A Conversation with Abigail Thomas

This month features my conversation with Abigail Thomas, whom Stephen King refers to as the "Emily Dickinson of memoirists." It was wonderful to have many of you there for this live event where she invited us into her home and her creative process, offering a rare and unvarnished peek into how she thinks about memoir; also reading from her latest book Still Life at 80: The Next Interesting Thing.

I am sharing an abridged version of the interview below, in written form, and have also posted the video replay for you to watch in case you missed it.

Be sure to check out the upcoming live author events.

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Abigail Thomas worked as both a book editor and book agent before writing her own first collection of short stories, Getting Over Tom. Her second and third books, An Actual Life and Herb’s Pajamas, were works of fiction.

Thomas’ memoir, A Three Dog Life, was named one of the best books of 2006 by The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, and received the 2006 Inspirational Memoir Award given by Books for A Better Life.

She is also author of the memoirs Safekeeping, Thinking About Memoir and What Comes Next and How to Like It.

In her new book, Still Life at 80, Thomas ruminates on aging during the confines of COVID-19 with her trademark mix of humor and wisdom, including valuable, contemplative writing tips along the way.

She lives in Woodstock, New York.

To learn more about Abigail Thomas, visit her site.

KARIN GUTMAN:  In all the things you’ve written, you seem to write little about your childhood. How do you think the way you were brought up shaped you?
 
ABIGAIL THOMAS:  My father [Lewis Thomas] wrote poetry in the 30s and 40s, which the Atlantic published, and I loved his poems. But he didn’t really start writing for the New England Journal of Medicine until the 70s. If he was excited about something, there would be a tremble and tremor in his voice as he talked about something I had no understanding of, and I thought to myself, That’s the way I want to live, I want to live on the verge, just where he is right now… you don’t know what’s going to happen but you know it’s going to be good. And that is what writing does for all of us, I think. You wake up in gear and you can’t wait to see where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re going, because you don’t know half the time where you’re going.
 
KARIN:  In the process of writing memoir, you talk about going into the basement and pulling out what’s down there and raising it up to the light. What do you mean by that?
 
ABIGAIL:  Well, it has all its power in the dark, and when you bring it up to the light, you see that it has edges and it’s finite. You look at it really closely—the parts of you you’d rather not know or talk about, but we all have them in all aspects of our lives. It’s so much easier to bring them up and write about them and achieve a kind of clarity that we’re all hungering for, whether we know it or not. It’s a way of putting it somewhere else. And it’s also having control over it. Nobody can sneak up behind you and say, “I know what you did…” I’ve already told you what I did.
 
KARIN:  What does it mean to put it somewhere else?
 
ABIGAIL:  You put it in writing, and it’s no longer in you. It isn’t buried in you somewhere. You’ve made something out of it. You’ve made something different and separate out of it. It’s helpful. You find it easier to forgive yourself for things you don’t even want to admit to. It doesn’t mean everything has to go into the book you’re writing, but it is important to take a look. Who are you kidding if you don’t. It is memoir.
 
I think when you’re writing memoir, if you wind up where you thought you were going to wind up, you probably haven’t looked hard enough. You have to make room for the surprises. It saves lives. It makes all the difference in the world.
 
KARIN:  How does writing memoir save lives?
 
ABIGAIL:  When Rich got hit [by a car]… that’s the only memoir I wrote chronologically as it was happening. I don’t know how I would have gotten through any of that if I weren’t writing it down—where I was, what I was doing, whether I was in the dog park or the lunch room where he was. That saved us both, I think. If you write it... it doesn’t really make sense... but it fits together somehow. I don’t know how else to say that. When you’re going through a real crisis, to keep track of it is better than just being lost, just losing yourself in it.
 
KARIN:  You've written about your aversion to the term narrative arc. How would you define what a story is?
 
ABIGAIL:  Well, I can tell you what I don’t like. I don’t like anything approaching perfection. I don’t like anything neat and tidy. I like a big mess. I like to write in the first person and the third person, and sometimes the second person. When I make things out of clay, I like things rough as though somebody just barely put this together, and I think that must have something to do with the way I write. I don’t know how to answer this except that I like a bit of a mess. I don’t like everything standing straight with its hair combed and its teeth brushed and its buttons all buttoned. The word curiosity is in my head. I want somebody to be curious to see what she’s going to do next, although I never really thought of that before. I want to be curious to see what I do next, and that produces whichever direction I’m going in.
 
Gosh, I wish I knew how to think about this.
 
KARIN:  Well, it’s asking you to analyze your own work, which I suppose takes away from the experience of it.
 
ABIGAIL:  It’s just hard, because my mind doesn’t work that way. I’m not good at analyzing. I think that’s because I didn’t go back to college. Oh well. I can’t do it.
 
KARIN:  You’re giving a good advertisement for not going to school.
 
ABIGAIL:  I don’t think you need school to be a writer. In fact, I think you need to forget everything you learned when you sit down to start—not know where you’re going or have some vague idea.
 
KARIN:  I know you spent some time in publishing. How did that influence you? It’s interesting that you didn’t arrive to the page yourself as a writer until your late 40s, and yet you were around it and it was accessible.
 
ABIGAIL:  It was extremely helpful. I remember getting a book—it was called French Dirt by Robert Goodman. It's still in print. The book wasn't very good, but the little thing in the very front, which was his discussion of what this book would be about, was really good. I learned that if you pay attention and make suggestions, you can get a really good book out of a writer who hasn’t yet written a really good book because you saw 12 sentences that were really good, when he was paying attention. I learned that a writer with spark, or some kind of talent, could get better.
 
I spent an awfully long time crumpling things up and tossing them across the room, saying, Who do you think you are? Because I thought you had to know something and that it had to be important and deep. But no, you just have to start.
 
Anyway, that's what I learned in publishing. I loved it until they made me an assistant editor, and then I realized I'd really have to know what I was talking about. If I loved a book, I would have to speak for whether it made any money or not. So I quit.
 
KARIN:  Do you think about your audience or are you writing purely for yourself?
 
ABIGAIL:  I am writing purely for myself. I'm writing for clarity and I'm writing for fun. And I'm writing to see what the hell the back of my mind is thinking when the front of my mind is doing nothing. It’s just so interesting… The smallest detail can take you someplace. You can write 15 or 20 or 500 pages of it, and then you get to the first sentence of what you're really going to write. So nothing is ever wasted.
 
KARIN:  What do you do when you’re stuck?
 
ABIGAIL: I had a lot of trouble with the beginning of What Comes Next and How to Like It. I’d gotten the whole book ready, but I couldn't find a way to start it. I tried it every which way until suddenly I began to write I can't write this… I can't do this… This is impossible. Then I wrote about what I was doing instead of writing, which was painting, and that segued right into the book. So sometimes, if you're having trouble, just stare at it and say, I hate writing this. I don't want to write this. This is too hard. These are the following 12 reasons why this is too hard. I'm just going to stomp my foot and eat chocolate cake forever… And then you might find that you've gotten yourself right into the book.
 
KARIN:  Do you find moving between creative mediums helpful?
 
ABIGAIL:  It's nice to have something else to do. And the clay is so sensual, which is what I'm doing now. The clay has a mind of its own. You can't boss it around. You can't boss writing around either. But you really can't force the clay and that's interesting and fun and makes for something else to put in whatever you're writing. I’ve done a whole little thing about clay.
 
I think we're supposed to make things with our thumbs and imaginations. Otherwise, it's just shopping, which can be very creative, but I think that's what a lot of this country has turned to use as a creative outlet. There are more interesting things to do.
 
KARIN:  You've watched memoir evolve over the years. What's your perspective on it? I know it's your preferred genre to write in.
 
ABIGAIL:  I love that it wasn't just a fad that disappeared. People kept saying, “This is going to be over within a year's time. Don't bother.” I love that we're curious about other peoples’ lives and that people are willing to write about them. It's been a while since I could read anything of any great length that wasn't written by a student. So, it's hard for me to talk about what memoir is like nowadays. I just love that it's still alive, that it's just as vital an artform as ever, more so probably.
 
KARIN:  What do you think that it says about the age we’re living in and us as a people?
 
ABIGAIL:  I just hope that we’re curious about each other and interested in each other and need help from each other. All of those things can be satisfied in a memoir. You can read about somebody who has experienced something that you've experienced. It helps, I think.
 
KARIN: Thank you, Abby. I think we'll all do a little bit of writing today.
 
ABIGAIL: Oh, please do! You can start with the line, “This is a lie I've told before.” Of course, maybe nobody lied. And you can send it to me when you're done.



Watch the full interview and video replay.

Buy the book

To learn more about Abigail Thomas, visit her site.

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A Conversation with Linda Sivertsen

This year's Nobel Prize in literature went to French writer and memoirist Annie Ernaux, raising the genre to the highest esteem among authors. She was lauded for “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.”

About her writing, she shared that she's not trying to remember but instead is “trying to be inside… To be there at that very instant, without spilling over into the before or after. To be in the pure immanence of a moment.”

I love discovering how different writers approach the creative process and make it their own. This month features author and book doula Linda Sivertsen, who has spent many years interviewing writers on the Beautiful Writers podcast. Her new book by the same name compiles the best advice from her conversations—from Liz Gilbert to Dani Shapiro to Steven Pressfield—while weaving her own journey as a writer through all of her struggles and eventual triumphs.

These days most writers are writing book proposals, whether it's for fiction or nonfiction, and Linda offers a longstanding 'how-to' course that guides you through the process with real-life examples. Scroll down to read our interview and more about Book Proposal Magic.

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Linda Sivertsen, “Book Mama,” is in LOVE with books—reading, writing, and selling them. Her titles have won awards and hit all the lists as an author, co-author, and former magazine editor and ghostwriter. But her driving force has been to publish sustainably. Naïve and optimistic enough to believe in magic, she’s on a mission to save forests via her role as a Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Ambassador.

Now, in Beautiful Writers: A Journey of Big Dreams and Messy Manuscripts—with Tricks of the Trade from Bestselling Authors, Linda shares—and expands on—the best of advice and storytelling from the podcast and follow-up interviews with literary greats, including: Elizabeth Gilbert, Dean Koontz, Terry McMillan, Cheryl Strayed, Steven Pressfield, Jenny Lawson, Deepak Chopra, and Martha Beck. The wisdom in these pages will nourish anyone who appreciates the art of storytelling and dreams of living a creative life.

When she’s not fostering literary love matches on her Beautiful Writers Podcast (a favorite stop for writers on tour), writing, or midwifing books at her Carmel or virtual writing retreats, Linda can be found on the back of a horse or running with her dogs. She and her husband live on their ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona.

KARIN GUTMAN: You have carved out a life for yourself, not only as a writer but also guiding so many writers and being an influencer in the literary world.

To what do you attribute your success?

LINDA SIVERTSEN: I think the number one thing I embody, and that I help other people embody, is the belief in their own magic. I had a rebellious spirit as a kid. I'm an odd duck because I'm a rule follower, but a lot of the rules are crazy-making and so I love to learn the rules and then see how I can bend them and go beyond them.

Growing up, I never felt smart. I didn't feel book smart.

KARIN: That's ironic, given that we're working with books here.

LINDA: Yeah. But I had a very strong connection to my intuitive inner world. Growing up I saw that the systems around me didn't always make sense. I didn't buy into or understand them, or even thrive in them. I just trusted my own magic. I think that's why people are identifying with the book, because throughout the storyline you see me limited and challenged and doors closing and all sorts of chaos around me. But I just persevere because I've got a mission. I've got a dream. I've got drive, and I'll learn the craft. I'll learn how to be confident. I'll learn how to get over the bullies that thought I was an airhead in high school. I can overcome all of that because that's dependent on me. And I just knew that my success was largely always going to be dependent on me and I could depend on myself.

KARIN: What was one of your earliest examples of this magic?

LINDA: I always wanted to be a writer. It was a secret dream in my heart, but because I was in the bottom third of my graduating class in high school, I didn't have faith in my ability to make it happen. And then I didn't finish college. I left USC three classes before graduation, so there was some real shame there.

But I had a dream, a literal dream that woke me up at three in the morning. The dream gave me six books—titles, format, covers, pages of text—and told me exactly what to do. The dream was so real that I never questioned it. Never. I was like, Okay, these books are being given to me. I'm a channel for these books. Obviously, this is connected to my heart's desire. I felt so lucky to be given this gift. Now that doesn't mean there wasn't mayhem amongst the magic the entire way, because mayhem is a big part of this storyline, but I think that the magical part was so big for me. It was so impactful that my confidence never wavered.

I think because I'm so aware of the things I overcame, I can then impart that certainty to other people. You may not be certain about your writing, but I'll be certain for you, and together we'll get it done.

KARIN: What happened with those six books?

LINDA: Beautiful Writers is a self-help book, an advice book for writers, but it's also partially a writing memoir. Throughout the story, we see that I pick the book that means the most to me, Lives Charmed. As I'm struggling to birth her, all these other books that I dreamed about keep getting birthed by other authors. So, it creates this urgency and panic. Never about confidence in my own abilities, but an urgency and panic about time, like, I have a dream but I'm hitting so many roadblocks. Will I be able to birth them?

I think it was spirit’s way of scaring the crap out of me, so that I wouldn't let go of the original book as I was facing obstacle after obstacle. Because you have to be dogged, you have to be perseverant.

KARIN: What was the tipping point for Lives Charmed?

LINDA: My agent said that the editors wanted bigger names. Eventually, Leeza Gibbons, Arnold Palmer, and Woody Harrelson all agreed to be included. That was the missing piece. Once I had that trifecta, it was a quick sale.

KARIN: Is landing a publishing deal with a top-five publisher still the goal from your point of view?

LINDA: It is for many, and sometimes myself, but not for Beautiful Writers. I had a follow-up meeting with a top five publisher when I was selling it, and I cancelled the meeting because I fell in love with BenBella in the interim. BenBella is not a top five publisher. They're not even in New York. They're in Dallas, Texas. But they had the vision that I had. I wanted my book to be printed on Forest Stewardship Council paper and to give a percentage of profits to forest restoration. They got excited about that. And the big publisher who has a really nice environmental record didn't seem the least bit excited. So I'm definitely not just a proponent of the big ones.

KARIN: I know you have relationships with a lot of agents and publishers. How do you navigate which of your clients to introduce?

LINDA: I have to be really careful. In the beginning, I would send people before they were ready. I would be talking to an agent and saying, Oh my gosh, you're just gonna love this gal, yada yada. I learned quickly that unless the writing is stunning in black and white, independent of who that person is, that we cannot go to agents or publishers no matter how much I love this person. No matter how close I am to the agent or the publisher. Because if they're not wowed by what they're seeing on the page, I lose credibility and then the next person I pitch gets less attention. I was very blessed that I wrote for so many of the publishers as a ghostwriter. That's where I developed the relationships and skill building.

I think we're all good at different things. You're probably far better than I am at story development. Everybody's got their thing. I'm pretty psychic with people's books, so I no longer want to do deep dive story development like I did when I was a ghostwriter because that's so intensive. I prefer to put that kind of intensity into my own work. But I can see the broad strokes, the big picture. I can take a whole bunch of disjointed things and put it together and outline it really quickly and easily and that's fun for me. But man, doing what you do is a real value and it saves people sanity, because when somebody doesn't know how to take their material and create an arc with it, and a compelling through-line and themes and all of that, doing what you do is a gift from God.

KARIN: Thank you. That’s a nice reflection.

You say that tenacity and perseverance are key. How much do you think that platform plays into the success of an author and salability of a book?

LINDA: I think that as the traditional publishing world continues to merge and get smaller, it's going to be harder and harder to publish traditionally, and platforms will become more important.

I still have clients that sell books with very little social media. One gal got a million-dollar advance last year from Simon & Schuster. She only has 1,200 social media followers. So that still happens.

KARIN: What genre?

LINDA: Self-help. It’s about outlining your dream life. Very mass market.

I had a gal who got a half-million dollars, again for a book without very much social media at all. That was a diet book, and she has a great diet business. She's an expert in her field. Not famous, but willing to go on podcasts and do social media and interviews, and with a really great angle to the topic.

I have several novelist clients who get $100,000 with no social media. They're writing book proposals that are so compelling. The chapter by chapter outlines are thorough, the format works. The marketing ideas are smart and savvy and concise and the authors are lovable. I'm thinking about three of them right now and they're mediagenic. They can walk and talk and look good. They're fearless. They'll put themselves on video and stick it on their social media for 1,000 people, but it's clear that they're going to be marketing forevermore. They're tenacious and the publisher is looking at those people saying, Let's give them a shot because their material is phenomenal and we're willing to bank on them. Odds are we won't lose money and maybe we'll make big.

KARIN: Is it standard for novelists to write proposals?

LINDA: Everyone I know who's a novelist does. When I interviewed Liz Gilbert and Marie Forleo last year for the podcast, I asked, Liz, “What is the last proposal you wrote?” She said the one for City of Girls. So even Liz Gilbert, who had already had a hit with Signature of All Things was writing a book proposal for her next novel. There's a thriller writer whom I just adore, her name is Tosca Lee, she releases about a book a year. They're all fiction, and she said she would never, ever sell a novel without a proposal.

The magic of a proposal is that you’re crafting the key points for your agent to hit with publishers. Later, your acquiring editor may use these same words when pitching you to bookstores and media, etc., because you’ve already done that crafting of sentences and angles and hooks for them. Why anybody would want to sell a book without doing that ahead of time is beyond me. Good luck trusting that a 24-year-old at some PR department is going to do it for you when they've got 30 other titles they're doing.

The beauty is, if you don't sell it, now you've got the blueprint for self-publishing. Go create the book yourself. And then you can promote it with all the angles and hooks and everything else that you put into the proposal.

KARIN: How do you guide the writers you work with?

LINDA: Every person is different. It's almost a vibrational thing. When I'm sitting with somebody I can often feel what their timeline looks and feels like. I frequently sense if it’s going to be a slow burn and they’ll need to take the time to develop other ways in which they can help themselves. One way is relationships in their genre, taking the time to comment on the writers that you love and getting on their radar and going to their book signings. If they're teaching a retreat, go to their retreat, get some connections. Maybe they'll give you a blurb. It's not unheard of to put in a proposal that you've studied with so and so or that you have hired a novelist to review your manuscript. There are all sorts of ways to do that slow relationship building.

I have one client who is so humble. She doesn't have a lot of ego. I felt like her path was going to be a slower one. I felt like she needed to have those connections, to buoy her competence and to help her build a community around her that would lift her up. So she's taken the time and it's been beautiful to watch. It's been a couple years and now her confidence is golden. She's got great connections. She's got a couple of blurbs and way more ‘look at me’ energy. I'm about ready to send her out to agents. I can't wait. I think she's going to be really successful. But it was a slow build.

Other people are on fire right away, and you can feel that. I'm thinking of one gal, she's writing about a tragedy in South America. It's a novel but the issue that she's writing about is really timely. I wouldn't recommend that she do a slow build. I would recommend that she get out there right now because her topic is in the news all the time and the quality of the writing is so good. We did send it out and she's gotten some phenomenal feedback and we're waiting to see if anybody picks it up. But if they don't pick it up, my advice would be for her to start getting in the media with the topic, because it's is also under-reported. If she were to help make the topic more famous, through writing about it, it would be a really good thing.

KARIN: What do you have to say about the genre of memoir specifically?

LINDA: There’s a lot of dismal talk about memoir. They say since the explosion of certain big memoirs, there's a glut in the market and it's harder to sell them. All of that is true. But I never want to limit anybody or the universe.

My book Beautiful Writers started out as a memoir. It was about my divorce called My Midlife Mess. When I went to sell it in 2016, my agent and I took meetings in New York. The meetings were really confusing because some of the editors loved the struggling writing stories and wanted more of those. And then some of the editors were like, Why do you have so many struggling writing stories, this is a divorce memoir. So there was a real disconnect. I had originally thought it was two books, but I didn't believe I was famous enough as an author to pull off writing them, so I combined them. Those editors were mirroring my own doubts. I have since been so grateful that those meetings didn't go well because when I put the book down for a while and walked away from it, I saw a whole new version that could be crafted from the podcast—snippets from these wise, beloved authors amidst my own struggling writing stories. There was the potential of making it a 'memoir with', a 'memoir plus', a 'memoir and'.

That's why my own experience has taught me not to limit anybody. Okay, so there's a lot of competition. But in my head, there's always a way.

Here's the key: Is the writer patient enough, tenacious enough, committed enough to take the time to find that specific way to tell the story? Not everybody is. I was not going to be on my deathbed carrying this book. No fucking way, because I've seen that over and over. I've seen the person who called me 10 years ago and said they couldn't wait to finish their memoir, who died recently still talking about it. To me that's tragic. So I was willing to carry this book around and work on this book for years and years and years until I figured it out. Not everybody has that determination, and that's okay.

Or you write the memoir and give it to your family. My family, including my ex-husband, found so much healing in my divorce memoir, which is a whole other story and incredibly miraculous because believe me, he wasn't written as a hero. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do with her, but perhaps she never needs to be published because she healed me and she helped my family.

KARIN: Each book has its own life force, right?

LINDA: No doubt.

In Linda's own words:

Book Proposals are a BIG deal and an even bigger document. (I’ve seen them come in anywhere between 20-120 pages with sample chapters. As an example, summarizing 30 chapters could take 15-30+ pages alone!) There’s a lot to include. But rest easy. We’re breakin’ it dowwwwn. Section by section. You’ll look back and say, “Whoa! I did all that?! That was easier than I thought!” Trust yourself. And, your muse.

Buy the book

To learn more about Linda Sivertsen, visit her site.

See all interviews

A Conversation with Zibby Owens

It's back to school season, and my 10-year-old daughter has been reading some of my old favorite Judy Blume titles. Remember Deenie and Are You There God, It's Me Margaret? She has also been enjoying the Owl Crate, which is a monthly book subscription. We've just started reading aloud The School for What Nots by Margaret Peterson Haddix, where all the characters get their own voices!

Equally exciting is the conversation I had with Zibby Owens, a book-loving, creative force. Zibby created the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books and is making major strides to transform the publishing landscape with her own publishing company, Zibby Books. She is working hard to create a new paradigm that is more author-centric. I find her inspiring in every way.

If Zibby doesn't already have enough plates spinning, she also just published her book Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Literature, which interlaces the books that have shaped her life with the events of her journey as they unfold.

In our interview below, Zibby shares about her mission as well as a lesson she learned at business school, which I believe is one key to her success.

In fact, Zibby will be visiting the Unlocking Your Story workshop this fall as a guest author. The 10-week sessions start next week! There is still space, so let me know asap if you want to jump in.

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ZIBBY OWENS is an author, podcaster, publisher, CEO, and mother of four. She is the founder of Zibby Owens Media, a privately-held media company designed to help busy people live their best lives by connecting to books and each other. The three divisions include Zibby Books, a publishing house for fiction and memoir, Zcast, a podcast network powered by Acast including Zibby’s award-winning podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, and Zibby Mag, a new content and community site including Zibby’s Virtual Book Club.

Bookends is Zibby’s intimate life story as told through the books she was reading at the time of pivotal moments, the effects they had on her, and what they taught her through each word on the page. An honest and moving story about relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, finding one’s true calling, and most of all, books. Bookends will inspire and uplift anyone who flips through its pages.

Zibby is a regular columnist for Good Morning America and a frequent guest on morning news shows recommending books.

KARIN GUTMAN: Let’s talk about your book! You spend so much time raising other authors up and I want to raise you up. How did you know it was time to tell your own story in the midst of everything else you're doing?
 
ZIBBY OWENS: Well, I've been trying to write this book for so long. So it's not as if I started this other stuff, and then decided to write a book. It actually was reversed in that I've been trying to write a book and then started some other stuff to help me do that, which ended up taking on a life of its own. Now that this book is coming out, it's like gravy on top of my life versus the main thing that I thought I was trying to achieve. Still very, very rewarding and exciting and it's been a goal that I've had for so long to get the story out, particularly after losing my best friend in 911, Stacey Sanders. I just kept writing about that, out of disbelief really. I'm sure many have gone through grief and an event that they just can't seem to process and metabolize because it's just so awful. 
 
I tried to get the story out right after business school in 2003/4. I put it aside. I stayed home with my kids for 11 years, but it kept nagging at me. It wasn't just her loss, but I had four other losses of people close to me in that year. And since then I've also lost several other people. My dad at one point was like, “Oh jeez, I can't get through this book, so much death.” 
 
But it's not all about that. That's just one tiny sliver of the story. It's also reinvention and finding my voice again and mothering and eating issues and everything that has led me here—and here is such a place of possibility and excitement, and yes reinvention, but also this very mission-driven life that I'm living now where I bolt out of bed (well not today, I overslept) but most days I bolt out of bed and immediately get to it. Whether I'm reading or writing or emailing or posting, if I'm not hanging out with my kids or my husband. 
 
There were many times I thought, Okay, it's just not going to happen for me. I'll just keep interviewing authors every day and put this rejection letter in a file. But it did, and I'm so grateful.
 
KARIN: Since cracking this book has been such a long process, was there something that clicked or opened up for you at a certain point?
 
ZIBBY: I think it was a confluence of several factors. When I first tried to sell the story, even though I started as a memoir, I rewrote it as fiction. That was problematic in that it was removed from what I had experienced, but I wasn't comfortable with sharing all that. It was also my first novel, and I firmly believe you have to write at least two novels to have a good third one come out.
 
But ultimately, it all came together when I decided to weave in books, which is my true love anyway. That was really what unlocked the power. Also, the timing was such that when I pitched it again as this book-laced thing, my own platform had grown enough so I wasn't completely unknown. Even still, I had one offer, and I took it. 
 
It's still hard for me to explain the book. I’m like, It’s my life!
 
KARIN: It is your life. I really enjoyed getting to know you and your journey.
 
ZIBBY: Thank you. Yeah, a lot of people are writing saying, “I listened to you falling asleep” or “I feel like I just had coffee with a girlfriend reading it.” It's not this big literary masterpiece. I'm just writing my voice on the page, like I would tell you right now. Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but I just write what I feel. I am not somebody who needs all the literary trappings of a sentence. I can do that but it's not as authentic as what I'm trying to do, for me.
 
KARIN:  You wrote that one of the lessons you learned in business school is “it’s good enough.” What does that mean to you in relationship to writing or anything else that you're doing?
 
ZIBBY:  I think about that a lot actually, so I'm glad you asked about it. In regards to Bookends, I was reading it again the other day, and I was like, Oh gosh, I would change so much. In fact, I kept rewriting the ending as time was going by between edit rounds. So, the ending was not what it was originally, because it hadn't happened yet in real life. It's just interesting that I was catching up right as I wrote it, and then I had the deadline. I need those external things. I'm an ‘obliger’ in Gretchen Rubin’s four tendencies. If that is the cutoff, that is the cutoff.  
 
It is much harder to regulate myself. I've really had to reprioritize a lot of things. I used to be the first person to turn in the medical forms. I used to set my alarm for five in the morning when the afterschool signup was up and I was enrolling. Now (I shouldn't even admit this) I missed the parent-teacher conference. So I had to reach out to the school and say, I missed it, could you help me out here? Of course, they did. I'm not saying that being a bad parent is what I'm recommending, but I’m letting some of the management things of life slip a little. I'm getting in the forms, but I have to be reminded a couple of times. I feel badly about that. But I have eight million emails and so I'm not doing some things as well. My kids’ birthday parties... I'm happy to call a place and have them run the show. The day before I’m still buying balloons and making it all special, but I'm not calligraphy-ing tote bags. I've had to make a lot of choices.
 
KARIN:  As a mom who runs her own business, I appreciate that!
 
The other thing that strikes me is that you give yourself permission—to write your story, to follow your instincts and pursue things you’re curious about. Where does that come from?
 
ZIBBY:  When I hear you say that, it makes me think of giving myself permission to share and be open. I don't know why I feel so comfortable. I was literally sitting next to the husband of a friend of mine at dinner the other night, and he was looking at me like I was nuts. He was like, I can't believe you share all this stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, I just do it. It comes really easily for me to write about my feelings. 
 
I started writing as soon as I could write. My grandparents published this mini book for me when I was nine, with two short stories I had written and I had my name on the spine and from then on, I was like, This is what I want to do. I want to be an author. But there's no great path to that. 
 
I kept writing, and one day I had gained some weight after my parents got divorced. I was noticing these very subtle shifts in the way people were treating me and I was upset about it. So I sat down at my desk one afternoon and wrote it all out. The way I write to myself is essay’ish. I don't know why, that's just how it comes out. And I printed it. My mother intercepted the printout and walked into my room flipping through it saying, “You have to get this published. This is going to help so many other girls.” She said I should send it to one of my favorite magazines, and helped me find the address to Seventeen. We sent it in together and they bought it. I feel like my life might have gone in a different direction had they not bought that piece and actually I'm still in touch with my editor Marie Evans, who became my editor at Real Simple.
 
KARIN:  That's amazing. 
 
ZIBBY:  Yeah, we have stayed in touch this whole time. She was really young. I was really young. And now we are not. But it was this picture of me holding a scale in disgust with the caption “Do 10 extra pounds make me a less worthy person?” I talked about the pain I felt in having gained weight.
 
But it wasn't just the writing of it, it was the fact that the magazine got so many letters and told me that I had helped so many people. That made me feel so good. So whenever I'm sharing, it's not to make myself into some public thing. That was never the intention of any of it. The goal of sharing is: a) it does emotionally help me, but b) I know that if I'm experiencing something, somebody else is experiencing it. You don't believe that necessarily until you have it proven time and time again. So even now, I'm thinking I should write about how I feel shame or I'm embarrassed or whatever. Other people are going through midlife and they're having some of these feelings and I should write about it, because as soon as I write about it, I get all this positive feedback. People saying, Oh my gosh, I had never thought about it. I hadn't articulated that. Thank you. And then I'm like, Oh phew, thank you. I'm not alone. So it's this very positive loop. So yeah, I give myself permission for that.
 
KARIN: I am curious about you as a mom. How do you do it all?
 
ZIBBY: The main thing is, I'm divorced and remarried and so every other weekend I have these long weekends without the kids. I could not do this if I had the kids full-time. No possible way. I catch up, I read, I write, I sleep. I have these days and I'm sad. I really, really miss them. I cry and it's still hard for me. It has been years and years. But from a professional standpoint it makes all the difference. 
 
Also, I have a wonderful nanny, but I'm home and I also do everything at home. So they're always in and out. In the afternoons I try not to schedule anything. I organize my work day around their pickups and drop offs, because those are really important to me. I tried for a while not to schedule anything after they got home, but now it's impossible. So maybe I'll have an event or maybe one call if I really need to. Also they're growing up. I have two 15-year-olds who don't need me all the time. And my nine-year-old and seven-year-old are like BFFs. They always know what I'm doing. I'll explain, “Remember this book I've been reading the last three days? I'm about to interview this author.” So they get it. I involve them in everything, so they're excited for me when good things happen. 
 
Sometimes I think I'm doing a better job with the younger kids because I'm not hovering as much as I did with my older kids. With my older kids, I was on the floor. I was home for 11 straight years, and I was in it every minute. That was my focus. With the little kids, we all have our focuses and we do it together, and I think that's a little bit more balanced.
 
KARIN:  I love that, it makes a lot of sense.
 
With the launch of your publishing company, Zibby Books, I'm wondering what your take is on publishing right now. How do you see what you're doing as similar or different than a traditional publisher? You’re forging new territory, which is very cool and exciting.
 
ZIBBY:  A lot of it comes from, Well, what if we did it this way? Like, why does it have to be that way? 
 
I wanted to build a company from the ground up, because so many of the authors I had interviewed had issues with the way the world is at traditional publishing houses. This is no fault of anybody who works at a traditional publishing house. It's just the way they were built. I wanted to make things more author-centric. 
 
I know what it’s like because I struggled for so long to get this book out. I’ve had experience at multiple publishing houses with my two anthologies and my children's book and then Bookends. I got to see how publishers handled authors—how things worked, what makes sense, what didn't. I thought, Well, maybe I can be the one to make some changes here. It took me a long time. I had one call with a distributor to discuss and thought, I am so not ready. I have actually partnered with Leigh Newman who had experience and showed me the way, and our consulting publisher Anne Messite was a huge help. We just had our huge sales presentation to the same distributor. At the end of this big presentation in this packed room with so many people on Zoom—me wearing a business suit—and I’m like, "I can't believe I'm standing here doing this presentation with our six spring titles and our covers. It was only two years ago that I had my first call with you when I had no idea what I was doing." And they said, “Well, it looks like you got your act together, because now it's out there.”
 
Every day I have new ideas. Everything I go through as an author informs what I'm going to do for my authors. So I just got back from book tour and thought, This makes no sense. I'm going to rethink book tours. How can I do things differently? So I'm just using all my experience to try to improve the experience of others and do things the way I want.
 
KARIN:  Can you share more specifics about what you're doing?
 
ZIBBY:  Some of the things:

• We are only doing 12 books a year because any more than that, I think we're competing with ourselves. 
   

• We are doing a year of reading. So if you were only to read our books in a year, it would be what you would need, in order. I don't like reading four really gut-wrenching memoirs in a row. I like to read a memoir, and then I like to read fiction, and then maybe this. It's like a book club. You could just read the books in the book club. I have Zibby’s Virtual Book Club and people read the books that I recommend, and they're like, “I wouldn't have read that, but you recommended it and I loved it.”
   

• There is no lead title. We're not pushing one book the way other publishers pick one book a month. Those poor other authors. Why? Everybody's in there writing and everybody should be heralded for their accomplishments. 
   

• We have profit sharing among the author's because I really want them all united, which they are. They're all on WhatsApp and talking all the time. That's taken off without me. We're having face-to-face regularly—all the authors, all the agents, all the people at the company.
   

• We have an Indie Bookseller Advisory Board and an Author Advisory Board. We have 750 readers who are Zibby Books ambassadors in 47 states around the country who are working with their indies. We’re even piloting a new program with bookshop.org to help local bookstores. We’re helping bookstores by doing programs like 22 in 22, where we encourage book readers to go to 22 bookstores in person in 2022.
   

• We have a couple of initiatives in the works for next year. We are partnering with brands. We're trying new distribution techniques. And we're creating community around books.

So that's our overarching mission.

KARIN:  That's a lot! 

Is this the direction publishing is moving or can all of this coexist? Between what you’re doing, the hybrids, and traditional publishing.

ZIBBY:  I don’t know. We’re going to wait and see how it all shakes out.

I am actively talking to lots of other players in the business towards accomplishing my mission. All of the things I'm doing are to reach a goal of helping discoverability for authors, helping readers find the right books, and connecting book lovers to each other. Other people are tackling that in different ways. And I'm all about, Let's get on the phone and how can we work together to do this? Because if there are more smart people tackling this problem in different ways, I want to use all of our brains to tackle it.

KARIN:  How would you define the problem?

ZIBBY:  The problem is, so many authors write books that don't get picked up, discovered, don't do well, because people aren't hearing about them. They aren't finding them. So they don't even have the opportunity to love them. I really think it's just so hard. Bookstores are like finding a needle in a haystack. It's just really hard to find a new book in that way. And yet, all the channels are crowded with noise and there are so many options for our time. So how do we get a book to stand out? How can we help authors feel valued? How do we frame success for an author? How do we have the books reach the right people and not make people feel like they're a cog in the wheel?

If we could figure it out, I'd be like, Okay great, I'm gonna go back to the beach. I just want to solve this problem.

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To learn more about Zibby Owens visit her site.

To learn more about her publishing company, visit Zibby Books.

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