Alex Michaelides, THE MAIDENS

[1:18]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 should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to: 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 Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Listeners, if you enjoy this podcast, I promise you will love my new audiobook for moms don't have time to a quarantine anthology. It's not about the quarantine, but a lot of the essays were written during that time about other things that moms don't have time to do or other busy people. Things like reading, eating, working out, breathing, having sex, and 60 bestselling and notable authors wrote essays. All those authors have been on this very podcast. So if you like to listen to my conversations, if you want to get to know these authors better, I read the audiobook myself. Check it out on Audible, Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. Again, Audible audiobook. Go listen to it. It's like sixty minute podcasts. I hope you enjoy. Alex Michiolidis is the author of The Maidens, which is already a bestseller and hit the list the week that the book came out. Alex was born and raised in Cyprus. He has an MA in English literature from Trinity College, Cambridge University and an MA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The Silent Patient was his first novel and spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list and sold in a record breaking 49 countries. He currently lives in London. Also, for Alex Mikey latest episode, I'm trying something new, and I am including a little bit of the audio from his book so you can get a tiny sample of it. Let me know what you think. Welcome, Alex. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss The Maidens. Thank you very much for having me. I'm very happy to be here. You are just I mean, I'm sure you know this, but you are such a good writer. I mean, the quality of prose and how, like, I just it's so immersive. You just, like, can't stop reading, and it's a mix, not just of, like, what's going on and sort of mystery of it, but also the emotion behind it is, like, so raw and relatable. So I don't I just loved it. It's like you're, I mean, that's probably why you're a number one bestselling author. But anyway.

[3:53]Alex Michaelides: That is so amazing to hear. Thank you very much. I'm, you know, I'm apprehensive, of course I am, because it's my second novel and I put my kind of heart and soul into the whole book. And so I really hope it works, but I'm nervous. I won't lie. So it's great to hear feedback like that. Thank you. Oh my gosh. No, it's so good. Can you tell listeners what The Maidens is about? Sure. The Maidens is, you know, speaking up on the same themes that preoccupied me with Silent Patient and just preoccupied me generally, which is Greek mythology, psychology and murder. And it's about a mysterious and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, who is suspected of murdering his students who are all members of a secret society known as the maidens. And our heroine is a Greek group psychotherapist who becomes obsessed with proving the professor's guilt even at the risk of endangering her own life. Wow. Well, you have that nicely tied up. I love it. Yeah,

[4:44]Zibby Owens: there you go.

[4:45]Alex Michaelides: No, it's a big part for me. I feel like until you can actually describe your own novel in a few sentences, it's not clear enough in your own head. That's a big belief of mine. And so I work very hard when I'm writing the novel to be able to refine it to a place where I feel like I can communicate it to somebody quickly.

[5:01]Zibby Owens: You know? That's true. Yeah. As soon as I'm like, well, it's about this, but then this, and then that, then you've like already lost the person, right? Yeah. You probably have to do that a little as well, like synthesize in just a few sentences, the books that you read. I have to do it all the time. Yeah. I'm like, whenever I recommend a book, it has to be like, you know and when it becomes like there's like another huge paragraph to get to the plot, I'm like, come on.

[5:22]Alex Michaelides: Like, what is it? Yeah. It's when you know there's a problem when you're writing it. Yeah. It's true. Funny. Well,

[5:28]Zibby Owens: so your book really talks about Sebastian and Mariana, this couple. It starts out that way. And when Mariana has to figure out what's happened with Zoe who's on campus and finds out about this crime and is it her friend and all of this, like, intrigue. And before that, you go into what it's like to have to go back to a place that you went so many times with someone you loved, which is something that happens to everybody and yet doesn't get talked about all that often. And here was sort of brought to life in such detail. So there's one paragraph I just wanted to read quickly. Well, even just about death, but you said death was no stranger to Mariana. It had been her traveling companion since she was a child, keeping close behind her, hovering just over her shoulder. She sometimes felt she had been cursed as if by some malevolent goddess in a Greek myth to lose everyone she ever loved. It was cancer that killed her mother, she was just a baby. And then years later, a horrific car crash, and I won't give any more away. But just the fact that she feels so chased by grief. And then what does she do sort of like on the train and facing ghosts everywhere she goes? Tell me a little bit about that and like where this is coming from. Well, I'm really glad you highlighted that passage because that passage is one of the few bits in the book that came to me just

[6:44]Alex Michaelides: in one go, as I was just going for a walk, I just heard that in my head, and I just grabbed my phone and quickly wrote it down, it didn't change. And so it was definitely something that was kind of in my mind and in my subconscious. It's a story about a woman who's haunted, you know, haunted by the ghosts of her past. And the very first image that came to me of the book was, you know, in this dreamlike way that these things come into your head, was an image of a woman in a house going through her dead husband's possessions, and unable to throw anything away. And then that ended up being the first chapter of the novel. And then everything kind of grew from there. And I went into themes of, you know, of lust, of love and loss, you know, with the Greek myth Persephone, but also the poetry of Tennyson. I tried to make it very romantic and thematic. The way I kind of rewrote into it personally was I went back to Cambridge, I was a student at Cambridge, and I left there about twenty years ago. And in order to write this novel set there, I felt I had to kind of revisit it in the way that Mariana revisits it. And so while I was writing it, I would go and stay there for a period of, know, four or five days at a time in a hotel. And then I walked my way through the novel, and I would kind of be where she was meant to be at the time that she was meant to be there. Like, she's meant to be in the pub at like 9PM on a Thursday, I would go at 9PM on a Thursday, and I take a notebook, and I write down what I was seeing and smelling and you know, and I thought that it would be a kind of atmospheric note taking. But the weirdest thing happened in that I started to, in the way that she's haunted by her ghosts, I started to be haunted by my own ghosts, you know, like lovers I'd lost or friends I'd lost or even myself at 18. And the more days that I spent on my own, going around this city where I've been so happy twenty years earlier, the sadder and sadder I got. And so but I was able to channel all of this into her character. And it was like a real exciting revelation for me in terms of writing the book. I was, you know, I think that's the only way that I can write is to try and become the person that I'm writing about. So it worked out well in the end. Wow.

[8:31]Zibby Owens: Okay. So maybe the trick is just to go where your heart broke and just mind that Yeah. Yeah. Space and place, and then throw it into somebody else's.

[8:41]Alex Michaelides: Yeah. Totally. I mean, I've always been really influenced or inspired by sadness and romantic sadness. And I guess that explains why there's so many like heartbroken love songs in the world. Like we can all we've all lost somebody that we love. And so we can all relate to that, I think. Can you share somebody that you've lost or somebody? Many people, and not just from a romantic love, like relatives, my grandparents, people like friends of mine have died over the years. Just and they stay with you in your heart. So I think this book was one journalist asked me if it was a kind of exorcism, this book, which is an interesting choice of word. It wasn't, it was more like a kind of therapeutic catharsis, I feel, because at the end of it, I felt that I'd let go of a lot of stuff that I've been carrying around for a long time. So yeah.

[9:27]Zibby Owens: Aside from your sort of immersive research, what other tricks, if you will, like tell me more about the process of how you put this together. Did all did you do all of it on? Just tell me the whole process because it sounds interesting. Well,

[9:44]Alex Michaelides: it's like, you know, the way the kind of books I write, I think it's all about the architecture. You know, I think it's about the crime investigation and solution. And I think that you could hold a lot within that structure. But that structure gives you like the basis that's going to hold your house. And I think of it as like a magic trick as well that your game that you're playing with the reader, and the reader willingly enters into this relationship with you when you write a mystery or a thriller, where they're like, Okay, I'm going go on this journey with you. And I expect you to be one step ahead of me. But the reader often tries to get one step ahead of you. And so it's like a little dance that you have. And the way I think of it is that there are two stories. There's the apparent story, which is the detective story, and that's the story we're reading. And then there is the secret story that I'm telling at the same time, which is the story of the murderer. And then they come together at the end of the book. And so there's all these kinds of different things to bear in mind when you're plotting a mystery like this. The way that I do it is a technique called mind mapping, which I've used for years, and it really works for me, you know, I take together many, many sheets of paper on the floor. And then I just start in the middle with one point like Marianna going through Sebastian's things. And then it makes me think of something else, I draw an arrow. And then I write that, and then I draw another arrow of something else that pops into my head and several arrows all over the place. And the reason it works, I think is because whenever I try to write in a linear list of plot, I get stuck. But because my mind can't hold this in my head, because I've got arrows going down the side of the page and writing this upside down and stuff like that, Somehow it frees up my imagination. And then you end up with this vast cobweb in front of you, which tells you the whole story. And then the tricky thing is to sit down with a laptop and try and put it into some kind of order. And that takes that's a bit difficult, but it's a really fun creative process. Yeah. Do you have pictures of your site? I do. It's on Instagram actually. Oh, it is. Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry. You know, I was actually thinking to myself like, oh, I should have well, anyway, I'm sorry for not seeing it ahead of time. I'll dig and find it. Yes. Yeah. It's way back, I think, because I had did that fairly on in the beginning of the process.

[11:46]Zibby Owens: Where did this love of writing and sort of, know, building mysteries essentially, where did this all come from? Like, when did you start liking to write? How did you know you wanted to do this? When did you know you wanted to do this? Like, what was it like when you were a kid, all that? I think, you know, it's funny because before we started filming, the first thing I said to you was, wow, look at your bookcase.

[12:06]Alex Michaelides: I grew up with my mom, like Mariana's mom in the novel, my mom's English, and she is a real bookworm. And she brought all of these books to our house. And so I grew up in a house that was just full of books. And every room in the living room had shelves covering all the walls that were full of books, and not just like any books, but she had really good taste. And so it was great books. And pretty much all of the writers that, you know, influenced me made me want to be a writer like Margaret Atwood, or Charles Dickens, or Henry James, or whoever were like taken off the shelf by my mom and like presented to me when I was a teenager or whatever. And so that's one side of it. But the other side was that the books that actually made me want to become a writer really were the Agatha Christie thrillers, classic thrillers that my sister had in her room. I think my mom was too much of a snob to read those books. And so, and I snuck into her at my sister's room when I was like 13. And I just liked the covers of these crazy looking books. And I took one down. And then I spent one summer on the beach. And Cyprus just devouring her books like one after the other after the other after the other. And I knew then and now, I was like, you must have thirteen years at 12 or 13. I remember saying to myself, oh, one day I want to write detective story like this, that I could read on the beach. And that was always been my motivation. And that's the reason I wrote The Silent Patient. When I got The Silent Patient in a decent enough shape, I printed it out and I took it to the beach. And I sat with some rose bottles of wine in Spain, and I read it. And I was really happy, like really properly. It's the first time I read something that made me really happy that I'd written. And so when I got a little bit lost with The Maidens initially and felt a bit a lot of pressure after the unexpected success of the first book, I thought, okay, I have to bring it right back down to that kid on the beach again, and just try and write something for myself to read. And whatever that really works for me, you know, as a brief, it's funny.

[13:44]Zibby Owens: I guess because you were kind of removing all the other voices in your head, you know, just But I mean, that's really all it comes down to. You have to write something you want to write and you wanna read. Otherwise, like, why are we doing this? Like, try to play to the market or make sure you're pleasing this person or that person or, you know

[14:01]Alex Michaelides: I think that was why I found screenwriting so heartbreaking and difficult. It's a really good point you're making because every idea I had, like I was working with a director, for example, would be second guessed by him and he'd be like, people won't get that joke. You know, and it really it's interesting because I don't know if you've ever seen Fleabag by Phoebe Waller Bridge. But when I first saw that on television, I just sat up and I was like, wow, she's not worrying about if people aren't smart enough to get her jokes, she's just making her jokes. And I thought how brilliant and brave of her. And so there's an element of that where I think the screenplays or films you're trying to pander to an audience the whole time. Whereas with novels, can afford just to write to please yourself, you know, and hope enough people will like it. The problem though with screenplays too is nobody really knows.

[14:45]Zibby Owens: Like people like to believe they know because there's so much on the line, right, and everything is there's so much money invested in every project. But really there's something that you can't predict about all of the success, right? People just sort of double down and like, oh, no, we know this. Like, that's what they say about all these books too. Like, this type of book won't sell. Well, really? Have you I mean, that's not true. Like, most might not, but that means that the person who's willing to try and experiment, do something new and cool and original will might be dissuaded.

[15:15]Alex Michaelides: So I'm, you know, And the thing that the thing with screenplays is that they're not considered like a finished product in themselves. They're just a means to an end. And so it's kind of sad to write something or work so hard on something that no one's ever going to read. And it gets changed at the last minute by somebody else. And so, you know, at least because I really did enjoy writing sentences. And so writing a novel is, know, at least you know that no one's going to like tear off the page and just throw it out without your permission. Editors try to sometimes,

[15:43]Zibby Owens: but you know. And maybe, I mean, writers on the whole, and not to say that this applies to you necessarily,

[15:49]Alex Michaelides: but I feel like people are pretty sensitive about their words. They like, this is our, you know, it's your pride and joy, you write it and like, there's a reason why sometimes you do it and to have somebody be so flippant about rejecting it, that just, like, can't feel good no matter how accomplished you are. No. It doesn't. And I'm really glad that I kind of moved away from I also think I'm better at writing books. I definitely get more out of it, I think. So when you're actually doing the writing, after you do your spider web and you figure out how you're doing it, does it all just like come pouring out now that you've figured out how to do it? Is it just like a matter of or do you like labor over each sentence? Sentences come later. Know, so I trained at the American Film Institute as a screenwriter. And I was really lucky enough to have an amazing teacher there who was a Disney writer. And he would always say to us, don't waste time on drafts, because drafts take a long, long time, you're going to write, you know, countless drafts of a novel that's going to take you forever. So he would say spend a year working on the outline. And that's what I've always done. And so I'll take my spiderweb and I'll type it up. And then I will keep revising that document for six months to a year, sometimes longer, just going over it and over and over and adding a little bit more and adding a little bit more and sort of trying to a better way to make a point or a beat. And then that document kind of expands and expands. And then it ends up becoming like a very short first draft. And then I will sit down and I will then break it down into chapters and write down, start working on the sentences and the prose. But it's about the story, I think, for me is the most important thing, as opposed to the pretty language. I think that if you have pretty language without a story, then it doesn't really go very far. So yeah, but it's a long, long drawn out process. The spiderweb is probably the most fun part of it. Because after that then becomes this process of trying to realize this moment of inspiration. And no matter how hard you try, you can never quite get it as good as you want it to be. So it's this element of frustration, I think that starts creeping in. So did you really not expect the book to be a success? The first one. Yeah, the first one. No, I mean, I didn't at that point. So I didn't even have an agent at that point. I've been dropped by my last film agent. And so I was just thinking like, okay, before I really do quit this, got I have this whispering voice at the back of my head for like twenty years saying write a detective story, write a detective story. And I don't know anything about detectives, but I had trained to be a therapist, although I didn't qualify. And I also worked in a psychiatric unit. And so I do know a bit about therapists. And I thought, Oh, well, I could make a therapist my detective instead. And then I can actually write something that I know about. And then once I had that idea of clicked, and then I wrote the novel just to see if I could write it. And I worked on it after it was ready for another six months or so because I just I was so scared about letting it go. It had been such a pleasurable experience writing this book. And I thought I just don't all I'd ever had pretty much as a screenwriter was projections. You get so used to it. And I just thought I just don't want to go through this again, because then I really have to give up my dream of being a writer. And it was a friend who finally just was the first person to read it just said, Okay, you have to try and get an agent, you have to send something because it's ready now. And I did I but even that I remember it took a couple of drinks before I wrote to this agent I found online who ended up becoming my agent, because I was so afraid of someone reading it, you know, and then from there, was just it was been a dream since then. So today's

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[20:47]Alex Michaelides: It didn't happen. I didn't have an inkling until it happened. I came out in London the week before it came out in America. And when it came out in London, it didn't my local bookshop, which is like, you know, five meters away, didn't even stock a copy of it. And so I'd been expecting something, you know, but not to even be in a bookstore. I was just like, Oh, wow, this is really depressing. And then a week later, I was dog sitting. And I went out for a walk like 11PM with the dogs, and I left my phone at home, just gives you a mark of how depressed I was feeling. There's no point, you know. And then I got back and it was like my phone that exploded all these messages from Celadon in New York saying call us, call us, call us and messages from my agency and call me and then I spoke to Ryan, my editor, and he said it's gone in at number one on the New York Times list. And I swore at him because I thought he was trying to wind me up. And I didn't believe it. It was so you know, that was kind of walking on air for the next week, but it took a long time. I was in a state of shock, that makes sense. You know, I just people kept telling me, you must be really happy. You must be really happy. And I was like, I can't feel anything. And after it took about a year before I started smiling and feeling like, Oh, wow, this is great. This is really and since then, I've really relished it. And it's been so much fun. But it was a real adjustment going from zero and having no agent, nothing and feeling like a failure to suddenly this overnight success. But I've been working towards that success, you know, from the age of 20 to 40. So it was a long, I'm glad it didn't happen at 20. I didn't think I could have handled it.

[22:13]Zibby Owens: Oh my gosh, your story gave me goosebumps. That's amazing. I'm so excited to hear that. That's like everyone's dream, you know, it's like,

[22:20]Alex Michaelides: you know, don't You don't think it's going to happen. So when it does happen, then you really don't believe it. It just feels like a dream. Yeah. But it's Oh my gosh. That's amazing. And now I get to write more books, which is really Tell me what you're working on now. What are you working on now? Now I'm Well, you know what, after I wrote The Maidens, was a difficult book to write, not just because it's I wanted to try and write something different. So, you know, I didn't want to write another small thing with six characters in a psychiatric unit. I could have done that. But I thought if I want to grow as a writer, I want to write on a bigger canvas, more characters, more complicated, bigger stories, a darker story. And so I really tried to push myself. And there were times when I was writing it when I was just thinking, wow, am I trying to do too much here? This is a bit overwhelming. And plus the pressure that I did feel of the second book. So I figured that I would be hugely burnt out at the end of The Maidens and not want to write anything. For whatever reason, it just really freed me up. I feel kind of buoyant and happy and light. And the moment I finished writing it, I started writing something else, like pretty much the next day. And so it's something I'm writing differently. I'm trying not to plan it where I normally do in that crazy, obsessive way. And I'm just trying to rediscover a joy for writing by just going to the laptop each day and seeing where the story is going to take me. Have no idea if it's going to work or not. But I think it's a marker that I'm feeling very relaxed and happy that I'm able to relinquish my control, because all that comes from fear, you know, doesn't it when you're trying to control every aspect of the story and plan it obsessively means underneath you on some level, you're kind of terrified. And I think having succeeded in written the second novel, I feel quite proud of the accomplishment. And now I feel quite relaxed and thinking, okay, now I'm ready to call myself a writer, not just a fluke, you know, and now I can keep going on with more stuff. And so, yeah, I'm feeling very inspired at the moment. It's really nice feeling. That's amazing. So no spiderweb for this one? No, no spiderweb. The final process. Forgot everything you said. You know, I have got an idea for a very complicated thriller for the next book, I don't know what's going to be my next book. And I know I'm going to need to spider web that one and plan it all out. So I think this one is just the kind of, you know, Stephen King always says once you finish a novel, then try and write something really fast, just for just for the hell of it. And some of his best stuff he said has come out of that space. And that's why I did it. I thought, okay, that's an interesting idea.

[24:32]Zibby Owens: You know? That's like your rebound relationship.

[24:34]Alex Michaelides: Yes, is. Hopefully, won't end in a bad way, but let's see, you might end in, you know, the police being called.

[24:44]Zibby Owens: My gosh. So what advice would you have if somebody was just starting out and maybe even just to tackle all the fear that you talked about? I mean, I don't know if you've seen there's this new Disney, I'm sure. I don't know if you have kids, but I there's this new Disney movie that just came out called Luca. And it one of I can't believe I'm talking about this, but one of the characters has all this fear. Right? And so they come up with this expression that they have to say all the time, which is something like, now, of course, I can't remember that either, but it's like, so something like, Silencio Bruno. And every time, like, they go and do something tough, this kid Luca has to say, Silencio Bruno. Silencio Bruno.

[25:20]Alex Michaelides: So it's like, how do you do that for the writing? Right? How do you stop the fear and let yourself get in that like, flow state that you're almost talking about with this next? Yeah, that could be me that character. I mean, my first thing I would say is just is just to keep going and just to persevere, really. I mean, you know, I, so I suffer from anxiety, always have done, I feel a lot better with it now. But a lot of it I have a lot of negative critical thoughts that will never go away, I'm aware of that. And so the whole time that I was writing Starm Patient, every day I would hear a voice saying this is rubbish, just it's trash, just forget it, give up. Sometimes And I would just forget the whole thing for two or three months because I was like, this is hopeless. But something kept me going. And so I would that's my biggest point I would encourage budding writers just to keep going, keep going because it worked out for me. And if I'd given up, none of this would have happened. So you have to keep going. That's the most important rule. And the way that I deal with the negative voices is I meditate a lot. And so I meditated before I wrote any single word every day for the silent patient. And I did the same thing for the maidens. Because when you meditate, somehow it creates a little gap, little bit of a distance between you and your negative thoughts. And so they still appear when I sit down to write. But instead of being overwhelmed by them, I'm able to kind of acknowledge them, Oh, okay, here I am thinking this is rubbish again, and then push them to one side and at least write for half an hour before the next lot of negative thoughts kind of bombard me. And I think without meditation, I wouldn't be able to do that. But it's crazy to hear myself talking like this. It makes me realize that we are our own worst enemies, because I'm so encouraging and supporting of everybody around me, and I'm so hard on myself. It's so dumb. If we could be a bit nicer to ourselves and a bit more kind of supportive, I think life would be easier and not just writing.

[27:04]Zibby Owens: Yes. I'm sure you're right. I completely relate to that. I do the whole, like, visualization with, like, the negative thoughts coming as the weather, you know, like Oh, that's great. Clouds are coming in and now they're going out and like, okay, here comes the rainstorm. I'm just going to watch the fact that it's raining. I can't really do anything about it, but I'm just going to wait until the rain is over. So I don't know. And you know that on the other side of those clouds, there is a clear blue sky and it's important to remember that. Think you just have to wait till they, they go by. Until they pass. Yeah, and they will pass because nothing lasts forever, which is the, you know, that's, it helped me a lot as well. I'm too like, I don't know. I can't meditate. I don't know. I can't like even do it. I failed. I failed meditation. Know that means I need it more than anybody, but I can't even get the benefits. I'm like too high stronger than anyway. Awesome. Well, Alex, it was so nice to chat with you and I'm really excited about your book and I can't wait to read everything that you write going forward. And I'm so glad I got to hear from you how you, your amazing journey. I mean, it's really inspiring and amazing. And thanks for being so open about

[28:14]Alex Michaelides: your emotions and your life. And it's really great. So thank you. That's a pleasure. Thank you. I hope I get to talk to you again. Maybe for the next one. Next one. Come on back anytime. I will be. Got the mic. All right. Take care. Have a great day. Thank you. You too. Take care. Bye bye. Therapy,

[30:13]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign 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.