Catherine Newman, WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS: A Novel
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast that you're listening to right now.
[0:07]Thank you so much. Called moms don't have time to read books.
[0:10]It is a daily podcast, 365 days a year, and each day we talk to an author about all of the things related to their career,
[0:18]their book, their life, and more in 30 minutes or less because who has time?
[0:22]I am now an author myself, although I wasn't when I started this podcast, and you can get my new memoir,
[0:28]bookends, a memoir of love, loss, and literature, wherever books are sold starting July 1st, and my children's book prints is charming.
[0:36]You can learn more about me at Zivi Owens.com, but really you're here to learn more about the authors and that is what we're going to do.
[0:43]Also, be sure to check out all the other podcasts in the Z cast podcast network.
[0:48]You can learn more at zcastnetwork.com and definitely check out those shows as well.
[0:58]Catherine Newman is the author of We All Want Impossible Things, a novel.
[1:02]I absolutely love this book and have been posting about it right and left on Instagram and I'm just a massive fan.
[1:08]Catherine is the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdie, the middle grade novel one mixed up night,
[1:15]the kids craft book stitch camp, the how-to books for kids, how to be a person, and what can I say, and the new novel we all want impossible things.
[1:23]By the way, she was on this podcast for How to Be a Person, which is a fabulous episode to listen to and also a fantastic gift, which I gave many people for the holidays last year.
[1:33]She edits the nonprofit kids cooking magazine chop chop, writes the etiquette column for real simple magazine and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Oprah magazine parents magazine cup of Joe and many other publications.
[1:45]She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her family.
[1:47]Welcome back to mom's time to read books. Oh, you have my book. You're so sweet. Catherine, thanks for coming on for all We All Want Impossible Things.
[1:55]Thank you for having me, Zippy.
[1:57]As you know, I've been like over the moon excited. This book is so good. I posted all about it. I'm recommending it right and left.
[2:04]It's so good from page one. You just open it up. I could not stop reading.
[2:09]I stayed up late. I woke up early. I love that feeling so much. So thank you for giving that to me.
[2:16]Thank you. I can't even tell you I Zippy emailed me and I it just made my whole weekend. It was the loveliest thing. Thank you.
[2:24]Well, I couldn't I couldn't stop and now of course so many people who so many other authors are such huge fans of yours too. I don't many people I've had on the podcast are like, right. I love it too. It's amazing.
[2:35]And I'm like, Oh, I didn't know. I don't like walked into this inside a recircle of author love for your book.
[2:42]No, either.
[2:43]You wrote books about loss. You and me. Yes. Yeah. I know. And thank you for saying that in your, you know, back about, but this was just the way you did the humor and I think it was the humor.
[3:02]You're so funny at like finding every moment that could have something comical, not like slapstick of course, but just in the darkest of times finding the little is bit of light and and really brightening it up.
[3:16]That sounds cheesy, but well, why don't you why don't we go back. Why don't you tell listeners what we all want impossible things is about.
[3:23]Thank you for that about it being funny by the way, because of course I live for that. I mean, as also as Jews like that's why we're still here.
[3:32]Right. I mean, it is like survival mechanism. It's so deep.
[3:40]And I'm just thinking now about the time that my husband and I were in couples therapy and the therapist said really dead pan like I see that humor is an idiom for you of like
[3:51]humor is an idiom for us.
[3:57]Okay. What's this book about I've been calling it a sleazy hospice friendship romance.
[4:06]Like that genre, it's about a woman whose best friend is dying of cancer and because of some practical considerations that friend comes to die in hospice near where the narrator is living.
[4:24]The narrator is kind of there's it's split, I guess, between hospice and the narrator's sort of semi grown daughters and the narrator sort of fucked up marriage. Sorry.
[4:38]And I feel like what it really is a book about and I know I was thinking about talking to you about it and how much this is like the thing that speaks to you.
[4:50]So is that I was trying to capture in a book what it feels like to be blown apart by grief.
[4:59]And the way that on the one hand, it's like an experience you're not sure you'll survive.
[5:07]And on the other hand, the kind of love it opens you up to which again, not to keep bringing up your book but your book is so twin grief and expanding that feeling of like opening up to the world because you've been blown apart.
[5:26]And so that's what the book is about, I guess.
[5:29]Well, that's such a cool image. I mean, I'm thinking of like if this isn't going to make any sense, but in my head it's making sense visually that if something is blown apart you actually have like more surface area.
[5:39]Yeah.
[5:42]Okay, like exponentially you can connect more you can have so much more out there because instead of staying in you have all these chances for magnetism and connection and everything.
[5:55]Totally, I love that image rate and even as you were saying that I was thinking that despite the fact that I keep saying it's about this person being blown apart.
[6:03]When you were saying that I was also picturing like I totally say but like a G.
[6:09]You hold this thing like you hold your heart together for as long as you can in your life.
[6:16]And then it cracks and then there's like a lot there.
[6:22]And I think people who have been cracked open feel this compulsion to let people know if this could happen at any minute.
[6:30]I feel like this is the genesis for so much literature. It's like, wait, you guys, did you know that this could happen to you at any second.
[6:40]Well, I'm going to just tell you how it happened to me and maybe that will like get through and unless it's happened, no matter how much you read and how empathetic you can be to somebody else's plight.
[6:52]I don't necessarily think it works.
[6:55]I know it's like until you've got your heart broken. You don't understand country music.
[7:03]And then the first radio after your heart's been broken. You're like, oh, I understand all of these songs because I think what you're getting at too is that
[7:16]there's nothing that feels more singular than getting your heart broken either from grief or from, you know, loss of a relationship.
[7:25]And it is also the thing that most connects you to every other person to play that everybody ends up grieving like there's not a person who will escape that.
[7:36]I do think there's something about that feeling. When my, so this based loosely on a real story, which is my best friend, I'm hospice.
[7:48]Eight years ago, thank you.
[7:50]And I remember having this experience of being on the train coming home. I've been with her and it's coming home for a while and thinking on the train like every one of these people is going to grieve someday.
[8:03]Like already being in that grief moment and realizing that it was one of the most, you know, besides death itself or birth.
[8:10]It's like one of the most universal human experiences, but when you're in it, it is so singular and I totally agree that the compulsion is huge.
[8:23]So it's too, I think it would almost be too hard to go about your everyday life if everybody was prepping for like having anticipatory grief essentially.
[8:35]Like if everybody was like, oh my gosh, everyone in this household is going to die. Like I don't think anybody would be able to like put their clothes on and run out and do 27 errands.
[8:44]But then there are times where you don't like in your book to because there's these, this like grief on grief on grief because of the way there's a number of years where you experience an almost unfathomable amount of loss.
[9:08]You know, where you are living in loss and you are aware of loss all around you and it is so crushing and it gives everything that crazy precious glow, you know that like in your book.
[9:22]It's like the kids and you fall in love with Kyle and everything is kind of glossed with the knowledge that's twinned with it that you could lose all of it, you know, I mean feel that so precious, but I agree right you have to compartmentalize, but sometimes in your life, you know, and it looks like, you know, I mean part of why I fictionalize this which, you know, I know you did it and it's like just different.
[9:49]I try to that way too.
[9:54]And I'd be curious to read that because I feel like I was so.
[10:00]like struck by the courage of not fictionalizing, you know,
[10:04]because it's so laid bare.
[10:07]And I also felt that I was very vulnerable writing
[10:11]a fictional book, but I think for me,
[10:13]the fiction of it allowed me to like cheat a little
[10:18]in the ways that I was trying to express some things.
[10:21]So her, the main character, you know,
[10:24]she has the thing she calls a falling in love disorder.
[10:27]And that is a thing that I suffer from really quite acutely.
[10:31]I have a massive falling in love disorder.
[10:33]And I do volunteer in hospice.
[10:35]And I do follow them with every single person.
[10:38]They're like madly in love.
[10:39]And I don't even mean platonically.
[10:41]I'm like romantically in love with everybody in the hospital.
[10:44]And I feel like I, so, but in order,
[10:48]I feel like for that to come out on the page,
[10:53]like some of that is very loud in the novel,
[10:57]I want to say, you know that she's so slutty
[11:00]and that that's like a way of describing something for me.
[11:04]That's very real.
[11:06]I didn't, I mean, I know she was,
[11:09]she had a lot of experience in partners,
[11:11]but I wouldn't have labeled her as slutty.
[11:13]I mean, there's such a judgment there.
[11:15]I know you're probably kidding.
[11:16]But like, you know, I was not like,
[11:18]I mean, the first time I was like,
[11:20]oh yeah, that's what we're gonna swear we're going here.
[11:23]I'm like, really, the gym coach or whatever,
[11:26]and I was like, all right, okay,
[11:28]did not see that one coming.
[11:31]So, you know, the talk, everyone I was like,
[11:35]I'm great, but I make it almost like,
[11:38]it's part of what makes this very sad topic fun, right?
[11:43]You're pairing like the most joyful things
[11:47]and the most pleasure you can get with like
[11:49]the most heartache you can get.
[11:51]And it's that juxtaposition, like you were saying,
[11:53]like with every little thing.
[11:55]Anyway, you also had something really interesting
[11:57]about the difference between loss
[11:59]and like the act of dying and the act of losing.
[12:02]I wonder if I could find it quickly.
[12:04]This is just an example of how funny you are.
[12:06]This is how you describe yourself,
[12:08]not yourself, the main character of the book,
[12:10]Edie and Ash, this is Edie.
[12:11]45 year old me, fresh off the school bus
[12:14]with my under eye bags and planter fasciitis
[12:17]and boos hanging down my torso,
[12:19]like beige, knee socks with no legs of them.
[12:23]That's so great.
[12:25]Oh my God, I know that was from the beginning.
[12:26]Hold on, let me find some.
[12:27]Oh, by the way, do they call it a day friend?
[12:29]Is that what they call a non-binary boyfriend
[12:31]or girlfriend?
[12:32]Is it a day friend or did you make that up?
[12:34]Well, some people do call a non-binary boyfriend
[12:39]or girlfriend that they friend,
[12:40]but I think that's slightly comedic
[12:42]and in fact, some people in my life
[12:45]have mixed feelings about me having used
[12:47]that expression.
[12:48]Oh, I'm not sure.
[12:49]Okay.
[12:50]And I know lots of non-binary boyfriends and girlfriends,
[12:54]but I'm not sure that's like a great thing.
[12:56]Okay, okay, I'll leave that out.
[12:58]You also have, I'm just gonna read a couple lines
[13:00]that I really like.
[13:01]You said, but sometimes I worried that marriage
[13:03]was just a series of these small deflations
[13:06]are dreams floating around invisibly
[13:08]near the ceiling like escaped gas.
[13:11]Oh, what a depiction of marriage.
[13:14]Sad.
[13:16]Then in the year you have, by the way,
[13:18]I am writing a book now called Blank
[13:20]about a woman writing a novel that is blank
[13:24]for the concept of it all.
[13:25]And like you literally wrote that in your book.
[13:28]The person was joking about it and I was like anyway.
[13:31]So I didn't steal it.
[13:32]It's already like, you know, 17.
[13:33]Yeah, you know, no worries.
[13:36]Oh my gosh, I can't find this line.
[13:38]Oh wait here, oh here it is.
[13:39]Well, here's something good anyway
[13:40]if it's not exactly.
[13:41]I'm gonna, I'm sorry, this is not organized process,
[13:45]but I have a few more.
[13:46]You say, she smiles.
[13:47]I know she says, this is so hard.
[13:49]I was just in the kitchen singing tradition
[13:51]and stress eating chocolate mini muffins.
[13:54]I hug her and tell her how amazing Ruth is.
[13:56]Ruth is one of the neighbor's neighboring rooms
[13:58]in the hospice and we wish each other luck.
[14:00]I pulled the door closed on my way out, everywhere.
[14:02]Behind closed doors, people are dying
[14:05]and people are grieving them.
[14:06]It's the most basic fact about human life tied
[14:08]with birth, I guess, but it's so startling too.
[14:11]Everyone dies and yet it's unendorable.
[14:14]There is so much love inside of us.
[14:16]How do we become worthy of it?
[14:17]And then where does it go?
[14:19]A worldwide crescendo of grief sustained day after day.
[14:22]And only one tiny note of it is mine.
[14:26]You love that.
[14:28]Like props for us to just be two people
[14:31]writing about fiddler on the roof.
[14:33]I, that's true too.
[14:37]I know, it's like this is amazing.
[14:39]By the way, that's true.
[14:41]I know.
[14:42]We're like, well, we can survive anything.
[14:46]When you have the moment where they're singing,
[14:48]do you love me?
[14:49]Yes, oh my God, the song to each other.
[14:51]Oh my God.
[14:53]I had tears in my eyes.
[14:55]Anyway, I thought you had, and maybe this is not you,
[14:58]but I'm always positive it was,
[15:00]or you define the difference between you,
[15:02]they're acting dying and then there's the act of loss
[15:05]and you're so in it with the dying
[15:08]and the medicine and the prep for that.
[15:10]And then all of a sudden loss comes on its heels
[15:13]and you're not even really ready for that
[15:14]because you're so in it with the dying part of it.
[15:18]So yeah, I know the line you mean,
[15:21]it's about digging a hole and you're so hard
[15:23]to dig the hole.
[15:24]Yes, yes, yes.
[15:25]And then there's the hole.
[15:27]And that for me, I don't know if this is familiar to you,
[15:32]your losses happened in so many different traumatic ways,
[15:38]but that it reminded me so much like seeing somebody
[15:41]through to the end.
[15:43]It reminded me so much of having a giving birth
[15:47]where you're so focused on the birth
[15:49]and you're like this and that and put toast in and blah it.
[15:52]And then like at the end of it,
[15:54]they hand you a baby and you're like, oh, shit.
[15:58]I have to take care of a baby.
[16:00]Like you're so wrapped up in the birth
[16:02]and I think with my friend's death,
[16:06]it was very like that.
[16:08]Like it was like grief was already in the room with us
[16:11]for sure.
[16:12]We cried so much.
[16:13]We were so in it.
[16:15]But also there was so much caretaking.
[16:17]It was like adjusting meds and she needed
[16:20]she wanted a different drink since she needed to be moved
[16:22]and bed and I feel that we were so focused on that
[16:26]that when she died,
[16:29]the just absolute crescendo tidal wave of loss,
[16:35]I think shocked us that we had been distracted maybe
[16:40]by death, you know, that it distracted us from loss.
[16:44]Anyway, but I know you know and then it's just like
[16:49]the way it is amplified by other losses.
[16:52]Like the way you experience loss refracted that for you,
[16:57]like part of why I think you're friend,
[17:01]the loss of your friend Stacey,
[17:03]which I think of in some ways as the sort of center
[17:06]of the book in some ways,
[17:09]like losing Stacey in 9-11 like you did.
[17:12]And I feel like then the rest of the book
[17:15]there are so many more losses and every loss is like,
[17:19]oh, and Stacey's still not here.
[17:21]Like to support you, you know,
[17:24]that there's this like fundamental missingness
[17:28]of the people whose losses you accrue.
[17:31]I don't know.
[17:32]No, I'm just, I'm like so flat.
[17:34]You're like totally turning the tables here.
[17:36]I feel terrible.
[17:37]You're talking all about my book.
[17:38]And I was like, you're like, oh my God,
[17:40]I know what you like wrote loss.
[17:43]We wrote loss books about like losing friends.
[17:47]It's so, it's such a deep connection to me.
[17:50]Yes, no, I'm joking.
[17:52]I mean, sort of.
[17:52]No, yes, yes, there's a lot.
[17:56]I wish I had had as much fun as your character, though,
[17:58]in the process.
[18:02]Like you ended up having fun.
[18:03]Yes, that's true.
[18:04]That's true.
[18:05]Okay, fine.
[18:07]That's true.
[18:08]So you debated doing this as a memoir
[18:10]and decided against it.
[18:12]When you were in this book,
[18:14]the main character thinks about writing a book
[18:17]and they're like, are you wait,
[18:18]are you taking notes on this or are you gonna use this?
[18:20]Like did that happen too?
[18:22]Like how much of this happened?
[18:23]Didn't happen.
[18:24]I know it's annoying question,
[18:25]but a lot of it happens and a lot of it
[18:27]didn't happen the way it's depicted in the book.
[18:30]So my friend did not die in Amherst, Massachusetts,
[18:34]where I live.
[18:35]She died in Coney Island in New York.
[18:38]And that part is just wishful film it.
[18:41]I mean, that is just me like my own main character
[18:45]wanting to be fully planted at the center
[18:49]of this life and experience.
[18:52]So I think that was a fiction,
[18:55]a primary fiction that sort of enabled the book
[18:58]to be the way it is.
[19:00]And a memoir wouldn't have been that.
[19:02]And a memoir feels more like it's not really your story
[19:07]to tell in this piece just because like,
[19:12]this is a person with kids and I've been, you know,
[19:16]siblings and I didn't feel like I could really tell
[19:20]the whole story that way.
[19:22]So instead I fictionalized it in a really strange.
[19:25]No, I mean,
[19:27]did the scene where she hugs her son happen at the very,
[19:34]you know,
[19:35]was that based on real life?
[19:36]Exactly.
[19:38]I don't want to like give anything.
[19:39]Oh, you know, I'm spoiler alert.
[19:41]I'm trying not to spoil it.
[19:42]I'm just saying it's not up to,
[19:45]I feel at the narrative arc of this book
[19:47]is fairly clear.
[19:48]I kept wishing at the full time I was reading.
[19:51]Same, oh my God, same.
[19:53]I know I come back to the book and I'm like,
[19:55]maybe in the one time where you're like,
[19:58]and now actually.
[20:00]Everything was fine.
[20:00]And I was like, really?
[20:02]And then you're like, no, that's what it would be
[20:04]in a romantic comedy.
[20:05]I was like, oh, I thought it was really hoping for that.
[20:08]But I feel like the conventions of film and fiction
[20:15]have given us these weird, and not that one
[20:19]shouldn't have hoped like it's good to be hopeful,
[20:22]but they've given us a weird sense that something could
[20:25]in a really romantic way flip on its head
[20:29]and turn out OK.
[20:31]And I'm not a massive optimist in general.
[20:36]I'm like a cheerful pessimist is probably
[20:39]how I would describe myself.
[20:40]But I did sustain some.
[20:44]There was this feeling of like, well, who knows?
[20:48]In hospice, where I am now, I'll just put this out there
[20:50]for your listeners.
[20:52]People, I always call it graduates.
[20:55]But there are people who come to hospice.
[20:57]They are dying.
[20:59]And then they are released from hospice.
[21:01]And I know I want everyone to hang their hats on this,
[21:04]because the premise of hospice is
[21:05]that you have made peace with the fact that you're dying.
[21:08]But life is very mysterious.
[21:11]Things do not always go as you imagine, as well, as I can say.
[21:16]So it's really quite remarkable, just human life,
[21:19]not as predictable as we think.
[21:22]How do you maintain your sense of equilibrium
[21:26]when you're caregiving so much, like even you
[21:28]as working in hospice or volunteering or whatever?
[21:31]How do you do it without getting so attached
[21:33]and repeatedly upset?
[21:36]Yeah.
[21:36]I do get attached to you.
[21:39]I'm so happy to make fun of you, because I'll
[21:42]get an email and I'll cry a little.
[21:44]And they'll be like, did someone in hospice die?
[21:49]Mom, this is the premise.
[21:52]But it is like everybody's very attached.
[21:55]It's a beautiful place.
[21:56]So when somebody dies, everybody who's connected to the place
[21:59]gets an email about it.
[22:01]And this happens, you can imagine almost literally daily, right?
[22:08]And everybody will be like, oh my god, what a lovely person.
[22:11]And everybody will share a memory almost every day.
[22:14]And it is incredibly moving.
[22:17]Like it's such a hospice is magic.
[22:20]I mean, if there's a subtext of the novel,
[22:22]it's like hospice is magic.
[22:24]It is magic.
[22:25]And not all of it.
[22:27]There's, I know people have had not great experiences
[22:29]of hospice care.
[22:30]But the place where I work, which is a house
[22:34]and people do come there to spend their last days,
[22:37]it is the care of the nursing staff of the CNAs.
[22:43]It is really not like any else I've ever been.
[22:45]It's just really beautiful.
[22:47]So yes, so I feel very sad.
[22:49]But I'm really there two hours.
[22:51]I wouldn't want to over blow it.
[22:52]I think I come in and I make dinner.
[22:54]I talk to people and I leave.
[22:56]Like it is not, it's not like a massive undertaking.
[23:01]Yeah, but still, it's so wonderful.
[23:03]You do that.
[23:04]Yes, I saw them love with them.
[23:06]I ask a bunch of people to marry me.
[23:08]And then that's all.
[23:09]Oh, well, I think we need some hospice's magic
[23:13]tote bags produced or something in conjunction with the baby.
[23:17]Yeah, hospice is magic.
[23:19]I know it's so true.
[23:20]Tell me about the cover.
[23:22]I mean, I know it's because of all the thirst and all that
[23:25]and everything.
[23:26]But tell me, tell me a little bit about the pieces.
[23:29]And what it's like to write a book and then.
[23:32]And so I will tell you.
[23:34]So the cover shows a can.
[23:38]And it's got a bendy strine and a flower that's
[23:41]a daisy that's dropping some puddles.
[23:43]And when they said they were going to send me some covers,
[23:47]I was like, oh my god, is it going to be like a hand holding a hand?
[23:51]Like I couldn't, how do you illustrate this?
[23:54]That's why I thought, or just like, yeah,
[23:56]I couldn't even imagine a good cover.
[23:58]Like if they had said, what's your dream cover?
[24:00]I would have been like, I have no idea.
[24:03]Like an anatomical heart in eight pieces.
[24:06]Like I don't know.
[24:07]And they sent me this and it was completely perfect.
[24:12]Like it was absolutely perfect.
[24:14]It's like a little weird.
[24:17]It's a little sad.
[24:19]Like it's not very subtle and wonderful.
[24:22]And I was thrilled.
[24:23]And I have gotten some covers.
[24:25]Like my first book, I was like, anything but a stork.
[24:27]And they were like, what about this?
[24:28]And it was a stork.
[24:33]All right, I guess, you know, because you
[24:35]don't want to be a pain.
[24:36]But this was so perfect.
[24:38]I was just beside myself.
[24:39]I had to write the artist and be like, you just nailed it.
[24:45]It's great.
[24:45]It's really beautiful.
[24:47]It's very subtle.
[24:49]Yeah.
[24:50]The whole thing.
[24:50]I mean, it was like an experience.
[24:52]I literally sat there with this book on my chest.
[24:54]I like, I literally, I know.
[24:55]I like, couldn't even go to bed.
[24:56]I was just like, oh my gosh.
[24:59]Anyway, yeah, it's not just the loss.
[25:03]It's not, it's like you took us through.
[25:05]And I know we're talking a lot about loss in this episode.
[25:08]But I don't, and it is obviously about this period of time
[25:10]when she is losing her friend.
[25:12]And it's about that.
[25:12]But it's about like what it's like to go through something.
[25:16]And also to do it as someone who's delicately balancing
[25:21]a marriage and two grown kids and our grown-ish kids,
[25:25]which is even more complicated and, or maybe not.
[25:27]But it just like all the things in life and this on top.
[25:31]It's like, and I love how you did.
[25:33]It's almost like the whole calendar and the month of February
[25:36]and then the quote.
[25:36]And it's just like so packaged up.
[25:38]And then it'd be March 2nd.
[25:40]And I don't know.
[25:41]It's just like so great.
[25:44]It's an experience.
[25:45]So for, it's like for anyone who needs to get through anything
[25:48]and wants to laugh at whatever's in their way.
[25:50]And anyway, I don't know.
[25:52]I don't know what you did that was so perfect.
[25:54]They kept the thing moving.
[25:55]No, I was trying to deconstruct it and say like, well,
[25:58]what is it that's working so well?
[26:00]What is she doing?
[26:01]And I feel like it's a lot of different factors.
[26:04]But is there something you tried to do to make it work well?
[26:07]Like structural craft wise or anything?
[26:09]Like that's an interesting question.
[26:12]I read, I've never written a novel before.
[26:14]And so I read a book that was like, how to write a novel.
[26:19]For when it was called KJ,
[26:22]recommended it to me, KJ doll and tell me.
[26:25]It's called like put on your pants or take off your pants.
[26:28]Do you know the book?
[26:29]You know, I tend to leave books that say take off your pants
[26:34]on the shelf, but, you know, people know it
[26:41]because it's a particular approach to writing
[26:43]but I can't remember if it's putting on or taking off your pants.
[26:46]But like, were you clotted out?
[26:49]And I read this like how to book it's like writing a novel.
[26:54]For dummy, it's like, here's how you write a novel.
[26:57]Here's how you structure.
[26:58]And I knew a lot about the book, honestly, right?
[27:01]Like I had been turning this novel over my head for seven years.
[27:05]I knew everything about the characters.
[27:08]I understood the premise of the narrative arc, right?
[27:11]Somebody's dying.
[27:13]But I didn't know how I would structure.
[27:16]You know that way when you're writing where you're like,
[27:18]somebody's putting on a bandaid.
[27:20]Will it take one sentence for four chapters?
[27:23]No, that was like that a lot.
[27:25]Do you let something like, how much does it
[27:28]expand to build this space?
[27:30]I had no idea.
[27:31]You know that feeling of just because I had only written nonfiction.
[27:35]Nonfiction is like, you know, they give you a basket
[27:39]and it's got like honey and bread and a bit brisket
[27:43]and you're on TV and they're like, make dinner out of this.
[27:45]And you're like, okay, you know, I can do that.
[27:47]And then fiction, it's so bottomless.
[27:50]Anything could happen.
[27:51]Alien could have come and like abducted E.D. before she died.
[27:56]Anything was possible.
[27:57]And that gave me so much vertigo that I had to like structure it.
[28:02]Like I had to make an outline so that I would sort of follow some basic principle.
[28:08]I really says this is not actually what you're asking me.
[28:10]No, that helps though.
[28:12]And I wrote it really fast because I wanted to inhabit it
[28:19]so fully that I wouldn't lose my sense of it.
[28:24]You know, and I didn't want it to be like, oh wait,
[28:27]what was I thinking about?
[28:28]Oh, that like I just wanted to be in it,
[28:31]which was it's own indulgent thing because then of course,
[28:35]I was with my friend for this like intense period of time.
[28:38]Which was a mixed bag.
[28:40]Oh, do you have anything else coming?
[28:42]Now I want to go back and read,
[28:44]you have another memoir you wrote a while ago.
[28:46]Is that also funny and another novel?
[28:49]I have only a novel for kids.
[28:51]Okay.
[28:52]There are novels and novel for kids,
[28:53]but your kids might like it.
[28:55]It's about them spending the night and IKEA.
[28:57]Oh, then it has some loss in it.
[29:01]You'll see there's some familiar characters actually.
[29:04]And I wrote some books about parenting that I think would,
[29:08]I think would speak to in the regular parenting way,
[29:10]but I also feel like you probably.
[29:12]Well, that what I had had to be normal, right?
[29:14]That one we talked about, didn't we?
[29:15]Do you know what I mean?
[29:16]Books about like four characters.
[29:18]Oh, oh, oh, oh.
[29:19]But I'm writing another novel and it's,
[29:23]I will see how it goes.
[29:25]You know, it's very, I know you know.
[29:27]I mean, you've written a bunch of,
[29:30]you're writing a novel,
[29:32]you've written a novel that you didn't publish, right?
[29:36]I've written several novels.
[29:37]Let's not go there.
[29:38]Hey, everybody, I am writing a novel now,
[29:41]which basically you had the same idea in your book.
[29:43]So anyway, so I'm working on it.
[29:45]I'll have to show it to you.
[29:47]I don't want to see it.
[29:49]Well, I can't wait for your next novel.
[29:50]And I am so excited.
[29:52]I really hope people just go grabbing this off the shelves
[29:56]because it's so unique.
[29:57]It's unique and
[30:00]the voice is so great and the story and universality, but also the specificity of it.
[30:06]That sounded ridiculous. No, thank you. If I were going to sum up my goal, it would be that.
[30:13]It would be that. Great. Well, there you go. Okay. Thank you so much, Catherine. Good luck.
[30:18]I'm so excited for you. Thank you. I'm so grateful. Thank you for the close
[30:22]read of my book too. That was really nice. Well, thanks. It was such a pleasure. Thank you.
[30:27]All right. Take care. Hi. Hi. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[30:33]Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[30:39]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots
[30:44]of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound for the
[30:49]Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[30:54]now trim music.