Cheryl Strayed, THIS TELLING

[2:09]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zippy Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippyclasses.com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings. But this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. I am re releasing my episode with Cheryl Strayed because as you all probably know, Cheryl Strayed is the most prolific, amazing author and essayist and everything else. And I did this episode with her a while back and since then, Tiny Beautiful Things has been released and Wild has been made into a movie and there's just so much that's gone on with her, and I am a huge, huge fan. So I thought I would re release it in case any of you missed it. So this is a recording of the Instagram live that I did with Cheryl Strayed. I was, like, over the moon to be interviewing her. I have been a fan for so long, and you can probably tell in my fandom adulation and all the rest when I talk to her. So I hope I did an okay job. I was stuttering. I was a little bit nervous actually because I'm such a fan. Anyway, Cheryl Strayed is the author of the number one New York Times bestselling memoir, Wild, the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough and the Novel Torch. Wilde was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club two point o. Her books have been translated into nearly 40 languages around the world and have been adapted for both the screen and the stage. The Oscar nominated movie adaptation of Wilde stars Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl and Laura Dern as Cheryl's mother, Bobby. Tiny Beautiful Things was adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos, who also starred in the role of Sugar slash Cheryl. And by the way, that's who was in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The play was directed by Thomas Kale and debuted at the Public Theater in New York City. Cheryl Strayed is also the host of the New York Times hit podcast Sugar Calling and also Dear Sugars, which she co hosted with Steve Almond. Her essays have been published in the Best American Essays, The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, The Sun, Tin House, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota. She lives in Portland, Oregon. I spoke to Cheryl on our Instagram live about her new story called This Telling, which is an Amazon original story, kind of like a mini novella, but she calls it a long story. Anyway, that's what we talked about, and it's really great. It just came out. Hi.

[5:22]Cheryl Strayed: Zippy, hi. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Oh my gosh. It's so nice to see you. It's so nice to see you too. I am so excited to be talking to you. You're like such a hero of mine. Thank you for doing this. Well, I think you're pretty awesome yourself. I just heard you say that you're a memoir addict. I love memoir addicts. I'm one too. We could talk about these all day. What are have you read a good one lately? Are you should we chat memoirs? Gosh. There are so many. Right? Yeah. So I have. And, you know, the minute I people ask me that question, I'm always like, my mind goes blank. But I can tell you a couple of amazing books I've read. The Undocumented Americans. Are you familiar with this book? I'm not. Carla Cornejo Villa I'm gonna I should have written down her name. No. It's okay. I caught you on the way. The Undocumented Americans, really a stunning, amazing book. I love motherland by Alyssa Altman. Me too. I love that. It. Love her. Such a huge fan. Me too. Me too. And I also am reading I'm almost done reading cast by Elizabeth Wilkerson, which is not a memoir. I mean, she writes about aspects of her life, but wow. Have you read that book yet? It's on my shelf. I have it. I just have not gotten there yet, but I'm getting to it. I feel like everyone in America should read past. Yes. My mother was like, you have to read this book. So, you know, if nothing else, I'm gonna read it for her. That's great. You have a little child behind you. I'm gonna put on my glasses so I can see this. Thank you for thank you for telling me. I'm doing it. There was a little urchin popping up. Say, guys, get out. Thank you. Sorry. You know, it's like 05:00 on a school night, and I'm very sorry. But, you know No worries. What happens. Two teenagers. I don't think they're gonna pop up, but yeah, you never know. Yeah, you never know. Okay. So let's talk about your latest, which I listened to in the car the other morning with my husband and my sister-in-law and everybody, and we just loved it. Oh, thank you. This telling part of the out of line series, which are all about women on the verge of a breakthrough. Then you're in such good company with Roxanne Gay and Emma Donahue and all these great women authors writing about, like, feminist stuff. Yeah. So tell me for those people on the call who haven't or on the Instagram live or whatever who haven't read it or don't even know about it that much yet. Can you please tell us a little more about the story? Yeah. So I was approached by amazon and the editors there to to write a piece of feminist fiction. You know a short story that and they basically like said you know whatever you want to do just make sure it's feminist. And of course I thought well that that's like everything I write. I am a feminist. It's it's part of all of my work. But when I started to think about what I was going to write about, what kept emerging is the story that I have been wanting to tell and trying to tell in one form or another for for actually many years. And it's rooted in a piece of my own personal history that it's it's one of those scenarios where I've always thought, well, what if what if it went the other way? And it's this, When my mom was in her teens in the nineteen sixties, she became pregnant. She was not married. She got pregnant. And because abortion was illegal then and, you know, as we know, there was a lot of kind of social censure against women having babies without men. She was basically, you know, forced to marry my dad. That's when my parents got married. My mom was pregnant with my sister. And, you know, she had me and my brother and sister and onward she went. But when I was a teenager and really asking my mom about her life, she told me this story about the choice that she had, which was really no choice at all. And those of you who are familiar with my other work know that that my parents' marriage was a terrible one, and my father was abusive to her. And, you know, it was a very hard thing to endure. And so I always, you know, the little creative writer in me really reflected upon upon, a, the impact that that kind of lack of reproductive choice, the impact of that on girls and women. In my mother's life, it it pushed her in one direction. And and the character, the main character in this telling, a young woman named Geraldine, finds herself in the exact same situation my mom found herself in. It's the mid sixties. She's just out of high school, and she finds out she's pregnant. And what was fun and and fascinating for me to do is just imagine, what if my mom had taken this other track? What would have happened? What would be the outcome of that? And so with Geraldine, I followed her. The story opens up when she's 17. It ends when she's like 70. And I follow her. The story is very, very, as you know, little micro chapters as we follow her over the course of her life and as she reckons with that decision she made back in the sixties. Wow. It's so many it brings up so many, like, what ifs, like, for so many people, and especially in light of all the prevalence of DNA testing and everything that's going on. I mean, a friend I just saw the other day just told me that she found out she was adopted. She's like 60 years old and her parents and this I mean, this happens all the time now. Yeah. It's just all these things that we thought were secrets or that people thought were secrets are no longer secrets. And I feel like that's really sort of what your story was about. It's like this corrosive power of secrets and how keeping them can just, like, affect everything from the inside out for the rest of your life more so than whatever actually happens in some cases. And, you know, that that's I'm so glad you picked up on that because, like, that's what I was really also trying to interrogate is the way that silence is is always serving in cooperation with shame. You know, the reason we have secrets is we're ashamed to tell the truth. And, of course, as we've seen over and over again, that especially when it comes to the realities of the lives of women, the lives of mothers, the radical act of telling the truth is a radical act. You know, the change can't be made until people say, as we see it, like I almost just said, Me too. Well, okay, me too, when it comes to sexual violence and sexual harassment. Me too, when it comes to abortions or, you know, finding yourselves yourself in relationships or situations that you wouldn't have imagined or expected. And so much of, essentially, women's bodies are cloaked in shame. And this story, for me, was about the impact of shame on one woman's life in the form of my main character, Geraldine, but also her movement. You know, we don't wanna spoil the story, but but her movement towards stepping out of that shame. In some ways, the only way to reject shame is to tell the truth about who you are. That is just a fact. And that's so much easier said than done, especially if you're someone like Geraldine, who has been, you know, really steeped in a in a culture and a generation that said, no, you should be ashamed. It's hard to believe. I mean, I feel like maybe because I live in New York or I mean, like, that there are still places that view all of the choices as as not really choices now. It's I don't know. It's that there are different tolerances, I should say, of of all sorts of things that and control and all these things. Anyway, away from politics. But Cindy, I wanna say something about that because I think it's really an important thing for us to to remember, you know, that I think a lot of American women are, you know, sort of think, oh, yeah, you know, we have access to birth control. We have you know, abortion has been legal for a long time. We have all kinds of choices when it comes to reproduction. But first of all, those things are very much being threatened on many fronts right now. But also, even like our own what I found is we even have kind of revisionist history about that. When I was writing this telling, like all stories, it always goes through an editorial process. And so Geraldine, my character, she gets pregnant in like 1964. And the editor was was like, well, wait a minute. Wasn't the birth control pill legal by then? And it really was fascinating for me because I think a lot of people are like, yeah, it's been legal since the sixties. But then when I actually did the research and learned that yet technically, a very small group of women had access to the pill earlier in the sixties, and they were married women in certain states. That they literally had to have, like, permission from their husband to to be prescribed the pill. And it really wasn't until, like, the the early seventies that women in all states could get the pill even if you weren't married, which was really later than I even imagined. And so that was the other piece of this, is I wanted to tell a kind of like, it's in some ways a historical story. I mean, only goes back to '64, but that's been more than fifty years now. And I think we forget, like, what it was really like for women who were coming of age in the sixties. We think of it as this wild and free time. But actually, most of America was really quite still very conservative, certainly when it came to issues of sex and female bodies. So tell me about writing something like this, which in audio form was forty five minutes. So I'm not even sure how long it would have been had I read it in hard copy. But tell me about trying to get so much into a shorter this format because this is not like a common length necessarily. It's not a short story. It's more like a novella of sorts. Right. You've done like, you know, in-depth memoir and all the rest. Like, just what was this particular assignment like for you? It was really I'm so glad you're asking about that because it was what I try to do with everything I write is I try to do something new. I try to stretch myself or I mean, trust me, Zippy, there were so many times where I cursed myself. Because I was like, what? Like, what? I mean, because, you know, to to try to fit in, like I said, it starts when she's 17 and ends when she's, like, 70. And so to truly try to kind of tell that much of a life and that small of a space, it is a short story, but it's a long short story. And, you know, to try to fit that in was a challenge. And so with the style, I don't know if you noticed. I mean, I'm sure you know this, about did the challenge. Because I had to be kind of minimal in the language. I had to very much like each chapter is almost like a little sketch, just a sketch of a moment or one scene or a gesture or a thought. Or I tried in some cases to kind of summarize a whole era in a very concise way. And so it was really fun for me on the language of level, on the level of language of like trying to say as much in the most economical fashion as I could. It's so funny because my husband, sometimes I read him books, sometimes I make him like listen to audiobooks like this and especially in the car. And this one he looked at, I was like, well, what did you think? That was so great. He's like, well, I just felt like it was very abrupt. You know? He's like each chapter he's like, each chapter ended in such a an abrupt way. Like and I was like, but that was so great because then he wanted to listen to the next And I think that's what, you know, propels the reader on so well, the shortness, the right to the point of it, basically. Yeah. I mean, you have to do that's like the whole trick of a writer, right? It's like getting an image into somebody else's head and the least amount of words unless you're, you know, heavily invested in the actual beauty beauty of each individual sentence, but you have to, like, do your job. Right? It has to Yeah. Get the point across and, like, with the shoes, for instance, like, that was such a perfect thing to I mean, I won't give anything away, but the shoes, the the spotting each other at the mall, like, these little moments with just little I mean, it's great. It's just amazing. Yeah. It's it's definitely for me a challenge as a writer to to let each piece be what it is because there are so you know, I would say that most of my work, I'm much more expansive and much more, like, okay, I'm gonna tell I'm gonna describe everything and tell a full the full story behind all of these details. But that was the cool part is that it's trying to do that very minimalistic, abrupt. I mean, I don't know if it was a like, I wouldn't use Abruptive. But certainly certainly, like, concise and knowing that there's so much off the page that I'm hoping that the reader in their mind will elaborate on, if that makes sense. Of course, it makes sense. Yeah. And Kristen Bell read it. Yes. I know. That was so cool. That was so neat. You know, it's funny. As I was writing this piece, it was like late late last year, early this year, my daughter and husband and I were binge watching The Good Place. So it felt it felt perfect. She felt perfect that she was the one to read it. Did you get to pick? Did you have any say in that or not? Yeah. Have a little say and and, you know, she's just certainly I mean, she's the perfect choice. That's excellent. Yeah. So you've been writing for so long. I mean, I was on your Instagram earlier and you had the picture of yourself twenty five years ago for a while. And I was like, wow. Is that long ago? Like, because when you read your writing, it's it feels like it happened, like, yesterday. Right? You're so in it. It's so, like, in this sense of immediacy is just, like, overpowering, and yet it's from a long time ago. So even even writing and producing all this stuff about all these periods of your life, like, I know you say you like to experiment with form, but how do you keep it interesting to yourself? How do you keep coming up with new stuff? Like, just how do you keep it keep it going so well? Well, it's true. It's true. I've been a writer since I was, like, 19. I'm 52 now. With Wilde, you know, I didn't actually write the book until, you know, much later. But yeah, I've written all along the way and I have been publishing work since I was in my twenties. And, you know, one of the ways to keep it, I guess, alive is always do, you know, take on a challenge with every with every piece. It's like, it's, I don't feel like, okay, I've got all these years of writing behind me. What I feel like is, okay, how am I gonna pull this off? I always feel afraid. I always feel like I can't do it. One of the things I say over and over is that to me, that, you know, I'm the way it feels to me to write a book is that I can't write a book. The way it feels to me to write a short story is I can't write a short story. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times during this telling that I just thought, okay, I give up, I surrender, I'm retiring, I can't do it. You know, and then you persevere and you get through it. And you do your best. I mean, that's the thing too that I wanna say. So just, I do wanna tell people, you can go to Amazon and get my story this telling, just clickity click click. You can also get the whole collection, my story, along with all the other amazing writers who are in the collection. But what I always feel really full in my heart when I'm whether it be I'm writing a short story like this telling or my next book or a while, is that I'm trying to do my very best. I'm trying to use all of my intelligence. I'm gonna try to put my whole heart into that work. I labor over every word again and again and again. But my work ends with the writing. Like, I can't help it if people love it, or if they hate it, or if they're indifferent to it. And I try to really just focus on the work and not on other people like, people's opinions of that work. And I think that that in some ways keeps me really alive as a writer, because I'm putting my focus always on, you know, how can I make the best words on the page today or on the computer screen today? And I think the minute I would if I shifted my attention to being like, do they love it? Do they love it? Do they hate it? What do they think? That's when I would sort of, I guess, lose my grounding as a writer. Today's

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[24:14]Cheryl Strayed: When you first came out with Wild and you shared everything, right, you're it's like you're an open book, right? We know all about so much stuff about you. Do you feel as you're going through life that you make different decisions about what you wanna share, what you feel comfortable sharing? Do you regret any of the earlier sharing? Is there anything you'd wanna take back? Like, how about your kids? Like, how do like, all of this. Like, where are you in this today? Yeah. No. There's nothing I would take back. And, you know, my first pieces that I when I first began publishing back in my twenties, they were essays that were extremely revealing, like Wilde is. Two essays. One's called the love of my life. One is heroin. They both ended up in best American essays, and they both introduced me to a big audience in a sort of situation where I was, you know, really laying bare my heart. And that was a very it was extremely educational for me. It was a sort of practice for what would happen with Wilde, was, you know, a million times bigger, but that people who I don't know would know a lot about my personal life. And what I try to do as a memoirist is, or, and personal essayist, is really to try to be as vulnerable and brave as I can possibly be about telling the truth about who I am and about my experiences in my life. Shucking off that thing, that silence and shame that we were talking about, that my character in this telling, you know, essentially lived her life under the trap of silence and shame. And I, as a writer, do the opposite of that. I'm like, okay, if I'm ashamed about it, I'm gonna write about it. Right? And, you know, I do think that for me, was really important to be mostly vulnerable with myself. Like, I'm definitely careful about the things I write about other people. I don't just say, okay, I'm just gonna say everything. I'm gonna talk about my siblings, and I'm gonna talk about my husband, and I'm gonna talk about my kids. Like, I it's not that I don't write about them. I just when I do write about them, I'm I am more considered, like, because I don't think it's my right to expose their, you know, violate their privacy. So I try to violate my own privacy, not other people's. And of course, you know, you inevitably, when you write about people, you do have to sometimes, you know, announce to the world things about them that they wouldn't other that they wouldn't otherwise tell. But I try to, you know, I try to do that with a lot of love and respect, and also sometimes permission. My kids are teenagers now. They haven't read my books, but they a lot of their peers have. And and I feel okay with it. Like, I think that someday they'll come to my books, and they'll be grateful that they can see the inner life of their mom. I I would certainly have loved to have that. That's a nice way to look at it. I don't know. Mean I wanna know the inner life of my mom. I'm not sure. Well, I mean, I think that that's I think that that comes with time. I mean, my mom's been dead a long time, you know? And I would love to have that. I would love to have that. And I think when when your your mom is still alive and you're active and you're you know, that maybe you still need to have that kind of, like, boundary, you know? And I certainly by no means would ever say to my kids, Okay, you know, time to read mommy's books now. I think that they'll come to them when they do, and it could be well into their adulthood, you know? Yeah. So what are you working on now? What's your next book? I'm working on another book. I'm really I I just finished writing a screenplay, which was I was hired to write a screenplay about a very interesting person. I can't say what it who it is, but I finished that, and I'm doing some revisions of that right now and working on my next book. Now listen, it's a novel, but then I'm also working on a memoir, and I keep changing my mind about which one I'm gonna finish first. So I'm kinda like running two races at the same time, and I'm not sure who's gonna win. Memoir or novel? Memoir or novel? But I do know it's funny because, you know, Wild was published in 2012, March 2012, and then Tiny Beautiful Things was published literally, like, four or five months later, which is insane. Like, I just had a crazy year of book promotion and doing, you know, more than a year to be honest. And I just wonder because I'm writing these two books kind of at the same time, like, if something they won't probably come out four months apart, but they might come out in quicker succession than expected. So how are you toggling back and forth like that? Like, how are you structuring your time? How are you allotting time to each project? How do you even, in your head, keep it kinda straight? Or is it just you pick it up when you are inspired for each project? I mean, I think what's probably gonna happen I'm gonna actually do a little writing retreat soon. And I think what's gonna happen is, like, it I'm at the moment of truth, okay, Cheryl, like because I can't. I can't really get to that, like, total sink in mode until I I commit. So I've written a bit of both or, you know, a substantial amount of both, but there's a certain point where I'm like, okay, now this one, I'm diving in. So that that decision's coming very soon. Because you're right. I don't go, like, day by day. It's kind of like, I'll work for, like, a month on this and get stuck, and I'll work for a month on this and get stuck. So I'm gonna have to make a decision. Do you have a vote? Novel or memoir? Are you a memoir addict? I was gonna say I vote for memoir. I mean, I also love fiction though. Read a ton of fiction. I love both. I think there's just something about memoir that's just so intimate, where I know it's you. It's not like I suspend disbelief and I, it's a character. I can still get a really emotionally invested in it. And I love it. Yeah. It's a memoir. It's literally like, like what you're saying, like someone's just giving you their diary and they're like, here, let me put this in your hand and and then I'm just gonna like stand by and let you read it. So I just feel like this is my gratitude to memoirs because I'm like, thank you. Like, thank you for trusting the reader essentially with what you're writing because Yeah. I think it always helps so much. It helps somebody, right, with what you're going through. Totally. Well, and you know, I think too, it's interesting. Absolutely. Like, I think that Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, all three of them non fiction. So many people say, you helped me with these books. But my first book, Torch, is a novel. And lots and lots of people read that and say, oh my gosh, that helped me so much. I saw myself in these characters. And so, you know, I I do think that for me, really good fiction, it does that thing where you actually feel like you're reading about real people. And you can identify with that character as much as you identify with, like, somebody who happens to be a real person. So, you know, I I think that it can have that function. I will say writing this telling made me feel like, oh my gosh, it's so fun to be back in the world of fiction again because you can change your your character's plot. You can be like, well, wait a minute. Let's have her do this instead of that. Whereas memoir, you're stuck with you're stuck with the plot of your own life. That's true. That's true. Memory, of course, is, you know, a big constraint. Yeah. You talked about writing a screenplay. What has it been like sort of entering the Hollywood land of life? Like, what is it like being in the entertainment world in that way? Yeah. Like, a whole new universe. It really is a new universe. Well, first of all, the wild movie experience was as good as it could possibly be for a writer. I've I've heard so many I have friends who had really bad experiences in Hollywood. And most of all, most writers have the experience of having their book option, and they're so excited about it, and it's glorious, and then nothing happens. And I had the great fortune of really having Reese Witherspoon, and she was partnered with this producer, Bruno Papadrea. And they were just like, we're gonna make this movie, and we're gonna get it done. And and it was amazing. They got to work on it. They hired Nick Hornby to write the script. And next thing you knew, we were rolling. And it was I was we shot it in Oregon, and I was really very involved with everything. You know, they sent me the script, and I would weigh in on it. And they said they had me on the set. And, you know, I got to become friends with all the people who made the Laura Dern, who played my mom, and Reese, who played me, and lots of folks. And it was just a wonderful experience. And what was really cool about it is I knew from the start that I was going to need to not be like, wait a minute, you know, cut. It's like, that's not how it is. That's not how the book is. I had to really realize, okay, this film is not my book. My book is my book. My book is the thing I made. And what they're making is an interpretation of this. They're it's its own thing. So if you only see the movie, you didn't really have the wild experience. Like, you know, there's so much more in the book. I think that the the movie did a really beautiful job being true to the book in a lot of ways and honoring the book. But there's, you know, there's stuff in the book that there couldn't be in the movie. They had to really streamline it more, as you do. And now, you know, being a writer in Hollywood too, just kind of as, like, a sideline job, has been really fun. Like I said, I'm really into trying new stuff. I mean, that's how Dear Sugar was born. I was asked to write an advice column. I said, I don't I'm not an advice giver. I don't write advice columns. And then there, I, you know, I went for it, and it was honestly one of the biggest things of my life, a really powerful thing. And so when I was asked to write the screenplay, I was, like, afraid. And I thought maybe I can do it. And then I did it. And I felt like, wow, I learned so much in that process. And, you know, I'll be able to kind of talk about it, like, more directly someday, I hope. And I do hope the movie gets made because it really was you know, it's a it's a really cool experience. And it's a different world, but it's also a wonderful you know, I learned a lot about writing and writing that in that very new form. I think we need to explore at some point or you why you keep thinking you can't do it and why you're so scared at the beginning of projects when, like, all evidence to the contrary. But I guess that's just the way people are. Right? It's just Yeah. Would you please be my therapist, Zebi? No problem. It's because I'm damaged. It's because, I mean, the thing is, is I'm laughing, but I'm telling you the truth. Like, I really always think I can't do it. And then I always do it. And it's just, it's just part of me. It's just part of, it's my psyche, you know, I, and maybe, and so I, you know, I don't think it's necessarily like a sign of like, weakness or maybe even, I mean, I wish, I don't know that it's something I have to fix. Like, maybe it's just that that I'm embracing it really fully and saying, like, this is how I feel. This is how it feels. It's it's scary, and it's hard. And then I think that the the the fact that I always meet that fear and difficulty with essentially saying, okay, I'm gonna persist anyway and doing it. Like, I think that's what matters in the end. You're absolutely I I think I'm not alone. I think a lot like, I I can't read the comments, but are people saying I feel that way too? Haven't been reading them either, but I guarantee you, I know other people are feeling that way because, like, most authors I talk to are like, that must have been a fluke. I hope I can do it. So it's not just you. Yeah. Is it called impostor syndrome or something? I mean Yeah. Like, what's weird is, like, whenever I hear that phrase impostor syndrome, like, I don't feel like an impostor in that kind of larger way. Like, I definitely feel like, yep, I am a writer. This is my call, and I've answered that call. To me, it it's alive. The impostor is more on the daily, like, there I am sitting in front of my laptop and I have to do what I feel I cannot do. This is what I say to my daughter when she like gets scared to go to school or something like that. We have this mantra like, I've done it before and I can do it again. So I just have her like, say that over and over. I write it on a little piece of paper. And now that's like our thing. So anyway, you're free to use that if that helps. It's a great one. So what advice would you have to aspiring authors? Well, so much advice. But let me just give a little bit. I mean, I think that this thing we're talking about is really key. Would say that most writers I know struggle with this very thing I was just talking about, sense of doubt or doom or like, oh, tried and I failed and I can't do this. That kind of voice in your head that keeps you from writing. You have to come up with a way to work with that. Know, probably what's going to happen isn't that like suddenly one day you're gonna be like, I'm a great writer and everything I say is brilliant. And so let me just type away. That's probably not going to happen. I don't know one person who writes that way. So you need to learn how to manage those voices in your head and decide that you're gonna continue the work, even if it's hard and even if it feels impossible or scary. And you also have to find a way also to glide past the external voices, you know, who say like, Well, but that's not a very good career plan. Or, you know, Hardly any writers make a living from writing. Or, you know, all of those kind of practical advice givers who basically want you to go get what they call a real job. And what I would say to anyone who really wants to be a writer is writing is a real job. It's the realest work I've ever done. And, you know, of course, it's fraught with all kinds of there are no guarantees to any kind of artist in this world that you'll ever have that kind of external success that manifests itself in, you know, a check-in the mail. But, you know, we know that you won't get the check if you don't try. You know? We we know that you won't succeed as a writer if you don't write. And so decide to keep faith with that. Decide to keep faith with the daily practice of doing it. And by daily practice of doing it, I don't mean that you have to write every day. I mean, whatever little fire that you have burning in you that tells you you're a writer, feed that fire. Do that work, whether you write one time a month for a day or write every day or, like, come up with some system where you get the work done in spite of all of the forces against you that live both in your head and out in the world. Once you finish something great, do you allow yourself to be like, actually, this is pretty awesome once it's all done? Yeah. I mean, every single time. Here's the other thing. So I have a, like and that's I guess that's the benefit for me of being an experienced writer now is is I actually can, like, see, like, I I I know the pattern. The pattern is I can't do this. This is impossible. I'm gonna try to I can't do it. I quit. I quit. No. No. No. And then I keep going. I keep going. I keep going. I get to the end. And then I look at it, and I think, wait a minute. Like, what was wrong with me? Like, this isn't so bad. Like, this is actually kind of okay. It might not be perfect or the best thing I've ever written, and some people might not love it, but, hey, it's pretty like, it stands up, man. And I did it. I made it. I you know, that that is you know, the the reason it's such hard labor is, know, we writers, like, we make something that didn't exist before. There we made a story where there was no story. We made a poem where there was no poem. We made a play, a screenplay, whatever it is. And, you know, once you have it there before you, it's hard not to have some gratitude and respect for it. And so, yeah, I feel great when I finish something. See, you're cured. Our session is over. That's right. My therapist, Sophie, has now helped me. Now I see, you know, you just have to keep it's so much like running a marathon or hiking a long trail, if you want to use wild as the metaphor. It's like, you know, or even like every time I go on a hike, you know, there are like times where it's like, okay, this is hard. It's hard to keep pushing up the mountain. And then you get there and you're like, oh, this is glorious. That was worth it. You know, persistence is such a key, I think, piece of being a writer. That's amazing. And also loops back in with this telling and the whole feminist theme of the entire series of all of the the entire collection. It's all about, you know, breaking through and and doing great work and achieving and not giving up. And That's right. That's it. So, and staying strong even through the hard times. Full circle. Full circle. Well, Cheryl, thank you so much. I was so excited to do this with you. I'm again, I'm just I have so much respect for you and it's been so nice getting to talk to you one on one. Thank you. Oh, it's really, really lovely to talk to you as well. And I hope, thank you for all of you who are listening to us and tuning into this. And I hope you go and read this telling and I hope you enjoy it. Yes, absolutely. I actually have a I think I have a code on Audible because I think they're my sponsor now. You can get a free month on audible.com/zibby and you get a free month of Audible. So use it to get this telling. You can listen to it on Audible, if you did, you can go read it. Yeah. So that's the go do Zippy's link, everyone. If want, don't have to. But I just realized. Anyway, thank you so much and stay in touch. Yes, you too. Bye, Zippy. Thank you. Bye bye.

[41:29]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.