Good Life Project - Stephanie Danler | The Road to Stray

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Stephanie Danler is a novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. She is the author of the international bestseller, Sweetbitter, and the creator and executive producer of the Sweetbitter TV series on Starz. The book and series were based on her own experience being swept up by the intoxication of the New York City restaurant scene in her twenties. Danler's work has appeared in the Sewanee Review, Vogue, The New York Times, and The Paris Review. Her new memoir, Stray, (https://amzn.to/361FOpf) is a powerful reflection on the relationships, addictions, moments of awakening, revelation, and connection that defined her earlier life and shaped the person, the partner, the mother, and the writer she would become.You can find Stephanie Danler at:Website : http://www.stephaniedanler.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/smdanler/-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Growing up in LA with parents who struggled with addiction, Stephanie Dandler almost failed at a school, but a teacher who really took notice and became her champion helped her find her way and land a spot at Kenyon where a deep love of writing took root in her college years. And at the same time, she had also developed a passion for the energy and the pace of New York City, which, being a New Yorker, I completely understand. So heading there after graduating, Stephanie completely immersed herself in the sort of intoxicating contact sport that is the city's restaurant scene. And all the while, she was also

taking notes that would eventually lead to and become her breakout novel and a hit TV show called Sweet Bitter. And having since left that world and transitioned into a career full-time as a writer, become married, move back to LA, become a mom, Her new memoir, Stray, is this deeply evocative and moving reflection on her earlier years, on the role her parents and their addictions and later relationships played in shaping her life and the place that she has landed today. We dive into all of this in today's really moving and powerfully honest conversation. Cannot wait to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

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Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So we left for Hawaii in early March. And when we were leaving, people were definitely talking about coronavirus.

But no one had canceled vacations yet. And I had never heard the word social distancing or shelter in place or quarantine. And we had been there like four days and it was a Tuesday. And someone wrote me that the NBA was canceling their games. And I was like, huh? And I like was like, I'm going to investigate this. That seems really serious. NPA, you know, I've heard of it. Then it said Disneyland is closing. And I was like, hmm, this doesn't seem great.

And then there was that Atlantic article written. Do you remember that? It was an Italian doctor who was basically warning. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. that? It was an Italian doctor who was basically warning me like that. And it was the first like big article that talked about quarantining and the sort of civic responsibility that we had. And it was the first time I had ever read Flattening the Curve. And I was like, oh, my God, this is happening. This is really scary. And what does it mean to be on this teeny tiny island in the middle of the Pacific? What's the risk?

And then it was like the next day, all of my friends texting me from Los Angeles. The supermarkets are all empty and schools are canceled and everyone's canceling their trip. And at the hotel, I'm talking to the people that work there and reservations are dropping out by the minute. People are just not getting on their flights. And we are on a remote beach in a self-sufficient condo. No one is coming in and out of it. Our toddler is running around in the sand all day. And my husband and I could not figure out for the life of us whether we were safer there or safer back at home. I think the instinct when you feel like the world as you know it might be ending or that there's something amorphous and dangerous out there, you want to be at home. But our home is in the middle of Los Angeles and Silver Lake and it's a thousand square feet and we have a teeny yard and our supermarket has hundreds of thousands of people that pass through it and so

we were talking about trying to leave early and then nature intervened and there was this crazy storm and the bridge went out and it's a very long story that was that kawaii because there was i remember there was like a week of crazy crazy rain rain there. Crazy rain. There were like 200 people trapped on our resort town was Hanalei Bay, trapped in Hanalei Bay who couldn't leave and had to use the elementary school as a shelter during the middle of news is breaking constantly about this pandemic. And we took it as a sign that we were supposed to stay the full length of our trip. And when we landed in Los Angeles, Governor Newsom had put a shelter-in-place order. Or maybe it was Mayor Garcetti.

It was the mayor had put a shelter-in-place order for Los Angeles. And we were like, well, we made it. We're here. And we have not left since. Yeah, I know that feeling. Yes, I'm sure you do. But we were scared. We were more scared than we probably needed to be. We didn't know if people were going to close the airports. We didn't know. At that point, I had a lot of questions about this food supply chain and everything that could go wrong felt like it was days or minutes away from happening. I think we've entered into a period of relative stability.

I'm using quotation marks within the pandemic where we kind of know what to expect day to day. But those first weeks, as you know, we're not like that at all. Yeah. And plus, I mean, you know, we're, I can see you now, but yeah, all of our community is going to hear our voices. So they, they won't necessarily know that you're also pregnant. And so, so I mean, in your mind, I'm sure you're also thinking, okay, so how does this factor into the choices that we're making about like, where do we swing this? Can we find an inexpensive rental? And at the end of the day, I needed to be close doctor's office and hospitals. So yeah, I think I was fantasizing if I didn't have any kids and I just would have stayed or gone to Mexico. Just said, bye, see you in a few months. Yeah. I mean, as we're sitting here having this conversation, there was a big piece in the Times today about all of these people that had bugged out to these beautiful tropical destinations and ended up staying.

Some of them because they couldn't get back and some of them because they just didn't want to go back. It was interesting to hear people tell the stories because so many times, especially if you're a longtime New Yorker, you feel like you owe something to the stories. Cause so many times, especially if you're a long time New Yorker, I mean, you're just so, you feel like you owe something to the city and there are people feeling almost like a sense of shame. Like I'm supposed to be there now. Absolutely. I mean, to be, to be on a beach, to have your immediate needs taken care of, just to be on vacation while everyone who lives in your city is having this shared suffering. I mean, New Yorkers take a lot of their pride out of the shared suffering. That's a very important facet. Half the reason we're here.

Exactly. I mean, what would you all have to talk about if you weren't talking about how hard it is to live in New York on a regular day, let alone during that time. Yeah, there's got to be so much shaming around that you were on a beach in Bermuda for these past two months. I mean, I've been in quarantine since mid-March. So I feel that I've served my time, so to speak. Yeah. With no end in sight. I mean, we don't, no one knows what's going to happen. Yeah.

So you're back in LA, originally from, was it LA or just somewhere in Southern California? I think it was LA area, right? Long Beach. Grew up there. And I want to bounce back to some of your upbringing too because it's you know such a an intense focus of uh uh your new book sounds like a kid who had a mad passion for writing but not so much for the process of education

you know i did not have a lot of respect for education until I got to college, which I was so lucky to get into. I essentially failed out of high school. I mean, I had many, many Fs on my transcripts and had to be put at 16 into a school that had a little bit more disciplinary focus. I went to go live with my father. That's a big part of my book stray. And I didn't get into a single college. I got waitlisted to one college and it was because of my writing and it was a school known for its writing program. And once I got there, I had enough good sense to know that I was really lucky and should take it seriously. But before that, it was a lot of detention. I mean, starting from a very, very young age. I was always reading way far above my pay grade and it got me into trouble all the time.

How so? Because, well, I just, I didn't, I mean, in trouble in so far as the teachers, you know, I went to a Catholic school and my fourth grade teacher thought that Catcher in the Rye was wildly inappropriate for me. It was my favorite book, and I didn't understand a word of it probably. We're talking about a 10-year-old, but I knew that his little sister Phoebe loved him, and so I would read it over and over again to understand this brother-sister relationship. And beyond that, it was just a lot of reading under the desk and like not all catcher in the rye. It's like Anne Rice. I was reading Interview with a Vampire when I was 11 years old and I was like, this is sexy.

This is great. This is better than learning to cross stitch, which we did at Catholic school back then. It sounds like there weren't many people that really recognized what reading was to you and also writing. But I guess your grandma was an early advocate, someone who stepped in and said, effectively, don't stop. Yeah. Sweet Bitter, my first novel, is dedicated to my grandparents. I mean, they partially raised me. Stray is about being raised by two addicts. And my mother was an alcoholic and a single mother and heavily relied on my grandparents to give us not just financial stability, but emotional stability. And so my grandmother was the first person who saw beyond the trouble I was causing and saw that it might be indicative of some greater sensitivity that should be nurtured and not disciplined. And I had, you know, one teacher in high school who encouraged me to apply to the one college that I ended up getting into.

And beyond that, I mean, you occasionally have friends, parents who stepped in and sort of saved your life. There was definitely a lot of kindness of strangers. but no one is telling a teenage girl with a tongue piercing who stays out all night and goes to raves that she's, you know, it's okay. She's going to be a writer someday. I'm having a daughter and I'm definitely not going to be telling her that when she's 16, if she's acting the way that I acted. Yeah. I mean, did that, I'm curious when, when you end up in Kenyon and studying writing and they're, they're really well known for their writing program there. A couple of friends who graduated there and had just had amazing things to say about it.

But it also, I've also in, I've heard some of your professors from Kenyon interviewed about you. And I don't know whether, I'm always curious about this, whether this is sort of like, whether it's revisionist history or them saying, well, yeah, there were definitely tells, but in college, there was something about her where she took the craft and the process and the pursuit differently than the average student that age. Were you aware of that and of approaching it that way? I remember being very drunk in college like everyone. I hope everyone. It seems like some sort of foundational education happens through drinking. But I remember the feeling of not having a safety net. And that feeling intensified when I got to New York. But I was at Kenyon, which is an incredible

school. I had to work full time. I was the only person I knew who had a full time job. I had all sorts of like group funding scholarships, like aunts of mine that I had met twice. Like we were just really scrapping it together to pay for it. It's a very expensive school. And so I think, I mean, I did take writing very, very seriously. When I got into the classes, which you have to apply for, I felt like it was even more of a sign that I was supposed to be there, but this wasn't going to be like high school where I just went to a tanning bed after lunch and never came back to my classes. That sense of operating without a safety net has always stayed with me, that I need to work harder, that there will be nothing there to catch me if I fuck it all up. And it took until I went to college for that to hit me, that I was completely responsible for myself and that the consequences of my actions were only going to land on me. It wasn't going to hurt my parents. It wasn't going to get me attention. It was just going to hurt me. And so I was very serious about my writing classes. And the same thing happened when I went to the MFA program at the new school. I was 30 by then, and I remember being surrounded by

23-year-olds, some of whom were very talented, some of them would become very talented if they kept working. But it was kind of a joke to them. It was just this thing they were doing after they graduated. And I had taken out more loans and left a successful restaurant industry career and left my first husband and I didn't do anything but write. I didn't go to the bar. I didn't make friends. And so that definitely started at Kenyon

and I did not have it in high school. Yeah. At all. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. When you, so when you leave Kenyon and you head to New York, you land in one of the most legendary restaurant domains. You could land in New York City in Square Cafe under Danny Meyer, who's this, you know, person who is revered um if anyone knows him outside of new york these days it's probably because of shake shack but back then he was he wasn't just a restaurateur he was somebody

who looked at at what happens within a restaurant as a craft and an offering of love and devotion and service and at least by reputation treated his you know like the people that worked with and for him differently than your average restaurateur in new york which is is really often a super brutal experience when you land in that world in your mind coming out of kenyan having developed a passion for writing is that something where you're like oh this is going to pay my bills while i get to write on the side or are you just dropping yourself into this world and saying like i'm all in in this place for now, let's just see where it goes? It started as a way to make money

while I finished a book that I had been in the middle of when I graduated. And I took a cocktail waitress job. And I also took a back-waiting job at Union Square Cafe. And initially, I couldn't make any money at Union Square. I couldn't get the good shifts. I was just a back-waiter. I was never going to become a server. The differences between those two jobs could not have been more stark. And I realized that the Union Square Cafe job was going to change me, was going to make me a better, more sophisticated, wiser version of myself, and that I would learn something there that went beyond commerce, went beyond this is $300 cash at the end of the night. And it's because of the way Danny

runs his restaurants, right? He has an ethic, a philosophy. He has a care model that is not, it is about profit, but that's a spoiler. It appears to not be profit-driven. And I was so drawn to being a part of something that was bigger than myself or being a place that wanted me to learn as opposed to being treated like a disposable set of hands. I mean, the comparison is who wouldn't want to be at union square cafe by comparison um once i really got that job the writing almost completely stopped yeah and i felt stupid for even bringing it how come because i saw union square cafe in those days employed people who had been on Broadway, people who had been opera singers, people who had galleries in Berlin waiting for their next shipment of paintings,

which is incredible. And part of the reason I wanted to work there, everyone was a working artist, but they were so accomplished and they were still bartending on Saturday night. And, you know, the bartenders at Union Square Cafe can make close to six figures as bartenders in really nice restaurants in New York City can. They owned homes. They had children. And this was their job. job and all of a sudden my creative writing thesis that was so derivative of Brett Easton Ellis, it makes me laugh out loud, it didn't look like much. I lost that sort of, I'm going to break into the publishing industry and I'm not going to work in the restaurant industry anymore. And that is when I shifted into wine.

I started to take wine classes. I thought I'll become a sommelier. This is such a beautiful way to spend one's life in contact with other people, exchanging energy with people, learning about wine, which is a subject that you can never really get to the bottom of. And I would write occasionally, but it really, really took a backseat. And then it became, I want to open restaurants. I want to run beverage programs. I want to travel to Europe and go on these wine trips. It took over life. And I don't regret any of it. It wasn't like I lost myself or my sense of myself. It was the same sensitivity applied in a different way.

Yeah. I mean, the restaurant industry, I don't know what it's like outside of New York City. I know my wife was in it for a decade in New York City. And so we saw, you know, a decade of the inside looking out. And that industry is kind of insane. But at the same time, it is, if you thrive on speed, on chaos, on the intoxication of electricity and energy and interaction, you know, I think it's the type of industry that either it fuels you and you become almost addicted to it or it destroys you or sometimes it does both in different orders. Absolutely. I mean, I feel all of those things profoundly and I hope they're in my first book. That it is an addiction, an adrenaline addiction, a thousand percent.

Even now, I've been out of the restaurant industry for five years. And it has moved my work ethic in a way where if I'm not suffering a little bit, then I'm not working hard enough. And I'm like, when is this going to stop? When is this going to get out of my system? Maybe with having a second kid i'll be so exhausted it will all be over um and i did see it ruin so many people and i also think that it's a trap and i think that the edge of that is where i was when i sold sweet bitter which is this life has given me so much.

I've been able to write. I've been able to go back to school. I've been all over the world, but I'm 31 and where am I going to go? Where does this continue? Looking down like a lifetime of service work, I think it's very sobering for a lot of people. Yeah. To balance the intoxication side of it. Yeah. And I think some people stay in it for all sorts of different reasons, but I think it's also one of those things where it's almost like writing a book there. If, you know, so many people want to have written a book,

not necessarily the process of writing is, you know, can be pretty brutalizing. I think so many people want the experience of owning a restaurant without the experience of actually running a restaurant. Who doesn't have the fantasy of walking into this 4,000 square foot place packed with people and humanity and joy and celebration? And you walk in and you're like, I created this and these are my family here. But the reality of it day to day is just, it's kind of brutal. You mentioned Sweet Bitter. So you start out, you end up splitting off, focusing on wine, opening your own spaces and traveling a ton and taking notes along the way also of kind of the conversations that are happening around the bars and around the tables around the tastings and that eventually turns

into you end up leaving and as you shared you end up in the new school doing your mfa and writing which is where effectively those notes get turned into this book, which goes out into the world. Curious about what happens that makes you say, okay, so I'm in the business. I'm taking notes. This is interesting, but now it's time to go and do this other thing. Hmm. Yeah, that's the question. We were, the restaurant group that I worked with, we were looking for a space for a wine store that I was going to get sweat equity in. The other businesses in which I was an owner, they were my husband's business, so I was an owner by proxy. But this wine store was going to be mine to run. And I was about to turn 30 and it felt like the culmination of from 22 to 30 working in the restaurant industry that this was what I wanted. You know, retail is so much gentler than restaurants. And my husband really wanted children, and he was a bit older, and I'd been putting off the do or who I was. And I knew that it was a good idea. I knew that a female coming of age set in a restaurant that didn't look like Anthony Bourdain's restaurant, who I love

and think is an incredible writer, but it's a hyper-masculinized view of an industry that is actually multifaceted. Yes, they are mostly run by men, but there is another side to it that I felt like he always neglected. And so I had this idea for a book and I applied to graduate school privately, secretly from my business partners and my husband, which looking back on it is a massive red flag. But I wasn't really ready to admit that I would leave at that point a fairly lucrative life and an identity that I cherished to maybe write a book. I mean, it's like mortifying looking at people, looking at people at weddings and at parties and saying, I'm a 30 yearold student and I'm working on a novel. You don't want to see the looks that you get back to that. Oh, and I'm back to waiting tables, even though I have this expensive degree

in wine education. The whole thing seemed like an embarrassing nightmare, which it was. And I got into the new school and a few other schools, but the new school offered me funding and I felt like I would really be able to do work there. And my marriage imploded four months later. I think that was the final straw. And then I really had nothing but the book. So I worked very hard to finish it because I had taken all of these risks and I felt that I had sacrificed so much of my comfort and stability. I was determined to have a first draft by the time I finished the two-year program. And I did. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting the way that with that context also, the way that you would also look at people who had essentially rolled out of undergrad and kind of come in here trying to figure out what's the next thing I want to do with my life. It's like just profoundly different set

of intentions and focus. You're there to basically say, this is structured time for me to write a book and have the eyeballs of people who are really good at helping me develop the craft while I write. And there is a thing that I want to end with. There's something I want to have in my hand. It's not just a certificate. It's not like a diploma. It's not just my MFA. It's a manuscript, which is, it's a completely different experience. Absolutely. I was so aware of that. And at times I didn't feel great about it. I think I always say this, but there are so many talented writers in the world.

There are very few people that actually finish a manuscript. And that is the edge. If I have any edge, that's the edge I had when I graduated. But fellow students who worked on a short story to death, and they had it published in the Adirondack Review. And I was like, oh my God, it's so literary. There's just like, they've been working on this short story for two years and I'm never going to be published in a literary journal. At the same time, I maybe knew too much of the marketplace or again, did not have any sort of safety net.

And I said, if I do not have something that I can sell, I cannot justify what I just spent on school. And I never expected to sell Sweet Bitter in a way that would let me just be a writer. I was applying for PhD programs and I was going to continue in academia and continue waiting tables. But if I did not have something that could pay me back, and while I love literary reviews, I think that that is a really, really hard road. Like, I don't know how these people are funding themselves, taking care of themselves, publishing a short story every few years. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to hear you say that when, you know, in the intervening time, you have, in fact, now been published a whole bunch of really amazing essays in those

very journals and written in a very sort of like in a very literary style which is not you know you're it's not an affectation that's your your writing voice and the books that you've written share that same just really stunning craft and it's it's story-driven and immersive and literary. There are things that you just see and feel in it that you would see in sort of more of a classical approach to writing. You also made a really interesting choice, which is you referenced Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential comes out. It's this expose of life in the kitchen in a New York City restaurant at Lizell and becomes this massive, massive blockbuster. So when you're coming out with your book, which is essentially based on a lot of your own personal journey, you have a choice to make. Like, is this going to be memoir or is it going to be fiction? You choose fiction. Yeah. Everyone, every teacher, turn this into a memoir, you're going to make twice as much money. Turn this into the Danny Meyer expose.

While I was market-focused, I was never commercial-focused. I really thought that Sweetbitter was going to be published by like a Gray Wolf or a Catapult or a Wave Books, like a very small press that also publishes poetic prose, essentially. And I was, I mean, that would have been a huge honor. And so I was never interested in the money. And I met with agents throughout school. They'll bring agents in for the students

and they would tell me the same thing, make this a memoir and we'll take it tomorrow and we'll sell it. I was too obsessed with Henry James. I wanted, in addition to sort of subverting the restaurant expose, I really wanted to work with Portrait of a Lady and tell it from the first person, deeply neurotic and confessional point of view of a 22-year-old woman, as opposed to Henry James III of Isabel Archer. I was too obsessed with novels. It's that terrible classic education I had at Kenyon. And when you make a novel, you're really trying to make something bigger than yourself. And I've never felt that as fully as when I was writing Stray, my memoir, because I don't know what Stray is about. I really don't. I have a few things that I can tell you because I'm fairly media savvy. I can tell you it's about the inheritance of damage and being raised by addicts. But with Sweet Bitter, I knew this was a subversion of classic genres this was about disillusionment and it was so much bigger than like the like shitty love affairs and all the mistakes that i made when i myself was 22

and so it was never ever an option i I never considered it. So boring. The restaurant expose about Danny Meyer. So, I mean, oh God. And who remembers the drugs, the drinking? But it's so interesting though, right? Because here you are, you've been in this world, you have a look at it and some of the biggest characters in that world

that very few people will ever get. You've lived this extraordinary life. And the industry that you would love to be a part of is kind of like telling you at every touch point, if you want the opportunity to actually step full-time into this space, this is what you have to do. And something inside of you says, I hear you, but no. And it wasn't based on the fact that you had already been published and already had all these successes before, and you knew that this was the right move. There was just something inside of you that was so fiercely convicted that this is the way I have to do it, that it gave you the fortitude to say, this is the way it has to happen. And we can say that I was right. But I I needed to be able to pull on all of my restaurant experience starting when I was 15 years old with a seafood place in Seal Beach, California,

through Ohio, through the years after Union Square Cafe. And every time I thought about writing a memoir, I thought it won't be as good. End of story. My name will be out there and it may be in a bigger way, but the book won't be as good. And I thought that about Stray. Yeah. And that's what I'm wondering. So Sweet Bitter ends up not just getting picked up, but picked up by Knopf, which legendary publisher in a deal that's reported as being this substantial deal. And then it goes out into the world. The book comes out, you're continuing to wait tables basically up until the time that the book

publishes. And then the book comes out and it's, it just kind of explodes into the public consciousness. It becomes the book everybody is talking about. It leads to a deal where it is then not just optioned and turned into a TV show, but you stay attached to it where you're not just writing the book now, but also a part of the TV show, which ends up being on Starz. And you become this kind of, I hate the phrase, but sort of like literary it person for a window in time and which on the one hand is amazing, but on the other hand can so often draw so much backlash and, and comments of, you know, Oh, the story and the way it happened and just lands in a customer's

hands at a restaurant who magically happens to be the right person. And all of a sudden it's all this big splashy thing and, oh, she's just charmed and lives this big, perfect life. And then you write Stray. And it doesn't seem like it's a response to the response, but it definitely fills in a lot of gaps. And then you also make this choice and say, okay, so the second book actually is going to be a memoir. So what happens between the time that you're saying, okay, I'm going to draw on everything that I know from the time I was 15 to create a great novel, because I just don't have anything that's interesting enough to write as a memoir. And then a couple of years later, like I'm writing a memoir.

I mean, you just gave a pretty great summary of everything that happened. All you left out was my first pregnancy. So as you were searching for that word, literary it girl, I was like, oh God, what's he going to say? And that's a tough one because all I was really doing during that time is working. I toured with Sweet Bitter for a year. I decided to write the pilot myself instead of give it over to someone else because I thought that I would be an idiot to turn down a PhD in screenwriting and filmmaking that someone was offering. Not only would it be free, but they were going to pay me to learn an entirely new skill set. And I gave that absolutely everything. It's not just my name on the credits. It's me at 4 a.m. talking to actors on the Williamsburg Bridge when it's negative seven degrees. It's working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. de facto every day on calls with mostly men who are

screaming at me sometimes, telling me that I'm wrong, tears in the bathroom, fighting, living long distance from my partner, going back and forth between New York and L.A. And so that is all charmed, actually. That's the charmed part. That is like a rarefied once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I treated it that way at the time, which is no one's going to offer me any of this ever again. You want me to come to Tampa to talk? Yes. Next flight out. You want me to come to Wichita? Absolutely. None of this could have been expected or anticipated.

And so I have to say yes to everything. But literally, it girl, I just feel like I should have been having more fun. Like I should have just been like drunk with my idols taking long lunches. And I seem to have missed that part of my success because now I have like 50 million children and it's never going to come back for me. And I think also, I mean, I think it's an interesting phrase because it's a loaded phrase in the first part. And because people just, they bury so many assumptions, like that Society loves to label people as the it person and whatever your gender is, whatever domain you go and do your thing in. And then there are assumptions that go along with that. That very often, yes, there are opportunities. people make up all sorts of stories about how somebody is living their lives and how they got

there or didn't get there and whether they're entitled to it or not, which I'm fascinated by when people sort of like throw a label like that around or make an assumption, whatever language you use, then how that affects you and how the stories that the world seems to want to impose on you interact with the life that you then want to live every day. I mean, I'm tearing up as you say that. That's a fraught experience to navigate. But I will say that your life only changes as much as you want it to change insofar as your home life, the people that you spend the bulk of your time with, the people that you call when you feel like you can't go on anymore, the books you read, the work that you're doing, the writing that you're doing.

For me, all of that stayed very, very much the same. And the assumptions, I want to say that they were hurtful when Sweet Bitter came out and that I got a thicker skin around it. But that's not totally true because I get hurt all the time. They really have nothing to do with me. There are stories that people need to believe and there are media machines that need to generate those stories. And one of them is about a waitress in New York who slipped her editor a manuscript and got a six-figure book deal. I just told you the tiniest bit about my life and what it took to get to that point, but nobody wants to hear it. You want to hear it because you are interested in people's stories. That's why you run a podcast, but nobody cares about that. And so

I think that I really, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of how to phrase this. When I was writing Stray, I didn't want it to be defensive. I never wanted it to be a book that said, well, look how hard I had it. And in a way, when I started it, what took it so long from taking shape is that I would say, but I'm okay now. Like the story, you know, my damage is not so bad that I can't function. You know, the violent abuse only lasted a few years of my childhood. You know, I've made it out alive. What right do I have to go back and start complaining about it? Ultimately, it comes back to a question of what the best book is going to be. And I had originally told Knopf that my second book of

a two-book deal was going to be a novel. And I clung to that for two years, pretending to be writing a novel. Classic. Great job if you can get it. I'm researching'm researching oh I have to go to Egypt for research oh I have to go to Greece for research um I never wrote a word I had just moved back to California I was obsessed with Los Angeles with the environment with the drought with the instability of this place, with the corruption of this place, with the beauty of this place. And I was haunted by my parents. And all of the writing I was doing kept circling that. And I know enough to honor those obsessions. And it took me years to tell Knopf that I was working on something personal, and that's exactly what I said.

Hey, guys, my second book is going to be something personal. Thanks. And they wrote back, like, a memoir? And I was like, no, no, no, no, not a memoir, like a book of personal writings that are true. But don't call it a memoir. Yeah, but don't call it a memoir. And I don't know unconsciously if any of that was fueled by the assumptions that had been made and the things that I had read about myself that were so hurtful and so wildly off base.

I have to think that I'm not truly above it. I like to think that I am. And I like to think that I take the advice that I give other writers, which is keep your fucking head down and do your work, which is leftover from restaurants. You don't need to be on the internet. You don't need to be Googling yourself. You just need to do your work. But I'm not sure that I'm as uncontaminated as all that. Maybe there was a part of me that wanted to, at least if people were going to judge me, have it based on real material. I think that part exists in all of us, right? Whether we want to acknowledge that it's a part of us, but it's even beyond that. I think, especially for somebody who raises their hand to write a series of essays that are about your life and then maybe call it memoir one day in that the best memoirs aren't the ones that tie it up in the

bow. They're not the ones that somehow figure out how to tell a story where you look good. They're the ones that say, I am in the full catastrophe, just like everybody else. And I'm going to tell not just how I was the victor or the hero or how I learned from all these things that I did or were done to me, but I'm just going to get real. And that's the best writing. And that's the way you write. That is the way that you approach writing. So it makes sense that, you know, even having this conversation and having you offer like, okay, so let me think about this. I don't really know. That's, it's interesting to hear you say that in conversation because that is the right, I don't know again. I don't know whether that is the right or wrong way to be or what the best, not as a writer, but as a human, what the most self-protective stance is to take. and I've met other memoir writers and I've asked them how you go through this experience of offering yourself out like this. And they're like, oh, a memoir is so constructed. And I was like, oh, right. I didn't do that. I didn't leave myself much artifice. And part of that, from a craft perspective, is that I just don't know that stories in which you're a victim are that interesting. There's very little conflict in

someone, from a storytelling perspective, who is constantly the victim and is not also the aggressor and is not also the perpetrator. It just seems like a very simplified tale to tell. So I approached it from that angle. also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be

fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So as you shared, you, Sweetbitter comes out a couple of years later, 2015, as you shared you sweet bitter comes out a couple years later 2015 as you end up back in california kind of absorbed in that world trying to figure out what to write and then it turns out that you're going to write about your life in particular your relationship with your mom um well with three people and the book is structured as three people, mother, father, monster, and really kind of exploring the impact that each of these relationships had with you. And 2005, in the context of your parents, was this kind of implosive,

explosive year. Your mom, who had, I guess, been a lifelong addict, ends up with a brain aneurysm. And that's the same year that your dad who had struggled with his own addiction. Well, share what your experience of that moment in time was about. So in 2005, I was studying abroad in Rome and my mother, who I was mostly estranged from because of the turbulence of my adolescence and her decision to send me to my father and essentially stop parenting me or telling me that she needed to stop being my mother. We had not spent time together since I had left California. And she goes down with a brain aneurysm that they almost didn't operate on. It was so severe. The fatality rates of brain aneurysms are quite high. And then those that live often live with severe brain damage. She was in a coma for a month. And then she made a recovery. At least it appeared that way in 2005. And we didn't have enough money for full-time care. And my grandfather asked me to move home and nurse her for the summer. And I had been living in New York City during the summers. Once I got to Kenyon,

I was very East Coast focused. Everything about my life went East. I had a boyfriend that was from New York City. All of my new friends were going to be moving there. And I worked there during the summers. So I came home and I nursed my mother and was faced with sort of the sadness, sort of. I was faced with the tragedy of her life and also of our relationship, which at that point I realized was irreparable, that we weren't really going to come back to each other in my adulthood and be friends or salvage what had happened between us. Her short-term memory is gone. She was partially paralyzed for many years, and while I nursed her, she couldn't walk at all. She is essentially, I mean, I write about her quite explicitly in the book, but it's essentially as if she had aged to a very, very elderly person. Conversations are circular, and she takes her a long time to assimilate new information. After that summer, I drove to Colorado to pick up my father to go back to my senior year of college,

and I found someone who was, I believed, had some sort of psychotic break. He was very ill. And again, in the book, I'm really explicit about it. We have this sort of nightmarish drive from Colorado to Ohio. And a month later, he overdoses. And it is discovered that he has had a severe crystal meth addiction for years, that he has lost his house and his job, and it begins a series of recoveries and relapses that lasts to this day. So 2005, tough year for Stephanie. Tough year for my sister, too. I look back on it, and I realize that it is the year I lost my parents, that I gave up hope of ever recovering them, and that I entered this state that I write about called grieving the living.

They're both alive, and I see my mom fairly often. I'm very involved with her care right now, which isn't always the case, but needs to be right now. And my dad lives in Washington, but they stopped being my parents in that year. And so, yeah, that is a big part of Stray. Yeah, I mean, it's really a reflection on how a year that really defined a lot of the how you would move forward in relationship with them. It's interesting also, and you go much deeper into it in the book, and there's a lot of the, how you would move forward in relationship with them. It's interesting also, and you go much deeper into it in the book, and there's a lot more context. There was, you wrote an essay,

I think it was 2016 in Vogue, which felt a little bit like a, you were testing ideas for the book. You wrote about your dad. There's a line that really just jumped out at me. So I'm going to read it. You wrote, when I look at him, I see a man in pain.

What he inherited, what he was born with, is what I call a black hole. It sits behind his heart and has been threatening to swallow him in darkness his entire life. I know because I'm his daughter. He passed it on to me. Yes, that was the beginning of Stray, though I was in denial for two more years. The writing of that essay felt like I was doing it blindly, like I was following some fever, like I was chasing some feeling of heat within myself. And I tried to pull it twice. I had a lot of fear and thought in many ways that it was going to ruin my career, that it was too much information about me before my book came out and it was going to ruin my privacy and embarrass me. And that was not the response that I got. And I think if I hadn't tested, as you said, with that essay, we definitely would not be talking about Stray at the moment. But what I learned from publishing that essay is that I did not have some prescriptive wisdom or like an inspirational

mantra to leave other adult children of addicts with, but that it seemed to be worthwhile to contribute to the conversation if I could stand it, if I was able to. And I still believe that that is true, despite feeling a little bit like a flayed cadaver these few weeks that I'm doing press. The other side of that is readers connecting with the book and this feeling that I'm in a community of people who have experienced similar things, whether they're parents or addicts or not, that this experience that I've had of what you just said, inheriting his damage and repeating it constantly without the crystal meth, that it's a really common human experience. Yeah. I mean, I think the power of writing about it,

especially in the way that you write about it also, it's not the bow or the moral at the end. It's the experience of somebody reading the last page and then saying, oh, I'm not alone. I mean, one can only hope. I don't even, I can't, yeah, one can only hope. And I appreciate that you say that about the ending. That also stopped me from writing a memoir. For a long time, I felt like there was no car crash or getting sober or getting cancer or beating cancer, there a better partner, I'm still there. And to end the book on anything different would have been very, very, very false to me.

Yeah. Which actually, there's something else that you wrote that really jumped out at me that actually feels like a good place to us to drop into. There's a piece you wrote in Literary Hub where you said, like most writers, I live in fear of disappearance. It's true. Maybe this stray is a testimony to this person that I was right before Sweet Bitter changed a lot, right before Sweet Bitter led to my first child. the tenuousness of it all and how close I feel to failure all the time. Because again, these easy narratives, these easy arcs are so deceptive. And I think that they make people feel that they're living their lives wrong or that they've been left out of something. And I'm not trying to sell that to anyone. Yeah. It's the happiness canon, which feels like a good place for us to come full circle also.

So in this container of the Good Life Project, if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Love. I'm sure that's what every single person says. But it's such a privilege. Thank you. in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do.

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Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.