The Writing Habits Behind 50 Million Books Sold (Jodi Picoult Interview)

Jodi Picoult's on the show today, who's published 30 novels and sold more than 50 million copies of her books. And for a while, she was writing a book a year. But what I admire so much about her is that she clearly has so much fun going about her craft. Like her research sent her ghost hunting, sent her up to Alaska to go visit Eskimos. And then also, she gets so invested in her stories that she literally hears her characters speaking to her.

So, how does she do it? How did she go about writing a book a year? Well, that's what this conversation's all about.

>> So, I want to start off with your three pieces of writing advice. So, read a bunch, write every day, and I think the most interesting one, which is where we'll end up, is don't stop in the middle of your book. >> Right. Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest caveat for beginning writers because everyone thinks like midstream, this is truly the worst piece of writing that has ever existed on planet, and they give up. And I think that's actually like a a psychological hurdle you have to overcome because if you don't finish something, you will never believe that you can. So, I I tell people write to the end of whatever it is that you're writing, and then you can decide whether you want to fix it or if you want to scrap it.

But until you get to the end, you're you're not going to ever feel that you're really a writer.

>> At what point do you commit to that? Like you've written one word and then you get there, or is it like a chapter that you get there? >> I think it's different for every writer, right? Cuz we all go about it differently. So, I like I get asked all the time, well, how do you know something's going to work as a book? And I do I would say at least 80 to 85% of my research up front. Um when I come up with the idea for a book, uh it's usually based on a what if, uh something I'm worrying about at the time, um with, you know, whether something I'm worried about as a woman, as an American, as um as a mother. And then that becomes like this little sandbox that I created, right? To me, the the whole point of of starting there is that I know I know where I want to go by the end of it, but my characters are the ones that are going to take me through it. So, I have to become an expert on everything that

they know. And that's the point where I stop. And I do a ton of research. And you know, that's a whole different conversation, but I do all this research, and then by the time I'm getting ready to write that first line, I've done so much research that I know if it's going to work. So, for me as a writer, I don't get to the middle of a book and go, all right, I'm not this isn't going to pan out the way I thought it was because I have an outline, I know who my characters are, and I know whether my research is going to slot and fit it. If I start doing the research and it doesn't actually jive with what I'm trying to do, then I know it's going to be a really hard thing. And I mean, like in the name of research, sometimes that gets really really challenging. I have probably one of the hardest things I ever had to do is find a Yup'ik Eskimo who was willing to invite me to his house. And so, >> [laughter]

>> Nice. What does that mean? >> So, it's a guy who lives like in the wilds of Alaska. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Okay, there we go. >> Yeah, and so I wanted to go there in like in the winter, and the only way to get to this place, Akiak, Alaska, and I had actually connected like to someone I knew in Alaska who was a professor who knew someone who knew someone who got me to this guy's house, right? And so, it's January. The only way to get to Akiak is to fly into Anchorage and then to take a dog sled plane. So, like you basically you go with with cargo dogs like in the cargo. And they're all tied to little loops, and you're just sitting there in a seat with all these puppies. And and then you land, and the the Yup'ik Eskimo village was another 60 mi upstream, and in the winter when the river freezes, it gets a highway number. So, you could either go by dog sled or you can go by snow machine. So, I went by snow

machine. And got to this village, and I had been told to bring gifts, so I brought a bag of oranges. >> Oh. >> And, you know, I gave them to this man, and he sent me home with like a whole package of dried salmon. And we did our interview. And it was, you know, he lived in a house, but it was very much like a reservation. Um and uh it was a very simple house that didn't have plumbing or electricity. So, like, they had what was called a honey bucket, which was their toilet. It nothing about the word honey or bucket would make you think anything good. And uh yeah, and basically I did this whole interview with him. And um I used that to create scenes in The Ted Circle.

>> And then when you're there, do you bring a notebook? You're like writing things down? >> All the things. Of course, in that case, I was actually wearing every piece of clothing that I owned. It was uh 40 43° below zero Fahrenheit. S I was wearing so many layers, and you know, I had these massive gloves that were made out of like reindeer skin or something. And um yes, too. So, I'm bringing I bring a notebook. Um nowadays I bring a phone, and I record on my phone, but back then I was probably recording on a >> So, don't they even work when it's that cold?

>> I mean, I kept it tucked into several layers. So, yeah, it was working. But um you know, I actually back then I think it was a tape recorder. But yeah, and that's basically I'll record, you know, with their permission, and then I transcribe what's recorded. So, what I'm usually doing in the notebook is writing down a word or a phrase that I'm like, I was this made me think of this. So, when I look at the transcript, I can literally just take that and plug it in and know this is going to go in this chapter, and this is going to go here, and this conversation's going to go here. I get asked all the time if I have research assistants. And I don't because I feel like I carry my office between my ears. So, how could I trust anyone to know what's going to be of use to me?

>> Right. >> Right? >> Wow. Wow.

Uh I love your energy. Um explain this to me. You write a book a year. >> Well, not anymore. Now I write a book every 2 years cuz I'm old. >> Okay. You So, explain this to me. You've been writing a book a year for a long time. >> Yes. >> You're a mom. >> Mhm. >> You do a bunch of research. >> Mhm. >> You also have 24 hours in a day, I think. >> Mhm. Yeah. >> So, like, how do you actually think about time and structuring all that?

>> So, I actually think having kids and being their primary caretaker and writing a a book a year really helped me sort of codify and format my days, right? So, um my first novel was published in 1992, right after my first son was born in 1991. And I was taking care of him. That was back in the time where there was nothing like paternity leave. So, like, it was just me in the house. He had colic. He was a really crabby baby. I mean, there were there was no free time, really. And I started learning how to write in 15-minute bursts. So, I would sit down and I would write until he started crying again or, you know, woke up or whatever. Then, as he got a little older, then he had sibling, then two siblings. I learned how to write at nursery school pickup. I used to take my laptop and I would like sit with it in front of me at a steering wheel and I would write. Um I would take it to swim practice, diving practice. Anytime there

was time in my day that wasn't given to the kids, I was writing. So, it wasn't like I had the luxury of a nanny or 8 hours a day until organized school. >> That was That was a game changer. >> Kindergarten changed my life. >> And you know, once the three of them were gone for 8 hours a day, well, piece of cake. All of a sudden, I had 8 hours in which I could do anything what I wanted to do. And that became my writing time. And interestingly, now my kids are all grown and have kids of their own, but um I still function the same way. So, I I tend to work Monday to Friday. I write uh the basically the hours of school day, um maybe a little bit later. And then, like, around 4:30 or 5:00, I go down my stairs for my office and I like make dinner and just turn into an ordinary person again. Um but, I usually don't write on weekends unless I'm at the end of a book and then it kind of feels like there's a monkey

on your back and you're trying to get it done. Um, but yeah, it I treat it like a work day, basically, a normal work day.

>> So far we've talked about the very active parts of writing, going to do research, going to the keyboard to write. What about the I don't want to call it passive, but we'll call it passive for lack of better word, the kind of daydreaming, the mind wandering, the letting the imagination go. >> So I I've always I don't know why. I've always thought of it in my head as percolating. That's always in the verb that I use. And when I'm thinking about a book before I start writing one, like I said, it always starts with a what if.

What would I do in that situation? What if this parameter changed? Um, you know, so uh, like Hollow Bones in the new book, there is this the origin story. There it is. Isn't she pretty? The origin story for this book actually came from a friend of mine who's a writer who texted me one night and she texted me this postcard from Post Secret. Do you remember Post Secret? >> I've no idea what that is. >> Well, let me tell you, Darrick.

>> I don't know what that is. >> So it was a Tumblr blog and then it became like an Instagram handle and people send in like their deepest darkest secrets on a little postcard, which could be anything from like, you know, every Friday I take off all my clothes and walk around naked all weekend to my husband doesn't know that our child is not his, whatever. And people send these in and they're published anonymously through this Instagram handle. And so my friend sent me a a post from 2012 that was a picture of the Twin Towers with smoke coming out of them and at the top in handwriting it said, "Everyone who knew me before 9/11 thinks that I'm dead."

>> Yeah. >> And I was like, "What?" I mean, I remember I was in bed, it was like 9:30 and I just my head just went So I did what writers do. I called dibs. And then I started thinking about that and I couldn't stop thinking about it. And that's the percolating stage, right? And I I was thinking, you know, what would make someone do that? Um, what what would the the be that would make you take a tragedy of that magnitude and nature and use it to disappear.

And that was like I said, that was the sandbox that I started Hollow Bones in. >> Yeah, I remember when Amor Towles came on the show. He described that what if stage is like you find this door and you look at the door, you're like, okay, I know there's something there and then you walk through the door and you just see the first frame of the house. >> Yeah. >> And all of a sudden you just know that you're somewhere wondrous. And then he was like, I could just imagine all the rooms in there. You just need the door.

>> Right. Right. >> you're good. >> Yeah. I mean, the other thing for me is that often I will walk through that door and I see the potential, but I also think again, how am I going to learn about this? Right? Um you know, so in the case of Hollow Bones, there's this um it's centered on a character named Molly who at 2 months old her mom uh goes to a doctor's appointment on 9/11 never comes home. And we catch up with Molly now, 25 years later and she's become the head of emergency preparedness and response for the state of Rhode Island. Because she's basically spending her life mitigating tragedy so that people don't grow up feeling the way that she did. Because many of the people I spoke with who did lose a parent on 9/11, in some way their life was fundamentally shaped around that hollow loss, right? And so that to me seemed to be right for her.

Um so then, you know, I'm sitting there going, okay, great. So she's the head of emergency preparedness. How am I going to learn about this? You know, and then I have to again network my way into that kind of of research. Um there is also an element in this book uh about postpartum psychosis. Molly is pregnant. She is um expecting her first child. She's worried about being a mother and that was again another another research hole to dive into that I really I I actually I probably would still be sitting there struggling if something hadn't fallen literally into my lap just by chance. But um I get a lot of mail from readers and I got a letter one day from a woman who said, um, she said, "I've read all of your books. You're often a voice for the voiceless.

I'm hoping you'll tell my story so that what happened to me doesn't happen to another woman." And she was writing me from jail, where she was awaiting trial after killing her 3-year-old daughter uh after having a newborn son and developing postpartum psychosis. Literally, as I'm thinking about it, I get this letter from her. And I wound up spending a year doing research with her. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> Wow.

Can you take me back to the idea of what if and that early stage you have the initial premise and how that leads to plot, how that leads to character, and how that leads to the other core parts of one of your books? >> With Hollow Bones, right? I I start with that postcard. And the first character that comes to me is Molly, someone whose entire life has been shaped by the loss of her mom. And I start thinking about who she is now, who she's married to, what she's doing, um, and I start thinking about, well, what happens if the person who whose job is to literally protect an entire state, right, to prepare uh for the worst that can happen.

What if something bad happens to her close to home and all the preparation in the world can't protect you? So, you know, for me the what if starts usually with, um, an issue, a situation, blossoms into a character or two, and then the characters start to take it away from me. And that's usually when I stop and do the research. >> Describe that feeling of the character start to take it. >> This is the hardest thing for me to describe, and it's weird, and >> Wait, cuz this woo-woo and this woo-woo, okay.

>> Yes, cuz I I really feel like, um, I don't create characters. I feel like they just start talking to me. For a very long time, I've called writing successful schizophrenia because I get paid to hear voices, right? And that's what it's like. I can hear them very clearly in my head. And, you know, I There have been times where I've been writing books where I was writing Harvest of the Heart, which is my second novel, and I remember waking up in the middle of the night, and this character was basically in my head yelling, "I don't like what you're writing for me."

And I got up, and I wrote like five pages longhand, and I stuck it in a bookshelf, cuz I knew it was going to come later in the book. And then when I got to that point, I pulled it out and used it. Um so, yeah, I I hear their voices, and they're the ones who are leading me and directing me then through the story at that point. But I do not I wish I could tell you how to create a character. I don't feel like I do it. I just feel like they sort of are there and speaking to me, but they kind of erupt fully formed out of my forehead like, you know, Zeus and Athena.

>> Wow. And how much of it is hearing versus seeing? >> So, when it's a character, I hear them. But when I'm writing a book, um I actually feel, again, I don't feel particularly creative, I don't feel crafty, I don't feel like I'm picking meticulous words. I feel like I am watching a movie, and none of you can see or hear it. And so, it's my job to tell you what I'm seeing or hearing. In that sense, like that again, very woo-woo, very much like a medium, you know, I feel like I'm watching something that's that's being unfurled before my eyes.

Really weirdly, when I wrote with my daughter, I wrote um a pair of YA books, a duology with her, and she's now a writer on her own right, writing middle grade. And once we were We were in England, we were doing an interview like this, and they wanted to separate us, cuz they didn't want our answers to impact each other, and I finished first, and I I went in to go listen to her interview like, you know, just eavesdrop, and they were asking her what it's like to write, and she started describing it like she was watching a movie. I'd never talked about that with her. Like I've never said that's what it's like for me, and I was like, "Okay, this is weird. Maybe it's genetic."

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[music] >> Do you um feel like there's a divine part of this, or do you feel like it's more like genetic, internal, something that you have a unique capacity?

>> I don't think it's divine. I do believe though that people are born storytellers or not. And you know, you may be born a storyteller and never write a thing in your life. You might be the person who sits at the airport and watches strangers go by and makes up backstories in your head for them. That's you if you're a storyteller, right? Um you might be the person people gravitate towards at a party because you're the one who can tell stories um and engage. Uh and again, you may never be a but I do believe that you're either born with that skill or habit. Um you know, and that's the one thing I don't think you can teach. I do believe you can teach someone to be a better technical writer.

>> What does that mean? >> Well, so when I wrote uh my first book was called Songs of the Humpback Whale. It was a very big book. I had so many brain cells back then, but it was like it was thousand pages. I had to cut it down for publication. It had five different narrative voices. Uh one that went forward, one that went backward. They intersected in the middle of the book, in the middle of America, and then there was three sort of parallel voices. And it was all mimicking um whale songs, which is what uh sort of part of the book was about.

Um and the idea that male whales sing to females to try to convince them to mate. And in doing so, they um they have the capacity to create songs, to change up bits of songs, to pass songs down, uh which is something that they used to only think was a human trait. And so, when I when I first wrote that book, I mean, I was very proud of it. I was thrilled it got published, right? And a few years into my career, I was at Simon & Schuster. I'd been through several publishers at that point. And they said to me, "We're going to buy your backlist, and we're going to start publishing your backlist." And they said, "If you would like to make any changes, please feel free to." And I was like, "Ooh, do I do that? So that the four people who bought it in hardcover, you know, have a different experience than the rest of the people?" And I went and reread it, and I was like, I totally stood by the story. I stood by the

voices. I stood by the characters. I didn't want to change anything. But, some of the description, where it would have taken me a page and a half to describe something, I can do it in five words now. Right? So, I mean, I've just gotten to be a cleaner writer and a more efficient writer. >> What do you think you learned in order to do that? >> Uh well, I definitely learned um I know exactly where I learned how to write. It was at Princeton. I was very fortunate.

I went to a school in the '80s that had an undergraduate creative writing program. I worked with primarily with uh Mary Morris, who is an extraordinary writer. And she absolutely taught me everything that I know, 100%. I would not be here if not for her. >> What did she teach you? >> Let me preface this by saying I was the student you hated in high school. Everything came very easily to me. I was a straight-A student, did really well on my SATs, blah blah blah. So, I write the short story and I'm like, you know, very excited to have it workshopped. And I walk into the class and she says, "Um I want you to sit on the floor in the middle of the circle of chairs." And she hands me scissors, a glue stick, and construction paper. And she says, "You can't say anything. You just do what people tell you to do."

And she then said, "Okay, so where does Jody's story really start?" And some brave soul went, "Uh page three." And she went, "That's right." Threw the first two pages over her shoulder. And she spent the next hour and a half basically getting people to cut and paste my story for me. And that's what I was doing, you know, all this paper. Well, I left there like red-faced, humiliated, so upset. And I got all my courage together and I went to her office hours the next day. And I said, "Why did you do that to me?" And she said, "Because you needed it and because you can take it."

And I was like, "A little tough love there, right?" And I was so angry and I was just so driven that I edited that story and edited and edited it. And finally she said to me, "You need to send this somewhere." And I was like, "What are you talking about? I mean, I'm writing this for a class, right?" And she said, "Go send it to Seventeen magazine." And so I I was a poor college student. I went to Palmer Square to the the kiosk where they sold magazines. I didn't even buy Seventeen. I just opened it and copied down the address. And I sent my my short story to Seventeen. And a few months later, um there was an a message on the answering machine in my uh my dorm room. We had answering machines back then and phones. And uh and it was somebody who said, you know, I'm calling from 17 Magazine. I'm an editor. We would like to to pay you for your story.

And I mean, I would have paid them, right? I was thrilled. And I thought first I actually thought that everyone was pranking me. So I called all my friends first and then, you know, when I called back, um yeah, they wanted to publish my story and they wound up buying a second one. And so before I graduated from Princeton, I had two short stories published. But again, it was I think it was a combination of Mary's tough love and my utter competitiveness to succeed, you know, that kind of It was the perfect storm, but it made me realize that you have to be willing to dismantle your own writing if you're going to be a writer. And the reality is that as at the position I'm at right now in my career, you know, I do have a following and I do have readers who I know I'm so fortunate to have this kind of reader who's like, oh, Jodi has a new book coming out, pre-order. I don't even care what it's

about, right? I mean, it took a long while to get there, but >> number 30? >> This is number 30. This is my 30th book. You know, so that's like that's a huge gift as a writer to have readers like that. But um you know, it's I don't know. It's just to me that is It's just something that you don't expect when you are when you're starting out. And and when you get to that position, when you get to that that 30th novel, there is there are tendencies to let writers like that slide. There are a lot of writers who I believe make it to the top of the New York Times list who are rewriting the same book, >> Total.

>> who are just resting on their laurels. I don't ever want to be that writer and I challenge any reader who thinks that that's who I've turned into to make sure they tell me cuz I will stop writing that day. And to me, part of the writing process means being your best editor. Now, I'm not saying that happens because I actually have the world's best editor, Jennifer Hershey is amazing and I've worked with her for many years now. And sometimes I actually think she cares more about my books than I do. She's so devoted and fierce. And she does make every book better, right? Cuz she's that outside set of eyes that I really value and um and want to be nourished by. But uh there are a lot of writers who get to a certain point in their careers and some publishers are like, "Yeah, well, it's going to sell, so we don't have to do much." But I don't want that. I I want to make sure that that the book is

in the best shape it can be when it gets out there, but I also want to make sure I'm writing the best book for you at that moment possible. And that usually involves for me some kind of writing challenge. And sometimes it's the topic. Sometimes it's the research, like Alaska. Sometimes it is the structure. Very often it's the structure of a book. Something that makes me have to really be on my game when I'm writing it.

>> What's some examples of that? >> Um so, an example of that would be uh A Spark of Light. That was a book about abortion rights in America that was written before Dobbs and in which I basically was saying, "We're going to get to Dobbs." And everyone told me on that book tour, "Oh, you're overreacting." Well, I did not overreact. But that book is told in reverse. It's about a shooting that happens at an abortion clinic. And the entire story goes backwards. And that is really hard to pull off because your biggest reveal, your surprise, then has to be the earliest chronological moment.

>> Right. >> Also, I was writing it with eight narrative voices. So, that was a nightmare to have eight voices going backward in time. Um I again, I must have been more brain cells back then. I don't know. It's like they're getting older, they're chopping off, but it was a real challenge. It was really difficult structurally. >> I want to get back to what you were saying about the tough editing relationship with your editor.

At Steve Jobs' memorial service, Jony Ive, who was his design director, gets up and talks about what Steve Jobs really understood about ideas. And he said that early on what Steve understood is that ideas are really fragile. They're like a bird and they have to be nurtured. And like with a really young baby bird, if you hit it too hard, it just won't be able to survive. There's a part of the creative process where you do need to be tough, where you do need to be critical, and then there's a part of the creative process where you need to be more gentle and nurturing.

Do you agree? And how does that work for you? >> Again, I think it's different for every writer. I am not the kind of writer who needs an editor holding her hand when she's writing. And part of that is cuz I write quickly. I mean I I still remember being very, very young and going on my first book tour and like, you know, nobody wants to hear from a debut novelist who's 25. And um and sold, you know, four hard cover copies. But I remember being paired with other writers at bookstores and like we could all get up and talk about our books and, you know, and there's this one woman who's like, "This paragraph took me 10 years to craft." And then I get up and I'm like, "Yeah, so I wrote this book in 9 months." You know, so >> took me 10 minutes.

>> Exactly. So like I write quickly and I hope my writing is is beautiful and lyrical and all the right things. Um and but I just think, you know, there's some people who are paced differently. It's just different writers write different ways. So I have never had the I would call it a luxury of having an editor say, "Let me help you develop this. Let me help you, you know, craft this from the get-go." What I actually do is turn in a finished manuscript. And I'm like, "Hi, here you go." And then she reads it and, you know, usually calls me and says this is absolutely extraordinary. And I get really excited and then I get the editorial letter and I'm like, "But you said it was extraordinary. What's all this stuff?"

>> What's an editorial letter? >> An editorial letter is when your editor writes you and says, usually lovely things in the first paragraph, and then spends like 15 pages telling you everything that's wrong. And basically, um you know, they editors don't edit. That's what TV and film always get wrong. They don't they don't make corrections for you. They just say, "This isn't working for me and here's why." And then they leave it to you to figure out. And there are definitely times where I'll look at something and I'll be like No, Jen, you're wrong.

You know, and when I can defend something then she'll listen and and she'll say, "Okay, I totally understand that." I mean, I always have the final word cuz it's it's my intellectual property. But when Jen is so smart and she's so good at her job that when she says something I always say to myself, "All right, wait a second. I really need to be objective about this. I need to step back and I need to see why she's seeing it that way."

You know, and sometimes it takes longer to wrap my head around than others and some changes are harder than others. Um there are times that I stuck to my guns and I still believe they were the right decision. And I think Jen would agree with that, too. Uh but if I can't defend something to my editor it shouldn't be in there. Right? You know, so that's another good example, I think, of not resting on your laurels. I mean, I could literally say, "Don't change a word, you know, copy print right there." But I don't want to do that.

>> As you think about building your skills as a writer, how much came from reading other works? So, give you two examples that I've picked up on. Early on, teenager finding Gone with the Wind, memorizing things. And then later on reading Gatsby and thinking through an unreliable narrator. >> Yeah. >> And how that works. >> So, I one of the things I always say to beginning writers is you need to read read read read read. And it's not just so that you sort of have this this core of literature in the back of your mind when you're writing, but I think you need to figure out how your stories are going to fit into a literary canon, too.

Um so, that's why that's that's important. Especially for beginning writers, it's fun to be able to play with voice and to see if you can write like somebody else. I mean, you know, um AO3 basically is is a whole network of that, right? You know, and fan fiction. Um but I don't I don't advocate for writing in someone else's voice. I think you have to find your own. I think that reading broadens your horizons. It lets you see how big a story can be and how stories can be told. Like sometimes I see someone write a book and I'm like damn, I wish I'd done that.

>> Oh. >> You know, like there are a couple of books in my career where I'm like, that should have been me. And um Life of Pi is one of them, for example. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is another one. And those are two books that are really about how you tell a story and about how you leave a legacy. So, I find it interesting that that's what my brain snags on, too. Um but those two books, like those are the ones I'm like, I can't believe they got to them first.

I should have done that. You know, and uh and I love that. I love feeling that um that jealousy when I read an amazing book, actually. I do read all the time. I read very widely and very different stuff. When I'm actively writing, I will also actively avoid books in kind of the genre that I write in or by writers who sound a little like me, just cuz I don't want to um parrot them, you know, without meaning to. Um so, you know, I might read Romancing when I'm writing physically because it's very different from the kind of story that I'm trying to tell.

>> Can you dive into exactly what it is that you took from Gone with the Wind and Gatsby? >> Yeah, so Gone with the Wind, I I get I I very distinctly remember this moment. I was reading the scene where um Margaret Mitchell is describing uh what Atlanta, you know, looked like basically after it burned. And it felt like she created a whole world out of words. And it was really the first time as a reader that I stopped and thought, well, I could do that.

>> Oh, wow. >> I mean, I'm I was 13 and I I remember stopping and thinking that. But I'd never I mean, I I met a writer. I didn't know anyone who did this for a living. So, why would I ever think of being a writer? And that was really the first time that I even entertained the thought. And Gone with the Wind is a really great example to me of a book that um interests me because as I go back to it as I age, as I become a different person, I have very different reactions toward it. When I was a kid, it was all about that. It was about her language and it was about the creation of this this doomed love story between Scarlett and Rhett and the interaction between the characters that so fascinated me. I completely missed everything about race and privilege in that book because that's not where my head was at the time. And it wasn't really until I was much older and I was doing research on my own for a book about racism and white

privilege, um Small Great Things, that I went and revisited that and I was like, "Ooh. Ooh, there is some real flaws in this book." But it took me a while to get there. Um I mean, a really great book is one that you can come back to as a different person several years later and read in a completely different way. >> Shoot. >> Um Gatsby, you know, with with Nick Carraway being an unreliable narrator, uh I love writing unreliable narrators.

I think it's really fun. Cuz it's like, you know, you know things that the audience doesn't know and to me that's a really fun sort of screen to put up as a writer. Um to catch them in in the act. So, I remember writing Keeping Faith. That's one of the ones where um the mother uh functions like an unreliable narrator and you don't know whether she is actually harming her own child with Munchausen's by proxy or if this little 7-year-old girl is actually exhibiting the signs of stigmata.

And I really like that. I like playing with that. It's, you know, to me it's like it's a layer of deception that I get to to jump into. I do think when I when I'm writing, especially different narrative voices, I mean, I know I said that they land on me and I hear them, but especially when I have multiple first-person narratives in a book. It's really important to me that they all sound very different. And I always imagine it like putting on somebody's wellies and stepping into a stream.

Weird, I know. >> What are wellies? >> Oh, Wellington boots, you know, you you know the boots. I boots, right? So, um the stream is the narrative, right? And so the story's moving forward, but how you feel when you step into those boots and where they pinch and where they rub your calves, that is going to be different for every pair of boots. And so, that's what I think about when I'm jumping into a book with multiple first-person narrators because, you know, you you have this moment where you're talking in one person's voice and then you catch the stream again a little further down it in somebody else's voice and then you keep going.

>> Yeah, it always bothers me when I'm reading a book and I can't quite discern the voices. So, then >> Yeah. >> I'm going to put out a mantra and I want you to tell me if you agree with it or disagree with it. You should be able to read a sentence from any character and instantly know who it is. >> Yes. You should. I do believe that. >> End of story. >> Yeah, and I mean, I I work really hard at that, right? So, there are some characters that I think are um the pattern of their language might be more florid than others. Uh some are subject-verb-object, you know, and I I think very hard about that when I'm writing in that character's voice.

So, yeah, you should be able to you should be able to tell from my books. When I was back in college, um my junior thesis was on Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen. Okay. And if you know her work, she is known for her gothic fairy tales. When you read them, they are so densely packed and full of adjectives and description and like it it reads it's a gothic fairy tale. It sounds like that. And if you read Out of Africa and Shadows of the Grass, which are the two companion pieces of her biography.

It's like someone else wrote them. Um mostly what you notice is that the more emotional a moment was, the sparer the language gets. Almost Hemingway-esque. You know, again, subject-verb-object. And in the moments where she talks about Dennis Finch Hatton, who was her lover, it's almost brutally abrupt. As if words couldn't carry the emotions that she had for him, right? So, it's that it's that trope of ellipsis, right? What is it that that we use words as writers, but there are times that emotion is so intense that we don't have the words for it.

And so, the way to read her work is the things that matter the most to her in the book are the things you hear the least about. Right? And to me, that was so fascinating. And I wrote about that over a whole junior year paper on it, and it's also something I think about when I write. I think about that very very much. Um where are the places where language breaks down? Where are the places where you can't describe emotion, and you you don't have the words to use to to carry forward the plot or the emotion. Um and you'll often find examples of that in my books.

>> Are there certain kinds of scenes that you struggle to write because of this? Like, you just feel it I I just I don't have the words to explain that. >> I mean, it's usually the the really emotional scenes are really really hard. I remember there was this scene in Perfect Match. Um Perfect Match is about this uh prosecutor who finds out that her son has been sexually abused, and she thinks it's her local neighborhood priest. And so, she goes and she shoots the priest in cold blood, dead, and then finds out she shot the wrong priest.

>> Ooh. >> And so, she winds up going to jail at one point in this book, and she has to say goodbye to her son. And I remember it was five pages, that scene, and it took like 3 days to write it. Because I was crying so hard when I was writing it. And I wanted to nail it. I wanted to get it right. Now, if I'm writing a court scene for one of my books where I have someone on the stand and I'm doing a direct examination or cross-examination, I can write 50 pages, no problem, you know, in a day.

Because that to me is um it's very regimented. I know what I'm going to say. It's not It doesn't have the emotional stakes. So, that some of the the uh the more I would say anchoring scenes do in books. So, for me, the emotional ones, I spend a lot of time on and they usually take more time. For exactly that reason. Because words you you're choosing words and you want to choose the right ones. And sometimes it is really hard to put everything into language. Yeah, sometimes we just don't have language.

>> How do you write good dialogue? >> You know, I I hear it. I hear I told you I don't feel like I'm writing it. I feel like I just hear it. And um and I will say, if that is not something that comes easily to you, read it out loud. In fact, I actually think especially a lot of independently published authors really need to read their work out loud because when you I listen to audio versions when I'm swimming. And you can hear all the flaws in your language when it's read out loud by someone. You can hear where you repeated a word, you know, in the same sentence, for example. So, even just a good editing tool is just to read your work out loud and see what you catch.

>> 100%. >> Yeah, and it helps you with pacing, too. Yeah, totally. Um but dialogue is like I I I've always liked writing dialogue and I don't I mean, I do hear it between the characters. Um it's funny because I now write I now write for theater as well. Which is writing dialogue is a great skill to have. >> Like plays? >> Yeah, I write musicals. I'm a librettist for musicals. >> I didn't know that. Did I tell you? How is that writing different?

>> It's so different. It's totally different because it is collaborative. So, I have a collaborator who I work with, and then I have songwriters, and the four of us are like a brain. And then you have to take uh input from your director, and then you have to take input from your producers. So, to me, writing a novel is like taxidermy. You are creating a three-dimensional thing. When you write a a libretto, you are writing um you're you're a paleontologist, and you're creating the structure, the skeletal structure that a director is going to layer on, and actors are going to layer on, and costumers, and lighters. And so, you're you're just giving them the framework, really, to build in. You're not supposed to create the three-dimensional scene.

Um and, you know, to speak about ellipsis, when people break into song in a musical, it's because words have failed. So, it's a really fun thing to do. I mean, I I started doing it like 10 years ago, and in many ways it reinvigorated my love of writing.

>> What is it that you love so much about writing? >> I love that I can go anywhere I want to go. Again, this is the freedom I have with this incredible group of readers who follow me around, but I write the things that really upset me or worry me. I you know, I I'd like to say I think about my fans when I'm writing, but I really don't. I really am thinking about an issue that is so gnarly to me that I want to thrash it out. I want to pick at it with a stick, you know.

I want to try to unravel it. And that I know is what is going to make a good book, because I'm answering a question for myself. >> What is it that you found that fiction has given you that you kind of weren't really able to access in non-fiction? >> Well, fiction has superpower. So, and I I will This is the hill I die on, right? So, I believe that um people don't go and pick up nonfiction about especially about controversial topics, right? So for example, nobody checks the FBI report on school shooters out of a library. But lots of people have read 19 minutes, which is about a school shooting in America and about how a community can fail a child to the point where they become a shooter.

And um they're coming to this book thinking it's fiction. These are make-believe characters. I'm going to be entertained. And if I do my job right, yes, I have taken you on a ride. But you close that last page and you've learned something and you're still thinking about it. And if I've really done my job right and I'm talking about something that's particularly controversial, whether that's uh racism or abortion rights or um and you know, uh the nature of good and evil or um it any of the other questions that we thrash around in politics mostly, um then you're asking yourself why you have the opinions you have. Cuz I really believe most of us form opinions when we're very young because our parents have them. Our pastor has them. Our friends have them, right? And then we just kind of coast and we don't really ever ask ourselves, why do I believe that? And we don't listen to the other side.

>> Right. >> And my job as the novelist is to make sure you hear the other side. I'm not going to tell you what to think, but I am going to ask you to listen to it and then sit with yourself for a little bit and say, "Well, why why do I believe what I believe?" You may not change your mind, but at least you will have heard someone else's point of view and maybe you'll understand why you believe what you believe.

>> As you've gone about your writing, do you feel like there's a trade-off between writing for awards and like critical acclaim and then writing for as many sales as possible? >> So I firmly believe that there is really bad literary fiction and really good commercial fiction. Those labels are marketing labels. And I very distinctly remember being a baby author, and um you know, being at a point in my career I was published first by Faber and Faber. My second novel was published by Viking. So, kind of highbrow. And then my third novel was published by Putnam.

And we had this decision when we were selling it about where where we wanted it to go. And we decided we wanted it to go to a big commercial house. Because I was going to write the same book no matter what. And I was going to do my best and write my best. And if I could reach more readers that way, well, great. I was I was thrilled to do that. I get really upset when people dismiss commercial fiction or say it's airport fiction or won't stick with you. I don't believe that at all. I really actually the most of the classics that we read were commercially popular.

>> I was going to say that. Gone with the Wind. Even Snow White. People are like, great movie. It made Disney so much money. It saved Walt Disney. >> Yeah. Or, you know, you look at Jane Austen. You look at Shakespeare. They were hired hacks. They were writing or you know, Dickens. They were writing by the word. It was fully for a populace that was consuming. >> The Beatles, too. Yeah, huge. >> So, to me, demeaning commercial writers um to support literary ones is is it's an arbitrary distinction to me.

Um you know, there are plenty of navel-gazing literary novels where nothing happens that I don't think are particularly well written. And then there are some really beautifully written commercial novels. Um I don't think readers care, either. I think readers just want a good story.

>> Tell me about Alice Hoffman. >> Oh, Alice. Yeah. So, Alice was the writer who made me a reader again when I got out of college. So, you know, you spend four years reading what people tell you to read on syllabi. And her books were the first ones I picked up when I was um you know, an adult and I wasn't in school anymore and I was transported. Alice has She writes the beautiful, beautiful prose, magical realism, which I love. And she The thing that got me was she makes writing look so easy, like it just flows on out of you and it's never easy. So, I was just transfixed by her. And, um, she was my favorite writer for a very long time and then I was a baby writer and I got asked to do an event on Cape Cod and she was one of the other authors on the panel and I was like, yes, yes, I will crawl there. I will, you know, I'll I'll do anything to be in that that event. And you know how they say don't meet your heroes?

Totally wrong when it comes to Alice. So, I met her and she was so lovely and I you know, I left there with her contact information. We're really good friends now. She's kind of like a big sister to me. Um, her new book, which is of Cambridge, is fantastic. I mean, not that I would ever think otherwise, but it's just it's one of her really great ones and I just like to me one of the great joys of being a writer has been getting to know other writers that you admire and to be able to say to them, "Hey, thank you so much for taking me away for a few hours."

>> Mhm. >> You know. >> Tell me about what you've taken from her in terms of her sense of character, how she makes reality magical, her descriptions of love. >> Love. It's love. That woman can write about love like nobody else. What she do? I I don't know. It's It's witchcraft. It's >> [laughter] >> It's literally I mean, it's the way that she she combines, um, the natural world. There's always tons of plants and things like, you know, very much nature oriented in her writing. Um, and I there's something that feels to me like when she talks about love, it feels like a vine and it just feels like, you know, like heliotrope growing over an arch and you can see it. You can see it developing and twisting and getting thicker and thicker and she does it with words.

Yeah, it's not how I write and it's it's beautiful to ingest. It's just so so precisely crafted and it to me Alice's books feel a little like a fever dream. You know, like you're diving into them and you're just you're going for a little ride. You're surfing on this beautiful language, but you're getting such a gut-wrenching emotional story in it. >> I just adore writers who they just expand our sense of what reality is and can be. It's like you go about your day, you're thinking about what you got going on and you realize you're kind of in the claustrophobia of your own mind. And all of a sudden you step into somebody else's descriptions of love or whatever it is and you're like, "Wow." and you kind of regain a sense of awe and wonder.

>> Yeah, I've been reading a lot of of speculative fiction lately and I just I love it. I just love the way that I love the way you can take a nugget of truth that is upsetting and you can twist it into something that's a little bit sci-fi. You know. >> Like what? >> Um I loved Chloe Benjamin's Under Story. It's um it's basically almost like a parallel universe kind of thing and it's all based around grief and what what changes would you make in your life if you thought things could be different, but how would those changes affect who you wound up becoming?

So it's like it's one of these weird sort of, you know, science fictiony books that's grounded in reality and heart and emotion. So, you know, it's not Dune. It's it's the life you're living right now, but kind of on steroids. >> The scenes, the stories that always get me are the ones that stretch over a vast array of time. >> Yeah. >> Something about that just makes me weep. >> Yeah. Yeah, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Such an incredible book. Oh, but I wish I had written that one.

>> Tell me about Emilia Bassano. >> So Emilia Bassano was at the heart of my book by any other name and of all of my books, I think this is my personal favorite. Uh it's probably the one that resonates the most with me as a writer. Um Amelia is a real-life person, or was a real-life person, who lived in Elizabethan England, and um I fully believe from the research that I've done that she wrote some of Shakespeare's plays and did not receive credit for it.

And of course, you know, I was again, English major in college, they were tossing around names for potential people who might have written the Shakespearean plays back in the '80s when I was in school, but they were always men, you know? So, it was Marlowe and Bacon and uh the Earl of Oxford, and I'd never heard a woman posed as a candidate until I read this article by Elizabeth Winkler that was uh in The Atlantic, in which she pointed out that Shakespeare, you know, wrote these incredible, three-dimensional, egalitarian women, right? Which is what attracted me to the plays.

But he had two daughters and he never taught them to read or write. And I just stopped and I was like, hold, please. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don't buy it. I just don't buy it. And then the more I began to sort of dismantle the holes in Shakespeare's life that don't make sense, you know, when it comes to why he uh wrote the things that he or how he wrote the things he did with a limited education, never leaving England, uh not speaking other languages, um never playing a musical instrument, but there are more references to musical instruments than in any other body of work. Um all these things began to not add up, you know, including the fact that, you know, when he he died, he didn't own a single book, right?

But I mean, he gave away all kinds of stuff, but he didn't own a single book, and it wasn't like there were lending libraries back then where you could do your research, but he didn't go to any of these places that he had written about. And then, I did this deep dive into Amelia. And so, Amelia was educated in a way that most people are not. Her family comes from this town called Bassano del Grappa, Italy. Um they were incredible musicians. They a bunch of Bassanos became the recorder consort to King Henry VIII and then to Queen Elizabeth. And um she emigrated, you know, with her father over to England. And when her he died when she was like seven and her mother went to go work somewhere. So, she became the ward of the Countess of Kent. The Countess of Kent was a really cool woman and she decided I'm going to educate this girl.

So, Amelia didn't just get a full classical education, which yes, FYI, there are doubts that Shakespeare even got a grammar school education. So, she gets this full classical education like you would if you were going to Oxford or Cambridge, but she also got a full legal education. Which again pops up very much in the plays. She was Jewish, but she had to hide her faith when she got to um England because you weren't allowed to be Jewish there.

Um she as I said came from this whole group of of musicians, an incredibly musically talented family. Um she she just all these all these bits of Amelia fit in in ways that make sense to to the plays in a way that Shakespeare doesn't.

>> I'm curious to hear how your personal experiences, your relationships, your life, how things that happen in your life end up in your books. >> Yeah, so I will say I'm a terrible friend because if you talk to me, uh I might steal a conversation for a character. Like I do that all the time and I've heard from friends who read my books and they're like, "Didn't I say that to you?" You know, I mean, it must be a really weird feeling. Um there are there are times where um I will what especially when my kids were growing up, um there's a whole if you look at like the trajectory of my books, basically, someone's going to teach Jodi Picoult 101 one day, right? And if you start, it's a relationship between a mother and a daughter. That's really what Songs of the Humpback Whale is. And I was closer in age to the daughter than I was in the mother than to the mother in that time.

Um, the daughter was 15 and I was 21 when I was writing it. And the mom was 35. Then I moved I had I got married and I started to write about relationships and if they're ever 50/50. And I had a baby and I remember I told you know, I told you Kyle, my first son was colicky and it was a rough time and I I used to have this recurring fantasy that I could go to the cleaners with my husband's shirts and I would just unroll the window and I'd throw them out one by one and then I'd go all the way to Mexico and I'd live in a hut on the beach. You know, and this was like I kept dreaming about this. And one day I was pushing my stroller with Kyle and a friend who had a baby who was pushing hers next to mine and I I confided this to her and she just stopped moving and she said, "I think about that all the time." And I was like, that's my next book. And that became Harvesting the Heart. And there is a scene in there

where that And for a really long time my husband wouldn't let me take his shirts to the cleaners. Um, you know, and then I started write I started having kids and I started writing like what I call the entire series of all the really scary things that could happen to your kids that you don't want to happen to them. Everything from like illness to kidnapping to um, gun violence, you know, all these things one after another. And I always joke to my mom that one day I'm going to write about putting your parents in a nursing home so she better watch out.

>> [laughter] >> Um, so I think where I am in my life sort of informs the what if questions that I'm looking at. You know what I mean? Um, when my kids all became sort of uh, you know, viable adults and were contributing members of society, that's when I feel like my scope broadened a little bit and I started looking at things like the nature of good and evil in the storyteller or abortion rights in Spark of Light or racism in Small Great Things or gender discrimination in By Any Other Name. So, I feel like now that I'm not worried on a very personal level anymore as much, I the things that that concern me are more global or issues, yeah.

>> Yeah, I think that one of the biggest things I've taken from this conversation so far is just to ask what if more. Yeah, yeah. Look at the gate, what if? Look at the light, what if? Look at somebody's dress, what if? Whatever it is, but there's something about that exercise that just >> Right. >> gives your imagination a sense of momentum or something. >> Right. And change one dynamic of it, right? You watch something on the news, you're like, well, what if this had happened instead? What if it happened here instead of there? You know, how does that change the story?

>> Tell me about ghost hunting. >> So, um for my book Second Glance, uh I wanted to write a ghost story and I knew I had to find a ghost. So, um when I was doing research for this, I actually started with the Atlantic Paranormal Society cuz they were the closest ghost hunting society to where I live in uh New England. And the guys had a website and I wrote to all three founders thinking these guys are never going to get in touch with me. Literally within 20 minutes all three of them had written me back and they were like, come on down, we'll teach you about ghosts. So, I went down to Rhode Island, which is a very small, very freaky state. And they took me out to dinner and the first thing they they wanted to explain to me why some people become ghosts and others don't. And they said, dying is like getting on a bus. You're supposed to go to the end of the line and then get off and, you know, continue on. But

sometimes the bus stops at a rest stop and you go to use the bathroom and you come back the bus is gone. That's a ghost. So, I'm like, like totally not buying any of this, right? And [snorts] um then we went to uh in Providence to an abandoned mental institution that closed in the 70s. And um we were It was January. It was very cold. We parked in a field facing backwards so that you could make an easy escape because when you're ghost hunting, you are also usually trespassing. Fun fact. And so it's very cold out. I have my hair tied back. I was wearing, you know, probably a black uh jacket or something. And um they took me first to this building where there had been It was like an old exercise rooms. There's like this creepy pool with like stuff floating in it. And all the windows are boarded up. And I peek in cuz I'm pretty short. And um what what it looked like were uh fireflies all over the room. Now it's January in

New England, so we don't have fireflies then. And one of the guys takes the digital camera and he takes a picture. And the fireflies turned into these big balls of light, which a ghost hunter will call a globule or energy changing form. Again, I am not buying any of this. So then they walk in another area where a building burned down with people in it. And as I'm walking next to this guy, all the hair stands up on the back of my neck.

And before I could even say anything to him, he takes his camera and he goes like this behind us. And what showed up on the screen was this white misty wraith-like thing even though it was pitch black behind us. So I'm like, all right, maybe you guys have a point. And at that point, they then went on a ghost hunt to call. These are people who call them because they feel like they have a paranormal entity in their house. So we crossed the border into Massachusetts. And this family had been hearing like moans and groans and bumps and thumps in the attic. So we go up to the attic.

Uh it's got a padlock door. They give me the key. I open it. They set up a video camera, right? And they're just going to let this record for hours. And then they're going to go over the footage. And they go back downstairs to go talk to the owners of the house. And I am the last one out. I close the door. I lock it. I stop off on the second floor of the house cuz they have two children. One who's like 6 months old and one who's 22 months old. They're both in cribs, separate rooms, and you know, like the their rooms were pristine.

There were no toys, no books, no clothes on the floor, which probably is paranormal. But they were fast asleep. And then I go downstairs and um they're talking about how the family has come home to find every tap running in the house. They've come home to find all the cereal spilled out of the cabinets in a pile on the kitchen floor. Once they came home or in the middle of the night, they heard kalimba music and they found a child's toy piano playing on the attic stairs without any batteries. So when I heard this, I said, "I'm going to go check on your children." And I go upstairs and in the first kids' room where there was nothing on the floor, there are now right around the edge of the crib like an L on the floor are seven pennies.

And they are all dated between um 1969 and 1973. So I pick them up and I put them in my pocket. I go into the next kids' room. Same thing where there was nothing on the floor, there are seven pennies. All dated between 1969 and 1973. Finally, I go to the the attic. I unlock the padlock. I go inside, turn on the light, and under the video camera tripod like someone went are another 15 pennies. All dated between 1969 and 1973.

So this was A, back when we had pennies, and B, it was really hard. You wouldn't It would be rare for you to find one penny that old, you know, cuz it they were 20 years uh earlier than that's when they were minted. Um and I found 25 of them in a row. And I still have all the pennies. And um the ghost hunters actually wound up going back to the house two more times to record stuff, and eventually did historical research. They said they did believe there was something paranormal there. There were two people who died in that house. One in 1969 and one in 1973.

Crazy, right? I mean, and I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. And they will tell you the same. They're like, "Don't believe it. Be a doubter until you see something yourself." >> Wow. So, you So, that >> I have a cool job. >> [laughter] >> No kidding. So, that happens, and then how do you go from crazy Penny 1969 and 1973 story to getting that into a novel? >> So, um that is in the novel. It's in Second Glance. And Second Glance is basically about a uh ghost hunter who can't find any ghosts, who is brought in to a land development um challenge where a group of local Abenaki Indians are upset because a developer wants to develop what they think is a burial plot. And uh what he winds up uncovering is not just a ghost, but um basically a uh historical fact from the 1930s when we in America were in the business of eugenics and were sterilizing people who we thought were an economic and social drain on

society. Um most of whom were Abenaki Indians or Catholic French Canadians. Uh and in fact, it was the work that was done in places like Vermont and Virginia and California that Hitler based his final solution on.

>> Wow. How much do you think about theme when you're writing? We talked a little bit about what what it is that you want to say. >> Yeah. >> But I mean, in school, theme is like the core thing that people talk about. Is that something that you think about? >> like in fourth grade, like what is the theme of this? I never think about this. It's like the opposite. I don't think about theme. I think about metaphor. I think about character. I think about plot. I think about setting.

>> If I hear the word motif one more time today >> I mean, sometimes I do think about metaphor more than I think about theme, right? So, like in Hollow Bones, um the reason it's called that is because there is a character who remembers how uh as a child she freaked out when she saw a mother bird pushing a baby bird out of a nest and her own mom said to her, you know, well, birds have hollow bones. Just watch. And it's the things that make them so fragile that also make them capable of flight. And that becomes a metaphor in the book.

So, I think more about that than I think about theme. >> What do you feel like you're pursuing? Are you pursuing some of the people enjoy? Are you trying to pursue clarity? Are you trying to pursue beauty? Like what is the thing that you're going for when you're writing? >> Empathy. >> Empathy. >> Yeah, I think that's what I'm pursuing. That and conversation. I want people I hope people finish my books and start talking. My favorite thing to hear is, "Oh my god, I can't wait for someone to read this so that I can talk to them about it." Right?

Because that not only keeps your story alive, but it keeps why you wrote the story alive. So, that. Um, and like I said, I I think I spend so much time in my books making sure that you have a different point of view that maybe you've never heard before. So, you know, in Small Great Things, one of the narrators is a white supremacist. Not an easy thing to write. Um, in uh Sing You Home, which is about gay rights, um, I did research with Focus on the Family.

And I was writing that book when my my oldest son actually had just come out to us. And I was like, all of a sudden I wasn't just writing this theoretically. I was like a mom on a mission. And when I went to go interview this woman who is the public information officer from Focus on the Family, um, we started talking and one of the questions I said was, "Do you worry that the rhetoric that you're using," cuz it was all about their pray away the gay and uh love wins out, um, uh you know, sort of uh the the seminars they used to run to obliterate gayness. Um, and so, uh I said, "Do you worry that your rhetoric is going to lead to acts of violence against the LGBT QA community. And this woman said, "Well, thank goodness that's never happened." And I was sitting there in this interview and I could just feel like this flush up my face of heat. And I said, "Do you know who Matthew Shepard is?" And she said,

"Who?" And I said, "Would you excuse me a moment?" And I got up and I went to the bathroom and I like I was standing there splashing water on my face and and it was so hard for me to take off my mom hat and put back on my interviewer hat so that I could finish the interview and write that character into the book. >> Mhm. >> Because that's the responsibility that I feel I have to my reader to make sure that all sides of an issue are represented even if they're ones I don't agree with.

>> Tell me about graphic novels. Writing Wonder Woman. >> Yeah, so that was totally a fluke. I was sitting at my desk one day and I don't even remember what book I was working on and I got an email from an editor at DC Comics and he said, "Um we'd really be interested in having you write a few issues of Wonder Woman. You would only be the second woman to write her since her conception in the 1940s." And I was like, "That's really flattering. Uh no, I don't have time for that."

>> [laughter] >> I went downstairs to dinner and I was like telling my family about this and all of my kids just stopped. They looked at me and they're >> going >> They're like, "Mom, you got to write Wonder Woman." >> Yeah. >> You know, so I was like, "Okay." Um it was probably the first collaboration that I did cuz it was before I wrote with my daughter, before I wrote with Jenny Boylan to write Mad Honey, um before I was writing for theater. And that was a whole it was a whole experience because I was not only I was not only trying to be true to all of the lore that existed before, but I had the input of an editor, of a penciler. You have to think not about um not about language, but about how uh how you represent a story physically, you know, visually. So, what's a double what's a bleed page?

What's going to you know, what what are the scenes that are really going to jump out? And that was such a different and foreign thought to my brain. I don't write in pictures, right? That I really had to I felt like I had to learn on the job very quickly. Um I thought, you know, if they hired me to be the second woman writing her, I wanted to be able to leave my fingerprint on it. And I thought, well, what is something that every woman has that, you know, Wonder Woman hasn't they haven't talked about yet. And I said, every mother has issues with every woman has issues with her mother.

And so I decided I was going to write that for Diana Prince. And that, you know, Wonder Woman's mother is Hippolyta, the Amazon. And I decided that I was going to create a five-story arc about Hippolyta basically wanting her daughter to be something that that Wonder Woman doesn't want to be anymore.

>> How much do you think about the business of writing? We've talked so much about the actual craft, but how much do you think about the economics of all this? >> Um a lot, actually. For different reasons. So, every 2 years I'm publishing a novel now, and every 2 years the entire landscape of publishing changes, which is amazing to me. I've been in it long enough to be like, how can it keep reinventing itself? But even at the the base level of, you know, I'm here doing this podcast because podcasts are where people are finding books now.

Right? That was not true 2 years >> Especially this show. All you authors All you fine authors >> [laughter] >> that we reach out to. >> Right. But you know, that's that to me is a new thing that's really interesting. And the fact that these things are being filmed now, so people can watch them. That's new. Um the change in actual publishing from, you know, basically five big houses and then the rise of smaller presses into independent publishing and self-publishing is a whole different ball of wax.

Uh that has completely changed the landscape of publishing. Um >> Book Talk. >> Book Talk. Book Talk is huge, right? I mean, it's the only reason I have a Tik Tok account. And I did it to see if I could crack that cuz I was like this is really interested to me because it's the one thing a publisher can't pay for. There is you know you you can't pay for word of mouth. And I was like I want to see if I can get into that community and see if you know if that's that's going to be kind of a new and exciting thing for me and it has been it's been really cool to be doing events and basically anyone who's between 25 and 35 now who comes to my event says to me I found your books because I heard you speak on Tik Tok and I like the things you had to say so I decided to read your books. So boom that's a whole new way of people are finding my books which is kind of cool right after all this time. Um so I do

think about that. The other reason I think a lot about the business of publishing is because of book bans in this country. So I've become a very vocal outspoken critic of book bans. Uh in 2024 19 minutes was the most banned book in America. I'm currently the fourth most banned author in America. And book bans have increased 1,100% since 2020. Uh PEN America sites that 23,000 individual titles have been targeted. Um at the beginning they were going after LGBTQ and BIPOC books and authors and then they moved into mature content which is where my books tend to fall. But a lot of the people who were being banned at the school level that's their livelihood. These are YA authors who are making their living by selling books to school libraries. That is not the case for me right? So my my readership is mostly adult and that's a smaller subsection of my readership. So in a way I felt very duty bound to speak out

because I have a platform and because I can without it being a threat to my livelihood and my income.

>> To go back to the business of publishing what do you do to actually track the changes? Are those conversations that you have with other authors? Are there certain places that you look? And then what I want to get to is like now you're you're you're on a book launch. How do you think about the strategy for a new book? >> I have the best team in publishing. They're amazing. It's like it literally feels like an army behind me. Feel like we're all kind of, you know, marching together. I'm at the front. It's It's uh end of F1 in Les Mis, right? So, it's one day more. Um well, this is day one.

And uh and they're the ones who really inform me every time I have a book coming up how the landscape has changed, how we're pitching it, uh where we're pitching it, and they I'm on the tour that quite honestly I have not seen any author do a tour like this in years. Um it's like 30 cities. It's a different city every day. Uh it is intense. And the venues are We're doing events with, you know, up to like 1,200 people.

And I remember when we when the tickets went on sale for this book, I was like, "Wow, this is a really tough time to be having a book tour. The economy is not in a good place in America." And you know, when you're deciding between groceries, gas, or a book, I know what I would choose, and it wouldn't be my book, you know? And the tickets sold so fast. And I think that told me that people need joy now, and they need to nurture and feed themselves right now. And I think, hopefully, they trust me enough to give them a story that is going to be worth that.

Um that means the world to me, right? You know, and and it really is my team that designs and informs me every time uh we're getting ready to go forward-facing to the public. Cuz most of the time I'm just I'm just sitting in my little office writing or doing my research, you know? And I'm not thinking about that. >> So, where do you rank on the scale of like publicity, super important, that's your job as an author, to kind of Field of of Dreams, if you build it, they will come, just write the best book.

>> 100% publicity. We are in a position right now. It's what I call the American idolization of publishing. Nobody can sit in their ivory tower anymore and just write books and expect them to find their way to the masses. Doesn't work that way. There's a lot of chaff out there and if you've got wheat, you have to make sure people know you got wheat. And um I am an anomaly. I love talking to people. I love doing events. I love meeting my readers and hearing what my stories have meant to them. And there's the last piece of the equation for me, right? They're the ones who tell me how the book was received. And you know, when you write fiction, you don't expect to change someone's life, but every now and then you do. I mean, I have had so many letters from readers who I mean, the ones that get me the most of the teenagers who've read 19 minutes who said, "I thought of bringing a gun into school, but I read this book and I'm not

going to." I mean, right? Wow. That's pretty life-changing for me as an author. Or the ones who read The Pact and say, "You know, I was feeling suicidal, but I'm going to tell an adult today." I mean, that's really deeply meaningful. Or the people who said, "I used Mad Honey. I used Sing You Home to come out to my family and now I have a relationship with my grandmother and she wouldn't talk to me for 10 years prior to that." You know, so again, it's it's empathy through stories, empathy through novels. And um yeah, so I I feel like for me, because I like doing it and because I'm an extrovert at heart, um I don't mind the publicity aspect of it.

It's fun. It's really fun. Uh there are a lot of authors who I believe should never leave their house cuz they're not doing themselves any favors, right? Um but if you you know, you can be born storyteller, but sometimes those storytellers can only tell stories on the page. And then there are some people I think who can tell stories face-to-face and in public in a way that's super engaging. And those are the people who should be out in front of their own fans.

>> Uh last question. So if we were to basically co-run university seminar, we're like working together on the curriculum, we're going to teach the students, what is it that you would want writers to really understand? >> You have to learn how to be your own best editor. You know, there will be people who help you along the way, and you should absolutely grab on to those brass rings every time you see one. You know, don't reject the advice of your publisher or your publishing company. Figure out what publishing format works the most for you, whether that is, you know, a traditional format where it might take a very long time to get an agent, but you have a publishing company behind you, or whether you want to self-publish and do a lot of the work by yourself. The biggest tool, the most important tool, the one you'll reach for the most in your toolbox, is being able to look at your own writing with objectivity, and kill your

darlings, to make it a better story. >> Yeah. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for your energy, thanks for your passion. Um, that was fantastic. >> Thank you so much. Thanks for doing this. >> And congrats on the new book, huh? There we go. That's my conversation with Jodi Picoult, and if you liked it, you'll also like my conversations with Richard Powers and Ann Lamott.