939. Elizabeth Strout

hey everybody Welcome to the other people podcast a weekly Show featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers I am Brad lisy it's good to be with you I'm here in Los Angeles where it is currently about 112° 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 Tik Tok Instagram Twitter and blue [Music] sky so my guest today is Elizabeth Stout 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 I was unloading the dishwasher or loading it or something and I just I felt this Presence by I mean not literally but I was aware of this presence and 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 a character and a voice so I 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 even 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 all of a sudden I just pictured her older walking with her cane walking herself into that marinaa 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 pilzer prize for fiction back in 2009 for her novel and stories and titled Olive kitridge in her new book tell me everything Elizabeth Stout returns to the fictional town of Crosby Maine and to her beloved cast of characters including Lucy Barton Olive 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 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 substack Brad list. substack do.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 otherppl pod help 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 [ __ ] by Dalia de la Serna one of Mexico's most thrilling new writers The Collection is available now you can visit feminist press.org and use code res20 to get 20% off of your copy today again that's feminist press.org use the code res20 and get 20% off I should add that Reservoir [ __ ] 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 other ppl.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 wants again is Elizabeth Stout her new novel is called tell me everything available now from Random House Elizabeth strout is the number one New York Times best-selling author of several books including the novel Lucy by the Sea another novel called o William which was short-listed for the booker prize Olive kitridge which again won the Pulitzer Prize back in 2009 her debut Amy and Isabelle won the Los Angeles times art seiden bound award for first fiction as well as the Chicago Tribune Heartland prize Elizabeth has also been a finalist for the Penn Falkner 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 Stout with all of you right now so let's get to it here I am with Elizabeth Stout and her new novel one more time is called tell me everything um not so much at this point anymore because I live in Maine in a small town and 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 she'll tell me everything which is fabulous she's just that kind of person and that's very wonderful to you know 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 seen 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 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 how we live in times where there's so much intolerance and there is such a rush to judgment often times when it comes to people's transgressions yeah 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 try and relax although when does anybody ever relax because they're told to but that's what I'm that's what I'm telling you is the you know 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 it is along these lines and found it to be such a powerful moment I'm glad yeah I could feel that in 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 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 you don't have to like bear the responsibility of this entire narrative exactly 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 Con 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 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 going to 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's stories that would be a motif throughout the book that every so often that was going to 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 thisal world that you're creating yeah and and have been working on over several books now and I I think that I looked at a chart where it sort of tracks the main characters in your fictional universe and and tell me everything a lot of these characters are converging like you say Lucy and Oliver 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 it were bits and pieces right and I have had a lot of conversations with writers over the years and uh frequent refrain is how difficult the process is every time you begin it a new and I'm sure this applies to you as well but it does occur to me especially when I consider how productive you have been over the past decade You' a lot of books it's crazy yeah maybe it is a bit easier to access and to 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 um every single book I wrote I thought okay that's the end of them and then this one but but I will tell you that I'm working on an entirely different character now not even in main a man not related to anybody and I'm so interested in him so I'm not sure I'm not I mean 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 it feels that way but you know I've said that before so I don't dare say anything okay because like that was a question that occurred to me and I 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 sh 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 krid will not die on my watch I you know what I I almost like didn't even 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 cuz 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 going to die on my watch so that's 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 she should be I that's exactly I 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 her or not probably I don't know but she's not gonna die on my wife great that's lovely to hear and she's what she's what 90 91 9091 by the end of the book yeah yeah so she's probably got 10 more years in her who knows she she seems like she's got all sorts of it on the page you know but uh your books you know there's a line in the book that uh Lucy Barton speaks I believe where somebody is asking her or 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 that's why I write honestly it's because because ever since I was a kid I might have said this last time I'm so sorry if I'm repeating but 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 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 yeah 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 in the literary world the 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 faceted by people and I to this day I don't think there's anything 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 are you good at people out in your personal life like in conversation oh that's an interesting question well because I'm in Maine it's a little hard cuz you know 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 to be I think all writers are on some level I've I've listened 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 yeah and all of your books and I think one of the things I noticed as a writer when it comes to your Pros style I mean a lot has been made of the Simplicity of it and how paired down it is and how deceptive it is you know it's like how is it 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 right and 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 you know and I realize okay you know he's he's going to 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 arms folded against you know I see I see that stuff and I can just see him so clearly and I can 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 uh yeah is part of I think the power of it right right and I want I want to quote you when it comes to character uh it's a I think it's something that you did at lithub you did sort of a Roundtable interview with other authors and I'm going to read 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 pH I stand by that I was going to say it's always a relief when we agree with ourselves is it very much so so yes I do agree with that I I am not a thinker of ideas I mean I don't sit down you know I know I know people who do and that's fine but they they'll tell me okay this is the theme of my book and or you know and I'll think hm I don't know what the theme is in my book I'm just going to 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 start start there and then write in right into their novels from the big idea I think the more common uh Avenue in 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 that's what happens to me if I even can figure out the theme so to to pick at this quote just a little bit more you said uh all I seem to care about is getting my character right and I want to 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 um 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 I I might start with a character and 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 think okay can't 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 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 I I still love them I made them up so it's not 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 she's Olive so she just boom and I just felt I I was unloading the dishwasher or loading it or something and I'll just I felt this presence but I mean not literally but I was aware of this presence and 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 a character and a voice so I 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 even 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 all of a sudden 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 because it was her voice that I it was almost like a gold thread that was coming down from the 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 hm this is weird Okay but it makes me qu like I had this question arised as I was reading uh 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 to feel their emotional world and right in ways that are somewhat Supernatural and hard to explain yeah it made me made me think to myself like well what does Elizabeth stra think about like big spiritual questions and like do you have like a 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 and 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 because 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 her 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 have 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 um one of my books Suzanne Lin she says to her friend the lawyer she said I think it's our duty to accept the mer accept the burden of the mystery with 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 I think it's reflected in this book those kinds of questions and that kind of answer yeah I think there's a humility in that yeah I 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 glad that's the gift of a very skilled writer is the ability to keep the readers attention right it's kind of the goal I think of everybody who sits down to tell you 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 how you do it because it's sort of deceptive there's not a lot there's not like any car chases happening you know it's not it's not pyrot Technic it's like two people sitting in 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 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 an 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 but you know 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 and also I think to tell the truth as much as you can because I think that readers can sense what's true and what's not and I've often thought back you know to when I was young young and I would put let's say I was in the dentist room or something you dentist 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 the way in which we all sort of contain multitudes yeah and and something you're so great at is like showing a character in his or her lower moments or kind of like you know putting their flaws on display whether it's Pride or some kind of like narcissism or ego but then a chapter or two later showing them at their very best yeah 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 isn't 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 bad or good well I'm thinking of Margaret uh B Bob burgess's wife and like she's a she's a minister I forget which church unarian unarian 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 when she's got the audien's like the congregation's eyes on her and it was just so recognizable to me I was like yeah I know I know people like that not bad people but people who you know sort of like really feed on attention right 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 uh 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 like really painful experiences in life can make people much more human it 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 and you're humbled and as a result of that you're you're going to be a bigger person that 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 ultimately 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 talk about the sinat what idea you know that came to me and I don't remember um I just don't remember I was a child when I first heard that term and I think and I mean is Lucy says that she came across it in a fable a book of fables or something like that I think she does I'm not sure 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 SCH over you know it was a black and white drawing and I just all of a sudden I remembered it and I thought Bob the sinine 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 I think so I know there's so many times in the book where it says and so they call Bob somebody calls Bob it's like I almost called it calling Bob you know who who else you going to call right yeah exactly right precisely so I want to uh 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 brace yourself okay you 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 down it's like I've been training for a marathon my entire life and now there's an acceleration happening yeah I I stand by that thank goodness yes I do great I'm two for two so good I know this uh the the word that I want to zero in on is training yeah I 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 you know with those notebooks those big fat notebooks I mean that I don't if they know they have them anymore but you know um 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 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 365 38 whatever the math is of those years and but I stopped telling people that I was you know that I knew I was WR because it gets embarrassing they're like well what have you published to say nothing so when that book came out people said oh what a what an overnight success of course and you know it wasn't it was about a 40y 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 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 Isabelle and I had written it as a story which thank goodness nobody wanted or I wouldn't wouldn't have returned to it but I I I needed to write that so that was the first novel that I wrote and I worked on it worked on it and I can remember at some point realizing oh nobody's going to 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 I'm 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 because then I could write from myself to this reader and that was very very helpful for me because I realized just put it down and I looked 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 scen way yes and that's because when um my daughter you know she was young I mean she 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 I really had to I learned rather soon that if I was trying to write something it wasn't going to 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 the sensation then 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 you know would go together or not but that's what I that's how I learned it from not having enough time to sit and try and plot my way through because I recognized if you're plotting your way through it's going to sound like you're plotting your way through well and I think too it's like this lesson that there's never really an excuse right like 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 15minute 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 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 it's exactly yeah it's an aesthetic choice but that aesthetic choice is an outgrowth of like oh I have to get my daughter off school precisely got to pick her up oh today she's home sick for three days okay there you go there you go right 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-public and it felt like it was hard to change it but I got over that yeah 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 you know a scene can come to me at any time I mean I can be on the subway or whatever and so if I write it 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 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 let's just uh let's try to drill down a little bit more like let's say that you're 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 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 going to be on the page I mean I rewrite all the time but 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 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 she's gonna die yeah Addy Beal yeah Addy 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 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 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 because I don't know you know I don't know right right you know like the the hair cutter what's her name I can't remember her name the hair uh sorry anyway one of olive 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 in crafting these stories like do you are there false starts do you go down paths that don't work out because there pretty elaborate these stories become as they are told but 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 parakeet 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 going to go in Olive again 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 going to fit in but this character that I had developed stayed with me so I thought all right let's try it if Olive is telling her story and then it worked I I hope so yeah were the were the birds there the whole time I'm just curious yeah they were it was one of the versions was even called parakeet I don't know why but okay okay well when it comes to your day-to-day uh we kind of talked about how maybe you know you've got this momentum uh 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 nothing you work 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 week you know maybe just working a few hours on the weekend day I mean you know I I try and work a little bit five days a week but yesterday just I mean it was just garbage that I wrote and I understood that it was garbage and so there we are 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 twoh hour Windows of time if I didn't necessarily have an urgency that I was trying to get down I 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 three pages and leave and that was sort of helpful but I've I've never really had trouble writing I've just had trouble writing well yeah well but I think like honestly yeah 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 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 assessing yourself and feeling like you had been there was this long fallow period at the beginning of your writing life you know like 30 some odd years and you were always right 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 I don't know well and but maybe I just learned to throw out faster but also when you're writing well maybe you're there's got to be the accumulated strength of all that practice I absolutely if you 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 uh 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 uh signed up for a writing class at the news school and she was in that class and after about halfway through the class after I had presented my story you know 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 group but I'm not really a writers 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 carile 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 you know she would come over and um we would pretend that we were secretaries writing these cover letters and then we just you know 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 her sensibilities okay I mean from the very beginning of of your career not this particular book but all the book from the very when she approached me when she first approached me that day I mean she look she knew me for 20 years 25 years before 20 years whatever I'm not going to before anything even was published so but she still I felt understood what I was trying to do and and that's why I mentioned the sensibilities and then in terms of the narrator of this book she was the one who pointed out to me the very first scene I sent to her she said you're going to 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 realized no she's absolutely right there's many things that are going to be going 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 because 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 just say to remind us you know going back to where he lived over here right right it's like this omniscient kind of like uh I don't even know like the voice like that God 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 W writer and you just started writing for a reader were you writing for Kathy like no I made up um 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 and because 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 I and the reader is patient but not really super patient wants to come with me but H 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 so you know am I telling you the truth because you're the reader and you're going to 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 a an ideal reader in the manner that you create a character yes do you know what they look like I guess their face I don't I don't actually no it's just it's a presence that sort of sits across from me and I realize okay I owe you this I'm going to do this for you and then uh another part of the dedication that I want to to touch upon is Jim hoan is that how you pronounce his name yeah he you 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 I did and that and Jim Hanan was very very helpful with that the whole thing yeah making sure you get details right yeah he would say this is what you have to do he's going 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 and it's very important to you creatively I don't think I knew this about you or if I do I I forgot but can you talk about piano and what it means to you I used to I played the piano for many many many years and 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 you know seventh grade through high school I 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 Frau relationship because he was such a perfectionist and I but he was amazing he was such a good teacher and 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 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 play mosart now because that's what I mostly studied with him and um 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 matter matters and how the words fall on the ear of the reader matters that makes sense yeah when I think of like reading your words there is I like I think I I find this in every good book that I read is that there is a a kind of cleanness like it goes down easy yeah uh 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 right when 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 um as 's gone by it's it's coalesced I mean so that I I don't have to do as many drafts to get it because I can remember when I was writing Amy and Isabelle the very first page of Amy and Isabelle 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 is it was terribly hot that summer that Mr Robertson left town and any writing teacher would have scratched out terribly but I thought no that's what I need I need this is my voice so anyway going back to that and having learned learned so strenuously to do that I think I have gotten faster at it you know I don't I don't need to rewrite quite as much although um 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 Main with this next novel yeah yeah yeah yeah out of the whole the whole bunch of them brand new person and it's a man it's a man can you can you I'm not going to ask you to explain the plot I know you don't probably even know at this point maybe exactly what exactly is going to happen but um 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 um my neighbor here in the build here in in our building I me was talking to me about um 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 the water and it turned out to be a man he' 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 head I thought wait a minute you are 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 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 but it was like he was fine he was just floating around so for for people listening this is how a novel Begins for Elizabeth trout 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 I feel like I'm probably 3ars done but then last night I all of a sudden realized oh no there's this whole thing I have to get in so I have no idea no idea yeah well I'll be excited to read it and I'm grateful you'll recognize the head yeah right exactly you heard it here first ladies and gentlemen okay uh but it's a delight to talk with you it's always a delight to read your work talk to you as well congratulations on tell me everything and I wish you well with this man head floating in is it the River or the ocean was it the it was the ocean oh even weirder to have guy just floating around the ocean yeah yeah was amazing it was just amazing I don't know why my neighbor didn't realize how amazing it was well it's your good I was going to say it's your good fortune I know but anyway thank you so much 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 Stout 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 strout visit her website elizabeth.com follow 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 Tik Tok Instagram Twitter and blue sky sign up for my newsletter at substack join the other people patreon community over at patreon.com pod help keep this show going into the future if you have 2 minutes please give this show a rating uh 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 other p.com and if you want to read my latest book it shares several of the words in Elizabeth Stout's latest novels typ title that's a cumbersome way of putting it my novel is called be brief and tell them everything Elizabeth Stouts 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 Audi book editions I narrate the audio book if that sounds good go get a copy read it and uh 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 [Music] you all right that's it for today I will be back on Thursday with Mera Gonzalez for another episode of Brad and merera for the culture a pop culture series that I have been doing with uh my buddy Meera since the spring so stay tuned [Music] oh oh oh [Music]