Have you ever felt so utterly torn between the creative yearnings of your soul and the insistent voice pushing you to “be practical”? For me, that tension has been one of the greatest struggles in crafting a life of meaning. But the four legendary writers joining us today have walked that razor’s edge their entire journeys – shedding conventions, giving voice to essential truths, and revealing the transformative power of stories to spark radical empathy and human connection, while also living their own, beautiful, full, and true lives.
You’ll hear from the celebrated novelist Sue Monk Kidd, who takes us through her profound journey from the limiting traditions of her Southern youth to the contemplative awakenings that allowed her to birth tales reflecting the full complexity of the human experience.
Then, you’ll hear from James McBride, the award-winning author and musician, who shares how music gave him the discipline to navigate any path while fiercely protecting his creative spark – ultimately allowing his stories to help others truly see one another.
Next up, you’ll learn from the inimitable Kate DiCamillo, two-time Newbery winner, who opens up about longing as the essence driving her fiction and how writing eased the ache of feeling unseen as a chronically ill child.
Finally, bestselling novelist Ann Patchett, whose clarity has been a compass since declaring her dream at 5 years old, illustrates the power of integrating our sacred callings through her pioneering writing process.
As we explore their paths and perspectives on life, I’m reminded of times I’ve let my own creative callings take a backseat out of fear, or prioritizing feeling safe or comfortable over self-expression. Yet these extraordinary humans revealed what’s possible when we wholeheartedly embrace and express our essential selves. So I invite you to bring an open mind and heart as we glean wisdom that just may provide the nudge you need to begin uncovering your own hidden paths to a life of truth and beauty.
You can find Sue Monk Kidd at: Website | Instagram | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Romie
You can find James McBride at: Website | Instagram | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Aviva
You can find Kate DiCamillo at: Website | Facebook | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Sasha
You can find Ann Patchett at: Website | Instagram | Listen to Our Full-Length Convo with Sasha
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Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codesphoto credit: Tony Pearce, Chia Messina, Catherine Smith Photography
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Episode Transcript:
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:00:00] I’m very interested in enlightening someone’s mind if I can possibly manage it, but what I want most of all is to touch their heart. I want to jolt their heart because I really think that’s the way in to other human lives. The shortest distance between anything is a story that jolts the heart.
Jonathan Fields: [00:00:23] So have you ever felt so just utterly torn between the creative yearnings, the desire to be just fully expressed and the insistent voice pushing you to just be practical? For me, that tension has been one of the greatest struggles in crafting a life of meaning and full expression. But the four legendary writers joining us today have walked that razor’s edge their entire journeys, shedding conventions, giving voice to essential truths, and revealing the transformative power of stories to spark radical empathy and human connection while also living their own beautiful, full, and true lives. You’ll hear from the celebrated novelist Sue Monk Kidd, who takes us through her profound journey from the limiting traditions of her upbringing to the contemplative awakenings that allowed her to birth tales reflecting the full complexity of the human experience and just do gorgeous, incredible, resonant work. Then you’ll hear from James McBride, the award winning author and musician who shares how music gave him the discipline to navigate any path while fiercely protecting his creative spark, ultimately allowing him to create stories that help others truly see one another. And next up, you learned from the inimitable Kate DiCamillo, a two time Newbery winner who opens up about longing as the essence driving her fiction, and how writing eased the ache of feeling unseen as a chronically ill kid. And finally, best selling novelist Ann Patchett, whose clarity has been encompassed since declaring her dream at five years old, illustrates the power of integrating our sacred callings through her pioneering writing process. So as we explore their pasts and perspectives on life, I’m reminded of times that I have let my own creative calling, my yearnings, take a backseat out of fear, or maybe prioritizing feeling overly safe or comfortable over self-expression. These extraordinary humans reveal what’s possible when we wholeheartedly embrace and express our essential selves. So I invite you to bring an open mind and an open heart as we glean wisdom that just might provide the nudge you need to begin uncovering your own hidden paths to a life of truth and beauty. So excited to share this spotlight conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.
[00:02:46] So up first our guest is Sue Monk Kidd, the celebrated author behind novels like The Secret Life of Bees and The Book of Longings. Growing up in the 1950s in the South, she experienced firsthand how society can impose strictures on women to be proper or silent or self-negating. By the time I left for college, he shares, my real self was already beginning to disappear inside those little cages in our powerful conversation. Sue takes us through her profound journey of shedding those constraints, layer by layer, from her early awakenings, exploring the contemplative life to her feminist rebirthing. Sue’s story is one of reclaiming voice, embodying wholeness and allowing the essence of one’s truth to flourish. Her path wasn’t easy, but as you’ll hear, it became the fertile ground for Sue’s incredibly impactful novels and deep empathy they spark in readers worldwide. Here’s Sue. When you were growing up, also beyond Faith was just sort of like a cultural assumption about the role of women. And I was reading a line that you wrote where you wrote, by the time I left for college, my real self was already beginning to disappear inside. Strictures of properness pleasing silence and self-negation little cages everywhere.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:04:01] Yes, well, I did grow up in the 50s and 60s in the south, and I very structured kind of religious experience. So you can imagine there was a lot of women being submissive and being on the peripheries and not being at the center of meaning making in the religion or having any kind of role. So it’s kind of like you’re a goldfish in a bowl, swimming in water you don’t see for a long time, and it’s true. But when I went to college, I had left behind so much because I didn’t have the courage, I guess, to really break out of these structures that had raised me and that I had internalized so deeply. So it took, as I said earlier, the jackhammer. But I think that Well, I moved through epochs. I say. I kind of shed that skin slowly, and I can look back now at this point in my life and try to integrate all of these things together. But there was a movement, an evolution to all of this. And it really started with not the feminist kind of dissident experience I had, but more of turning to the interior life. That’s where it began for me, because I had no sense whatsoever of the inner life, the reality of that until I read Thomas Merton and then Carl Jung, and I was overwhelmed with this idea and my feeling was like, hey, why didn’t anybody tell me about this? How could this be? And nobody told me. So I had a phase where I was really exploring in depth this world, this contemplative inner life. And then came this sort of feminist awakening, and it just kept evolving over the decades, you know?
Jonathan Fields: [00:05:59] Yeah. The contemplative phase. Did that touch down for you in college, or was it later on when you really started to step back into writing?
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:06:07] Well, for me, I guess I’m a slow learner because I was 30 years old. As I said, I was really all in until around 30. And then I picked up The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton.
Jonathan Fields: [00:06:22] Which has changed so many people, you.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:06:24] Know, it really has. And he was remarkably influential in my life and continues to be actually. But his gift to me through that book was the awareness, as I said, of the interior life. And I read that book just astonished it wasn’t so much, even his journey into this monastic world that he describes in the book, it was this world within. And so yeah, I began to explore that. And that opened my creative life, actually. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:07:00] Because up until then, I mean, you end up going to TCU for university, but then you also, instead of writing, you say yes to nursing for the better part of a decade before this awakening that you start to describe. I’m curious. I want to dive into sort of like this, what happened around the time of 30 years old. But I’m really curious about the journey in nursing and saying yes to that. And then what led you to say, okay, so after, you know, like eight, ten years in this space and being deeply of service and building a life and a living around it, it’s time to be done with this.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:07:37] I would say that it probably turned for me somewhere in my adolescence, because up until I was maybe 15 or 16, I was going to be a writer. I’m not sure it was innate in me, but from a very early age I loved story. I loved my father’s storytelling, I loved writing, I, I was going to be a writer. And then I was sitting. I was sitting in home economics class one day, and the teacher wrote a list on the blackboard of professions for women, the topic of the day. Now this is like 1963, maybe, or four. The topic of the lesson for that day was something about women working outside the home. Oh, horrors. You know, so I remember sitting there with bated breath, waiting for her to write, write her on the board. But she she never did. There was teacher, librarian, stewardess, wasn’t even a flight attendant nurse, and so on. This made a deep impression on a very impressionable girl Myself and I worried about it. I remember going around worrying about this. Well, what am I doing? Is this going to work? And I went to see the guidance counselor and I asked her about it and she said, oh, I think you could write as a hobby.
Speaker3: [00:09:03] Mm.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:09:04] Um, but it would really be smart to take up a profession that you could fall back on in case something happened to your husband. This is where we were in my world, anyway, in that small world. And so I said, okay, I guess that’s what I do. And so I tossed over this dream, this idea with great pain, actually. And, um, decided, what should I be, a teacher or a nurse? I picked nurse. I’m not sure I was a terribly great nurse, but I didn’t kill anybody. I mean, I it worked out, but somewhere around 30, actually, it was after reading Merton And discovering this powerfully present in her life that my creative life woke up again. I wanted to carry on a conversation with my soul and I wanted to express it. This desire kind of welled up and I got really homesick for myself. I think, you know, homesick for that part of me I had left behind an orphaned and. And so I remember walking in the kitchen when I, on my 30th birthday and making this announcement to my husband, who was sitting there with our two toddlers, trying to, as I recall, get them to eat their cereal. They were singing something like snap, crackle, pop or something, and I interrupted and told them, I’m going to become a writer. And that was it. I mean, I of course, the next day I’m thinking, what did what did? I don’t know anything about writing. What did I just do? But it somehow took from me and I began to write and work, and within a year I had left nursing behind and moved into writing full time. Mhm.
Jonathan Fields: [00:10:55] I’m curious about the moment that you make this declaration, because as you reflect on this, this is, you know, you remember the day, you remember the scene, you remember the moment. So it was clearly powerful. And this was a flag in the ground for you. Have you talked to your husband or your kids about that moment also and sort of explored, was this anywhere near as meaningful for you, or was this just kind of like, you know, another, another moment in the kitchen, sort of like in everyday life? I’m curious how different people experience a single moment where, for one, it’s profound, but for others it may be very different. Yes.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:11:31] That’s interesting. For me, it was a big annunciation that had been coming and coming and saying it out loud. I was really making that annunciation to myself. Mm.
Speaker3: [00:11:44] Uh, this.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:11:45] Is, um, your path and your returning to yourself. And it was a homecoming for me, and I’m sure that’s why it was so powerful, because it was like returning or coming home again. The prodigal girl, my husband, I remember he told. He turned and looked at me and said, well, that’s that’s great, you know, good for you. Something like that. And he was always supportive. And yet I don’t think he caught in the least the profundity of that moment for me. I mean, later he did, and later we discussed it. My daughter Ann, who has also become a writer, who was the two year old sitting at the table that day. Of course, they don’t remember any of that, but we’ve talked about it many times since. And, um, how what became of that one tiny moment where I really never looked back, even though I was afraid and had a lot of fear about what I was doing, and had to gather my courage over and over again to go out there and put my voice in the world. I was home and I was going to do it one way or the other. Mhm.
Jonathan Fields: [00:12:54] When you say yes to that and you start to write. So it’s interesting. I’m curious when you think about your time in nursing and then you’re starting to write, even though over the course of that next year you really, you sort of closed the door professionally on what you had been doing. I have to imagine that the time that you spent steeped in empathy, steeped in sort of like trained observation, was in some way deeply informative to the way that you stepped into writing. I’m curious whether from the inside out, that was your experience also?
Speaker3: [00:13:25] Yes.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:13:26] I think it made a big impact on me that time I spent in nursing many years. What I learned was that people suffer. There’s pain. There’s so much need in the world for us to open our hearts to one another. And there’s there was it was almost overwhelming, in a way, what I encountered in the lives of those people I took care of on pediatric units, um, medical surgical units, even in nursing school and a psychiatric ward. And I think I never forgot that. I’m sure it had to have made an impact on me somehow, because what I came to later, I didn’t realize quite how much I believed this until it finally formed in my mind that really the point for me and the power of literature and of writing is empathy. You know, the highest value in my kind of world, I guess, ideally, is compassion. I think there’s no higher value for me to aspire to in the world, not belief, compassion. And if we can somehow tap into this empathy, I think the empathy is the portal into that. So I was looking around for a reason I wrote. Someone asked me that in an interview. Why do you write? And I was maybe 40 years old. And I sat back and I thought, yeah, why do I do this? Really? Is it just simply because I have a gift or I have a desire, or I have a longing or it’s my true home or whatever.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:15:14] Somehow that became not enough for me. I wanted my work to serve something larger than that, even though I think that is actually enough, frankly, for us to, you know, experience our own gift and give it to the world. That’s a great thing. But I wanted it to mean something. And there’s a little story. I was in Chicago at a bookstore and a gentleman, a really well-dressed, rather affluent looking man, said to me, I read The Secret Life of Bees. He said, my wife made me. I really didn’t want to read it, but my wife made me. And I said, well, was it very painful for you? And he said, no, actually, I made a connection to this world that I did not expect and I did not see coming. He said, I’m from this. He was a CEO of some important corporation in New England, and he came from, as he described it, a very wealthy family. And he said, I had nothing in common with this little girl from South Carolina and these African American women. He said, but when I read your book for the first time, I felt like I sort of understood their world, and I became them and they became me. And I went. That’s why I write. It really hit me. That’s it. Because it creates empathy and that is a reason to do it now.
Jonathan Fields: [00:16:51] It’s so powerful. It’s like a gateway to seeing ourselves in others and others in ourselves. Which brings me back to something that you shared last year, actually on your Instagram account. And I’m going to read your words because it’s a little long, and I didn’t give you a heads up so that you could pull this up and read it yourself. But you wrote for the woman I overheard say she wants to write a memoir, but can’t help feeling it’s self-indulgent. May I go on record here? Writing memoir is gloriously self-indulgent, and I’m perfectly okay with that. Women have been told so many times to be selfless that it can actually feel uncomfortable when we attempt to search for one. When I write memoir, I’m undoubtedly in search of wholeness. Maybe I’m trying to resolve something, heal a wound, redeem some part of myself that has been orphaned or lost, or give a voice to what has been silenced. Maybe I’m trying to step into my truth. Maybe I’m trying to reveal myself to myself. But here’s something I didn’t expect. Writing memoir can also be gloriously other indulgent. The process not only takes me into myself, it frees me from myself.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:17:54] I found that to be true. The further I go into my own story, my own deep, the freer I am, because I’m not consumed with it. The unconscious world, as Jung particularly taught us, will be there to remind you over and over again what you don’t deal with, you know. And so we have to kind of be conscious of things in one way to do that is to write about them. And it frees us from that, and we can kind of resolve it somehow, find peace and wholeness through it and move on. So it’s actually very other oriented, I think. And when I finished writing the Book of Longings, I took the manual, I printed it all out, and I took the manuscript downstairs from my study and handed it to my husband, who hadn’t read a word of it. That’s our way. We do it, I write it. He doesn’t. He knew what I was writing. He knew that I was writing a story about the wife of Jesus. His comment on that was, oh, what could possibly go wrong there? But I handed it to him, and I watched him kind of out of the corner of my eye over the next day or so as he read the manuscript, and when he finished, he looked up and he said his first words out of his mouth were, there’s an awful lot of Anna in you. There’s an awful lot of you in Anna. And I knew what he was talking about. But my response to him was, there’s an awful lot of Anna in an awful lot of women and an awful lot of women in Anna. And it’s not just me. And I think that longing to have a voice in the world and to know our largeness is so palpable for us, um, in Anna’s prayer that she writes in this incantation bowl, she closes by saying, when I am dust, sing these words over my bones. She was a voice. I think that’s my prayer too.
Jonathan Fields: [00:20:00] Mhm. And that feels like a great place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project., if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.
Sue Monk Kidd: [00:20:12] To pay attention? To love. To be here now.
Jonathan Fields: [00:20:21] Mm. Thank you. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I love Sue’s take. And our next guest is James McBride, the legendary author, musician and screenwriter whose boundary defying work insists we pay attention to the deepest callings of our souls. In my experience, few artists embody the power of following your canonical creative path quite like James. As a young man, he chose music actually, over a more conventional career, a decision that ultimately led him to become a transformative storyteller, able to, in his words, make people care about each other. In this conversation, James shares how music gave him the discipline to navigate any path in life while fiercely protecting the creative spark from the cynicism that can just so easily extinguish it. His journey shows us that when we honor our intrinsic gifts and yearnings, we gain not just fulfillment, but profound impact. As you’ll hear, James novels like The Good Lord bird do just that, inviting us into deeper understanding and connection.
James McBride: [00:21:28] I think that music is, for me personally. I mean, if you’d asked me when I was 25, I’d have said, yeah, I wanted to play jazz for the rest of my life. But now I realize that what music did for me is what I hope it does for my sons and for my little program I run in my church, and that is it prepares you for a life of labor and learning and enjoyment. I mean, there’s nothing more enjoyable than driving down the street and listening to, you know, Sonny Rollins or The Doors or Beethoven or anything. That’s beautiful. I mean, you know, I’m I was listening to Mahalia Jackson yesterday. I mean, there’s nothing more pleasurable than enjoying the first, the highest art form of all, which I think music is. And so I think to study it just gives you a great appreciation for for life and for teamwork and for discipline and for the things that are important that help you do whatever you like to whatever you like to do. I think, you know, most of you, most of you are great scientists and engineers and architects and and attorneys. I mean, a lot of them have great, great experience with music. And I think that’s music. So I see music as you know, look, I could I could have supposed, I could have gone on to just the life of being a musician. But that wasn’t enough, really. Because music shouldn’t be your life. Really. Life should be your life.
Jonathan Fields: [00:22:53] Mhm. Yeah. I mean, you mentioned, um, the kid you’re working with now, I guess, uh, at the church, um, because that was pretty much your, I mean, the early days for you was really, I guess it was really just a big part of your family. You know, it was sort of like a church music, books. Sounds like your introduction to the music side also was sort of, uh, you know, the church needed people to play.
James McBride: [00:23:14] That’s true. Yeah. Well, you know, we grew up in the church, in the Baptist church. So we heard that kind of music growing up, and we listened to it at home. We didn’t have you know, I grew up in a time when you listen to records and you, you know, and you only had a certain number of records. So you listen to whatever was on the radio and whatever records you had at home. And I think it gave you a wider palette in terms of what you draw on later or what I drew on later when I became a musician, because you had to listen to what everybody else listened to also, as opposed to just listening to the kind of music that you thought you liked. So but yeah, I grew up in a, you know, in a church, and we always listened to music that swung hard, you know, that sort of heavy, hard swinging 1950s, 1960s gospel. Um, that is really, really one part of, of the so-called African American musical experience. But it’s it’s one of the most popular and one of the most affecting and sweetest. So it always made music special to me. I just can’t imagine a life without music. I just can’t imagine being a writer without having music as part of my vocabulary, you know?
Jonathan Fields: [00:24:28] Yeah. I almost wonder, um. I mean, when you. Do you go back and forth when you’re working on something? Between playing, composing and writing.
James McBride: [00:24:38] All the time. Yeah. All the time.
Jonathan Fields: [00:24:40] No kidding. You feel like that? Like you can feel the sensibility, sort of. Of the two interplaying with each other?
James McBride: [00:24:46] Um, I don’t know. I mean, I just do it to keep from going crazy, you know? I mean, you know, you you you you only have so much gas in the tank when you’re running these characters on the page, or they’re running you around on the page and you have to get up, you have to move around, but you don’t want to go, you know, to a coffee shop and start gossiping with somebody about nothing. So you sit down at the piano and you say, oh, I’m working on this. And I mean writing and music. Share this. They are about the process of failing continuously. And so you just learn to accept that failure and you absorb it, and then it pushes you to something that’s new and hopefully special or different. So the act of just getting your tail kicked every day by these two art forms that you know, you’re not really as good as people believe you to be at, it helps you live. It keeps you humble. It keeps you, keeps you healthy.
Jonathan Fields: [00:25:44] You know? Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting also because, um, sort of when I look at, um, the two together also and it sounds like from what I know, your approach to both, you know, it’s it’s not about structure. It’s not about sort of like building the outline and filling it in. It’s it’s about it’s jazz. Like, either way, it’s jazz.
James McBride: [00:26:08] Absolutely. I mean, but you know, you have to be careful when you say that.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:11] Yeah. okay.
James McBride: [00:26:12] Because I saw Bruce Springsteen one time in my life back in the 80s. He was at the Meadowlands, and I didn’t even want to go, you know, because I was like, I don’t like rock n roll, uh, you know, and man, the concert was four hours, and it felt like it was a half hour long. I mean, it was so good. It was so good. I mean, you know, the Clarence Clemons. This was when he was you know, I don’t know if you listeners even know who Bruce Springsteen is. I know.
Jonathan Fields: [00:26:39] They do. They do. I saw him play three years ago at, you know, what used to be the Meadowlands? Also for four hours. And my mind was blown.
James McBride: [00:26:47] Oh, he’s just a bad cat, man. I mean, it’s ridiculous, man. So, I mean, but my point is that if if it’s right, you just feel it. And, um, Bruce Springsteen’s got plenty jazz in his music. I mean, you know, in a he doesn’t, you know, his jazz isn’t supposedly, like, the most sophisticated, you know, but there’s plenty of jazz there. I mean, what is jazz, you know? You know, as as Louis Armstrong said, you know, if you have to ask, I really don’t know. You know, music that brings that moves to the heart, that makes you feel good inside, that gives you hope, And it makes you want to hug your neighbor. That’s Jazz and Bruce in that regard. Bruce Springsteen is loaded, man, because he’s, you know, he’s spent his entire career trying to make people see the best part of themselves and of others. And that’s really that’s what jazz should do. That’s what any good music should do. And that that includes all forms of classical music. So, you know, for me, jazz and blues and gospel have been part of my, you know, DNA, my musical DNA. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate, you know, uh, klezmer music or, you know, 18th century music or, you know, the composers like Virgil Thomas or whoever. I mean, everyone has a different song. And if you’re smart and if you have a liberal arts education, which I’m fortunate enough to have, you learn that if you if you want to enjoy life, you learn to appreciate all of it. You know, I completely agree.
Jonathan Fields: [00:28:20] I think my reference to jazz was more just and this is I play guitar for most of my life. I don’t play jazz, but, um, but like you said, it’s to me it’s it’s the reference is more about knowing the notes, developing a certain amount of craft, but then holding everything lightly and being responsive to the moment and like making it about the interactions and the play and the freedom.
James McBride: [00:28:47] Well, I mean, if you do that, it helps you in the rest of your life. If you can do that and you can get it from jazz, it helps you in everything you do. When I was working at the Washington Post, I used to work with an editor named Jeff Frank, and he later became friends, and he ended up at The New Yorker. And and now he writes books. And one day I was at his house and Jeff pulled out his guitar, and he turned out to be, like, a really good guitar player. I mean, like when I say good, I mean a musician level good. Not just like good because you’re friends, you know, you can play I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles. I mean, he could really play. And it made sense because that’s just who he was. He was a person who knew how to listen, but he also knew when to not listen and when to speak, you know, and it showed on the page in his work. So music teaches you to listen. And if you’re a writer, that’s your job. You know, that’s your job to listen to people and to, you know, to reflect back to them or to others what you’ve heard in a way that makes it palatable and makes us care about each other. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:29:55] The, um, you go to Oberlin, you end up in Columbia J. School and then out. And I spent the better part of a decade really on the journalism side of things. I mean, Boston Globe, um, it was Washington Post, the the last place you were?
James McBride: [00:30:10] Yeah, that was my last stop. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:30:12] Right. I mean i’ve heard you say something a couple of times in the past about your time there also, which is a journalists become cynics, which I’m kind of curious about.
James McBride: [00:30:20] Well, if you want to stay creative, you have to avoid the cynicism that journalism creates because, you know, journalism. False. You know, it’s it’s magnetized toward politics. They kind of go together some in some way. They’re like three fingers of one hand and three fingers on the other hand, and you shake hands. Okay. Well, that’s that’s six fingers. Well, the other four fingers, you’ve got to guard them, you know, carefully. Because if the cynicism and the blood and the guts from the first three fingers, first six fingers feed over to the rest of the fingers, then your whole hand is bloodied and wounded, and you’ll never be able to build a house. That’s a horrible metaphor, but my point is that cynicism is destructive in terms of creativity, and and creativity is what makes one of the things that makes America a very unique and very, very great place. Um, so creativity doesn’t happen when you’re picking up a video game About car thefts or some other bullshit. It just doesn’t happen. Excuse my language. It just doesn’t happen. If you want to stay creative, you should read books and walk the earth. Otherwise, you’re never going to journalists by comparison. Do get out and do things, but the level of cynicism that you allow into your life as a journalist will at some point simply will just pour water on your spark, your creative spark. So you have to be careful and that that cynicism doesn’t happen. That rather skepticism can roll in. That’s fine. Skepticism is fog. But cynicism is thunder and lightning. Rain. You just you gotta move. You can maneuver your way through fog and discover great things. But when it’s raining hard and the thunder. And you’re just looking for shelter. And there goes your story. Goodbye.
Jonathan Fields: [00:32:14] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. The, um, I guess the journalism bug had kind of left you, but the writing bug definitely didn’t, because I guess it was that same window, right? When you’re sort of you’re playing around full time, you’re touring when the bug sneaks back into you to return to your mom’s story and, and go a lot deeper into it.
James McBride: [00:32:35] Well, I always liked to write. I always just felt journalism was not creative enough for me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:32:40] Yeah.
James McBride: [00:32:40] That’s really the problem. It was just not, uh, it’s just not that creative, you know? So as an artist, I simply do what I can do best. And I can’t imagine not writing or living without words and without music. It would be very difficult for me, and I’ve been doing it so long now that I don’t know how else to live. I mean, I walk around with a pad in my pocket everywhere and a pencil everywhere. Everywhere I go. And No matter what I’m doing, even if I’m cutting the grass or working with plants or it doesn’t matter. Whatever I have always have. I have hundreds of notebooks laying around my house, really, and I never go back to look at them. You know, I just have these ideas. I write them down and I just forget it, you know? But it’s just you have to be a little bit obsessive and compulsive when you’re a writer and you’re always trying to be free, you know? When I met E.L. Doctorow, I felt like I was talking to and I talked to him for all of three minutes, but I was I felt like I was talking to a man who was working at his freedom. Mhm.
Jonathan Fields: [00:33:58] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting because you’re I know we talked for a heartbeat about the fact that you’re teaching music to kids now also. Are you still teaching writing over at NYU?
James McBride: [00:34:08] Yeah. Mhm. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:34:09] Because I’m curious. Because I’m I’m fascinated by it. Like if somebody comes into a room with you, what they’re looking for, what they think they’re looking for, what they think they need to actually step into this place of being a writer versus what you really feel matters.
James McBride: [00:34:26] Well, the young writers that I meet at NYU are really wonderful people. First of all, I don’t teach like, you know, honors classes and, you know, super duper writers who are trying to be, you know, write for super duper publications or magazines or anything like. I basically, you know, whoever signs up, you know, the first people to sign up before they of course, it’s limit are the ones in the class. And then I just make them write, make them write about themselves, and I teach I mostly focus on structure, you know, I mean, because you can’t really unless you can get time and place set centered in your story. Nobody you’re just blogging, you know, no matter how good you are as a writer in terms of like, no matter how fast you can run the 100 yard dash, a book is a marathon. So you can run 100 yards and beat everybody else. But after 100 yards, I’m just going to. I’ll be running backwards and I’ll go leave you behind because you don’t know how to do it. Structure. So I talk about structure quite a bit and I make them right. I send them out. I make them right. I don’t talk that much. We read a little Nietzsche. We read a little bit of Gary Smith, who’s a wonderful writer who used to work for Sports Illustrated, but he didn’t really write about sports. He wrote about life.
James McBride: [00:35:38] And then we write. That’s it, you know, and I hear their thoughts about things, but then we mostly write about what they know. So I sent them everywhere. I sent them all over the city and sent them there. I sent them to go get ice cream and cake. I’ll send them to the Bronx. I send them to go see what the plaque that said where Ebbets Field was. Go find a joke. Go get a haircut. Tell us what you see in the barber shop. I make them do that when they’re finished writing red ink, because all of the pages are bloody. But the game, young people, you know, they really are. I get a lot of inspiration from my students at NYU. I just loved the kids, man. They give me so much. They give me so much more than I could ever give them. When I think of young people in this country, you know, when I think of these kids who I meet at NYU, I’m encouraged and I’m inspired. All of this stuff that’s been happening lately is just encouraging and inspiring for me to witness. I’m delighted that so many young people have taken it upon themselves to to speak on behalf of people who cannot speak and to try to write things at a time when so many of them are having such personal difficulty and such deep personal challenges. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:36:56] I mean, it’s it is incredibly powerful to see what’s going on and to see so many people rise up and step out and actually say things and acknowledge things. And especially when people who feel drawn to, to deeply observe and then turn that into language that somehow, like what you said goes out into the world and in some way affects other people. You know, it’s sort of a powerful place to be, but also a place where I kind of I wonder if what the sense of responsibility that some people would feel in being the people who try and observe and then turn that into language that goes out into the world and in some way affect other people.
James McBride: [00:37:35] I don’t think that people who who do that sort of thing think that deeply about it. Mm. Um, and they probably should. I don’t think they do. So, you know, there’s that I mean, the fact is that. I don’t know people who who have an enormous amount of influence in terms of our sway in the world, don’t really think about how how far their words are reaching the clever ones that some of the evil ones do. They figured it out, you know? But look, the problem is that if you want to change society, your words, your deeds have got to reach deep into the bowels or into the the guts of whatever organization is involved, so that the producer of, you know, podcast 59 and the producer of CNN, you know, who works the night shift and the producer of Fox News and whoever is getting the message so they don’t just follow the crowd and just do the same story that the other guy did. I mean, that’s really the problem. I mean, it’s very unusual for me to get asked these kinds of questions that you’re asking because a lot of the people who do create the news or who follow the news, I just don’t go, don’t do their homework. I’ve done many, many dozens, hundreds of interviews.
James McBride: [00:38:57] And oftentimes the people are just not prepared and they just don’t do the homework. You know, when I was at Columbia, one of the things that they really forced on us was they made us get ready for interviews. If you weren’t ready for interviews and you brought your story back and it wasn’t good, they just sent you out and made you do it again. Of course you didn’t like it, but you did it. You know, nowadays I you know, I’m interviewed by dozens, dozens of journalists who oftentimes just don’t even do their homework, I understand. Look, you know, I’m trying to read the book. That’s okay. I understand, but you can tell that a lot of them are doing the homework out in the real world, you know? And, you know, with the with the 15 minute bit where someone takes a bit, a piece of shit, excuse my language and just blows it up into nothingness that’s passed around the world when there’s 200 million kids in the world. Go to bed hungry every night. There’s millions that go to bed hungry every night in this country. And we’re arguing about some Twitter feed or something. I don’t want to hear that. You know, look, if you’re going to be a reporter, do the job.
James McBride: [00:39:58] If you’re going to wear the mantle of First Amendment, and the 14th amendment is so that so many people died for. When you suit up, you better suit up all the way. Pull your socks on and put your sword on. And go out there and do the job. Don’t do a half way job. Doesn’t help. The answer begins right at home with all of us. You know, what do we do? Who we pay attention to? What do we read? What do we support? Have we voted those kinds of questions? A lot of us said, you know, I’m moving in that direction. I’m very I’m delighted about that. And that’s really doesn’t have anything to do with what my generation has done. That’s really coming from young people, you know, because these kids, these young people, they don’t have to do this and they’re doing it. And look, there’s a lot of raggedness to it, but it doesn’t matter, man. The ship, someone has got the wheel of the thing and they are spinning the wheel and the ship is turning. There’s nothing. You can’t stop this kind of thing. It’s kind of like the Vietnam War. You know, that little tiny island that just. You really just couldn’t be taken over. I mean, you can’t stop it when people, the spirit of people is greater than anything, it’s greater than evil. And it doesn’t need a lot of fuel to run. Evil and hatred is like a diesel engine that just gulps fuel. You have to just constantly pour it, you know, you got to keep that fire going. But when something is propelled by love and decency and honor and justice, true justice, it doesn’t. You know, it could. The car can run on popcorn and it’ll run for a long, long time. So we’re witnessing something special, even though this is an extremely difficult time.
Jonathan Fields: [00:41:41] Yeah, this feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. Um, so in this container of the name of the podcast is a Good Life Project.. So if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, I’m curious what comes up for you.
James McBride: [00:41:57] Oh that’s easy. Just love somebody. Put it in your work, you know, let everybody. It’s real quick. It’s real simple. Everything that we do is connected. Everything that you and I do connects to what someone else does. And that’s how the world works. So if you just love your neighbor, you’re making the world a better place in a real way. Mhm. Thank you.
Jonathan Fields: [00:42:28] Yeah. And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. I always love learning from James. So our next guest is Kate DiCamillo, a two time Newbery Medal winning author whose unforgettable characters and stories illuminate the path to connection even amidst life’s hardships, which she doesn’t shy away from writing about or speaking about. In fact, drawing from her own journey of overcoming childhood illness and her father’s absence, she weaves tales that just insist that we confront the darkness but always, always give us hope that we can endure and flourish. As you’ll hear Kate’s novels from because of Winn-Dixie to The Tale of Despereaux, they create portals into a young person’s world, one filled with both heartbreaking loss and transcendent joy. And her work really reminds us that by feeling into the universal longing every child knows, we begin to see ourselves and each other more fully. It’s an intimacy that allows Kate’s fiction to become this luminous field guide for how we truly live, as she captures the beauty and vulnerability of the human experience. Here’s Kate. I’ve heard you say in the past some variation of tell the truth, but always, always give them hope. When you’re writing for kids especially. Always tell the truth, but always give them hope. Which makes me curious. So always tell the truth. Like things aren’t always going to go your way. There are hard things you have to deal with. Be honest. Kids can handle that. Give them hope. It’s interesting because you’re not saying. Then give them hope that everything’s going to work out okay.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:44:01] No. Give them hope that they will be able to find connection. Joy. Sorrow that it’s okay. Those things, you know, it’s. You know, this is if you’ve poked around in me and my storytelling is there’s also a pushback to the some of my stories being dark. And to me, it always and I’ll, I’ll answer that question up on a stage to why are they so sad? Why are they so dark? Why do you let these bad things happen? And to me, I always think, well, good grief, do you think that your child is not living in this world? And, and you know, because almost always the darkness and the sadness comes. Those questions are from the adults, not from the kids. The kids know and and adults can’t bear to think about kids suffering, but they’re right here with us. The and and in the world is beautiful and it’s terrifying. And kids need and deserve stories that tell them that truth. It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying. You will find a way to walk through all this beauty and terror.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:19] Yeah, the hope is less. It’s going to be okay, but it’s. You’re going to be okay.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:45:24] Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s a that’s a beautiful, beautiful point. Yes. You’re you’re going to be okay.
Jonathan Fields: [00:45:32] Yeah, I know you. Um, you wrote a piece in time. What was it, 2018? Why children’s books should be a little bit sad, which really, you know, touches on this. You tell a story in that about, I guess, a kid who came up to you after you spoke and shared your own story of your childhood and and how things were would be okay.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:45:52] Yeah, it’s funny because, you know, uh, back in the old days when we when we all traveled and I would go into
Jonathan Fields: [00:46:01] The before times.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:46:03] [laughing] In the before times, I would go into schools and um, and talk to kids and, you know, do a presentation. They always want you to have a PowerPoint. So, okay, here’s my PowerPoint. And it goes back to this thing about why am I standing up here talking to you? Okay, well, I’m going to have to tell you the truth. This is part of how I became a writer. And part of it is that, uh, my father left the family when I was young. I mean, I think that’s part of why I write. I also think part of why I write is because I was sick all the time as a kid, and I spent so much time alone and in my head and in stories. And I think that’s part of why I write. So I tell all this to the kids. I tell them that my father left. I tell them that I was sick all the time, and whether there’s a kid that comes up to me afterwards and wants to talk about that. Or sometimes something electric will happen among the kids where they will make the connection. As I’m talking, all these bad things happened, and yet those bad things gave you the gift of this writing. And it’s like. Exactly. And the room, it doesn’t always happen, but when they make that connection collectively, then it’s just like, oh, and then they can see that, um.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:47:26] It’s funny because it takes me all the way back to it’s totally different thing, which is, uh, outlining your story. Right? Because, uh, I’m just thinking how we want to present things to kids as linear, this and that. And because that’s the way we want the world to work, and that’s the way you give you you rest some meaning out of the chaos. Right? But I was in this big auditorium in Connecticut, and I was talking about how I don’t write with an outline. And I just I just can’t. And a little boy raised his hand and said, what if you were in a class with a teacher who said that you can’t write a story unless you outline that you have to turn the outline in first? And I said, is your teacher in the auditorium now? And he said, yeah, that’s her right there. It’s like, okay. So then I turned to her and I said, if I was the child sitting in your classroom and you wanted me to write a story, but I could not write it for you unless I outlined it first, it wouldn’t be able to do it. And there’s all kinds of different ways to write, and everybody does it differently.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:48:42] And it is kind of that thing of, we have to give you rules, but we have to let you open to possibility, and we have to be encouraging you to constantly, you know, look, if you like, but you’re going to have to leap. Right. And so that’s what a story gives you. That’s what experience where you’re not going to be. Able to make yourself safe because you’re sick or because a parent is missing and you don’t understand why. But these things, these what seems pathless actually can become a path because it’s like we all, we we as adults long for the rules to hold. Right? It’s just like, um, when when somebody and you know this too, when somebody raises their hand and says, how do I write a book? How do I do it? We all want somebody to tell us this is the way and we just want I want to be told that. But I know for a fact that I’m going to have to wander through the, you know, the down the long, dark hallway, um, for a long time. And the only thing I can do is keep on walking down the hallway. I don’t, you know, each book is different, every writing experience is different. And we don’t know what the rules are.
Jonathan Fields: [00:50:03] Yeah, I feel like we get caught up in easy over good, you know.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:50:09] Oh my, goodness, that is so true. Ultimately, it is just. And I’ll say this sometimes, um, after I’m finished talking, it’s just like there is only one wrong way to do this. And that is if you want to do it and you’re not doing it. And that message comes, you know, courtesy of almost ten years that I spent as a callow youth from, you know, 20 to almost 30, saying, I want to be a writer, I want to be a writer. I want to be a writer, and not writing like, that’s a terrible way to spend your life wanting to do something and not doing it. That’s wrong. Everything else. Once you sit down, it’s. It’s all you trying to figure it out for yourself. You. You read as much as you can. Somebody can show you how to strip something away, make it cleaner. But most of the journey itself is you, and a teacher is to go along on that journey with you. I always think like with an editor and this is what, you know, an will read. My Ann Patchett is a fantastic reader and also will always tell you the truth. Right. And so you’re and when you’re writing, you feel like you’re down there in the trenches and somebody who is a good reader or a good teacher or a good editor can come and they’re flying above and they can see, they can see the pattern and the thing that you’re doing, and you might not be able to see it yet. And so that’s enormously helpful. But mostly it’s just you down there digging and hoping that what emerges is a pattern.
Jonathan Fields: [00:51:51] Let’s talk about those ten years a bit, though.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:51:54] yeah, let’s.
Jonathan Fields: [00:51:56] I’m curious. So I mean, you’re we jumped through like, right into the deep end, which is which is always fun. Um. Born in Philly, raised in a small town in central Florida. Right. Um, a little bit west of Orlando, I guess.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:52:10] Correct. Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [00:52:12] Ended up studying English, I guess, and then coming out. And then you have this sort of, quote, fallow period. I think I’ve heard you call it the Lost Years.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:52:20] The Dark Age.
Jonathan Fields: [00:52:21] Where you’re working All sorts of different jobs, you know, like Disney and Greenhouse and all these, these different things. And, and while you describe it as ten years of not writing, I question that. Um, because I guess I question the distinction between when I think about writing, I think a lot of us, you know, would consider writing what happens when your fingers finally hit the keyboard. And at least for me, most of the writing happens before my fingers hit the keyboard.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:52:50] Well,
Jonathan Fields: [00:52:51] And it’s the accumulation of of thought, reflection, contemplation, and then years of not quote writing that are actually like, to me, this because you couldn’t you couldn’t actually what comes out of those fingers when it hits the keyboard couldn’t come out. But for the fact that you spent ten years doing all these different things, so is it really ten years not writing?
Kate DiCamillo: [00:53:12] Uh, it’s a beautiful point. And, and, and, you know, in all the interviews that I’ve done, no one has ever come at it from that direction. The closest that we’ve gotten is somebody saying, uh, usually they come from this side. Uh, aren’t you sorry that you wasted all that time? And my answer, which is going to lead into you’re not writing how you phrased it, is. No, I don’t regret it at all. I don’t regret it. I mean, I look back and I’m chagrined. I can see my my youthful self and my black turtleneck posturing. Right. But I was all those jobs that I was doing, which were things that brought me very. They taught me about the world, about other people. That was one thing. So we can put that in the not writing but writing category. But the other thing, and it has shaped me going forward. And also I’m and I’m very different than like Ann Patchett in this respect. And we’ve talked about this where like you, she will write and write and write in her head and, and not write. But for me, that long period of wanting to do something and not not doing it, um, kind of like hardwired this thing into my brain of show up every day, and then you can shut up that part of you that is beating yourself up for not doing this. And so I just got into that’s how I got into the saddle, was I’m going to just I’m going to sit down and do these two pages every day, and then I can shut up about this.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:55:06] Then I’m doing it right. And so that kind of like wore a groove in my brain of, okay, this is how to get this done, is to show up every day. Some days are terrible, some days are wonderful. I find that showing up makes me realize what it is that I want to write about. And, um, also, I just it’s so much easier to do it than it is not to do it. And I have that in the PowerPoint to the kids. And I don’t know that the kids are old enough to get that how hard it is to pretend to do something, and how much easier it is to just go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to do the work than it is not to do the work. And I say that to them, and I get a uniformly blank look until I get to older kids, you know, 17 or 18. Younger kids, they don’t get that. It’s easier to do the work than it is not to do the work. And it and it’s that’s what’s so nice about being able to go out and talk to kids and talk to people and like, look, here I am, a messy human being. Do not for one minute think that the book is something perfect and the person who wrote it is somebody. I’m just a messy human being trying to tell a story.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:56:31] And I’ve had kids come up to me afterwards and say, but if you could do this because you were sick all the time and you’re, you know, you’re basically you’re just in you’re so I’m short. That helps. Right? You’re so short. And you can do this. It’s like, yep, if you want to do this, you can do it too. And and I’ve said to adults sometimes that, um, I’ve been in so many writing groups and, and I would sit there and people to the left and the right of me, it was very clear they were much more talented than I was. And I just remember having the conscious thought, I cannot make myself talented, but I can make myself show up and do the work, and I can make myself relentless about putting the work out into the world. That is what’s available to me. And that is what I hung my hat on. And it’s something that whatever it is that you want, if you’re willing to put your heart and soul into it, it opens doors for you. It’s not always success. I feel like, yeah, boy, I’ve been super lucky to have success. It’s what every story has given to me as I’ve written it and then how it. It gives me that connection when it goes out with the readers in the world. That thing I was never prepared for that. And that has been the hugest gift of all to connect with people that way.
Jonathan Fields: [00:57:51] Yeah, there’s this energy that I get through so much of your writing through a long window of time. I’m going to say it wrong, but are you familiar with the Portuguese word saudade?
Ann Patchett: [00:58:01] No. Spell it for me.
Jonathan Fields: [00:58:03] I, I think it’s s a u d a d e something like that. It’s it’s apparently really hard to translate to English, but really roughly translated, it’s this, um, it’s a sense of longing, but it’s a sense of instead of it’s, it’s the, the pain of longing, but it’s the it’s the beautiful pain of longing. You know, it’s it’s this sense of, you know, like it’s something you almost yearn for. It’s something that you can feel about, something that you know you’re going to lose but haven’t yet lost. Like, um, you know, maybe as a child goes out into the world and you feel in the senior year, um, I feel that sense in, in your writing. I wonder if you feel that within it too, or if you feel it coming out of you.
Kate DiCamillo: [00:58:53] Um. I’m thinking about how I think you’ve put your finger right on. Uh, there’s a it’s I’m. I’m working on my emotions. Isaac Denison, who is, uh, was a Danish storyteller. Um, and there’s a quote that I come back to again and again of hers, which is the essence of his nature. She’s writing about a poet. The essence of his nature was longing, and that is, that has been underlined by me since I was. It was like 25 years ago. And I come back to it again and again and again. So yes, I think you’re exactly right. At the same time, I think it becomes one of those things on my shoulder that I cannot think about. I cannot be too aware of what it is that is guiding me, and that the essence of who I am is longing, homesickness, and the stories are a way to connect and to ease that homesickness and to ease that longing. And that’s been the beautiful thing, is that that has been the great good fortune of my life, is to have people connect with me through those stories. It has been truly, truly profound. So, yeah, I think you’re I think you’re one smart individual. That’s what I think. And one very good reader. I feel seen, I feel unmasked, and I feel also because I feel seen and empowered. So thank you.
Jonathan Fields: [01:00:42] Mm. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. Um,
Kate DiCamillo: [01:00:46] Thanks for making me cry. Yeah.
Jonathan Fields: [01:00:51] Um, as we sit here in this, uh, in this virtual container of the Good Life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
Kate DiCamillo: [01:01:01] To live a good life is to see and be seen. What is it for you?
Jonathan Fields: [01:01:10] It’s to love and be loved. First and foremost.
Kate DiCamillo: [01:01:14] And I think to be. Not to argue with you, but I think to be loved is to be seen. Right? Yeah. So I think I think we have the same definition of a good life.
Jonathan Fields: [01:01:25] Uh, I feel so, so moved listening to all these deep shares from these authors. And that brings us to our final guest, the brilliant Ann Patchett, the renowned novelist, essayist and now indie bookstore owner whose unwavering commitment to storytelling has been a North Star since her childhood. Few writers radiate the level of certainty and whole hearted pursuit of their creative craft that Ann embodies from literally declaring her dream to become an author at just five years old, to developing her now famous process of chAnnling entire novels in her mind before putting pen to paper. Ann’s path has been one of integrating her intrinsic gifts more fully into the world. As you’ll hear, her journey really illustrates what can happen when we honor those core callings, no matter how unconventional. Her work from the award winning Bel canto to her latest bestseller, which I absolutely love, Tom Blake sparks depths of feeling and connection that many of us spend lifetimes seeking to uncover. Ultimately, Ann’s approach to work and creativity and life is a profound reminder to never stray too far from the yearnings of your soul. Here’s Ann.
Jonathan Fields: [01:02:34] It seems like reading was a huge part of of you as a kid. Was was writing also?
Ann Patchett: [01:02:39] Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I and I’ve puzzled about this a lot in my life. You know, why is it that when I met somebody when I was five years old and they said, what are you going to do when you grow up? And I would say, I’m going to be a writer. I mean, it was just baseline. And that is the most interesting thing about me. And perhaps the only interesting thing about me is that I’ve always known exactly what I wanted to do. I never wavered from it, and I got to do it. And that puts me in such a tiny, tiny sliver of humanity, I knew it, I always knew it, I did it, and I didn’t want anything else. You know, I never thought. And I’d like to live in Paris for a year. I’d like to travel the world. I’d like to have money, get married, have children. I have nothing, nothing. I just want it to be a writer.
Jonathan Fields: [01:03:41] It’s so. What? I mean, you can’t answer this question, but it is. What is it? What was it inside of you at five years old that just knew? I mean, it couldn’t have been an unclear understanding of what the life of a writer was because you’re five. And yet it was so clear to you.
Ann Patchett: [01:03:59] I have a theory, and my and my theory is I didn’t know how to read. And my parents got divorced, probably I was four. My mother and sister and I left Los Angeles and moved to Tennessee. The week before I turned six. I had already started first grade at five in Los Angeles. I didn’t finish school. We just moved constantly. We stayed with a lot of people. It was, you know, 1969. Nobody went to school. I really didn’t learn how to read until I was in the third grade. And so I think that somehow, in my mind, I conflated the desire to learn how to read, to learn how physically, to write, to not always be passing and sneaking and, you know, squeaking by in one way or another that I started to say, I want to write, I want to write, I want to write. And I became very clever. So even though I really couldn’t read or write, I could tell a story. I could be amusing, I could seem smart, and I had it in my mind that that was the thing that was going to really save me, and it stuck by me. Therefore I stuck by it.
Jonathan Fields: [01:05:17] I mean, it’s interesting that you could tell a story. Were you sort of walking around formulating stories in your head? Yeah. So which follows you then to later because you’re the creative process that you have described, which is so different from what a lot of other writers describe, is this idea of basically building the entire world and the characters and the story in your head for as long as humanly possible at birth. Has has to burst out onto a page. It sounds like that seed was planted really early.
Ann Patchett: [01:05:48] Yeah. That’s interesting. I actually I’ve never made that correlation, but that is true because I really couldn’t write. I, I worked in my head and, and then got to a point where I could get down whatever I could get down. And that became my way of working. And then later, you know, when I was in my 20s and I was a waitress, and I just got into the habit of always having a story in my head, something that I was thinking about all the time as a way of keeping myself company, as a way of of feeling that I, that my life mattered, that that it had, that it had depth. So I was a waitress, but I was also a waitress who was writing a novel in my head while I was rolling silverware.
Jonathan Fields: [01:06:37] Mm. Yeah. I mean, the it’s almost like that was you’re getting paid for the process of incubating the story that eventually that’s the story that eventually becomes the patron saint of liars. Right?
Ann Patchett: [01:06:50] Right.
Jonathan Fields: [01:06:50] Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s such an interesting process because it also you have to have a huge capacity to hold things and people and ideas and worlds and storylines and plots in your head to do that. I wonder if it’s sort of the, the type of thing where it’s a trainable skill to be able to do that.
Ann Patchett: [01:07:11] One thing that I think about all the time is I’m I’m constantly surprised that there’s something that I can do that other people can’t do. So I think, well, you could hold a book in your head. I mean, in my mind, if we meet, if you and I meet and we like each other and, you know, I call you up a week later and say, let’s have lunch. And then, you know, later on we go to the movies, whatever. We begin a friendship. And I at some point ask you about your childhood, and I ask you if you have siblings, and I ask you about your parents, and then I, I forget. Did you have a sister? Did you tell me that already? You know, were you married before? Do you have kids? Do you? What are their names? How old are they? I’m going to forget. And then I’m going to ask you again. And then I’m going to remember. That’s. That’s how we exist as humans. We don’t go home and take notes on the people that we meet, the people that we want to befriend or join our lives with in some way. We forget. We remember, we forget. We remember. We ask again. We look again. And that’s exactly what writing a novel is like. I go and I look again.
Ann Patchett: [01:08:24] And. And when people say, why don’t you write it down? And I always think, well, as soon as I write something down, I’ve committed it and then it feels important. Whereas if I don’t write it down, I forget and and it falls away. If it falls away, then I need to go and look again. There’s I’m working on a couple of different things right now because this is such a weird time, and I’m writing children’s books right now because I just can’t imagine writing about the adult world. It would be like writing a book the week after September 11th. You know, you don’t know where the ground is right now. But I have an idea for a novel that I had before the world changed. And I think about it sometimes, and I think I don’t want to I don’t want to write a grown up novel about the pandemic. This time will pass. You won’t think it will, but it will. Just like September 11th doesn’t play a central role in every novel that’s been written since. But there are moments that I have insight because the world is informing me now and my mind is changing. And I’m glad that I didn’t take any notes on this book, because it means that my mind can change and everything is open.
Jonathan Fields: [01:09:43] Yeah. When you think about sort of focusing your energies, I mean, one of the things that’s taken up a lot of space for you since 2011, I guess, was you’re out there writing books public and going back. And at some point, long time in Nashville, two bookstores left those two bookstores, and I guess they weren’t really even bookstores or, well, they were bookstores, but they were there was but they were they were mega bookstores. There were borders. And then there was one that was bought 12, 15 years earlier by a larger brand, but eventually those go away. You’re the happiest person in the world, in solitude and being out there when you have to be, and just writing like you are a writer’s writer. Somehow you decide that that is the moment in time for you to become the owner of an independent bookstore. How does that come together?
Ann Patchett: [01:10:33] You know it. It’s it’s civic. And it sort of brings it back to my father. Actually, I did not ever want to own a bookstore, which I think a lot of people do. That’s like the, like a rush job, right? Yeah, for a lot of people. But I was never that person. And in fact, I feel uncomfortable in bookstores because, you know, my mind associates bookstores with being on book tours and with feeling kind of haunted and overwhelmed. But the bookstores went away. There were all sorts of people forming committees about what they were going to do to, you know, get a bookstore. Nothing was happening. And I just thought, oh, damn, damn, it’s going to be me, isn’t it? I went to Catholic school for 12 years, and there’s this whole thing of if you can formulate the sentence. Whose responsibility is it to fix the public school system, or clean up this trash, or make the world a better place? The answer is always it is your responsibility. So whose responsibility is it to open a bookstore and get this problem solved? Ah alas, it must be mine. And I was introduced to a woman named Karen Hayes. And we we met the last day of April, and we opened the bookstore on November 15th.
Ann Patchett: [01:11:52] And the idea would was that Karen would run the store and I would pay for it, and we would be partners. And I have wound up as Karen. As Karen often says, you know, you’re the loudest silent partner that anyone’s ever had. But I’ve become sort of not just the face of Parnassus Books, but of independent bookstores and shopping local. And I became the representative for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, and I just it became my thing. And it’s wonderful. It’s a little exhausting sometimes, but what I there’s so many things about it, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t change anything. I have really, really loved it. I’ve found enormous joy in it. And the best part is when people come up to me now in the grocery store, they’re not coming up to talk to me about one of my books. They’re coming to talk to me about what they’re reading and about the bookstore and about, you know, some staff member who was fantastically helpful and who gave them exactly the book they wanted, or they heard me recommending a book, and they loved it. And they’re grateful. And I can really interact with people on that level. That brings me joy.
Ann Patchett: [01:13:16] Somebody walks up to me in the grocery store and says, I love the Dutch house. I’m like, okay, God, wow, thanks God, I gotta go get an orange now. But if somebody walks up to me and says, oh my gosh, I read your recommendation of Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore and the first novel. I wouldn’t have picked it up. Boy, that book changed my life. That was so amazing. Thank you so much. I love that book, you know, and then I can enter into that moment and that relationship. So it gives me a public face that feels natural and not like I’m hiding it is it is me without scaffolding or protection. If I’m talking about the bookstore and books and other writers. When I went on book tour, this last time I had my entire talk was about books that I love and and writers who I had met along the way, who helped me figure things out about the Dutch house and books that I want to sell, cell that I want to get behind. And I thought, this is this is a real revelation, because if I can go out in public and talk about other people’s books instead of talking about my book, I feel really comfortable.
Jonathan Fields: [01:14:30] Yeah. I mean. How much it’s interesting to you because, you know, to a certain extent, part of that, I also feel, is it’s your passion, it’s your love, it’s your deep knowledge of what’s out there. And also part of it is that you’re I have to imagine, like you have reached a point in your own career where you don’t necessarily have to go out there. And every time you step into a bookstore, every time you step onto a stage, you like the the line in your mind doesn’t have to be, I need to sell my book. Um.
Ann Patchett: [01:15:05] Yes. But it’s also complicated because one of the things that’s really changed since I have the bookstore and my friends who are my peers are always saying to me, you’re making us look bad. Stay home, stop doing a 35 city book tour. You don’t need to do this at this point in your life. And that’s true. I don’t, except now I know that what keeps a bookstore going is somebody who can sell a mother load of books, showing up and doing that for the night. You know, we had a we had a truly disastrous Instagram Live event with John Grisham a couple of days ago. You know, it’s like nobody can get the technology straight. And it was a complete bust. And it was nobody’s fault because the internet just kept cutting out. But, you know, here’s John Grisham and he’s saying, I want to do something to support independent bookstores. So I’m going to go around to these independent bookstores and do this Instagram Live thing. He didn’t have to do that. He understands that. That’s what’s keeping us in business. That’s what helps us make our payroll and pay our health insurance and all of that. So at this point in my life, where, yeah, technically, to sell a Patchett novel, I don’t have to show up and do these big events every night. But I also now really know that that’s what keeps bookstores going.
Jonathan Fields: [01:16:37] There’s something bigger that’s behind what you’re doing. Yeah, yeah.
Ann Patchett: [01:16:40] And the people, the really big people who come out and do these huge events. Glennon Doyle. Um, yeah. She her last event that she did before she canceled her tour for untamed, which is still sitting in the number one spot on the bestseller list. She came to Nashville. It was 1600 people. It was bundled. So all those books were pre-sold and she showed up. It was like the last night on Earth that anybody did an event that was so huge for us. Huge. I am so grateful to her for doing that. And not only that, you know, that’s one end of the scale, but then the other end of the scale is, you know, the person who’s got the first book out and maybe ten people or 15 people show up for the event. But that’s you get heard and those people connect to the writer and they read the book and they recommend the book to their friends. And that’s how you build a career. And that’s the other reason the bookstore has to be there.
Jonathan Fields: [01:17:45] Yeah, I mean, it’s a powerful it’s not the backup reason at this point. It’s one of the primary driver of doing this. And I think a lot of people, you know, it’s funny when probably around the time that you opened Parnassus, you know, the world was saying not only is a bookstore a hard thing to run, but bookstores aren’t going to indie bookstores. They’re just not going to exist. Give it a year or two. And it’s not just this, but, you know, the beast is going to be gone.
Ann Patchett: [01:18:13] Right. Books are going to be gone. Yeah, we’re all going to get an e-reader and that’s going to be that. But if you want something to be there when this is over, you have to support it now. And that’s a lot of the reason that again, even now I’m going out and I’m banging that drum and writing op eds. And you know, to anyone who will listen, if you love your bookstore, call them up and order a book, order a puzzle, order whatever it is, because you need to keep them alive.
Jonathan Fields: [01:18:43] Yeah, I wonder how that’s going to translate out even into just local mom and pop businesses that have really been a part of the community, and whether people in the community will step up and say, you know, maybe I’m even paying more and maybe there’s no convenience in getting it faster or better, but this just matters. I don’t want this to go away, and I will. I will do whatever I need to do to make sure that it actually stays, which actually feels like a nice place for us to come full circle as we spend a nice, uh, bit of time together already today. And we’re sitting in this really interesting, weird time where I think you and you are experiencing it very differently than a lot of people. Also in this container of the Good Life project is, which now extends from New York to Nashville. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up.
Ann Patchett: [01:19:33] This right now, right this, right this moment with you, it actually makes me want to cry. I mean, it’s it’s so it’s so true. To live a good life is to have your eyes open and see who’s in front of you and feel the enormous good fortune of this. Second, no matter what, we are alive. And I’m grateful and grateful to you, really, for taking this time. It’s been such a pleasure.
Jonathan Fields: [01:20:06] Thank you.
Jonathan Fields: [01:20:08] What an incredibly rich tapestry of wisdom that we have woven together today from these legendary writers, from Sue’s journey reclaiming her authentic voice, to James’s insights on protecting the creative spark, to Kate’s meditations on the sacred longing that birthed great art and Ann’s lifelong embodiment of her core calling. Each tale reveals the profound transformation that awaits when we wholeheartedly embrace the yearnings of our soul. And if you love this episode, be sure to catch the full conversation with today’s guests. You can find a link to each of those episodes in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor? A seven second favor and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
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