Good Life Project - Amy Koppelman: On Writing, Darkness, Love and Life

Episode Date: May 2, 2016

Today's guest, Amy Koppelman, is a three-time novelist (so far), mom and an incredibly insightful human being. Her latest novel is Hesitation Wounds.Amy's second book, I SMILE BACK, was turned into a movie starring Sarah Silverman that premiered at the 2015 Sundance, Toronto and Deauville Film Festivals.I wanted to sit down with Amy, because I was drawn in by her immediate, visceral writing voice, her willingness to explore places that might scare off many others and also because of her lens on the writing journey and on life.In this conversation, not only does Amy share a bundle of unfiltered advice on the creative writing process, she also takes us, very transparently, into her personal journey and her lifelong dance with depression, becoming a mom and wife and author and how each affected the other.Listen in for some insightful thoughts on traversing the creative writing process to write your best work.  In This Episode, You’ll Learn:Why every creative writer’s process has to be their own.Amy’s Tip: Assume that no one will read your writing. Your honesty will flow more freely to weave a more compelling story.The six-word story Hemingway wrote to win a bet.How using writing prompts can jumpstart your creative process when nothing else will.How Amy uses writing as a “toilet bowl” to therapeutically express emotions.Her method of expressing inner turmoil and using truth in her novel characters,Her view on mental health, depression, medication and therapy.Why comparing your work with that of professional artists isn’t a comparison at all and can lead to self-defeating tendencies.Amy’s take on “giving yourself permission” to do something that impacts others.Why personal suffering is NOT a core requirement for artists as many people believe.Confronting “Imposter Syndrome” when people ask “What do you do?”What it was like to be interviewed on air by the love of her life.Resources Mentioned In This Episode:Amy’s Website: AmyKoppelman.comAmy’s Books: Hesitation Wounds, I Smile Back, A Mouthful Of AirAmy’s Interview on Her Husband’s PodcastJ.D. SalingerPhilip Roth - American PastoralChris ‘Daze’ Ellis (check back as we're airing an episode with him in July 2016)Michael StewartRaymond Carver - A fantastic grammatical writerToronto Film Festival Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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continuing education. Like me, they didn't spell great, their grammar wasn't great, but they wrote from a place that was so raw and truthful, and that really moved me. Today's guest, Amy Koppelman, is a novelist who is not afraid of topics that are deep and dark and profoundly emotional, and very often the things that so many of us feel but never talk about or never acknowledge that we feel. Her latest book, Hesitation Wounds, is a continuation of that exploration. In today's conversation, we dive into what fuels her, what brought her to writing in the first place, her writer's life, first place, her writer's life, her practice, her influences.

And then we also dive into the mindset that she often deconstructs and really illuminates in her books and her own personal journey with very deep and profound struggles with depression and anxiety and how she lives with them, how she's moved through them and become a voice to really bring them to the surface's moved through them and become a voice to really bring them to the surface and talk to them and seek treatment and have conversations around it. This is a very real conversation. It's raw. It's completely unfiltered. Just letting you know that in advance, we go places that are deep and in a way where there's no censoring. So excited to share this conversation and Amy's lens on the creative life, the creative practice, and also living in sometimes shadowy places with you.

I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Who's your favorite author? Name three that you love to read. I love to read Challenger, Herb Pedersen. Today, I don't know why I'm going to say Philip Roth. That's a nice one. Normally, I wouldn't. I don't know. But yes, I'm rereading American Pastoral. Wow. He's a very clean writer. Yeah. It's funny that you said that he's a very clean writer because you're a really clean writer also.

Is that something that's really important to you? Yes. Using as few words as possible is important to me. It probably has to do with my basic insecurity, you know, be as small as possible and as quick as possible to get off stage because, you know, you might not be able to keep their attention for long. I used to think that that's what it was, but I do think aesthetically I'm drawn to writers who are very sparing in their use of words. Although Philip Roth writes big novels. Yeah, I'm huge.

Per Pedersen, though, is a spare writer. But Philip Roth, yeah, he's a very, very clean writer. There's more words than I use, but there's never a word that's not needed. It's interesting that that's kind the way that I hear things, particularly in this book. It's a memory book. And, you know, we don't really remember things in a linear manner or with a beginning and middle and end, you know, memory just flashes in your head. You know, you'll be buying orange juice and you will have a memory of something that has maybe nothing to do with a supermarket, but it'll flash and you just know the beginning, middle and end of it because you've internalized it.

So as a book, I only show that moment, which in a way is alienating to a reader. You know, what's interesting is there's there's it's like a very Hemingway thing. Also, you know, the famous six word story that's somewhat associated with Hemingway. Nobody knows if it's true or not. Have you heard this story? No, no, no. Apparently years ago, you know, Hemingway is sitting around a table with a whole bunch of friends and a challenge is issued. And, you know, it's like, and I can't remember whether it was issued to him or he, you know, like laid down the gun and said, you know, I can tell a story from like a beginning, a middle, and

end in six words. So he invented the Hollywood pitch. Apparently, yeah. Yes, I... Except then it wasn't like, it's like a fish called Wanda Meets... Yeah, right. Right now, that's so funny. Right.

He actually probably had words that made a sentence. Yeah. So the story goes that people threw down their money and I'm trying to remember the order of, I remember the words, but not necessarily the order. Like the six words he offered were, baby shoes for sale, never worn, full story. And, but the reason I bring it up

is because it ties in with what you were just saying, which is like the power of that story is in what's not being said. Cause you fill in every gap around those six words. Yeah, that's fascinating to me. That's so fascinating. I'm actually getting to teach my first writing class. This just happened to me yesterday. I think that writing can be taught so much as you can give people the space to write and help them be able to articulate their vision more or not be scared and feel that they have a right to hear the voice that they hear in their head and put it down on paper.

And I really love prompts. I think prompts are very important. And I'm going to Google this when I get home, because that's a great way to start. That's how I'm going to start my first class. I'm going to say Hemingway. And then I'm going to give them that because that's fascinating. Baby shoes. Yeah. It's either, it's like baby shoes for sale, never worn or never worn, whatever it is. It was those six words, but it's like, you don't, the whole story is told, but it's told in what's not said, you know, you make it up around that.

What happened to the baby? Did the, I immediately, of course, go baby died. Right. And that's what I think everybody initially flashed, but then they're like, maybe it didn't, maybe it was just the shoes were too bad. I mean, it's just, you create whatever story is relevant to the context of your life. Maybe it was a shoe store and they just, you know, it was in a time period where it was hard to buy new shoes. I love that.

Or a thrift shop where they happened to have new ones because somebody was really wealthy and had too many pairs of little kid shoes. I, of course, did go right to, oh, no, they never got to wear the baby shoes. But I think that's where, I mean, I remember the first time I heard it, it's like my heart stopped and I just breathed in it and, like, didn't breathe. And I'm like, because I think that's what everybody assumes when they hear it the first time. Like, that's the baby. But I think that's where I mean, I remember the first time I heard it, it's like my heart stopped and I just breathe in and like didn't breathe. And I'm like, because I think that's what everybody assumes when they hear it the first time, like that's the story. And it's just so. Oh, you mind boggled me. This is making me so happy as nervous as I am. Obviously, I'm a slow starter. So I apologize for talking so nervously, but you got my attention because for me, as I was saying, prompts have really helped me getting prompts. The best writing classes I ever took, the teacher would give us prompts to write

to. And then go like, okay, just start writing. Do you remember any of the prompts that really sort of trigger? Yeah. They would say like, the last thing I remember is what I did before I left the, in my bag, there is yesterday he said, let's say she would offer four prompts like those. And then she would just say, you know, pick one of those prompts and just make sure you mention it in your writing. So somebody might start off their paragraph with, you know, the yesterday and some people might not get to that till they're three quarters in. And then she would make us, this one particular teacher, after time was up, she'd say, you

know, you have a couple more minutes. She would make us read it out loud. Yeah. And that is very scary for me. It's scary for everybody. But those things were really helpful, I think. Yeah. It's funny.

I think I feel the same way. My daughter, a couple of years ago, it was her birthday or something, she bought me this little book, which was like a book of prompts for like a dad where it was like, and every day I would fill it. So the prompt would be like, you know, when I was 10, my favorite thing to do was, and then like, I would fill in the rest of it. And then I would just leave it on the side of my table and she would come in the next morning knowing that there would be something. Oh, it was about her history. It was about me.

Oh, when you were. So she gave it to me. Right. Oh, I thought so. And I would, and I would fill it in. And then like everyone, she would come in the morning and just know that there'd be like a little more that she would learn about me. But.

Oh, that's amazing. Had it not been for the prompts, like simple little prompts every day, this never would have happened. Right. Like what was your favorite candy or. Yeah. Because if I had to just come up with, okay, here, like share something from, you know, like about your entire history, like a little bit every day, then I don't think it would have happened. I think it's not just about writing. I think we just, if we get like the slightest little sort of like head start to do something, it makes a difference.

Well, like everything is somebody can just open the door for you a tiny bit and then it makes it easier to walk through. Yeah. So when does it write? When do you start teaching? May. It's at seven weeks and it's May, I think like 23rd, Monday and Wednesday nights for three hours each night. If you guys could see the smile on your face right now, I mean, this is so clearly, this is something that means a lot to you. Well, for 13 years, I kept writing to all the different schools.

Could I teach a writing workshop? Because we were talking earlier about being in a community of people. It's to be in a community with people, especially people that love to read. It's such be in a community with people, especially people that love to read. It's such a great feeling. I don't think I'm going to be teaching them as much as getting to be in a class again. So I'm very excited. And I've gotten to that middle age age of going like, and it's going to be so much fun to be with young people, even though my son's that age. But yeah, but I'm most excited because it's in the general studies. It's undergraduate

in general studies, which is continuing education. And that's where I took my first writing classes. And I still think the best writers were the writers that I met in continuing education. Like they, like me, they didn't spell great. Their grammar wasn't great, but they wrote from a place that was so raw and truthful and that really moved me. And so I hope I get to meet people like that. Yeah. What do you think was behind that? I think part of that comes from why you are writing. I think if you're an adult and you're, and you decided to take a continuing education class because you want to write, you want to kind of get something out, like purge

yourself, purge something, I guess, in a way. And so the stories people wrote were not, they weren't thinking about, you know, how to game the market, like, oh, interconnected short stories were big last year. So next year they're not going to be big or they are, you know, it wasn't ever about that. It was just, these are my thoughts and feelings. And then we would try to help them shape them. So they would be the most clear for other people. And I think that that's where it comes from. And I think that actually to write, especially to be a fiction writer, I think it's safest just to assume that when you write, no one's going to read what you write because it will make you be able to be more

honest to telling the story, I think. And I think the best writers do that. They write from a pure place, a certain kind of fiction. I mean, if you're writing a great mystery, then plot's really important. You know, you want to get that all. You want to think about all of that. Yeah. But I mean, especially reading your writing, that makes sense to me also. Because you go to places when you write that would probably make writers kind of wonder, like, okay, this is what I feel like, you know, I need to write. Like, this is the thing that's coming out of me.

Yes. For better or for worse, this is what's coming out of me. It's interesting, but a chunk of years back, I was out and had a chance to just spend a little bit of time with Steve Pressfield. Yeah. And he was telling me this story, and he was saying that a good friend of, like, an old buddy of his was a cop. And the cop, maybe he had just retired or something like that.

Yeah. And he started writing. Yes. And he called Steve one day, and he's like, he's like, I think I need to stop because what's coming out is so dark. Yes. And Steve was like, no, no, no, no, no. That's where you have to go. Yeah. I do always sit down to write something that's going to be that people will. I mean, I always start off thinking, well, maybe people will read this. And I mean, I started Hesitation Wounds writing about a brother and a sister who grew up in this artist colony in New York called West Beth. And I have hundreds of thousands of words about their life in this artist community and their childhood and almost none of it's in the book.

And there were a lot of happy things that happened. I'm thinking, I do remember reading a lot about that. Somehow, well, I just write and write for a very long time, page after page. And then at a certain point, I'll write a scene and then that will kind of make it clear to me, oh, this is what you're trying to write about. And then it's amazing how smart your subconscious is because then I'll go back and look and I can see, you know, in between all those pages, certain sentences that connect. It's like, I knew what I was trying to say before I knew that I was, what I was trying to say.

Yeah. So how, how do you know when it's time to kind of go back and start to like, look at the hundreds of thousands of words that you've written start to look for those like the threads that really jump out and say this is what it's about well like with this book i just wrote what actually is the last scene of the book where the the protagonist suza has adopted a child and she's taking the child to visit her brother died when she was young he killed himself it's his birthday And she's taking her new little daughter to visit the brother on his birthday. And the snow starts to fall and the little girl's never seen snow before. And she asks her mother to stick out her tongue. And when I wrote that, I realized, oh, that's what you're writing about, like what it takes to be able to continue to stick out your tongue or believe or even allow yourself to see the beauty of snow falling.

Because snow falling can be heartbreaking. It's heartbreakingly beautiful when the trees get coated with snow. And for a long time, I tried to balance the entire book on that one split second decision that we make all the time, whether we're going to invest in life or not invest in life. And I realized I needed more than a split second. So I put it in a day. Then once I knew I was putting it in a day, was able to go okay so present tense is in the day and then I could look back at the pages to answer your question this is a long way around to answer your question and I would see like okay well this is what she did in the day yeah the thing that was

tricky for me was that there were so many different paths there was you know the distant past the immediate past and memory walks to the right and left of you, everything at the same time. So it's hard to figure out how to show that in. It's hard for me at least. And cause I, I mean, the way that the book, the book is put together also is really, you're sort of telling simultaneous stories as you kind of move together and then, you know, they all start to weave together over time. And I've read other authors who do it that way also. And I'm an author also, but I've written only nonfiction.

And I'm always mesmerized by fiction writers and novelists who can kind of like start these different threads and sort of like run them parallel. And then at some point they all come together. Well, Faulkner does that. And As I Lay Dying, Fa come together does that and as i lay dying faulkner does that better than anybody to the point where when i read that i was like i should never write another word again but um yeah he pulls it and you go like oh that's what they were doing with the casket the whole time right but but i mean it's it's so interesting though the way you said you do it in that and i guess this is going to be different for every writer, right?

Is that you kind of like write and write and write and write and write, and then eventually you hit that pivotal moment or scene where you're like, that's what it's about. And then you look back at like this massive volume of stuff. And then sort of like you start to see what actually really matters from that and piece that sort of almost like going backwards backwards like reverse engineering your way back through the story well when when we think about our lives we reverse engineer we skip around and there are always moments they could be the farthest away and and have the most immediate presence so i was really trying hard to copy that you know capture, capture that. I was only answering, I hope that wasn't too much of an exclamation, but you said that you like to talk about the process. I do. No, and a lot of our listening community actually has got a strong creative side to them, so

they tend to enjoy it as well. Somebody said to me at a reading a couple weeks ago, well, you know, how do you, how do you write? How do you start to write? And I always think, and I'm not saying this glibly, like if, if you can talk, you can write, which is kind of the Hemingway thing. You can tell a story. You tell stories all the time to your girlfriend when you meet at Starbucks for coffee. You know, I can't believe that he didn't call me. And he said, you know, I can't believe that she's cheating with so-and-so. And so you just have to trust that you can tell that same story with a pen or pencil or typewriter and just use that voice, like the policeman voice, like that cop was writing from an authentic place. And that's the writing I like the most when I can read something

and the writer's able to articulate a thought or feeling to me that I've had or don't even know that I have had and haven't been able to say or that I didn't even know I had. And then it always makes me feel, you know, so much less lonely is the word I always come up with because you feel, oh, somewhere out there, that little book that somehow got into my hands, that person understood,

understands what the way that I'm looking at something. And there's a certain kind of camaraderie in that. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's actually really kind of fascinating is that, you know, a chunk of Hesitation Wounds talks about the graffiti scene a couple of decades ago in New York City. And I just recently actually, we recorded a conversation. I'm not sure exactly when this will air, but we recorded a conversation with a guy who was actually one of the big writers back then.

Who? Days. Oh, really? Yeah. but recorded a conversation with a guy who was actually one of the big writers back then days oh really yeah i know so much about because i like i said i spent so much so i spent years so many years that this friend of mine dante ross i took all the graffiti stuff and i was like can we write something like so we wrote a tv show pilot which of course never got made but i had to do something with that world because i there something so romantic about, and Days in particular, and I've seen him, he's in all the videos and I have these books. Wow, that's somebody who I would actually have loved to meet. He actually lives in the neighborhood.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And he's one of the few guys from that time period that made the jump into studio and galleries and museums and he's doing amazing stuff. Yeah, he survived's one of the few guys from that time period that made the jump into studio and galleries and museums. And he's doing amazing stuff. Yeah, he survived. He did. But what was fascinating, which was tying in with what you were just saying about writers writing something that goes out and it creates a conversation.

Because I was asking, I was like, what was kind of driving you. And he was like, you know, the cool thing back when they were writing on trains was, and for those who don't know, like graffiti, guys who did graffiti would call themselves writers and they would write. Right. Everyone had something called a tag, which would be their, either their graffiti name or certain initials. So you would know that piece of art, sometimes their tag would be the piece of art, but that that piece of art was done by that person. So there was real ownership in the style, the voice, the image. It could be political or a train and then you would know that that would then travel around the city. Yes. And it was like this way of having a conversation with other writers. Right. You know, and it was like you were almost sending trains back and forth.

Yes. You know, you were having conversations with other writers. You were having conversations also with like the lady eating a donut on the way to work. Anybody who saw this. And, you know, you were also having conversations with the person who's like these fucking graffiti artists are ruining the trains you are having conversations with the mayor you are having conversations about community you are i love that world in a way um i mean i think there's lots of people who are fascinated by that time period but again back to like i don't like this word authentic because people

use it, but it was so pure. The best of the graffiti artists, of course, there were people who did it for other reasons or, you know, were more motivated by fame, but the ones who were really motivated, they had something they wanted to say. They were coming from a really pure place and it was dangerous because another thing that's so interesting about that time period, which lots of people don't know, is that there was a separate branch in the police department called Vandal Squad Cops. And so they would go after the graffiti artists. And anyway, I'm sorry, but it's fascinating. It's fascinating to me also. I mean, and it was, and it really, like, the metaphor of what you were just talking about, about writing and sort of, like, sending it out into the world. And actually, in this weird way, it's like it gives you, as the creator, the ability to have this conversation with people who you may never actually sit down, you know, over a coffee.

And the fact that you also wrote about that scene in your book, and I literally, you know, was just talking a couple of days ago. About Michael Stewart? No, I was just talking to him about his, you know, like his life. It was just, it's kind of like it all just came together. Yeah. And also what I noticed was when you're writing, because I know just a little bit about the scene, you're using real people. Yes, Michael Stewart's a real person.

Yeah, so it was kind of fascinating. The fact that we're still talking about police brutality. I mean, that was 1983. There was a guy named Michael Stewart who was going home from, I think he was working in a bar and he wasn't a real graffiti artist like days, but he, you know, he would tag, he could tag things and he, with a a Sharpie wrote his tag on something. And anyway, it's one of those horrible police brutality cases where he was beaten and it was covered up and he was strangled. And the DA said that he died of a heart attack, which he might've technically died from a heart attack after, you know, his eyeballs were popping out of his head.

But I was reading so much of this. And then, you know, on the news, there's just mirror images of this. And I mean, I love policemen. Policemen have only been helpful to me because I'm also like a white girl. But and I think, you know, most policemen really try so hard, but there's just constantly these cases, just like Michael Stewart, still. It's so upsetting when you see that things don't change over time.

Yeah, agreed on that. One of the interesting things about you as a writer also is that, as we kind of talked about, you go to these places with characters that really get into the recess. I mean, you create these beautiful elevating scenes, and you put those books out into the world, you kind of said you should write a fiction book as if nobody's ever going to read it. When you write that, it's so raw and so real, and you put it into the world, I think sometimes people make assumptions about you? Oh, yeah. I mean, of course, my first book, the joyous infanticide novel, A Mouthful of Air, the mother has very bad postpartum depression and she ends up killing her child. And I mean, the play dates really slowed down at our house. And in my second book, the mother has a lot of affairs and does a lot of drugs. I mean, I almost never go out, but people really just assume. It's a funny thing.

Every so often when somebody is really being coy about it, and I know they're just trying to figure out how much of a character is me. Every so often I'll say something like, when they say like, you know, how did you do research for this book? I'll just be like, oh, I just like fucked a million guys. And then they recoil because people want to think it's you, but not really, not if it's at any cost to like them being able to, yeah. But this book hesitation wounds is the one that's closest to my heart.

And has the most of me in it. I really love those characters, and I understood them, the desire to want to survive and feeling guilty for it, feeling like you could have saved more people, you know, sadness, feeling the futility of things. Yeah. I mean, and you've also, you know,

you've been very open about sort of your journey and also about the fact that you have lived struggling with depression and anxiety and you've become very much an advocate for just the way that we engage with people who may be suffering something in life. So if you're open to talking about it. Yeah, oh, I'll talk about anything.

You know, take me into sort of like that side of your life and when you started to realize in your life that things weren't quite like everybody else. I've been better for a very long time now. I still wake up and every so often look over my shoulder thinking, oh, wow, how far away is the wave? Like, how long can I keep it at bay? But I think probably I was a little girl when I started to first be, things started to first be blurry, you know, gauzy. But I didn't realize that till I was much older. That's just the way in which I saw things.

And then when I was around 25 or 24 and I was married and happily married, I stopped being bulimic. I was very bulimic. And I think that's where I put all of my sad, self-loathing thoughts and feelings or anger into doing that but once i was living with um my husband and i knew he really loved me and i really loved him and i went to do that i was like i can't do this to him and then i didn't have that anymore as like an escape valve to let out some of the stuff then i fell into a very bad depression um and started going to luckily therapy yeah and that really saved me but therapy in conjunction with medication is really what made it possible to have the life that i have now and so i think that when i write it's just um i guess they're my toilet bowls, my modern day toilet bowls. Instead of throwing up, I just throw up into the book, but into the toilet bowl, the book. But I, it's funny, even when you said of you've talked about your own suffering from depression, I'm like, oh, that sounds so horrible, because it's not suffering suffering like really suffering, suffering. And it's funny

that I just had that reaction just now. And I think that that's so part of having depression is that you are constantly telling yourself if you could just be a little stronger, you could defeat it somehow. Yes, you're just too Right. And if you just tried a little harder, you could figure it out. But it's no different than if you have diabetes or if you have asthma, you need medication. They just aren't able to measure it, to quantify it as easily on charts and the way they can those illnesses. I have a friend who a couple of weeks ago, medication for her really stopped working. And like, I know, I knew she had to go get electroconvulsive therapy. And even though I spent years and years, which is in this book, you know, reading about it and the wonders of it, I felt, you know, so sad and because I knew how

scared she was. But even then, even when the doctors told her that that's the point that she was at, they had tried everything even then she said, but you know, maybe if I'm just like a little stronger, I could just like think myself out of it. And like she hadn't gotten off the couch in weeks, she would wake up, even though she didn't sleep and just cry for hours and hours. And so it is part of kind of like the cycle that you're in. I surprised myself just now when you said that, that I cringed because you'd think with all of my prophylatizing about why medication is so important.

Yeah, but it's- I want to do that. We are who we are. And it's funny that you're self-aware enough so that you had immediately felt that about yourself because i saw that oh yeah i asked the question leaning back into the chair a little bit and i was kind of but you know there's yeah i think there's um there's like the there's a layer of what you're actually living with i'm not gonna say struggling with living with and then there's the sort of the blame. And then there's the almost like, well, you know, like this isn't struggling

compared to people who are quote, really struggling. And it's sort of like, you play this comparison game with what you're going through. It's like when I hear people use the phrase, first world problem. Depression feels like a real first. Right. It's like, yeah, but we're not, you know, like starving somewhere where, you know, and it's like, yes, that's like, there are horrible, horrible things and there's horrible suffering going on. But, you know, to try and compare the gravity of what you feel on a daily basis, you know, and somehow say it's less than simply because what you're feeling is generated from the

inside out, even though you have no control over that to a certain extent versus what somebody else is feeling where it may be based on their environment, a lack of food, resources, water. It's heartbreaking because, you know, there's, you don't have, that inner circumstance is just as real and just as devastating. And just as physiological in many ways. I mean, I said to my girlfriend when I went over there, I said, if you had a friend who was having a diabetic attack right now, like going into a diabetic coma,

you would call 911 and we would put her into an ambulance and take her to the hospital. What's happening to you? The way you are right now, this isn't living. You're dead, even though you're alive. And your friends are telling you, you need to get into that ambulance and it's not your fault.

But even now, even today, I felt embarrassed. Like, oh, geez, that makes me sound so like, yes, first world problems yeah oh yeah i'm so depressed and um also they did not have uh the paint color that i wanted this paint is more yellow or you know it feels like those are equal on par with each other even though i know more as well as anybody that they're not yeah i mean there's like there are layers of that yeah i think for all of us and we like even just general self-loathing even self-loathing without depression is hard to um exactly and talk about so this is interesting too right because you know

it sounds like in a way of your writing started at least in on in some form as like a form of therapy. Oh, yes. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So when I started getting help with the doctor, I also started writing again. I had written a lot when I was a little girl and then I kind of forgot about it. And yes, I would just put my thoughts and feelings down. And I never thought about writing for a long time as writing for somebody to read as much as I was talking to myself, I guess. And I think writing is very therapeutic. It's maddening.

Like when you're trying to figure out how to make a story or something work together, but writing just writing, like free writing, I think is really helpful because you can tell the pad and paper or the computer your worst secrets and you have no penalty for that. So if you're mad at somebody or you feel embarrassed about something, you can just write it down and no one ever has to see it. And I think that's really good for people. In fact, I tried to, for a while, do a writing class at some middle schools in the city. I thought it would be helpful to some fifth graders. Originally, I wanted to do it for high

schoolers, but the social workers I spoke to said already by high school, kids would be too closed off. And then they didn't let me ultimately do a writing class with them where I would give prompts and they could get out their thoughts and feelings because I wasn't trained as a social worker and somebody might talk about being beaten and I wouldn't know what to do. And I thought I understood that, but I also thought that was tragically sad because maybe that would be a vehicle for them to be able to talk about something that instead they'll carry around shame for and not know that it wasn't their fault. Yeah. There's, I mean, and you would hope that there would be other resources also that you could then say, Hey, right'm off too. What's interesting too is that

while you sort of turned to writing as a form of therapy, I've had these conversations with writers, with painters, with artists, where they intentionally put themselves into positions of self-loathing and fear and destitution because they feel like they have to suffer enough for the art to be good enough. I'm not one of those people. I know people say, well, you need to suffer to be creative. Look at Van Gogh. I just look at that totally fucking differently. I think that's so ignorant. I think

if Van Gogh had gotten help, he would have been able to create even more beautiful paintings. Those are not mutually exclusive. I apologize to anybody who was here and thinks that, you know, thinks the opposite of the other people that were telling you that. But I think that that's, you know, something that people use to not take medication. They think somehow feeling that pain makes them more creative or makes them more human. But medication, when it's administered properly, is not going to numb the pain. It doesn't get rid of the sadness. It just kind of puts a trampoline underneath it so that when you're in free fall, you know that eventually you are going to be caught. And because you're going to be caught, then you're going to be able to have the time to figure out, you know, how to get better. And so I don't like that at all. Yeah. And I agree with you. There's enough

just built into the human condition that you don't have to go out looking for additional suffering as fuel for creation. Yeah. It just, I don't know, that just really, obviously, I didn't mean to, I just, it just touched a nerve because I think that a lot of people think that that's why they can't take medication. not be artists per se in terms of how they support themselves, but are as artistic as artists, you know, have like an artist soul, so to speak, you know, or the easier way to say that is are very sensitive and they feel like if they took medication, it would numb them. And it doesn't do that. It's not taking Xanax or drinking, you know, vodka that will do that. But the proper antidepressant medication is only going

to make you be able to remember what it was like before you were depressed. And oftentimes, people can take a certain amount of medication and then they get to go off the medication and it just helps them get through whatever a particular episode is. It's not that they're chronically depressed and have to take it forever. So sorry, I didn't mean to get so like, ooh, ooh, that's not true about us. But it's just, I feel like that kind of thing hurts other people.

No, I agree. And whether it's medication, whether it's cognitive behavioral therapy, like whatever it is that, I actually love the visual that you created. It sort of like puts the trampoline underneath you and takes you out of free fall. You know, for some people, it may be medication

or some people, it may be behavioral for some people. Well, I mean, I very much believe in cognitive behavioral therapy and talk therapy, but I don't think for people who have real depression that those things alone can help it. It doesn't matter how many miles you run and how many endorphins you get. I do believe that some people need medication and that doesn't make you weaker than other people. And, you know, I'm for trying mindfulness, meditation. I think all those things really work and they help control your anxiety.

But if you're really depressed, the idea that those things can help you, it's the same as saying to a diabetic, be mindful about, you know, your insulin level. Like you can't, it's, it self perpetuates, it perpetuates why, why I got this. So even though I believe in lots of like natural things, some people do just need medication. Yeah, yeah. I should really, I never make any money from any of my books or anything. I should get like sponsored by a pharmaceutical company. I should call like the Zoloft people and be like, you know what? I keep telling everybody they should take Zoloft. So it's like hesitation wounds brought to you by Zoloft. Yeah. My husband

had said that to me. If I was a race car driver, it would be like Zoloft on one side, sponsored by, and well, Butchon on the roof. Right. That's funny. So at some point though, I mean, sort of treating writing as a form of therapy for you was the thing that really reconnected you with it. But clearly at some point you move from saying, hey, this is a form of therapy to this is like, this is something that I cannot do on some level.

Right. I know. I don't know when that happened. If I actually think about it too much, I go, the gall of you to think that you should be a writer. But I don't know. I just started writing. And I think I kept writing like that for a really long time. And then I must have written to a point where I noticed, oh, you're trying to say something. And then I must have started to write about, I think when Mouthful of Air, I was also pregnant with my daughter. And I think in retrospect, I was writing through the fear, you know, what if I didn't get the help that I needed after giving birth to her what if I didn't go back on antidepressant medication um because uh all I did the whole time I was pregnant was want to take Zoloft again to feel better and then when she was born I felt very guilty because I

didn't breastfeed her and I felt like I could be strong I should be able to be strong enough that she shouldn't have to pay that price and so for like a week I didn't take medication and then I saw that I was like about to hit a wall very quickly so I think I was writing through that fear and I had characters and I started writing through them. And so somehow it just changed. So that was kind of like the moment or the window where it started to shift from pure therapy to there's something bigger here. Yeah, and then I thought because of the way I was raised,

well, like you go to school then. So then I started applying to school and getting rejected. I always get a lot of rejections. So that's why when I came out of school, my first novel was, I mean, like I said, that was an infanticide novel was rejected by, I can't even imagine how many people I smiled back. It was like the 81st publisher to buy it. So that is probably one of the best things about writing school. You build up your tolerance to rejection. Yeah. What, I mean,

I'm curious though, what, what was it that, I mean, was it just sort of like that thing? Like if you want to, if you want to do something, then like you have to go and get officially trained. Yeah. I mean, because as I was saying to you, I don't actually think that you can really teach, I mean, you can teach somebody by showing them great works of art to read and great examples. And there's, I mean, you know, you read a Raymond Carver story and you go like holy cow and you learn that way you could teach people grammar I can't I have the worst grammar but I don't think you can necessarily teach people at least the writing the place that I write from so anyway I shouldn't have cared about that validation, but I did. I wanted to go to writing school and it was great because I could also say to like my mom, like, I'm sorry, I have homework to do.

And saying homework sounded a lot less ridiculous than saying, oh, I have writing to do. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of fascinated at our relationship between permission slips to do the thing that's kind of like yearning to get out and us still hanging on to the need for some form of validation or permission or somebody to kind of anoint us and say, okay, like now you have permission to go and do this thing and call yourself X. Oh, yeah. I haven't called. I feel like I'm repeating stories. But I mean, I have a very hard time calling myself a writer. Three books in. Three books in. And I told this story. So I'm sorry for repeating myself.

But if for some reason you have share a listener with whoever I told the story to. I went to the Toronto Film Festival this year with I Smile Back and I got off the airplane and I went to customs and they said, what are you here for? It says business. And I was like, oh, I'm here for the film festival. And they're like, what are you doing at the film festival? And I couldn't say to the guy, even though I knew it was a movie that was based on a book that I wrote that was based on a screenplay that I co-wrote I still couldn't say writer and when I finally said I said to myself if you can't fucking tell this guy writer there's something really wrong with you so finally I was like I'm a writer that's what I'm doing here and um it was like you know bells

and whistles went off and then I came back home and I was at a party and somebody said, what do you do? And I said, oh, I'm a mom. I'm a mom. Well, first of all, being a mom is the way I would self-identify more than being a writer. But I also, even now, still find it very hard to say. What's that about? I mean, have you ever kind of thought to yourself, like, why? What's the hesitation? I don't know. It's just something in me that feels deeply fraudulent.

But I'm not sure if that has anything to do with writing or if that goes back to, you know, why are my books so short? Honestly, I think most books should be a lot shorter, but there's sort of, you know, like both of us being in the industry, there's like, okay, for us to publish something, it has to be X page. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the thing. And I mean, this novel is really a novella. All my books have just gotten past 40,000 words. So you hit that minimum.

Yeah. And that's not even really the minimum. The whole time I was writing this and I had hundreds of thousands of words, I would Google how many words, I mean, this is two years ago, how many words for a novel, and I would see 60,000 to 80,000, and I would still go like, but I don't want to use 60,000 to 80,000. But it also really goes along with your sort of supreme efficiency ethos, where it's like, well,

if the, if the story can be told beautifully and powerfully and emotionally, you know, in half the words, why would you add a word more than that? Well, but, but I do love reading big sweeping stories. You know, I, I read for the first time a couple months ago, The Fountainhead. And I read Cain and Abel one weekend over the summer. And it was like the most fun weekend. And I mean, those are not stories that are short on words. But I just, I guess I like my books to be kind of like a photograph where you can kind of put it away and then take the picture of that kind of woman. You kind of see who she is. And I knew I was writing about a brother and sister who really loved each other.

That's all that I knew. And their truth only happened to be 40-something thousand words. I did see something where they called Philip Ross's last three novels or something his short novels. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, even Philip Roth's short novels are like 100 words more. So, yes, if only one day I could write a novel as long as, not even as good as, as long as a short Philip Roth, a small Philip Roth novel or whatever they called it. But wouldn't it be kind of like a cool exercise to take something that's that big? I mean, okay, maybe this shows how weird I am about writing if I think this is cool. To take something that size and say, huh, could you retell this story with like 25%

of the language and have it be equally as powerful? Maybe you can. And I mean, there's certainly a lot of writers like they toil for years and years and years to get it just so. But sometimes I wonder. Yeah, no, my new book, I keep wanting to write like a big sweeping story. That's why I'm reading these big sweeping books.

And I joked and said to my friend the other day, it's going to take me like nine years to write this book that I think is going to be a family saga and it's going to end up being about menopause. Some woman with menopause. And that's going to be how I distilled this. Well, also, and this kind of goes back to the beginning of our conversation, right? It's like you said, okay, to write a book that's hesitation words is around 40,000 words, like that you ended up writing hundreds of thousands of words. I think a lot of people don't realize that. And I think this is more particular to fiction than nonfiction is that, because I've talked to, you know, like, so many people who write novels and fiction, and it seems like the pattern there is, it's almost like for every 10 pages you write, one makes the book.

Like, you end up just discarding so much of what you create. That would be so interesting to like actually find out the numbers. I print out stuff and put it like in a box or a hamper. And I remember going through the hamper when I was really searching for more ideas and praying that somewhere in the hamper, I was going to find like a nugget of gold that I could use to give me like 800 more words. Yes, I think that that's true. I also think that for fiction writing, revision is very important. So that's also why. But I also think that it's really important if you haven't started writing yet and you're listening to this to not compare what you write to somebody else's finished product. I think that's a way where lots of people stop themselves from being artistic because they'll paint something and it doesn't look as good as something, you know, that they see in a museum.

Or they'll write something and then they'll open up, you know, a book and go, well, I can't do that. That's really short changing yourself because you have to remember that the writer or the painter worked hours and hours and hours and give yourself the benefit of the doubt that when it's time for you to go back, if you're writing because you want to write something to publish, that you're going to be able to rewrite it. And in the time it took you to write the novel, you'll become smarter. You'll have read more. You'll know what you're trying to say more. So I do think that's one of the most self-defeating things is to compare your earliest product to a finished product. Yeah.

And we do that. I mean, whether you're a writer or not, we do that with everything we do in life all the time. Like we're constantly walking around, right? Comparing our insides to other people's outsides. And it's like, no, you can't do that, man. You're always going to lose that game. It doesn't work that way. I want to start to come full circle a little bit. So it's interesting. You recently, I guess it was right around the time that your last book came out, you did something that was amazing, which is that you sat down with your husband who was also runs a podcast and he interviewed you and that's where I feel like I'm repeating stories and because I'm like but wait I think I think I said that but I haven't listened to his I haven't listened to

the podcast I'm too scared to listen to the podcast because so I'm curious like what was that like for you I mean it it was um I don't know I was gonna go like it was a beautiful experience but well in um in a way I was trying to but I don't know if it came out in the podcast because the podcast was edited. Thank goodness, or else you would have heard me crying the whole time. But I was trying to thank him because I think people who love people that have depression or some kind of, you know, well, we could stick to depression in the case of me. It's really hard because you don't understand when you're the person who loves that person, why your love can't heal that person, why you can't make them happy. And I mean, the reason I got better was because of Brian and because I knew he loved me and I loved him.

And I wanted to be able to not just, you know, pray that, you know, somebody would take me away. I used to do that when I was very most depressed. I said this, I don't know if this is in the podcast, but I would like lie in bed and like pray, like if there was any way, like angels could just swoop down and take me away. So he wouldn't then his life wouldn't be ruined by my, you know, having killed myself. You know, I would have been all for it. It was very hard to talk to him because also he knows the answers to all the questions. So that just was awkward. I just kept looking at him and thinking, wow, like if it wasn't for you, I mean,

I was going to say, well, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here. But if it wasn't for you, you know, none of it. And I don't know if people who love depressed people ever get the gratitude that they deserve for just having to stand by on the outside and hope that the person they love will be able to figure it out and not take it personally. And I mean, you can actually be a depressed person and love a depressed person and still not still have a hard time accepting that you can't make them better I mean you you can understand that I spent years trying to make like my father better and I could never make him better so I think that that's what it it was like I was hoping that in some way I would be able

to thank him or at least tell him that I remembered. I'm going to start crying here. Anyway. I'll get you tissues. I'm usually so well bolstered against tearing up. That's okay. But I've seen online or Twitter people say, oh, you should listen to this podcast. And I started to listen to it, but I was just, first of all, just the sound of my voice is awful. But I just think sometimes it's best just to, you know, not take a picture.

Like, I just have it in my head, so I won't, like, listen to it and, you know, look at the picture of it. But, yeah. But, yeah, Brian, who doesn't have a depressive personality at all, he saved me, you know, by loving me enough to help me get the help that I needed. So if we come full circle here, so the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that term out to you, to live a good life, what, what bubbles up? Well, it's going to, I guess it's going to sound so corny, but it's what I believe, like how I live my life and what I was trying to say with the Sousa character is just to love the people that you love as much as you can possibly, possibly can, which sounds so um obvious but um to really love them and you know try to tune out the the things that we waste a lot of time thinking about like this you know the stupid

things and just to realize that every moment is precious and i think that then you've lived a good life. If you can really love purely and all-encompassingly, that's a word. For me, I'm so appreciative that I get to be able to do that. And so I often think, like the snowstorm the other day, our son was home from college and it was the four of us. And it was my son's girlfriend was there too. And the snow was coming down and we were watching The Godfather. And I remember just going like, I am so lucky. This is the best life. And I get to be with my little family watching The Godfather for like the 7,000th time because we had to indoctrinate his girlfriend and my daughter

into the rules of, you know, how you're supposed to live, you know, what's honor. But in all seriousness, I did look around and think, you know, damn, this is a great life. And so, yeah, I guess my corny answer would be to love the people you love

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