Articulate Experience
Articulate Experience
Room At The Top
On this episode of Articulate Experience— three best-sellers on writing for the masses.
The 27 books in the wildly popular Jack Reacher series follow the title character to countless different times, places, and circumstances. Yet, to succeed, author Lee Child admits, Reacher himself must never evolve.
Publishers doubted that audiences would root for a fat heroine. Jennifer Weiner proved them wrong.
All eyes were on Yaa Gyasi when she signed a million dollar deal for her first book. Wary of fame, she’s been careful to protect her inner peace.
- [01:00] Lee Child
- [19:18] Jennifer Weiner
- [38:38] Yaa Gyasi
Articulate Experience examines stories of humanity, resilience, and wisdom through the words of some of today’s greatest writers.
Articulate Experience is a production of the Articulate Foundation.
More at articulateshow.org
Welcome to Articulate Experience — the show that examines stories of humanity, resilience, and wisdom through the words of some of today’s greatest writers, I’m Jim Cotter. In this episode—three writers who found room at the top…
Lee Child was 40 when he created Jack Reacher, the heroic savior of the little guy for the past 25 years
LEE CHILD: “I dislike him more than you would expect. By me being critical and warts and all about it, authentic honest character, that's why you do like him.”
Jennifer Weiner collected rejection letters until she hit it big in her early thirties—
JENNIFER WEINER: “I must have written a hundred short stories and sent them to magazines and published two.”
And, Literary stardom came to Yaa Gyasi in her twenties
YAA GYASI: “It didn’t feel like a sudden thing to me because I had been writing fiction since I was seven’
That’s all coming up on Articulate Experience.
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For more than a quarter century, millions of fans, readers, moviegoers, even music lovers, have followed the adventures of Jack Reacher, a retired U.S. military- cop-turned-vagabond who hopes for the best, plans for the worst, and always helps out the underdog. But when British author Lee Child created this all-American latter-day Robin Hood, his own life was in turmoil.
In 1995, in a nationwide flurry of corporate restructuring, Child lost what he had thought would be a job for life as a mid-level manager and union organizer at Granada TV, a commercial television affiliate in the northwest of England where he’d worked for almost two decades. Prospects in his field were bleak, so a 40-year-old Child decided to try something new— writing a hit crime thriller series.
LEE CHILD: It was about forging forward and saying I'd done the good corporate thing, I'd been a loyal employee got me absolutely nowhere. Now I'm going to work for myself. And the key line, I think, in the first book, Reacher says, “I tried it their way. Now I'm going to try it my way.” And I wanted to say that to myself, and I also wanted to say it to all these other people in the same spot that- you know, what are you going to do? You can sit around moping, or you can accept defeat, or you can move on and live a different life.
Child’s professional rebirth as a novelist has seen him pen more than two dozen novels and 15 short stories and novellas selling upwards of 100 million copies worldwide. This far-reaching popularity has brought about adaptations including; two Hollywood films starring Tom Cruise, an Amazon Prime TV series, a 10-track album called Just the Clothes on My Back created by Child and the band Naked Blue, as well as countless works of fanfiction.
LEE CHILD: You know, in general, if somebody says anything about Reacher, I'm thrilled. You know, people are reading my stuff, they're taking notice. I'm happy about it.
JIM COTTER: What about the Reacher- there are other Reacher books that are not yours? Do your [undecipherable] friends have to make any calls for those? Are do you just let it go?
LEE CHILD: The requests came in from people, “can we write in the Reacher universe?” And I said, “Sure, knock yourself out, whatever you want, as long as you do not show Reacher himself walking or talking.” Because this is a tough business. And if somebody you know is struggling and wants to make a few bucks out of piggybacking on it, that's fine with me.
JIM COTTER: A lot of my friends, husbands and wives, read Jack Reacher as well. That's pretty unusual.
LEE CHILD: It is unusual, and I know what you mean. And my wife and I share. She reads ferociously, I too, but the overlap is pretty small. And- if you want to be a bestseller, you got to have the big audience, and the big audience is obviously 50% women. Actually, more than that. For fiction, women are the default buyers. You know, women read a lot more fiction than men. And so I've probably got- maybe 65% of my readers are women. Which sounds amazing, but as I say, you would expect 55-60% anyway, so that extra little margin is great. And it is, obviously, what makes the book a bestseller, if everybody reads it as opposed to just one gender or one demographic.
JIM COTTER: Are you consciously doing that? Because it doesn't feel like you’re pandering in any way.
LEE CHILD: I'm not consciously doing anything. And that is actually, I think, the key to the success of this series. I don't do it for any purpose. I'm not thinking of sales. I'm not thinking of appeal, or popularity or anything like that. I just write the story that I want to write that is dictated by the characters and the circumstances.
And many, many times I'm aware that I'm doing something that is shocking or appalling. Reacher is shooting a guy in the back and stealing his money. I mean, that's awful. But it's authentic. This is what he does. And I think people respond to that authenticity.
But the women thing, yeah, absolutely. Initially, I thought it was a male fantasy. The absolute lack of commitment, the absolute lack of responsibility. That you don't have bills, you don't have a mortgage, you don't do a tax return, you just- In the morning, you just get on a bus and go somewhere else. And I think that is a strong male fantasy, that you are weighed down by all these burdens and responsibilities, but it's also, equally I've learned over the years. absolutely a woman's fantasy. They want to do the same thing. They would love to just get on a bus and be somewhere else tomorrow, because life is tough. Life is hard.
JIM COTTER: Well I want to stay on this because there’s certain parts about the idea of getting your revenge in first. That’s a very Jack Reacher idea, and it seems perfectly reasonable. There's the- also the idea that he's not- he's not the underdog, right? Most physical situations, he's the overdog. So we don't have to root for him as the underdog. Is this- have I made this up, or is this something you…?
LEE CHILD: Yeah, I wanted to try it that way. When I was little I love- I loved David versus Goliath, you know, which is the ultimate paradigm for conflict story. We've lived with it forever. But I liked Goliath better. I wanted Goliath to be the good guy. I wanted Goliath to win. And so I just- when I came to writing the series, I thought, ‘Alright, can we have Goliath as the good guy? Can we have the good guy utterly physically unchallengeable?’ And again, I think that works as a consolation for people because in real life, we're always just a little nervous about something or other. You know, you’re coming out of a party late at night or something, you're walking through town, you’re just a little bit nervous.
Suppose you didn't have to be. Suppose that you were unchallengeable. That is a very secure and lovely feeling. And I wanted to give the reader a taste of that. So the drama has to come from somewhere else. The drama does not come from “Will Reacher survive?” And typically in a story, the hero loses and loses and loses, and then he wins in the end. And I just thought, ‘You know what? What about just have him win all the way through?’ Because I’m a bit like that. If I'm watching baseball, I don't particularly want a nail biter. I like a lapper, I like an absolute destruction.
JIM COTTER: What's also interesting about Reacher, it's only occurring to me as we talk about him, is that he is one, a Wild West character, he's a cowboy, he's exploring the trampled parts of America. He's also kind of an everyday superhero. Not superpowers in that- they're not super- They're not flying around. But he has powers that most of us- most of us humans don't have. That invincibility piece is a trait of super humanity. Has he ever lost a fight? I’m trying to think. He’s temporarily lost them.
LEE CHILD: He’s had his nose broken and he once had a headache. But, ya know, basically, yeah, this is a paradigm that this guy will not be beat. And that ought to be a short circuit dramatically, but people love it. You know, the drama comes from solving the mystery or sorting out the situation.
But yeah, Reacher is a knight errant in that old fashioned sense. I mean, you mentioned cowboys, and a lot of people say, “Yeah, Reacher is this western figure.” Which of course he is, in a sense, but that figure was not invented by the Westerns. It was- it was imported from medieval Europe, when medieval Europe was scary and, you know, there was a frontier feel. Then later, of course, Europe became more settled and civilized, so that character was literally forced out to where there was still a frontier. Either Australia, lots of similar legends there, or America, of course, in the West.
JIM COTTER: The classic avenging hero.
LEE CHILD: Yeah, and universal in world culture, actually. There's a Japanese trope, the Ronin, who is a samurai disowned by his master, and sentenced to wander the land doing good deeds. Which is exactly parallel to Sir Lancelot, or Sir Gawain. You know, this trope has been around for thousands of years, because we want it, you know.
If you're in trouble somewhere, some time, you would love it if some guy would show up, solve your problem, and then, crucially, leave. Because it's the transience that's really important to that myth. They can't stick around. The only time in legend or myth that any one of them has ever stuck around was the Pied Piper of Hamelin, because he stuck around because he didn't get paid. And then he killed all the children by marching them off a cliff, you know. It's a nightmare if they stick around.
So the idea is they show up, they solve the problem, they leave. And that has been happening for thousands of years. I mean, you can trace it all the way back through the Scandinavian sagas, Anglo Saxon poems, ancient Greek stuff, religious myths! The Savior myths that suddenly, somebody shows up. So it is permanent in our culture.
Wherever Jack Reacher goes, he avenges injustice, with violence when necessary. But though the altruistic vigilante is a timeless archetype, Child’s Reacher has not been immune to changing times.
LEE CHILD: And as much as politics or political mood can color culture, I do think it's getting a little harder to write Reacher now, because Reacher really worked well when he was somehow in counterpoint to the assumption that liberal democracy was inevitable, and the thing- and being nice to everybody, being collegial, being democratic with each other, was the way to go. And Reacher’s brutality and his vigilantism and so on, stood in a nice counterpoint to that. And it kind of made sense in that context.
Now, I feel that we don't necessarily have that background, where we assume that liberal democracy is inevitable and being nice to each other is the right way to do things. We're moving out of that era. Which leaves Reacher a little exposed, I think, in some ways.
JIM COTTER: A lot more for him to push against. Because there's a lot more bad guys. The bad guys have made themselves a lot more visible.
LEE CHILD: They have but it's not a que- Yeah, more- There are certainly more to push against, but the manner of pushing is the hard thing. In the old days, Reacher had been brutal and broken, no opposition, just beating somebody up, was seen as clearly fictional because that clearly wasn't the national mood. Whereas now, the national mood is to be entirely oppositional and critical and hostile all the time.
JIM COTTER: And to back your beliefs with violence.
LEE CHILD: Yeah, if necessary. So the Reacher is sort of somewhat… The light shining on him now is different than it was before.
JIM COTTER: And then in terms of the style, you don't leave a lot of artifacts lying around on the page. You're very- I would almost go as far as say AP style, is that- You're going for
not wasting words, you’re going for accurate, brief, clear. All of the great rules about journalism. It feels like journalistic writing. Because I have no tolerance for having my time wasted by writers. I’ve tried all the other guys and put them down after a page because I’m like…
LEE CHILD: Yeah, I mean, I- that I backed into that, really, as a way of characterizing Reacher. Here's a man who's taciturn, doesn't say much alone a lot of the time. What would his internal and external voice actually sound like? I think it would be halting. I think it would be brief. I think if he had nothing much to say he would say nothing. So I tried to capture that in the voice of the book, which carried with it of course, the benefit, as you say, it just tells the story. It starts at the beginning and rushes to the end. With no flowery digressions, which I think is-
You've got to keep an eye, or half an eye at least, on how a book is consumed. And these days,
JIM COTTER: We don't read them from cover,
LEE CHILD: We don’t. You know, it's the fantasy that you're going to sit down in your armchair for five hours and have a great afternoon reading. Who can do that now? Books are read 20 minutes on the train to work, maybe 20 minutes at your lunch break, maybe 20 minutes before you go to sleep. It's a very fragmented way of consumption. And so you've got to take that into account when you're writing because you know this book- people are not going to be paying 100% attention, and they're not going to read it from first page to last all in one go. So you got to bear in mind, yeah, somebody's picking this up after two or three days, they need to remember who the characters are, they need to remember who the issues are, so clarity is super important. Even to details like I often- there are many characters in my books that I never give names. I just say the guy from the bar, the guy with the Cadillac or whatever. It's for- partly that's Reacher’s dismissive economy of style, but also it's saying to the reader, “Don't worry, I'm going to look after you. I'm not going to confuse you about who these people are.”
JIM COTTER: Interesting. That's very kind. I mean that sincerely, that is kind.
LEE CHILD: You know what, it’s also common sense and it's something I learned from from television that, you know, how is television consumed? Back in the day when I was a kid, it was an event, you know, you would sit in your living room and watch the show. Obviously, there was no VCR or anything like that back then. And then now, nobody watches television like that. You know, you watch television, you watch your favorite show while you're cooking dinner, while you're on the phone to your mother.
Today, the Reacher series is pushing 30 volumes. On September 1st of every year, Child and Reacher begin a new adventure together. But once he puts down his pen, usually the following spring, Child quickly puts some space between himself and his faithfully recurring anti-hero.
LEE CHILD: Really keep it at arm's length in that sense.
JIM COTTER: He's not embodied in you in some way?
LEE CHILD: I think no.
JIM COTTER: You can let him go?
LEE CHILD: Yeah, I do two things in particular. Number one is, I'm more critical of him than you would expect. I dislike him more than you would expect. Which- my aim as a writer, basically, is to like him a little bit less than you’re going to like him. And by me being critical, and warts-and-all about it, authentic, honest character. And that’s why you do like him.
You can see numerous examples of series where the fatal mistake is the author falls in love with the character. And at that point, the series just becomes sugary and horrible.
JIM COTTER: Interesting. I have another question. So I have this- you know this- Rob Lowe once talked about Charlie Sheen, and particularly about Charlie Sheen’s various addictions. And how Charlie, like his dad, went into AA and got clean. And the way Rob Lowe wrote about it, which is very beautifully written, he said, “While Charlie was clean, his addictions were out outside doing sit-ups, getting ready for him to come back.” And I've heard this from other people who have addictions — gambling, alcohol, drugs, the whole thing — that the timeline continues to move while they're clean and they join back up with it where they would have been had they continued. And I'm just wondering about Reacher. Is Reacher still in your- I mean, maybe even in your unconscious? His life is still going on now. Like, you're not writing about him now, I think you write from October to Ma- to March or something?
LEE CHILD: I was- This year I was done in April, so yeah.
JIM COTTER: Since April, Reacher’s out there. Is he out there doing stuff? You say you leave him alone, but really do you? Is he out there doing stuff now?
LEE CHILD: What I try and do is, this is a series that people value for its comfort and familiarity, and they want the next book every year, and they want it fundamentally to be the same. They want a different story, obviously, but everything else the same. And so, I put all my effort into not developing the character. You know, you do an MFA at a school, and it's all about character arc and all of that. And I don't want a character arc, I want to keep the character absolutely the same, because that's the familiarity that sells a series. But the author himself is obviously changing. So to put it into literal terms, Reacher is out there somewhere. You know, I'm going to be a year older by the time I write the next book. I'll have done a year's worth of things, I’ll've talked to a year’s worth of people, seen a year's worth of things. And so when I start the next book, I will be a different man and Reacher will therefore be a different character. So that in that sense, yeah, Reacher is always out there developing. Except he's not, because he's made up. It's the author that's developed.
JIM COTTER: Will he tell you when he no longer needs- has anything else to say? And will you be able to hear that?
LEE CHILD: Yeah, I mean, I'm in touch with the process enough to that if that were to happen, if it were to- be nothing more to say, I would know that instantly. But the other lucky advantage I built in to Reacher at the beginning was that he has no home and he has no job, and therefore he is not fixed in any sense. That- you know, I have not written 24 books about a police lieutenant in Boston, or whatever, this-
JIM COTTER: And you've moved the chronology around?
LEE CHILD: Yeah, chronology can be random, location can be random. The pitch of the story can be random. Sometimes it involves the White House and the FBI. Sometimes it's a dusty little no account town with one stoplight and the nearest police department a hundred miles away. So the- the freedom is immense. So the likelihood of Reacher saying to me, “There's nothing more to be done,” is pretty small, because everything can be covered by Reacher. The variety I can build in is fantastic. So I'm never gonna get bored of it. He's never gonna say, “Yeah, we've mined this seam ‘til there's nothing left.” Because it isn't a seam, it is everything.
Together, Reacher and Child have traveled the world — leading readers on a zig-zagging escape through time and place — offering respite from the real world where the big guy usually wins and the little guy loses. Now nearing 70, Child’s 2023 book will be his last for the series. But, the beloved character will forge ahead without its creator, under the care of Lee Child’s brother, Andrew. And so, the cultural icon, vanquisher of evil, savior of the virtuous, continues, timelessly, on his next great adventure...
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Jennifer Weiner is a globally renowned author of more than 20 novels and short story collections which have sold in their millions around the world. Her second novel, (2002’s) In Her Shoes, was turned into a hit movie starring Cameron Diaz, and Toni Collette. Yet at the outset of this now illustrious career, Weiner had just one, fairly humble ambition.
JENNIFER WEINER: I always thought, If I could just write a book and publish it, and it would be in bookstores, and I could go there and look at it, that would be so wonderful. That would be so amazing. Because you can't control for the other stuff. You can't control if something's going to be adapted, you can't control if it's going to be on the bestseller list. I mean, certainly, there's things that you can do to make that more probable, but who knows. I mean, the things that become tremendously popular… I think, if somebody were, you know, sitting in a lab trying to, like, crack the code, I don't know that you could do it. I mean, a book like Where the Crawdads Sing, that's been on the bestseller list for however many years it's been? Like, who saw that coming? Right? And yet!
JIM COTTER: These are described as books for women, which I disagree with. I think they’re books about women. And I've been a faithful reader for twenty years. And I don't get it. I don't get why they're for women.
JENNIFER WEINER: Well, women read books, by women and by men. Men, generally speaking, don't read books by women, and they don't read much fiction at all. If you're not talking about, like Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Stephen King, people like that. Mysteries, thrillers, right? Exactly. Men read those books. And they'll read literary fiction if it gets big enough, you know, if it sort of becomes the kind of book that everybody is talking about.
JIM COTTER: You need to be armed for the dinner party.
JENNIFER WEINER: Yes, exactly. You need to at least act like you know what the book is. But most of what's called domestic fiction, or commercial women's fiction, or just women's fiction, like, men won't touch it. Which publishers know. So, you know, if you're going to sort of steer toward an audience, the idea that you're steering toward women, it's smart business. I mean, do I wish that it were different? Yes. And do I think that it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy? Because you package something that basically makes it look as girly as a box of tampons, and then you really can't be too surprised if men are like, “Well, that's not for me,” because you've told them, “It's not for you.”
JIM COTTER: And have you ever pushed back against that? Because that is a very, it's a very valid point. And it's not just you, it's it's everybody who writes in this genre — if there is such a genre — that regardless of what's inside the pages, and I'm specifically talking about you that I sometimes feel like you should have proper, serious literary covers. But the publisher wants to make money.
JENNIFER WEINER: Yep. Well, I- something else, very interesting that I have noticed is when a literary novelist will come out with a new book. The hardcover, like you said, will have a proper serious literary, moody, you know, everything that tells you this is serious business, this is a real book. Then when they try to sell it as a paperback, and when they're trying to get the book clubs to pick it up, it'll have flowers, it'll have bridesmaids, it'll have beaches. I mean, it's it's really, really interesting. And do I struggle with it? Absolutely. Because I wish men would read my books. I think that men should read a lot of what's called domestic fiction or women's fiction, but it's an interesting intersection of where creativity meets marketing. And I think a lot about what things would have been like if I'd published under my initials, or, you know, if I just called myself, Jonathan.
JIM COTTER: You’ve still not been reviewed by the New York Times?
JENNIFER WEINER: Well, I've gotten some of the like, the capsule reviews. Like, I'm work- paragraph by paragraph. It's gone from like being like, half of a sentence to like, three entire paragraphs. So I'm confident, I'm confident, that before I shuffle off of this mortal plane, that I will have an actual review in the newspaper.
JIM COTTER: Because you write for it!
JENNIFER WEINER: I do. There's a lot of separation. Though, you would think that it would translate. But the op-ed pages are a world away, you know. They're their own fiefdom, the book department, and that's as it should be.
Weiner’s sense of editorial integrity can be traced back to her early days as a reporter in Pennsylvania and Kentucky. This came about when, after getting her bachelor’s degree in English at Princeton, she decided some real-world writing experience would serve her better than an MFA.
JENNIFER WEINER: I'm very, very grateful to my journalism training, because you learn to treat writing, like craft. You're not sitting around waiting for divine inspiration, or, you know, like, you're a wind chime and the Muse is going to come blow across your strings. Like, you sit down, you put your fingers on the keyboard, and you write. And even if every word you write is crap that you're going to just delete, delete, delete the next morning, you write. And I think that's important, because I do think that there's a lot of, you know, very wifty ideas about inspiration and creativity, and only special people can do this, and, you know, ‘writing can't be taught.’ I mean, I do think that you have to have some talent, and you have to have some inclination for the work. But inspiration’s not enough, talent’s not enough. I mean, the world is full of talented people who have never finished a short story, let alone a novel. I don’t know if I’m- I can tell you, I am certainly not the most talented person out there, but I work hard. That’s what it is. I mean, it’s work. It’s a job.
JIM COTTER: But I'm just curious about- and I'm not talking about the writing. It's all writing, right? But the storytelling part of it, the- the pulling down of threads, the ‘Meanwhile back at the ranch.’ Did you study- I mean, did you read Into the Woods? Did you read like- did you read Bird by Bird? Did you do all that stuff to try and get a handle on what made a story move, or was- did some of that come naturally to you?
JENNIFER WEINER: Some of it came naturally because when you're one of four children in a noisy household, you learn to tell a story. You know, when you're sitting at the dinner table and you know that you're not going to get your parents attention just by existing the way some kids — possibly mine — do. You better come with a hook. Like, you better bring your material, and it better be polished, and it better be tight, you better have that set ready to go. That was some of it. I took creative writing courses as an undergrad, and that was some of it too. But I was self taught for the most part. And it was lots of practice. And it was lots of rejection. The ten years between college and publishing my first book, I must have written a hundred short stories and sent them to magazines, and published two. And that's good. You know, like that was, that was a good track record. That was okay, because I'd get encouraging rejection letters. Every once in a while somebody from the Atlantic or the New Yorker would write like a sentence on the company letterhead that would say, you know, “This isn't right for us, but you are clearly a writer, and you should keep going.” And that meant everything to me. Like that was enough to like, hang my hopes on for another year.
Today, Jennifer Weiner finds herself in a position where her advice for up-and- coming young writers is much in-demand— and she gives of it generously. In one ten-point essay, she lays out her top tips, including “get a dog,” “major in liberal arts,” and, maybe most surprisingly, “have an unhappy childhood”.
JENNIFER WEINER: My children will not be writers. Their childhood has been just blissful and nothing bad has- no that's not true. But yeah, I mean, I would say of the writers that I know. I feel like more and more I'm meeting writers who did have happy childhoods, and I'm always like, “What was that like? How do you sit down and write a book? If you're okay, like, how- how does that- how does that work? How do you make that happen?” Because I do feel that unhappiness is kind of the secret sauce. And you don't have to be unhappy all your life, but you have to- I think that you have to have been lonely at an impressionable age and always able to access that loneliness. Always able to go back and know exactly what it feels like to not get picked in gym class ,or to not have anybody to sit with in the cafeteria, or to not have anybody ask you to dance at the dance. Like that open sore has to live somewhere inside you, and you have to be able to poke it every once in a while.
JIM COTTER: I mean, your dad, just abandoned- just stopped being a husband, he stopped being a father.
JENNIFER WEINER: Yeah, he told us that —I'll never forget this— he said, “You should think of me as a fun uncle.” And I said, “Okay, that sounds really, like, perverted and disgusting.” And no, like, you're not my uncle, you're my dad! You don't get to just like, you know, vanish for a year. Like, what the hell! I think my dad had a lot of demons. But I also think, you know, there was something going on in the 80s. You know, I knew a lot of kids in junior high and high school whose fathers were off on a voyage of self discovery that would often include younger women, and you know, they all lived in this one condo complex. It was very sad. But, you know, I think that the world told them that that was acceptable. The first family became the practice pancakes, and you could just, you know, find yourself a younger model and start the whole thing over again. It was hard.
JIM COTTER: How do you think that- because that's the first- did you find that there were short shortcomings in your relationships with men as a result?
JENNIFER WEINER: I had very low standards. Initially. I mean, you know, my father made me feel like no one would ever love me. And the first time somebody did, I was just like, ‘What's wrong with you?’ you know, and it made relationships very hard. It made trusting very hard. It did a number on my self esteem. But it made me a storyteller.
JIM COTTER: Really, you tie those two things together? Because you had to tell a better version of him or… ?
JENNIFER WEINER: I absolutely- Okay, so there's a Sharon Olds poem, where the voice of the poem talks about going back and watching her parents meeting each other. Meeting each other in college. And she talks about these young, beautiful people with their young, beautiful bodies. And she's watching them and she's thinking, ‘Stop, don't do this. You're going to do terrible things to each other, you're going to do terrible things to children,’ right? And then she sort of, you know, sees them walking through the gates of their college and she says, “Go ahead and do it, and I'll write the stories.” I think that's all you can do. When you've been the child who has been damaged by these two people who never should have gotten together and had kids, you pick through the wreckage, and you make it make sense somehow, and you tell the stories.
Writing for Weiner is also a way to self-reflect. At 30, she was coming off a decade of dieting and felt frustrated by the fairytale weight loss journeys of many women in books and magazines. So she penned her debut novel, 2001’s Good in Bed, as a roadmap for what she wanted out of life. A story about a larger woman who falls in love, finds her voice and gets her happy ending—withoutbecoming thin. But even though the British author Helen Fielding had already had success with a plus-sized protagonist in the Bridget Jones’ series of books and movies, Weiner still faced a hefty challenge.
JENNIFER WEINER: I sent out 25 query letters and got 24 rejections. Just not taking new clients, not taking new fiction, not taking new women's fiction. And the one agent who agreed to read the manuscript and then wanted to work with me said that one of the problems that she had, and one of the things that she wanted me to change was the size of my heroine. She said, “This is a fat girl, and no one wants to read a book about a pathetic, lonely fat girl.” She said, “Maybe make her more like Bridget Jones, where it's just like, maybe 15 extra pounds.” And I thought, ‘Well, I'm glad that Helen Fielding has opened the door to the extent that we can sneak in somebody with 15 extra pounds.’ However, she's done that, like, she's been there and done that. And if I do that, I'm just going to have written Bridget Jones with a bat mitzvah.
JIM COTTER: Knowing your biography, there's a lot of versions of you in these books. Unshamedly. And the readers know that too. Ever feel exposed? Ever feel like your life is out there for the the ages?
JENNIFER WEINER: Well, for some reason, it doesn't bother me that much. I don't know why. Because I think probably for like a normal person, it would be like, 'What do you mean, you're putting my business in the streets like that?’ But I guess I always felt that, if telling my story — either doing it in fiction, or doing it in an essay, doing it in a newspaper, or doing it in a book — if that was going to make someone feel less alone, and more seen, and less like a freak, then that would be a worthwhile thing to do. And if if the price that I would pay would mean feeling a little overexposed or a little known, you know. It is strange that people sort of walk up to you and they know your kids names. They know your dog’s name. They know that my mom died recently. And I'm just like, ‘Wait a minute, I've never met you.’ And then I'm like, ‘Oh, yeah, the internet.’
JIM COTTER: Define for me the difference between personal and private?
JENNIFER WEINER: Believe it or not, there are some things that I don't share. And I think especially since I have children — and since my children became old enough to understand what I do — I mean, I would say that there's a version of me that is out there for public consumption. And then there's things that I just don't talk about. And I think most people have have those lines, they're just in different places, you know, but there is some stuff that's private.
JIM COTTER: When you got to the point where somebody said that you were going to have that sensation of having a book in a bookstore- At that point, you must have thought, ‘Something's possible.’. How was what you thought might be possible then different from the reality? Good? I'm guessing good and bad?
JENNIFER WEINER: Yeah, well, I think that there's a very human instinct to think like, if I only get X, then everything is going to feel fantastic. For women, I think a lot of it is tied to if I could only lose 20 pounds, everything will be great, and everything will fall into place. And so for me, it was like, if I ever publish a book and can walk into a bookstore, that will soothe every hurt feeling that I've ever had in my life. And it will finally shut up these voices in my head that say that I'm not good enough and no one's ever gonna love me, because people love me, because my book’s in a bookstore. And that wasn't what happened, right?
JIM COTTER: So describe- You walk into, what bookstore is it?
JENNIFER WEINER: Borders. Remember Borders? It was it was on the New Releases wall. And I just looked at it for a while. And then of course, I have to wait till somebody comes and picks it up. And then I have to, like, hold myself back. And I'm like, “That's my book, I wrote it! I’ll sign it for you if you buy it!” And it was amazing. It really was. And it's still amazing every single time, because it still doesn't quite feel real. It's like part of me is just, you know, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to be 19. And I'm still going to be in college. And I'm, you know, it's like that terrible anxiety dream. If there's a test, and I didn't study for it, and I won’t have published anything, and it's oh, my God. But, then you have a book, and it becomes a best seller. And it's like, okay, that feels really good. But I can still feel unhappiness or insecurity or self loathing or self doubt. And then it's like, well, if it's if it's made into a movie, if it's a number one bestseller, if it's published in thirty different countries, if it's this, if it's that, and eventually, you just get to the point where you figure out, there's nothing external. Nobody is going to hand you a crown and a scepter and suddenly, every hard, sad thing will fall away. It doesn't work like that.
JIM COTTER: It's hard lesson to learn
JENNIFER WEINER: Hard. And you have to learn it over and over and over, I think, because I think that there's something very natural, you know, it's like, well, if I climb Mount Everest, that'll be enough. You know, if I fly a rocket to the moon, that'll be enough.
JIM COTTER: How are you now? How’s the self-esteem now? Have you got an asshole in your head still?
JENNIFER WEINER: Yeah, you know, and a lot of times it sounds like my dad. But, I have good days and bad days, I would say more good days than bad days. But you know, you can't look at your Amazon rankings, or where you are on the bestseller list, or how many copies this book sold versus how many copies the last book sold, because you will make yourself so crazy. Like, so crazy. Because, you know, eventually you realize it's just never ever, ever enough. And there's always somebody doing better, if those are your metrics. And so like yesterday, I woke up in the morning, I knew I didn't have anywhere to be yesterday so I could sort of play hooky. And I got on my bike, and I rode from my home in Queen village down to Atlantic City. It was like seventy miles. And I thought about my summer plans, and my daughter, and my dog, and my husband, and my mom. And I was so happy. You know, just being outside. Being on these like two lane roads, riding under these like canopies have shade trees, and it was quiet and it was beautiful. And it wasn't too hot, and there weren't lots of people. And it was just the nicest day and I thought, you know, this is what being rich is. You know, it's not money or big houses, or fancy cars, or fur, or jewelry, or whatever. It's time. That's the truest sort of endangered resource. It's having time and just being able to do something just purely because you want to do it and it pleases you to do it. And getting to do the thing that I love the best every day, like, this is my living. It's not my hobby anymore. Like, I've gotten to make my hobby my life.
Disquiet, and even unhappiness, Jennifer Weiner has found, is as essential to a successful life as it is to any good story. But that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in it. Instead, we can move through it, process, and keep it with us as a memory, like a good anecdote or a well-worn paperback. Something to take out and reflect on occasionally, but then put away, so we can begin to create our next great story.
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The acclaimed novelist Yaa Gyasi— best known for her 2016 debut, Homegoing — was born in Mampong, Ghana, but grew up moving around the United States. When she was an infant, Gyasi’s family arrived in Ohio, where her father—now a professor of French— earned his PhD. From there, the family moved to Illinois, then Tennessee, before ultimately settling in Huntsville, Alabama.
The young Yaa was shy and sought comfort in the familiar, forging strong bonds with her two brothers. But books were her closest friends, and from an early age, she fostered a secret love of writing– one that would take decades, and her eventual admission into the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop — to earn her parents’ acceptance.
YAA GYASI: I think that when I got into graduate school and I got into Iowa, it legitimized my decision in a way for them. They- they both are very educated, like, they understood school. And so it felt like a more reasonable path, now that there was a degree that could come out of it. So that was the beginning of them kind of letting go a little bit. But I think it had probably begun in college, just because I stuck to my guns for so long, that I think they had kind of started to get used to the idea that I wasn't going to be a doctor.
JIM COTTER: How bad did it get?
YAA GYASI: I mean, you couldn't really ever call anything a fight because it's, it's pretty- for most of my life, they just said it and I did it. But it was kind of years of an insistence that I not be a writer, followed by my kind of bullish silence about doing it. So I got, I suppose, pretty bad, but it never felt to me like, aggressive or anything. It just felt like since I was so confident that I knew what I wanted to do, it didn't feel terrible,
JIM COTTER: So, what, was there secretive writing? Did it get to the point where you're like, you're filling these manuscripts and of course you don't show them to- … But that's- that's kind of cool, in a way, that you have this thing. I mean, if you're gonna have a teenage rebellion, here's a pretty good one. So you have to hide for your parents.
YAA GYASI: Yeah, I did. I wrote a young adult fiction novel when I was a teenager that no one has ever seen, except like a friend or two. And then when I was working on Homegoing, like they knew I was working on something, but they didn't- they didn't know what. When I went to Ghana, the summer before my junior year of college, it was because I had gotten a fellowship to research a novel, but I didn't tell them that. And so they just kept telling everyone that I was there to do research, but they didn't know what it- what it was for or what it was. So I am pretty secretive about what I'm writing.
This desire for privacy ultimately contributed to the massive publicity surrounding the release of her first book, Homegoing. The story begins with two Ghanaian sisters separated early in life when one is sold into slavery. It then traces 250 years of family history as their descendents face the intergenerational consequences of that long-ago separation.
Homegoing was a huge success,winning the PEN/Hemingway Award, an American Book Award, and a long run on the New York Times Best-Seller list. But publicity came well before publication, when the 25-year old received a million-dollar advance. And so despite Gyasi having spent seven years crafting the book, onlookers were quick to call her an overnight success.
JIM COTTER: A lot of people want to say, oh, just appeared from nowhere, made from whole cloth, and so young! Did that start to get a bit annoying at a certain point that everyone's going so young?
YAA GYASI: Yeah, it did a little, mostly in the instances where that was like, the primary thing. And it didn't feel like a sudden thing to me, because I had been writing fiction since age seven. So it felt like-
JIM COTTER: And you’d been writing the first book for, what, seven years, is that right?
YAA GYASI: Yeah, that's true too. Yeah.
JIM COTTER: Was there sort of a moment when you believed that it was possible that you were going to write something that other people want to read?
YAA GYASI: I don't know if there is a single moment where that felt true, you know. With Homegoing, I- I think so much of the pleasure of writing a first novel is the lack of knowledge around whether or not anyone will read it. It like, gives you a kind of a sense of freedom that stops being possible after you publish the first book. And so I didn't really, I wasn't really thinking about whether or not anyone would read it, and it wasn't until I sold it, that I kind of understood that- that it would find an audience.
JIM COTTER: That must have been very frightening.
YAA GYASI: It was incredibly frightening. Yes.
JIM COTTER: Also just the money part was extraordinary.
YAA GYASI: Yeah. It was beyond anything that I could have thought to be possible for me.
JIM COTTER: And then describe to me the moment — cause I- I'm not trying to just relive this, ‘cause I know you've had to rehash this — but the moment when the agent calls you and said, “you'll never believe this, but they want to give you this much money.”
YAA GYASI: I think I- I played it very cool. But then when I got off the phone with him, I started crying.
JIM COTTER: With joy or with fear, or with both?
YAA GYASI: With both. Like joy, and anxiety, and a very complicated mix of emotions. Mostly because I recognized that my life was going to change completely. And I was, and still am, a pretty private person. And I was like, thinking about all of the ways that my life would change.
JIM COTTER: Having had that thought and sort of trying to run the film forward, how was what you thought would happen different from what the reality became?
YAA GYASI: It was similar to how I had imagined it. Certainly like, I didn't know what the details of it would be, but I sensed that there would be, you know, just a lot more attention than other writers that I knew.
JIM COTTER: And were you ready for the, the vacuity of the cruelty of some people, [...] That was just part of the job?
YAA GYASI: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't know that I anticipated the degree to which that would be part of the job, but I think I was already tuned in enough to other writers’ careers. Had already read and seen what other people had gone through, particularly cause I went through a program. So I did know other writers who were at the early stages of their career. So I could guess.
JIM COTTER: So in some ways you were actually though coming at it from a different- and you were, you'd been here long enough to know that you weren't the white middle class person from Boston who was going to be treated in that way. So who did you have to compare that with? Because there's going to be a bit more grit in how you're responded to, or a bit more something. I- I have never been Black, so I can't- that's not my lived experience. But you have, and I believe that it's more difficult. Was that part, at all, of the fear of…?
YAA GYASI: Yeah, it definitely was. Especially having written a book like Homegoing, which was attentive to, you know, issues of- of blackness in this country. Like, I suspected that I would get some vitriol directed at me for that. And I did. I was fortunate in some ways. One of my friends also had a book come out that same year, who's Black, Brit Bennett. So we've had these kind of like parallel careers, and have been able to kind of trade stories in a way that has made it feel less lonely than it might have otherwise.
JIM COTTER: Did your understanding of racism in America become more pronounced when you became a public figure? Not your understanding, your experience of it more to the point?
YAA GYASI: Yes. I suppose my experience of it did become more pronounced in some ways, in that I was seeing explicitly what I had known only kind of theoretically about the way that a kind of fame or recognition does not shield you from racism in the ways that we would like to think that it does.
JIM COTTER: Probably exposes you more to it.
YAA GYASI: So I do think there is a little bit more understanding.
JIM COTTER: And this idea that you've espoused, that you need to work twice as hard to get half as far: It's still true?
YAA GYASI: Well, probably. It's still a lie, in that it's not ever going to be enough to save you, but I think it's still a guiding principle for many, many Black people.
In the aftermath of Homegoing, Gyasi moved to Berlin to work on her second novel, Transcendent Kingdom. That story centers on a neuroscientist named Gifty who's working through the traumas that have torn her family apart. Many aspects of Gifty's life mirrored Gyasi's own. Both are black women born to Ghanaian parents. Both grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, and both attended Stanford. But Gifty was never meant as a stand-in for Gyasi.
YAA GYASI: I think of those like, autobiographical details as a kind of scaffolding that you put up to, to build the house, but it doesn't matter, ultimately. Anything that is from my life that goes in the book is unrecognizable, to me at least, by the time I finish it.
JIM COTTER: In music, you know, people will have hit with their first record, which took them 24 years to write. And then they have to write the second album on the road from whole cloth. And it's the difficult second album. That wasn't the case for you, but God you made it hard for yourself. First of all, you were now writing it- you knew you were going to have an audience. There were people out there waiting for this. And then you wrote the damn thing in the first person, which makes exposition really difficult.
YAA GYASI: Yeah, I did, but it felt like a kind of freedom to me, to be doing something so different from Homegoing, this book that I had spent so many years working on. It was nice to have to think about new things and kind of meet new challenges. It didn't- it didn't feel burdensome as I was doing it, I think because it was a chance to try something new.
And I think it's, it's nice for the first person, it brings it an earnestness to what the character is saying, that you might lose otherwise. So I found that helpful.
JIM COTTER: Do you think about the version of yourself that you might become? Do you see yourself being an Alice Walker or a Toni Morison? A lady of that age with a body of work who has- I don't even know how to describe those two women, or you in that respect. Just- just the idea that you could- you could go through and continue and live a life in words.
YAA GYASI: Yeah, I, I do. Insofar as I, I think about the fact that I want to continue to write and continue to place literature at the center of my life. I don't know if I think about, you know, what the books will be like or how the career will go. But I do spend a lot of time thinking about wanting to write another book, and hopefully write another one after that. And so on.
JIM COTTER: How much do you feel like your inner world has been… I was going to say compromised, I was going to say invaded. I don't know what the right word is, but you went from writing for you, and I suspect writing to find out what you thought rather than a way to express something, to this, and now a second book, and now it's your book coming up. Do you feel vulnerable in any way? Do you feel like this bubble that you were able to live in is somewhat now a goldfish bowl, maybe?
YAA GYASI: I think I would have answered that question differently after Homegoing came out. Like, I think part of my anxiety in those years was that feeling, that worry, that I hadn't protected my inner life somehow. And I wouldn't be able to figure out how to return to whatever that quiet place is that I need in order to write, that I had given too much away somehow. And writing is the cure for that feeling. And so the fact that I started Transcendent Kingdom, and then got into it kind of reminded me that I can go back to that place when I need to, and that I can and should protect that place in the ways that I can.
Yaa Gyasi is rightly protective of the quiet solitude of her writing practice. For it’s only by working to preserve that space of singular, focused attention that she’s been able to capture the imaginations of millions. Her third novel is currently in progress— but naturally, that’s about all she’ll say… for now, at least.
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Children's author Kate DiCamillo writes to heal from the absence of her father in her own childhood and beyond.
KATE DICAMILLO: I've taken all of this chaos, all of this hurt and bewilderment that you feel is a kid and you poured into a vison, then you can make it into something beautiful.
The Pulitzer Prize winning in poet Gregory Parlow observes and dissects emotional subjects in a way that reads like reason, especially when the subject hits closest to home.
GREGORY PARDLO: Yes, I have a problem with my father. There are points when I'm going to be angry and uh, and I'm trying to normalize that.
And the playwright Sarah Gancher is driven by the belief that laughter is a spiritual act, a philosophy she inherited from her own late father.
SARAH GANCHER: He was very, very funny and we were very similar. That was a thing I got all the time during my childhood, was just like, you're so much like your dad.
Join us for the next Articulate Experience.
Articulate Experience is a production of the Articulate Foundation.
More at articulateshow.org
The program is produced by Tori Marchiony with help from Christine Walden, Mark Miller, Tom Contarino, Eva Roben, Matt Hoisch, Gabby Bing, Paula Butler, and Mary Morilla.
Our fact checker is Christopher Munden.
Original music and sound design by John Avarese.
I'm Jim Cotter.
