Joshua Henkin, MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS: A Novel
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[1:09]Joshua Hanken is the author of Morning Side Heights.
[1:12]Joshua is the author also of novels Swame across the Hudson,
[1:16]a Los Angeles Times notable book, Matcha Money, a New York Times notable book,
[1:20]and The World Without You, winner of the 2012 Edward Lewis,
[1:24]Wallent Award for Jewish American Fiction,
[1:27]and a finalist for the 2012 National Jewish Book Award.
[1:31]His short stories have been published widely, cited for distinction in best American short stories
[1:36]and broadcast on NPR's selected shorts.
[1:38]He lives in Brooklyn, New York and directs the MFA program in fiction writing at Brooklyn College.
[1:43]Welcome, Joshua.
[1:44]Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Morning Side Heights.
[1:48]Thank you, Zippy.
[1:49]I'm really happy to be here.
[1:50]I should have just like, you know, headed over to the West Side to film this over there.
[1:55]I'm on the other side now, but, you know, close enough.
[1:58]This book was so beautiful.
[2:00]I mean, I know you know you're a great writer because you're super accomplished,
[2:03]but reading this book was like, oh wow, this is great writing.
[2:08]So it's very refreshing, not refreshing.
[2:11]I read great writing all the time, but like, it's very exciting and awesome.
[2:15]When you open up a book and all of a sudden you realize it's like,
[2:18]fantastically written and you don't want to stop reading it.
[2:21]So I was really delighted.
[2:22]That's let me just say that.
[2:23]Thank you.
[2:24]I appreciate that.
[2:25]Would you mind telling listeners a bit about what your book is about?
[2:28]Sure.
[2:29]So Morning Side Heights is about a long marriage between an eminent Shakespeare scholar at Columbia
[2:35]and his girlfriend then his wife.
[2:37]And she meets him in the 1970s when she's his student and is pursuing a doctorate herself.
[2:44]And then she ends up giving up a career, her career and becoming the wife of an academic
[2:49]and they have a child and he has a child from a previous marriage.
[2:52]And so at the mixed family and then about 30 years later when he's in his late 50s,
[2:58]he starts to become forgetful and he is diagnosed with early Alzheimer's.
[3:03]And so the book is really about how the people who love him.
[3:06]His family, his friends, his colleagues cope with the, the client of a great man.
[3:11]And I noticed in the acknowledgements you said you had said goodbye to your dad.
[3:15]And I was wondering if this, if your dad had Alzheimer's or where, if this was a personal story.
[3:19]I mean, where did it come from?
[3:21]Yeah.
[3:22]You know, I like to say that all good fiction has to be emotionally autobiographical in the sense that
[3:27]the writer has to be emotionally on the line.
[3:29]And if there's no motion for the writer, there's going to be no motion for the reader.
[3:33]So my book, some of them are more narrowly autobiographical.
[3:36]Some are less narrowly autobiographical, but they're all emotionally autobiographical.
[3:40]And this one was inspired by my father.
[3:43]My father was a well-known professor at Columbia.
[3:46]He taught at the law school for 50 years.
[3:49]And like Spence, he eventually developed Alzheimer's.
[3:53]Fortunately, if you can ever say you the word fortunately about Alzheimer's,
[3:57]he developed it much later than Spence did in his mid to late 80s,
[4:00]but he was still teaching at Columbia at the time, which is a story in its own right.
[4:04]But in some ways, I was most interested in telling the story from his wife,
[4:08]his perspective.
[4:09]And this is also inspired by my own family.
[4:11]So when my father started to decline, my mother went to a caregiver's class,
[4:16]the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side.
[4:19]And this sort of surprised me because my mother is not a consorting with strangers kind of person.
[4:25]She doesn't go in for self-help groups.
[4:27]And so I was interested in what happened to her that she felt she'd find comfort in the company of people
[4:33]whom she might not have had anything else in common with us.
[4:36]And the fact that they are caregivers.
[4:38]And so the book started out really is a long short story that took place at the JCC between crew
[4:44]and a bunch of friends.
[4:45]She meets the JCC.
[4:47]But then over the course of eight, I spent eight years on this novel.
[4:51]And I wrote 3,000 pages.
[4:53]Oh my gosh.
[4:54]Yeah.
[4:55]I'm very inefficient.
[4:56]But yeah, so 90% of what I wrote is gone.
[4:59]But you know, after draft seven or eight, I realized that the book was not really about
[5:03]crew and her friends at the JCC.
[5:05]It was about this family and this marriage over many years.
[5:10]And so, you know, I think it's fine for a writer to think they know where they're going,
[5:14]but you better be wrong.
[5:15]Because if there's no surprise for the writer, there's no surprise for the reader.
[5:18]And so eventually the book took its own course.
[5:21]Wow.
[5:22]So what was it about this particular story that over eight years,
[5:26]you felt compelled to keep digging in and shifting and changing and sculpting.
[5:31]Like what was it?
[5:33]What wouldn't we be alone?
[5:34]So, I mean, ultimately it's the characters.
[5:37]You know, I think about fiction in terms of character.
[5:40]And my goal is to make the characters as rich and complicated as possible
[5:45]and to get them into trouble.
[5:47]You know, to me, that's what fiction is is, you know, getting your characters into trouble.
[5:50]But I think specifically, you know, I was interested in what it's like for crew.
[5:55]You know, who is very intelligent and accomplished woman of a certain age,
[6:01]who was on her way to a career in academia.
[6:05]And then she gave it all up.
[6:08]And, you know, that was quite common in those days.
[6:10]It still happens now.
[6:12]But I was interested in that phenomenon of what it's like to hit your wagon to a star
[6:17]and what happens when the star fades.
[6:19]And I was much more interested in telling it from her perspective rather than expenses.
[6:22]You know, it's obvious what happens to Spence when his star fades.
[6:26]He starts to become less lucid.
[6:28]But what's it like for crew, his wife was really identified with his success,
[6:32]who might even, you could argue, is over identified with his success.
[6:36]And what happens when his success leaves him?
[6:38]What does that do to the wife?
[6:41]How does she refashion herself in a world and in a life that she hadn't anticipated?
[6:46]That one of the more telling scenes was when his book was due
[6:50]and do and do and do.
[6:52]And she finally was like, all right, why don't I help you write it?
[6:55]Like, let me do it.
[6:56]And he's like, oh, you can do it.
[6:57]And she's like, I was a graduate student.
[7:00]And he's kind of like, oh.
[7:03]He's forgotten that.
[7:04]And, you know, of course, you know, the world is littered with, you know,
[7:08]famous professors whose graduate students are doing their work for them.
[7:12]And so yeah, crew in the moment of desperation helps to be able to write his book.
[7:15]But it's been at this point.
[7:16]It's been 30 years since she's been in graduate school.
[7:18]And so she can't do it either.
[7:19]And so they're kind of helpless together.
[7:21]They're really, you know, they're attached to the hip.
[7:23]Well, I think one of the things that was particularly moving was how,
[7:27]from such a detailed perspective, you showed us the decline.
[7:31]Right.
[7:32]Having, I don't have, I have an experienced Alzheimer's myself.
[7:34]But now with this book, you see it.
[7:36]You see it.
[7:37]I mean, it's one thing to see it in a movie.
[7:38]Right.
[7:39]Like, ask Alice or whatever.
[7:40]That's what it's called.
[7:41]It was so good with them.
[7:42]All right.
[7:43]So you see the signs.
[7:44]But here, it was much more.
[7:45]It's like you're actually living with it.
[7:47]Right.
[7:48]So like the night where he wanders off barefoot,
[7:50]or the little things that happen at home or when he falls.
[7:53]Or like when, you know, like just all these little tiny moments
[7:57]that add up to the end result being like in a totally different state.
[8:01]But it's like the heartbreak of the smaller moments.
[8:04]I feel like that you captured.
[8:05]Yeah.
[8:06]I mean, thank you to be.
[8:07]And I do feel like in life and in fiction,
[8:10]it's the small moments that are most interesting.
[8:12]And sometimes the big moments are so big that they come predigested
[8:16]in a certain way.
[8:17]So it's not that you don't want to focus on the big moments, too.
[8:20]I mean, you know, there's a scene where it's been forced to take a
[8:23]mini mental exam up to Columbia Presbyterian.
[8:26]And it becomes apparent how much he has declined.
[8:29]And there's also a scene when prove me to the head of the
[8:32]English Department who tells her that, you know, he can't continue
[8:35]teaching.
[8:36]But in some ways, I'm interested in the sort of the more
[8:38]support surprising small moments.
[8:40]For instance, there's a scene early in his decline when there's a
[8:44]mouse in the apartment.
[8:45]Yes.
[8:46]And once the catch that mouse with his own two hands, which is very
[8:50]uncharacteristic of him, it's not the sort of thing he's prone to do.
[8:54]And he's not a person of physical prowess.
[8:56]But obviously it's too painful for him to acknowledge his
[8:59]mental decline.
[9:00]And so he kind of shifts things on the matter is physical.
[9:03]And you know, runs around the apartment trying to catch the mouse
[9:06]with his own two hands.
[9:07]And so those small, expected moments that I think are revealing
[9:11]about character, you know, both in life and in fiction.
[9:14]And then he does notice when the mouse goes away, he quickly figures
[9:18]out like why that happened and how Peru had done it.
[9:21]What happened with the trap?
[9:22]He's like, you know, he wasn't one to be fooled, necessarily.
[9:26]For sure.
[9:27]And I think I think that captures something about dementia,
[9:30]something about Alzheimer's, how, you know, one second, the person
[9:34]is totally incoherent.
[9:35]And then next second, they're loosing, next second, they're incoherent
[9:38]again.
[9:39]You know, it's obviously it's a steep decline over time.
[9:42]But moment to moment, that can be real moment to insight
[9:45]amongst the confusion.
[9:47]And when the clinical trial happened, and there was like a
[9:50]temporary, there was hope for a moment.
[9:52]And then it was, you know, short lived.
[9:55]It was also heartbreaking, like access to that person.
[9:58]And then it's like out of.
[10:00]your fingers.
[10:01]Right, well, I mean, it is a heartbreaking disease.
[10:03]And I think that's one of the challenges
[10:05]of writing a novel about Alzheimer's
[10:07]is I tell my graduate students that they shouldn't
[10:10]write a story about a ball rolling down a hill
[10:12]because the ball's going to roll down the hill.
[10:14]And so I think that's what Alzheimer's is like
[10:16]in terms of the actual medical prognosis
[10:19]is that unfortunately, at this point, hopefully,
[10:21]I will change, but at this point, there's no cure.
[10:23]But I think so, one of the challenges of writing a book
[10:25]about this is to not really make it be specifically
[10:28]about the disease course, but about how
[10:30]different people around the patient reacted
[10:33]the disease course, what choices do they make?
[10:35]Do they enroll the person in clinical trials?
[10:38]Do they?
[10:39]Does Prue end up in a new love affair?
[10:42]I mean, these are the kinds of questions
[10:43]that I think face people who are dealing with someone
[10:47]who is in decline.
[10:48]And so I was very interested in the non-ball rolling
[10:51]down the hill parts of the book.
[10:52]I did not see coming what happened also with, well,
[10:55]I don't want to give things away.
[10:57]But the way, even things that you might take up
[11:01]to make yourself feel better, don't necessarily
[11:04]work out the way you want.
[11:06]Right, I don't.
[11:07]I thought sometimes it's so obvious.
[11:09]That sounded so obvious, but in the short term,
[11:12]there are minor heart breaks along the way as well.
[11:15]Sure, and I agree to be.
[11:17]And I think that that's kind of why I wrote this book
[11:20]over with so many decades.
[11:22]I mean, the book takes place over so many decades
[11:24]because I'm interested in the modulation of emotion.
[11:29]In the happiness, amidst the sadness,
[11:33]in the humor, amidst the heartbreak.
[11:35]And I feel like this book, even though it's about a tough topic,
[11:39]it's not a depressing book.
[11:40]And I feel like you leave the book with some sense of hope
[11:44]for Prue.
[11:45]And people can't be depressed forever and ever, hopefully.
[11:49]And so that was very important to me is injecting
[11:52]moments of levity, even in situations
[11:55]that are tough.
[11:56]And I feel like Prue herself is kind of a tough character.
[11:59]And she's resilience.
[12:01]And her resilience gets tested.
[12:02]And she proves herself up to the task, I'd say.
[12:04]Well, the whole trajectory of the chock-full of nuts
[12:08]to the Chinese restaurant, I mean, it
[12:10]like gives you, it just like gives me chills, right?
[12:13]I felt, I really felt like I went on this whole ride with her.
[12:17]And I didn't really want it to end.
[12:19]Like what happens next?
[12:20]And also all the supporting characters, too.
[12:22]The sun and that whole side drama and his dyslexia
[12:26]I found super interesting.
[12:28]And the daughter wanting to become a doctor, Sarah, and Jenny.
[12:32]And right, I mean, it's like everybody sort of works together.
[12:36]Like all the ripples, how does she become a doctor out
[12:40]of this need to control?
[12:41]I don't know.
[12:42]I just found it.
[12:43]Yeah.
[12:43]I think those are all good questions.
[12:45]I mean, again, as I said, if I'm really
[12:47]interested in character and in trying
[12:50]to write about many different characters,
[12:53]all tethered to this one man.
[12:55]And I'm also interested in writing about New York.
[12:58]I grew up in more side heights.
[13:01]And I feel like New York City is a character in the novel.
[13:04]You mentioned you're on the upper east side.
[13:06]I grew up on the upper west side.
[13:07]And I'm older than you.
[13:09]And I grew up at a time when I went to school on the upper east
[13:12]side.
[13:13]And I grew up on the upper west side.
[13:15]I went to school on the upper west side for west side
[13:16]and I grew up on the other side.
[13:18]I saw you in the transverse or something.
[13:20]We've got to take the other on the pro sound bus.
[13:22]So yeah.
[13:23]And I think I was, I love this wasn't conscious
[13:26]because you don't find her encounter once
[13:27]said that a writer can't do without a certain measure
[13:30]of stupidity.
[13:31]And I think that's true.
[13:32]And you know, somebody's come by naturally.
[13:34]And others have to cultivate it.
[13:35]But I felt like I was chronicling a change in a neighborhood
[13:39]in a way that was parallel to my chronicling
[13:41]a change in a man and a character.
[13:44]I grew up at a time when they were really meaningful
[13:46]distinctions between the upper west side and the upper east side.
[13:49]I was sort of the poor child of academics among my rich
[13:52]classmates who were the children of professionals.
[13:55]I mean, now there are still differences between the upper
[13:57]west side and the upper east side.
[13:59]But there are much more nuance.
[14:00]And the city has changed a lot over the past, you know,
[14:03]50 years.
[14:04]And so I think I was really writing about a city even as I
[14:06]was also writing about people.
[14:08]I should amend what I said.
[14:09]I went to high school on the upper west side.
[14:11]But I went to grade school on the upper east side.
[14:13]And so most of my friends at my, you know,
[14:16]all girls private school on the east side
[14:18]lived on the east side.
[14:19]But I did have a friend on the upper west side.
[14:21]And whenever I went to visit her, we would have to go to the
[14:23]garage.
[14:24]And my mom would take out the car.
[14:26]I thought that the west side was like 100.
[14:28]You're like, it was like going to Connecticut.
[14:30]We're like, we're going to the west side.
[14:34]That's kind of how my classmates felt.
[14:36]Their parents didn't want them coming to the right side.
[14:38]I was always the visiting team when it came to play dates.
[14:43]I was always going to the east side.
[14:45]So did you go to Chapin?
[14:46]Is that school that you went to?
[14:47]Did you really?
[14:48]Yeah.
[14:49]Where did my mom?
[14:50]Did you go to Connecticut?
[14:51]I went to Vermont.
[14:52]Oh, okay.
[14:53]But I went to college with a lot of collegiate boys and
[14:57]really girls.
[14:58]And my mother had three, I mean, I have two brothers.
[15:02]My mother had three boys.
[15:03]But she always had a dream of having a girl because she
[15:06]wanted that girl to go to Berlin.
[15:09]So none of us felt, you know, we would have had to dress up as
[15:12]girls to go undercover really, so it never happened.
[15:15]But my mom was kind of obsessed with really.
[15:17]It's like yental in reverse or something.
[15:20]Yeah, we're going to go and reverse.
[15:21]Well, I have two boys and two girls.
[15:23]And none of them went to Berlin.
[15:25]So I'll just leave it at that.
[15:27]It's important for kids to do different things
[15:29]from what their parents did.
[15:30]Yes, exactly.
[15:31]So then how did you end up becoming a writer and a
[15:34]perfect like it?
[15:35]Just how did you get to where you are?
[15:37]Yeah, so it's kind of a coincidence, like sort of
[15:40]secure this route.
[15:41]You know, I was heading down a more traditional academic path.
[15:45]My father was a professor.
[15:46]And so, you know, I'm probably the only person on the planet
[15:50]who thought that, you know, getting a PhD in the humanities
[15:52]was a safe path.
[15:54]I kind of always want to be a writer, but I also want to
[15:57]play in the NBA and certainly, you know, you realize you're
[16:00]neither good enough nor tall enough.
[16:02]I was going to say you're sitting down.
[16:03]I can't tell, but you don't strike me as like six, five,
[16:06]but who knows?
[16:07]I have 11.
[16:08]I was actually captain of the Rama's basketball team, but
[16:10]that says much more about their mom's basketball team, my own
[16:13]basketball playing abilities.
[16:15]But anyhow, yeah, it's planned to be to get a PhD in the
[16:17]humanities.
[16:18]But before I did that, I took what I thought would be a
[16:20]couple of years off and I moved out to Berkeley after I
[16:23]graduated from college.
[16:25]And, you know, I think the reason for that is this.
[16:27]You know, I was born in 1964 and I grew up in the shadows of
[16:31]Columbia.
[16:32]And so my first conscious memory was being taken to
[16:36]nursery school to the greenhouse nursery school by my
[16:38]mother in 1968 and being turned back at the gates by the
[16:43]student protest.
[16:44]And so that was my version of a snow day.
[16:47]So when I graduated, I think I was kind of kid who always felt
[16:49]like I sort of missed the 60s.
[16:51]And so, and I think if you think Columbia is good, if you're
[16:55]obsessed with the 60s, then you think Berkeley is even better.
[16:58]So when I graduated from college, I moved out to Berkeley,
[17:02]really not knowing anyone.
[17:03]I slept in the floor of a friend of a friend and I found the
[17:07]department in Berkeley and I got a job at a magazine.
[17:10]And one of my tasks at the magazine was to be the first
[17:14]reader of fiction manuscripts.
[17:16]And I saw how terrible a lot of them were.
[17:18]And I thought, well, if other people were willing to try to
[17:21]risk failure, then I should be willing to try and miss failure too.
[17:24]And I mean, wasn't like I thought I could necessarily do any
[17:26]better, but I thought, you know, you want to give it a shot.
[17:28]And so I started taking some workshops and I got some
[17:31]encouragement and I moved to Ann Arbor at the Michigan where
[17:33]I got my MFA and the rest of the history.
[17:35]But I say all that as a way of illustrating that, you know,
[17:39]there are writers who are, you know, more instinctive writers
[17:42]than I am more naturally intuitive, whereas I teach myself how
[17:46]to be an intuitive writer.
[17:48]And that seems like an oxymoron.
[17:49]What does it mean to teach yourself to be intuitive?
[17:51]But I think it's true.
[17:52]You know, the late David Foster Wallace, who in addition to
[17:55]being a great writer was also a serious amateur tennis
[17:58]player, once did an interview with Roger Federer for the
[18:01]Times magazine and Federer talked about learned intuition.
[18:05]How you hit the tennis ball over and over and over again until
[18:08]what you're first doing mechanically becomes much more
[18:11]instinctive.
[18:11]And I think that's what I was doing with writing.
[18:13]I, you know, I read really carefully.
[18:15]I saw the craft, you know, decisions that writers made that
[18:20]I thought worked and that I thought didn't work.
[18:22]And I basically taught myself to become more intuitive.
[18:25]And so teaching has really been, you know, an instrumental
[18:28]part of my writing and life.
[18:29]I have friends who are writers who wouldn't begin to know how
[18:31]to teach, but for me, it's really essential.
[18:34]I think it's in part because I'm relatively social person, but
[18:36]also because I feel like, you know, 30 years later, after I
[18:40]started doing this, I'm still teaching and still writing.
[18:43]And I learned as much from my students as they learned for me,
[18:46]you know, a psycho analyst friend of mine talks about the
[18:49]analyst and the patient being in the pool together.
[18:51]The analyst is not, you know, sitting at the side of the pool,
[18:54]watching the patient flail.
[18:56]And I think that's true of the writing teacher as well.
[18:58]My students and I are all in the pool together.
[19:01]We're all flailing together.
[19:03]We're all struggling with the same thing as all, although it's true
[19:05]that I've been doing this longer than they have.
[19:07]I'm more experienced at this.
[19:09]The page is just as blank for me as it is for them.
[19:12]And we're all, you know, struggling with the same issues.
[19:14]So I feel that teaching writing is the instrumental part of my
[19:17]own, you know, experience as a writer and helps my writing a lot.
[19:21]My husband was in the professional tennis world.
[19:23]So I've given him like five separate copies of string theory by
[19:26]David Foster Wallace.
[19:27]We have it like everywhere.
[19:28]So like, like this is a blending.
[19:31]This is a blend of our interest here.
[19:33]But anyway, great novel by the British writer, Brent Benjamin
[19:35]Markwood, which is about the tennis tour.
[19:38]It takes over a space over a single weekend.
[19:40]Huh, I'm getting the name of it.
[19:42]But I don't know if you guys have been in read fiction.
[19:44]But if he does, he'd be interested.
[19:45]Maybe you'd be interested if I care.
[19:46]So I'll find the bucket.
[19:48]I'll, I'll email you.
[19:49]My husband doesn't really read that much.
[19:50]Oh my goodness.
[19:51]Oh, you got a dog.
[19:52]Oh, yeah.
[19:52]Sorry.
[19:53]Yeah, I have a black dog too.
[19:55]You know, I have a new family.
[19:55]Oh, yeah.
[19:56]Oh, 125 pounds.
[19:57]And it looks like you have a problem.
[19:59]I have a black one.
[20:00]Yeah, amazing.
[20:01]Well, first of all, I like want to go take your class.
[20:04]Do you ever offer like classes to not people who are like enrolled?
[20:08]Yeah, you know, I used to teach in the United
[20:10]Secretary why when I had some amazing classes there, you know,
[20:14]one of the things about New York is that, you know, if you're living in Arkansas,
[20:18]Idaho, and you're teaching an MFA program, you're really the only game in town.
[20:22]Whereas in New York, there are also other opportunities to take, you know,
[20:25]really high level writing workshops that are not affiliated with MFA programs.
[20:29]And I, you know, I was once teaching at the Y at the same time as I was
[20:32]teaching at Sara Lawrence.
[20:33]And I would say my class at the Y was as strong as maybe even stronger than my MFA
[20:38]classes, Sara Lawrence.
[20:39]I had some amazing writers there.
[20:40]And you get a real diversity of experiences.
[20:42]You get people who, you know, who can't spend full time in a program,
[20:46]but we're happy to come once a week and who have interesting lies, you know,
[20:50]had people in their 70s and people in their 20s.
[20:52]So I think used to do that.
[20:53]Unfortunately, I don't do that any longer really to my own writing and running
[20:58]my own MFA program.
[20:59]There's no time for me to teach.
[21:00]Guy from my MFA students.
[21:02]So I occasionally do writing conferences, but in general,
[21:04]they want people I teach these days.
[21:06]Our graduates are in support and college.
[21:08]Okay. Well, I missed my moment.
[21:12]All right.
[21:12]Well, one piece of parting advice that everybody can use.
[21:15]What, what advice do you have aspiring authors?
[21:18]I just, I just, I mean, I mean, like advice to humans.
[21:20]Oh, I mean, if you have human advice, I'll take it,
[21:22]but I meant for aspiring authors.
[21:25]I think they get a dog.
[21:27]No, advice aspiring authors.
[21:30]I would say treated like a job.
[21:31]Don't wait for inspiration.
[21:32]You know, there's work that's inspired and there's work that's uninspired.
[21:36]But I don't think it correlates to how you're feeling when you're writing.
[21:39]Sometimes when I'm feeling most inspired,
[21:42]the work I produce is the worst.
[21:43]Because I fall in love with this sound of my own voice.
[21:46]Whereas when I'm feeling uninspired,
[21:48]I sometimes produce better work.
[21:50]You know, we tell our grad students at Brooklyn College
[21:52]that we want them to be writing 18 hours a week,
[21:55]three hours a day, six days a week.
[21:57]And I make my students keep, you know, keep a log of how many hours a minute
[22:02]they write each day.
[22:03]And then at the end of the week and workshop,
[22:05]they, you know, they tell us their minutes and they do it anonymously.
[22:10]And not everyone gets to 18 hours, but we all try.
[22:13]And, you know, there are people who count words
[22:15]and they're people who count time.
[22:17]And I'm a believer in counting time.
[22:20]Because I feel like time is neutral.
[22:22]Then all you can do, you know, sometimes you write three hours,
[22:25]you produce five words.
[22:26]And sometimes you write three hours and you produce 10 pages.
[22:29]But I feel like those five word days are investments in those 10 page days.
[22:34]And as I said before, time is neutral,
[22:36]that all you can ask of yourself is to put in that time, day in and day out.
[22:40]And hopefully if you treat it like a job,
[22:42]you know, they're no guarantees, but hopefully what you produce will eventually
[22:45]after eight years and 3,000 pages work.
[22:48]So as much as that people can be mystified writing
[22:51]and treat it like employment, like you put on your heart hat,
[22:54]you tie yourself to your seat and you,
[22:57]you know, you type away at your computer or you do it by hand.
[23:00]However you write to keep track of those,
[23:03]those hours and minutes.
[23:05]So I tell my students to keep track of the amount of time they spend on the internet.
[23:08]And because it's amazing how much time you can spend not writing.
[23:12]And I want them, we all fool ourselves.
[23:15]And so I guess I encourage myself and others to,
[23:18]to not fool yourselves and to, to put in the time and ask nothing more of yourself.
[23:24]Love it. Well, maybe in another eight years when you write your next book,
[23:28]you can come back on the show and maybe,
[23:30]maybe you'll shave off a year in time. Who knows, maybe you'll do it in seven.
[23:34]I hope so. I'm hoping to become more efficient.
[23:36]And some of my earlier books took fewer than eight years.
[23:39]So, I mean, I'm not going to be Joyce Carroll.
[23:42]It's writing a book a year.
[23:43]But my hope is I can write a book in three to five years.
[23:46]So whenever, whenever that time is, I'd be thrilled to come back
[23:48]because I'd be really enjoyed talking to you too.
[23:50]And I really, really loved your book.
[23:52]I mean, it was so good. I wish I'd read it earlier.
[23:54]But anyway, I read it now.
[23:57]Thank you. Good luck with hearing with your new publishing.
[23:59]Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
[24:01]All right. Have a great day. Okay.
[24:02]Bye bye.
[24:04]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:08]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[24:10]at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[24:13]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com
[24:15]and sign up for my virtual book club
[24:17]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[24:20]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[24:23]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.