Janet Sternburg on Hindsight & Tackling Hard Family Truths In Writing

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

Mindy: We're here with Janet Sternburg who is the author of White Matter, which is a fascinating little bit of family history that touches on something that I personally am very invested in which is the treatment of mental illness and the misunderstanding of mental illness in the past. And how certain procedures - in this case lobotomies - have been overused. Janet writes extensively about this in her book White Matter. So if you would just like to start out by talking a little bit about who you are, what you do and how you came to write White Matter. 

Janet: First of all, I am a writer and always have been from when I can remember. But in 1998 to that I added photography. So I am now a pretty serious fine arts photographer. And my latest work, my newest book is actually a book of photography with text. White Matter came out in 2016. So I hope you'll understand me as someone who both shuttles back and forth between two art forms and sometimes connects them. And who spent the years essentially give or take, let's just say 2016 is when it was published, I probably started White Matter in 2006. That means it took me a very long time to write this book because I wanted to first of all answer a question that is fairly unique to my own family. And then I wanted to answer it in the book by both telling the story of my family and then also connecting it with the larger developments in the history of medical treatment. 

The unique thing about my family is my mother was one of six children, essentially a Polish, Russian, Jewish second generation family. When the six children became adults, two of the six were given lobotomies, but it's very unusual to have two in one's immediate family. And I say immediate because even though it's my aunt and uncle, I grew up with them, they were around all the time, both before and after. So I felt I had to write a book when I realized many years later how unusual this was. You know, when you're a kid, everything seems normal. It's what you accept and only later did I discover - not at all. And then that posed a whole set of difficult questions for me. What happened? How could it have happened? Were the right decisions made? Had my family, who I always thought were good people, in fact done something rather awful to their own kin? Was it the best they could do given the circumstances? So that was the point at which I felt I have to write this book. 

Mindy: You bring up so many good points that I want to continue talking about. But that sense of hindsight - you're absolutely right when you're a child, everything around you is normalized. So you think that other people are living lives that are similar. I grew up in a pretty conservative rural area of Ohio. So I just assumed everyone went to church. That that's what everyone did on Sunday morning, you went to church. I had no idea that there were people that did not participate in Christianity. When you grow up, run into other experiences and you're just like, oh wait a minute! And you have to rethink some of the things that happened in your life. 

But in your case, that means actually questioning some of the decisions and then also the motives of people in your family. I know a lot of my listeners have the intent of possibly doing that as well. But when you're writing about yourself and about your own family, there's always the chance that people are not going to like the way they are portrayed. What was that like for you emotionally as a writer to be going through those movements of questioning your own mother and then your aunt's, but then also reactions within the family that you had decided to write about this thing?

Janet: First of all, I want to begin by saying that I don't consider this a memoir. This is not a commentary on your calling it that because the publisher wanted to - as all publishers do - give it a subtitle that essentially defined it. In the days when we all went to bookstores, it would be the cue - this is where to shelve it. Memoir. Why don't I like it? Because when I hear the word memoir, I hear me. That's the first part of it. Moi, that's the second part of it, in French. Me Me. I am not writing a book of Me Me, on the contrary. But let's call it a hybrid book. Some people have experienced it as almost like reading a novel, a page turner, what is going to happen in this family? Even though the reader knows what will happen. 

And here is a writerly point about that aspect, which is I came to the understanding that it was going to be my voice that would pull the story along. Not me, Janet, but this person telling the story and I had to learn how to tell that story in a way that that aspect would keep a reader going. At the same time, it is  - to use the language of fil,  perhaps which I've worked a lot - its intercut with the history of medical illness, with neurology, some facts about how it works. And that goes back to the title. White Matter is the switchboard in the brain between the limbic ie the emotional brain and the frontal lobe, which makes all the executive decisions. So if you cut that switchboard and you are, for example, schizophrenic, or diagnosed as such, you may still hear voices that say “this is a terrible person, you should harm them.” They won't reach the frontal lobe where the decision is made. So to put it more simply. It's the link between feeling and thinking. And I wanted all that to be in the book as well and I won't go on. But there are other layers that I could talk about. 

So it was a very large job of weaving, not to put too much information in or speculation or material that you would lose the thread of the story. So, having dealt with that question of “not a memoir,” I'll answer your other question directly. It was really hard because these people were people I knew and I did something, I'll tell you briefly what it is. It doesn't mean that anybody else should do it, but it was a good technique for me. I knew I needed to see them as people outside of me, as characters. It's not my uncle. As not my mother. How do you do that for me? What I found was something that you may or may not know. It's called the Enneagram and it's a personality system, in effect, that I won't even begin to get into now. 

But it does have very useful and helpful and not reductive ways of seeing people. Because many personality systems do say, well you're this or you're that. The Enneagram is, I think, very good. So I was able to see, for example, my aunt Jen - somebody who had to get her own way who had underneath that a certain kind of vulnerability. My aunt Etta was somebody who wanted to make peace all the time and would not stand up against others, even though she was a very fine peacekeeper. But it didn't always work. So I was able to take some of those categories and give them to the people I know so that they stood outside me, they were characters. And then I tried - and this is partly why it took so long - to be, and here is a really hard one - as truthful as I could be, without having been there all the time. How do you do that? What kind of license to make things up? 

So I kind of invented a guideline for myself, a little lantern and I called it scrupulous imagination, which meant I gave myself the leeway to imagine. But it was that I put so much thought into all of these people, and what might have happened. Also because my family left behind a lot of photographs and one aunt in particular a lot of writing, so I was able to infer from that. And that's where the scrupulous part came in, as close as I could be, to what I think. So now we get to the third part of your question, what did they think about it? By the time the book was published, they were all gone. At this point in my life, I'm quite alone, because my parents are gone. My aunts and uncles are gone. I had no brothers and sisters. I'm an only child, I don't have children, my cousins are gone, so I'm rather uniquely quite alone. I do have one cousin who is with us, She's 90. When I had done an earlier book called Phantom Limb, she was very troubled. She appeared in the book, I gave her a different name, I gave her different characteristics. But of course people know. She actually said to one of the aunts who was then alive, well how could Janet have done it? Then the aunt who was intelligent, but sort of two faced, said to her, well you know Janet is not telling the story raw, she's made it into something - I would like to hope, a work of art. This book with White Matter, that cousin said - you nailed it. You got it right, I can see them all. Because of course they're her aunts and uncles and her mother and her father. She said -  You got it, I really could see them and you presented them in a way that brought them alive and yet you told the story in a way that made it fair. It was okay. Thank God. 

Mindy: I'm relieved to hear it. I also think that that is probably for a lot of writers that want to write about their own family members, whether they're putting up that filter and that screen of treating it as fiction or like you're saying using like the Enneagram or the personality test to kind of write a caricature of the real person. I think that that's a really healthy approach. I really like that. I am familiar with Enneagram. I think that is a really fascinating choice to help you to develop them as characters. I think that that would probably bring a lot of light and also give you a different perspective.

Janet: One of the great things about the Enneagram, even though there's a typology of people, each individual typology has what they call the wings and they take you to how that person would interact with another kind of personality type. And you could get a sense of what the dynamics that I knew what they were already. But I didn't know why it might be inevitable for the particular, let's just say the wound of one person to inflict itself on another. It really did help me work, but whatever speaks to you, you know.

There was something you just said a second ago that I wanted to come back to. I know what it is. I am a very big fan of hindsight, period. And I'll tell you two examples that go to the point of how hindsight is always changing. I am comfortable with the way that I presented the people in White Matter. But just the other day, I was thinking, you know the way that Sam was not very nice to my father. And the other day I was thinking about that in context of something present in my life. And I could see - you know how with a camera you can shift the focus? Well, the focus shifted. I saw different aspects. I saw long shot, medium shot - to use film - close up, whatever it was. The mind brought something new to that relationship. 

The other thing is there are two books of mine that I did essentially in the early 80s, early 90s and they've been in print now… well, the first one for 40 years and the other one for 30 years. Their books about what it means to be a woman who writes, a contemporary woman. They're called The Writer On Her Work. And they were published by Norton. Has kept them in print because, well, for any number of reasons, presumably they still sell. But it was also because they were the first of its kind. And recently the literary archive, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired my archive for those books, which is thrilling. I mean this means that all that material will be there forever. It's everything from my correspondence to the editing notes to the financials. It's all there. 

Now, what is the point of why am I telling you this? Because they asked me to do an interview with them, a written one, about my thinking about these books. So we come to the issue of hindsight and I have had occasion to talk about these books and write about them a fair amount through the years. And it would have been very easy to say, well yeah, you know, pull out the regular old stuff that I've said before. I thought no, no, I'm going to look at it fresh. I'm going to look at this with hindsight. And so for example, when the interviewer said - if you were doing these books now, what would you do? And I said they shouldn't be done now. We need the other voices. We need to hear other points of view. So it's so wonderful to spend a life revisiting and continually using hindsight to reinvestigate one's work in one's life. And now that I'm old enough I can do it. I mean you can do it all your life. But now I really can.

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Mindy: But I want to go back to what you were saying about the relationship between Sam and your father and you kind of reconfiguring that in terms of a film and a close shot, medium shot, and a long shot and that giving you a new perspective. So that is a great example of you using your experience in film and also in photography and tying that into not only hindsight in your reactions to other people's relationships in the past, but also your writing. So if you could talk a little bit about those two mediums intersecting creatively and how they inform each other? 

Janet: That's just a great question. I will add, it's a question I am going to spend the rest of my life answering. I'll also add that, now there are two books of mine that are out of my photography. The first one is called Overspilling World. And in that book there's an essay called “There For the Seeing” that I wrote. There were some other essays. I'm really kind of happy about that. I mean, the filmmaker Wen Wendors wrote an essay about my work and I didn't know him and I thought that was pretty wonderful. But I did write an essay in which I talked about living in the corridor between writing and photography. I talked about how writing for me, I called it the furrowed brow. I really tried to get things right. I'm waiting for a click - it's right. And that click can take years. 

Photography is so much more immediate. It is so much more playful. I don't mean the photographers are playful. I mean the medium encompasses all kinds of subjects and kinds of ways of working. But you do have this joyful thing of going out in the world and seeing what comes to you in that world and bringing it back almost like a fisherman. You know, what do I have in my net? Then thinking, well, is this something that I'm interested in keeping? Do I want to work with it? I don't manipulate, but I crop. Is this something that is saying something about what I'm thinking about and don't even know what I'm thinking about? So it's a dynamic process that does not have as much suffering. 

However, one of the things that really really interests me is the relationship of word to image and I got really interested in the long, long, long time ago when I was working for public television and I essentially got money from my then boss to do a very short film on a writer I adored, Virginia Woolf. The film was not trying to make somebody be her, more to evoke her and there was landscape and an actor who was evocative. And then I used a lot of writing of Virginia Woolf in voiceover and I learned this great big lesson. They fight each other, a whole lot of words and a whole lot of images fight. 

And so I've been thinking about that one way or another ever since. I tried an experiment with a book of poems, Optic Nerve and it's from Red Hen, which is a wonderful poetry publisher, and now prose. And I tried inserting in the poem, not every poem only if some wanted it, a small image the size say of what a stanza would be. So the experience of reading would be starting at the top, going down, encountering an image, and then going on. And I'm not sure it really worked to be honest, but it gives you a sense of how I'm trying to think of them as forms that intersect. 

The newest book that just came out in October is called I've Been Walking and its subtitle is Janet Sternburg Los Angeles Photographs. And they were all images that I took in one year, the year of the Lockdown. Not documenting it. I'm not a documentary photographer, I'm not a photographer who sort of manipulates and tries to make the work into a certain kind of art object. They’re both fine, it's just not what I do. However, what I discovered is that I do have the eye of a poet and that relates now to writing because I'm always, without knowing it, seeing what I think of as the more. And the more is the metaphor, What does this object, what does this thing have beyond how it simply looks on the surface? That's where it comes together. And finally, in this latest book, I do have text sprinkled throughout. So there's lots of times when there's an image and there is no text, it's fair and it kind of floats. I had a great designer I worked with and he got it. He let it float a lot. I think it almost works because it's not completely clear that it's essentially two long sentences, and some people think that it's a caption to the image on the other side. So I keep working at it and also you have to stay interested as you know.

Mindy: I want to come back to something you have mentioned I think is really interesting. The Writer On Her Work, and talking about specifically being a woman, if there were writers out there listening who want to write a biography or memoir that involved family members or a story from their past… and all of us being fairly conditioned as women to always be nice and polite instead of necessarily being truthful. If you have any thoughts on that, as far as specifically female writers who may want to be addressing topics or possibly true life accounts of things that have happened that may ruffle some feathers. The difference between approaching that as a female and cultural expectations, how that works both like internally as the author, but then also maybe even experiencing more pushback because you're a woman. 

Janet: The quick answer is, you betcha I know just what you're talking about. The quick answer also is that you have to kind of layer in age culture, the Jewish older woman who has grown up in a culture of guilt, which doesn't mean that everybody hasn't in some way or another. But just the guilt is like really familiar in my culture. Two things -  thing number one, the Virginia Woolf film so many years ago, it was that part of Virginia Woolf's writing where she says in effect - these will be almost direct quotes because it stays with me. She said - when I first started, I was a young woman and I was writing criticism and I said, flatter, deceive. Use all the wiles of a woman. Then I realized my writing would be destroyed. And then she conjures up this figure she calls The Angel of the House. And The Angel of the House is the one who always defers. If there's chicken and she really likes dark meat, she'll take the white meat. That's literally an image that Virginia Woolf uses. And then - The Angel of the House, I've caught her by the throat and I strangled her. If I had not killed her, she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. 

So yes, it's something I do think people suffer a good deal from, The Angel of the House in contemporary terms, contemporary life. But I want to give it a different valence, which is years and years ago I went to a reading and it was two writers. One was Anais Nin who wrote her diaries and then published her Diaries. There's an awful lot of material in there that has got the potential to hurt somebody, as well as to enlighten people. The other writer was Grace Paley and Grace Paley wrote fiction, but very clearly often about her family. So they're talking back and forth about the very question that you're raising. And Grace Paley said something that hit me a long time ago. She said - I try not to hurt people unnecessarily. There's a lot of writing life, there's a lot of stories to tell. I don't want to live in the world as somebody who just hurts people. I thought, well that kind of takes it to a different place. It's not so much a female place, it's kind of an ethical place. But how you see yourself as a writer. And I found that a useful guide.

Mindy: That is really interesting and it cuts right to the point. The medium in between those two are, not necessarily even a medium -  just taking both into account as you are right. I have not heard the Virginia Woolf quote about The Angel of the House and killing her so that she will not pluck out your heart. But yes. Quite a few of my books recently are being caught up in censorship and getting banned and being challenged. I write about dark topics. I write about tough subjects and if it makes people think then that's wonderful if they aren't comfortable with their own thoughts, then that's not my fault or my problem. 

I never, as you said, wrote with the intention of hurting or harming anyone, I do not feel guilt for what I have produced because number one, it's fiction, but also it is a true representation of the world. My books are dark and aren't particularly safe because I'm writing them for people that aren't existing in safe places. You know, I'm writing them for sexual abuse survivors and I'm writing them for people struggling with addiction. Those are not happy, comfortable places. I must represent them accurately and faithfully and truly in order to paint that picture. So I don't apologize for my work and I appreciate the Virginia Woolf quote while also appreciating the other perspective And you're right, it's not a gender perspective, it's truly ethical, moral, don't hurt for the sake of hurting. 

Janet: Exactly. And something else about that. I think, first of all, the world has really changed. So much more subject matter is out there - permissible, so to speak. One thing that I think is not permissible is what I think of as “triumphal endings.” And a lot of the stuff that's out there that's very dark gets a lot of praise because it moves toward a reconciliation that everybody can understand and feel good about and there's nothing wrong with that. But I personally believe the world is more complex and I don't want to be part of that triumphal - It's OK now, and I've conquered it, even if it isn't in self help, even if it's a really very good writers. I think the world can take the darkness. That William Styron book about his depression, Darkness Visible. But I do know that he did not quote unquote conquer his depression, that notion of conquering and we can do it and the will and all that, I just think life is much more complicated and that his writers and any sort of artists, that's our job. 

Mindy: A lot of the flak that I get from my own writing is that I don't write happy endings. It's a gray, it's a “okay for now” kind of ending sometimes. Or “you may have survived, but you have scars now.” 

Janet: And scars are interesting. Yes, scars are almost a definition of hindsight because they linger. 

Mindy: One of my favorite quotes is from Women who Run With the Wolves, and she says - scar tissue is stronger than skin.

Janet: I don't know if that's true biologically or not, but it's certainly true. I broke my collarbone many many years ago and it wouldn't heal. And so I kept going back and forth. Should I have the surgery, should I have a nice straight collarbone and have everything symmetrical? Ultimately, I decided not to for a number of reasons, one of which, scar tissue turned out to be my friend. Because there was so much of it, nothing hurt anymore. Well, let me put it even in a different way. I'm going to go back to the book Phantom Limb, which has some stuff about it, even though it's very short and very lyrical and very strong. But it is about something that my mother went through and I, the daughter, tried to find out how to help her through losing her leg, amputating her leg, and having phantom limb pain. Did a whole lot of research and thinking about it. But what I discovered is that you really don't want a phantom anything. But if you have it, it can also help you to walk. Because if the phantom makes its appearance - because it's not there all the time. We're talking about the brain now, the same stuff as white matter. I'm fascinated by neurology. If the phantom presents itself, it fools the artificial leg into thinking that a leg is there. Isn’t that wild? What do you take from that? The very thing that causes pain and you really don't, want also helps you to walk. Wowser. That's a good example of scar tissue. No, it's not very attractive. But it is that sense that what doesn't hurt you fattens in some ways. You know, that famous line.

Mindy: Last thing, why don't you let listeners know where they can find you online if you're active online or your website, but also where they can purchase your work?

Janet: I'm kind of out there in that sense. If anybody simply Googles me, they will get a lot of stuff. But there's one thing that's super important. Nobody ever spells my name, right. It's Janet obviously, Sternburg, it's B. U. R. G. You will get my photo website, book website. All my books are on Amazon, both the ones we're talking about and the photography books. For those of you who dislike Amazon, understandable. There's this wonderful thing called Bookshop and it kind of aggregates the independents. All my books are there. There's a fair amount of writing about my stuff. Instagram, which I use a lot these days. It's almost like a diary of what I'm seeing, when I finally decide I like something. Instagram Janet Sternburg, B U R G. So yes, I’m gettable.

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.

Saumya Dave On Writing Mental Health, Family Relationships & Debuting In A Pandemic

Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Saumya Dave, author of What A Happy Family, which is available from Berkeley and it features mental health in a very large way. Talking especially about families from a humorous edge and pressures of internal family mechanisms. I know that my family in particular has a lot of their own little jabs and jibes and things that we all kind of assume about each other as the family member that has a certain role. So for example, I'm the youngest, so my role is to always be wrong. 

I would just like to talk a little bit about first mental health because you are also a practicing psychiatrist, so it's a fascinating coalescence of two different journeys, your career, but then also your writing, coming together and bolstering each other. So if you could tell us first of all what the book, What A Happy Family is about and then if you can tell me a little bit just about the mental health in fiction narrative and what it's like to be exploring that also from your profession. 

Saumya: Sure, well, I love the way you described What A Happy Family with that idea about mechanisms in a family, I think that's such a perfect way to think about it, but in short it's about a family that settled in Atlanta. There are five members of the immediate family and then one member Zach, who is married to the eldest daughter in the family. And the book really goes through how each member of this family navigates mental health in their own ways and the ways that all of these family members hurt each other and then hopefully how they help learn to heal each other. 

So I'm a psychiatrist like you said, and I have been reading fiction for my entire life, so when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor and a writer. And it wasn't until I was in high school in college when people said to me, you're going to have to pick one, you can't do both, not a thing, people don't do that. And I saw that reflected in the community and then the greater world at large around me. So I thought, okay, I do have to pick and I picked the pre-med part of it and thought, okay, I will write later, I will write in my free time. And I learned very quickly that it doesn't always work that way. I know there are a lot of disciplined people out there who can put in their time to all the things that matter to them. But I learned about myself that if I didn't block off hours and if I didn't commit to writing the way I committed to this other career that I was going after, it would get lost eventually. And that was something that really scared me. 

So I, from a young age, turned to fiction to teach me about life. As the daughter of immigrants, as someone who felt like an outsider many, many times growing up. And as I started writing more and more and my debut came out during the pandemic of course, which is great. I've had two books in a pandemic When my debut out in July of 2020, I learned by going to a lot of virtual book clubs that a lot of people turned to fiction to teach them about life, to comfort them, to entertain them. And during my residency training, when I was learning about the ins and outs of psychiatry I realized I wasn't finding very much fiction that explored mental health.There are books out there that do that and they do it really, really well. I just couldn't find one about a family and about the things they do and don't tell each other. 

The roles that they put on each other in the way they may be regressed back into those roles when they're together and how those roles impact their own selves when they're not even with their family members. So in their workplaces and their romantic relationships and their friendships. So, after my debut came out, I thought, what if this is what the second book is about? What if I put together some of the insights I've learned through my psychiatry training and through seeing patients and and put it through fiction and see how that comes out as a story, the kind of story that I always hope to read. 

Mindy: Everything that you're saying about learning through fiction...I think that fiction and reading in general are the quickest path to empathy and I don't know about you, but a lot of people that I know that are also creatives have struggled during this pandemic, to both read and write, definitely want to talk to you about having two books released during a pandemic - what a lovely experience for you. But first I would like to talk about something you mentioned - wanting to be both a psychiatrist and a writer. Those are two huge goals. And first of all, it's amazing to me that as a child you were like, I want both of these things that I'm going to get them. That's awesome. I love it. 

I myself always just knew that I wanted to be a writer. However, what I want to point out about your path that I think is super smart and a wonderful thing to share with my readers is that you did two things that I love here. You made the decision to - in essence - be practical and go the pre med route. If anyone were to ask me, hey, what do I do? Do I become a doctor or a writer? I'm like, you become a doctor and then you write on the side because I can say as someone that worked in the public schools. I was the librarian, but I worked in the public schools for 14 years and I think I had published my fifth or my sixth book before I was able to actually live off of that income. So it is a lovely dream. It is a difficult thing to attain and an even more difficult thing to actually make a living from. 

I love that you instinctively seemed to know that. But then also just had that little, niggling - no, I want to write. And that's so beautiful because it should never be ignored. I always tell people, if you get a flash of inspiration, you grab it, you take it, you go. If you have a dialogue or scene or a title or whatever it is, lightning doesn't strike twice. Once you have it, you grab it, you write it down. If you have that urge to write, in the moment, you need to sit down and do it. 

Saumya: Oh, I love that so much because I think there's so much to be said about keeping our passions alive and present no matter what they are. And all the writers I've met over the years, they feel as though it's this core part of who they are. So when they don't do it for very long periods of time, they want to return to it. And of course that time they vary, because life happens and so many things might be going on. But I've always found that you know, whether it's a week, a month, a year, whatever it is, people who love words want to return to words. 

Mindy: So I love what you said because there's so much power in keeping those things with us and close to us and nurturing them and it's so much a part of who we are like you said, I think you're ignoring a very strong sense of self purpose and drive if you just try to put it in a box and set it aside for now. You lose it. Which is something that you did mention earlier and you run that risk of losing it. But I also think you run the risk of losing part of yourself. 

Saumya: That's so, so true. One thing that was going through my head a lot when I was in college and I was completely focused on the premed path was, is my future self going to be resentful? And that question kept coming up again and again and I realized then, you know, I was in my early twenties at that time that I don't want to be resentful when I'm older, I don't want to be resentful. So what can I do to prevent future resentment? And that question has helped me in a lot of daily and longer term decisions. 

Mindy: That is really cool. I like that a lot that you are asking questions of your future self and saying, you know, what do you want? How do you want to feel? Uh I really like that I actually had a conversation with my boyfriend about future selves and how we thought of ourselves when we were younger, Not necessarily what our goals were, but what we pictured ourselves as when we were children and whether or not our core ourselves have changed. So interesting that you bring this up about yourself and knowing this about yourself at a young age.

I had a similar experience. We're a very midwestern family. I'm from Ohio, I grew up on a farm, that's what we do. We are farmers, we are farmers and teachers, that is what we produce. That is who we are. I come along and I don't want those things, I want to be a writer and I knew that from a very young age, but I didn't necessarily have that phrase. I didn't know that that was what I was doing. What I was doing even when I was a very small child was inserting myself into the narrative. 

So, I would be reading a book and I'd be like, well, if I were in this story, this is what I would do, and I would write a scene with myself and it as a child. So I would be, you know, rewriting Bridge to Terabithia, you know, with me in it and kind of fan fiction in a way, is what we would call it now. But I always took tv shows that I loved or stories, books, cartoons, whatever it was. I would insert myself in it, like, as a new character, create storylines for myself and for these other characters. I didn't know that I was writing, this was just what I did. This was myself. 

I think I must have had the assumption that this was a child enterprise, this was what I did as a very small child and that I would essentially grow out of it the way you grow out of your toys. I get to be 6th, 7th, 8th grader and I'm still doing it. This is what I do in my spare time, is writing stories and now they are usually entirely my own creations. I'm no longer inserting myself into tv shows I'm writing and doing these things in my head, this is how I go to sleep as I'm laying down and creating these narratives, and because I don't know anyone else that does this, and because it is very much a different, a new thing in my family, I was worried that there was something wrong with me, I was worried that there was some sort of mental health issue because I wasn't living in the present and I wasn't living in reality, and I was actually very concerned for my mental health, not knowing that what I was doing was creative, and essentially I was writing all the time. 

Saumya: How did that go from then on? How did you know, okay, I'm a writer and this is what I need to do?

Mindy: I think that eventually I bridged that gap, but as a 13, 14 year old, sitting down with my parents and having this big heartfelt, “Guys, I think I'm insane.” You know, and they were like, oh no, you're not, honey, it's okay, you're just creative and you're imaginative, and this is a good thing. My parents are wonderful people and they've always supported and pushed literacy and reading. And they were like, no, this is good. You're just a very creative person and that's okay. You know, the people around you aren't so you're not seeing it. So you think this is weird. I just needed someone to say this is okay, you're not weird.

Saumya: There's so much power in getting that. And I imagine especially in your teens, to hear that from your family must have felt so comforting to you to know that There was not only support, but there was an explanation for what made you, you. 

Mindy: Yes. One that meant that I was not going down an unsafe route. I think that was my concern was that I wasn't spending enough time doing, quote unquote real things. So yeah, I was worried that I wasn't grounded enough in reality and kind of, operating off of a very 1890s mental health standard for women. 

Saumya: Yeah. That somehow still finds its way into things today too. So I hear that.

Mindy: Yeah, somehow, even as a child, as a teenager, I knew this, I knew that someone somewhere would point at me and tell me I was wrong. Speaking about that support then that I had from my family and bringing it back to your work and especially the novel, What A Happy Family when we're talking about family roles. Those are so powerful. Just in my example, I needed my parents to say this is okay, this is acceptable. And of course I was young enough that that was a huge boon to me to have that grant of permission to continue in this vein. So then, speaking about your novel and some of the different family interactions inside of it, what are those, I don't want to call it power struggles - although it can become that - those different dynamics, how do they play out within the novel? 

Saumya: The novel really explored exactly what you said, you know, how our families receive us or how they maybe don't. And the latter is really what comes out through all of the characters, or at least that was my goal in writing it. And what I wanted to show was how each child, there are three Children in the Joshi family there are, Suhani, Natasha and Anuj and Suhani is married to Zach, so he's also a pretty big part of the story and each of those children. They have the same parents Deepak and Vina, but they turned out so differently, even though they have the same parents. I wanted to explore how that can be possible and how a parent can be different with each child.

So even though the child is of course different, they have their own personality and their own experiences and preferences and all of these different things, they also get different parents with each round. So, Vina you know, comes from such a different background than her husband and she comes from parents who really cared about image and her making something of herself and having something to be proud of for a cause that was purely her own and they felt very disappointed in her for marrying someone and not being an actress the way she had been primed to for her entire life. 

So she takes a lot of that unresolved ambition and it goes into her oldest child, goes into Suhani and she tells Suhani, this is what you have to do in life, this is how you're happy, and this is how I'm looking out for you and what she doesn't realize is that that makes Suhani really count on external measures of success to to be equated to happiness. 

She sees a lot of herself as a woman in Natasha as the second child in the family. And so she acts out of fear a lot in the hopes that Natasha doesn't go through the struggles that she does. But a lot of times that fear comes out as criticism, it comes out as complaints, it comes out as them arguing with each other and really butting heads. And so, you know, I really wanted to show how this woman coming from a loving place, and really just loving being a mom and being a member of this family can have such different impacts on her three children. And then of course how that affects her marriage and how her husband may not always have the same perspective when it comes to their kids as she does.

Mindy: So powerful. I know that all of my boyfriend's throughout high school and onward, when you're really interacting with the entire family would always say, oh my gosh, you get mad at your mom so fast! Why? Your mother is so sweet and so loving and so caring and you just get mad at her so quickly! And she is, she is all those things and it's always coming from a positive place. But it's also like my entire life has been correction, not in a bad way, but always towards her and who she is, which is more quiet, more kind, more for lack of a better word feminine than I just naturally am and it continues on. I'm 42, and as soon as there is any hint of course correction, I'm like, no, don't talk to me. 

Saumya: It's so interesting how that is such a universal thing. I'm the same way with my own mom, with my own dad and you're so right, it doesn't matter how old we are, those dynamics just stay, they stay forever. 

Mindy: They really do. We go back into our younger selves with our parents and it's not always negative, always, it's just a cycle. And uh, that's, these are the roles that we play and I love what you're saying about there being different roles for the parent with each child. I have an older sister and I see how my parents are different with her than they are with me. They're always handling me a little more carefully. I'll just put it that way. Always with the, please don't make Mindy mad. It is not worth it. But then also, it's also hilarious when she's mad. So maybe we should poke her a little. So there's always, there's that back and forth that oscillation. 

Saumya: That's so true. I was also so interested in how Family members who are part of the same memories, the same events, the same trips. They can look back on those and have very different perspectives. So that idea actually came from, I was at home for all of 2020. My husband and baby and I lived with my parents and grandparents for the entire first part of the pandemic. And my siblings and I were talking about this vacation, we went on 15, 20 years ago and I thought the vacation was wonderful. I thought we had a great time and I only have happy memories when I look back on the vacation till this day. So I was telling them that they said, you know, we didn't have a good time at all. You were really bossy, telling us what to do and it was miserable. And I didn't know that until I'm here in my mid thirties that they have a completely different view of that same trip that I continue to have very good feelings about. So, I also got very interested in that idea, that we as family members can be part of the exact same events and have such different takeaways from those events that stay with us. 

Mindy: It's so funny that you say that we had this saying when I was a kid, “Mindy is being a butt,” that was what was often said. I hated family trips, I hated going out into public and now, like as an adult, I know why I don't like being in large crowds. It's not necessarily a fear. It really comes down to identity. I have a very strong feeling of who I am, and when I'm in a very large crowd, I'm surrounded by all those identities and it just strikes a sour chord within me. I don't know why I feel a little bit last. I feel a little bit overwhelmed as a child. That was very intense as an adult, I know how to handle it. Of course, I have a better sense of my own identity. So it's a little different, but as a child, I was literally overwhelmed by personalities, having too many people in one place was too much for me. So when we would go to the zoo or we would go to an amusement park and it's supposed to be a big fun time and I am psychologically miserable and just very unhappy and usually it's hot. So, you know, I'm physically uncomfortable surrounded by people and strangers. I'm also scared of heights so I couldn't ride rides. And then everybody was giving me a hard time for being difficult. 

Saumya: That must have all been so overwhelming.

Mindy: So much, too much of everybody wants to take pictures. And even as a child I had this like, real grip on irony and everybody's like, everybody together and have a happy family picture and I'm like, fuck this. So I would literally turn my back to the camera. They would be like, we're taking a picture of all the Children and the cousins together and I'd be like, no, and I would just turn and show the camera my back and everybody would, you know, uh say, “Mindy's being a butt.” Her butt is what's in the picture. So to this day as an adult when we're in public, they'll be like, “Mindy don't be a butt.” 

I'm like, listen, I’m in a better place mentally now and I know my roles, but it was also I I learned that I would get in trouble then if not, I mean quote unquote trouble, everyone was always fairly kind and understanding, but I would be grumpy and angry and fearful in many ways. So I would be lashing out and then I would get in trouble for being rude or having a temper. So I learned to just shut down emotionally mentally, physically, whatever make myself as small as possible. And just this was how I was quote unquote, being good. Then I get in trouble because I'm not happy.

Saumya: You can't win. 

Mindy: No, I couldn't win. Being an adult and moving through space, and like how to handle myself a little bit better, but also being around other people that function in that same way and seeing their discomfort and how it affects other people and you know, can be the wet blanket. I'm like, okay, I understand how I was being interpreted but also God I was so unhappy and so miserable. And so you know, you're right, those roles, they remain the same. That is essentially still my role in the family. I'm the loose cannon. I'm the one that needs to be controlled or tamped down and mitigated in some way all the time. And as you were saying, it doesn't matter how old you are, this is still who I am within that family system. 

Saumya: Well, I think that what you said about the way you know, when you were at the zoo and how you felt and then how you then learned to present yourself, even if that may have been different from what you were feeling inside. It's such a powerful statement because I think as kids, we can learn even if we don't consciously process it, we learn what parts of us are acceptable socially and what parts are not and so we learn how to adapt in different ways and when you said the part about shutting down, I thought, yes, that must be so common. I can't imagine how many kids there are who feel that shutting down is the safer option and it's the more acceptable option. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I see it. I still work in schools as a substitute. I ended up going in and working as a substitute in a long term position last year because of Covid and I was with fifth graders and that was the youngest range of Children I'd ever handled. And I knew from my own experiences, especially with youth, you know, once more than one person is correcting them. It's a tidal wave of social unacceptability. The kids they want, especially the helpers. You know, they want everyone in the class to be good and respectful to the teacher. And so if I correct someone, there's immediately four or five little ones going, Yeah, David, you know, it's like, no, no, no, you guys, I'm the adult in the room. You don't get to jump on David, the person being attacked shuts down or lashes out usually shuts down. And I know that feeling and it's so devastating because you are, you're just like, okay, I'm not acceptable. I won't interact and that's so painful. 

Saumya: It is, it's so painful. And you know, I just did a virtual book club last week and one of the members asked, do you think that the family is happy by the end? She was speaking to the title and I told her that I don't know if happiness is always the goal, whether we're talking about the beginning, middle or end of the story. What I hope for any family, any community, whatever group we're thinking about that's connected is that there's more honesty and there's more of a belief that each person can show up as themselves and they feel like they can authentically do that. So just being a holistic person and being comfortable with oneself is maybe more of the gold and happiness, because happiness might not always be there, no matter what the dynamic is that we're talking about. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I think happiness to people, I love what you said, happiness may not always be the goal. Happiness essentially should be fleeting. I don't think it is, much like anger, it's not a sustainable emotion. 

Saumya: That's such a good point. And I think we don't say that enough. 

Mindy: No, we don't. I always tell people contentment is underrated. 

Saumya: I love that and I love that distinction also between contentment.

Mindy: Happy couple, happy family, happy marriage because of the phrases we use. I don't know those things exist. 

Saumya: Yes, it's so true. And I don't know if, like you said, that should be the ultimate goal, maybe we should change all of those to contentment. Contentment. Friendship with contentment, parent with contentment, all of those roles. 

Mindy: If you were happy all the time, then I think you're probably ignoring something. 

Saumya: That's so true. I was hoping when Natasha goes through a lot of her own journey with her own mental health in the book, she's very hard on herself, but her family and members of the south asian community that she's growing up around there also hard on her too, so it's not all in her head when she thinks that what she brings to the table is not completely acceptable and what she wants to do with her life. She wants to be a stand up comedian, it isn't always well received and it isn't always celebrated, but my hope is that she also sees her strengths. And I remember once when I was learning about anxiety during my training, my professor actually said, well, people who have anxiety, they also are very, very good at planning. They're thinking ahead, it's a future oriented state because you're always anticipating and there's some strength to that, there are a lot of good things that come from that. So the idea is to make sure that it's in an amount that's not hurting someone and it's not maladaptive to what they want to do, but we also should celebrate our full spectrum of whatever it is, we're bringing to the table. 

Mindy: Yes, absolutely, learning yourself, being aware of yourself, those are powerful tools.

Saumya: They’re such powerful tools and I wish that those were encouraged from a young age because I think we learned so many other things in school, which is great. But I hope that whether it's in classrooms, or wherever it is that we just have that encouragement and support to learn about ourselves and to accept ourselves and each other because I think the world would be in such a different place if that was encouraged from the start. 

Mindy: Yeah, I agree completely.

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Mindy: I want to talk really quickly about your publishing journey and publishing in a pandemic. So I think my eighth or ninth book released the week before we went into lockdown and I know how that affected my sales and my marketing and my promotion. And I already had, you know, 7,8 books out. So I had a built in audience. I had a social media presence, I had a platform that I could operate off of as a debut author coming out during the pandemic. I thought about every debut author, I was just like, oh my gosh, these poor writers that had this goal and they attained it and they attained it at a horrible moment for marketing, for promo for everyone. So, if you could talk about that experience and how that went. 

Saumya: Sure. So it was of course jarring. I think the pandemic was trying for people on so many levels, of course. I spent 10 years working on my debut, so I edited it, I rewrote it. I got rejected over 200 times before I found my agent and my publisher. And the book changed from the first draft, of course, all the way to what ended up being the one that got me the book deal. 

But I think that felt especially like a blow because I thought, oh, here's a decade worth of work. I'm going to be able to celebrate it in person with some friends, I'm going to be able to meet readers and none of those things happened. So there was definitely that let down for quite a bit, but I found within a couple of months of it coming out, there were some unexpected silver linings. So I got to meet so many readers through virtual book clubs. I've done about 100 virtual book clubs in the past year and a half. And it's just been so wonderful because some of them have been international, many of them have been out of the New York area where I live. So I felt that I was able to meet and connect with readers whom I otherwise would not have met if we weren't in the pandemic. So that was really great. 

The second part is that I did feel like a lot of people came together, similar to what you were just saying, that people thought, well what's going to happen to these debut authors and even that sentiment and that empathy for us as a group went such a long way. So I had a lot of other established authors reaching out all the time asking, oh, can I do anything to help you? How can I support you? This just must be so tough. And I felt that support the whole way, I think a lot of those people would have been very supportive otherwise, of course, even if I was publishing in the circumstances that I thought I would, but I just really felt such a movement of that for debuts. And I know that a lot of my fellow debuts felt the same way that a lot of people came together to try to amplify our voices and to promote our work and that meant a lot to us. 

Mindy: Yeah, it's a harsh business at any time to come out during the pandemic. You didn't necessarily have to pivot. A lot of us had to relearn how to promote and you just kind of had to say, okay, we're going to create something new and the fact that you did 100 virtual book clubs, That's amazing. And in fact probably even more effective than a traditional approach. 

Saumya: Yes, you know, it's so funny you say that because one thought that kept coming up again and again when I was debuting in the pandemic was - I wonder if this would have been harder if I was an established author because of exactly what you said. The pivoting. This is all I know, I don't know anything outside writing and publishing in a pandemic. I don't know what the other side looks like at all. So I didn't have to relearn and I didn't have to go through those hoops at all. I just walked straight into this. So I think there are hardships no matter what end that you come from. 

Mindy: I agree. I think too that a lot of people had different experiences of the pandemic. I work from home, my life didn't change knowing that the world around me had gone a completely different direction for everyone else and my life was essentially unchanged, which caused some introspection. I can say that, but also reading changed a lot of people that I know that are very avid readers. Suddenly we're having a hard time reading. People I know that I have never read a book in their lives started. The dynamics of the readership, I think changed in some ways because we have people kind of wandering into this world and being like, I never considered reading and now I'm tired of looking at the screen, I'm tired of binging shows, I had this opportunity and I thought I was going to sit down and watch tv for three months and I'm sick of it and I learned something new. I had the opposite where it was like I'm going to roll through this TBR. I couldn't read, I couldn't read anymore. And so many people I know had the similar situation, my relationship with reading changed as soon as I became a career writer as well. So there's been stages of my relationship with reading changing, but one of the things that changed for me was that I had become a very avid audio book reader because I traveled so much that got cut off and suddenly I'm like holding a book - which used to be my preferred method. I'm hearing a voice in my head and trying to match it with a narrator and I'm just like, oh God, like it was making me crazy, this was not what this was supposed to be. 

Things changed obviously for everyone. Creative world changed. Marketing changed. And I do in some ways as you're saying, I envy you and other debut authors that just walked into this and you have those skill sets and I think a lot of the things that you guys experienced are now going to be a new normal, not necessarily because that's how the world is going to be, but Marketing and promotion changed and we found out that you don't have to fly to Florida for a 20 minute book talk. 

Saumya: So true, that's so true. You guys are going to have some skill sets that some of the alumni are going to have to kind of adapt to. 

Mindy: I know myself, I love traveling. I love meeting people. I don't feel like I get the same connection over virtual, but I think it's changed. I think people are learning how to interact with their screens a little more personally like this and it takes out so many risk factors as well as far as exposure, especially with the things heating up again. 

Saumya: Right, right. I also found that some of the magic still stayed for me as someone who just will always love books. So last year when my debut came out, we were in Atlanta with my family and so my virtual launch was with the bookstore here in Brooklyn, Books Are Magic. So I never saw my book in that bookstore and I've been going there pre pandemic for so many events and when we moved back here when my second book came out and What A Happy Family released, we went straight to that bookstore and I signed copies in person and left them there and I thought wow, this is a magical moment. And yes, it's happening a year later. But that magic is still there and I'm grateful for that because I think sometimes when anything becomes a job, no matter what it is, it can be so natural for it to just become work and for it to not feel like there's a sense of wonder around it. And I think with a lot of the things that we've all lost. I've heard people say, oh I will never take this for granted again. I will never take for granted getting a cup of coffee with a friend or seeing someone from afar in a park or being able to just step outside and walk by people and have conversations that are just daily run of the mill ones. I will never take those things for granted again. So I think there are also these newfound perspectives that have come about and will continue to. 

Mindy: I agree. I wouldn't want to say that I had devalued human interaction, but I wasn't seeing the benefits of it. 

Saumya: Yeah, no, that's so fair. I resonate with that. 

Mindy: Yeah, I wasn't acknowledging even just having a conversation. I go to obviously a very small little grocery store market and talking with the ladies that own the store and just having a little chat, you know, you don't get to do that now. And hanging out with people at my gym after the workout and just be like, man, that was really hard. Like do your glutes hurt? You know, and just having these little interactions. 

Just recognizing the value of those friendships and even business friendships and those, those compartmentalized friendships like at the gym or the market or whatever it is, shopping for groceries, walking through and stopping and getting some water and a mother and her very little boy, like maybe four or five were standing there and he was masked and I was masked and the mom looked over and she was like, oh, I really like your shorts. Because I was wearing my running shorts and she was a runner too. We ended up in a conversation about the benefits of different running shorts. And, and then this little boy was like - my tomatoes are doing really well this year! And he started talking to me about his garden and it was so cute and so sweet and you made me smile for like the rest of the time that I was shopping and it was just, you know, it was like a month ago and I'm still thinking about this little kid that just wanted to tell me about his tomatoes, and it was so endearing. I love that. I love that this child is comfortable doing this. And those little tiny moments that I don't get to have when someone is delivering my groceries to my door. 

Saumya: That's so true. Those daily interactions like you said are fleeting and there's a transient nature to them. I think when we all lost those, we realized how much value they have. Being able to say that quick hello or connect with someone in the grocery store. Those things just make us feel more connected. And it's nice to see some version of that coming back in certain contexts. And I also hope that, you know, that of course keeps going and that we get back to a new normal that's safe and where people still keep those connections alive. I was doing some research on burnout actually just yesterday and found that connecting with others has been proven to help with burnout. There's so many interventions out there for it, but really connecting with others and whatever way that might look is a helpful thing. 

Mindy: Yeah. And I did not give enough credit to the energy that others give me when I'm at home and I'm writing it's all output. It's all output. And if I'm not going out and interacting, I draw energy from other people and those moments they give me an uplift, they give me a smile, They give me everything I need to come back home and be isolated again. Hopefully. 

Saumya: Yes. Yes, that's such a good point. Especially when the work you're doing is solitary work. 

Mindy: Yeah, very much so. Last thing if you could let listeners know where they can find the book, What a happy family and where they can find you online. 

Saumya: Sure. So What A Happy Family is available wherever books are sold. I love supporting independent bookstores. So if you have an independent bookstore in your area, they may already carry it or you can request it and they are wonderful and usually get it within a week. Of course online at all of the online retailers. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target dot com, all of those. And in terms of where to find me, I'm at Saumya J. Dave on Instagram and on Twitter with the same username and then my website is www.saumyadave.com. 

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