[Music] Hey everybody, welcome to the Other People podcast, a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. I am Brad Listy, it's good to be with you. I'm here in Los Angeles where it is currently about 112 degrees. It's ridiculously hot here. Don't forget to subscribe to this show wherever you listen. You can also subscribe. On YouTube, follow me on social media, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Blue Sky. [Music] So my guest today is Elizabeth Stroud, author of a new novel called "Tell Me Everything." You know, it's very, it's very different. Like when Olive came to me, she just showed up and I just felt, I was unloading the dishwasher, loading it or something and I was just, I felt this presence, I mean not literally, but I was aware of this presence that I heard in my head. I heard her say in her head, "It's high time everyone went home." And I thought, "Wow, I have to get that down." Because it was a character and a voice. So I just immediately wrote down what had just happened and then that was the first story of Olive Kitridge, which was at her son's wedding and you know, she's sitting at the picnic table and I've never had a picnic table. I don't know anybody who has, but the point is, she showed up in that particular way. And then when I wrote Olive Again, which I had never planned on returning to her, she showed up again like that. I was sitting in a cafe in Oslo and she just, obviously I just pictured her. Older, walking with her cane, walking herself into that marina and I realized, oh, she's back, I have to deal with this. - All right, that was Elizabeth Strout. Her new novel is called "Tell Me Everything," available now from Random House. Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction back in 2009 for her novel in stories entitled, "Alive Kitridge." In her new book, "Tell Me Everything," Elizabeth Strout returns to the fictional town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters, including Lucy Barton, "Alive Kitridge" and Bob Burgess. "Tell Me Everything" is a novel about human relationships, about characters falling in love, yet choosing to be a part. There is a subplot involving a shocking crime. And ultimately, it is a novel about human beings in search of meaning in this life with all that it entails. I had such a good time talking with Elizabeth. It is an honor to have her back here on the "Other People" podcast for a second time. That conversation is coming up. A reminder that I do a weekly email newsletter. I would love it if you signed up. You can do so over at substackbradlisty.substack.com. And if you are a fan of this show, a fan of the work that I do, I hope you will join the "Other People" Patreon community over at patreon.com/otherpplpod. I hope you keep this show going into the future. Today's episode is brought to you by the Feminist Press publisher of a new story collection called "Reservoir Bitches" by Dahlia de la Cerna, one of Mexico's most thrilling new writers. The collection is available now. You can visit feministpress.org and use code "res20" to get 20% off of your copy today. Again, that's feministpress.org. Use the code "res20" and get 20% off. I should add that "Reservoir Bitches" is the official September pick of the "Other People" book club. That is my book club. You can sign up. You can join the book club over at the show's official website, otherppl.com. I think you should do that. I interview book club authors here on this podcast, so you can read the book and then listen to the interview or listen to the interview and then read the book. It makes for a very enriching, holistic literary experience. So my guest, once again, is Elizabeth Stroud. Her new novel is called "Tell Me Everything" available now from Random House. Elizabeth Stroud is the number one New York Times bestselling author of several books, including "The Novel Lucy by the Sea," another novel called "O William," which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Olive Kitchridge, which again won the Pulitzer Prize back in 2009. Her debut, Amy and Isabel, won the Los Angeles Times Art Sidonbaum Award for first fiction, as well as the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. Elizabeth has also been a finalist for the Penn Faulkner Award and the Women's Prize in London. She lives in Maine and I'm very pleased to get to share another great conversation with Elizabeth Stroud with all of you right now. So let's get to it. Here I am with Elizabeth Stroud and her new novel, "One More Time," is called "Tell Me Everything." Not so much at this point anymore because I live in Maine in a small town. But I do, I mean, I have a couple of close friends, yes. But, and we do talk very intimately, but I don't think they tell me everything and I certainly don't tell them everything because that's how we are. I think, I mean, I think that's how most people are. I think there, although I did have one friend come over, I never see her very often at all. She came over the other day and she'll tell me everything, which is fabulous. She's just that kind of person and that's very wonderful to be able to receive it. But the whole idea is, I think, that even though these conversations in the book are intimate, especially with Bob and Lucy, there's always a little space because as humans, we just have so many different parts of ourselves that are going through us. And, you know, we're seeing through one person's eyes and another person's eyes. And so that's interesting to me how we are seen by who we are talking to. - Well, I also felt, as I felt in Lucy by the sea, like the last conversation we had, I think we spoke to this a little bit, I feel a political subtext in your book. And it's very much a subtext because politics are only mentioned in passing, the political culture that we are living through because these books are very contemporary in terms of like when they're set is mentioned in passing. You get bits and pieces, but it's never foregrounded. And something about this novel that spoke to me quite a bit is how we live in times where there's so much intolerance and there is such a rush to judgment oftentimes when it comes to people's transgressions. And this book seems to be making in its subtle ways, or maybe not so subtle ways at times, an argument that we should be more forgiving of one another. - Just relax and try to relax. Although, when does anybody ever relax because they're told to, but that's what I'm telling you is the super subtext of the book is just, you know what, everybody's human, just let it be if you can, if you can. - Well, there's a great, I think maybe my favorite, I hope I don't spoil anything by saying this, but there's a scene in the book where Bob Burgess kind of uncharacteristically loses it on his nephew and it is along these lines. And I found it to be such a powerful moment. - I'm glad, yeah. - I could feel that and you as the writer kind of like channeling where he's saying, look, people are complicated. - Right. - Everybody's been through a ton and there are reasons why people do, oftentimes there's really good reasons why people do bad things. - That's right, that's right. He's talking about broken people and even people who aren't broken, but just people who have been through stuff and he thinks that this guy is too young to have realized that, which he apparently is. - Yeah, well, the last time we spoke, we talked as well about your creative process and the way in which you write in little scenes, which I found illuminating and also as a writer instructive and kind of inspiring because it takes some of the pressure off. - Yes, it does, but that's the whole point, it does, doesn't it? - Yes, you don't have to like bear the responsibility of this entire narrative. - Exactly, exactly. - I'm curious to know when it comes to this book, if you can recall the first scene that came to you. - You know, I think the first scene that came to me was the olive Lucy, the very first conversation they have when Olive is telling Lucy about her mother. And that was, I mean, I think in many ways, the start of the book was for me because I realized that Lucy and Olive are now living in the same town and I thought, wait a second, this is too good, I have to get them together. So I did and that story was the first story that came out and then I thought to myself, now what am I gonna do? And then I realized, oh, okay, I've got these other people around, you know, let's just follow them. And then I began to understand that Lucy and Olive would meet and tell each other stories. That would be a motif throughout the book that every so often, that was gonna be their relationship. - And I think like when I'm trying to recall, forgive me for not having very good memory, but I'm trying to recall our last conversation and I do think we spoke a bit about having like a unified creative vision of this world that you're creating and have been working on over several books now. And I think that I looked at a chart where it sort of tracks the main characters in your fictional universe and tell me everything a lot of these characters are converging, like you say, Lucy and Olive are now living in the same town. - Yeah, I just figured that out. - But you're getting to the point where a lot of these characters are now all appearing in this book, whereas in the previous books that were bits and pieces. - Right. - And I have had a lot of conversations with writers over the years and frequent refrain is how difficult the process is every time you begin it anew. And I'm sure the supplies to you as well. But it does occur to me, especially when I consider how productive you have been over the past decade. You've published a lot of books. - It's crazy, yeah. - Maybe it is a bit easier to access and to just get the work done when you are working in a fictional universe that you know so intimately with characters, you know so intimately. Do you feel there's truth to that? - Yes, as I look back, I think that was probably one reason that the books came out so quickly because I just knew these people so well, although I never intended to keep writing about them. Every single book I wrote, I thought, okay, that's the end of them. And then this one. But I will tell you that I'm working on an entirely different character now, not even in Maine, a man, not related to anybody. And I'm so interested in him. So I'm not sure, but I do think that there's something about having returned to this universe so many times that they probably came forth not more easily, but you know what I mean, with a little more. - Access. - Yeah, access, thank you. - Do you feel like you're done with this universe? - I have no idea, I feel that way, but I've said that before so I don't dare say anything. - Okay, 'cause that was a question that occurred to me and I couldn't remember if I asked it of you last time is whether or not you have some like grand vision, like you have the books mapped out, it's not like that. - No, no, I never have anything mapped out, not even a book itself. But the only thing that I know is that if I ever, ever should return whatever. And I don't have any plans to it all, and I think probably I won't, but I can only say that all of Kitridge will not die on my watch. - All right, you know what? I almost like didn't even want to, I'm interested to hear you say that because it was, it was in my mind to ask you about that, but I almost didn't want to 'cause it would be too painful. - No, and I just thought, you know what? Whatever we do, if we even see each other again, all of you're not gonna die on my watch, so. - That's a relief. - Yeah, I think so, it was a relief for me as well. - There is something, she should be immortal, right? I mean, there's something kind of- - Yeah, she should be, that's exactly, thank you. Thank you for getting it, because I really, I did figure out that, so whether this is the last time we'll see or not, probably I don't know, but she's not gonna die on my watch. - Great, that's lovely to hear. And she's what, she's what, 90, 91. - 91 by the end of the book, yeah? - Yeah, so. - She's probably got 10 more years in her, who knows? - She seems like she's got all sorts of vitality on the page, you know, but your books, you know, there's a line in the book that Lucy Barton speaks, I believe, where somebody is asking her, talking to her about her work, it might be olive. And she, like what's it all about, I think, is the question, and she says people. People and the lives they lead, that's the point. And I could just as easily attribute those words to you, it seems. - Yeah, I mean, that's why I write, honestly, it's because ever since I was a kid, I might've said this last time, I'm so sorry if I'm repeating, but ever since I was a kid, you know, I didn't grow up around that many people, and every time I saw a person, I was like, who are you, you know, what's going on in your head? Because even as a young person, I understood, there's a lot going on in somebody's head that we don't actually get to see. So I've just been on a quest to try and figure out what goes on inside somebody else's head. And what their lives are like, the most ordinary life is fascinating to me. - Me too. And I think reading you brings that home to me where I'm like, how is she doing this? I am so absorbed into these people's lives. The characters in your book are so beautifully drawn, so memorable, Bob Burgess, Lucy Barton, Olive Kitrich, they're approaching, I think, in the literary world, a kind of iconic status. They're so dimensional, these characters, and you're so good at character. Do you consider character to be your strongest suit as a writer? - Yes, I do. I'm very, very interested in character, because, like I said, from my earliest memory, I have been fascinated by people. And to this day, I don't think there's any more interesting than people. I mean, I'm sure there are for other people, there's things that are more interesting than people. But for myself, I still remain fascinated by people. And so I do start with a character and try and go in there. - All right, everybody, we are in September, but it's still summertime. There's still stuff happening. We're still going outside. Be sure to fuel up for all of your activities with factors, no prep, no mess meals, with options like calorie smart, protein plus, and keto, factors, fresh, never frozen meals, or dietitian approved, and ready to eat in just two minutes. No matter how busy you are, there's always time for factor. So crush your wellness goals this month with great food, premium ingredients, and it's simple. Keep kitchen time to a minimum. Factor meals are ready in just a couple of minutes. No shopping, prepping, cooking, or cleaning up. Choose from six menu preferences to help you manage calories, maximize protein, and take, avoid meat, or simply eat a well-balanced diet. So here's what to do. Head to factor meals.com/otherppl50 and use the code otherppl50 to get 50% off of your first box, plus 20% off your next month. Once again, that's code otherppl50 at factor meals.com/otherppl50. 50% off your first box, plus 20% off your next month while your subscription is active. Factor meals, check it out. Eat good food. Are you good at drawing people out in your personal life, like in conversation? - Well, that's an interesting question. Well, because I'm in Maine, it's a little hard 'cause they're in. My goodness, I shouldn't. But anyway, that's a very good question. I think certain people, yeah, certain people, and then others, of course, don't want to be drawn out, which is fine. Just makes my imagination more active. - Of course, and then obviously you're a good listener. You would have to be, I think all writers are on some level good listeners. - I've listened to my entire life, to strangers, to anybody I can listen to. I've listened and listened and listened. And you do learn a lot that way. - And also seen. You can see the subtext. If you're careful about watching. - But you do have to watch. - It comes through in this book. And all of your books. And I think one of the things I noticed is a writer when it comes to your prose style. I mean, a lot has been made of the simplicity of it and how pared down it is and how deceptive it is. It's like, how is it accumulating all of this power? But something that I recognized and made note of over and over again is how your character descriptions in terms of their physical action, as it is tied to their emotional and interior lives, is often very simple. It's the closing of eyes. It's the crossing of a leg or uncrossing of a leg. But it's just right. Your writing process is very visual. I would have to believe. - Okay, good, good. I do see them. I see them in my mind. And I realize, okay, he's gonna keep shrugging, but I can only put shrug down two times in one paragraph. - That's it. - And then I have to make it adjustable for the page. - But that's all it takes, really. - Yeah. - That's what I think the lesson is. It's like you don't need to see Bob Burgess do much more than like lean forward with his arm full that he gets. You know, I see that stuff and I can just see him so clearly and I can feel what he's feeling. And so you're very good at finding those little gestures and understanding that the economy of it is part of, I think the power of it. - Right, right. - And I wanna quote you when it comes to character. It's a, I think it's something that you did at Lit Hub. You did sort of a round table interview with other authors. And I'm gonna read something that you said in that interview because it sort of speaks to what we're talking about. You said, quote, "I have to keep coming back to character. "All I seem to care about is getting my character right. "I'm not thinking about themes or things I, quote unquote, "want to write about. "I just let my character go and see where she takes me. "In my older characters like Olive Kitridge "and Lucy Barton, they take me places naturally "that the younger characters could not go. "But I confess to having no ideas as I am writing. "Just the women or the characters who I am writing about." - Yeah. - Phew, I'd stand by that. - I was gonna say, it's always a relief when we agree with ourselves. - It is very much so. So yes, I do agree with that. I am not a thinker of ideas. I mean, I don't sit down. You know, I know people who do and that's fine, but they'll tell me, okay, this is the theme of my book and, or, you know, and I'll think, hmm, I don't know what the theme is in my book. I'm just gonna write about these people. - I feel like it kind of goes one of two ways. I think there are writers who are sort of like these big idea writers who start there and then write into their novels from the big idea. I think the more common avenue, at least based on the conversations I've had over the years, is that people write their novels and then learn what the theme is sort of at the end. - Yeah, that's what happens to me. If I even can figure out the theme. - So to pick at this quote, just a little bit more, you said, "All I seem to care about "is getting my character right." And I wanna know what it means in practice. Like, how do you do this? How do you know when you've gotten the character right? Is it just pure intuition? - I think a great deal of it, especially at this point in my life, is intuition. It probably always has been, but I'm more and more aware of how much I do use my intuition just to let me know if it feels right. And like, I might start with a character and not be able to enter them and then they end up on the floor. You know, that's happened a number of times. And I just say, okay, can't find you, goodbye. But if I am able to know them, to the extent that we can know anybody, and I can know them because I'm making them up, then I can stay with them and watch them and have them do. I know that many of my characters behave badly and that doesn't bother me at all because people do behave badly. And I'm, you know, I still love them, I made them up. So it's not their behavior, except as long as their behavior is true to who they are. - Right. And is there a commonality in terms of how these characters come to you? Do you usually begin with like a visual or a voice or a detail? - You know, it's very, it's very different. Like when Olive came to me, she just showed up. Oh, I mean, she's Olive. So she just, boom. And I just felt, I was unloading the dishwasher and loading it or something. And I was just, I felt this presence, I mean, not literally, but I was aware of this presence that I heard in my head. I heard her say in her head, it's high time everyone went home. And I thought, wow, I have to get that down because it was a character and a voice. So I just immediately wrote down what had just happened. And then that was the first story of Olive Kitridge, which was at her son's wedding. And, you know, she's sitting at the picnic table and I've never had a picnic table. I don't know anybody who has, but the point is she showed up in that particular way. And every time, and then when I wrote Olive again, which I had never planned on returning to her, she showed up again like that. I was sitting in a cafe in Oslo and she just, obviously I just pictured her. Older, walking with her cane, walking herself into that marina. And I realized, oh, oh, she's back. I have to deal with this. And so I did. So that's Olive. And then somebody like Lucy came to me as a voice. And that's one reason I had to write it in the first person 'cause it was her voice that I, it was almost like a gold thread that was coming down from this ceiling. And I had to catch her voice. And if I could catch her voice, I could do her. So it's always different. - There's almost something mystical about what you're saying. - A little bit, actually. It does occur to me sometimes, like, hmm, this is weird. (laughs) - Okay, but it makes me quite, like I had this question arise as I was reading. And I think Lucy, Lucy, who is, I know she's not you, but there are echoes of you in her. And she kind of will have and will describe to Bob often experiences that she has where she will really feel a connection to somebody that's almost psychic. Like an ability to kind of access their interior, feel their emotional world. - Right. - In ways that are somewhat supernatural and hard to explain. - Yeah, exactly. - It made me think to myself like, well, what does Elizabeth Stroud think about like big spiritual questions? And like, do you have like a finely tuned sense of that sort of thing? Like, do you have any psychic ability? - You know, it's so interesting because I think in the past, a little tiny bit, I would once in a while. Like, I can remember when I was 12 years old, I worked at the country store here in Maine. It was just a little tiny country store. And a woman came in and she was probably my age now. She was in her 60s, whatever. She seems older as she was, but she started to talk to me about her husband who had just had a stroke. And as a result of the stroke, he was depressed. And this woman just talked to me about this. And I look back and I think, I wonder why she chose me. But then what I also remember, I remember very distinctly feeling a little bit like my molecules had moved into her and that I knew exactly what she meant as she was telling me this distressing story. And that was very, you know, it was only when I looked back 'cause it was normal at the time. It was like, okay, well, that's what. But I look back and I think that's very interesting. And that's often how it feels when I have a character. Only there's never any real person. But that woman, and I think about it, she's obviously long since passed away, but that was my sort of first understanding that I don't really have a body even though I do, but you know what I mean? It was a sense of like sort of moving into her body in a way, very strange. Do I have spiritual question? I have enormous questions and I'm not one answer. So, but I do think, I was thinking about this the other day. I think, I guess the only thing I can say at this point is that what I had a character in one of my books, Suzanne Larkin, she says to her friend, the lawyer, she said, I think it's our duty to accept the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can. So that's the only thing I have to say at this point in my life. - I think it's reflected in this book, those kinds of questions and that kind of answer. I think there's a humility in that. - Yeah, I wish I knew, I wish I knew, but I don't and I don't think I'm going to be able to. So. - So something else that I can't help but notice in your work is how it arrests my attention and it's notable because I got to say like as a kind of symptom of the modern age, my attention isn't great. - Right. - And yet I can just fall into these books and be like so happy to be turning the pages. - So good. - That's the gift of a very skilled writer is the ability to keep the reader's attention. It's kind of a goal I think of everybody who sits down to tell him to write a story but I'm curious to know like over the course of your career maybe what you've learned along these lines and how you do it because it's sort of deceptive. There's not a lot, there's not like any car chases happening. - No. - It's not pyrotechnic, it's like two people sitting in a room telling each other's stories and yet I'm riveted. - You know, I think it's a couple of things that I've learned over the years. I think that the voice is very important and that means the narrative voice that the reader is hearing has to, I think every sentence has to fall on the ear of the reader in a gentle way, not if not gentle at least in acceptable way, that every sentence has to have a sound to it. And that makes it sound like I pick a lot, well I do, but when I get going that will happen naturally. But I think the sound of the story is important and the narrator is important. I have a different kind of narrator in this book but also I think to tell the truth as much as you can. 'Cause I think that readers can sense what's true and what's not. And I've often thought back to when I was young and I would put, let's say I was in the dentist room or in the dentist's waiting room and I would put a story down that I was reading and I thought why did I put it down? And I have come to realize because it probably wasn't truthful to me. - Yeah, I think that there's a lot of truth in that and I think that there is, like one of the things I would note along these lines has to do with character again and the complexity of people and the way in which we all sort of contain multitudes. And something you're so great at is like showing a character in his or her lower moments or kind of like putting their flaws on display, whether it's pride or some kind of narcissism or ego. But then a chapter or two later showing them at their very best and it's kind of this muddle. It's never just one way. - But it almost never is. I mean, when you look around at people you know, I mean, unless they're a total sociopath which is interesting for me to write about. I mean, ordinary people have multitudes of varieties of how they deal with the world in one person. So they're almost never all about our good. - Well, I'm thinking of Margaret Bob Burgess's wife and she's a minister. I forget which church she is. - Unitarian. - Unitarian. So she's a Unitarian minister and she gets up in front of her congregation and Bob sees this kind of like narcissistic pride in her when she's got the audiences, like the congregation's eyes on her. And it was just so recognizable to me. I was like, yeah, I know people like that. Not bad people, but people who sort of like really feed on attention in a way that's maybe not entirely healthy. - Exactly. - But doesn't make them bad. - No. - And then by the end of the book, she's no longer doing that because she had that experience that sort of changed her a little bit. And he notices that she's become actually quite sincere from the pulpit. - Yeah, I mean, I think of her, I think of Jim, Bob's brother. They both have these kind of humbling experiences. - Yes, precisely. - Painful experiences. - Precisely. - And it brings to mind the ways in which like really painful experiences in life can make people much more human. - They can. I have often thought that, I have often thought that if you're lucky, you go through something that just cuts you off at the knees and you're humbled. And as a result of that, you're going to be a bigger person. That's the best case scenario. - Right. - As opposed to becoming bitter, you know, or whatever. But yeah. So to be humbled, I think is, can be a very good thing. - Absolutely. - Maybe the character in whom this is on like finest display is Bob Burgess. - Yeah. - Like his humility and like the goodness of Bob. Bob the sin eater. Can you talk about the sin eater? - Oh, the sin eater. - You know, that came to me and I don't remember. I just don't remember. I was a child when I first heard that term. And I think, and I mean, Lucy says that she came across it in a book of fables or something like that. I think she does in the show. But that is a sort of a memory that I have. A very young child seeing this man turning the page and he gets more and more slumped over. You know, it was a black and white drawing and I just all of a sudden I remembered it. And I thought, huh, Bob the sin eater because he's just getting more and more exhausted with everybody's problems that he takes on. - That he takes on willingly. - Yeah, he's Bob. - He's an incredibly lovable character. You have to love Bob. - Yeah, I think so, I know. There's so many times in the book where it says, and so they call Bob. - Yeah. - There's so many calls Bob. It's like, I was called a calling Bob. - Who else are you going to call? - Yeah, exactly, right, precisely. - So I want to talk a little bit more about this run of productivity that you've been on because I know that it will be of interest to my listeners, many of whom are writers or aspiring writers. And I'm going to read you back to yourself again. So grace yourself. You can say, quote, I'm getting older and I've taught myself how to get these sentences down, how to know when they are worth getting down. It's like I've been training for a marathon my entire life and now there's an acceleration happening. - Yeah, I stand by that. Thank goodness, yes. - Okay, yes, great. Two for two, so. - Good, I know. This, the word that I want to zero in on is training. - Yeah, I've trained for years. I mean, I was literally writing ever since I learned to write which was probably about the age of four or five. With those notebooks, those big fat notebooks, I mean, I don't know if they even know if they have them anymore, but you know. And my mother told me to write. She's the reason I'm a writer because she would say to me write down what you did today. And so I just wrote from the time I was very, very young. I understood that I was a writer and that I was going to be a writer and then it just took forever. I mean, I was like 42 when my first book was published and it took me that long. And I was writing for 36, five, 38, whatever the math is of those years. But I stopped telling people that I knew I was right 'cause it gets embarrassing. They're like, well, what have you published? Just say nothing. So when that book came out, people said, oh, what an overnight success? Of course. And, you know, it wasn't. It was about a 40 year overnight. Is there something you can point to that you had to overcome as a writer in order to get to the point where you could break out and start this run of success that you've had? It's probably maybe not as clean as that, but can you think back to like a real breakthrough that you had or something that you had to clear in order to get where you are today? - You know, I remember when I was writing "Amy and Isabel" and I had written it as a story which, thank goodness, nobody wanted or wouldn't have returned to it, but I needed to write that. So that was the first novel that I wrote and I worked and it worked on it. And I can remember at some point realizing, oh, nobody's gonna read this anyway. So just say it, just put it down. And that was like such a relief to me because even though I was hoping this, maybe I would read it, in my mind at that point, I was no longer writing for an audience. I was just writing for a reader, which was an enormously different thing 'cause then I could write from myself to this reader. And that was very, very helpful for me 'cause I realized just put it down. And I look back and I think all those years I was trying to write like a writer. And what does that mean? It meant nothing. I had to be myself and I would think, I think I was just so worn down from so many years of rejection that I just realized just write it for this one person, whoever that person might be, and get it down as straight and honestly as you can. - And have you always written in this scene by scene way? - Yes, and that's because when my daughter, she was young, I mean, I would only have a couple of hours a day, at the, maybe every other day I would have a couple of hours. So I really had to, I learned rather soon that if I was trying to write something, it wasn't gonna work. So I had to use an impulse, whatever my impulse, whatever I was feeling the most at that moment, I could transpose that feeling into a character, not the facts of whatever I was feeling, but the sensation that I could get what I would call a heartbeat. And that's when I began to realize, okay, the scene is worth something, so just keep it. And then eventually the scenes would go together or not, but that's how I learned it from not having enough time to sit and try and plod my way through because I recognized if you're plodding your way through, it's gonna sound like you're plodding your way through. - Well, and I think too, it's like this lesson that there's never really an excuse, right? I remember talking to Amy Bender years ago. I always go back to this story. She had like infant twins and she was telling me that she was writing her next book in like 15 minute windows. - Yeah. - And I was like, okay, well, if she's doing that, then nobody has an excuse. - Yeah, absolutely, I totally get that. - And it has an impact, like what's interesting too is that the circumstances of an author's life will have an aesthetic impact in the way that the book is structured and how it appears on the page. - Exactly. - It's an aesthetic choice, but that aesthetic choice is an outgrowth of like, oh, I have to get my daughter in school, I think it's precisely got to pick her up. Oh, today she's home sick for three days. Okay, there you go, there you go. So you talk about, you know, process and working in these like brief scenes. I also read that you often will begin by hand. Like you'll notice something, you jot it down in a notebook and then eventually it gets transcribed or typed in some fashion. Can you just like clarify that process a little bit more for people? - You know, I used to write, I used to write almost everything by hand. I mean, even as I was writing a book, I would write it by hand and then not put it through the printer until the last minute because it seemed once it came out of the printer, it felt like it was semi-published and it felt like it was hard to change it. But I got over that. So I can, you know, I can scratch it up the minute it comes and my handwriting is obviously getting much worse. But yes, it's again, if a scene can come to me at any time, I may be on the subway or whatever. And so if I write the actual scene down, I can't take notes about it because I learned that if I take notes, it waters it down. And when I go back and look at the note, I realize, oh, but the urgency, the urgency of the scene has to somehow land on a page somewhere, on a napkin or something, even if it's just one paragraph. So that's what I do. And then I will find hopefully a place for it or not. So let's just try to drill down a little bit more. Like, let's say that you're having, there's a scene where Lucy Barton is visiting Olive in her apartment or where she lives and they're sitting down and they're kind of having a conversation and telling each other's stories. You are on the subway and you have, or you're in your car and you have a vision of this scene. What will you write down? What might you write down? - I'll write down exactly the narrative itself. I will go into that narrator's voice and I will write down, you know, as if it was gonna be on the page. I mean, I rewrite all the time, but I will go to it as though I was actually writing that story. But it just has to be a paragraph. It doesn't have to be much, but it has to be in the voice of the narrator. - The stories that you tell in these pages about these sort of unrecorded lives, as Lucy says. You know, these ordinary people who don't write books, who don't have fame or notoriety, they're just living ordinary lives. And yet the stories that are embedded within those lives are utterly riveting. - Yeah. - I'm curious to know how you create those stories. You know, the story, I mean, I'm trying to think of one off the top of my head, but there was one about this young woman. I'm blanking on her name, who goes to visit the psychic and the psychic tells her that she's gonna die. - Oh, yeah, Addie Beal, yeah. - Addie Beal, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, just like, there are endless examples of this in this book, but like, where do those originate from? Are you pulling from your actual life? - Pieces of them. Like I actually did know a woman a thousand years ago who went to a psychic and was very excited about it. So that actually was something that I pulled back from a million years ago. But other pieces that, I mean, the stories themselves are pulled from having watched people maybe even in this town and thought, I wonder what their lives are and then made it up. (laughs) Because I don't know, you know, I don't know. - Right, right, right. - You know, like the hair cutter or what's her name I can't remember, sorry. Anyway, one of all of the stories about the woman who cut hair and had parakeets in her garage. And you know, that's just, you know, I just made that up, but I made it up from having seen a person who used to cut hair, another person who had parakeets. Do you struggle ever in crafting these stories? Like, are there false starts? Do you go down paths that don't work out? Because they're pretty elaborate. These stories become as they are pulled. But beautifully told and riveting. I mean, that's part of the magic of your work is that like all of a sudden I'm invested in this woman who cuts hair who has parakeets. - Okay, well, that's good because that woman who cuts hair, her story, I had tried to put that, I think that was a story that was gonna go on all of it yet. And it never worked. It wasn't, it just didn't work. And so I didn't put it in. I wrote it a million times, not a million times. I probably wrote it 25 times, different ways. And it just didn't work. So I thought, okay, you're not gonna fit in. But this character that I had developed stayed with me. So I thought, all right, let's try it if all of it's telling her story. - And then it worked. - I hope so. - Were the birds there the whole time? I'm just curious. - Yeah, they were. It was in one of the versions, it was even called parakeets. I don't know why, but. - Okay, okay. Well, when it comes to your day-to-day, we kind of talked about how maybe you've got this momentum having published and written all these books over the past decade, you still have bad days. - Oh, gosh, yes. - At the keyboard. - Oh my word. Oh my word, yes, absolutely. Yesterday, I just did nothing that was worthwhile at all. - Do you work every day? - Well, no, but I try to work. I try to work like five days a week, even if it means taking a day off in the middle of the week, maybe just working a few hours on the weekend day. I mean, I try and work a little bit five days a week. But yesterday, it was just garbage that I wrote and I understood that it was garbage. And so there we are. - And you just start over again the next day. - Yeah. - And do you have like word counts or page counts that you hold yourself to? - No, but back in the day when I was writing scenes, you know, I would, I would, when I had those two hour windows of time, if I didn't necessarily have an urgency that I was trying to get down, I remember telling myself, okay, three page, three, meaning handwritten pages, one side each, three pages or three hours. But I just told you I had two hours. I don't know. But I would tell myself, sit here, just sit here or you can write through pages and leave. And that was sort of helpful. But I've never really had trouble writing. I just had trouble writing well. - Yeah, well. But I think like honestly, the fact that you don't have trouble writing is a distinguishing factor. A lot of writers have trouble writing. - You know, I have always been grateful that my writer's block comes in the form of just writing badly. That's my writer's block. And it's, I think it's a much, hopefully better form. - Well, it kind of brings back to mind this word training. You know, when you were kind of assessing yourself and feeling like you had been, there was this long fallow period at the beginning of your writing life, you know, like for at least some odd years. And you were always, but you were always writing. - I was always writing, exactly. And I'm still always writing. And I'm still writing badly, but I don't write, I don't think I write badly as much, but maybe I do. (laughing) - Well, and, but maybe when you write-- - And I just learned to throw it out faster. - But also when you're writing well, maybe there's got to be the accumulated strength of all of that practice. - Absolutely, if you do anything repeatedly, you're going to get better at it. - So I want to read another thing that you have written. And it is the dedication at the front of this book. You write to my dearest friend and first reader of 40 years, Kathy Chamberlain, whose sensibilities have enabled me to be the writer I am and whose advice was responsible for the very voice of this book. - Yeah. - Tell me about Kathy. - I met Kathy 40 years ago, when I had first moved to New York City, I met her the second week I was there, I had signed up for a writing class at the New School. And she was in that class. And after about halfway through the class, after I had presented my story and she walked up to me and she said, a bunch of us meet, would you like to join us? And so I did. And it was a little bit of a writer's group, but I'm not really a writer's group type person. But anyway, the point is Kathy ended up staying friends with me and she was writing herself and ended up writing a really well received biography of Jane Walsh Carlisle a few years ago. But the point is that she and I were our first readers for years and years and years. And back in the day, when you actually had to mail the manuscripts, she would come over and we would pretend that we were secretaries writing these cover letters. And then we'd just send them all out. So she's been tremendously important to me. And I do think from the very beginning, she seemed to understand what it was I wanted to do on the page, which is why I say we're sensibilities. - Okay, I mean, from the very beginning of your career, not this particular book, but all of us. - When she approached me, when she first approached me that day, I mean, look, she knew me for 20 years, 25 years before 20 years, whatever, I'm not gonna admit, before anything even was published. So, but she still, I felt understood what I was trying to do. And that's why I mentioned the sensibilities. And then in terms of the narrator of this book, she was, when it pointed out to me, the very first scene I sent to her, she said, "You're gonna need a large narrator for this." And it was like, "Oh, my word." Now, I would like to think that I could have figured that out myself and I might have, but it would have taken me longer. But anyway, I realize, no, she's absolutely right. There's many things that are gonna be coming on in this book and the narrator needs to be large, but also, and these are my words, no, not hers, but inclusive. Like, I need to make sure that the reader feels safe. You know, that I've got the reader by my hand the whole time and I'm saying, "Okay, don't worry. "I know where we are. "Do not feel like we're getting lost 'cause we're not." And so I include the reader more directly than I usually do as a narrator. - Well, there's like, there are like instances, not a lot of them, but there are instances where you use like the first-person plural, like we-- - Right, also to say, to remind us, you know, we're going back to where he lived over here. - Right, right, right. It's like this omniscient kind of like, I don't even know, like the voice, like that kind of omniscient godly voice that's looking over the whole universe, and you have so many different characters that you're keeping track of that it makes sense that you would make that creative choice. - That's right, that's right. And that was really, that was a big thing in order for me to write the book, to find that narrative voice. - So, hearing you talk about this relationship that you have with Kathy, who's like your friend and trusted first reader all these years, and who knew you way back when. When you talked about writing your first novel and how you got to this place where you sort of surrendered, where you stopped trying to be like a capital-- - Right, right. - W writer, and you just started writing for a reader. Were you writing for Kathy? - No, I made up an ideal reader, and I still write for that ideal reader. And the ideal reader doesn't have any gender or anything like that. It's just a presence that, 'cause I realized years ago, I thought, wait a minute, if I can make up characters, then I can make up a reader, and so I do. And the reader is patient, but not really super patient, wants to come with me, but I have to earn their trust. So, it's always, you know, I'm always thinking, okay, how, for example, you know, how loud has the page been? Are you tired of noise on the page? Do we need some landscape to quiet us down? You know, for example. But then also, you know, am I telling you the truth? Because you're the reader and you're gonna know if I'm not. You know, all the way from the little things to the big thing, yeah. - That's super interesting. You've created an ideal reader in the manner that you create a character. - Yes. - Do you know what they look like? I guess they're face? - No, I don't, I don't, actually. No, it's just, it's a presence that sort of sits across from me. And I realized, okay, I owe you this. I'm gonna do this for you. - And then another part of the dedication that I want to touch upon is Jim Hoeonic. Is that how you pronounce his name? - Yeah. - You describe him as premier defense attorney of Maine and a generous source of information. - Yeah. - There is a crime narrative, like a subplot in this novel where I did wonder if you had to get into the weeds. - Yes. - Like procedurally, on a research level. And that seems like-- - And Jim Hoeonic was very, very helpful with that. The whole thing, yeah. - Making sure he got those details right. - Yeah, he would say this is what you have to do. He's got to get the computer, but this is where, yeah. Exactly. - So, another question that I have for you is sort of a wild card. And it has to do with something I read in prep. I think it was maybe even your husband who said this about how you play the piano. And it's very important to you creatively. I don't think I knew this about you. Or if I do, I forgot. But can you talk about piano and what it means to you? - I used to, I played the piano for many, many years. And then in college and after college, I played it in bars. But that was, like I would just play popular stuff. But the point is that when I was from seventh grade through high school, I studied classical music with this guy, who had, he had originally been a concert pianist and he ended up at the University of New Hampshire. Anyway, he was an older man. And he, and I had this such a fraught relationship because he was such a perfectionist and I, but he was amazing. He was such a good teacher. And he would say, can't you hear it, can't you hear it? I mean, and I was like, and I couldn't hear it. And then I learned to hear it. And I think of him every single time I sit down and play the piano now because, you know, he's long dead. And I feel like, oh, Irving, now I can hear, I know Irving. (laughing) I know, I know, I know, I know, he was such a, oh man. And he did end up loving me and I ended up loving him. But that's not the point. The point is that I mostly played Mozart now because that's what I mostly studied with him. And again, what I have learned is that every single note matters and how you land on every note matters. And that's what he was trying, he was trying to get me to hear the two note phrases that the first note is harder and the second note lightens up. And every time I play a two note phrase, I think, I hear it now Irving, I hear it. But it reminds me, of course, of my work because every word matters and how the words fall on the ear of the reader matters. - That makes sense. When I would think of like reading your work, there is, like I think I find this in every good book that I read is that there is a kind of cleanness, like it goes down easy. - Yeah. - And I feel like the writer has done the work in that instance, you know? And I'm not struggling to kind of get through. And when you reflect on like the process of getting your books done and getting the words on the page, are you one of these writers who sort of works slowly and kind of gets it right the first time? Or are you going back and achieving this sort of clarity that exists in your work, like in the edit? - You know, I think that as time's gone by, it's coalesced. I mean, so that I don't have to do as many drafts to get it because I can remember when I was writing Amy Nisabelle, the very first page of Amy Nisabelle, I literally wrote that out by hand, probably 200 times by hand on a piece of plain paper so that I could read it again and again and again and make sure every word, I mean, I was learning my rhythm. Now I look back and I think, yes, I was learning my voice and my rhythm because you know, the very first line of it is there was terribly hot that summer that Mr. Robertson left out. And any writings you would have scratched out terribly, but I thought, no, that's what I need. This is my voice. So anyway, going back to that and having learned so strenuously to do that, I think I have gotten faster at it. I don't need to rewrite quite as much, although I certainly get rid of stuff. I get rid of it all the time. - All right, so in closing, I want to ask you a little bit, I know people are, you know, writers are often superstitious or a little bit circumspect when it comes to talking about future books. You touched on it at the top. - Yeah. - You are venturing out of this, you're venturing out of the state of Maine with this next novel. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Out of the whole bunch of them, brand new person. - And it's a man. - It's a man. - Can you, I'm not gonna ask you to explain the plot. I know you don't probably even know at this point, maybe exactly what exactly is gonna happen, but can you talk at all about the origin of this man? Like, where did it begin? Like, you know, like, what did you see? Who did you hear? - It began, my neighbor here in the bill, here in Morbilly, Maine was talking to me about a time when he was in a boat off the coast of Massachusetts with his father and they saw this man's head floating along in their water and it turned out to be a man. He had fallen overboard and he was floating along and they picked him up and took him to shore and he was fine and his father had a drink with him a couple days later. And I couldn't get the image out of my hat. I thought, wait a minute. You are driving in a boat and you see a man's head and he's just like, floating. - Right. - I couldn't believe it. - When you first started talking about this, I thought you meant like a disembodied head. - Well, that's what I thought. That's what I thought when he was telling me. He said we saw this man's head and it, but it was like he was fine. He was just floating around. So for people listening, this is how a novel begins. For those of us throughout. - Exactly. I just couldn't stop the image. And then I started to think, but why was he floating around? - How far along are you in this book? - Well, I think, I feel like I'm probably 3/4 done, but then last night, all of a sudden realized, oh no, there's this whole thing I have to get in. So I have no idea. - No idea. - Well, I'll be excited to read it. And I'm grateful to have-- - You already knows the head. - Yeah, right, exactly. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen. - Yes, okay. - But it's a delight to talk with you. It's always a delight to read your work. - Love your chat too as well. - Congratulations on telling me everything. And I wish you well with this man's head floating. Is it the river or the ocean? Was it the-- - It was the ocean. - Oh, even weirder to have a guy just floating around in the ocean. - Yeah, yeah, it was amazing. It was just amazing. I don't know why my neighbor didn't realize how amazing it was. (both laughing) - Well, it's your good-- I was gonna say it, so you're a good fortune, right? - I know, but anyway, thank you so much. You're just lovely to talk to, so I really appreciate it. Thank you very, very much. - All right, everybody, there we have it. That was my conversation with Elizabeth Stroud. Her new novel is called "Tell Me Everything" available now from Random House. Great conversation with Elizabeth. So fun getting a chance to pick her brain and talk with her about her life and her work. For more on Elizabeth Stroud, visit her website, ElizabethStroud.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram. One more time, the new novel is called "Tell Me Everything" available now from Random House. Go get your copy right away. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, wherever you listen. Hit the subscribe button. You can also subscribe on YouTube. Follow me on social media, TikTok, Instagram. Twitter and Blue Sky. Sign up for my newsletter at Substack. Join the other people, Patreon Community, over at patreon.com/otherpplpod. Help keep this show going into the future. If you have two minutes, please give this show a rating wherever you listen. It helps the show find new listeners. Rate it, review it. It would be greatly appreciated. To get another people t-shirt or to join the other people book club, just visit the show's official website, otherppl.com. And if you want to read my latest book, it shares several of the words in Elizabeth Stroud's latest novels title. That's a cumbersome way of putting it. My novel is called "Be Brief and Tell Them Everything." Elizabeth Stroud's is called "Tell Me Everything." You know what I mean. So anyway, my book, "Be Brief and Tell Them Everything" is available in trade paperback, ebook, and audiobook editions. I narrate the audiobook. If that sounds good, go get a copy, read it, and let me know if you do, if you want to, or just read it. It's up to you. You know what I'm saying. "Be Brief and Tell Them Everything." It's my novel. It's out there waiting for you. All right, that's it for today. I will be back on Thursday with Mira Gonzalez for another episode of Brad and Mira for the Culture, a pop culture series that I have been doing with my buddy Mira since the spring, so stay tuned. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] How did American politics and our economy become so corrupt? Hi, I'm David Saroda, an investigative journalist at The Lever, former Bernie Sanders speechwriter, and Oscar-nominated writer on the film Don't Look Up. Join me on my new podcast, Master Plan, where we expose the secret scheme hatched in the 1970s that legalized corruption for the wealthy. With the help of never-before-reported secret documents and a few special guests, we'll look back at where it all began and figure out how to move forward. Listen and subscribe to Master Plan wherever you get your podcasts. [BLANK_AUDIO]
