Harlan Coben on The Blurry Line Between Memoir and Fiction
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked. I'm Zibi Owens. I've interviewed more than 2,000
[0:06]authors on this show and learned endless amounts about storytelling,
[0:10]reinvention, and life itself because when you talk about books, you're really
[0:14]talking about life. So get ready to hear from today's best authors,
[0:18]the best-selling, and the not yet discovered. Come find your next great
[0:22]read, and the story behind it. Enjoy!
[0:27]I absolutely loved Harlan Coven's new book, Plot Twist. Life, craft, and the messy first
[0:34]draft a memoir on writing. If you only buy one book ever about writing, you should
[0:40]make it this book. Harlan Coven's Plot Twist. Harlan Coven is a number one
[0:45]New York Times best-selling author and one of the world's leading storytellers.
[0:49]His 38 suspense novels are published in 46 languages and have been number one best
[0:54]sellers in more than a dozen countries. His Myron Balliter series has earned the Edgar,
[0:59]Sheamus, and Anthony Awards. Harlan Coven is also the creator, an executive producer of many
[1:05]television shows, including adaptations on Netflix of the number one global hits, missing you,
[1:10]and fool me once, run away, stay close, the stranger, the innocent, gone for good, hold tight,
[1:16]and the woods, as well as shelter and Lazarus on Amazon Prime. His newest series adaptation
[1:21]on Netflix, I will find you starring Sam Worthington, premiered globally on June 18th. Seriously,
[1:27]read this book, and I loved this conversation. Welcome Harlan, thank you so much for coming on
[1:32]totally book to talk about Plot Twist, a memoir on writing, Life, Craft, and the messy first draft
[1:38]congrats. Thank you, sir. It must be here. I was just starting to rave but that I would save it.
[1:44]I loved this book. It's like part as it says when they cover death, but it's part memoir,
[1:50]but part writing advice. So you tell us your whole life story, but we've been the best advice on
[1:57]writing. Like it's not didactic. It's like you trying to sort it out as you're telling us,
[2:03]and yet ending up with the most useful tips ever. I don't know, I absolutely love it.
[2:09]Oh, thank you. Thank you. That's really kind. I'm hoping that it will motivate some people,
[2:13]especially writers, but all kind of creators. So, you know, we humans are meant not just to consume
[2:18]but to create. And I hope the book will do some of that, you know, hoping. Absolutely. Okay. Why
[2:23]at this point? Why did you just saturate this type of book right now? You've written a bazillion books
[2:28]and you're so funny in the book. You're like, I don't know who counted how many copies of these
[2:33]who counted them on a million copies. But anyway, you've sold a bazillion copies of your books and now
[2:40]why this one? You know, I kind of needed a little bit of a break from the thrillers. I was,
[2:45]I did two thrillers last year, not just my own normal one that I do, but I also did a collaboration
[2:50]with Wies Witherspoon called Gone Before Goodbye. And I just was like, I can't turn around
[2:55]and do another. And I had done one of those BBC Maestro master classes. And what I realized while I
[3:01]was doing it is I kind of always said that the process is separate from my life, this Harlem
[3:06]COVID demand, this Harlem COVID, the writer, I don't know anything about murder, blah, blah, blah.
[3:11]But I realized when I did it that actually everything about your life is in the books. And,
[3:17]you know, wouldn't it be cool to do a sort of writing guide that was also a memoir? Because
[3:21]every, there's no aspect of my life that I talk about that somehow hasn't ended up in a book.
[3:28]And hopefully maybe people will also, even if your life seems fairly mundane,
[3:33]this never is. But that you could find things in your own life that's going to inspire you
[3:39]to be able to write. So between all of that and all this years of, I use the, I put the word
[3:44]of wisdom and quotes, all the years of the things that I think about writing, the things that I
[3:50]think that you're taught wrong about writing, to put it all to one and make it as you kind of
[3:55]point out extremely consciousness, I hope a little bit. We're undiscovering it along with you.
[4:00]It's just sort of irresistible. Well, so many times throughout the course of the book,
[4:05]you give us these examples and you're like fiction memoir, memoir fiction, because where is the
[4:09]line really, right? Everything bleeds in and can be used as material in whatever way.
[4:15]Yeah, don't you think so? I mean, there's times that I'm thinking about something in my past
[4:20]and then like, did that actually happen? Or do I think that happened? You know, it's like,
[4:26]I remember, you know, the book I was talking about breaking into this, we used to break into
[4:30]this old Nike missile base, that was, you know, but ruins now, which is so weird. I grew up in
[4:36]a town that had a bunch of weird rumors, one of which was in the small suburban town of Livingston,
[4:41]New Jersey, that there was a Nike, a Nike nuclear missile base hidden behind Riker Hill Elementary
[4:47]School. And it turns out that that was true. But when we were kids, we would kind of break in
[4:51]like, you know, I'm saying like, I did it all the time, like, I think I did it once maybe. Did I,
[4:55]and then you start going through that. And fiction becomes memoir and memoir becomes...
[5:00]fiction. And it's okay in fiction to mess that up. Totally. You write a lot about your parents,
[5:05]your siblings, a little bit about your kids. You have a note about it being their lives,
[5:09]which I totally respect that they can write through on stories. But when you write about your mom,
[5:14]quirky, and your dad, Carl, right, Carl? Yeah. Oh my gosh. And not to skip ahead and ruin anything.
[5:20]But one of the final scenes of the book with the hotel key is one of like, I was like,
[5:26]I'm going to try not to cry reading this book. But the way you talk about losing them,
[5:31]you're great love of them, how it ties into your writing about missing people over and over again.
[5:36]It's one of the most poignant depictions of that massive love that you felt and how it is now
[5:43]with them gone. And I'm so sorry. Well, thank you. Yeah. I lost a number of people when I was
[5:51]when I was young. And I think it definitely, again, it's one of those things I never really thought
[5:55]about. I just think I do missing people. This is not necessarily a secret. If you know my work at
[6:00]all, if you've seen any of the Netflix shows, I love missing people. I don't, you know, I get the
[6:04]Christie does dead people murder people. I do missing people. But I read, you know, I was thinking
[6:09]about and I did tell no one, which was in my breakout book. And how it started in many ways
[6:16]with thinking about, oh, God, if they could just be here one more day, if they could just see
[6:20]their grandchildren once. And these are hopes that we all have these are all moments that I think
[6:24]of universal for us. But how much of that impacts my writing. And also, you know, when I was
[6:32]creating a Myron Bolator, my detective, all the detectives back in those days, they have parents who
[6:37]were abusive or parents who were out of the picture or whatever else. So I thought how cool would
[6:42]be if Myron hadn't had my parents still alive. So, you know, that he had a real close relationship
[6:47]with them that, you know, and I get to point it and I get to point it. I get to melodramatic
[6:52]when inviting the scenes but top, they're my therapy. So I don't like you. And I like how you point
[6:58]out that you are jealous of Myron in some ways. And yet he is envious of you. So it's not like
[7:04]an exact depiction, right? You can take the things that you need to get out there and
[7:10]create that sort of tension to create actual living breathing characters like that.
[7:15]Well, don't you, Zibi? I mean, I ask you the same question sort of. We never like to admit that,
[7:19]you know, we are part of, I realize that as I've gotten older, we're part of every character,
[7:23]including the bad guys, if you will. But we, you know, we don't like to admit when I was creating Myron,
[7:29]I was using me with wish fulfillment as a template. Don't you think that that goes on a lot?
[7:35]You know, in the fiction that we read and write, yeah. Well, it does all come from our brains.
[7:40]I mean, as far as all the sources that we use, ultimately it comes from our brains onto a page.
[7:46]And so it's in there somewhere, some little bits and pieces have to fly in at some point,
[7:51]right? And that's part of the magic I'm trying to also convey in this book is like,
[7:55]if you write something, it's almost godlike. I mean, there's a blank sheet of paper there
[8:01]before, it's absolutely meaningless and nothing. And you and only you, whatever you write,
[8:06]only you can write, no one else can write, creating something. That's just this little magic to
[8:11]that. And I hope the book gets that across to people, whatever you do. I mean, there's, I've had a
[8:17]number of people who write songs tell me that the book, you know, really resonated with them.
[8:22]And I have some friends who paint and sculpt and just to be able to make something,
[8:28]to create something out of nothing. There's a, especially with writing because you and I are
[8:31]writers. There's a magic to that. Don't you think? I completely agree. Yes. Just the expression
[8:37]of it. And I think that's also really important because you keep it throughout the book telling
[8:43]people like you are not writing. If you are researching, you are not writing. If you are taking
[8:48]a workshop or talking about writing or sharing the plot of your novel, like you are writing,
[8:53]if you are writing, just like you can't be painting if you're just standing there with a blank
[8:57]canvas, like then you're not painting that day, you're doing something else. Right. And so the
[9:00]difference of having the ideas and then the expression of them is like the most important
[9:07]step in the whole process. Hey, I mean, I don't, I don't want to be too much of a taskmaster in
[9:13]the book, but, you know, again, outlining is not writing, creating characters is not writing,
[9:18]researching is not writing, hanging Starbucks is not writing, talking to your friends about writing is
[9:22]not writing. Only writing is writing. Only those moments that you have your butt in a chair
[9:28]and are producing words on a screen or a page really counts as writing. The other stuff is part
[9:35]of it. But it's sort of like putting on your uniform before you play a baseball game. You're
[9:40]uniform is important and you've got to get this cleats on to make sure your bat is okay,
[9:43]but only playing baseball is playing baseball. Well, I love how refreshing it was that you were
[9:49]just like, I don't know why it works. Like I go to this coffee shop and then I don't know,
[9:54]it's no working anymore. So then I try something else and I write by hand and then I type it up
[9:58]and then I kind of circle back.
[10:00]and I don't know why that works either.
[10:02]And I think it's just so refreshing
[10:04]because creativity is nothing.
[10:07]You can completely streamline.
[10:08]It's nothing you can dictate to someone else
[10:11]and be like, okay, this is exactly how you do it.
[10:13]So the fact that you're owning up to all of it
[10:15]and just being like, this is how I've muddled through it.
[10:19]And let me give you the best approximation
[10:21]to my process and maybe you can use that for something.
[10:23]Like that is just great.
[10:25]No, thanks.
[10:26]So hoping people also adapt and find their own process
[10:29]because copying anybody else's process.
[10:32]As I wrote in the book, it's asking if you ask 10 writers
[10:35]how they do it, you get 11 different answers.
[10:37]And I've had fascinating conversations
[10:39]with a lot of my friends, John Grisham,
[10:42]who does it very, very differently
[10:43]from myself, Stephen King, Lee Child, Laura Lippman,
[10:47]bunch of different people we're always talking about.
[10:50]We don't talk very much about writings.
[10:52]You usually be dumb,
[10:52]but as you know, when you're with writers,
[10:54]you usually don't talk about writing.
[10:55]But how they're process, all the processes are different.
[10:58]And some people need more discipline, some need less,
[11:01]some need to change up, some need same.
[11:03]And let this next exploration, you do a lot.
[11:07]And I know you're always finding ways
[11:10]of helping people do different things.
[11:11]And when you see online,
[11:12]all self-help and things like that,
[11:15]it's always changing, right?
[11:16]You think you have that answer.
[11:17]You know, you watched an episode of Oprah from 25 years ago,
[11:20]oh, here's the answer to this or whatever else.
[11:22]And of course it's not.
[11:24]It never really is, and that's okay.
[11:26]That's so much right.
[11:27]Like you gotta change up.
[11:28]And so I'll think I have the answer
[11:30]to how this writing is going to work.
[11:33]It just isn't.
[11:34]You have to keep being a little bit flexible
[11:37]and a little bit mobile and trying different things.
[11:40]Love that.
[11:41]I also love your incremental ambition.
[11:44]Like why did we not have that phrase before?
[11:46]That is just so perfect, right?
[11:48]Like, I mean, I've heard continually raising the bar, right?
[11:52]Moving the goal post, blah, blah, blah.
[11:54]But that's really what it is, right?
[11:56]First, all you wanted was to publish a book.
[11:58]And like so many authors, like that is it.
[12:01]Like, let me just do it.
[12:02]And then you're like, but could I publish a second book?
[12:05]Could I maybe make it a bestseller?
[12:07]Could I make it higher on the bestseller?
[12:08]It was like people who were trying for the first goal.
[12:12]Like when I first heard that people cared
[12:14]what ranking they were on the bestseller list,
[12:17]I was like, so that's a joke, right?
[12:19]Like they're on the list.
[12:19]Like they couldn't possibly care the number.
[12:21]Do they?
[12:23]But you spell it out.
[12:25]And it's hilarious, but also great for people to own
[12:28]and know that like, we all go through this,
[12:31]whether it's writing or whatever.
[12:32]Like when you set a goal and you achieve it,
[12:34]like, okay, boom, move on to the next.
[12:38]I mean, I think one of the issues that we have today,
[12:40]which is interesting that it's only in the last 100
[12:43]or 200 years back as few as wasn't the way it was,
[12:45]ambition becomes a bad word or sales or being commercial.
[12:50]I mean, every work of art that you've ever loved,
[12:53]like Elijah or whatever else,
[12:54]that was commissioned by some rich guy or a church.
[12:57]That wasn't him saying, oh, today I feel.
[12:59]That's only today.
[13:01]And the word ambition seems to have negative connotations
[13:05]and it really shouldn't.
[13:06]Whatever your ambition is,
[13:07]that's gonna get you writing, whatever you use to get yourself
[13:11]to work as there's no shame to say, yeah,
[13:13]my initial ambition, and this is back in the 80s.
[13:17]So we're talking a long time ago, way before
[13:20]it was Amazon or any of the ways people can publish now.
[13:23]All I wanted was to one day have a book published
[13:26]by a legit publisher to one day,
[13:29]just see that book sitting in a store and then you know,
[13:32]you know, and I also, the important thing,
[13:34]I enjoyed it.
[13:35]I enjoy every step of the way.
[13:37]I appreciate every moment.
[13:39]But while I've climbed that mountain and I've reached it,
[13:42]I'm enjoying that moment, but I'm also looking,
[13:44]there's another mountain that eventually,
[13:45]I'm gonna wanna climb and say,
[13:46]oh, just maybe two books.
[13:48]Wouldn't it be good,
[13:49]it wasn't a flute two books?
[13:50]And as you mentioned, incremental ambition.
[13:52]Also, it's not discouraging.
[13:54]I don't know how many people will write me
[13:55]and you probably hear these people too,
[13:57]it's like, you know, I've written two books
[14:00]and I put them on Amazon and they're,
[14:03]I think they're really good
[14:04]and how come I'm not selling like you and Paterson?
[14:06]You know, take an easy pal.
[14:10]You know, like they're people today,
[14:11]just think like, you know,
[14:12]because they see everybody else online.
[14:14]We also didn't know, which was so great.
[14:16]We were so naive.
[14:16]I had no idea how small I was when I was small
[14:20]and no idea because I didn't have 8,000,
[14:22]you know, now you just look online.
[14:23]Everybody's doing so much better than me.
[14:26]Put that away.
[14:27]Don't worry so much about that.
[14:29]Find your own little goals
[14:30]and take great satisfaction
[14:32]because they are.
[14:33]They're great, they're great.
[14:35]You're great, I love that.
[14:37]Meanwhile, I think that the Amherst Development Office
[14:39]is going to love you after this book.
[14:41]You have so many shout outs to Amherst.
[14:44]Not only your very well-respected and well-known classmates,
[14:50]like David Foster Wallace
[14:51]and you told a beautiful story about him
[14:53]and your relationship with him
[14:54]and Dan Brown and your fraternity
[14:57]and like so many others that you felt almost bad for going.
[15:00]on a basketball scholarship or being recruited for basketball and like you were like the the
[15:05]shabby son compared to your amazing brothers who you know were prep school kids and everything
[15:11]and yet all that you learned in in school and liberal arts and everything has been such a huge
[15:17]piece of this book so anyway I don't know they're gonna have it like in the windows of every
[15:21]dorm I think. Yeah Emma's was a and this is something else that I think in today's world and I
[15:28]don't want to get on a social media rant or whatever else but you know all we learned really
[15:33]at Amherst all liberal arts taught back in those days and I don't know what they're doing today
[15:36]was critical thinking how to see an argument tear it apart or defend it that was it it didn't matter
[15:41]if it was left at right or middle and you were creatively thinking this way which I think is
[15:46]extraordinarily good for fiction writing and to create the kind of weird plots that I'd create
[15:51]in the space that my plots are weird and my twists are weird I get it we don't really have that
[15:55]now we're critical thinking is just we take sides and we see a narrative and it has to fit
[16:00]it Sherlock Holmes has a great quote via Sir Arthur Conan Doyle where he talks about that we have
[16:06]to you know we shouldn't theorize before we have facts because then we twist the facts to suit
[16:10]the theories run the theories to suit facts and that's what's going on all the time today I mean
[16:15]I read people's you know the things the nonsense people believe in argue for just can't use
[16:20]critical thinking so I thought it was nice to give a shout-out to Amherst where we did we were
[16:24]never really indoctrinated into one thing or another we were just taught I don't care this is your
[16:29]favorite person I don't care if this is the you know your guru political scientist or philosophy
[16:35]tell me how you're gonna tear him apart because I don't make your belief in him stronger if it's
[16:39]meant to be and if it's not meant to be you should know that too you talk about your collection
[16:45]of ideas here what is it called your idea list or something yeah I have an idea file
[16:51]and how what I love the most about that is all the places that you see and think of fun
[16:59]interesting ideas but then you actually write them down like I feel like I go through the day and
[17:03]like oh I wonder about that person on that bike over there and like who is that you know like
[17:08]we're all like anyone who has that natural curiosity is always wondering but you take it the
[17:13]step further of being like one day I'm gonna talk about those two people writing on that you know
[17:17]that foggy knee on the bikes and so tell me a little bit about when are like how often are you writing
[17:23]these things down like are you in your notes are you only scribbling them down how many times are
[17:28]you writing and how many times do you end up using all of the ideas not that it matters because
[17:33]it's a great exercise just to record them my guess is I I use less than five percent that's a
[17:39]guess most of my don't ever use and the ones that I love most I never use the what the lines
[17:45]that are well listen to the lines that I think are gonna be really funny in a book they always
[17:50]will stick out if you try to force them in it has to you know there's that line that you work on
[17:54]the most is always the one that you end up having to cut and there's sort of two philosophies on
[17:58]it so on the one hand I do write things down as soon as I see it I always have always sort of ready
[18:03]now with a phone I can put it in I could type it into a text that I send myself or whatever else
[18:08]but I've also learned that if I don't remember at the end of the day maybe wasn't worth remembering
[18:13]anyway so sort of at the end of the day at the beginning of the day I may write things down because
[18:18]it comes back to me so I kind of do both the early days I wrote down everything and I just save it and
[18:25]I have a file that to no order whatsoever I try putting things like you know ideas or character or
[18:32]lines so I can because I go through it now it's so many pages and so many little things that
[18:37]is hard for me okay right now I need an idea and I'm looking at dialogue or something like that
[18:43]it's a complete and utter mess and only would work for me but it does help and I think it's
[18:48]also a little bit like going through the gym and working on a muscle you know it's not necessarily
[18:52]writing it's part of what I call in the book the writer's mind frame which I think is I'm always
[18:58]a writer and if you want to be a writer I think it helps if you can a little piece so you should
[19:02]always be a writer a little piece of you should always be looking for a story it doesn't
[19:07]necessarily make me always such a great person because I'm distracted a lot but I do think that's
[19:12]part of you know not in the highfalutin way not in a in a god comes down to me and moves my
[19:18]fingers across the keyboards why but I try to view life as material in some way and I think it
[19:24]helps also me I think I hope it makes me more empathetic as well I loved your son's quote
[19:31]about the boy in the cafeteria line with the spoon and he's like I heard these this
[19:36]you're like you're like tell me this exact scene like five times in a row because I'm going to
[19:40]use this yeah this is what I was one time I used you know sometimes as you know the reality is
[19:46]just absolutely perfect if you change a line of it it doesn't work so I'm talking with that
[19:51]story I created a character named spoon for those who have actually seen the tbsha shelter on
[19:56]Amazon spoons a character or
[20:00]the young adult books and he was telling me this story about his first day at school and the kid
[20:04]trying to get giving him offering his dirty spoon and I'm like, well, slow down. I need the exact
[20:08]wording you just said because the exact wording you just said is perfect and I actually used it
[20:14]exactly as he put it. One thing you point out is that some authors make you wait a little bit longer.
[20:21]It'll set up a scene and then you have to sort of trudge along for 50 pages before you find out
[20:26]like before they have the conversation that you're dying to hear or whatever and your philosophy
[20:32]is set it up and then deliver soon. The reader needs to trust you that you're going to give them
[20:38]what they want and not make them unnecessarily wait. Why do you think authors sometimes do that?
[20:44]Is it because they're afraid, they won't be more to write after that or that they're giving away
[20:52]too much too early and they can't live up to it or what is the rationale behind it?
[20:57]I'm not sure. I think there's different things in different worlds. We live in a very competitive
[21:02]world. When you were writing a book and all the deference, I love classics that I've read
[21:06]all the ones that everybody's supposed to and all that. But classics competed against nothing.
[21:13]Dostoevsky and Dickens and they competed against nobody because there was no TV. There was no
[21:21]Netflix. There was no internet. There was no scrolling on the phones. So one of the things is we do
[21:25]have to up our game a little bit in terms of that. What I've learned though is there's of course
[21:31]there's some twists I say to the very last page that I know from page one. I'm going to live
[21:36]around the very last page. Someone's saying bad. But if you're raising questions, try this technique
[21:42]of answering them earlier. But the key is the answer to the question, the answer to the question
[21:47]should lead to more and even better questions. So you satisfy the reader in a sense that, okay,
[21:52]I got that answer. But now I'm even more intrigued because I got the answer. So you're not letting
[21:58]them off the hook by giving them the answer. You're just creating it going, it's Alice Wonderland
[22:03]going down the rabbit hole. You're going further down the rabbit hole rather. So it looks like
[22:08]maybe you're going up and you're being enlightened, but actually you're being more engrossed.
[22:13]So I, you know, there's kill all your darlings. And the other thing I would say is be careful
[22:17]saving all your darlings because they do perish. So try that. I'm not saying it works all the time.
[22:23]I'm not saying sometimes I go, hmm. So we're a little revealed that. Let's take it back.
[22:27]But for the most part, I have found that you can, the same way you can cut more and you think
[22:31]you can push up more story than you think. And yeah, that's a challenge to you that you now have to
[22:36]come up with more things that are going to intrigue you and the reader.
[22:40]And that it's okay to just start right in the middle of a scene that it's okay. Like you can,
[22:45]you can take us right into the action without talking about the weather and all the prologue and
[22:49]the habits as you mentioned. Yeah. Well, you, I mean, it's not, it's not my, you know, it's trying to
[22:54]start scenes in the middle. And Vonnegut had the great line where he says, I try to start the book is
[22:58]close to the end as I can. Kind of love that quote. That's so good. And the, the other problem that
[23:04]people will try to do, and I see this actually in TV a lot, no pressure when I do TV to have this,
[23:09]we have this like really cool, violent opening record, really gripping. And now we're going back
[23:15]six months or whatever else. I don't like that myself all that much even though sometimes we'll do
[23:20]it. I have to, the thing is it has to then lead to something. You can't say, oh, I'm going to
[23:25]this really exciting scene. And then my lead character is going to look at the window for 12 pages
[23:30]while I give her an entire backstory. Trust the back, you know, trust the back story is going to
[23:36]come out or be a dialogue, view, whatever. And we don't also, the inner caveat to what I was saying
[23:41]about give answers is don't tell us everything right away. I don't need to know she has to
[23:45]resistors on page one. You know, I'll find that out later on. Just, you know, don't overload
[23:50]me with information about her life or his life in the beginning. So it's both too, you know,
[23:57]and it's also trial and error. You know, you're going to do things and you're going to realize
[24:01]it's not working this way and you can try it again. Do you believe anybody can be a good writer,
[24:06]a great writer or no? No, I don't. I mean, I don't think so. No, I think everybody,
[24:11]the issue, you know, there's the old joke about like an ice surge and comes up to a writer
[24:16]to party and the ice surge says, oh, I think I'm thinking trying to write a book and the novelist
[24:20]says, oh, I think I'm trying ice surgery. And that's cute, but not actually true because the truth
[24:25]everybody can write not everybody can do ice surgery. So we've all written. And so we all feel
[24:31]which is cool that we can that we can do it. I don't, I think there's like everything else.
[24:36]There's some natural talent and some talents you can learn and develop. But I think if you're
[24:41]not talented and if you don't have the skill to do it, you're not it's hard to stick, you know,
[24:46]this is it's hard stick with writing writing is it's really hard unless, you know, you're
[24:52]good at it and really do find a satisfaction. And so I think it's like, you know, you might
[24:57]have a no natural ability.
[25:06]Even it's conventionally, you're going to see that.
[25:09]And so I think it's probably the same, but damn the try and the thing about writing is that
[25:14]even if you fail at it, you're getting better, you know, it's one of those things that
[25:19]the more you do it, the better you get at it.
[25:21]There's no question about it.
[25:22]And there's really no harm in doing that.
[25:25]And some people write, it becomes something of therapy that's a different kind of writing,
[25:29]that maybe that's working for you.
[25:32]So in the book, you talk about being Jewish and your family in Jersey and even Jason Alexander
[25:39]used to be what J Greenbladder said that.
[25:42]J Green spam.
[25:43]J Green spam.
[25:44]J Green spam.
[25:45]Yeah.
[25:46]The links to the New Jersey.
[25:47]Yeah.
[25:48]Did you debate including any of that given the current climate of Jewish authors in the world?
[25:54]I mean, you could have easily not included any of those references.
[25:57]No.
[25:58]But I get it.
[25:59]I mean, I certainly get that it's a ridiculously tough time.
[26:03]It's too much of my makeup.
[26:04]The secular Jewish background growing up here on the East Coast and the New York, New Jersey
[26:11]area.
[26:12]I grew up in a town called Livingston, which is probably 50% Jewish.
[26:15]It was a big Jewish population.
[26:18]And so I think my sensibilities sort of come from that like it or not.
[26:22]And at this stage, I'm also, I'm 64 years old, I'm not 23 starting out.
[26:27]And if you don't want to read me because of that, don't.
[26:30]I don't want you.
[26:31]So I guess that's the, you know, as you mentioned, I grew up with, I had a very strange
[26:37]college, as you mentioned, the David Foster Wallace and Dan Brown and Christopher Bojallian
[26:43]and Susanna Grant and Bill Aimee, and we used that a lot of, I think we had four published
[26:49]writers lived on my floor at Amherst.
[26:52]But my high school was a little weird too.
[26:53]I went to my senior, my class, I had Chris Christie and Jason Alexander was a few years.
[26:59]I had Danny Suckover, who wrote modern family, Chelsea Hamler, went to Livingston High
[27:03]School as well.
[27:05]So it's, you know, we're just creative times.
[27:09]And I hope, you know, that the people today are going to be also growing up and that's
[27:13]sort of creative, interesting time periods.
[27:15]You also wrote about the murder of one of your classmates right before the start of school.
[27:22]And I can hear the crackle of the announcer as you all found out and everything.
[27:28]And you reflect on that and think, you know what, even in these seemingly perfect, seeming
[27:34]small towns all over America, like you have just as many dramatic, you know, story rich
[27:39]moments, traumas, you know, unsolved crime, all the things, like they're lurking everywhere
[27:46]and you're no stranger to that yourself.
[27:49]You know, we also have a habit of making, you know, making the point of eternity, making
[27:52]front of like, you know, oh, you know, other so safety conscious now, you know, I survived
[27:57]my childhood not wearing a helmet.
[27:58]A lot of kids didn't read about it because you know, so, but a lot of kids didn't.
[28:02]A lot of kids really got hurt, you know, it's a hard thing to think about, people don't
[28:07]quite get this, but like in 1900, the people lived to fifth, I'm meeting ages, like 50.
[28:12]I know it's, you know, people don't are poo-poo science now, but to stuff that medical, the
[28:17]medical world and the industrial world has brought to this world in terms of longevity
[28:21]and life's been that the positives are just unbelievable when you stop and think about
[28:27]it.
[28:28]So a story like that one, I don't think it was a big deal, it was on the paper for
[28:31]like a day or two.
[28:32]They quietly found the kid who did it and I still don't know, I mean, I've heard a lot
[28:37]of rumors about what happened to that kid, but it seems to, he was underage, so he got
[28:41]away with stabbing a classmate at a regular high school party and killing him.
[28:48]So I think in today's world we would have heard about that a lot more, but at my point
[28:52]being that it was probably more unsafe back in those days.
[28:56]There was people who were grabbing kids back in those days too, we just didn't hear
[28:59]about it, we didn't talk about it, we see now a lot with, you know, religious groups and
[29:04]boy scouts and things like that that it's just swept under the rug, so that's not good
[29:10]either, obviously.
[29:12]Yeah.
[29:13]Crazy.
[29:14]You talk about your adaptations of a bunch of the books and who was the author you quoted
[29:19]when they asked him like, do you like what they did with your book and he's like, my
[29:24]book is still sitting on the shelf right there, nothing has changed about my book.
[29:27]And you've had all sorts of different adaptation experiences and original, you know, tell
[29:32]me a little bit more about that and how you view the different mediums, because as you
[29:37]say, like they are just completely different and they shouldn't even be, you know, lump
[29:41]together in that way.
[29:43]Well, should the quotes from James M. King who wrote a postman rings twice and double
[29:47]and then they need a bunch of books and interviewers said, don't you hate what Hollywood
[29:52]has done?
[29:53]Yes.
[29:54]Your books and he said, they're nothing right books, they're right there in the shelf,
[29:57]not the words change.
[29:58]My philosophy is the same.
[30:00]I get as a reader that when you watch an adaptation,
[30:03]you want it to match the characters that are in your head
[30:06]and all that, and I get that frustration.
[30:08]But get our side and be goes, well, why?
[30:10]If you want the experience of the book, read the damn book.
[30:14]I want the experience of an adaptation to be different.
[30:17]That's number one.
[30:18]Number two, the worst adaptations in my view
[30:21]are the ones that try very hard to stay
[30:24]slavishly devoted to the text.
[30:26]Now I'm going to talk about like Harry Potter, for example,
[30:28]you've created a very specific world.
[30:30]But in thrillers, I've loved it that I placed
[30:32]some in Spain or Argentina or France or Germany
[30:36]and changed the story around.
[30:37]It gives it a fresh perspective for me
[30:41]and to see it through other people's eyes.
[30:42]You have to let go when you're doing an adaptation
[30:45]because you don't have full control.
[30:47]And if you're trying to, it's going to be a mess.
[30:49]So I get the fidelity aspect of it.
[30:52]And I don't get a part of this.
[30:53]Is that a book?
[30:54]Is it a book and a TV series?
[30:56]Is it a TV series?
[30:57]A book is a wonderful experience where it's very internal.
[31:01]I will find you as not currently on Netflix.
[31:04]And the very beginning and the very end,
[31:06]we actually sort of used words that I had written
[31:08]the book when we're in his head.
[31:09]But in the book, you're in his head the whole time.
[31:12]So it's a different perspective.
[31:13]How do I tell that?
[31:14]And if I try to be too much in his head,
[31:17]it's not going to work in a visual medium.
[31:19]They're two different mediums.
[31:20]And so you have to understand, I don't care
[31:22]if I will find you the TV show is close to I will find you
[31:26]the book, though it actually is.
[31:28]I care that it's a good TV series.
[31:30]That's all.
[31:32]So try, I'm not saying you have to change everything.
[31:35]I change very, very little sometimes.
[31:37]But sometimes things visually work differently.
[31:40]Yet to understand is a different medium.
[31:42]In the book, you shout out many other authors,
[31:45]which is lovely from TV correlates to Joyce Carroll.
[31:49]I mean, you're just so many people.
[31:50]When you are looking for inspiration or reading yourself,
[31:55]do you have go-to authors that you gasp in excitement
[31:59]when they have a new book coming out?
[32:00]Or are you so in the writer's world that that doesn't happen?
[32:05]Or how do you feel about it?
[32:06]Like what do you get most excited to read?
[32:08]I mean, I'm still a fan.
[32:10]I mean, I don't know any musicians
[32:11]who don't listen to a lot of music.
[32:13]I don't know any writers who don't read a lot and love reading.
[32:17]One of the issues for me is that a lot of them are my friends.
[32:20]And when I do interviews like this,
[32:21]I leave one of their names off and they're like, dude,
[32:23]what, you know, what's new?
[32:25]I always feel bad, you know,
[32:27]so I'm always thinking what I just recently read.
[32:28]And I've just recently read and spent time in San Francisco
[32:31]with my good friend Michael Connolly,
[32:33]who has a new series of books, the Catalina series.
[32:37]And it's funny, he named the character still well.
[32:40]And that's an old friend of ours who used to,
[32:42]it was a big bookseller back in the day.
[32:44]And I don't know how many of us know that,
[32:46]but I thought, oh, cute.
[32:48]No one knows what his real first name is,
[32:49]but I do because I know exactly who you based it on.
[32:53]And, you know, I'm not afraid to tell you that
[32:56]I still think the best writing book that I had had read
[33:00]is Ann Lamontzberg by bird.
[33:02]I think that that's even what I disagree with Ann.
[33:06]I can't wait to actually hope she reads this
[33:07]because I can't have a great discussion on it.
[33:10]There's so many, so much wisdom in there
[33:13]and so much insight into what an artist goes through.
[33:17]And part of what I hope I expressed in this book,
[33:19]which Ann does as well is, you feel this too,
[33:22]is how, you know, just how insecure we all are,
[33:25]how we do all still have imposter syndrome,
[33:28]how we still all have doubts.
[33:29]And I think when you lose that,
[33:31]when you become too confident as a writer
[33:33]is when you start to suck,
[33:34]only bad writers think they're good.
[33:37]And unfortunately, this is something, you know,
[33:40]I know Stephen King still suffers from it.
[33:42]So I think it's something you have to live with.
[33:44]And if you don't wanna live with that,
[33:46]you know, if you wanna live great self-esteem,
[33:49]then this is a tough job for you.
[33:52]Well, I'm sorry, I ran a little late.
[33:54]I had eight million things I wanted to talk to you about.
[33:56]The book, I loved it.
[33:58]Thank you so much for coming on.
[34:00]And I can't wait for this to find all the hands
[34:03]that need to be holding and reading
[34:05]and learning so much from it,
[34:06]although that sounded creepy, not just hands, people.
[34:08]But, anyway, you know what I mean.
[34:10]Can't wait for this to be out in the world.
[34:11]Thank you.
[34:12]Thanks, Sabia. It's great hanging with you.
[34:13]Okay, you too.
[34:14]So thank you.
[34:15]Take care.
[34:16]Take care, bye.
[34:17]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi
[34:20]formerly Momstone, I have time to read books.
[34:23]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[34:26]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens
[34:29]and spread the word.
[34:30]Thanks so much.
[34:31]Oh, and bye the books.