A (3:36)

Help me to weave a few things together in terms of your relationship with yourself as a writer, because I've picked up a few things. One is you got what you call it the rag.

B (3:44)

The rag bag.

A (3:45)

The rag bag guy. Okay, so you got rag bag guy over here, the quilt that's all coming together and being empty. So you're trying to fill up through experiences and friends and. And whatever else. And then on the other side, the aversion to writing and sort of the. I gotta stay in my routine, sit down to write all this, to say, how do you know that you're not lying to yourself here saying, ah, I just need to go accumulate more experiences. And then it's month one, then it's year one, then it's year five, year ten.

B (4:15)

Let me ask you. It's not accumulating more experiences because that puts more pressure on you. It's about paying better attention. I have a priest friend who actually just passed an old man named Terry Ritchie, and he Said the point is not to try harder. It's to resist less. And so it's not about trying to get it to happen or jiggle it out of the universe. It's about awareness. It's about agreeing to just become awareness and to start noticing, to notice a certain color, that's all you need. I don't need the experience. I could describe your orchids. I could describe the slightly greenish yellow inside the center of your orchid, you know, and then I could use that to describe somebody's eyes later. But I just notice it. The writer's job is to pay attention as life at life as it tromps by. This is a little off the subject, but there was a priest named Father Dowling who helped the very neurotic Bill Wilson get AA off the ground in 1935. And he said to Bill, sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses. And I use that with all of my bird by bird writing workshops because it's about putting on a better pair of glasses and waking up. You know, it's up, hitting the snooze button, and you start paying attention to people's faces, people's eyes, to the landscape, to the sky, to the ground beneath you. And it's all what we meet our writing self with is that we meet it halfway by noticing. And so I don't say you fill up with more experiences or more friends or anything like that. So you start just like really paying attention and then, you know. My husband wrote Neal Allen, who's the co author of Good Writing, of course. His last book was called Better Days, Tame youe Inner Critic. And he changed my life almost 10 years ago. On our first date when he taught me, he said, have you ever noticed a voice inside of you that discourages you with your writing or just tells you, keeps you small and scared of trying new? And I said, have I ever. You know, I'm having it right now. I don't think I wore the right blouse. I have it all the time. I mean, I'm almost 72. And he taught me how to address it, which is to notice it and to say, oh, it's you. It's not truth. It's not the reality of my life as a writer. It's this old internalized voice from when I'm 4 and 5. It's kept me alive when I was a little one because I didn't run out to the street or swim out too far, right? And Neil taught me to notice it and to say, oh, it's you. Why don't you go to the library? Why don't you sit down right there and get a book to read? And I've got work to do, but I'll come get you if I need an ethical consultation or something. It's terrified. It's your superego. Terrified of being killed and annihilated. But you say, no, no, you go to the library and read. I'll come get you as needed. And so that's the work I do in answer to your question. Because everything I need for every piece that I'm working on is really already there. I've always believed with my novels that the characters know who they are and what would happen naturally in their lives, and that I have to get out of the way so that they can tug on my sleeves and say, I wouldn't do that. And one more thing. There's a rule in good writing about if it's literary, you can't use it. You know, if you're trying to sound literary, take it out. But I am always trying to get my characters to say things that they really wouldn't say, but they're just so brilliant or ironic or funny or they'll make people think I'm not a buzz kill or something like that, and I just have to take them all out. Like Jessica Mitford said, kill your little darlings. But you kill your little darlings in the second draft. You know, you write a really terrible first draft, and then you can apply these literary rules, but everything in you wants you to not write. And so the first thing I say to my bird by bird workshops is, you gotta stop not writing. You know, And a lot of my workshops involve people explaining to me that they're going to start writing as soon as soon as their last child is out of the house, as soon as they move to the rushing river, as soon as they retire. And I say, you know what? That's fine, but if you're not writing now, you're not gonna write. Then you know the thing inside of you, the inner critic is telling you not to write. No one in your family is glad to hear you're working on a memoir, believe me.

A (8:54)

Yeah, what was the line you said? You said, the key is not to blank. It's.

B (8:58)

The key is not to try harder, but to resist less.

A (9:02)

Wow, what a beautiful line. So when you're at the keyboard, how does that sentence manifest itself? How do you channel that idea?

B (9:12)

One of the rules in good writing is trust your voice. And I just also. Don't you just trust the process? If you sit down and you start writing. It's like getting in very cold water and you're in. You might as well paddle around for a minute. Yeah, so I paddled around for a minute and then I had this other image and then I got that and it was all terrible. And by the time I'm done, it's way too long. So, you know, it's a third too long. Then I go back and one of the rules in good writing is take out the boring stuff. I took out some of the overly long descriptions, I took out the parts that make me look good, and then I had a really workable second draft. Then I apply the rules. I take out the verys, I take out the actuallys, I write stronger verbs, and all of a sudden I have 600 words, a couple of manuscript pages. That was what I had been after all along. Only if you asked me when I sat down, I wouldn't have been able to tell you. That's over and over and over again how I write.

A (10:13)

Tell me about the stronger verbs I have to say.

B (10:15)

On our second date, Neil handed me this list of his 34 rules. That's the subtitle. It's 36 Ways to Improve your sentences. But I added, write the hard stuff, which you like. And I added, take out the boring stuff, which I like. But his first rule is use strong verbs so that you could. You would say, guy walked down the hall towards the kitchen, right? Not interesting.

A (10:42)

He stumbled down the hall.

B (10:44)

What if guy stumbled down the hall? What if he staggered down the hall? What if guy, army crawled down the hall? You know, you just over and over again keep finding a stronger verb with your second draft. With the first draft, you know, in Bird by Bird, I said, there's three drafts. There's child's draft. You're too young. But our pediatrician in the 50s was Dr. Spock, whose baby book sold something like 12 million copies. Our parents raised us on Dr. Spock. But at any rate, he said, with 2 year olds, you must be firm but friendly. And that's how I edit my first draft. I'm firm but friendly. And I say, I like this, I like your description and. But we're going to maybe use it somewhere else, which is a nice way of saying we're going to cut it here. And it's the adult draft, and you take out and you fix and you find the stronger verb. And the third draft in Bird by Bird, I described as the dental draft. And you go tooth by tooth, you wiggle and jiggle, you floss. Some teeth might need a little attention. Some teeth are fine. You go on to the next one. And that's really what good writing is, the dental draft. Yeah, I forgot the question.

A (11:56)

So did I. I was listening. Who knows? Oh, it was about verbs. It was about verbs.

B (12:01)

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

A (12:03)

Do you have any more to say on that?

B (12:04)

When I was a young writer, I didn't know that everybody was using the thesaurus and I thought that I was cheating. But it's an invaluable tool because first of all, you get immersed in words and that's what writing's all about. You know, you have to amass a kind of battered old toolbox if you're gonna get anywhere with writing. We writing as functions, kind of as a toolbox. But a thesaurus just can't be beat.

A (12:31)

Well, with the thesaurus, I think of there's three categories of words. There's words that you know and words that and use. Know and use is the first category. The second is don't know and don't use. And those are the fancy words.

B (12:43)

Yeah.

A (12:44)

And then there's a middle category with the thesaurus that's really useful, which is words that you know but you don't use. And they were kind of like subterranean. And you're like, ah, that was a good one. And I just kind of plucked it. Like, say I' about crying. Like, I know the word wept, it's not a fancy word, but if for whatever reason I can't access that word and then I get wept, it's like, yes, yes, yes. That's what I was looking for. And I think that implicit here is that the temptation with the thesaurus is to try to sound literary. And you're saying no, but there still is use in thesaurus, a lot of it in finding that middle category of words.

B (13:23)

Exactly. My dad was a writer and he taught me the habits of writing that you don't wait for inspiration. There's really no such thing. You sit down every day at the same time you get your work done. If you wanted to be a writer, you're going to be a writer. It's like you got one of the Willy Wonka golden tickets. So you write as a debt of honor that you got. Maybe you're not going to get published. Maybe you are. No one knows. But you sit down and you write. One of the rules my dad was very strict about was that you used 155 cent words, nickel words instead of 25 cent words. One of Neil's rules is that you just, you don't use words we have to look up. Shirley Jackson said, a confused reader is an antagonistic reader. And if I have to look up one of your words, I'm onto you. That you don't have confidence. And I may not. If I've read two or three pages of your book in the bookstore and you're using words I don't know, I'm gonna probably not buy the book.

A (14:24)

Tell me more about observation. Because we're talking about sort of the external observation of just open your eyes and listen and observe. But then there's another kind of observation of just the friends that you surround yourself with. Friends who are observant themselves, who have good lines, good observations, and then also who are funny.

B (14:43)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've always said. I said in Bird by Bird that you should get the most brilliant, fabulous friends you possibly can. But none of them should be writers. Cause if they say something, really, they're going to want to use it. But as I. As we started off saying, it's about paying attention. It's about being in the express line at Whole Foods. And there's an old person in front of you. And they. First of all, they've got like 17 items and they're using coupons in the express line. Right. And you have an opinion, but you keep it to yourself. Because you were raised well, but the person behind you isn't. And they're muttering stuff. And you get that down because it's important, you know, and you may use it, you may not. Now, in Bird by Bird, this is before cell phones. I always had my students carry a pen in their back pocket and an index card and then get home and take the index card out and add it to the pile. And you may use it, you may not. I may not use that color green that's in the very center of your purple orchids. But I get it down on paper because just writing it makes it almost indelible. Not when you're my age, but your age. And writing it down on your notes, in the phone. It functions the same way.

A (15:58)

How did your relationship with God change your relationship with the inner critic? Right. Because in so much of the way that you describe your relationship with him, it's focused on grace and forgiveness. Forgiveness. And.

B (16:14)

Well, I gotta say that Neil's list. No, Neil's work with his clients and me on our second date changed my life because I'd never exactly had an image for it. And the work he does is bringing your inner critic out and looking at it and seeing who it is most People would identify a mother or father's nagging or hectoring voices saying, why are you wasting your time writing? And mine was this really, really awful personality in New York City publishing from. I've been in Publishing for 45 years, and he goes back that far. But anyway, so as soon as I could see that voice, I could understand what the. I mean, I wouldn't say it's the devil or the enemy, but I would say it was the voice that thwarts me and that tells me I'm not that good. I'm not a New York City glitterati type, you know? And so all those years with me and God and not knowing about the inner critic, I would have. I'd have to carry these two voices at once, you know, And I would. I always would hear God just sort of gentling me like a horse, you know, and just saying, it's really. This is really good. I like this. It's going to be good. And I got you. I'm right here. And. And then I'd also hear this voice. It's like the, you know, the cartoon where you've got the angel and the devil on each shoulder and everything has gotten a lot easier since I've been able to visualize the critic of. Well, at the time, 62 years that had been telling me that what I was up to was really not gonna work out in the end.

A (17:55)

And how'd you visualize the critic? Do you see the critic? Do you name the critic?

B (18:00)

You can read about it in better days, Neil's book. But the way we did it last night on stage, actually, you notice where it is. For most people, it's in the head. For us types, it might be in their torso, but you bring it forward and you have it in your hand and you start to talk to it. You do both voices. I say to it, who hired you? And it usually says, you did. Why did I hire you? Because you were afraid of looking mad. You're afraid of embarrassing yourself. When did I first hire you? Well, you're five, you know, and you were starting kindergarten and you were already getting that toxic self consciousness. You start to talk to it, and then eventually you say to it, I'd like to take over. And it's worried about you taking over because you might make a fool of yourself. We've all had embarrassments. We've all disgraced ourselves because I have a public life. It's happened for me with big audiences. But then I point out to my inner critic that it was supposedly in charge when that happened. I ask it if it can trust me to take over. No, it begrudgingly says maybe. And I ask it to go to the library because I'm in the middle of something. And I could picture this voice that only esteemed a certain kind of very, very elitist white male New Yorker writer and not a aging hippie, California type, a hugger. So when I heard that almost 10 years ago, being able to picture that voice that I had internalized as a very young writer, I sold my first book to Viking at 25. I'm going to be 72. I always, always heard that voice and seeing that face. And it was so wonderful to see it and to be able to say, oh, thank you for keeping me alive as a child, but I won't be needing you right now. I'm in the middle of something.

A (19:55)

Tell me then, about dialogue. About learning to listen to how people speak and listening, observing, coming back to that and then getting that translated onto the page. Because dialogue is. It has to have a kernel of truth in writing, but it's also very different from how people actually speak on the bus or at a restaurant or in the park.

B (20:16)

And dialogue is poor or weak. Dialogue is the main reason I'm not going to buy your book in the bookstore. If I've read the first three pages of your book during the audition, and if the dialogue is forced or if it's just too clipped and witty, I'm not interested. Clipped. Yeah. And we don't talk that way. I mean, we always. In good writing and in Bird by bird, I always say, you know, write a ton of dialogue and then take most of it out, read it out loud. Read what you've written out loud because you're going to hear how artificial it sounds. People don't talk that way. People don't talk in clip perfect sentences. And we should know which character is speaking by the rhythm and their vocabulary, not by you saying. Andrea said. And you can never use other words for said. One of the whole rules in good writing is you can only say said. You can't say. Andrea chuckled.

A (21:19)

Why would you do that, given the verb thing that we talked about earlier?

B (21:24)

Oh, because it's all so artificial and it just feels so sophomoric because the author is trying to find substitutes for said. I would prefer patches of dialogue where there's no. There's just quotation marks. There aren't. He said, she said, he said. Which would also be a drag. But if you start saying. He chuckled, he enthused, he. He proclaimed, I should know by the verbs in your dialogue and the rhythm of the person's speech, who's talking, and the condition in which they're talking. I can also describe what the person is doing with their hands while they're talking or what happens with their mouth when they're talking. Of course, as long as I use a strong verb to describe that and no adjective adverb. But dialogue's really tough. And in the old days, I had all my students get Radio Shack

A (22:23)

recorders,

B (22:23)

tape recorders, but now it's on the phone, the voice memo. And if you read your dialogue, you'll just cringe when you hear the sentences that ring false, that ring like somebody who has had some time to rewrite their sentences before. Another way to do to learn dialogue is to read the masters, you know, to sit at the feet of people who. Doctorow's great with dialogue, Nora Ephron's great with dialogue.

A (22:50)

What did you learn from them?

B (22:52)

I just learned that you can make it really interesting without trying too hard, that you can have dialogue that's just a few sentences that make you laugh out loud the way, you know, somebody might say at the end of your soliloquy, they might say, good to know. And you burst out laughing, you know, or they look at you blankly and then they say whatever, as a teenager might. Or a teenager might say, no problem. And so what I learned is that, you know, the point of both bird by bird and good writing is that you can do anything if you can get away with it if you don't lose. Me. And I have read books that are almost entirely dialogue. Peter Matheson's brilliant book Far Tartouga is in patois. You know, most of it. And it was.

A (23:47)

What is patois?

B (23:48)

It's like the lingo or the dialect in New Orleans say that it's just a mix of Caribbean and Native American. And it's complicated. And I would read it because of the brilliance of the people's hearts and the plot that was unfolding, but mostly because I'm an old person and I'm tired. I don't want to work, you know, I don't want to work. I don't want to dissect your dialogue. I don't want to wait it out and see if you're going to get to the point. I want you to get to the point. It's, again, a confused or a bored reader is an antagonistic reader. And the thing is that long patches of dialogue tend not to work for me. Al Franken.

A (24:38)

I love that word clipped. Clipped dialogue.

B (24:41)

Oh, yeah, explain that to me. There are writers that can get along with clipped dialogue. But what does that mean? It means like snappy. It's like snappy.

A (24:49)

So if you have characters, that's a negative connotation, right?

B (24:52)

Well, if you have somebody that's snappy and they're warm and they're doing good for the people around them and they're in a hurry and they're snappy, that's different. If it's somebody at a cocktail party who's just trying to impress you with their over education, then it is tiresome. I remember this has nothing to do with anything but Updike, who I grew up on, who I really revered and learned dialogue from. He had tiny issues with women and so. But putting that aside for a minute. But he said in one story that being at a cocktail party where people were talking at him, he felt like he was being pelted by tiny ping pong balls. I just love that. And that's how snappy dialogue when it's not called for makes me feel. I feel pelted.

A (25:41)

How do you feel like Marin county or the state of California has washed over your work?

B (25:46)

I am just so entirely California.

A (25:48)

You are California.

B (25:49)

I am just so California. To my core, the west coast is infinitely less ironic. Like, my husband was raised on the east coast in Arlington. And when he moved to the West Coast 20 years ago, he was shocked by how kind of mellow the people tended to be. I mean, infinitely less ironic and competitive. It's just the effect that California has on you. And the way that I write is something that has been troubling for east coast reviewers. It's not how they're the writers that for whom they give their stamp of approval. Right.

A (26:29)

So explain the differences in the actual writing quality between what you're doing and what you saw as east coast. The sort of east coast approach.

B (26:39)

Well, take St. John is in France. And for instance, he's very, very famous and really revered by the east coast critics. He writes in a way that is just very lofty. You know, beautiful sentences but fancy words and very, very erudite and complex. And I don't write that way. And that complexity is really loved by east coast critics, or let them. And then there's lots of writers on the east coast who don't write that way. But the way I write is like, say west coast is brought again or the beatniks, just the San Francisco avant garde. And Evan Cannell, well, he writes more like in East. He's St. Louis, but there's Just a whole sensibility that's different because I think first of all, the weather's warmer so we're not like in a state of clenched and clutch and held breath as much as people on the west east coast might be. But just a different sensibility. You know, we're not ancient. We haven't been around that long. Been around for 150 years instead of whatever it is. 400.

A (27:58)

Yeah. I've been wanting to ask you this question the whole time, but I have the book help. Thanks. Wow here. And we're talking about observation, opening your eyes. And it's like a prompt. It's like I've just been thinking to myself, how do you just get that sense of wow and restore that sense of wow and open your eyes to it because you realize that so much of our experience of the world and the day to day of life is quite myopic. Claustrophobic.

B (28:28)

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you get that sense of wow, I think partly by deciding to be available for it. I mean, one of the great gifts of being a writer is that it can help you get your curiosity restored. That, you know, they stop grading for curiosity in first grade and a lot of us put it away because it wasn't really encouraged. I mean, imagination and curiosity were encouraged, but really being good at long division was more of a value. When we're coming up and deciding to be a writer and carrying an index card or in a pen with you or your phone, if you're going to use notes, means that you have decided you're going to start paying attention again. So yesterday morning, my husband and I left our boutique apartment with the broken sink and we went out and my feet were really, really sore from the day before and my knee was really sore. And I had this media thing I didn't really want to do. And we decided to stop into an Irish tavern to get the Irish breakfast, which was like a great price for a ton of food. We were sitting at it, there was no one there. And the bartender came over, very genial Irishman of about 60 who we could barely. We thought he was punking us. And when I saw that, I started laughing again. Well, you know, I said in help, thanks while that laughter is carbonated holiness. I love that once you're laughing, you're back on sacred ground. And at that moment I decided to pay attention to this guy. It was at that moment like getting spritzed by a plant. Mr. And so we just started talking and he got us everything. And then I asked for the Wi Fi and it happened to be 147 Guinness. He started spelling Guinness for me, two ends to it. And I said, you know, I'm a sober alcoholic, I've been sober for decades. And then I really remember how to spell Guinness, believe me. And he laughs. Well, then Neil got up during our breakfast to go to the bathroom and the guy came over and he said, kind of sotto voce, how long have you been sober? And I said, I'm coming up on 40 years. And he said, wow, the third great prayer. And then he reached in his pocket and he pulled out a 24 hour chip and a six months chip. And he said, I just celebrated six months clean and sober. And we both said, wow, because that's a miracle for anyone. For me, for him. And all of a sudden I was on a track B, which was a new pair of glasses paying attention. And I used that story in the thing I described to you earlier in this piece I was writing this morning. And that's how it all works.

A (31:16)

Yeah. When you're opening a book, what are the things that you're really thinking about on the first page, the first few pages, the first sentence, what really matters to you?

B (31:26)

Well, I'll give a book three pages. Usually it's a book as a reader. Yes. In a bookstore that I'm auditioning. Usually it's because I've been reading good reviews about it, although there are almost no reviews anywhere anymore. But if you look around or somebody's told me that they loved it and I'll pick it up and I'll read the first few pages and I will be looking for somebody that is writing really nice sentences. You know, MFK Fisher, the probably the world's greatest food writer, said, what you're doing as a writer is writing one clean, fresh sentence and putting a period at the end of it. And so I'll start to read and I'll see if these sentences are pleasing to me and I'll read a little bit more and I'll see, I'll just start noticing. Oh, I like this. I want to get to the bottom of this paragraph. And here's the catch. I'm going to turn a page, then we keep reading. Oh, I like this. I want to go on and end like that. And the sentences are pleasing, they're not ostentatious, they're not show offy. You know the Neil's rule, if it's literary, it isn't. If it's literary, I'm not going to be interested in it. If it's really human. And, you know, ever since we got here on Earth, we've loved stories about ourselves. You know, the first storytellers are gathering people around the campfire. They're telling people stories about their ancestry and what they make of it all and what the lightning means and what the water. And that's what I want to read about. Still. I want people to hold up a mirror for me. Whether it's science fiction or takes place in ancient Egypt, I want it to be about the drama of humankind. And I'll pay extra if it's sort of funny. And that's what I'm looking for in the first three pages of a book. Pleasing sentences, somebody with a story to tell. My favorite quote, and there's some amazing quotes in this book in good writing. Yeah, yeah. Is something that my screenwriter friend Randy Mayem Singer said. She wrote Mrs. Doubtfire and a bunch of other stuff she said. I think it's seven words. Tell me a story, make me care.

A (33:44)

How do you make people care?

B (33:45)

Well, if you're writing a novel, you have characters they wanna find out more about. They wanna find a character who you recognize as a real person. Maybe. Maybe it's Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, who has nothing, nothing, nothing in common with me, but I recognize him as a really dear, messed up human like the rest of us. You know, if you don't have anything wrong with you, I'm not interested. If you don't have anything wrong with you, there's a zero chance I want to sit with you at the table, at the dinner table, no matter how brilliant and educated you are. And so you are a person I recognize as one of us. And something's going on that makes me worried for the character, makes me care. The character. I wrote about this a lot in Bird by Bird. There's something at stake. You know, the character has something to lose. And we all have the same things to lose at stake. You know, we can lose our sense of meaning, we can lose our connection to other people. We can have a sense of loss that is. Feels like it's unsurvivable. So it's a character who feels real and human and who is in a predicament that I can identify with where I'm pulling for them and I want to find out what happens. That's how you make me care.

A (35:07)

The word desire came to mind. Like, do they need to want something?

B (35:11)

That's a good question. I mean, usually what you want is the same thing. That is at stake. I want my son, who's 37 and my grandson, who's 17, to outlive me. That's basically at this stage of my life, all I want. And so that's what's at stake. And so if I say that on the first, second page, it's like Ibsen saying, if there's a gun in the first act, it really needs to go off at some point, right? So if I say in the first couple pages, all I care about is that my son and grandson survived me. It's a pulse. And we're gonna go, uh, oh, and

A (35:51)

talk to me about this relationship between. You need to like your main character, but that doesn't need.

B (35:56)

You don't need to, like, mean that.

A (35:57)

They need to be perfect.

B (35:58)

You don't need to like your name. Well, you know the great short story writer Ethan Kanan, who teaches at the Iowa Workshop now, he and I have been fighting about this for 35 years now. He said the most important thing is that you have a likable character and that you never. And I think that is maybe true, but you can have a really, really screwed up character. Totally self obsessed, but kind of pathetic in a way that you relate. That I relate to. I was going to say what we've been fighting about is he said you should never write out of revenge. And I always told my students, you need no other reason but that the kids who teach you in seventh and eighth grade. Grade should eat it. You know, when they see that. Back at you, man. Back at you.

A (36:40)

I'm gonna prove something to you. There you go, the big bully.

B (36:44)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A (36:45)

How did you get to the revenge point?

B (36:48)

I discovered that early on. Well, also I discovered early on I started writing my first novel when my dad. When my dad got sick with brain cancer when I was 23, he said, I'm going to write my version of this. Why don't you write your version? We were a little family, my two brothers and dad living in this little hippie town on the coast. This is 77, 1977.

A (37:12)

This is Tibura.

B (37:13)

This is Bolinas.

A (37:14)

Bolinas, the surf town.

B (37:16)

Yeah, surf town. Hippie town. And what I discovered and what he taught me was that when you decide to be a writer, everything is grist for the mill. You know, every experience, every thought, you put it all down, you take out the boring stuff. But I could use everything that happened, everything cruel that happened to me, I could use. Now you have to worry a little bit about slander and libel. So I have to change the person's hair color. And their height, Right? I have to make you a towhead who is only 5 foot 3. And then you're not going to recognize yourself or sue me, because also, you can't sue me because you're not recognizable to the public. Right? But I can use all the cruel things you've said to me so far in this first hour against you, and I can use direct quotes, but you can't sue me. So that's how I started on understanding that people that were behaving really badly were really inner. They were kind of a recognizable enemy to everyone. People who put you down for whatever, for your values, for your looks, for your hair, for whatever.

A (38:26)

What was that line about childhood? Like, if you. If you've gone through a childhood, you have enough to write about.

B (38:33)

That's Flannery o'. Connor. You know, she wrote a book, People Don't Read enough, and she said in it, if you've survived your childhood, you have enough to write about for the rest of your life. And it's really true. I mean, it's the great prompt. My son has a writing workshop, a collective with 700 writers in it called arightingroom.com, not thewritingroom.com who are our mortal enemy. But@arightingroom.com, they have a prompt every morning. And often the prompt would be, tell me a childhood memory. Because then if I ask you to do that, you're going to be able to write for a month. Right? Because what you can do is my advice. And I give a lot of talks. There is make a list of every childhood memory, starting at your very first holiday, your very first experiences of nursery school. You know, you're probably four, you might have a flicker of something from three, maybe a little bit from four, and then five, it starts happening because you're in society then and you're on the blacktop, which is where any sense of safety you might have had before ends. And you start, you get these prompts. I'll tell you a prompt right now, that. And for your listeners, that could unleash a whole book for you. This is the big a writingroom.com prompt. There was a tree. There was a tree. Tell me about that tree. Is it from your childhood? Is it the tree in the cherry tree outside your window that is not in blossom, but that is budding in bud? Is it the tree that you fell out of when you were in second grade where you got a cast, which was incredibly cool because all the kids were jealous of it, and they all wrote messages on you? Was it the tree where you carved someone's initials? Is it the tree where you buried your grandfather's ashes that you'd never have bounced back?

A (40:26)

You know, I mean, the story of humanity begins with the tree. I instantly. The first thing I thought of, I thought of Eden. What is it about trees that have this sense of, like, the tree of life? There's a sense of mysticism and possibility. Like, what is it about trees that's so generative and filled with life?

B (40:44)

I think that somehow you could make a case that the tree is every single thing about life that there is. Like, birds are more complicated. You know, I've had a couple of books with the word bird in them, Imperfect Birds and Bird by Bird. Because if I've written that, if birdsong were the only proof that there is an alternate reality or a deeper, richer reality, it would be plenty for me. But a bird is a little bit esoteric. They're so trippy, you know? They're so trippy.

A (41:16)

People equate them to dinosaurs.

B (41:17)

Yeah, well, they can't spring from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs. But a tree, it is a tree of life. It is the individual branch and the individual apple and whatnot. But it's also. We have learned that it's that vast network of communication. That one tree over there is feeling sickly. And this tree over here, me, with my root structure, I can give you vitamins, I can give you food. And I do, because it's all part of the. And that's not the human experience. Unless you decide that that's what you're going to be a part of now is that kind of interconnectedness. But that's what the tree is. And I really believe that if you write down there was a tree period, you could write for days.

A (42:04)

Days. What was the other writing prompt you're going to talk about?

B (42:08)

Okay, well, Abigail Thomas, who's written a book on memoir and another book, still life at 80, she gave me a few of these great prompts. One was, write down 10 things that you've forgotten. Then when you're done, 10 more, tell me 10 things you remember. I remember this smell of the cookies in my grandmother's kitchen. She was not a good cook, but the cookies smelled like love, and they smelled like almond, and they smelled like vanilla, and they smelled like that. My grandmother really, really wanted me to feel cherished and loved in her funky little kitchen.

A (42:49)

I remember the way that one grandmother used to put capers on everything, and she was a decent cook. And the way the other grandmother grew up during the Great Depression and would serve us food with mold when we went over to her place.

B (43:02)

Tell me something that you wish you hadn't said. Oh. Oh, God. I don't even want to say some of the things I wish I hadn't said here, but because I have a public life, some of the things I've said have haunted me. You know that. Some of the things I've said have gotten me canceled at speaking engagements. Some of the things I've said to people wounded them. Some of the things I said to my child I just said in desperation. I said, because I was at the end of my rope, I want to say that I'm forgiven. My son was a meth head, an alcoholic. Grace of God and the sober man of San Francisco. He's got 14 years clean and sober. But there were things I said during those bad years that I can't believe came out of my mouth. Every parent. Every parent has said things they swore they would never say that their parents said to them and that when they found out they were going to be a parent, swore they would never say ever. I will never say that. And they inevitably do. Let's go back to writer's block because I suddenly remember I gave a Talk@A WritingRoom.com that I think was useful because I know a couple of hacks. One is to skip way ahead that you're on page 37 of your book and you are blocked. You're where Isabel Allende was. You're trying to gather stuff for the rag bag guy, the little Dr. Seuss character, and it's just not happening. Skip ahead, move on. You don't know what happens now. The person is face to face with somebody who hates them and they're in a broken elevator and you don't have a clue what happens. Skip ahead to page 50 where they're getting off the elevator and there's been a slight shift of the planes of the earth. There's a difference in their faces. There's a difference in their eyes. They're not shut down right now. They're not glaring. They have left the realm of glaring. So you shift ahead from 37. Maybe you just shift ahead to page 41. You don't know how they get there, but, you know, they end up walking off and they bump against each other. It's impossible to have imagined on 37, the people who hate each other in a broken elevator can step off four or five or six or 20 pages later and they bump shoulders. How do you get. I don't know. Now my Husband with his clients has this amazing tool he gives them that I don't know, is the portal to freedom. You know, are you going to stay in that job? I don't know. You're supposed to know what you're going to do next, what you're going to. If you're going to stay, if you're going to go, if you're. Whatever he teaches people to say, I don't know. And as a writer can say, oh, I don't know. How do you and I, who have loathed each other for it's gotta be 30 years now, get off the elevator and we have small smiles on our face? How do we get. I don't know, but I can pick it up there. So you skip ahead. The other thing you do, and this is the other thing I know about writer's block, is you suddenly introduce a character who, out of the blue, who, coming off the elevator, knows you both and is astonished that you are standing so close to each other after what happened on the blacktop when you were in fifth grade and he had chosen Caroline over you for the ice skating part. Ice rink party. You introduce a character who knew you both. You introduce a character who also hates a person that you had formerly been hating when you got on the elevator. Whatever. You introduce somebody new. You shake it up.

A (46:57)

So what's the main point there? What's the main point there?

B (46:59)

The point is that you introduce something that hadn't been there at the point where you were blocked, that it's like a snow globe. You shake it up. That it's not the exact frozen landscape that had been in the snow globe. You shake it up. It's like there's a chapter in Bird by Bird on Polaroids. And it talks about how. Because when I was coming up and when I wrote Bird by Bird, we took Polaroids. We didn't have phones, we didn't have. I don't even think we had disposable cameras yet. But you've taken a picture of this scene. You know, there's a Perrier bottle leaned against the couch, and there's the famous orchids with the green. And I take a picture of it thinking that I'm really taking a picture of you and I'm noticing this other stuff. And then that's where you are before the writer block. And it's kind of blackish, greenish, and it's developing. It's a Polaroid, and it takes time to develop. And all of a sudden I notice that there are a bunch of books under the couch That I hadn't even noticed, you know, and that actually I recognize one of them and I want to go get it. I don't, because I'm on the spot here. But I reckon maybe it's my book. You had it there. You do have my books all around here. But I hadn't noticed. At the point of writer's block, I thought I was taking a picture of you. What I'm taking a picture of is this coffee table book that my dad had who's been dead for 50 years nearly. And that I remember all of a sudden sitting with my dad and on the couch and we're listening to Thelonious Monk and he's playing Lulu's Back in Town. And I hadn't remembered that song and now I can play it. And I'd forgotten that Thelonious Monk's wife called him Melonious Thunk. And it's all coming back based on something I hadn't known was interesting to me.

A (48:53)

One of the things that I love to do. And I said this to a friend last weekend, he was like, stop. Stop joshing me. I'm telling you, I do this all the time. I just go for a walk and I play I Spy. And he's like, how do I find more writing ideas? And I go walk down a block and just try to observe five things that you've never noticed about that block before. Look at the ornamentation on the lamp post. Look at the way that the trash can has some stickers on it. Look at the way that there's some trash towards the end of the block, but not in the middle of the block. Think about, why do I like the staircases on this house more than the one on that house? And you just play I Spy and you just try to notice as many different things. Try to surprise yourself or just try to notice something kind of like you're with a four year old and something about that awakens your eyes to the world and you begin to see all of these things that were somehow under the register of consciousness but were always right there.

B (49:53)

My husband said, and I started my last book somehow with this line that everything true and beautiful can be discovered on any 10 minute walk. Whether you're in Fairfax and it's all trees in bloom, or we were just up Washington D.C. where every single cherry tree had gone into bloom for our arrival. And here, where things are a tiny bit behind, but they're just starting to blossom just now. And you can see the buds. You could just see the buds on the tree. Right now you could see the buds on the tree.

A (50:23)

Those weren't there two days ago.

B (50:24)

Right. You can just see the buds and you could stop and be blown away. And then you all of a sudden remember the Aeneas Nin quote, that the pain of staying in bud was suddenly too much, and you decided to go ahead and see what it was like to bloom. And all of a sudden, the world is happening again for you. It's moving and it's showing itself to you.

A (50:47)

Elif Shafak, who came on the show a few months ago, she said the world is pregnant in the spring.

B (50:53)

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's beautiful. Julia Cameron, who wrote the Artist's Way.

A (50:58)

Yeah.

B (50:59)

She had a assignment in it which was called. It might have been called the Writer's Day Artist Date. The artist date.

A (51:04)

Yeah, I think so.

B (51:05)

And you. You took your paper and your pen or your pencil somewhere, consciously, intentionally, then you sat there and you captured it on paper and you scribbled. I used to teach my grandsons right classes, writing workshops beginning in kindergarten, you know, with poopy first drafts. But I'd also just hand them paper and pencils and have them sit there and I just have them make lines across the page. And I said, that's what writing is. It's just making lines. But you're going to learn to write words, you know, and descriptions. And then all the aides and me and the teacher would come by and have them tell us their stories and we would write them for us. But I have them do 10 minutes just scribbling across the page and. And that's what the artist date is, that you either go to somewhere natural or you go to a cafe or you go to a cemetery, or you go to a library. You know, you go outside and you pay attention and it is revealing itself to you. All of life, you get it down on paper. That's what writing is.

A (52:07)

Do you have a favorite word?

B (52:09)

I love the word meadow, and I love the word glade because it suggests sanctuary and safety. A ring of trees that you step. A meadow surrounded by trees that you step inside of. That's a secret world. Do you have a favorite word?

A (52:25)

Serendipity.

B (52:26)

Oh, serendipity.

A (52:27)

Yeah, I love that word. Something about the energy of what serendipity is, is embodied in the way that that word is spelled. It's kind of like a onomatopoeia, but for how the word looks.

B (52:39)

Yep. I love that word too. Yeah, I love the more girly words like meadow and glade. Yeah.

A (52:45)

Tell me about this idea of kind of squinting. You have an idea that you're beginning to develop, and you're kind of squinting at it, and it's beginning to form in your head.

B (52:55)

Mm. Well, that was another thing I did with my grandson's classes through all those early grades, was I would tell them that if they close their eyes, there's a movie screen behind their eyes, and they can look for a memory or a imaginary scene between. You know, they are all into superheroes and Pokemon and stuff. And I'd say you can see it on the screen behind your eye. And now when you open your eyes, you can squint at it to bring it back, bring it into focus, and then get it down on paper. If you can't write actually yet, tell us one of it, one of us, and we're going to get it down on paper for you. So that's what it is. You squint to kind of bear down on it a little so that you can capture it more precisely. It's funny. I'll tell you one story from the first, the kindergarten workshop. My grandson was all excited to get to bring his nana in and show her off. And I was, like, semi famous, and the teacher got to hold up bird by bird and all that. And I did my thing, poopy, first drafts and bird by bird and all of that. And I talked for about half an hour and had them do an exercise with the aids and the teacher. And afterwards, my grandson came up and he tugged on my sleeve, and he said in this kind of mafia voice, he said, nana, that was terrible. And I said, what? And he said, you told us you could help us write a book, but you only taught us how to write one page. And I said, honey, that's all I got, but I can teach you how to write one page. And it's back to what we were saying, that if you get into that cold water, you might as well splash around for a while and you warm up and you're in it, you might as well go for it, get a little bit more done than you were agreeing to in the beginning.

A (54:44)

But also, that's what a book is. It's just a page and then a page and a page. It's what life is a day and a day and a day behind an hour and an hour and an hour. You were talking about movies, and I know you love movies.

B (55:01)

I do.

A (55:01)

How have movies informed your writing?

B (55:04)

Movies have informed my entire life. You know, I think that at least half of what I know about everything I learned from Great movies starting at an early age. I mean, when I was coming up in the 50s, it was all Disney movies, mostly animals movies, and a lot of which end with the mother being killed. So I was a very sensitive and frightened child to begin with. And I. And, and. But movies have informed everything I know. And they also taught me how you frame things. It starts somewhere and that scene ends somewhere. And you get from A to B in one scene and you don't bite off more than you can chew. You don't bite off more than the. The viewer can follow. And Orson Welles said, you are creating a happy or sad movie depending on when you decide to end it, you know. And so I learned that you could end it where there's. At a place where there's hope you could end it. And a lot of modern movies end where so ambivalently, where you really don't know how people are going to go on from what they've already been through. But they're together. That's usually enough to give us the belief that they're connected and they're going to be okay for now, which is all any of us ever have, that we're okay for now. But movies and the choices directors make about what they show and what they don't show, you know, it's Miles Davis saying, write about the space between the notes, the choices that directors make is just. I mean, to watch great movies starting 100 years ago would give any would be writer all the information they need.

A (56:48)

Talking about that Miles Davis quote, what does that mean to you? That's not clear to me.

B (56:53)

It means that we are a very talky species and that we keep trying to capture the meaning of life that we see and what has been most important and impressive to us. But actually the silence, you know, spiritually, that silence is where it all happens and that we capture in. In words. The silence. We can capture in words the moment, the momentousness of the moment with a few very carefully chosen words. We can capture years of aging by describing when the next paragraph begins, that the old dog's muzzle has gone gray or that the narrator's hair has gone gray. And we capture in quietness and silence the momentousness of just being alive. And that's between the notes that we can hear.

A (57:56)

Yeah, Sports announcing is similar. I was watching the World Baseball Classic recently, and Venezuela's kind of this underdog. They win. And the announcer says something to the effect of the best in the world.

B (58:10)

Yeah.

A (58:10)

And then it's just complete silence from the announcers for the next two minutes or so, and you're just hearing the crowds cheering, and the ambient noise of the moment just speaks for itself. And I think of so many of my favorite moments in sports announcing. And it's very, very similar. It's three, four, five words. And then ambient noise. Silence.

B (58:37)

Yeah. And often in novels, in great novels, something has happened and it stops you on a dime because you think, oh, no. And if the character, like in Middlemarch, I think, the greatest novel ever written by George Eliot, there are so many moments where a character has made a decision to do something and you just stop in your attraction. You think, oh, no. It's like George, who is in love with Mary. I think it's Mary Darcy. He has proposed to her and the father has accepted because the daughter doesn't really get to. The father is accepted. And George has kind of already lost everything. He's young. He's a young man full of life, and he keeps betting on the horses. The father of Mary has lent him some money to help them get started. George has a good idea. He's going to take the money, say it's $1,000 or pounds. What's he going to do? He's going to go to the racetrack and double it. And you put down the book and you say, don't go to the racetrack. And you almost don't want to go on, but maybe it's going to work out this time until you pick the book back up. But there is a silence where you feel all of our longing, all of the young man's hope who's going to marry his beloved, going to make a little extra money and surprise her. But you're going. Please don't go to go home, Go to the race, go to Mary, go to the river. He goes to the racetrack and he loses everything. Well, now what? I don't know. He doesn't know. The character doesn't know. No one knows. What are you gonna do? You better turn the page.

A (60:20)

I just had the writer and director of a movie called Train Dreams On.

B (60:25)

Hi. I cannot wait to see that movie.

A (60:28)

So good. It was just nominated for Best Picture.

B (60:30)

Yeah. Yeah.

A (60:31)

And there's a really important line in that movie where things are going all right. They're going all right. Not great, but not terribly. And the narrator says, little did he know that he would remember these days as some of the best in his life.

B (60:47)

Yeah.

A (60:48)

And it's a really important line because the thing, Capital T. Capital T. The thing doesn't happen for another 10, 15 minutes. But that line When I was watching the movie for the first time, I just sank down in my chair and it was sort of like the gambling. And I said, oh, no. Oh, no.

B (61:08)

Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is the greatest moment in movies and in books, where you just have to stop for a minute and catch your breath and tell me a story, make me care. You're pulling for things to sort out. My husband always says life tilts to the good, but it's until it does that you're holding your breath. John Lennon famously said that everything sorts out by the end, and if it hasn't sorted out, it's not the end. And I live by that because for me, in the modern era, it sure hasn't sorted out for the good yet, but it will. John Lennon said, you know, and my husband said, but while you're waiting, that is the thrill of being a reader or being a movie watcher is the thrill that everything could just turn to. You know what? Maybe it's not going to. Maybe it's not going to.

A (62:08)

How do you feel like movies have informed the way that you tell stories?

B (62:12)

Well, they have told me what I need to know a movie is about. The director is setting up lily pads across the pond for the viewer to land on. I need to know this much. I need to know this. Who these people are, how they're together. I need to get them then from here to there. I need to get them out of the city. I need to get them into Newark, because that's where this catastrophe is going to begin to unfold. But it isn't. They've shown me. You know, the wonderful short story writer was a friend of mine, Alice Adams, a New Yorker writer. She told her writing students this great formula that I wrote about in Bird by Bird. It's A, B, D, C, E. And I think that is really the formula that a director might use. A is for action. Something has to happen kind of early on, either in the movie or the book, in the first few pages, that we're all together here in a small studio in the West Village. And who are these people? Why are we all together right now? Are we of any interest at all? And then B is for the background. Well, here's why we're together. Here is what we had hoped was going to happen today. Here is the background. That's what a director is going to show you, too, either through flashback or through the characters telling each other, reminding each other of what's gone before. D is the development. The story starts to develop. We hear a knock downstairs on the do, no one's supposed to be at the door. We're supposed to have this time together and things start developing. And these are lily pads we're landing on. I hear footsteps on the stairs. Things are developing. They don't sound like yours because they have a high heel. They make a clunkier sound on the stairs. I don't recognize it and I'm scared. So first what do I do? Well, I hide. And then I hear, you know, A, B, D, C, E, C is the climax. Things come to a head upstairs, outside the bathroom door. It's not Jack Nicholson in the Shining with a hatchet trying to get through, but something is happening. It's where all of the minor chords I've played so far crash into one another. It's the cymbal in the symphony orchestra. That's the climax. The climax means there has to be a killing of some sort. It doesn't have to be a character. It doesn't have to be a death of a character. It has to be the death of maybe the illusion that the characters live with their whole life. That has meant they never, ever, ever can break into full awakening, into full humanity here. Or the killing of an illusion or the killing of a prejudice. It could be the killing of a person. It's a killing outside the door, at the top. At the flight. Top of the stairs. And then E, A, B, D, C, E, E is the ending. There's that way that I take my readers, or in a movie, the viewers, out of the pond that they have agreed to spend time with me on all along. We get out together on the last page or in the last.

A (65:26)

Would you write those out?

B (65:27)

A, B, C, D, E. No, but I've. She told me this 40 years ago, and I just remember. And I've told every student I've ever had the A, B, D, C, E. Because it's a great formula.

A (65:37)

What makes for a good ending, A

B (65:40)

good ending for me, I can't stand if things end badly for the main character. I really can't. I'm sorry. What works out for me is that the ending, it makes sense and that if I look back over the. All the pages before, I might have known. I should have. I could have intuitively seen this coming. But there's a little bit of surprise where I smile and I go, yep, that's exactly right. That's really the only thing that could have happened. And then people are set on their feet. I don't know what's going to happen now, but I love spending 300 pages with them every night for eight nights in a row. I got to know these people and I pulled for them. I lost confidence in them. They gave me faith in them again by making choices and decisions I didn't know they had in them. And they moved on, just like in real life.

A (66:41)

You know what I'm thinking about? I'm thinking about how when you get into a story, whether it's a book, whether it's a movie, one of the things that you're doing is you're surrendering to the author, to the artist, and you're saying, I trust you. And I think a lot of what a good ending is, is you've gotten to the end. And there's been a lot of twists and a lot of turns, a lot of things that were unexpected. And you say, that was worth it. I'm glad I did it. Thank you for knowing me better than I knew myself.

B (67:12)

Yeah.

A (67:13)

And there's times when I really feel kind of betrayed. I'll use a strong word because I think it's warranted. Where. When I am with a body of work and I felt like they didn't honor my heart, they didn't honor my emotions, they didn't treat me right there, and things can still be difficult, and they treated me right. So that's not the point. But it's. You get to the end and you say, you knew me better than I knew myself. And I'm glad I trusted you.

B (67:39)

Yeah, exactly. I could read you the ending of good writing because this is how I end every talk that I give about writing and about how we write and about who we are as writers. I do care that people write well. I do. Because of my starvation for truth and for the joy of reading. Good writing has been my rock and salvation since my parents first read to me. Tonight, when I crawl into bed, a good book is waiting for me in which I will get lost and found. Neil will be there, too, also lost in a book. And we will be in peace. Suddenly, one of us will exclaim, I mean, say. Because Rule 4 says stick with said. Listen to this. And then we'll read a sentence or description to each other and shake our heads at how fine it is. You are fully capable of creating good sentences, too, with practice, guidance, an editor or writing partner, and dedication to the craft. Trust me on this. But better yet, trust yourself. You've got this.

A (69:08)

Why do you want to end with that?

B (69:10)

Because I think it's the most important thing in this book is that everyone can get to be a better and Better writer. It's like learning to do anything, whether that's piano or pickleball. You know, with piano, you don't start off wanting to botch the farmer in the dell. You want to play Brahms, but you have to be willing to be able to botch the farmer and the dell that she stands alone. You know, little by little you can work your way up to botching your favorite Beatles song to In My Life. And it's terrible at first, and then it gets better and better. Then you could play it for somebody and they go, wow, you did it. That was beautiful. And then you work your way up very slowly through Chopin to whoever. And that's what writing is like. You start off and it's way, way, way too long. And a lot of it is going to end up getting cut or cut on the cutting room floor. But you're doing it. You're doing it every day. You're a writer now and you're. And you're pursuing the writer's life and you're sitting at the feet of the masters and you're reading all of the writers at work in the Paris Review series. You're writing, you're reading all of those once a week and you are corresponding with other writers and you're sharing your work with another writer who you found and they're sharing their work with you and you're helping each other get better and better and you're trying slightly harder things and slightly harder things. You're learning to take a little criticism and you're sticking to the fact that it's your work and you're the final arbiter of it and you're doing it like the Nike ad. You just do it.

A (70:55)

You stop not writing.

B (70:56)

Stop not writing.

A (70:58)

How did you deal with criticism throughout your life?

B (71:00)

I hate criticism. I am so in the wrong business. But it has always hurt me. Always. Like the first review. The first reviews I got were for this book I wrote about my father's illness, a novel called Hard Laughter. And the first reviews I got, and this is in the 1980, I arrived by mail from my agent. They're Publishers Weekly in Kirkus. And they're terrible, the reviews. They're terrible reviews. And luckily I'm still drinking at the time. But they both say that whatever meager charms the book possessed were harmed by the writer's show off.

A (71:36)

He overkill that'll make you tip the bottle.

B (71:39)

And that made me tip the bottle. And it also rings through the chamber of my mind. I no longer after that was doing show off. The overkill of trying to be funny. Started editing myself in a much, much different way. But I have gotten criticized every book. And you know, this Good writing is my 21st book, and now there are no reviews, so you hardly have to worry about the bad reviews now. You just worry about neglect. But the criticism's very hard for me to take. Now, Neil And I, for 10 years, have been editing each other, and we have a policy that you edit with a sandwich form, which is you come over to where the other person is. And you said, I love this. This is going to be great. I don't think your lead works. I actually don't think the first couple paragraphs work. But at the very bottom of page one, when that paragraph starts, that's where you hook me in. I don't think the ending works. All endings are way before the ending you've presented. They're with an essay, there may be a page and a half earlier. With a book, they could be 13 pages earlier. But sometimes Neil has come in, he's been in a hurry, and he started with, exactly what's wrong with it, what I need to fix. And once or twice I've cried. And then he goes, oh, I'm so sorry. I really love it. It's just the beginning is just so confused. And I really think you're just clearing your throat. Those first two graphs and take them out. Trust me. And criticism is. You know what it's like. It hurts a little bit. But one of the rules in good writing is trust good editors. You know, worship good editors, worship a good writing partner because they're saving you from yourself, from your blind spots, from your, you know, your weird little habits that you think are so charming, that, no offense, really aren't.

A (73:35)

Have there been times when you've. When you've overreacted to criticism? And so there was a critic who came in, they said this, and you said, oh, my goodness, they're right. And then you found that you had actually lost the sense of yourself in the process.

B (73:47)

Oh, yeah.

A (73:48)

And basically had to integrate that criticism into your craft to say, you know what? People will criticize me for that, but that's who I am. That's who I want to be.

B (73:57)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I could give you 20 examples of very, very important book reviews that were really devastating. Like, I got one. This is not quite 10 years ago for a book. It might have been the book on either hope or mercy. It was Hallelujah anyway. And it was just essays on spirituality, and it was very human. It was very Funny, it was really loved. It was a huge bestseller. And the reviewer in the Chicago Tribune said that the book made her feel like she was in the backyard with one of the Kardashians. Ooh.

A (74:35)

Huh. That's strange.

B (74:37)

And I wanted to write back, but you don't get to that. No one had ever heard of her or was likely to. Right. But I couldn't do that because you don't get to respond to reviews. But I've gotten. But then that made me think, wait a minute. And then I thought, the way I write is the way I want to write. And you can tell because what I'm publishing, you know, and by. And by the time I've written something, it's gone through so many washes. Three or four drafts from me. The editorial response, me making those changes, going back to the editor, doing another round of edit.

A (75:14)

You ever feel like the writing gets over edited?

B (75:17)

No, I'm just desperately grateful. Desperately grateful for I have a great editor at my house and, you know, then you go through the copy editor and. And a copy editor may have tiny control issues and be marking stuff like for. I'll tell you one example. I wrote a book called Jo Jones, my second novel. And in it takes place at a cafe, broken down dive, really, on the Petaluma River. And two teenagers say, at the cash register, I'm gonna have to pay you, like in total dimes. Well, that was a line I had heard and scribbled down. I'd said to them, wait one second. And I wrote it down. Now that's a beautiful line because that's rhythm and blues, right? I'm going to have to pay you, like in total dimes. Now, the copy editor read it and cross it out and added, I'm going to pay you totally in dimes. And I had to go back and say, no, this here, the sentence is, I'm going to pay you, like in total dimes. So, yeah, so, yeah, you know. But for the most part, I am desperately grateful for my editors.

A (76:27)

Yeah.

B (76:27)

Yeah.

A (76:29)

A word that you use a lot is reverence. And we were talking about wow a little bit before, but can you explain reverence, why you use that word?

B (76:38)

Well, reverence is about agreeing to be awakened, you know, and to stop hitting the snooze button and to keep asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be? Well, it hurts to be fully alive. It means you have taken off some of your armor and you're willing to be real and human with people, which you certainly were not raised to be. You were raised to be impressive and to do well and to try to get everybody with any amount of power or say, to like you and to grade you and to move you up the ranks. Right. And so to agree to be fully reverent, to be fully alive, means that you are stepping into the realm of reverence, of breath, of the moment, of real, of your own beingness and the world. As you quoted the other writer, being pregnant right now, for you, new life. Pregnancy is about new life. We've gone through the death. We've gone through the death in the winter. And it means that, wow, we're back. I can take off some of these heavy clothes, metaphorically, and be here.

A (77:44)

I'm thinking of the word porous.

B (77:45)

Yeah. We're gonna be poor. We're gonna be permeable. We're gonna take off the armor.

A (77:50)

Yeah. But the key point, I think, of what you were saying is a certain willingness to be hurt is the first.

B (77:57)

A certain willingness to be hurt in the interest of the great gift of being here as fully alive and as fully human as we can manage.

A (78:06)

Yeah. Thank you, Annie.

B (78:10)

Thank you so much.