot hold either, which is why I've got back fat
[14:20]and a muffin top of the waistband of my pants,
[14:22]which, looking at you, I have fine heartably,
[14:24]but anyway, fine, fine, that's true.
[14:28]Yeah, thank God for Zoom.
[14:29]But I try to laugh because back fat and a muffin top
[14:32]and chipped paint and imaginary dinner guests
[14:34]are insignificant frustrations, minor indignities
[14:37]in the grand scheme, middle ages full of them.
[14:39]And there are so many things that are much, much worse.
[14:41]None of us knows how life will turn out
[14:43]and even if we forget everything else.
[14:45]Who is he, it's again?
[14:46]We must not forget that.
[14:47]So let's just feel happy to be here,
[14:49]to cry sometimes when the occasion calls for it,
[14:51]but to laugh as often as we can, that is enough
[14:53]because consider the alternative.
[14:56]So nice, I love that.
[14:58]Thank you, well, so good.
[14:59]Thank you, and thank you for reading that.
[15:01]I think it captures kind of the,
[15:03]what I hope is the spirit of the book,
[15:04]which is, by the time you reach your 40s and 50s and 60s,
[15:10]you, you know, like mortality is no long.
[15:14]If you've led a relatively healthy and lucky life,
[15:17]which many people haven't and, you know,
[15:19]not what I have been lucky enough to,
[15:22]you know, eventually mortality becomes, you know,
[15:26]it used to be an idea and now it's a presence, right?
[15:29]And so you have to get up every day and say like,
[15:32]man, I'm just really, there was a moment
[15:35]after I had my third child when I was,
[15:38]I had turned 43 and I was in my suburban house
[15:42]and the baby was like two weeks old
[15:43]and my parents were visiting and our basement flooded.
[15:48]And it just like, you know,
[15:50]I was like nursing and exhausted and whatever,
[15:53]like not exactly a spring chicken as a new home.
[15:55]And I was just so like, whatever, you know,
[15:58]you've been through this.
[16:00]And then it was my birthday,
[16:02]a few weeks after the baby was born.
[16:03]I was turning 43 and the basement, like,
[16:06]the floodwaters had receded and like whoever came
[16:10]to fix it helped and whatever.
[16:11]And I got up and I said,
[16:13]today's gonna be a good day.
[16:14]And my parents like in unison said,
[16:17]every day is a good day.
[16:19]And I'll never forget that because they didn't like
[16:22]rehearse it, but they both just.
[16:24]And that's their mindset.
[16:25]And I think, you know,
[16:27]that's what I've tried to capture in this book
[16:29]with whether you're dealing with like your muffin top
[16:33]over the waistband of your pants
[16:36]or friends who die too young
[16:39]or careers that like blow up or slowly shrivel or whatever.
[16:44]You know, you have to remember like,
[16:46]you're just lucky to be here.
[16:47]And you got to make the most of it.
[16:49]And as we were talking about before,
[16:51]like laugh when you can and hopefully laugh at yourself
[16:54]the hardest when you swallow a fork among other things,
[16:59]you know, so.
[17:00]Wow.
[17:01]Well, I love how you kind of track the passage of time
[17:04]with these little moments like the chipping of,
[17:07]you know, your son banging into the thing
[17:09]that this scooter or skateboard as my kids
[17:11]are literally scootering those years
[17:13]all morning and like messing up my house
[17:15]as like in real time as I'm like reading this book.
[17:18]But it's true.
[17:19]And then you have that moment later in the book
[17:20]where you're sitting there and it's like so quiet in the house.
[17:23]And you're like, and now I would, I miss that.
[17:28]And I feel like it's just a relatable moment.
[17:30]I mean, I'm divorced and remarried.
[17:33]So I have like every other weekend,
[17:34]I have this quiet like where I'm like,
[17:36]oh, I miss that.
[17:37]So I feel like I get this like preview of empty nest or hood
[17:40]like every other week.
[17:42]So I have a appreciation when they're here
[17:44]or I try to if it can last 10 days.
[17:46]But anyway, but there is that like the fleetingness
[17:49]of the whole chaos.
[17:51]And I don't know that's seen with you sitting there
[17:54]like typing and you know you're like typing the essay
[17:56]you're writing is just so poignant.
[17:59]Well, and meeting, I was sitting on my front porch.
[18:03]Nobody was home, which is so rare.
[18:05]I mean, particularly now on COVID, like you know,
[18:08]my house is packed.
[18:09]Like my adult sons are both living in home
[18:11]and my youngest son who's almost 14, he's here.
[18:14]And obviously my husband's here and the dogs.
[18:16]And like I, there's that tension that you feel proud.
[18:20]I'm sure with your kids for 10 days,
[18:22]like you you long for the moment
[18:25]when you have a little bit of headspace
[18:28]and you're long to be alone.
[18:30]And then when you're alone, you're like, oh, oh,
[18:32]I'm lonely, I'm so like there's no.
[18:37]I mean, that's why that moment on the porch
[18:39]in that essay is nice because I know it's gonna end.
[18:41]Like I'm, I'm nearby myself and I'm really happy.
[18:44]But part of the reason I'm happy
[18:46]is because I know that the people are gonna come back.
[18:49]And so I don't know, you know, I don't know
[18:51]what happens to me.
[18:52]I don't know what happens when they're really gone.
[18:55]I think that's part of why I had a third kid at, you know,
[18:58]after a big gap between number two and number three
[19:01]is like, I didn't want that part of my life to be over.
[19:04]And I don't know, was that like,
[19:06]no, I have a six year gap as well.
[19:08]I have like two sets of kids that I get it.
[19:11]I mean, there's something about,
[19:13]I mean, there is a lot of meaning to the whole thing,
[19:15]not to sound trite, but like this is what I've really created
[19:19]in life as these kids.
[19:20]I mean, that's what's gonna sadder
[19:23]now this sounds ridiculous.
[19:24]Well, it's not meticulous.
[19:25]It's not ridiculous.
[19:26]I mean, that's, you know, those kids are what are gonna carry
[19:30]through as you get old.
[19:32]And you hope, right?
[19:33]If you have a, some of them.
[19:38]Well, I know, well, listen, you have a girl, right?
[19:42]Like, I have to give you girls, like I only have boys.
[19:45]And so sometimes I think, oh man, like I'm so screwed.
[19:47]Like they're all just gonna, again, sex stereotype thing.
[19:50]But, but I look at the, I'm one of three girls
[19:53]as I write about a little bit in the book.
[19:54]And, you know, I look at the relationship
[19:56]that I have with my parents and it is so close.
[19:59]And it's.
[20:00]and it's very strong and really dynamic.
[20:04]And I think part of that is because we're girls.
[20:07]Am I allowed to say that out loud?
[20:09]You know, and so I hope like with the three boys,
[20:12]I at least get like one decent daughter-in-law.
[20:14]I think my odds are pretty good.
[20:17]I think so.
[20:17]I think so.
[20:18]My dad is one of three boys.
[20:20]And one of my uncles totally stepped up
[20:23]and took care of my grandparents.
[20:24]Yeah, my uncle Mark just, he did everything.
[20:26]And it's not like anyone appointed him.
[20:28]He just was so devoted and managed everything.
[20:32]And it just, you know, they were always completely
[20:36]loved and supported until the end.
[20:37]So I think somebody just always emerges from the group.
[20:40]And was it clear always that that was gonna be Mark?
[20:44]Not until he was needed.
[20:46]Not until he was needed.
[20:47]Oh, all right.
[20:49]All right.
[20:49]Yeah, I thought it might have been my dad,
[20:51]but no, not so much like that.
[20:53]Well, all right.
[20:55]But I know that I know all the siblings really appreciated
[20:58]that he did step up.
[20:59]So I'm sure one of your sons will become your uncle Mark
[21:02]of the family.
[21:03]I hope you give me help.
[21:05]So tell me just a little about writing this book.
[21:08]When did you write?
[21:09]I know that one essay wrote on your porch,
[21:10]but do you just like write as catch as catch can
[21:13]or do you sit down and write in big locks of time
[21:15]with your process?
[21:16]So when I wrote this book,
[21:18]I did it in a couple of different stages, I guess.
[21:22]Part of it I wrote when I was between leaving real simple,
[21:27]leaving the magazine industry,
[21:29]and then joining equal management
[21:31]where I'm now a literary agent.
[21:33]And so that was, I took a two year break from working.
[21:36]And so I was writing and my friend Jim,
[21:40]who's a novelist, has this phrase that I mentioned
[21:44]in the book actually that he said,
[21:45]I needed to write with no attachment to outcome.
[21:48]Just like sit down.
[21:49]And so like I tried writing a novel,
[21:51]which just wasn't very good.
[21:53]And I was gonna write a book about our dog
[21:56]who ended up drowning,
[21:58]which is one of the essays in the book,
[22:00]and sort of trying to make a parallel between that
[22:02]and the loss of my career and the loss of the dog
[22:06]and whatever, it like didn't work.
[22:08]But I just sat down and wrote with no attachment to outcome.
[22:10]And because it was in that two year period,
[22:13]I would just sort of like,
[22:14]I mostly like would sit at the kitchen counter
[22:16]and it was like after I'd taken my son to school
[22:18]and I had the house to myself and whatever.
[22:21]But then I started working again and I finished the,
[22:25]and so I wrote some of the essays in that two year period
[22:27]and I didn't really have a process.
[22:29]Once I was working again,
[22:32]I needed to really find kind of dedicated moments of time.
[22:35]And so I would get up, you know,
[22:37]at like six in the morning or something.
[22:38]And I would write for like an hour and a half
[22:40]before anybody got up.
[22:41]And then when I was finishing the book,
[22:44]I would go to this chopped back when one could like go,
[22:48]you probably still can go to a chopped, right?
[22:50]I would, there was a chopped on 41st Street between Madison
[22:53]and what's after Madison, Lexington Avenue.
[22:58]I never, Parker, yeah, not Fifth Park.
[23:02]That shows you how long it's been, right?
[23:03]It's so good.
[23:04]Yeah, that's embarrassing.
[23:05]You can't even admit that.
[23:06]I'm gonna have to delete that part.
[23:09]There's a chopped.
[23:10]I would walk down Madison Avenue for my office.
[23:12]I would make a left on 31st Street towards a park avenue
[23:16]and there's a chopped there
[23:17]and I would sit there for like an hour with my laptop
[23:20]and a salad and I wouldn't work.
[23:21]So that was my process.
[23:23]I don't know, it's not super organized
[23:25]and like I have a friend who watched the movie,
[23:27]Little Women, a young friend and she's like,
[23:29]did you have like a special app that you put on?
[23:32]Like like the main character in that movie
[23:34]and I was like, no, no, I have a laptop.
[23:40]Wait, so what is it like now being an agent
[23:42]after hadn't transitioning to that new career?
[23:45]I mean, it's great.
[23:46]I feel super lucky to be able to make such a big transition,
[23:50]you know, at a fairly late stage.
[23:53]And I think a lot of the skills are really compatible.
[23:56]I mean, the mechanisms for delivering writing
[23:59]are obviously different, but the skills are similar.
[24:03]The skills you need to be a good agent
[24:04]are fairly similar, a lot of them.
[24:06]And so, but it's, you know,
[24:09]it's sort of like peeking behind the curtain
[24:13]in the Wizard of Oz or something.
[24:14]Like you kind of like and you don't like what you see
[24:17]when you look behind the curtain.
[24:20]So it's interesting, it's harder than I thought it would be.
[24:25]And, but I think that's good for me, you know?
[24:28]What's the hardest part?
[24:28]They're just so many books.
[24:30]I mean, you know this, right?
[24:31]Like books are your world.
[24:32]Like they're just so many books.
[24:35]And it's hard to, it can be hard to get a publisher
[24:41]to be interested in a book that you feel really has potential.
[24:45]That's probably the hardest part.
[24:46]The hardest part is working with a client
[24:49]who is entrusting you with her, his or her publishing future
[24:54]and not meeting success.
[24:57]You know, when that happens to any kind of agent,
[25:01]it happens to relatively new agents like me
[25:03]and it happens to agents who have been doing it for 35 years.
[25:06]You know, like you just, you don't always succeed.
[25:08]And so that part's kind of hard.
[25:10]But it's fun.
[25:11]I mean, it's interesting and it's fun
[25:12]and you can be a professional dilaton.
[25:14]So that part's really good.
[25:17]You can work on the stuff that interests you.
[25:19]And that's really cool.
[25:21]That is really cool.
[25:22]That's amazing.
[25:23]So what advice would you have to aspiring authors
[25:26]as an agent or as a writer myself?
[25:29]Do both.
[25:30]Okay. So as a writer, I would go back to that advice
[25:35]from my friend, Jim,
[25:36]that you should just write with no attachment to outcome.
[25:39]Just sit down and write.
[25:41]Don't wait for like some news to fly in the kitchen window
[25:44]and land on your shoulder.
[25:44]Like it's never gonna happen.
[25:46]I mean, it might.
[25:46]But I feel like a lot of certainly new writers
[25:50]or young writers think that like some like the clouds
[25:53]are gonna part and something's gonna happen
[25:55]and it's gonna just come to them.
[25:57]And you know, and like,
[25:59]and they don't realize you have to sit in front
[26:01]of that laptop or with that piece of paper
[26:03]or that piece of line notebook paper in front of you
[26:05]and just like start and see what happens.
[26:08]So that's what I would say as a writer.
[26:10]And then as an agent,
[26:12]I think that when I look at writers who are successful
[26:16]or authors who were successful in getting published
[26:19]and I'm talking about just specifically
[26:21]about book publishing, not about magazines or newspapers
[26:24]or I think you need,
[26:26]it's like a three-legged stool.
[26:27]You need talent, you need discipline
[26:30]and you need confidence.
[26:32]And confidence needs to take the form of like polite persistence,
[26:37]like if you're an unpublished author
[26:40]and you're either looking for an agent
[26:41]or you're trying to self-publish
[26:42]or you're looking or you're going directly to a publisher,
[26:45]you really need to practice polite persistence
[26:48]because for agents and even more so for book editors,
[26:51]it's like drinking from a fire hose.
[26:53]They get so many submissions.
[26:55]And then, you know, you need discipline kind of going back
[26:59]to what I said before that you have to just like sit down
[27:02]and do the work, you can't, I don't know, it's a job.
[27:05]And then talent and you know,
[27:08]so when you look at when you look at successful writers
[27:10]and those three things, talent, confidence and discipline,
[27:14]different people have different amounts of each, right?
[27:16]And you have to know sort of where your weaknesses are
[27:18]and then push extra hard on those other two things, I think.
[27:22]That's what I would say.
[27:23]But everybody's different.
[27:24]I was reading in the Times magazine over the weekend
[27:26]that Pro Followed, they should grow
[27:27]because he's got that new novel coming out
[27:29]and he was talking about how like he walks around
[27:31]for two years thinking about his book.
[27:33]And then he spends like another God knows how long
[27:35]like plotting the whole thing.
[27:36]Like I thought, wow, that is like so amazing.
[27:39]But you know, not everybody works that way.
[27:41]And whatever you found makes things sell
[27:44]versus the things that don't sell.
[27:45]Oh gosh.
[27:46]I mean, at the end of the day, it's really talent.
[27:50]I mean, in publishing now,
[27:52]people talk a lot about platform
[27:55]and authors who need a platform
[27:58]and kind of early on in my agenting life
[28:02]so now like a year ago or a little over a year ago,
[28:06]I went out to lunch with Susan Campbell
[28:08]who was this beloved, that random house
[28:11]and unfortunately passed away, you know,
[28:14]probably six months after she and I had lunch.
[28:17]And she, but you know, she'd been around forever
[28:19]and everybody loved her.
[28:20]And she and I are proud of,
[28:21]she was maybe a little bit older than I am.
[28:23]Maybe early sixties or something.
[28:25]I actually can't remember.
[28:26]But I was saying to her, what did book publishers do
[28:29]before like platform was a thing?
[28:33]And she said, well, we just,
[28:34]we just acquired things like on gut instinct.
[28:38]And I was like, can we go back to that?
[28:42]Can we do that again?
[28:43]So, you know, in the absence of,
[28:46]if you're an aspiring writer
[28:47]and you're not a person with like a gazillion
[28:49]Twitter followers or Instagram followers
[28:52]or, you know, some very successful presence
[28:56]outside of your writing life,
[28:59]you just need to be an incredibly great writer, you know?
[29:03]Or have, or if you're doing an illustrated book,
[29:06]have something that's just so unique
[29:09]that people just can't look away.
[29:12]I don't know, Sydney, that's not really a very good answer.
[29:15]It was a good answer.
[29:16]I think that's great.
[29:17]I think it's neat to have the insight
[29:18]from an agent's perspective.
[29:20]I don't actually get a lot of agents on the show, really
[29:23]because most authors, I mean, actually,
[29:26]I had Bill Clay on the show,
[29:27]but I don't know, it's just,
[29:29]it's really an interesting perspective.
[29:31]And I'm sorry, I just started this fellowship
[29:33]for, I'm doing for women memoirists a year, two to four,
[29:38]but this year I picked four.
[29:39]So I'm gonna like help them with the whole process
[29:41]of writing their great memoirs and everything.
[29:43]So I'm interested in sort of that process
[29:46]on their behalf as well,
[29:48]because I'm gonna like have them go through the whole thing.
[29:50]And it's just interesting to hear.
[29:51]Like I've already picked them based on talent, right?
[29:54]And the stories that I think they have to tell.
[29:56]And once you have a great story to tell,
[29:58]like shaping it, I think.
[30:00]is just part of the picture.
[30:01]I think having the story is, you know,
[30:05]you can't fake a story.
[30:06]Anyway, a week, but I say anything else is it.
[30:09]I can I say two quick things.
[30:10]Yes, I'm like thinking about Bill Clegg.
[30:13]Like you could have 15 agents on your show
[30:16]and you get 15 different answers, right?
[30:18]So like I'm at one, obviously.
[30:20]But two in terms of memoir,
[30:21]when I first started working to think, well,
[30:24]Richard Pine, who's one of the three partners
[30:27]who's my agent said we were talking about memoir.
[30:31]And he said, you know, you realize, right?
[30:34]That if you look at the New York Times bestseller list,
[30:37]oh, no, actually at an editor time
[30:38]and a juicer said this to me,
[30:39]Priscilla Payne, who's an editor time and juicer said.
[30:42]If you look at the New York Times bestseller list,
[30:44]basically one memoir a year makes it on the list.
[30:47]So like bear that in mind, right?
[30:49]Like that, it's hard.
[30:51]So I think memoir's hard.
[30:52]And then what Richard said to me,
[30:54]Richard Pine, was memoir,
[30:57]when you think about memoir,
[30:59]it really competes with literary fiction.
[31:01]That's, I mean, a lot of people have memoirs
[31:04]that they would like to publish.
[31:05]And like the bar is so high.
[31:09]So you're smart, you know,
[31:10]to pick the people based on their talent
[31:12]because, you know, I don't know.
[31:15]Like you look at a book like educated
[31:18]and that's an outlier, right?
[31:21]And my one last piece of advice
[31:25]to aspiring memoir writers is if I get,
[31:27]if I had a dime for every time I got a pitch
[31:30]from a memoirist and aspiring memoirist who said their book
[31:34]was either like wild or e-pray-love,
[31:36]I would be like a gazillionaire.
[31:38]Like everybody thinks their books are like wild
[31:40]or e-pray-love.
[31:42]And we need to find some new examples.
[31:44]Yeah.
[31:45]Yeah.
[31:47]Anyway, that's kind of a long, long, a long,
[31:50]but memoirs, you know, there's nothing better
[31:53]than a good memoir.
[31:54]Well, I also think it's what's your goal.
[31:56]I mean, maybe your goal is not to get on the bestseller list.
[31:58]That's not everybody's goal.
[31:59]If you can share your story and affect people's lives,
[32:02]even if you affect two people's lives profoundly,
[32:06]that's, I believe that's worth doing.
[32:08]That's somebody's entire life.
[32:10]You know what I mean?
[32:11]So I think people have all sorts of different goals.
[32:14]Well, even if you write it and you have it
[32:17]and your family, you have it for your family.
[32:20]Yeah, that too, you know.
[32:21]Like, and that's, you're right.
[32:24]You're right.
[32:25]And that you can't overlook that
[32:27]because it's-
[32:27]I think somewhere between two people
[32:29]and the bestseller list.
[32:30]That's the sweet spot.
[32:33]That's the sweet spot.
[32:34]Well, sorry.
[32:37]I know we read a little long.
[32:38]I feel like I could talk to you forever.
[32:39]And I did know this offline and in some format at some time,
[32:43]but thanks for coming on months and have time to read books.
[32:45]Thank you for truly entertaining me
[32:48]and making me think and feel and laugh and cry.
[32:50]I mean, it's just that those are all the ingredients
[32:52]for a great book.
[32:53]So I truly appreciate it.
[32:54]And for also being like a guide, right?
[32:56]I love books that are by people
[32:58]who are just a little bit older than me
[32:59]to like just just a smidge
[33:01]so that I know like what's coming next.
[33:03]Like a trusted older sister, so.
[33:06]I probably should have told you
[33:07]the parts to skip, actually.
[33:09]Just head down, don't be silly.
[33:12]Well, thank you, Debbie.
[33:13]This has been a huge pleasure and an honor to be on your show
[33:16]and I love what you're doing.
[33:18]And I'm really happy to have been here tonight.
[33:20]So thanks.
[33:20]All right, thanks.
[33:22]All right, have a good day.
[33:23]Bye.
[33:24]Bye.
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[33:45]Thanks for listening to this episode
[33:47]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[33:49]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zippyowens
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[34:01]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[34:04]for the Sound Editing.
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