Ann Patchett, THESE PRECIOUS DAYS: Essays
[0:01]Hi, I'm Sivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
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[0:37]Hi, hi, hello.
[0:38]Enjoy the show.
[0:40]I was honored to interview Anne Patrick about her most recent essay collection called These Precious Days.
[0:46]We did this as part of the Temple of Manual Striker Center's Women on the Move series,
[0:51]which I helped moderate and organize.
[0:54]So this is taken from that event, which was live at the time.
[0:58]And now I get to release it as a podcast.
[1:00]Anne Patrick, if you don't know, is the author of Seven Novels.
[1:04]The patron saint of liars, Taft, the magician's assistant, Bell Canto,
[1:09]Run, State of Wonder, and Commonwealth.
[1:11]She was the editor of Best American Short Stories 2006 and has written three books of nonfiction,
[1:17]Truth and Beauty, about her friendship with the writer Lucy Greeley,
[1:20]which I tell her in this episode.
[1:21]And by the way, it's how I discovered Anne Patrick, and it's one of my favorites.
[1:24]What now, an expansion of her graduation address at Sarah Lawrence College.
[1:28]This is the story of a happy marriage, a collection of essays, examining the theme of commitment,
[1:32]and these precious days, essays on home, family, friendship, and writing.
[1:36]In 2019, she published her first children's book, Lam Slide, illustrated by Robin Priest Glasser.
[1:43]A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers Workshop.
[1:46]Patrick has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including England's Orange Prize,
[1:51]the Penn Faulkner Award, the Harold D. Versal Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
[1:56]The book sends Book of the Year, a Guggenheim Fellowship.
[1:59]The Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize, the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts,
[2:03]the American Bookseller Association's Most Engaging Author Award, and the Women's National Book Association's Award.
[2:10]Her books have been both New York Times' notable books and New York Times' bestsellers.
[2:14]Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages.
[2:17]In November 2011, she opened Parnassa's books in National Tennessee with her business partner Karen Hayes.
[2:23]She has since become a spokesperson for independent bookstores, championing books and bookstores on NPR, the Colbert Report, including the series finale,
[2:30]Oprah's Super Soul Sunday, the Martha Stewart Show, and the CBS Early Show among many others.
[2:35]Along with James Patterson, she was the honorary chair of World Book Night.
[2:39]In 2012, she was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
[2:44]I mean, when you find that out, I wonder what you do.
[2:46]I should have asked her about that.
[2:47]Anyway, Anne lives in Nashville with her husband Carl Van Daventer and their dog, Sparky.
[2:53]You can subscribe to her blog notes from Anne, which features book recommendations, exclusive commentary articles, and more.
[2:59]And you can follow Parnassa's books on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and the bookstore blog, using
[3:04]Hi, Zippy. Hi, Anne. Delighted to be chatting with you today. This is so fun.
[3:09]I'm so glad this all worked out. Thank you.
[3:12]And I'm particularly excited to discuss these precious days, where you tell us everything from the inspiration for this beautiful painting to your innermost secrets, perhaps the backstory of becoming an author.
[3:29]And give us examples of your abundance of caring for other people in the way that you nurture someone to illness. I mean, it's really amazing.
[3:39]So I don't have a property for this book.
[3:41]Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.
[3:43]It's so interesting when people say, oh, it's your innermost secrets.
[3:46]And I think yeah, it probably is, but I don't really have innermost secrets.
[3:50]Or my innermost secrets are pretty tame. So it doesn't seem like a big stretch.
[3:57]Of course, I've spoken to other authors on my podcast months and I have time to read books who say that the essays they write do not contain them.
[4:05]It's a very carefully curated extraction of the things that they want to share. Is that how you feel?
[4:10]Yeah. I mean, I think that everybody understands the lines, you know, what you can talk about and what you can't talk about.
[4:19]So people ask me a lot, you know, is this okay with your husband, is it okay with your family or friends that you're saying these things.
[4:26]And I think, oh yeah, because I mean, one, everybody reads anything that I write well before I publish it.
[4:32]I ask in advance, is this all right.
[4:35]And then after I write it, I give them a copy and we talk about it. So everything is cleared, everything's up front.
[4:42]But the secret is you only tell a fraction of what you know, so that when the person is reading it, they what they are thinking is oh, I'm so incredibly grateful that she didn't tell that story that she picked this little mild version of it.
[4:59]And it's it's not anything that I really set out to do, but instinctually I know where the lines are.
[5:06]Interesting. I read your book Truth and Beauty that was actually the first book of yours I ever read whenever I came out and that made me follow you ever since and inhale many other things that you wrote, of course.
[5:16]And you're of course all your work with Parnas's bookstore in Nashville. So I was really surprised in this book to hear you describe yourself as someone with low energy.
[5:26]And because from all that I had seen, I would have thought differently, you said in here in the book, sometimes I think about people in terms of units of energy.
[5:35]Andre Preven must have come into this world a thousand times more energy than I did or else he must have marshalled his resources much more effectively.
[5:42]I have just enough energy to write, keep up with the house, be a decent friend, a decent daughter and sister in life.
[5:48]And you talk about this in the in your discussion of not having children.
[5:52]And part of not wanting children has always been the certainty that I didn't have the energy for it. And so I had to make a choice, the choice between children and writing.
[6:00]So talk to me about this lack of energy. I don't know. I don't buy it.
[6:05]You know, it really is true. I mean, I don't mean physically like I'm a perfectly perky person.
[6:13]But when I look at my friends who have accomplished so much and they have children, you know, my, my best friend here in Nashville is a woman named Judy Lewis, who's a biomedical engineer, who has three sons.
[6:28]And she patents brain surgery techniques for a living. Okay.
[6:33]And, and does more good in the community than anyone I know. And, and so I do always look at myself up against other people. And I think I write books.
[6:45]I do a good bit of writing. I co on a bookstore. That's really nice.
[6:50]But then when you factor in children or a nine to five job or an eight to seven job, which I don't have. I mean, I don't take a salary at the bookstore. I'm there a lot, but it's, I'm not on the schedule. I don't have to stand behind the cash register.
[7:06]I look at what other people accomplish. And I feel like I've come up short, but I also will tell you. And this is something that just always makes me feel so much better.
[7:16]Yo, yama is a friend of mine. Now, that doesn't put me in a small category because yoyo is a friend of everyone that yoyo meets.
[7:24]But we were having breakfast one day a couple of years ago. He was doing concert in Nashville. And then he always wants to go out afterwards.
[7:31]Because yoyo can stay up and party until two o'clock in the morning, which I cannot. So I said, you know, I won't go out with him. I did that once.
[7:38]It's like, I won't go out at night. It's too much for me. But he said, you know, come to the hotel and we'll have breakfast. And he said to me, I am the laziest person I know.
[7:49]Yo, yama who just is on the road 300 nights a year. And he's not just playing better than anyone else.
[7:57]But but bringing peace to the planet, he's he's involved in more real and important piece initiatives than anyone I can imagine things of himself as the laziest person that he knows.
[8:12]So I wonder if that isn't the answer that once you start doing a lot of things, your field of vision opens up and you just know how much more you should be doing.
[8:25]And you know how you're coming up short. That's what it is.
[8:32]I mean, I guess if we measure ourselves against everybody else all the time, like they don't always be people.
[8:38]Don't be silly. Don't be all the time.
[8:40]I mean,
[8:42]Is that the problem? Should we just talk about that for an hour? We could.
[8:46]I literally, I wrote my senior thesis on this about like social comparison theory and how it applies to eating because like people just continually compare themselves to everybody else.
[8:56]And I was trying to prove that well, anyway, this is so off topic, but I was trying to prove that people with more depression and eating
[9:02]disorders had a higher likelihood of comparing what they ate because like I was always comparing like what I was always looking on everybody's plate all the time.
[9:10]I mean, I still am like, what are you doing? What is it?
[9:13]And perhaps actually that is so interesting because the only time in my life that I ever had a problem with food because I've just I come from a family that isn't interested in food.
[9:24]We don't mourn with food. We don't celebrate with food. We're just not really food people. But when I was in college, when I was eating with groups of people three meals a day and then suddenly I was like, what are you eating?
[9:36]I think I want to eat that too. Yeah, that's not good. That's really true. But an incredibly interesting thing to study and think about.
[9:44]That's interesting too because of how you talked about your mother being so beautiful.
[9:48]And I also think I think that's like a whole category of people and slash memoirs women who grew up thinking their mother was so much more beautiful than they are.
[9:57]Right. It's like a thing.
[10:00]And how people are still saying that, or until, you know, recently that you looked like your mother,
[10:06]be with sisters or, you know, and then you had that funny line about the phone that
[10:11]let me find out.
[10:12]The man who said you were doing something wrong.
[10:15]Oh, that's right.
[10:16]Yeah.
[10:17]The man handed us back our driver's licenses and looked at me.
[10:20]What are you doing wrong?
[10:21]I laughed.
[10:22]You're supposed to ask her what she's doing, right?
[10:24]Yeah.
[10:25]And he said, no, no, I know what I said.
[10:27]What are you doing wrong?
[10:28]Now, my sister and I talk about this all the time.
[10:31]My sister and I are perfectly, perfectly decent-looking, regular-looking humans.
[10:37]But our parents are really spectacular.
[10:43]We just had parents like movie stars.
[10:45]And it is the case, and it is still the case.
[10:48]My mother is 84.
[10:50]And people are still stopping her in the grocery store saying, sorry, you're the most
[10:54]beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life.
[10:56]I mean, it just doesn't change.
[10:59]My sister and I used to sit around and say, what's going to happen when mom isn't the
[11:03]most beautiful woman in the room anymore?
[11:05]Is this going to just devastate her?
[11:07]I still don't know because she still is the most beautiful woman in the room.
[11:12]Yeah.
[11:13]I mean-
[11:14]But it's great.
[11:15]I mean, that was actually really good for writing in a very funny way because I looked
[11:21]at my mother and I thought, I'm forget it.
[11:25]I'm not going to compete.
[11:26]I'm not-
[11:27]That's like, that is a contest I'll never win.
[11:30]So I grew up as somebody who, unlike my mother who gets up every morning and spends
[11:37]45 minutes putting her face on and picking out her clothes and looking amazing if she's
[11:42]going nowhere, I'm somebody who's never died my hair.
[11:48]I never wear makeup.
[11:51]It's hysterical that I have worn more makeup during the pandemic because I do feel that
[11:56]it is important to put some eye makeup on before you get on zoom.
[12:01]And then as soon as this is over, I will run upstairs and wash my face, although if I put glasses
[12:06]on what difference does it make, you know, my mother wears contacts, like, why are you wearing
[12:10]glasses?
[12:11]Because I can't see and I don't want to stick my finger in my eye.
[12:15]Your eyes look great.
[12:17]You did a great job.
[12:19]Like, if you take all of that, if you just take away beauty as a woman, it really opens
[12:24]up a lot of time in the day.
[12:27]And I like sort of being this person, especially for the young woman who come in the store
[12:32]and they want to be writers and they look at me and they think, well, you know, she's
[12:36]nothing special and look, she's done so well.
[12:40]That's interesting.
[12:41]Yeah.
[12:42]That's funny because I've never, my mother is, she has always put together, she'll dry
[12:46]her hair for 45 minutes.
[12:48]She's, you know, all this.
[12:49]And I'm like, no, no, no, five minutes max to get dressed ready out the door.
[12:54]I often have my hair up in the freezing cold wet and it's funny how it's daughters.
[12:59]There's so much that we do that we don't even realize and direct reaction to whatever
[13:02]I'm asking whether the same or the opposite.
[13:05]Right.
[13:06]And then it skips generations.
[13:08]My grandmother was very plain.
[13:10]My mother was very beautiful.
[13:13]My sister and I are plain and my sister's daughter, no doubt, will spend her life worrying
[13:19]about beauty.
[13:20]Interesting.
[13:21]All right.
[13:22]So I guess half of us are going to be, okay, you know, I don't know.
[13:27]And actually I found it super interesting that you talked to us in the book about your
[13:31]mom after your essay came about your three dads and how her marriage is because you
[13:37]set up all this intrigue, like, well, who was this woman and what was up with her that
[13:41]she was moving her family to Nashville and getting divorced and getting divorced again and
[13:46]what was up with, what's her story?
[13:48]And then you give us these little inklings more and more about her as your essays go on.
[13:54]Was that a strategic decision?
[13:56]It's not a strategic decision because I don't, I sort of just write one essay at a time.
[14:02]But what's interesting is how it, it does all string together because of course it's
[14:07]all me.
[14:08]Right.
[14:09]I'm not thinking, I'm going to put this little egg in here and then three essays later
[14:14]I'll put another egg in.
[14:16]But that is the way the information comes together and it becomes very cumulative.
[14:21]I like to say my mother is Helen of Troy.
[14:25]Entire civilizations were lost because of her.
[14:29]Oh my goodness.
[14:31]What a character.
[14:32]You have said in the essays that you think your greater contribution than all of your
[14:39]work is how you've affected your community by starting the bookstore.
[14:44]Tell me a little bit more about that and how did that, when did that come about?
[14:48]How did you decide, how did you overcome some of the obstacles of owning a bookstore and
[14:53]just decide to do it and what has been like the greatest part of it?
[14:59]So we just had our 10th anniversary at Pernassus Books which is unbelievable.
[15:04]The bookstore is closed.
[15:05]We had one large independent Davis kid which became part of the Joseph Beth chain out
[15:10]of Lexington.
[15:12]We had a borders, both of those stores were 30,000 square feet.
[15:16]They both closed within six months of each other.
[15:19]Everybody was just wailing and saying, we have to have an independent bookstore.
[15:23]We were left with a books a million and a Barnes and Noble that was about 20 minutes
[15:28]outside of Nashville.
[15:30]Everybody wanted a little independent bookstore.
[15:32]Nobody seemed to be doing it.
[15:34]I didn't want to go into retail.
[15:37]That was never my dream to open a bookstore.
[15:40]But I was introduced to Karen Hayes by mutual friend and we met on April 30th of 2011
[15:49]and we opened the store on November 15th.
[15:52]So to say that we didn't have time to think about it, it was just crazy.
[15:59]We just had lunch and we were like, okay, let's go for it.
[16:02]And I said, let's partner, I'll pay for everything and you do all the work.
[16:08]And Karen is our in-store manager.
[16:12]She's the owner manager.
[16:14]She, like, I would say Karen and I make a decision to hire Karen to run the store.
[16:20]And that's the way it works.
[16:22]It couldn't possibly work without her as she's just great.
[16:27]She runs a tight ship and the thing, there's so many great things about it, but I never
[16:32]thought about it.
[16:33]I just was like, oh, this has to be done.
[16:36]Somebody has to do it.
[16:37]I guess I have to do it.
[16:39]I love the staff.
[16:41]It is like the bar at Cheers.
[16:45]It is the place that I can go that everybody goes where everybody knows your name and
[16:49]everybody's happy to see you.
[16:52]We all love the same things.
[16:54]We're always talking about what books that we like.
[16:57]Oh, I love this little question that's just popped up.
[16:59]It says, is the bookstore able to make a profit?
[17:03]Yes, it is.
[17:04]Yes, we're doing fine.
[17:07]People who own independent bookstores never want to admit that they're okay.
[17:12]It's a very E or group.
[17:14]It's like an entire collection of E or is getting together because they're so afraid
[17:20]to say that everything's fine, but everything's fine, and our bookstore is 5,000 square
[17:26]feet.
[17:27]We had 60,000 square feet of profitable book selling retail space in Nashville.
[17:33]It went away.
[17:34]It was replaced by 5,000 square feet, and Nashville has gotten so much bigger in the
[17:39]last 10 years.
[17:41]We're it.
[17:42]There are some great use bookstores.
[17:44]This is a little tiny new bookstore on the other side of town, but we are this great
[17:51]independent bookstore.
[17:53]I love our staff.
[17:54]I love having my friends in one place, and I love being able to recommend books to people.
[17:59]All my life, I have forced my friends and my family to read the books I love, and I'm sure
[18:05]you know this better than anyone, but I always say the contract between a reader and
[18:10]a book is not complete until you can take that book that you love and say to someone,
[18:16]oh my gosh, you know, this is the book for you.
[18:19]I finished reading Kate Bowler's new book and I loved that book.
[18:24]Yes.
[18:25]Yes.
[18:26]I recommend that a lot because I'm going to be on her podcast tomorrow, I'm such a good student
[18:31]that I read a bunch of Kate Bowler books in order to be on her podcast, and I was talking
[18:38]to my friend Judy last night, and I was like, oh, I've got to drive this book over
[18:43]to you.
[18:44]You're going to love this book.
[18:45]Oh, Margaret, you're going to love this book, and that's when a book is finally done
[18:51]for me.
[18:52]Yeah.
[18:53]I literally, I underlined when you said that exact thing because I feel the same way.
[18:57]I think that's why I recommend books like night and day, right?
[19:00]It's like, there's something about it that's just so captivating.
[19:05]Yes.
[19:06]I was trying to find that goal.
[19:07]Anyway, it's here.
[19:08]Kate Bowler.
[19:09]Her cure for being human is the name of that book.
[19:12]But I think that when I was young and I originally got into teaching because I thought teaching
[19:17]is the best way to spread the joy of literature and the love of books.
[19:22]To which I now think, well, yes and no, it was, you know, like I was teaching a survey
[19:28]to literature class in Iowa, basically, if you were an English major, you automatically
[19:32]placed out in my class.
[19:34]So enforcing people to read books, they don't want to read.
[19:38]It's so amazing to have a bookstore where people come in, not just from Nashville, but
[19:44]from all over the country and sometimes all over the world, to say, you know, hey, Ann,
[19:48]what do you want me to read?
[19:51]What do you think I should read?
[19:53]There is nothing in the world that lights me up more than that.
[19:57]And I can just blather on and on and on.
[20:00]about books I love all day long.
[20:02]Yes, me too.
[20:04]We should ask you that.
[20:05]We should just do that.
[20:07]We should have just like a rapid fire podcast episode
[20:11]where we're yelling out books,
[20:13]like playing a game of spit in the ocean
[20:15]just fastest.
[20:16]Let's do it.
[20:17]Come on, mom, send out 10 to read books.
[20:18]We'll do it that way.
[20:19]I'll release this.
[20:20]And then that'll be a companion.
[20:21]Yeah, you had this, I found this section
[20:24]where you were comparing your love
[20:26]to have proselytizing on behalf of books with the Hari Krishna.
[20:30]And you said, I asked, this is the Hari Krishna
[20:32]at the airport or something.
[20:33]I asked him about his life,
[20:34]and we talked for more than an hour while we waited.
[20:36]He said, imagine loving God so much.
[20:39]You'd be willing to stand in an airport day after day
[20:42]trying to tell people what it was like to love God,
[20:44]to feel so loved by him.
[20:46]What if this joy you felt, this love was so great
[20:48]that you wanted to share it with everyone,
[20:50]but they all rushed right by you
[20:51]looking in the other direction.
[20:53]All these years later, it's still the best description
[20:55]of how I feel about books.
[20:57]I would stand in an airport to tell people
[21:00]about how much I love books, reading them, writing them,
[21:02]making sure other people felt comfortable reading,
[21:05]writing them.
[21:05]I love that.
[21:07]Yeah, it's really true.
[21:10]I mean, I feel very, very moved by getting to do that.
[21:14]Someone is now again saying, please repeat the title
[21:16]of the Kate Buller book.
[21:18]No cure for being human.
[21:23]I actually, you can listen to my podcast with Kate Buller.
[21:25]If you want to hear even more from her perspective about it,
[21:28]maybe I'll put the link in the chat leaders.
[21:30]Oh, please do.
[21:31]I would love to hear that.
[21:33]That's great.
[21:34]Yeah, she was great.
[21:35]She was really amazing.
[21:38]So one of the things that you say in the book also
[21:42]is about your dad, which has been quoted now widely,
[21:45]but I was kind of disappointed because I was thought
[21:46]it was something that I had found you really unique.
[21:48]And then I was like, oh, the New York Times already picked this up,
[21:50]but that your dad wanted you to be a dental hygienist.
[21:53]And wanted you to pursue the practical,
[21:56]which is something that many people's parents do still, right?
[22:01]Put away the creativity and all of that.
[22:03]There's this new book coming out.
[22:04]You probably already read it by Yiv Rodsky, who wrote fair play,
[22:08]which was about gender division and the way
[22:09]where it's coming out called unicorn space.
[22:11]And in it, she talks about how we all have to have something
[22:16]in our lives or we're pursuing something creatively
[22:18]that also gives meaning.
[22:20]And you can share with the world at large.
[22:22]And so oftentimes we get into these jobs, which are like jobs,
[22:26]and they neglect this huge side of us.
[22:29]And so people think, oh, I should be happy,
[22:31]but they really can't be because they're not accessing this place.
[22:34]So you turned it on its head and decided,
[22:37]you know what, I'm bypassing that whole should do.
[22:40]And I'm going to go straight for what I know I need deep down.
[22:43]I need to do, which I think most people consider very brave, right?
[22:47]When in fact, it's like essential that we all dip into that.
[22:50]What do you think?
[22:51]But, in fact, it's also really stupid.
[22:54]And I have thought so much about this
[22:58]when I've been doing interviews
[23:01]because a lot of people have brought that up.
[23:02]Oh, your dad wanted you to be a dental hygienist.
[23:05]And it's like a laugh line.
[23:07]And the more I talk about it and think about it,
[23:10]and my dad came from such a poor family.
[23:14]His parents came over, his mom was Irish,
[23:17]his father was English, they came
[23:19]during the depression to California to look for jobs.
[23:23]Like, if you can think of anything sadder than that,
[23:26]they were like, oh, keys, but from another country.
[23:29]They had seven kids.
[23:31]My dad was the first kid to be born in this country.
[23:34]My grandfather was a machinist at Columbia Pictures
[23:38]and he lost his job during a strike.
[23:42]And after that, he was the janitor at the LA Times.
[23:46]And my grandmother worked in the lunchroom
[23:50]at the LA Times.
[23:51]And my father worked in a liquor store
[23:54]until he finally got a job as a police officer.
[23:57]You know, they weren't safe, they were poor.
[24:01]And my father wanted me to be safe.
[24:05]And I have to say, when I meet a kid who says,
[24:10]oh, I'm going to be a writer or I'm going to be a movie star
[24:13]or I'm going to be a ballerina,
[24:14]I mean, there is part of me that's like,
[24:18]I want you to be safe because I know what the odds are
[24:22]on this, even if you're the best,
[24:26]it is so hard to make it in this career.
[24:32]And what it takes is so much more than talent.
[24:36]It takes the ability to just get kicked and get up
[24:40]and get kicked and get up.
[24:43]And to realize that no one cares
[24:45]and you're going to have to do it because you love it
[24:48]and you want to do it.
[24:49]We have a young woman who works at the bookstore, Lindsay.
[24:53]And Lindsay came to us out of college.
[24:57]She tried to go to graduate school.
[25:00]She wanted to get an MFA.
[25:01]She applied to a ton of schools she didn't get in.
[25:05]The next year she and I worked on her stories all year.
[25:08]She worked so hard.
[25:09]She applied to all these schools she got into one school.
[25:12]She wrote, and she went away.
[25:14]She wrote a novel.
[25:15]She sent it to all of these agents.
[25:18]No agent would take her on.
[25:20]She rewrote the novel so many times.
[25:23]She ended up coming back to Parnassus,
[25:25]back to work for us, which has got to really be hard, right?
[25:29]You know, to have all these dreams make this full circle
[25:32]back to your job out of college.
[25:34]She got an agent.
[25:36]She got one agent.
[25:37]She just sold her book to Double Day.
[25:40]And I mean, I could cry when I think about it.
[25:45]And I said to her, you know, all the people
[25:48]that knew you along the way are going to say,
[25:50]oh, Lindsay, she wrote her first novel and sold it to Double Day.
[25:54]And they're never going to know how many times you got kicked
[25:59]and nobody cared, but you cared.
[26:02]You know, you pulled yourself up.
[26:05]You listened to what people said.
[26:07]You did the revisions.
[26:09]When that didn't work, you listened again.
[26:11]You did the revisions.
[26:13]And I'll tell you those are the people that make it.
[26:15]Those are the people.
[26:17]And when I say that thing about approval,
[26:19]you know, that you just need to give up on approval.
[26:23]And that's what Lindsay did because all these places,
[26:27]all the schools and the agents and the publishers
[26:30]that rejected her, you're looking for approval.
[26:34]And they're saying, no, I don't approve of you.
[26:36]I don't like your work.
[26:38]I don't believe in what you're doing.
[26:40]No, not interested.
[26:42]And then she says to herself, but I'm still interested.
[26:46]And not because I want to be a writer,
[26:49]but because I am a writer.
[26:51]And I'm going to keep writing.
[26:52]I'm going to keep doing and being who I am.
[26:56]How terrifying would it be to have a child who was doing that?
[27:00]How painful would it be to see your child kicked again and again?
[27:05]And you can't help them.
[27:07]So yeah, you would want them to be,
[27:10]you would want them to be a dental hygienist.
[27:12]You'd want them to be safe.
[27:14]Somebody just asked what the name of Lindsay's book is,
[27:17]I won't tell you because it's not coming out
[27:20]until next year.
[27:21]And it hasn't been announced yet.
[27:24]So I want to tell you because it's a really good title,
[27:28]but I'm not going to tell you.
[27:32]I had that same situation.
[27:34]You know, I mentioned to you as before we got on.
[27:36]Like it's taken me 20 years to sell this memoir.
[27:38]I've been working on it and it's finally coming out.
[27:40]But I have had many crying on the floor
[27:43]literally having to push myself off the floor
[27:46]and being like, it's just not going to happen.
[27:48]I don't know.
[27:48]It's just not going to happen for me.
[27:50]I guess it just won't.
[27:51]And then getting back to it because which way is there?
[27:54]This is what I do.
[27:55]So that's probably, the world doesn't care
[27:58]if you publish your memoir.
[27:59]The world doesn't care if I ever publish another book.
[28:03]It really doesn't.
[28:04]And people are like, oh, well,
[28:05]when's your next book coming out?
[28:06]And I always think, well, what about to kill a mockingbird?
[28:10]We got along just fine with one book.
[28:12]It, if anybody who's involved in literature,
[28:16]it's a privilege.
[28:17]It is a privilege.
[28:19]If you are writing books, it means that you have food
[28:22]and shelter and you're OK.
[28:26]And if you're crying on the floor and I'm crying on the floor,
[28:29]because it's painful and impossible
[28:31]and our feelings are hurt, no one cares.
[28:34]The only person who has to care is us, you know?
[28:39]Because it's our privilege to make this work.
[28:42]No, it's true.
[28:42]It is very, it's true.
[28:44]You're absolutely right.
[28:45]And I didn't mean to sound like, oh, what was me about it?
[28:47]No, no, I mean, oh, whoa, is us many, many days.
[28:52]Whoa, is us.
[28:54]Whoa, is Lindsey.
[28:55]But so what, you know, you just have to keep getting up.
[28:59]And actually, that was something
[29:01]that my father was really terrific at teaching,
[29:05]because my father was from that school.
[29:08]He was somebody who just got up and went to work.
[29:11]He was tough as nails.
[29:13]And if that was my inheritance and not like,
[29:17]you are a beautiful flower.
[29:20]You are making part in the world.
[29:22]We applaud your dad, applauds your creativity.
[29:27]He was just like, get over yourself.
[29:28]Get off the floor.
[29:29]Get back to work.
[29:31]And that's what you need.
[29:32]Wow.
[29:33]It's true.
[29:34]It's the combination.
[29:35]Yeah, nobody wins the contest.
[29:38]They don't enter.
[29:39]You have to just keep entering over and over in any way,
[29:42]anyway.
[29:43]Yeah, I love, I actually, I love that.
[29:45]I always say, you don't play, you don't win.
[29:48]No, no balls, no hits.
[29:51]You've got to just keep pitching it out there.
[29:53]True.
[29:54]Sometimes easier said than done.
[29:55]But I'll always say.
[29:56]Now I want to ask you the question that, because I am curious.
[30:00]If you're writing something else, but it's only because I think when there's such a good thing,
[30:04]you just want more of it, right? You you want like you just want to know like what what else can come
[30:10]out of this this typewriter or this mind or not the typewriter anymore, but that's going to entertain
[30:16]me. Right? I think the question is actually when people ask it, it's more of a selfish thing. When can
[30:20]I ingest your content? Not like what do you up to? You know, I and when people say, well, what are you
[30:26]writing now? My answer is, what am I writing now? I'm writing my name. I'm signing my name.
[30:32]That's what I'm doing. I am signing my name. When I leave here today, I will go back to the
[30:38]bookstore because we just got in 642 books that have to be signed today. I'm writing my name.
[30:45]I have signed this book either the physical book, tip sheets or book plates somewhere between 25
[30:52]and 30,000 times. I have signed my name in since this book was in pre-production. So that a friend
[30:59]of mine in Bozeman, Montana sent me a picture the other day of her holding up a book in her tiny
[31:06]store saying, yes, I do. I don't even know how this is signed. It just was. Anyway, that's a tip sheet.
[31:12]That is a tip sheet. So I signed 20,000 of those and then they they come in boxes and I sit there
[31:21]and sign my name until I'm vomit. And then I nail those boxes back and they put them into the
[31:26]book. The tip sheets are sewn into the books. So this is this is so crazy. The interesting thing
[31:33]about me is I am this weird intersection of every angle of publishing. I'm a writer. I'm a book
[31:40]seller, but I know everything about the business. So hey, the book hit the list on number seven,
[31:46]New York Times. Woo-hoo, great, right? Does that have to do with me writing a great book? No,
[31:52]that has to do with me signing my name 25 to 30,000 times because if you want to order a copy
[32:02]of Ampatch, it's new book. You want a little bookstore. You want to order a copy of the book.
[32:07]But you want one that signed. You can't get it unless you order a carton of 12, right?
[32:13]So normally a little bookstore would order two copies of an Ampatch at new book,
[32:19]but they want them signed. So they order a carton. And that, my friend, is how your book hits the
[32:26]list, not because you've written something brilliant, but because you've signed them in advance
[32:32]and the stores are willing to take a chance to get the signed copies because people like to buy
[32:38]signed copies, especially around the holidays. Wow. Yeah. It's dirty. It's really just not
[32:45]what you think. You have to I started my own publishing company called Divi Books. We have to like
[32:50]talk. I need all of your tips. I mean, all of the secrets. That was amazing. Oh my gosh. Well,
[32:56]you're obviously just super. I mean, that's the thing about the book industry right now, right?
[33:01]You have to also be a marketer. You have to always be thinking, why do you think people like
[33:06]signed copies so much? Like, what is it about that? What is it about signed copies? And yet,
[33:11]I, I, I, I fall for it. I bought a copy. I bought a signed tip-in copy of Sophia Lorenz memoir
[33:22]several years ago. I don't know why because I had this moment. I was like, Sophia Lorenz
[33:28]touched this book. It's not even that some rabid Sophia Lorenz fan. I just thought, oh, that's
[33:33]really cool. There is something about it. It is wrong. It is absolutely wrong. Because anything
[33:43]that's good or interesting about me, you already got it. It's in the book. But there is that
[33:49]connection. Somebody just put that up. You know, it gives us that feeling of connection. And it is
[33:55]really true. You just think, oh, this is a little bit special. And so however many times I might
[34:02]think I'm not doing this anymore, the time comes. And you're like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm going to do
[34:07]it. I'm going to do it. Yeah. A signed copy is part of you. No, but the better part of me is
[34:15]actually my book. My, my mother just wrote that by the way. I was my mom. Good job. Good daughter,
[34:24]good mothering mother. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't
[34:32]Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have
[34:37]Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book
[34:42]club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan
[34:47]at Textures Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing
[34:51]this fantastic intro and out trim music.