Nicola Yoon, INSTRUCTIONS FOR DANCING

[1:25]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen vaccine research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Owens and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Today's sponsor is the Baby Trend Cover Me four in one Convertible Car Seat. This car seat is so unique. It addresses the number one complaint by experienced mothers, which I believe I am, which is sun in your kid's eyes, which is something that of course drives them nuts and you're not going to want to put like what baby sunglasses on. That's never really worked for me. Along with the canopy, the Cover has a usage rating from four to 100, so you can use it for a long time, and can be used infant rear facing, toddler rear facing, forward facing, and belt positioning booster. The Cover Me also has a very convenient recline system, which includes a zero radio base and integrated recline flip foot. I don't exactly know what that means, but that's okay. The system allows the children to find a position comfortable to them and also limits the amount of space taken up by the seat when in rear facing position. Basically, it's just an amazing car seat, and I wish I had had this when my kids were little enough to fit into car seats. It makes parents' and kids' life much easier. It's just amazing, and it has a UPF 50 plus on the canopy so your kids don't get a sunburn either. So your kids will love sitting in it, they can interact with everybody in the car, and it protects you both rear and forward facing. There is a special 20% off code which is CoverMe20 if you go to babytrend.com/ossa,ossa. That's httpsdouble/babytrend.com/ossa and put in the code CoverMe20. Capital C, Cover, capital M, Me, the number 20. Also, I'm giving away one of these car seats. So if you or anyone you know is having a baby soon and would like a new car seat, which is something that you have to get when you as soon as you're pregnant, I am giving one away. To win the giveaway, just write a review and give a rating to my podcast, preferably a five star rating and a really nice review if you don't mind. Extra credit if you do the same thing for my moms don't have time to lose weight podcast and my moms don't have time to have sex podcast. If you could do five star ratings and reviews for all of those podcasts, oh my gosh, You will definitely be at the top of the list for entering this giveaway. And then we will pick at random. So enter the giveaway, use the code if you just want to get the percent off and order it right away. And again, baby trend cover me four in one convertible car seat. Go for it. It's June. Happy June 1, everybody. Welcome to my June Book Blast where I'll be releasing multiple podcast episodes a day, all based around a certain theme. Today's theme is Happy Pub Day. This is the Pub Day release for four books that are all coming out today June 1: Christine Mangan, Rebecca Stafford, Nikola Yoon, and Zakaya Harris. Enjoy today's June 1 book blast. Nicola Yoon is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Everything Everything and The Sun is Also a Star. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Prince Honor Book recipient, and a Coretta Scott King New Talent Award winner. Both novels have been made into major motion pictures. Nikola grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, novelist David Yoon, and their family. She's also a hopeless romantic who firmly believes that you can fall in love in an instant and that it can last forever. Her latest book is called Instructions for Dancing. Welcome, Nicola. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss instructions for dancing.

[5:31]Nicola Yoon: Nicola you for having me. I am so, so happy to be here. Your book was so great. I mean,

[5:38]Zibby Owens: it's basically like 'Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost Than Never to Have Loved Again in a book form. Right. For You, for every I mean, it was like amazing. It was fantastic.

[5:48]Nicola Yoon: Thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, it took one billion years to write this book and it was a long journey, but I am very proud of what has come out. You know, I started writing it when my mom was very sick and my father-in-law was also diagnosed with cancer and he eventually died, you know, within a year. And one of the things I was struggling with when I was writing with this book is, you know, why do we love people and we know we're going to lose them, right? Like why do we all do this? Know, endings are painful, right? And everything ends. And so why do we as humans like commit our lives to this? Why don't we just, like, put ourselves in a little shell and hide away from the world? Because frankly, when I was going through all of that stuff with my family, I really just wanted to. I just wanted to just hide away and love no one ever. And I'm sure that everyone else has struggled with this feeling, right, because we've all lost people and lost things, and it hurts. Well, our interview is now over. That was so beautiful. We don't have to talk about anything Great. Thank you.

[6:58]Zibby Owens: I am so sorry for all that you went through. And I read that in the back of your book, and I'm so glad you told the reader about it. I mean, that's like a great you detailed your whole journey and how you had written another book first and decided that that wasn't going to be the book. And then you finally came back to this one. Even admitting all of that is inside of this book is a decision in and of itself. What made you decide to tell everybody about it? Why be so open about it? Or do you feel like it just gives it the context that you were hoping it had? I mean, in my acknowledgements, I'm fairly open usually anyway. And it's funny because

[7:34]Nicola Yoon: to me, haven't there's so much more to tell. So I just wanted to give a little bit of context for why this book took so long. That's really what it was because I think the question I get most asked by fans and they're teenagers and they're so wonderful and they're like the best fans in the world is, Oh my God, Nikki, when is the next book coming out? Because my last book was in 2016. And in between the last book and this one, so much had changed in my life, just so many health issues in our family. I just wanted to say a little bit, this is what was going on. And also the internet doesn't tell the truth or we don't all tell the truth on the internet. So I'm fairly private anyway, so I don't share I certainly don't share my family's health struggles online. So I just wanted to say a little something. You know, I know it took forever. Hopefully, it was worth the wait. Oh,

[8:31]Zibby Owens: I mean, I don't feel like that's forever, but I feel I can sense the pressure you're getting. I mean, two number one bestsellers, people are like, alright, let's get going. But in truth, that's not that long to wait between books, is it? I don't know. It's really not, but

[8:47]Nicola Yoon: book publishing is both like an art and a business, right? So there's an extent to which you're just like, okay, where is your next book? And, you know, honestly, my publishers have been great and gracious. They're willing to wait for me. Like, you know, I talk about the book that failed in between The Sun is Also a Star and Instruction for Dancing. And, you know, we could have published that book, but I didn't love it. I don't think anyone else loved it. I mean, it was good and competent, but it wasn't magic, or I didn't feel the magic. And I don't really think they did either. And so at some point I was like, I don't know if we should go with this one. And everyone was okay with that. And they were like, Nick, we'll just wait for you. And I was like, Okay. So a lot of the pressure is self imposed,

[9:34]Zibby Owens: unfortunately. I'm feeling that. I'm feeling that a little bit. Oh my gosh. Well, this is also a great book for anybody whose family has had divorce in their family and who doesn't know sort of how to forgive because it's not just loss. It's also betrayal. Right? Like she feels so betrayed by her father. And what does it mean? And, you know, of course it takes till like, I don't know, three quarters of the way through before she finds out why her parents really, you know, the real reason they got divorced or whatever. Still, like when you have that main relationship with the father and the daughter and that trust breached, all the research says that it contributes to all subsequent relationships.

[10:18]Nicola Yoon: Right. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things I really like to do in the books is show that parents are just people and that they're also often very flawed. So just like a little bit of background of the book, it's Evie, the book is about Evie who is 17 and she loves her parents and she loves their relationship and she especially loves her dad, but they get divorced. And they get divorced because the dad has an affair, right? And so Evie, who's like normally this very romantic sort of romance book loving romance book reading and loving girl becomes quite cynical. And on top of all that she meets this sort of mysterious woman who grants her the superpower, although Evie doesn't think it really is a superpower where if she sees a couple kiss, she sees their entire relationship, right? So she sees the beginning of it, the middle, like sort of the exciting beginning in the middle and then the inevitable end, right? And what Evie takes from this is that everything ends. And so forget about it, why bother to get into relationships? And so through, she's become quite cynical and through all this, she has to learn to forgive people and to learn to live with the fact that things do end because that's just what life is, right? Like for good or for bad, it's just true. And so that's the journey that Evie's on, right? Like so including forgiveness, right? Because we all do make mistakes and we all do hurt each other. But the only way through that is love, right? So, you know, the place you got to learn. Poor Amy. I like put her through the ringer. Seriously.

[11:54]Zibby Owens: But I love how you said at the end, how it's all about the wide open middle. And that's where you have to live. Because it's true for love. It's true for life. It's like, it's so perfect. And my favorite quote in your book was, The problem with broken hearts isn't that they kill you. It's that they don't. Oh my gosh. Right? I hope you have that, like, posted up somewhere or, like, put on something because it's so true. It's like sometimes you wonder how you're going to get through things. You just don't even know. And yet you do and you have to. And

[12:26]Nicola Yoon: so you do. And so you do, right? And that's the trouble, right? Sometimes you just don't want to. And I actually remember exactly when I wrote that, I think I was in the hospital and I've been working on this book. And I sometimes, I mean, I write in notebooks anyway, but sometimes I write out of order if something occurs to me. I remember just writing that down and just sort of putting it like, I made a note to myself to come back to this quote for the book at some point.

[12:53]Zibby Owens: Wait. So you don't type

[12:55]Nicola Yoon: your books? You know, I write into notebooks and then my first draft is in these Moleskine notebooks. So like this thing. I write into 10 of them. And 10 of them makes one book usually. And then every few days I type it into the computer. And so it's my first revision. And I've always done it that way and I cannot get away from it. I've tried and it does not work.

[13:19]Zibby Owens: Wow. Doesn't it take a lot longer? I feel like it takes me so long to write. It does take a lot longer.

[13:26]Nicola Yoon: But I feel much freer when I'm just writing by hand because it just feels I feel like a kid. Like, I can just write anything. It's it's not permanent. You can just cross it out. And so all the sort of sort of weirder ideas occur to me when I'm writing in my notebook because I don't know, I don't edit myself. I don't censor myself in a way that I do on the computer. The computer feels a little bit more permanent to me. And so, yeah, I feel like just free. I can do anything. I can say anything.

[13:58]Zibby Owens: Well, I love all the tricks everybody uses to get themselves to write without that inner sensor coming. If it takes 10 Moleskine, go for it.

[14:08]Nicola Yoon: Whatever gets you to write is the thing that you should do. You know, that's what they always say.

[14:13]Zibby Owens: And in this book too, I was so sad about her abandoning her love of reading because of her emotions overwhelming her and how you have so much about romance books are woven interspersed, like in these short chapters, like designed to keep people's interests with different, like the way it's, you know, here's a quote, here's a text, and here's this, and here's like the definition of different romantic relationships. Yet it all starts with like her feeling like, I forgot the quote, but something like words or books are just like letters on a page. I was like, Oh, that hurts my heart.

[14:50]Nicola Yoon: Like books don't work their magic on me anymore is And the opening it's true though. Do you ever go through this yourself? We're at FVs where it's just like nothing is whatever sadness is happening in your life, nothing is penetrating. You're trying to find it through and the usual things don't work anymore. That's true. And that's where Evie is at, right? Like she loves books, she loves romance, but the magic is gone, right? Part of her journey is finding her way back to that magic.

[15:20]Zibby Owens: Wow. So Nicola, how did you get started doing all of this? How did you end up writing? I mean, I know now the story of this book, but just your whole journey to begin with. Like, where did you did you like to read it? Did you like to write as a kid? Like when did it start? So I'll tell you my, like, ridiculous.

[15:38]Nicola Yoon: Yeah. I want it. I'm sorry if you're repeating yourself. You must tell people this a lot, but I'm so interested. No. No. Like, it makes me laugh when I think about it. Like, that's the the way things happen. But I did write when I was a kid, but I forgot for a long time. I was really good at math in high school and college, and so I sort of got sucked away into the world of engineering. I worked in finance for twenty years while writing on the side, but the thing that really got me back to writing is I went to Cornell for electrical engineering. In your senior year at Cornell, they make you take something outside of your major. And so I took a class and I took creative writing because I was young and obnoxious and I thought, Oh, how hard could it be compared to my partial differential equation classes? Like all this stuff. And I took this class and it was the hardest class I've ever taken. I was just like, How could this be? And at the time I was absolutely just in love with this boy who just did not love me back at all. Like I was just suffering from unrequited love. And so I wrote bad poetry and bad one act plays and bad short stories and bad everything about this boy, just everything about him. And my professor was this lovely woman and she took me to her office hours one day and she's like, You're going to get over this boy eventually. But she told me that I had potential. She really liked my writing and she was right. Like, I got over the boy eventually, but I got bitten by the writing bug and it just stuck. And I cut at her forever with and I can't even remember her name at this point. I'm so old.

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[20:30]Nicola Yoon: But I do remember her just, like, really looking at me and saying, you have potential and you should do this. And then I did. But then it was another twenty years before anything saw the light of day. It took a long time, but we got there.

[20:45]Zibby Owens: And why this genre? Like why

[20:47]Nicola Yoon: how did you end up here? I mean, a couple of things, right? I think that I'm quite a philosophical person. What I mean is, I am the person asking the question at the party, but what does it really mean? So it's kind of obnoxious, like I'm really irritating, but but I really want to know the meaning of things, like the big grand meaning of things. And I think kids are like that. Like I think young adults are naturally philosophical. I think they're very open to the world. I think they're trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be and the kind of person they want to be in the world. And I honestly think that most adults should retain this, but they don't, right? Like we should all be asking the big questions. Like we should all be trying to figure out how to be better and what is the meaning of life and does God exist? Like we should all be asking these questions that makes your life richer, it makes you curious, curiosity keeps you young. And so I think I sort of naturally fit with this audience because I think they're naturally very curious and I am also, I am this way. It's so annoying, but this is how I am. Like, I just can't let it go. I always want to know. I don't think it's annoying or obnoxious, P. S. It's

[22:01]Zibby Owens: not. It's great. It's great to be curious and inquisitive and questioning. I think it's anyway, so stop with That's the

[22:11]Nicola Yoon: fair. That's fair. Yeah. But so the kids are I like that, Anne. And honestly, most of my readers are actually older. Like, they're actually, like, between, like, 28 and, like, 34 or something like that. And I do think they are curious too. I mean, I hope that what I'm doing is sparking a conversation with yourself. Right? And I love being in conversation with teenagers because they're so open.

[22:35]Zibby Owens: And I wanna say, look at this way of thinking about things over here and look at this way over here because it's the first time generally that they're thinking about these things. And for me, it's like just a privilege to be in conversation with. Well, have to say earlier today, I was on a call with two publicists, one of whom was like in her late twenties probably. And they were asking like who I had coming up or something like that. Anyway, I mentioned that I was interviewing you this afternoon. And the one girl was like, Oh my gosh, I just reread her book again yesterday. She's amazing. Blah, blah, blah. I love her. And I was like, Okay. Okay. Anyway, she was very excited. I feel like I should have had her on here for the Zoom as well. Well, I I think it's all a great way to question life and not take things for granted because life is short and you either acknowledge that in a regular basis and live your life a certain way or you don't. And I think if you do, you feel compelled to try to tell everybody else to live the same way. It either works or it doesn't, but at least you're trying to get the message out. So I totally get that.

[23:44]Nicola Yoon: I mean, think we all learned this this past year too, right? How things can just change, right? And I firmly remember being in Trader Joe's with my husband and thinking this was kind of a lark, that maybe three weeks and we'll buy some junk food and we'd camp with our little girl. And it wasn't right. I mean, it turned out to be so much bigger and there's so much loss and things changed just like that. And you got to pay attention. Don't get forever, right? So you got to pay attention and try to live. I I say this as someone who is trying like that all the time and I don't always succeed, but I do try.

[24:26]Zibby Owens: Isn't there that saying like do or there is no try or something? Do or not. Star Wars. Oh my gosh. I am the last person on the planet to quote Star Wars, but anyway, I don't know where that came from. You know, I started this community called Moms Don't Have Time to Grieve because I have four kids myself and I've gone through times of loss and tragedy and all this stuff. It is so hard to keep yourself together and also have to

[24:51]Nicola Yoon: be at least somewhat functional for all of the kids and everything. How did you manage that? I think my instinct is to hide some of it from her. My little girl is nine, but they're so much smarter than we are and so much more perceptive. I try to hide, but I cannot because she sees everything. And sometimes I'm just honest. Mama is sad. Grandma is sick. We debated for a long time whether or to take her to my father in law's funeral and then ended up doing it. And we all cried in you know, at the funeral, and and she understood in the ways that kids do. Right? So they understand up to a point. And then I think their brain honestly protects them from, like, going too far down the pathway. Like, she doesn't imagine her mom dying. She doesn't her dad dying yet. She will, but I think there is like a protective mechanism that sort of kicks in and to all of us honestly. So I tried to be honest, I didn't go down the full path with her because she's too young. But then I just let it happen. I want her to know it's okay to be sad. Because don't want to be You have to pretend that everything's okay all the time because I feel like that's not good or healthy, but you can't tell them too much too because I mean, anyway, I'm trying to protect her.

[26:18]Zibby Owens: Wow. Well, it must be neat for her to be growing up in a family with two authors. I mean, that's so great. I mean, if you're ever gonna be in an environment where you have two sort of thinking, analyzing, observing type parents, I mean, I'm making massive assumptions based on the fact that you both write novels, but that's such a unique environment in which to grow up. What is that? What's it like? What's

[26:40]Nicola Yoon: We have a crazy household, honestly. Because we tell stories all the time, we tell stories to each other and she does too. If she doesn't turn out to be a writer, I'd be wrong about everything in the world because she's such a storyteller. And I think because David and I met in graduate school, the way we know each other is through storytelling. And we were in our first writing workshop together. I really admired how he wrote. That was like one of the things I fell in love with. Loved his writing. And so that's how we know each other. And so we are always talking stories. I am bouncing ideas off him. He's doing the same for me. She jumps in with her own ideas. She has told me things that have made it into the book. So, you know, we just are a storytelling household. It's really fun when Penny is involved, but what's really great is when I'm suffering for writing, right? So like, I'm in the middle and everything sucks and I think I'm the worst writer in the world. I can go talk to Deirdre and he knows exactly how I'm feeling and he will reassure me that I'm not, in fact, the world. But he knows the insecurity, right, and the self doubt. So that's really good. And I don't know any other way of knowing him. Right. We're just creative together. That's how it's always been with us. Oh, that's great.

[28:02]Zibby Owens: And your first two books have become movies. And I was like almost late to this because I was watching the preview and I was like, how have I not seen these movies before? And I was like, I have to pause the trailer because I don't want anything to be given away, and I have to like go watch this with my teen daughter this weekend. Trailer's been like trailers are like little movies themselves. Right? They like do the whole thing. You're just like, stop. I know. Right? I'm like, no. No. No. Like, give me, like, a twenty second trailer. Like, I I don't want I always am stopping trailers early before. But that's such a neat thing too, and I loved your little Instagram thing about, like, you know, version two of how a movie gets made with all the clips and everything. That was so neat.

[28:41]Nicola Yoon: I still look back and when putting together that little Instagram post, I had to go through all my pictures on my phone and just find everything. And it took me down memory lane too, and just how fun it was. And how fun it was to buy a little dress for Penny for the movie premiere and done little things like that are the things that I really remember and that are so special. But the movies have been amazing. I don't write books for the movies, but certainly it's amazing when they turn into movies because it also sells more books, right? And I really just want the books to be in the world because that's my big dream. But both experiences were surreal and wonderful. I remember bawling my eyes out on the set of Everything Everything. The first time I saw the actors speak the lines, I just cried and cried and Penny was there. I remember I had like the headset on and she was like, Why is mama crying? And David was there. And David said, Those are tears of joy, honey. And like melted thing in our household many years later. Like, if she'll be crying for something, sometimes she'd like, Those are tears of joy, mama. Nick's just like, Okay. But I mean, was so good to get to show her that you can make art, know, like, and it can turn into something else. Like you don't There isn't only one path to success because I thought that for a long time when I was in corporate America, like, didn't think I could make a living being artistic. And it was lovely to show her that, you know, like, you can you can make things, sweetheart, and they can and and even if they don't become big, but you can still do it. You know, this is a path. And that was really important to me and I was really happy that she could see that. Oh, that's amazing.

[30:30]Zibby Owens: Well, I'll be waiting for her books. I'll save her a slot in like twenty years Yeah. Or

[30:37]Nicola Yoon: Like, there's no way. If she has to block a lawyer, I'll be like, more shocked than anyone.

[30:43]Zibby Owens: Have you started another book? Are you are you gonna focus mostly on publicity for a while or what's your what are you up to? I

[30:52]Nicola Yoon: writing I finished actually a book during 2020 crazily. A first draft anyway, which is not to say it's a book, it's still just a draft because it's not good yet. And then I wrote another book that's coming out in June with five other women called Blackout, and I started something else just recently. But I'm kind of taking that's going much slower because I'm in publicity sort of, let's talk about this book mode. Yeah. And it's hard to do both at the same time.

[31:24]Zibby Owens: Wow. That's exciting. So what's the name of the one that's coming out next?

[31:29]Nicola Yoon: Oh, it's called Blackout. No. Not the one with five women, the other one. Didn't you say there's Oh, yeah. But that one is like that's still just mine. Like, I'm new to my agent now. Oh, you're kidding. I finished it. So I'm very excited, but, you know, she hasn't even seen it yet. Oh, okay. Doesn't even tell me it's terrible yet. I'm sure it's not terrible.

[31:50]Zibby Owens: So

[31:51]Nicola Yoon: what advice would you have for aspiring authors? So there's a couple of things. There's the practical thing and the more philosophical thing. So the practical thing is writing is miserable sometimes. What happens to me is I start off really strong. So I have this idea and I'm like, yes, and it's writing, writing. And then I get to the middle and the middle is where all the doubt creeps in because you're not sure that it's worth writing this book. You're not sure about the ideas that sent you down this path. You're 100% sure it's terrible. And I call it the wide open ocean of the middle. And that's where most of the doubt is. And my advice is just get through it. Just get to the end. Get through the first draft. Self doubt is part of the process, which is the hardest thing to really, really know because it still feels terrible when you have all that doubt, but the doubt is part of the process. You just gotta get to the end. The thing I always say is I don't have a career because I'm good at first drafting. Have a career because I'm good at revision, right? Which means you got to get to the end so you can make it better. Like I'm almost desperate to get to the end so I can fix it, but you can't fix nothing, right? So you just have to get through it. And then my sort of more philosophical advice is, I think the world is very good at putting people into boxes, right? And saying, you're supposed to like this and you're supposed to be like this and do these things. And I think that's all nonsense, right? You get to be you, like the individual you, and all the things that are weird and quirky about you are the things that actually make your writing interesting, right? So all the parts that you're sort of going to hide away from the world, you got to go and you got to get in there. That's what makes you interesting. Like if I give a room of 50 students the same idea, I'll get 50 different stories, even though it's the same exact plot, right? And what's interesting is the thing that makes you, you. So let your freak flag fly. It's not philosophical. Amazing.

[34:04]Zibby Owens: Well, Nikola, thank you. It was so lovely to talk to you. I'll be thinking of you now for a while because I'll be plowing through your movies, and I'm really excited about that. So I hope you enjoy it. And the books, of course. You know, I will Yeah. Get accompanying books, not just to watch the movie, but you're a wonderful, as you know, wonderful writer, and it's been a joy to hear about your process and everything. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. My pleasure. Alright. Have a great day. Okay. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow for more. Thanks again to today's sponsor, the Baby Trend Cover Me four in one convertible car seat. Don't forget to enter my giveaway, and the winners will be announced at the end of this week. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.