Laurie Frankel, FAMILY FAMILY
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[1:03]Laurie Frankel is the author of Family Family, a novel.
[1:07]Laurie is the New York Times best-selling award-winning author of novels such as The Atlas
[1:10]of Love.
[1:11]Goodbye for now.
[1:12]And the Reese's book club pick This is How It Always Is.
[1:16]Laurie lives in Seattle with her husband, daughter, and border-coly.
[1:19]She makes good soup.
[1:21]I have to say, I absolutely loved this book, Family Family.
[1:24]It's one of my top books so far of the year.
[1:26]Welcome, Laurie.
[1:27]Thanks for coming on momstone.
[1:28]Have time to read books to discuss family family.
[1:32]I'll just say it.
[1:33]Thank you.
[1:34]Thank you so much.
[1:35]Yeah, so I'm thrilled.
[1:36]And I'm thrilled to be here.
[1:37]And I appreciate so much.
[1:38]You're doing this course.
[1:39]OK.
[1:40]As I was just saying, I'm obsessed with this book.
[1:42]I love boys.
[1:43]I love all of it.
[1:44]It's so original.
[1:45]Oh, my gosh.
[1:46]I just, it's hilarious.
[1:47]Even all the like malepropisms, maleprop.
[1:50]I mean, you can't even say that.
[1:51]I mean, just like all these funny things you do.
[1:53]It's like all the way through.
[1:55]It's so, it's just so first rate.
[1:58]I don't know.
[1:59]Listeners, what family family is about?
[2:02]Oh, first of all, thank you.
[2:04]I appreciate it so much.
[2:05]It's such a weird time after the book has left my hands.
[2:08]But before it's in anyone else's.
[2:10]So it means the world to make family family is about.
[2:13]Well, it's about family.
[2:15]And it is about adoption.
[2:17]And it is about not just one adoption,
[2:19]but a lot and a lot of different kinds of adoption,
[2:22]which is sort of the idea that I went into it with
[2:25]and then approved much, much more complicated than that.
[2:28]There are lots and lots of books about adoption.
[2:30]You know, so often when we talk about lack of representation,
[2:33]we really mean a lack.
[2:35]And that's not the problem with adoption.
[2:37]It's not that there is no representation.
[2:39]It's just that the representation is so negative.
[2:42]And when it isn't negative,
[2:44]it's this like, well, then a miracle occurred
[2:46]and they settled for each other and it wasn't terrible.
[2:49]And I hate that story.
[2:51]So I set out to tell a different one.
[2:53]And it took me a long time to figure out,
[2:56]well, okay, how do you tell a story?
[2:58]If your point is that, well, it's not really terrible.
[3:01]It wasn't that these horrible things happened.
[3:03]And that is why there's not just one,
[3:06]but a variety, I guess, of adoptive families in this book.
[3:10]It is also about a movie star
[3:12]and it is about social media and cancel culture and scandal
[3:17]that we sort of get caught up in a rile of ourselves.
[3:20]And it's about dream jobs.
[3:22]And the way which dream jobs are dreamy,
[3:24]but they are also jobs.
[3:26]Which is something that I think about all the time,
[3:28]because I definitely have a dream job.
[3:30]And it is dreamy, but it is also a job.
[3:32]Well, you achieved your goal in such a creative way, right?
[3:37]By having the main character,
[3:39]I'm always forget everybody's name.
[3:41]What is your name?
[3:42]India.
[3:43]Yeah.
[3:44]Having India, of course, India,
[3:45]there was a whole backstory of that name.
[3:46]How did I forget that?
[3:47]Anyway, having India be the movie star
[3:49]who's in a movie about the adoption
[3:51]that's then not with the right depiction.
[3:53]And so it's like this whole meta thing
[3:55]that you would get set up.
[3:56]You know, it's funny.
[3:57]I just wanted to, for the screening of all the light
[4:00]you cannot see, which have you been watching that?
[4:02]I don't know.
[4:03]I hadn't happened.
[4:04]Yeah, because the book was so good.
[4:05]I know.
[4:06]I know.
[4:07]Oh, is it going to do it just?
[4:08]I don't know.
[4:09]So I will.
[4:10]Well, I have worked up to it yet, I think.
[4:12]Yeah.
[4:13]Well, I saw I was like out in a place like I had to go see it.
[4:16]Yeah.
[4:17]Because I was like a little reluctant.
[4:18]It's really good.
[4:19]But anyway, the star was there and she's low sight.
[4:22]And so she was talking exactly as you are
[4:24]about representation.
[4:25]And she's like all the depictions of, you know,
[4:28]no sight or low sight people.
[4:30]Have you like with this cane and this and that?
[4:32]Like this is not what it's like.
[4:34]It doesn't have to be the story.
[4:36]She's like, I don't look spacey and like, you know,
[4:39]that I can't, you know, and it's just what you're saying.
[4:41]Like it doesn't have to be a sob story.
[4:43]And where are the other, where are the flip sides?
[4:45]Why is there only one narrative?
[4:47]Yes.
[4:48]Exactly.
[4:49]Where are the flip sides?
[4:50]Why is there only one narrative?
[4:51]Yeah.
[4:52]I think one of the answer to that question is narrative involves misery.
[4:55]Like there have to be low points in order for you to go up again.
[4:57]There has to be this arc.
[4:58]It's like, like definition.
[5:00]Right.
[5:01]And that just means you have to find a different way to tell about it and to talk about it.
[5:05]And I also think it is, these are complicated complex issues,
[5:09]which makes them really wonderful things to talk about for 400 pages,
[5:13]but not for 400 characters.
[5:15]You know, I think they just, they don't lend themselves well to,
[5:19]to sound bites or to posts.
[5:21]I need 10 hours from you.
[5:23]I need you to sit down and like, let me tell you a story.
[5:26]And that makes it a wonderful thing to write a novel about,
[5:29]but also that's a, you know, that's a high bar basically.
[5:33]Well, but when you put it that way that you need like 10 hours,
[5:36]I'm like, oh, no, no, I don't have 10 hours for you.
[5:38]That's right.
[5:39]Yeah.
[5:40]But then when you read it and your chapters are also short and punchy,
[5:46]you know, like you time like disappears.
[5:50]Like reading time is not like regular time because when you're reading something good,
[5:54]you're, you lose the clock entirely.
[5:56]And that's kind of what, you know, this book does.
[5:58]It's like you can't sleep and you want to finish and the rest.
[6:01]So it doesn't feel like 400 pages because that would also be like forget,
[6:06]forget that too.
[6:07]You know, but it's these short sections all linked together.
[6:10]You know, it's almost, I don't know anyway.
[6:12]Yeah.
[6:13]Yeah.
[6:14]I hope so.
[6:15]I hope so.
[6:16]And I feel exactly that way as a reader.
[6:17]I want it to move.
[6:18]I want to be turning the pages.
[6:19]And if it does, you take as long as you want.
[6:22]But if I'm slogging through it, then I feel like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we got to pick.
[6:26]Yeah.
[6:27]You know, because you're right, 10 hours is, is a lot of time to ask of someone.
[6:32]And especially now, probably always.
[6:35]And, and when you put it like that, like, okay, give me 10 hours and we'll do this thing.
[6:39]And your meeting reaction is no, I don't have 10.
[6:41]What do you grab 10 hours?
[6:43]And so I think, you know, as writers, we have to earn it.
[6:46]Yeah.
[6:47]That's, that's, it's, I mean, it's really amazing.
[6:49]Anyone reads anything.
[6:50]But it that way.
[6:51]It is.
[6:52]And I, and I am therefore so grateful to people for doing it.
[6:57]But, and myself, I do spend almost all my time reading books.
[7:02]So, so I feel like, okay.
[7:04]Yeah.
[7:05]I know what that transaction is.
[7:07]How did you come up with the characters?
[7:10]Were you ever into acting?
[7:11]I feel like it's so deep into that world as well.
[7:13]that whole like aspirational and wanting to act, but not being able to sing.
[7:18]And, you know, having just, even when India realizes, like, oh my gosh,
[7:22]this is what I meant to do.
[7:24]Not everybody has that feeling.
[7:25]No, not everybody has that feeling.
[7:27]And so I, I am a theater fan.
[7:30]I'm a deep, deep.
[7:32]I love, I love the theater.
[7:34]I love musical theater.
[7:35]I love musicals.
[7:36]Unlike India.
[7:37]I love plays.
[7:38]I love the theater.
[7:39]I always, always have.
[7:40]I cannot sing.
[7:41]But it turns out I also get an act.
[7:43]So, it's pretty much going to be a barrier for me to be.
[7:48]It is really interesting.
[7:49]I think to love something as an audience member and have no sense of wanting to
[7:56]we're being able to do it yourself.
[7:58]And for me, that contrast with reading, which I also am a huge fan of.
[8:03]And I'm doing all the, all the time and eventually that spilled over into wanting to do
[8:09]it myself wanting to write books myself.
[8:11]And that's not on the table for me for theater.
[8:13]And so in some ways, it's this.
[8:14]I don't know.
[8:15]It's a pure love.
[8:16]It is just something that I have always that I have always loved but never aspired to.
[8:20]Maybe it's also true that my academic background is in Shakespeare.
[8:24]And so I have all of this.
[8:26]And I taught play writing and I've taught play reading.
[8:30]And I've taught drama and theater.
[8:32]All of that stuff like from an academic standpoint.
[8:34]And, and that's very, very different.
[8:36]But it does, it did give me a place to start as far as research went.
[8:41]And it's super fascinating research.
[8:43]It's a, it is an interesting world to be immersed in from, from that perspective.
[8:47]So all of that was a pleasure.
[8:49]So then when was your first attempt at fiction?
[8:52]One of the things that I think is interesting is that,
[8:55]I don't want to say, I have a novelist like, like,
[8:57]like I think the way people want to give you their star signs.
[9:00]I am a novelist, like in this kind of core of my being sort of way.
[9:04]It's what I want to read.
[9:05]And it's what I want to write.
[9:07]So I had tried to write short stories, which seems like the entry point.
[9:11]I mean, and the kind of most direct answer to your question.
[9:14]But I want to write short stories.
[9:16]I want to write novels.
[9:17]And I think that you cannot know whether you can write a novel until you have actually already written a novel.
[9:23]It is a really difficult thing to sit down and try to do.
[9:26]Because they're long.
[9:27]And they take a really long time.
[9:30]So, you know, I think if you want to know if you can write a sonnet,
[9:33]you can sit down and try to write a sonnet.
[9:35]I think if you want to know if you can write fiction,
[9:37]you can sit down and write a short story.
[9:39]And it might take weeks and it might take months.
[9:42]But like, okay, that's a tackleable sort of a goal.
[9:45]I just think it isn't true with long form.
[9:48]So I didn't, I did not know that I could do it until I had already done it.
[9:52]I was teaching in Baltimore and then I fell in love with a person in Seattle.
[10:00]and moved out to say out where I am still,
[10:02]and got a teaching job out here,
[10:03]and I had this block of time, like six months,
[10:06]between jobs for the first time in my life,
[10:10]that I had time to actually sit down and say,
[10:13]it's just something I can do.
[10:14]I have no idea, and I figured it out
[10:18]by after I, you know, after I had done,
[10:21]I had read 10,000 novels,
[10:23]and that seemed pretty good training,
[10:25]but I just don't think there's any way to know
[10:26]whether you can get from the beginning
[10:28]to the end of the thing without doing it.
[10:30]Very true.
[10:31]When you were structuring this novel,
[10:34]who came first?
[10:35]Fig, India, one of the other characters,
[10:38]like where did the, or did it all just sort of come together?
[10:41]Yes, it's such a good question.
[10:43]So India used to die in the first sentence of the book.
[10:47]Oh my God.
[10:48]I know.
[10:49]Which is really remarkable given that she is,
[10:52]I mean, she's certainly the heart of this novel,
[10:55]and I don't think it's really much of a spoiler
[10:57]to say that she lives through it,
[10:59]but she did not used to,
[11:00]and she was always a huge part of the book,
[11:03]but she was kind of hanging over it
[11:05]because we knew that she died,
[11:07]and simply it was just too sad,
[11:09]and she had too much life in her,
[11:10]and it colored the book in a way that it was too costly.
[11:14]But therefore, I had her kids too.
[11:17]So Fig also, like they came together.
[11:19]I had Fig's voice in my head from the beginning,
[11:23]because she's 10, and so her voice is very distant,
[11:25]and she's very smart, 10-year-old,
[11:27]precocious and smart, 10-year-old,
[11:29]which is how I like my kids.
[11:30]And therefore, that voice is really clear,
[11:34]and I think easier to write because of that,
[11:36]and easier to empathize with her immediately.
[11:41]She is piled, and she is smart and curious,
[11:44]and originally because she has lost her mom.
[11:46]And so, well, pretty much everything else
[11:48]about this book changed over the course of it.
[11:51]I mean, I cut 300,000 words from this thing.
[11:54]What?
[11:55]I cut 300,000 words from this book
[11:59]that's nearly three times as many words as remain.
[12:02]It has two timelines, one of which I dragged
[12:05]to the trash can, and redraft it from scratch.
[12:08]And so, which way, which one?
[12:10]Well, the past one, because, as I say,
[12:13]she used to, I'm sorry, the present,
[12:16]the present time, she had to die,
[12:18]and then we had this whole aftermath.
[12:21]So we were getting the story of her past,
[12:24]leading up to her death, and then we saw her legacy.
[12:28]And so that had to go.
[12:29]I mean, it just had to go.
[12:30]It is also true that I started this book on March 3rd, 2020.
[12:35]So it was really, I mean, it went really well for a week,
[12:37]and then my kid came home from school for a year and a half.
[12:40]You know, the whole world got derailed.
[12:42]And I think there's no way to have been writing something
[12:46]and not have that got get derailed as well.
[12:49]So yeah, everything changed.
[12:52]You know, writing of Fig is a 10-year-old.
[12:55]I have a 10-year-old daughter.
[12:56]And so this was like spot on, you know?
[13:00]And I have boy-girl twins who are older, they're 16.
[13:03]But anyway, there were like so many things.
[13:05]I was like, she got that right?
[13:06]Yep, that way.
[13:07]I'm like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
[13:11]So I love that note.
[13:12]Thank you, that's great.
[13:14]Even like the agent character,
[13:16]the sense of humor in this very subtle,
[13:19]but I chuckle out loud multiple times.
[13:23]It's not like you're not doing slapstick.
[13:26]It's like this very sophisticated, but hilarious comedy
[13:29]that you have to know the words that are,
[13:32]it's just so great.
[13:34]It's like a hidden code or something.
[13:37]I don't know.
[13:37]You're a unit, like you might miss it, but thank you.
[13:41]Yes, thank you, I love that.
[13:42]Yeah, I mean, I hope so.
[13:44]Because that too, I think, contributes
[13:45]to what you're talking about.
[13:46]I want to earn your 10 hours.
[13:48]I want you to be amused.
[13:50]Yeah.
[13:51]So do you make yourself laugh when you're writing?
[13:54]Like, do you chuckle at all?
[13:56]I think I do, but I do.
[13:58]I see the jokes coming and I think, oh, yeah,
[14:01]that's going to work.
[14:02]That's going to be good.
[14:03]And they come to me just a few lines
[14:06]before they come into my head maybe a few lines
[14:08]before they actually come out of my fingers.
[14:10]And I think, yeah, OK, that's going to be nice.
[14:12]That's going to work.
[14:14]One time, establish the characters and edit them
[14:17]and revise them a lot.
[14:18]They start to talk.
[14:20]And so I hear them and they surprise me
[14:24]as if I were reading it.
[14:26]And that's, I feel like that's what you're writing to get
[14:30]to that point where the characters are amusing you.
[14:33]Interesting.
[14:35]Did you work alongside your editor?
[14:37]I mean, I know this is not your first book.
[14:38]Like, did you, you're wearing a shirt that says edit?
[14:41]So, or is this to go through that many words and changes
[14:46]and all that?
[14:47]Like, I feel like to do that in a loan in a room,
[14:49]would you tear your hair out, you know?
[14:52]Yes, there's definitely some tearing of hair.
[14:56]I did work with my editor a lot.
[14:58]And she, she is a person who has a lot of notes
[15:03]and we do go back and forth.
[15:04]But I did almost all of that 300,000 words of cutting
[15:07]before she saw it.
[15:08]I had done most of the major overhauling
[15:11]before I sent it out to her because I don't want to hear
[15:13]this, I like her.
[15:14]I wanted to think well of me.
[15:16]I don't want her to say it until it's really pretty good
[15:19]and it wasn't working.
[15:21]I mean, sometimes I think like, okay, this is working
[15:24]but it could be better.
[15:25]And then I, and then I will do those, those large edits.
[15:30]But I have to talk myself into them more.
[15:32]Is this one?
[15:33]I didn't have to talk myself into because it just
[15:36]was not working.
[15:37]It was, I was having to do a lot of,
[15:39]because it was the present timeline.
[15:41]I was having to do a lot of machinations
[15:44]because the world was changing every morning.
[15:46]I woke up and it was somewhere different.
[15:47]And you're like, oh, well,
[15:48]you can't have the scene at school because school is closed.
[15:50]Oh, we can't have the scene in a coffee shop
[15:52]is called the shop is closed.
[15:53]Well, those people can't run into it
[15:54]or tell the grocery store, it's grocery.
[15:55]I mean, it was like that level of thing.
[15:58]But also, you know, it was just admitting to myself,
[16:01]look, I can't kill this woman.
[16:03]So I have to find some other way of telling this,
[16:06]of telling this story.
[16:08]I will say though that I am an editor,
[16:10]I am a person who writes really terrible drafts
[16:14]and then iterates them, just write them again and again,
[16:17]and again and again and again and again until the get better.
[16:19]And it is not, it is frustrating
[16:21]and it is not the linear approach to novel writing.
[16:24]I think we're human being or really any of those things.
[16:27]If I could do it a different way, certainly would
[16:30]because there is that hair tearing, but I can't.
[16:34]Just wait, that's just the latest.
[16:37]I found it really interesting.
[16:38]And this is part of the flipping the narrative
[16:40]that we were talking about earlier
[16:42]when India is going through all these birth mom albums
[16:47]and scrap books and learning everything
[16:51]and then finding the one that's different
[16:53]and the way she talked to Camille.
[16:57]Camille, Camille, you know, she's like,
[16:58]I don't want these letters that are like,
[17:00]oh, I'm gonna be a dear mom, like I'm gonna take it.
[17:04]She's like, this is your child.
[17:06]Like this is, don't even talk to me about it like that.
[17:09]And that's something that I hadn't read either.
[17:12]Tell me about that.
[17:13]Yeah, and that is exactly why
[17:16]because you haven't read that either.
[17:17]And I hadn't read that either.
[17:19]One of the things, there are a lot of implicit assumptions
[17:22]I think about adoption that we're not looking at
[17:25]very closely and for a lot of reasons.
[17:28]And I think he doesn't serving anyone
[17:30]to make those boxes really narrow.
[17:32]I don't think anyone is ever served by really narrow boxes.
[17:36]Actually, like this is, it does my fifth novel.
[17:39]Very different from one another.
[17:40]But like this is what I am always on about.
[17:42]It's like wider ranges of normal,
[17:44]make the world a better place for everyone.
[17:47]In the case of adoption and in the case of like birth moms
[17:50]in particular, I think it is all really well intentioned
[17:55]and trying to hold space for and trying to honor.
[17:59]And yet I think we are often doing people a disservice
[18:03]when we say like, this is how you must feel.
[18:07]This is how you're always gonna feel.
[18:09]This is how this is gonna go.
[18:11]And I just think it's dehumanizing
[18:13]because everyone else might feel any of any different
[18:16]number of different ways about anything at all.
[18:18]Whereas we say like birth mothers have to feel this way
[18:23]and this order about this thing.
[18:24]And that's the only thing that's acceptable.
[18:26]There are lots of reasons for that.
[18:28]And they are, I mean, they are really loving reasons
[18:32]and a lot of ways.
[18:34]But I think they're ignoring human complexity.
[18:38]And can finding people in ways
[18:42]that I think are not serving anyone in the equation.
[18:46]And so I wanted to look at it more deeply
[18:50]and more complexly.
[18:52]Complexly, is that a word?
[18:54]More complicatedly.
[18:56]More closely.
[18:57]And I guess, and again, I think this is a beauty of novels,
[19:01]like from a character perspective.
[19:03]Not from a policy perspective,
[19:06]not from a social media perspective,
[19:08]not from a 1200 word article perspective.
[19:11]Like, let's really look at this.
[19:13]And look at this person as a person.
[19:15]Let's see where we are.
[19:16]I love that.
[19:17]Oh my gosh.
[19:18]Thank you.
[19:19]Where are you, by the way, with your next book?
[19:22]Do you hate when people ask you that?
[19:23]I don't hate when people ask me that.
[19:26]But in this case, it does a complicated question.
[19:28]I mean, at the moment,
[19:29]because I'm in this kind of pre-pub place,
[19:31]I'm mostly doing stuff for this one still.
[19:35]I have started the next one.
[19:36]I have always started the next one.
[19:38]I feel like novels are really daunting.
[19:40]And if you don't start the next one,
[19:41]then you will never start.
[19:43]You stand at the bottom of the mountain,
[19:44]or like, no, that's too tall.
[19:45]I can't.
[19:46]I can't.
[19:47]So I feel like it is, it is good and useful to always,
[19:50]to always be in the middle of something new.
[19:53]But it is also true that because I revised so much and so thoroughly.
[20:00]they probably wouldn't tell you what it's about anyway
[20:02]because of writers or superstition and weird about things
[20:05]like that.
[20:05]But if I did, you come back and say,
[20:08]like, what happened to that novel?
[20:09]I'd be like, oh, yeah, no, that's something else
[20:11]completely and entirely because they go through
[20:14]these huge changes.
[20:15]Well, it's good to know that that's normal, though, right?
[20:19]I guess, yes.
[20:21]I never know whether people find this heartening
[20:24]or really demoralizing it.
[20:25]I find it, personally, I find it heartening.
[20:30]So that's good.
[20:32]That's really good.
[20:33]It's really good.
[20:34]You said you're just a really huge reader.
[20:37]What are, and you only read fiction?
[20:39]So what are some of your all-time favorites
[20:43]or something recently that you've read,
[20:45]something you've read recently that you love?
[20:46]Look, at my many books and my bookshelf,
[20:48]this is the book I'm recommending to everybody these days.
[20:51]Oh, I keep hearing great things about it.
[20:52]Is it really amazing?
[20:54]OK, OK.
[20:55]So amazing.
[20:55]I read it years ago because the publication on this one
[20:59]has been so slow, and now I'm reading it again.
[21:02]And it's just fantastic.
[21:03]I mean, it's fantastic for a time.
[21:04]It's fantastic for the second time.
[21:05]It's timely, isn't it?
[21:06]We must not think of ourselves.
[21:08]It must not think of ourselves.
[21:09]It is a, it takes place in Warsaw, get it out.
[21:11]So it's historical fiction.
[21:13]It is World War II.
[21:14]It is not cheerful, but it is hopeful.
[21:17]It is not a depressing book.
[21:19]It is a remarkable book because you know how it ends.
[21:21]But also, you know how it ends.
[21:23]It is a book about people who are keeping in,
[21:26]for one person, particularly, who is keeping an archive.
[21:29]And that is a true story.
[21:31]And that archive survives.
[21:33]And you know that it survives because you're reading about it.
[21:35]And so it is a really remarkable book.
[21:37]I love all of her books.
[21:39]And that is the best one.
[21:40]So, you know, take that.
[21:42]I am also, I have recommended to everybody
[21:44]now on the Alderman's new book, The Future.
[21:46]She's another one.
[21:47]I love everything she's ever written.
[21:50]I did not think that she could top the power.
[21:52]I felt like the power was an essentially perfect book.
[21:55]This book is, it blew my mind.
[21:58]I mean, it blew my mind.
[22:01]I, it was one of these books
[22:02]where like every three pages decided to put it down and go,
[22:05]okay, what?
[22:06]I mean, there's that level of thing.
[22:09]It's very smart.
[22:10]It's about tech billionaires behaving badly
[22:14]and the geniuses, the rogue geniuses
[22:17]who want to fix it.
[22:20]And it is epic in scope.
[22:21]And she too manages to do it.
[22:23]I mean, it's 350 pay 400 pages.
[22:25]I, you know, it's just, and you can't stop turning them.
[22:29]I'm recommending this book to everyone.
[22:31]In the well of all time favorites, this book,
[22:33]we're all completely beside ourselves.
[22:35]Karen Joy Fowler is a book I recommend to everyone
[22:38]who will sit still long enough to listen.
[22:40]If people have not read this book,
[22:41]the thing to do is to read it without reading anything
[22:44]about it.
[22:45]Don't read their reviews.
[22:46]Don't read the back.
[22:47]Don't even look at the cover if you can help it.
[22:49]Just because it's got a twist and you want to preserve it.
[22:53]You can, so it's really fantastic.
[22:54]Even if you know it, she is definitely
[22:56]in by like all time, all time favorites.
[22:58]I mean, gosh, I could do this all the time.
[23:00]I was like, you should have your own show.
[23:01]I'm just sitting here watching it.
[23:03]This is great.
[23:04]Yeah, I really all day long.
[23:06]I could do this.
[23:06]First of all, effort is someone I am ever recommending
[23:09]to people to read.
[23:10]The truth is another one that just,
[23:12]I mean, it's speaking up funny.
[23:14]This book is laugh out loud.
[23:17]Funny book about lynching and race in America
[23:20]and gosh, that is a remarkable combination.
[23:24]He's amazing.
[23:26]This is a man with 30-some novels.
[23:27]He writes like one a year.
[23:29]They are unlike anything else I ever read by anybody else.
[23:33]The one that's coming out next year is called James.
[23:35]It talks in from Jim's, but it's amazing.
[23:38]He's amazing.
[23:39]He's amazing.
[23:40]Anyway, as I say, I could do this all day long.
[23:42]So you should cut me off, but I know.
[23:45]I'm going to just like come to you
[23:46]from my book recommendations.
[23:47]This is great.
[23:48]The world would be better place
[23:49]if people would just read what I told them to, I think.
[23:52]Do you do anything?
[23:53]Like, do you post your lists and make a whole thing about it?
[23:57]I don't actually.
[23:58]I mean, I'm asked often enough in ways like this.
[24:01]And so I'm always so to tell.
[24:03]And I zoom with a lot of book clubs.
[24:05]And they always ask that question.
[24:07]And that's a really good question for book clubs to ask.
[24:09]But I don't have any sort of a, you know, I don't know.
[24:12]It would be a good thing to do, like a sub stack
[24:14]or something like this, where I just every month
[24:15]told people what they should read.
[24:17]You should.
[24:18]Let me know.
[24:19]I can help you set it up.
[24:21]Thank you, that'd be awesome.
[24:22]OK, I know you've already given a lot advice, a lot of advice.
[24:25]But if there's one more piece that an aspiring novelist
[24:29]out there should know, or even just somebody
[24:32]working on a follow-up who's just like a drift or whatever,
[24:36]what is your advice?
[24:37]Well, and you are a drift because I think
[24:39]one of the unfortunate things about novel writing
[24:41]is that what you learned writing the last one
[24:44]doesn't actually help you with the next one,
[24:46]because there's so different from one another.
[24:48]That's not an uplifting piece of advice.
[24:50]I have two, I think.
[24:51]One is read everything.
[24:53]And that's everyone's best advice.
[24:55]And it's because it's the best piece of advice.
[24:57]A thing I tell students all the time is the advice
[25:00]that you're given about writing, all of it.
[25:02]Take it or leave it.
[25:03]It works for the person who's given it to you.
[25:05]It may very well have absolutely nothing
[25:07]to do with your process except that one.
[25:10]You got to be reading.
[25:11]There's no point otherwise.
[25:13]You figure out what it is that you might read
[25:16]that is gonna drive and steer your writing useful if you.
[25:20]It's not like, if you're writing this,
[25:21]you have to be reading this and this and this and this,
[25:23]but you got to be reading something in order to support
[25:27]that the process and the voice and the whole idea of it.
[25:31]I just think it's not negotiable.
[25:33]I feel like personally I am always writing
[25:35]about what I am reading and I find that practice
[25:39]to be, to be, is when I'm teaching people how to write.
[25:43]And therefore they have to do what I say.
[25:46]Make that part of the curriculum.
[25:48]And this is the other one, edit.
[25:50]That's the other piece of advice is like,
[25:52]just fear not the fact that your draft is crap.
[25:54]It's gonna be crap for a while.
[25:56]You can make it better and you will.
[25:58]And that too is not like, oh, I'll just go through it
[26:01]one or two more times and then everything will be fine.
[26:03]I think it takes me hundreds, hundreds of times
[26:08]of going to the beginning and writing through to the end
[26:10]and fixing things and going back to the beginning
[26:11]and writing through to the end.
[26:12]But that's okay because that's part of the process.
[26:15]So that is my other piece of advice.
[26:16]Don't despair, edit, love it.
[26:21]Laurie, thank you so much.
[26:22]Thank you for the thought for moking entertainment
[26:25]and all of it from family, family.
[26:27]And yeah, I am a huge new fan and I'm sorry.
[26:31]I'm only coming to you now, but I have to light it.
[26:33]And I feel like I've discovered this gem
[26:35]that everyone knew about and I'm they're all like,
[26:37]well, yeah, of course, okay fine, okay fine.
[26:40]I was just late to the party, welcome, welcome.
[26:44]And thank you so much to be for doing this.
[26:46]This is a pleasure.
[26:46]You are a delight and grateful.
[26:49]Thank you.
[26:50]Okay.
[26:51]All right, bye Laurie.
[26:53]Bye.
[26:53]Thanks.
[26:55]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time
[26:58]to Read Books.
[26:59]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[27:01]at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:04]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[27:06]and sign up for my virtual book club
[27:08]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:11]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[27:12]for the tech's texture sound for the sound editing.
[27:14]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:16]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.