Nicholas Sparks, THE WISH

[0:49]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 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. Nicholas Sparks is the author of The Wish. With over 100,000,000 copies of his books sold, Nicholas Sparks is one of the world's most beloved storytellers. His novels include 16 number one New York Times bestsellers and all of his books, including Three Weeks with My Brother, the memoir he wrote with his brother Micah, have been New York Times and international bestsellers and were translated into more than 50 languages. 11 of Nicholas Farx's novels, Choice, The Longest Ride, The Best of Me, Safe Haven, The Lucky One, The Last Song, Dear John, Nights in Rodanthe, The Notebook, A Walk to Remember, and Message in a Bottle have been adapted into major motion pictures. Nicholas last came on my show to talk about The Return, and now he's back to discuss The Wish. Welcome, Nicholas. Thanks so much for coming back on Mom's In No Time to Read Books for the second time, this time to discuss The Wish. Excited to be here. Thank you for having me. This is always fun.

[2:20]Guest: I like can't believe you already have another book out. Like I feel like we just were talking about the return and now here you are again, this is amazing. This is your

[2:27]Nicholas Sparks: pace. This is what you do. This is what I do, right? I'm getting close to actually finishing my next one, by the way, should be finished sometime in October. That's what you do if you try to write a book a year, kind of means you have a book every year.

[2:45]Guest: Guess that that would do it, you know? Well, last time we talked about the return and this time we have the wish, which is very different. I know last time you had talked a lot about the themes being love and mystery, and I was wondering what your sort of positioning of this book was and if you could tell listeners kind of what it's about, and then I'll chime in with more questions. Sure, sure. Real short, know, this was a novel that was really twenty years in the making.

[3:09]Nicholas Sparks: And by that, I mean, it covered an idea or a theme that I kind of wanted to explore. I'd always wanted to write a story about a pregnant teenager who decides to give her baby up for adoption. There've been a couple of books about that, movies like Juno and things like that. And I will tell you that probably starting in the late 90s, after I finished A Walk to Remember, and even before I wrote The Rescue, that was book three and book four, I said, oh, let's come up with an idea for that. Let's come up with an idea for an adoption story or a pregnant teen story, so to speak, and couldn't come up with the idea. So I wrote The Rescue. And then I finished The Rescue, tried to think of my next idea. Said, Oh, let's cover them. Couldn't come up with the idea. Took about twenty years before the idea began to come to fruition. And it's funny, because it kind of dovetailed with another idea that I always wanted to explore. And it's something that I think if you're an American novelist, you should explore. And that is, hey, got to write a Christmas story. Look, if you're an American novelist, look, you got to do a dog story. I did that with The Guardian. Look, Stephen King, he did it with Cujo, right? You got to do a dog story, but you also have to do a Christmas story. Like Risham has done a Christmas story. And, you you want to do something like that. And strangely, it was suddenly thinking about these two ideas, hey, a pregnant teen and Christmas. And little by little, the story began to gel in my mind. And

[4:52]Guest: there we go, and we're off to the races. And then when did you bring in the cancer patient who has like a YouTube channel?

[5:00]Nicholas Sparks: That was a little bit modeled after my sister, but I thought it was in a way it ratcheted up the meaning of my Christmas story in that, and I'm not really ruining for anyone who's worried, am I ruining the book? All this is in the flap, by the way. And you pretty much learn all of this within the first couple of pages. So I'm not really, there are no spoilers here. But if it's your very last Christmas, and you know it's your last Christmas, what would you do? What do you do? How do you make that special? And what does that even mean? And so the book is a little bit of an exploration of that. And again, of course, then you find a way to dovetail that into the particular story. Now the whys I choose, the why I chose certain things, and of course, every novel is just a series of 10,000 decisions. Yeah, I probably have answers, but yeah, we don't have to kill the magic. Why don't we just enjoy the story?

[6:01]Guest: Well, I love how you tell it like it's Maggie telling the story and she's telling it to Mark in the book and then you flash back. And so then it becomes the you, the author, like, telling us the story as a narrative, but you know that you're really supposed to be pretending that, like, Maggie is telling us the story. And then you go back and forth. And sometimes I'm like, aren't they getting tired? Like, They need to take a break. She's been telling the story for so long. For me to read it or whatever. I mean, not in a bad way. It's so much drama. And it feels like it's a lot to take in when you're going back with her and you know, her pregnancy and her aunt and I mean, 15, holding the teddy bear. I mean, this is crazy young. I can't even I have 14 year old The idea like, literally, I'm like, could you just make your own sandwich? Like, the idea of having a baby when like, you can't even put the cheese back in the fridge is like, I don't know, unthinkable. Right.

[6:58]Nicholas Sparks: And it was unthinkable to her. And she was actually a very fun character to write in many ways. Of course, I have daughters as well. Mine are now 20. How old are they? 21. Are 20? They're 20 this year. And so, yeah, I remember a little bit of the melodrama and I don't necessarily mean just girls, but I mean teenagers in general, there's a little bit of melodrama. So when something is bad, it's awful. You know, nothing, if it's really bad, nothing has ever been worse for anybody in long the history of the world. This is it. This is the worst. And so it's really fun to explore a character that begins her story in that tone, and then to watch her, let's say mature a little bit because quite simply,

[7:47]Guest: she's forced to and she has no choice but to mature. And even the fact that it has to be a secret. And I know this happened so much now, you know, 23 and me, these things are it's a lot harder to keep a secret these days. I mean, I can't, you know, Instagram and everything, the idea that somebody could, like, go off and have a whole child is seems further fetched than I feel like it was just last generation where she could go off and do that. But just the the shame or the yeah. Just this corrosive effect of not living the life that is actually your real life. I'm not saying that very well, but how a person has to go through life carrying that weight and what it does to them is so interesting.

[8:26]Nicholas Sparks: It is. And of course, in this story, right, she's from a nice, very Catholic, very Catholic family. And so abortion is just not even an option. And it was okay, probably in their minds, because most of the story occurs, or I'd say half of the story occurs in about 1996. And okay, what would you do? You send her off far, far, far away for a few months, assuming that most teenagers, the ones let's say at her school are wrapped up in their own lives. And when she gets back, they probably will barely have noticed she was gone in the first place. And that was the plan. And of course, I won't tell you how it ends, but of course, that was the plan. And you're right, it's probably harder now to have this happen. Although I do know very Catholic families here who have kept things remarkably quiet. Interesting. Simply by having them go live somewhere else, remarkably quiet, like truly only a couple of people know. And you're like, wow, they pulled that off. That was amazing.

[9:35]Guest: Wow. I loved the detail, by the way, where you have Maggie spot like Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Berg novels by her bed. I'm like, are you friends with Elizabeth Berg? Is that why you put that in? I was just wondering.

[9:47]Nicholas Sparks: I'm a big fan of her work. I think she writes with a really wonderful emotional authenticity. And I find the voices of her characters really resonate with truth and just this real, they feel very genuine to Mill. They feel very authentic, more so than many writers, in fact. And I've just always thought she was exquisite and extraordinary. Does she know she's in your book? No, probably not. Unless she reads it.

[10:15]Guest: Unless she reads it. It's only a lie. I know, but still, you know, I don't know. Maybe when you're such a well known author, it doesn't give you that same thrill. But I was excited even just I don't know. I would think she would wanna know. I'll tell her. Okay. I'll tell her. You tell her. And tell her. And if you do, tell her I'm a huge fan. I think she's just extraordinary. So nice. That's awesome. I love how everyone in the author community is like it's such a nice community. I I doubt this is what other industries are like. I can't imagine people in. But anyway, it's just this instinct for authors to lift each other up is really awesome in general. But anyway, and what about the whole photography piece of this book? Yeah. I love photography.

[10:54]Nicholas Sparks: It's a hobby of mine, and I'm an I'm a hobbyist. I can't say I'm an avid hobbyist. And I can't say I'm anywhere close to a professional, but I can say I enjoy it. And I have taken some lovely photographs over the years and there's something very wonderful about it. Have absolutely no desire really to learn the ins and outs of Photoshop or Lightroom, which is really these days where the art of photography comes in. So with that said, I can only be so good. I can only be good up to a point, but I can never ever be great. But there is something extraordinary about trying to capture what you're actually seeing and then get it right in the camera so that it's reflective of what you're seeing. And there's something very artistic about that entire process. And I love that. Was an element, I suppose, that dovetailed all the way through the novel. And it was a theme that resonated from one story until the next. And of course, I tried to be very realistic with her photography career, she's, yes, she has a gallery, but it's really not. There's a famous artist in the gallery who lets her put her stuff on the walls. It's about can't. That's in her mind. Hey, I've got my own gallery, right? Of course. And then there's a little bit of sadness there about kind of the reason now why she's selling a lot of photographs. And it's because people see her on YouTube and she's talking about her diagnosis and they want a souvenir. And you're like, yeah, I don't know if I wanted to sell these as souvenirs. I wanted to sell them because they're art, right? But you could do what you can do. But she's I think in in in the novel, she threads that knee that needle emotionally and and professionally very well. Well, you mentioned earlier in the conversation about

[13:00]Guest: Maggie being in part inspired by your sister. And I know last time we talked about your very tragic losses of your parents, and I'm so sorry, and your sister's illness and everything. So tell me, can you talk a little more about what pieces of that you You know, my sister's final years a month, the final years of life, she was young, she was about 33.

[13:19]Nicholas Sparks: I would go and visit her and sometimes I would just see her standing in the kitchen and looking out the window and she wouldn't be saying anything. And there's really nothing out the window to really see. I think it's the same thing that's there all the time. And was it like there was a parade out there, fireworks going off. And in those moments, I would wonder what she was thinking. And if you knew you only had X amount of time, you see the world a little differently. But also sometimes when you're looking, I have the sense you don't see anything at all, except visions of your own life. And I think my sister went through that. And I tried to capture that with Maggie, as well, because everybody, it is part of the human condition to have regrets, to wonder about different paths you could have taken in life and where they might have led. You might question why this is happening, but also who and why you are the person that you are today. You might feel that there's unfinished business in some places, whether with a family member. And I try to capture all of that with Maggie, not in an overdone melodramatic way that's meant to ring tears, but just more a part of Maggie's human. These are very human things. And in situations like that, there are no right and wrongs. It's us of things are gonna come, emotions and thoughts. In some ways we take them for a ride and see where they lead. I wanted to explore that concept

[16:48]Guest: And did you ever talk to your sister about it? About those moments or?

[16:53]Nicholas Sparks: No. Sometimes that well, yeah, I would ask, what are you thinking? Sometimes she would answer and sometimes she wouldn't. And sometimes I wouldn't ask. I had the sense that there were moments when they were very personal moments to her. And I wanted her to have them for herself because it seemed to be what she needed at the time. There's the terrible thing with my sister, of course, that she was so very young and it's a terrible thing. She had a brain tumor. And at the same time, you had a little bit of a chance to say goodbye. But what does that mean? How do you say goodbye for a month? It's a tricky, tricky thing. And of course, the novel, have Mark and Maggie navigating those waters as well. I'm

[17:43]Guest: like continually just moved by how you take the events of your own life, but then sort of mix them up and put in like the heart of it into your books. Right? It's like you're working through it. In each book that you write, it's like you work through another piece of the puzzle.

[17:59]Nicholas Sparks: Sure. I think that's important. Right? It's important to, of course, depending on what kind of novel that you're writing. And I try to write novels that evoke genuine emotional authenticity. And to do that, I think the writer has to be very honest and the writer has to be, I guess, perceptive enough to not only know what a character might be thinking or feeling, but then the best way to describe that in a way doesn't feel manipulative. And that is the whole writing process. It's one of the reasons why these novels are very challenging to write. It's really easy to go one sentence too far. And yet if you don't go far enough, it's not going to quite work. So it's just that literally every step along the way, every section or every page or certain sometimes there are sections of those novels that it goes,

[19:00]Guest: it's every paragraph or sometimes every sentence and you got to get those just exactly right. Wow, wait. So at the beginning, you said to be, every great novelist should write a Christmas story and a dog story. What else is on the list?

[19:12]Nicholas Sparks: Well, are the big ones. That's it? Just those two? Well, yeah, I mean, those are the big ones, right? And of course, I think those are, that's just my opinion. But look, Charles Dickens, he's gonna win. He's got the all time greatest Christmas story. He wins. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and stipulate that right upfront. But you have these other stories, the ones that maybe you watch with your kids are the ones that bring you joy, White Christmas or Elf or A Christmas Story, Ralphie and the BB gun or shoot, last year they had a Q1 holiday, right? You get these shows that deal with the theme of Christmas and in one way or another. And you find yourself looking forward to the next holiday season when you're like, Oh, I want to watch that again, even because perhaps there's nostalgic reasons or things like that. So those are the two big things. I don't know that there's a third. I really don't that if you're a novelist, an American novelist. American novelist. Okay. An American novelist. Because when we start reading, anybody among the first books that people read, there are things like Where the Red Fern Grows or Old Yaller, right? Or Call of the Wild. I mean, dog story, dog story, dog story. And I read those books when I was third, fourth and fifth grade, essentially. Those were very, for whatever reason, formative books. And certainly they instilled within me a love of reading. And if you don't have a love of reading, you're never going to become a writer one day. Maybe I'm just fond of dogs love cats too. But these were the formative books when I was at that very young eight, nine and 10 and looking for that, wow, this story is so great.

[20:57]Guest: I think there's something to that. So why did you not market this as a Christmas book and have it come Christmas time and all of that?

[21:04]Nicholas Sparks: Oh, it will be. It will be. So how it works in publishing, long, long, long, long story short is that probably about 40% of books that are sold during the year sold really in the weeks from Thanksgiving through Christmas, right? And so the bigger you are as a bestselling novelist, the further away from Christmas they put you because they want you to stay on the list all the way through. Oh, interesting. Okay. And so I'm pretty much the furthest out because they're pretty sure this will last through Christmas. And yeah, it's a Christmas story in a way, but it's just a good story. And you can read it at any time. Look, if you read it at the beach, or something over in September, you're gonna love this story. And

[21:53]Guest: it's got something for you. So you've been doing this for so long. And you have this book that already your team is convinced will be on the best analyst for weeks and, you know, months. And yet you're still doing publicity for the book. Like, you're still on this podcast with me. And like, I'm sure you know, doing all tons of other stuff. Like, do you ever wanna just be like, you know, I think it's gonna be okay. You know? Do you ever wanna be like

[22:18]Nicholas Sparks: Yeah. To a certain personally,

[22:21]Guest: you're not because I'm I'm having a delightful time and I love it, but, know, for your own sanity.

[22:26]Nicholas Sparks: Well, tours are There's pros and cons to a tour. First, I consider myself very fortunate that I'm able to go on tour. Many authors don't. But it's also nice to meet readers, right? Writing can be a very isolating profession. When I'm writing a novel, it's not like I'm doing it in a crowd or I have coworkers or we're taking a break at the water cooler and things like that. Can be very isolating. And I can say that I've learned quite a bit from going to events over the years among the questions that I ask, hey, what was your favorite book? And which was the first book that you read? And, or I say your couple, oh, you don't know how to pick one, pick two or three. And it's interesting to me because sometimes it triggers in me thoughts along the line. I haven't done one with a young character lately. Maybe I should do that again, of course. And that led to The Wish. I had done a Walk to Remember early on and then ten years later, had done The Last Song, which was also a teen story. And I think it was on tour a couple of years ago and they said, yeah, teen story. I'm like, That's right. I haven't done one of those in a while. And of course, then you mix in Christmas, you mix in adoption, and there we are with this story. So you can learn things from your readers and people are very kind. Tours were miserable, I wouldn't go on them, but people are so nice and they're so excited and you get photos with them and it's wonderful that they take time out of their day to come say hello. I mean, that's very meaningful to me. Wow. So basically you use your book tour to get all your other ideas. You be could honest about it. All of them, but it is interesting, right? Because I'm familiar with these books in a certain order, right? Starts with a notebook and message and walk straight down the list. But it's always amazing to me how many people read them. Oh, was the first book you read? The Lucky One. Wow. Then I went back to A Walk to Remember and I just read The Return. I'm like, You're all messed up. But it's nice, but that's always interesting to me. And of course, that's more common than the people who've been reading me for the last twenty five years to read them absolutely in order. But it's interesting. And it is it is important to know which ones people like the best. And and that's that that's helpful too. So if you could change something about the publishing industry, what would it be?

[24:56]Guest: I thought, yeah. Well, that's a huge question. Right? Just thought I'd throw it in at the end there.

[25:01]Nicholas Sparks: Yeah, you know, I can say that I get so much joy from hanging out in bookstores. And I love the process of going through shelves and trying to find something. And then when you don't always do it, but sometimes you find something that no one had told you about, you hadn't really heard, but something about it catches you and you read it and you think it's amazing. It's like discovering buried treasure. And I've always loved that feeling. And so if there's one thing more, something one thing changed, hey, more bookstores, right? But I don't know whether that's gonna happen. I mean, I'm fully aware of the online stuff and hey, I think online is great for buying. It certainly is very easy and very convenient. I still don't find it as good for browsing, so to speak, to be able to pick up the book, see how big it is, how thick it is, what's the font size, you can skim through the flap so easy and put it back and things like that. I just find that very convenient. I just love bookstores. So hey, more bookstores, but what can we do, right? Can always do something. Not everyone is like. Awesome. Okay, I know I asked last time, but advice to aspiring authors before you go. Do you have any? Advice to aspiring authors. Yeah, you got to read a lot. And I think you got to read in a variety of genres. For instance, if someone wants to write like me, and I'm certainly not recommending that they do, but if they do, you can't just read my books, you have to read what I read. And if you take something like The Return, my novel last year, unless you'd read a lot of mysteries, you couldn't have written that, for instance. So you got to read a lot and read in a variety of genres. And you have to read with an eye toward what does an author do well? And what does he not do well? What's done particularly well? Why is it done particularly well? And you can do all that on the second read. The first time through, you should just enjoy a book. But the second time you should figure out why you enjoy that. That's if you're trying to learn. And then of course, step number two, if you want to be a writer, you gotta write. And that's it. And I think that if there's one thing you concentrate on, it is capturing voice. And voice is where I start with my novels. And what is voice? It's how a character sounds. It's when they're thinking, it's how they sound when they speak, it's their actions that they do. And all of this goes to telling you who a character is. And the more original voice is, both original but also universal that you feel like, Oh my gosh, this sounds like I used to sound kind of when I was a teenager or something like that. You concentrate on voice and you can do good voice in two pages. And so start with capturing the voice after you've read an awful lot. And once you've been trying your hand at writing, then start with voice and then keep going in the story. If you have a good voice, odds are people are gonna be interested in your profile. I hope so.

[28:04]Guest: Might need a new job if that's not working for you.

[28:08]Nicholas Sparks: Well, I had a job when I was writing Yeah, the notebook I'm for

[28:12]Guest: kidding. And is this gonna be a movie? Probably, but we'll see. Okay. Alright. Well, Nicholas, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate your time. Alright. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Bye. Bye.

[28:23]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 zibby owens dot 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,

[29:18]Nicholas Sparks: It's finger lickin' good. Prices and participation vary while supplies last. Not available on third party ordering platforms. Tax extra.