Roxana Robinson, LEAVING
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[0:33]Roxanna Robinson is the author of ten books, including six novels, three short story collections,
[0:39]and the biography of George O'Keefe.
[0:41]Four of these were New York Times notable books.
[0:43]Robinson was born in Kentucky, but grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
[0:47]She attended Bennington College and graduated from the University of Michigan.
[0:50]She worked in the art world, specializing in the field of American painting,
[0:54]before she began writing full time.
[0:56]Her novel cost was a finalist for the NEBA.
[0:59]It was named one of the five best fiction books of the year by the Washington Post
[1:02]and received a fiction award from the Maine Publishers and Writers Association.
[1:06]Her novel Sparta was named one of the ten best books of the year by the BBC
[1:10]and won the James Webb Award for Distinguished Fiction,
[1:12]found that the USMC Heritage Foundation and the fiction award from the Maine Publishers
[1:17]and Writers Association.
[1:18]Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker,
[1:21]Harper's Tinhouse, Best American Short Stories, and Elsewhere.
[1:24]Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post,
[1:27]Look for them, Harper's, and Elsewhere.
[1:29]She was twice the finalist for the NBCC, The Lockian Award for Criticism,
[1:33]and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts,
[1:36]and the Guggenheim Foundation.
[1:38]She teaches at Hunter College, has twice served on the board of pen,
[1:41]and is a former president of the author's guild,
[1:43]where she continues to serve as a member of the council.
[1:46]Her new novel, Leaving, is out from Norton.
[1:48]Welcome, Roxanna. Thank you so much for coming on,
[1:50]Momstone. Have time to read books, to discuss leaving.
[1:54]I am so thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.
[1:58]Your book is so beautiful, and I am so captivated,
[2:03]the sentences that you write are gorgeous, so much so that
[2:07]as I was walking around New York yesterday,
[2:09]even walking past the entry to a subway station,
[2:12]like the way you wrote about it, when you said something like,
[2:15]you know, the sidewalks opened up,
[2:17]but like you just take everything, like a simple subway entrance,
[2:21]and make it into something poetic and beautiful,
[2:23]which changes how I sort of view the world. So thank you.
[2:26]Thank you for that. Yeah, that's, I mean,
[2:28]any writer is, you know, because you're a writer,
[2:31]and you know what you're trying to do is set down your own experience
[2:35]and make it something you can share, and that sort of illuminates your reader's world,
[2:40]and it's it illuminates yours. That's why you're trying to transmit it,
[2:43]so it's exciting to hear that it's being transmitted. Thank you.
[2:46]It's transmission accepted, received.
[2:49]Okay, tell listeners what your book is about, please.
[2:54]So it's about two people, Sarah and Warren, who had a relationship when they were in college.
[3:00]They split up sort of because of a misunderstanding,
[3:03]and just the way those things happen in college. They were quite far apart, and things
[3:09]it fell apart, and they both married other people, and really didn't see each other for decades.
[3:15]Then they run into each other by chance at the Metropolitan Opera,
[3:21]and they're both 60, and he's still married to the same woman, and she has been divorced,
[3:26]and her husband, her ex-husband died. So she's single, he's, he's not, and everything starts up again.
[3:33]So it's a story about connections between people. It's a love story,
[3:38]but it's also about a different world. I mean, I've, we've all read many, many love stories,
[3:43]I teach Anna, Karen, and I teach them about work. So I love love stories, and they're sort
[3:49]of what makes the world function keep moving as people's attraction to each other.
[3:54]But I hadn't read many love stories that are set in the second half of someone's life,
[4:00]and it's so, so different. I mean, when you're in your 20s, you are a free agent,
[4:05]and you can both decide to move to China and learn the language, or become,
[4:11]you know, environmentalists. But when you're in your 60s, you have a place, whatever your life
[4:17]has been, it's there. It's part of you. You have established something. You've established a job
[4:23]and colleagues and friends in a place that you live. And to uproot all of that for someone else
[4:30]becomes very complicated, and you have to measure what you have against what you want.
[4:36]And then there are people around you who may not allow you to be so free. And in this case,
[4:42]they both have adult children, and they realize that their adult children feel that they have
[4:48]a right to play a part in this relationship, which is something really a young person doesn't have.
[4:54]Even if you are, if you have kids in there, you know, that are 6 and 8 and 10, they may be
[4:59]furious if you get a divorce, but they can't stop you. But if you have adult children, they take it,
[5:04]they can take a very powerful place in your life. So there are all sorts of things that happen
[5:11]in a relationship that takes place in this part of your life that I wasn't seeing written about.
[5:15]And I was seeing it around me. And I thought it was so interesting that I needed to set it down
[5:21]and transmit it. Wow. Really beautiful. Well, not only do you have the love story in the present,
[5:26]but even when you write about it in the past, it seems, you know, it can appeal to people who
[5:31]are used to the younger love story. You still have all of that. And, you know, even some
[5:36]simple gestures like when Sarah feels the weight of Warren's body on her, and they're like trying to,
[5:41]you know, lean on the couch in a certain way to offset the weight. And just like those little
[5:46]moments are still there. So you still check that box. But there are some discussions even, not
[5:52]even the love story, but even just the dialogue between Warren and Sarah, where they talk about
[5:57]having kids and how before you, before you have kids, your conversations are one way. And then
[6:03]of course, once they're like, though the power dynamic shifting, like you said in their involvement,
[6:09]but also in the way they occupy your life and how you're trying to get their attention when
[6:15]they're older as the parent versus the child desperate for your attention as a child, which I
[6:21]you had a whole section about that that I was just like, yes, this I kind of want to like,
[6:25]you know, as a medium. I don't know. It was just so spot on and well, well said.
[6:30]Yeah, well children are the big presence in our lives. They're the big other. And we want them,
[6:36]we love them, we love having them in their lives. And they're tremendous nuisance. You know,
[6:41]whatever you want to do is more difficult if you've got three toddlers hanging on your legs and
[6:46]crying. And so you, they're part of your life in a wonderful way. And they give you enormous joy,
[6:53]but they also complicate your life. So in the beginning, you're sort of trying to your conversations
[6:58]are about what you're doing as an adult and with your job and your colleagues. But then later,
[7:05]and your, your, your kids aren't really part of the conversation because you think your real life
[7:09]is, is elsewhere. It's being a professional, whatever you're doing. And then things change. And
[7:15]then you start talking about your kids and what they're doing. And they take over the conversation.
[7:20]You're so proud of the fact that your child got into Stanford or your child is one an award.
[7:24]And you become, they become more and more dominant. And then when you step away from the world,
[7:30]it's Sarah and Warren are still working, but they, they no longer are planning to run the world,
[7:36]which they might have done when they were 40. So their children become more and more important.
[7:40]And you realize then you realize that your children are not paying attention to you that they
[7:45]are not asking for your attention. So it's wonderful. I mean, I love examining families from every
[7:51]aspect. You also paint a picture of a single older woman who is totally happy being alone,
[7:59]which is great because I feel like there's this common reception like, oh, no, she's alone,
[8:04]dada, and you were in this book. You're like, no, no, no, this is amazing. Like, I can come in
[8:11]and it's quiet. And there's just this beautiful dog. And I can do what I want. And you've painted
[8:17]like this aspirational setting for the person with the kids hanging off them or anyone else
[8:24]is to say like, we don't need to be surrounded by people to be happy. And there are many different
[8:30]ways that life can look great later in life or really at any stage in life.
[8:34]Yeah, it was, that was interesting too. I mean, Sarah has a job that she loves,
[8:40]working at a museum and has a place to live that she loves and she's lived in for years. And she loves
[8:46]the natural world around her. And she has this wonderful dog. So she has friends. She has a job.
[8:52]And she has a daughter and a son. So she's very well taken care of by the world around her.
[8:59]Yeah. I feel like, you know, this might have deeper roots in sort of the societal construct of
[9:05]needing a, like, you could take this to a whole feminist place if you wanted. But it, you know,
[9:11]at the least, it makes a beautiful setting and a sense of place and all of that where,
[9:16]so you were inspired by people in your world, you saw this happening. What happens for you,
[9:21]because you are not a new author, right? You have a gift of, you know, you can take different scenes
[9:26]and you've been writing. And I want to hear about how you even got into writing to begin with. But
[9:31]when you come, when you have that spark of an idea, how, what is the journey from,
[9:36]oh, maybe I should write about this to this book coming out? Like, when did what happens next?
[9:41]So really when I write a novel, it's because I've seen or heard something, something has gotten
[9:48]into me that is kind of troubling to me. Something I can't understand or I can't,
[9:54]I can't lay it to rest. It's something that just stays inside making trouble.
[10:00]And each of my novels has this kind of germ,
[10:03]something that bothers me, that troubles me.
[10:05]And with this book, I started seeing,
[10:07]I remember years ago meeting a couple in Maine at some
[10:12]fundraiser and they were in, I think they were in their 80s
[10:16]and it became clear that they were a couple
[10:18]but I knew that he was Mr. McMillan
[10:20]and she was Mrs. Sherman.
[10:21]And I was really shocked, you know,
[10:25]they were these dignified gray hair people
[10:28]and they were living in sin.
[10:29]And I said, so do you two are, and he's not at ease
[10:32]and we live in sin, we're not married.
[10:35]And it was really surprising and,
[10:36]but they seemed, you know, very happy
[10:39]and they said, you know, our finances are settled,
[10:42]our kids would be upset if we got married
[10:44]and changed all the legal things.
[10:47]And so we just lived together
[10:49]and I thought, well, why not?
[10:52]That seems very sensible, but it was really a departure
[10:55]for that kind of person to challenge
[10:58]the norms of society so drastically
[11:01]and to be so happy about it and see what we find in.
[11:05]And then, so I thought that was really interesting.
[11:07]That was a shift that was gonna happen.
[11:09]And really the two big reasons, practical reasons
[11:13]for marriage are protecting the children
[11:16]and protecting the inheritance, whatever that is.
[11:19]So that legal commitment is, you know,
[11:22]to make sure that the family money passes on to children
[11:26]and the children are protected,
[11:27]apart from the emotional parts.
[11:29]So these two people didn't have any reason,
[11:32]practical reasons to get married.
[11:34]And then I just started watching people around me
[11:36]and I knew something like three couples in New York
[11:39]who would not give up their own apartments.
[11:42]They would move, you know, sometimes they'd stay
[11:44]in his apartment, sometimes they would not give up
[11:47]their own apartments.
[11:48]And that's not something you do in your 20s, really.
[11:50]You want to be together all the time
[11:52]and you do.
[11:53]So I was just seeing so many different ways of dealing
[11:57]with romance, which was certainly still there.
[12:01]And I remember also seeing this was a number of years ago.
[12:03]I was at a party in Boston at a club,
[12:07]also very dignified.
[12:08]And I met this woman who was in her gray hair in her 80s.
[12:13]And she had this beaming expression in her face
[12:15]and she said right over there in that corner
[12:18]is where Bill was standing when I fell in love with him.
[12:21]And I said, oh, that's so wonderful.
[12:23]When was that?
[12:23]And she said three years ago.
[12:25]And I said, oh, very great.
[12:31]You know, they were married and they'd been married
[12:33]for three years and they were very happy.
[12:35]So I was just getting signals that there was a lot more
[12:40]that I hadn't paid attention to and that was happening around me.
[12:45]So that's how this all started.
[12:47]And then do you start taking notes?
[12:50]Or how do you turn that into the manuscript?
[12:52]Do you just start writing?
[12:54]Do you outlet?
[12:55]Like what does the process look like for you?
[12:57]No outlines, no notes.
[12:59]The only way I can write something
[13:00]is to write my way through it.
[13:02]And I may have a sense of where it's going,
[13:06]but it always changes.
[13:08]So I don't, with my first book,
[13:10]I tried, my husband was a lawyer
[13:13]and I first showed him the draft of my first novel
[13:16]or I told him I was writing it.
[13:18]And he said, have you made an outline?
[13:21]And I said, no, do you think I should make an outline?
[13:24]And he said, well, I would make an outline
[13:25]if I were writing a novel.
[13:26]I thought he's right.
[13:27]I should make an outline.
[13:28]I should sit right down every chapter and what happens in it.
[13:31]So I did that.
[13:32]I felt really good about myself.
[13:34]I accomplished something.
[13:35]And then I started writing it,
[13:37]but nobody would do what they were meant to.
[13:39]And I wouldn't say what I had planned them to say
[13:42]and they wouldn't do anything.
[13:43]So I gave up the outline because for me,
[13:46]it is really an organic process.
[13:48]And I started out with a problem and a set of characters
[13:53]and their task is to move through that problem
[13:57]and resolve it in whatever ways they can.
[13:59]But what I need to do,
[14:02]the only preparation I will do is
[14:05]I will often write little tiny biographies of the characters.
[14:09]When they were born, what color their eyes are,
[14:12]where they grew up, what their parents were like,
[14:14]so that I know that character very well.
[14:17]And so that character is consistent throughout the book.
[14:20]This is somebody who's very ambitious
[14:21]and who is impatient and doesn't ever lay
[14:23]you finish your sentences.
[14:25]This is somebody who grew up in the country
[14:27]and it's really uncomfortable in the city.
[14:29]So that person, I know that person before I start writing.
[14:32]So I don't end up like Flow Bear
[14:35]saying that Emma's eyes are blue in one page
[14:37]and brown on another page,
[14:39]which fascinates all of us.
[14:41]So I need to know the character very well
[14:43]on what kind of actions and what kind of behavior
[14:46]that character will deliver during the book.
[14:50]So that's the only thing I do.
[14:51]So that the characters are consistent throughout.
[14:54]But other than that, I just start writing.
[14:58]And tell me about how you originally got started
[15:02]and how you've kept writing novels a career
[15:05]with your teaching and everything else.
[15:06]Like just how do you do that?
[15:09]And how did you get started?
[15:11]I think, I mean, I started writing
[15:12]when everybody else does in first grade.
[15:14]It's just, I never stopped.
[15:16]I always loved writing.
[15:17]It was something that made me happy that I could do
[15:20]and it was something that worked for me.
[15:24]I studied it in college.
[15:25]I studied with Bernard Malamode at Bennington.
[15:28]And after college, I went to work in New York
[15:32]and worked for Sotheby's, which I loved.
[15:35]And that's where I became interested in American art
[15:38]and which I still write about.
[15:39]And that's why I wrote the biography of George F. Keith
[15:42]because I became sort of interested in American art.
[15:45]But while I was working at Sotheby's
[15:47]and another gallery too, I was always writing fiction.
[15:50]And I was trying to get my fiction published.
[15:53]That was really my goal rather than writing nonfiction,
[15:56]writing art history, which I also did.
[15:59]And then finally, I started publishing.
[16:02]And it's just, you know, as every writer knows,
[16:04]it's just a lot of rejection.
[16:05]You write something and it gets turned down
[16:07]and you write something else.
[16:09]And that gets turned down too.
[16:11]But you just, and I can't tell you how many times
[16:13]I quit writing.
[16:14]Many, many, many times.
[16:16]Okay, if they don't want this story,
[16:19]they don't deserve any more stories from me.
[16:21]I'm not writing stories anymore.
[16:23]And that made me feel very good.
[16:25]I would quit.
[16:26]Then I would think of something I wanted to write about.
[16:27]So I write about that.
[16:29]It was just something, you know,
[16:31]and all writing students need to remember.
[16:34]It's just there's a lot of rejection.
[16:35]You can't depend on the world to love your work.
[16:38]You have to depend on yourself to love your work.
[16:41]You have to love what you're doing.
[16:42]So that's how it was.
[16:44]Wow.
[16:45]But when you were doing these pretend quitting things,
[16:48]it were pretend.
[16:49]It weren't pretend.
[16:49]Oh, wow.
[16:50]You meant it.
[16:51]I was really okay.
[16:52]Okay.
[16:53]How long would it last?
[16:55]Yeah, maybe we.
[16:56]Okay, so funny.
[16:58]When you went back to it, did you try something new?
[17:00]Like when you were mad about the stories,
[17:02]were you're like, okay, this time I'm going to try
[17:04]a bubble up.
[17:04]No, same thing.
[17:05]Positive feedback.
[17:06]So I knew that people were interested in what I was doing.
[17:10]And, you know, I always wrote about the things
[17:13]that really, that really gripped me.
[17:14]And they were always about personal relationships.
[17:16]And they were always about, you know,
[17:19]intimate connections that went wrong
[17:21]and that had to be resolved.
[17:22]And those things kept coming in my life.
[17:25]I kept seeing them or experiencing them.
[17:27]And I had to set them down.
[17:29]So I just had to do it.
[17:31]Are there any of your past works that you're like,
[17:34]that you look back on now and you're like,
[17:36]oh, I wish I had changed this about that.
[17:38]Or, you know, that you have any second thoughts about
[17:41]or that you're like, I hope I could ever do a good job
[17:45]as that one.
[17:47]I never read my stuff.
[17:49]Again, I would never look at it.
[17:50]It would probably horrifying me.
[17:53]I mean, I probably would think, oh, that sentence is bad.
[17:55]On the other hand, when I write, I'm so obsessive.
[18:00]I write every, I start, you know, a new file,
[18:04]which is in a new chapter.
[18:05]And so every time I open that chapter,
[18:07]I reread the opening paragraph.
[18:09]So that opening, the opening page of every chapter
[18:12]has probably been rewritten a hundred times.
[18:15]Every time I have to go through that.
[18:16]No, this word is too heavy right there.
[18:19]I have to change that to a two syllable word
[18:21]instead of a three syllable word.
[18:23]So I, everything gets sort of combed through
[18:26]for the tangles.
[18:27]Takes me a long time to get out the tangles.
[18:30]So that's how I function.
[18:33]If I went back, there would be some words.
[18:36]But also, you know, my toes would probably curl.
[18:38]I'd probably think that this is a stupid scene
[18:40]or I shouldn't put it in.
[18:41]When my O'Keefe book, my O'Keefe book was published
[18:45]first by Harper and Row, which was bought by Harper Collins
[18:47]and then it moved to University Press of New England
[18:51]and then they went defunct and another publisher asked me
[18:54]if they could publish it.
[18:56]And I said, sure, and she said,
[18:57]is there anything you want to change or is there anything you
[18:59]want to add?
[19:00]And I thought, yeah, that book I wrote sort of
[19:02]in the thick of feminism.
[19:04]And it's a, there are a lot of feminist passages in it,
[19:07]which I wouldn't put in today.
[19:09]It's not, I'm not embarrassed by them,
[19:10]but I could take them out.
[19:11]And I started reading it and I thought,
[19:14]I changed my thing.
[19:17]I would change everything.
[19:18]I would start saying this paragraph should come be for that.
[19:21]So I said, I wrote a forward and I added some letters
[19:24]that had never been published before.
[19:26]So we added new material,
[19:27]but I couldn't go back and start editing.
[19:30]I would drive me crazy.
[19:33]And I never reread my work at all.
[19:36]Interesting.
[19:36]So how long does the typical book take you?
[19:38]How long did leaving take you?
[19:40]To write.
[19:41]It's probably the shortest time I've ever spent on a novel.
[19:44]My first novel took me seven years.
[19:47]The O'Keefe book also took a very short time
[19:49]because there were other people writing the same book
[19:52]and my editor told me that I had to be first.
[19:56]I had a gun to my head.
[19:57]And so if he hadn't said that, I would.
[20:00]still be writing that book.
[20:01]I would still be any more material.
[20:04]But the other books often because a book turns out
[20:09]to include material that I don't know about
[20:11]and have to do a lot of research.
[20:13]When I wrote Cost, which I thought was going to be very short,
[20:16]I thought it was going to be, it's about a two week vacation
[20:20]in main three generations of a family.
[20:23]And I thought it was going to be very intense and short
[20:27]and just about those people in that place at that time.
[20:31]And it turned out that one of them was a heroin addict.
[20:35]So all of a sudden I had to learn about the entire world
[20:38]of addiction.
[20:40]I had to talk to heroin addicts.
[20:41]I had to talk to policemen.
[20:42]I had to talk to interventionists and doctors
[20:45]and go to meetings and meet heroin addicts
[20:49]and learn a whole world that I did not know anything about.
[20:53]And the same about my book about Sparta,
[20:56]which is about a marine lieutenant coming home from Iraq.
[20:58]So I had to learn about Marines, the military,
[21:02]what it was like to be in Iraq,
[21:03]what the home these were like inside, everything.
[21:07]So those books took me like five years each.
[21:11]This book I didn't have to do any research for so
[21:14]I think it took me three years.
[21:15]Wow.
[21:16]And have you started your next book?
[21:18]Yeah.
[21:19]Can you say anything about it?
[21:21]No.
[21:22]I have found, and a lot of, I think a lot of fiction writers
[21:25]feel this too.
[21:26]If you talk about a book while you're writing it,
[21:29]you lose the intensity that fuels the writing.
[21:34]So I remember early on telling a friend of mine
[21:37]what was going to happen in a book.
[21:39]And I said, and he says this amazing thing.
[21:42]And she says, I can't believe you said that.
[21:45]And I told her the whole scene.
[21:47]And then I got back home the next day.
[21:50]And I thought, this is a really boring scene.
[21:52]Because I had told ever, I had used up
[21:54]all the energy that I had on that scene by telling it.
[21:58]And it was no longer inside me to put down on the page.
[22:01]Interesting.
[22:02]So I never talk about the book while I'm writing it.
[22:06]And also, so there's that.
[22:08]I know it's like those indoor, those winter tennis bubbles
[22:14]that depend on keeping the air pumped up.
[22:16]If you let the air out slowly, the whole thing just collapses.
[22:20]So I don't ever let the air out while I'm working on it.
[22:23]And the other thing is that for me, when I'm working on the book
[22:28]and even the first person who reads it,
[22:30]it's like a cake that's not quite baked.
[22:33]It's still kind of rising up and down.
[22:37]It's very, very susceptible to any touch.
[22:41]So if I were to tell you what this new book is about,
[22:44]and I saw you frown, I would think it's a really stupid idea.
[22:48]I shouldn't have started this book.
[22:50]That's a bad idea.
[22:51]So any response at all, it has way too much weight for me.
[22:57]When I'm writing the book, and when I first show it to somebody,
[23:00]it's very, I mean, if my agent says, you should, you know,
[23:04]well, anything my agent says I listen to,
[23:06]but you're just, I am very, very vulnerable when it's not quite finished.
[23:11]I don't want to hear anybody's comment,
[23:13]because it will have an enormous amount of weight.
[23:16]And I don't, I need to finish it by myself before I show it to anyone.
[23:21]I'm working on a new book myself,
[23:24]but before I started writing,
[23:25]I was like running different ideas past people to get a temperature check.
[23:30]Like, what do you think about this?
[23:31]What do you think about this?
[23:32]How about this?
[23:33]And I found very quickly that like one idea was just like way too dark
[23:36]and people were like, no.
[23:38]And like, it still would have been fun to write.
[23:39]But like, if nobody wants to read it at all,
[23:42]like I could just do that off on my own, you know, I don't know.
[23:44]So I do a little more market testing, I guess.
[23:47]But once I get, once I'm getting into it, I'll probably wait.
[23:50]But I don't know.
[23:51]Maybe I don't have as much air in there to begin with.
[23:54]Well, you pump the air up yourself.
[23:59]That's funny.
[23:59]The thing is that talking to your friends about it
[24:01]and saying, what do you think about this idea?
[24:03]You can't give the idea the amount of weight that you would
[24:07]and when you actually write it.
[24:09]So you're asking them for their opinion on a shorthand thing
[24:12]that they can't possibly know.
[24:15]They can't possibly understand how you're going to really
[24:18]present it in the book.
[24:19]Yes, that's true.
[24:20]You're giving them too much power.
[24:23]Much power.
[24:24]Well, I also feel like sometimes by asking it,
[24:28]like if I know what I'm wearing looks good,
[24:30]I'm not going to ask five people for how does it look.
[24:34]Right.
[24:34]So if I'm asking people, it's probably not the right thing
[24:37]anyway.
[24:38]Like I finally arrived at what I'm doing
[24:40]and I don't need to ask anybody about it.
[24:42]But I feel like it's part of how I do it at least.
[24:45]I guess I need to know that there's something wrong with that.
[24:49]I don't know.
[24:50]Yeah.
[24:50]If I'm like, well, what do you think?
[24:52]Then it's probably bad.
[24:54]Uh-huh.
[24:56]It drives you, then you should write it.
[24:59]Yeah.
[24:59]There's no, you know, that's one way to learn.
[25:02]Yeah.
[25:03]Very true.
[25:04]And tell me more about your teaching
[25:05]and how the teaching sort of intersects with the writing
[25:07]and all of that and what you've learned from being
[25:09]a teacher yourself.
[25:10]I teach my main teaching.
[25:13]I mean, sometimes I teach at a conference or something,
[25:15]but I teach a hunter in the MFA program.
[25:19]So it's all writers.
[25:20]And I teach a lit class, actually.
[25:23]It's not a writing class, which is so much fun.
[25:26]And we read Madam Bauvery and a Karenina,
[25:30]check off to the lighthouse, what else?
[25:34]Then there's always one other book that I put in at the end.
[25:38]But we read these great, great books.
[25:41]And the students have mostly never read them before.
[25:44]They want to read them in a group.
[25:46]So there's this wonderful sense of discovery.
[25:49]And people will say, I really wanted to read Madam Bauvery
[25:53]or I really wanted to read Anna Karenina.
[25:55]But I know I'd never get around to reading it myself.
[25:58]And it's such a delight to read that book.
[26:01]It's everyone loves reading it.
[26:03]And it's so absorbing.
[26:06]You get so involved with the characters
[26:08]and the two love stories that are at the heart of it.
[26:11]And you get so involved by Tolstoy's vision,
[26:14]which is vast.
[26:16]I mean, he's trying to figure out how
[26:18]to deal with the Russian continent as well as his own love
[26:22]life.
[26:22]So it's a feast.
[26:24]And I love the students and they bring me stories.
[26:28]They have to write one paper or sometimes two.
[26:31]And they can write creative stories in response
[26:33]to the books we've read.
[26:34]And so they tell me stories that I would never
[26:37]have thought of in relation to these books.
[26:40]So it's really a great pleasure for me.
[26:44]Amazing.
[26:45]What are you reading now?
[26:46]For fun.
[26:48]For fun, I'm reading the, I'm just going to start the, well,
[26:51]I just read Anne Anne Wright's wonderful new book, The Ran,
[26:54]The Ran.
[26:54]I love her writing.
[26:56]And I'm going to start reading the Slow Horses series,
[27:00]which are English sort of detective stories
[27:02]that had been made into a TV series called Slow Horses.
[27:06]So those are really fun.
[27:08]Amazing.
[27:09]I know you've already given advice,
[27:10]but if you had any more parting advice
[27:12]for aspiring authors, what would it be?
[27:15]Trust yourself, if it's interesting to you
[27:17]will be interesting to your readers,
[27:20]write what excites you the most, what frightens you the most.
[27:24]Really, the reason that I write books
[27:25]is because I'm disturbed by something.
[27:27]I'm troubled by something.
[27:29]And I can't get it out of my head.
[27:31]And so the way I write about it is to set it down on paper.
[27:34]So write about the things that trouble you the most.
[27:38]And trust yourself, trust that your ideas are important.
[27:44]Forget about the world.
[27:45]Forget about that devil on your shoulder,
[27:47]which is telling you that it's no good
[27:48]and no one will want it.
[27:50]If you want it, it's good.
[27:52]So just write what you what you need to write.
[27:56]I love them.
[27:57]Did you have any other titles for leaving
[27:58]or was it always leaving?
[28:00]I did have another title for it.
[28:02]I wanted to call it the other life.
[28:04]Hmm, that's good too.
[28:06]Amazing.
[28:07]No, but that thing is just that people thought
[28:10]that that would suggest some kind of spiritual,
[28:15]which it isn't.
[28:18]But anyway, but maybe it's good.
[28:21]Leaving is great.
[28:22]Great title.
[28:22]Rossana, thank you so much.
[28:24]I really appreciate your time.
[28:25]And again, your writing is so phenomenal.
[28:28]And the book is beautiful.
[28:29]I'm so congratulations.
[28:30]Thanks for having me.
[28:31]I hope you feel better.
[28:33]Thank you.
[28:34]Okay, bye bye.
[28:35]Thanks for listening to this episode
[28:38]of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:40]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[28:42]at Zebi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[28:45]Also sign up for my newsletter at zebiowens.com
[28:48]and sign up for my virtual book club
[28:49]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[28:52]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact,
[28:54]Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[28:56]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[28:58]for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.