you
I’m really excited about this
conversation I’m just going to jump
right into it you’ve written about so
many subjects 23 books as far as I know
you’ve ever written about elephants so I
wanted to ask you first of all what was
the inspiration for leaving time well it
was had nothing to do with elephants at
first actually uh so I have three kids
and my youngest is a daughter named
Sammy and she was getting ready to go
off to college and her brothers had
already left
so I was becoming an empty-nester and it
upset me more than I thought it was
going to I was really thinking about
what it would be like to be left behind
and somewhere in the middle of all that
thought I read an article probably in a
National Geographic magazine that said
that in the elephant Kingdom in the wild
a mother and daughter elephant stay
together their whole lives until one of
them dies and I read that fact and I
thought well why don’t we do it that way
I mean it’s before Japan you know and it
kind of got me thinking and I began to
do a little background research on
elephants and in particular how their
minds work a lot of people love
elephants or you know collect elephants
but don’t necessarily realize the the
cognitive abilities that elephants have
they can feel grief and pain and loss
and they have incredible memories all of
those things are part of the elephant
brain and the more I learned about that
the more I realized this was a perfect
metaphor for the book and that I had a
profession for one of the main
characters in the book part of the
challenge of the book is that you’re
writing in different voices you’re
writing the voice of a scientist was it
difficult as a writer to to switch your
brain to do that no um the book is the
story of this woman Alice Metcalf who
studies elephant grief and cognition and
she runs the sanctuary with her husband
and one night there’s a horrible tragedy
at the sanctuary and a caregivers
trampled by an elephant and that same
night Alice disappears off the face of
the earth and the only the OEL
person who’s a witness is her
three-year-old daughter Jenna the
problem is Jenna can remember none of it
and Jenna then begins the book ten years
later believing that her mother never
would have left her willingly and that
she is going to find this woman and she
enlists the help of a failed psychic
named serenity and an alcoholic
detective named Virgil and the three of
them are somehow gonna find her mother
but you also get to hear from Alice and
the way you get to hear from her is the
way Jenna gets to hear from her by
poring over her research entries and her
journals and that’s what Jenna’s done
for the past ten years is try to find
her mother literally between the lines
of what she’s left behind but one of the
things that impressed me so much about
the book was the beautiful detailed
descriptions of elephant behavior and
just elephants and so you must have done
a lot of research for that and I’m
wondering how you went about doing that
research for this book I knew that I
needed to see both elephants in
captivity and elephants in the wild
because the main character in the book
whose name is Alice Metcalf who is
actually missing for most of the book
she drives the book as her daughter
Jenna tries to find her Alice is an
elephant researcher who studies grief
and cognition and elephants and she
studies them in the wild in Botswana and
then she runs a sanctuary with her
husband in New England so I began by
doing research at a place called the
elephant sanctuary which is in Hohenwald
Tennessee the elephants who come to live
there are elephants who have been in
circuses and zoos their entire life and
in many cases have been very horribly
abused coming to the sanctuary means
that they have hit the jackpot of
retirement homes so I got to see how a
sanctuary runs which was really
important for the book because a lot of
the action takes place in a sanctuary
but I also needed to know what alice’s
research was about and so I went to
Botswana and I worked with an elephant
researcher who studies the migration of
elephants in the thule bloc and you know
I got to observe some incredible
behaviors of elephants in their natural
habitat which were phenomenal everything
that you read in the book is something
that either I experienced or that I was
told by someone at the sanctuary or by
this researcher so every story in there
is true Wow how long were you
at each place I was in at the elephant
sanctuary for just a smattering of days
was a couple of days but it’s you know
2700 acres most of which I wouldn’t be
able to access by foot because I’m not
an elephant and something that a lot of
people don’t realize is that elephants
in captivity often die of foot problems
because they’ve been standing on
concrete for so long and if you think
about it in the wild an elephant gets to
walk on top of different terrain so for
example there was an elephant at the
sanctuary that had such severe cracks in
her feet that Teva you know the Teva
company that makes sandals they made
these giant Tevas for her and she wore
these giant Tevas around for a while
yeah and then when I was in Botswana I
was there for about a week
it was fantastic cuz you’d get up every
morning and you could basically go on
safari and I got to see this fantastic
matriarch the matriarch is the female
head of the herd who runs the herd she’s
usually the biggest elephant and the one
who has the most collective knowledge
often the oldest elephant and she was
leaving her herd up this little incline
and sliding down on her butt over I
don’t her like it was a little
playground slide and it was so fun to
watch this whole herd just keep doing it
um and then we came across two young
males they had this giant dung ball
which is kind of gross but they were
kicking it back and forth like it was
soccer
just back before it was totally played
there was no other reason for them you
know it was really fun to be able to see
behaviors like that that’s really really
rare
actually so one of the behaviors that
fascinated me because it’s so
interesting is elephants grieving
there’s a lot of elephant grieving in
the book because Alice Metcalf who is
this missing mom that her daughter Jenna
is trying to find throughout the book
she studied elephant grief and that was
what really amazed me the most and
people say well what’s the coolest thing
you learned about elephants and it’s
that they do have this depth of
understanding for loss that I would not
have been able prior to this to
attribute to an animal elephants that
come across the bones of another
elephant will get very somber their ears
droop their tails droop they have a
complete behavioral change and what’s
really interesting is that they don’t
act this way around any
their bones just the bones of elephants
they have been known and very often
returned to the site where an elephant
has died for years afterward as if
they’re paying respects like they’re
going to a grave site and again when
they get there they get very quiet
somber reverential they stay for a few
hours and then they move on they’ve been
known to break into research facilities
in the middle of the night and steal a
bone that a research was working with
and bring it back to the site of that
elephant’s death and at the Elephant
Sanctuary in Tennessee there’s this
great story about an elephant named
sissy sissy survived the 1981 floods in
Gainesville Gainesville by basically
being submerged for 24 hours with just
her trunk up like a little periscope so
she was really traumatized by the time
she came to the sanctuary and it took
her very long time to bond with other
elephants which they let they let happen
naturally which of course is one of the
issues with zoos because you know you
can’t just stick two elephants together
and expect them to be friends so she
instead of bonding with an elephant
began to carry around a tire like
everywhere she went it was like a
security blanket like a little pacifier
and for years she carried this tire
around and then finally she bonded with
an elephant named Tina for years they
were inseparable and then one day Tina
got ill and she died when she died sissy
stayed with her the whole time she was
dying stayed by her grave for a day
after she died and then very carefully
they watched her take that tire and lay
it on the grave kind of like Wade placed
a wreath and she left it there for her
friend as if she knew her friend needed
it more now Wow right no amazing that’s
really amazing maybe we should watch the
clip on the elephant behavior we have a
link we have an amazing wonderful clip
about elephant behavior that we would
like to share with you all tonight this
is a large adult male named Stoney and
he’s doing what we call tough ground or
tufting the ground it’s look at him he
is so silly look how he’s right down on
the ground must males do this when
they’re threatening another male and
it’s kind of a way of saying this is
what I’m going to do with you if I get
hold of you now he’s just looking
me and he’s now starting to shake his
head and doing what I call a head waggle
now that’s an invitation to play this is
just a really cute video of two young
elephants two juveniles doing what we
call play social rub they’re lying on
the ground and just wiggling against
each other elephants love to do this
especially kind of in the late afternoon
when they’ve had a lot to eat and
they’re feeling good this was filmed in
the evening it was about an 11-year old
female and two infant tabs that she was
looking after and she was so cute with
them she just lay down in this sort of
dust wallow here and allowed them to
clamber all over her look watch this
balancing act here where he he tries to
step on her on her trunk but it’s a
little bit too Wiggly so then he decides
okay he’ll just step right on her face
instead she doesn’t mind great that’s so
wonderful and poaching we haven’t really
touched on yet and that’s the sad thing
about elephants that when you fall in
love with them then you begin to realize
that they are being killed at a rate of
thirty eight thousand elephants a year
and by that estimate they’ll be gone in
the wild in Africa in ten years and I
don’t know about you but I want my
grandkids to be able to see elephants
you know so it became very important for
me to learn about poaching which I
really didn’t know much about and to to
figure out why it’s important for us in
this country where we don’t have
elephants to really support the
initiatives to take care of elephants
that are being threatened we know that
poaching is more than just a wildlife
concern it’s a humanitarian concern
they’ve linked the money from poaching
to Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army
we know that al-shabaab poaches one two
three tons of ivory every month in
Somalia raising five hundred thousand
dollars a month that goes a really long
way in Somalia and al-shabaab has ties
to al-qaeda and that’s why it matters in
this
country without you or someone like you
writing about this there’s a small
fraction of people in the world who
would be aware of it and especially in
the United States but everywhere that
your books are being sold I just kind of
felt like saying on behalf of the planet
thank you for them it’s really you know
what they’re there are a lot of reasons
that people become writers I am really
really fortunate because I go to my
office every day and I have the the
opportunity to entertain everyone but I
also have this potential to educate a
little and I think if you can leave the
world a better place in some small way
that’s really important um hopefully
that’s what my books can do they can
teach you something you didn’t know and
maybe open your mind up a little in a
direction that you didn’t think you were
gonna have to go yeah absolutely and
it’s it’s wonderful yeah thank you
so I was thinking is a writer reading
this it’s a fascinating journey for you
because on the one hand you get to
become a scientist you get to become a
psychic you get to become a detective do
you feel enriched and do you feel
exhausted you feel enriched do you how
because you’re becoming all these
different people in the course of
writing your book how does that I
actually feel lucky yeah I feel really
lucky because I get to go to work and
I’m someone different
every day I do not feel as if I have
created serenity or Virgil or Alice or
Jenna I feel like they’re speaking
through me and I hear them I hear them
very clearly in my head they talk to me
they sometimes wake me up at night
because they are annoying and and
honestly you know they long said my joke
is that writing is successful
schizophrenia I get paid to hear voices
right there you go that’s really I hear
their voices and I feel as if you guys
are you know you can’t see the movie you
can’t hear the movie so it’s my job to
tell you what’s being said when I’m I
know I’m close to finishing a draft I
can already hear other people whispering
like ready really yeah really Wow I’m
sure there are people in the audience
who have questions that they brought
with them tonight right so there’s only
one rule which is if you give away the
ending of any of my books I’m gonna kill
you right
right keep that in mind yes you don’t
want to do that really there was a
question right there
hi I’m what is what was the hardest and
easiest part of getting started as a
writer with your very first book the
easiest part about getting to be a
writer
honestly was having the great good
fortune and the grades to get into
Princeton because at the time in the 80s
there were not many undergraduate
creative writing programs there were a
lot of graduate schools but not
undergrad and I had the opportunity to
work with living breathing writers in
particular one who really shepherded me
into becoming my own best editor which i
think is the most essential tool for a
writer I actually spent a two-year
period and this is the hardest part
trying to find an agent I had over 100
rejections from agents a lot of people
will write me and they’re like yeah you
know I just got back my third rejection
I don’t know if I can do this and I just
go yeah okay whatever okay you know that
is the hardest part honestly of being a
writer I think believing in yourself
enough that somebody eventually takes a
second look one person has to really
fall for it you know and that’s that
kind of makes the odds feel a little bit
better let’s come down to the front
please
so I have a question about my sister’s
keeper now how did I know that it was
the first book I read and totally got me
hooked on you but um when I was so
excited for the movie after seeing it I
wondered what your opinion was on the
change yeah that was so tactfully
Celotex
um so here’s the thing about about
selling books form into movies what most
of you don’t realize is that the writer
does not have any say over what happens
there are exceptions but in the vast
majority of cases you sell your property
to a studio and then they do with it
whatever they want to do and you are not
asked for any you know any contributions
whatsoever it’s like giving a baby up
for adoption and we writers try really
hard to to find a good home for a baby
but sometimes it doesn’t work out
and in my case you know I had I was
actually asked to try and and interview
nick cassavetes the director before he
was hired and I said to him that what
was the only thing that was really
important to me in the book that should
stay the same was the ending and I
explained that it was what had sold all
these copies of the book people going I
can’t tell you what happened just read
it so we could talk you know and so he
read the book and he said you’re right
that’s the only ending for this story
I’m not gonna change it if anyone else
does I’m gonna tell you why and I’m
gonna tell you myself and I thought
that’s fair and he spent two years
writing a script he would call me weekly
I would help him whenever he asked with
character with dialogue with scenes
whatever um he would read me stuff and
then at the end of that process a fan
wrote me an email saying they’ve gotten
the script of My Sister’s Keeper and did
she worked at a casting agency and did I
know that they had changed the ending so
I called Nick at home and he wouldn’t
take my call I went to the movie set and
he threw me off the set I went to New
Line Cinema and I spoke to the head Toby
Emmerich and I said you guys are gonna
lose money on this film because I have
the best chance in the world and they
are not going to be happy with what you
did and he said no no you know we really
trust Nick he did the notebook for us he
knows what he’s doing and I said okay
and I walked away and of course the
movie was not successful it’s a
beautiful movie
Nick Nick filmed a beautiful movie with
wonderful acting performances about
dying with dignity that is not what the
book is about
that’s his interpretation but it’s not
what I thought the book should be about
and many of my wonderful fans agreed and
the movie lost money and the really cool
silver lining here is that ever since
then I have had more clout in Hollywood
because I apparently am psychic and I
told them they were gonna lose money oh
that’s kind of cool but it was not a
pleasant experience would it would it
mean that I wouldn’t do it again
no because ultimately let’s be real in
most cases the book is always better
than the film right and for those of you
who went to go see my sister’s keeper
and were as disappointed as I was the
good news is that you get to go home and
pull that book off the shelf and read
the story the way it should be right
yeah
um gentleman in the blue shirt here
hi I’m my wife and I are both the oldest
of four and I’ve had a lot of
discussions and hardship with my
relationship with my mother because I
was the one who started everyone leaving
yeah so you really said that this was a
core for the walk well how did this and
this journey of writing it help you with
what you were going through mmm that’s a
great question um it really did help me
most of my books are really my therapy
session for all of you to watch you know
it’s something that I’m really
struggling with and and I wrestle it out
and throw it at other characters but
really I’m talking about something
that’s upsetting to me and you know for
me it really was that that sense okay
elephants and and elephants moms and
daughters they stay together forever so
what does that really mean for humans
when people leave us do they ever really
leave and I think that was really that
was really the end point that I came to
physical distance means nothing that’s
details that when you love someone
they’re always with you
so we have up this skirt a wonderful
woman in the front in purple and black
what kind of events inspire you to write
cuz it like in your book 19 minutes um
Peter Hughton goes on a school shooting
rampage in his school so as it vents
like doesn’t inspire you to write I
could write about any number of really
devastating topics or things that are
very upsetting but I think there’s more
to it than that I don’t rip things out
of the headlines what I need to do is to
find something that has intersected in
my life at that moment in a way that
really moves me deeply and what moves me
today might not be what moves me in five
years so a book that I think that’s
interesting but not that interesting
right now could completely change five
years from now I could be dying to write
that book so there is this it’s a dual
feed part of it is things that I hear
about things that I read about in the
world that that I have a curiosity about
and the other part of it is where I am
in my own life it’s funny because
sometimes think you know very
self-serving ly about Jody Pico 101
which is gonna be taught clearly one day
you know and if you look at the
trajectory of my career my very first
book was about a mother and a daughter
this book is about a mother and a
daughter again what’s the difference
when I wrote my first book I was closer
in age to the daughter now I’m closer in
age to the mother and in between I wrote
about the relationships between men and
women because I got married then I wrote
about all the really scary things that
can happen to your children because I
had children it was like a whole run of
that for many years and now you know I’m
moving into more theoretical stuff the
nature of good and evil you know and and
race for example things that are bigger
because that’s I have the luxury of
worrying about those things and not just
worrying about my kids anymore I keep
telling my mom that one day I’m gonna
write about putting your parents in a
nursing home she’s really happy to hear
that’s great well on behalf of all of us
thank you so much for sharing thank you
thank you
you
I’m really excited about this
conversation I’m just going to jump
right into it you’ve written about so
many subjects 23 books as far as I know
you’ve ever written about elephants so I
wanted to ask you first of all what was
the inspiration for leaving time well it
was had nothing to do with elephants at
first actually uh so I have three kids
and my youngest is a daughter named
Sammy and she was getting ready to go
off to college and her brothers had
already left
so I was becoming an empty-nester and it
upset me more than I thought it was
going to I was really thinking about
what it would be like to be left behind
and somewhere in the middle of all that
thought I read an article probably in a
National Geographic magazine that said
that in the elephant Kingdom in the wild
a mother and daughter elephant stay
together their whole lives until one of
them dies and I read that fact and I
thought well why don’t we do it that way
I mean it’s before Japan you know and it
kind of got me thinking and I began to
do a little background research on
elephants and in particular how their
minds work a lot of people love
elephants or you know collect elephants
but don’t necessarily realize the the
cognitive abilities that elephants have
they can feel grief and pain and loss
and they have incredible memories all of
those things are part of the elephant
brain and the more I learned about that
the more I realized this was a perfect
metaphor for the book and that I had a
profession for one of the main
characters in the book part of the
challenge of the book is that you’re
writing in different voices you’re
writing the voice of a scientist was it
difficult as a writer to to switch your
brain to do that no um the book is the
story of this woman Alice Metcalf who
studies elephant grief and cognition and
she runs the sanctuary with her husband
and one night there’s a horrible tragedy
at the sanctuary and a caregivers
trampled by an elephant and that same
night Alice disappears off the face of
the earth and the only the OEL
person who’s a witness is her
three-year-old daughter Jenna the
problem is Jenna can remember none of it
and Jenna then begins the book ten years
later believing that her mother never
would have left her willingly and that
she is going to find this woman and she
enlists the help of a failed psychic
named serenity and an alcoholic
detective named Virgil and the three of
them are somehow gonna find her mother
but you also get to hear from Alice and
the way you get to hear from her is the
way Jenna gets to hear from her by
poring over her research entries and her
journals and that’s what Jenna’s done
for the past ten years is try to find
her mother literally between the lines
of what she’s left behind but one of the
things that impressed me so much about
the book was the beautiful detailed
descriptions of elephant behavior and
just elephants and so you must have done
a lot of research for that and I’m
wondering how you went about doing that
research for this book I knew that I
needed to see both elephants in
captivity and elephants in the wild
because the main character in the book
whose name is Alice Metcalf who is
actually missing for most of the book
she drives the book as her daughter
Jenna tries to find her Alice is an
elephant researcher who studies grief
and cognition and elephants and she
studies them in the wild in Botswana and
then she runs a sanctuary with her
husband in New England so I began by
doing research at a place called the
elephant sanctuary which is in Hohenwald
Tennessee the elephants who come to live
there are elephants who have been in
circuses and zoos their entire life and
in many cases have been very horribly
abused coming to the sanctuary means
that they have hit the jackpot of
retirement homes so I got to see how a
sanctuary runs which was really
important for the book because a lot of
the action takes place in a sanctuary
but I also needed to know what alice’s
research was about and so I went to
Botswana and I worked with an elephant
researcher who studies the migration of
elephants in the thule bloc and you know
I got to observe some incredible
behaviors of elephants in their natural
habitat which were phenomenal everything
that you read in the book is something
that either I experienced or that I was
told by someone at the sanctuary or by
this researcher so every story in there
is true Wow how long were you
at each place I was in at the elephant
sanctuary for just a smattering of days
was a couple of days but it’s you know
2700 acres most of which I wouldn’t be
able to access by foot because I’m not
an elephant and something that a lot of
people don’t realize is that elephants
in captivity often die of foot problems
because they’ve been standing on
concrete for so long and if you think
about it in the wild an elephant gets to
walk on top of different terrain so for
example there was an elephant at the
sanctuary that had such severe cracks in
her feet that Teva you know the Teva
company that makes sandals they made
these giant Tevas for her and she wore
these giant Tevas around for a while
yeah and then when I was in Botswana I
was there for about a week
it was fantastic cuz you’d get up every
morning and you could basically go on
safari and I got to see this fantastic
matriarch the matriarch is the female
head of the herd who runs the herd she’s
usually the biggest elephant and the one
who has the most collective knowledge
often the oldest elephant and she was
leaving her herd up this little incline
and sliding down on her butt over I
don’t her like it was a little
playground slide and it was so fun to
watch this whole herd just keep doing it
um and then we came across two young
males they had this giant dung ball
which is kind of gross but they were
kicking it back and forth like it was
soccer
just back before it was totally played
there was no other reason for them you
know it was really fun to be able to see
behaviors like that that’s really really
rare
actually so one of the behaviors that
fascinated me because it’s so
interesting is elephants grieving
there’s a lot of elephant grieving in
the book because Alice Metcalf who is
this missing mom that her daughter Jenna
is trying to find throughout the book
she studied elephant grief and that was
what really amazed me the most and
people say well what’s the coolest thing
you learned about elephants and it’s
that they do have this depth of
understanding for loss that I would not
have been able prior to this to
attribute to an animal elephants that
come across the bones of another
elephant will get very somber their ears
droop their tails droop they have a
complete behavioral change and what’s
really interesting is that they don’t
act this way around any
their bones just the bones of elephants
they have been known and very often
returned to the site where an elephant
has died for years afterward as if
they’re paying respects like they’re
going to a grave site and again when
they get there they get very quiet
somber reverential they stay for a few
hours and then they move on they’ve been
known to break into research facilities
in the middle of the night and steal a
bone that a research was working with
and bring it back to the site of that
elephant’s death and at the Elephant
Sanctuary in Tennessee there’s this
great story about an elephant named
sissy sissy survived the 1981 floods in
Gainesville Gainesville by basically
being submerged for 24 hours with just
her trunk up like a little periscope so
she was really traumatized by the time
she came to the sanctuary and it took
her very long time to bond with other
elephants which they let they let happen
naturally which of course is one of the
issues with zoos because you know you
can’t just stick two elephants together
and expect them to be friends so she
instead of bonding with an elephant
began to carry around a tire like
everywhere she went it was like a
security blanket like a little pacifier
and for years she carried this tire
around and then finally she bonded with
an elephant named Tina for years they
were inseparable and then one day Tina
got ill and she died when she died sissy
stayed with her the whole time she was
dying stayed by her grave for a day
after she died and then very carefully
they watched her take that tire and lay
it on the grave kind of like Wade placed
a wreath and she left it there for her
friend as if she knew her friend needed
it more now Wow right no amazing that’s
really amazing maybe we should watch the
clip on the elephant behavior we have a
link we have an amazing wonderful clip
about elephant behavior that we would
like to share with you all tonight this
is a large adult male named Stoney and
he’s doing what we call tough ground or
tufting the ground it’s look at him he
is so silly look how he’s right down on
the ground must males do this when
they’re threatening another male and
it’s kind of a way of saying this is
what I’m going to do with you if I get
hold of you now he’s just looking
me and he’s now starting to shake his
head and doing what I call a head waggle
now that’s an invitation to play this is
just a really cute video of two young
elephants two juveniles doing what we
call play social rub they’re lying on
the ground and just wiggling against
each other elephants love to do this
especially kind of in the late afternoon
when they’ve had a lot to eat and
they’re feeling good this was filmed in
the evening it was about an 11-year old
female and two infant tabs that she was
looking after and she was so cute with
them she just lay down in this sort of
dust wallow here and allowed them to
clamber all over her look watch this
balancing act here where he he tries to
step on her on her trunk but it’s a
little bit too Wiggly so then he decides
okay he’ll just step right on her face
instead she doesn’t mind great that’s so
wonderful and poaching we haven’t really
touched on yet and that’s the sad thing
about elephants that when you fall in
love with them then you begin to realize
that they are being killed at a rate of
thirty eight thousand elephants a year
and by that estimate they’ll be gone in
the wild in Africa in ten years and I
don’t know about you but I want my
grandkids to be able to see elephants
you know so it became very important for
me to learn about poaching which I
really didn’t know much about and to to
figure out why it’s important for us in
this country where we don’t have
elephants to really support the
initiatives to take care of elephants
that are being threatened we know that
poaching is more than just a wildlife
concern it’s a humanitarian concern
they’ve linked the money from poaching
to Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army
we know that al-shabaab poaches one two
three tons of ivory every month in
Somalia raising five hundred thousand
dollars a month that goes a really long
way in Somalia and al-shabaab has ties
to al-qaeda and that’s why it matters in
this
country without you or someone like you
writing about this there’s a small
fraction of people in the world who
would be aware of it and especially in
the United States but everywhere that
your books are being sold I just kind of
felt like saying on behalf of the planet
thank you for them it’s really you know
what they’re there are a lot of reasons
that people become writers I am really
really fortunate because I go to my
office every day and I have the the
opportunity to entertain everyone but I
also have this potential to educate a
little and I think if you can leave the
world a better place in some small way
that’s really important um hopefully
that’s what my books can do they can
teach you something you didn’t know and
maybe open your mind up a little in a
direction that you didn’t think you were
gonna have to go yeah absolutely and
it’s it’s wonderful yeah thank you
so I was thinking is a writer reading
this it’s a fascinating journey for you
because on the one hand you get to
become a scientist you get to become a
psychic you get to become a detective do
you feel enriched and do you feel
exhausted you feel enriched do you how
because you’re becoming all these
different people in the course of
writing your book how does that I
actually feel lucky yeah I feel really
lucky because I get to go to work and
I’m someone different
every day I do not feel as if I have
created serenity or Virgil or Alice or
Jenna I feel like they’re speaking
through me and I hear them I hear them
very clearly in my head they talk to me
they sometimes wake me up at night
because they are annoying and and
honestly you know they long said my joke
is that writing is successful
schizophrenia I get paid to hear voices
right there you go that’s really I hear
their voices and I feel as if you guys
are you know you can’t see the movie you
can’t hear the movie so it’s my job to
tell you what’s being said when I’m I
know I’m close to finishing a draft I
can already hear other people whispering
like ready really yeah really Wow I’m
sure there are people in the audience
who have questions that they brought
with them tonight right so there’s only
one rule which is if you give away the
ending of any of my books I’m gonna kill
you right
right keep that in mind yes you don’t
want to do that really there was a
question right there
hi I’m what is what was the hardest and
easiest part of getting started as a
writer with your very first book the
easiest part about getting to be a
writer
honestly was having the great good
fortune and the grades to get into
Princeton because at the time in the 80s
there were not many undergraduate
creative writing programs there were a
lot of graduate schools but not
undergrad and I had the opportunity to
work with living breathing writers in
particular one who really shepherded me
into becoming my own best editor which i
think is the most essential tool for a
writer I actually spent a two-year
period and this is the hardest part
trying to find an agent I had over 100
rejections from agents a lot of people
will write me and they’re like yeah you
know I just got back my third rejection
I don’t know if I can do this and I just
go yeah okay whatever okay you know that
is the hardest part honestly of being a
writer I think believing in yourself
enough that somebody eventually takes a
second look one person has to really
fall for it you know and that’s that
kind of makes the odds feel a little bit
better let’s come down to the front
please
so I have a question about my sister’s
keeper now how did I know that it was
the first book I read and totally got me
hooked on you but um when I was so
excited for the movie after seeing it I
wondered what your opinion was on the
change yeah that was so tactfully
Celotex
um so here’s the thing about about
selling books form into movies what most
of you don’t realize is that the writer
does not have any say over what happens
there are exceptions but in the vast
majority of cases you sell your property
to a studio and then they do with it
whatever they want to do and you are not
asked for any you know any contributions
whatsoever it’s like giving a baby up
for adoption and we writers try really
hard to to find a good home for a baby
but sometimes it doesn’t work out
and in my case you know I had I was
actually asked to try and and interview
nick cassavetes the director before he
was hired and I said to him that what
was the only thing that was really
important to me in the book that should
stay the same was the ending and I
explained that it was what had sold all
these copies of the book people going I
can’t tell you what happened just read
it so we could talk you know and so he
read the book and he said you’re right
that’s the only ending for this story
I’m not gonna change it if anyone else
does I’m gonna tell you why and I’m
gonna tell you myself and I thought
that’s fair and he spent two years
writing a script he would call me weekly
I would help him whenever he asked with
character with dialogue with scenes
whatever um he would read me stuff and
then at the end of that process a fan
wrote me an email saying they’ve gotten
the script of My Sister’s Keeper and did
she worked at a casting agency and did I
know that they had changed the ending so
I called Nick at home and he wouldn’t
take my call I went to the movie set and
he threw me off the set I went to New
Line Cinema and I spoke to the head Toby
Emmerich and I said you guys are gonna
lose money on this film because I have
the best chance in the world and they
are not going to be happy with what you
did and he said no no you know we really
trust Nick he did the notebook for us he
knows what he’s doing and I said okay
and I walked away and of course the
movie was not successful it’s a
beautiful movie
Nick Nick filmed a beautiful movie with
wonderful acting performances about
dying with dignity that is not what the
book is about
that’s his interpretation but it’s not
what I thought the book should be about
and many of my wonderful fans agreed and
the movie lost money and the really cool
silver lining here is that ever since
then I have had more clout in Hollywood
because I apparently am psychic and I
told them they were gonna lose money oh
that’s kind of cool but it was not a
pleasant experience would it would it
mean that I wouldn’t do it again
no because ultimately let’s be real in
most cases the book is always better
than the film right and for those of you
who went to go see my sister’s keeper
and were as disappointed as I was the
good news is that you get to go home and
pull that book off the shelf and read
the story the way it should be right
yeah
um gentleman in the blue shirt here
hi I’m my wife and I are both the oldest
of four and I’ve had a lot of
discussions and hardship with my
relationship with my mother because I
was the one who started everyone leaving
yeah so you really said that this was a
core for the walk well how did this and
this journey of writing it help you with
what you were going through mmm that’s a
great question um it really did help me
most of my books are really my therapy
session for all of you to watch you know
it’s something that I’m really
struggling with and and I wrestle it out
and throw it at other characters but
really I’m talking about something
that’s upsetting to me and you know for
me it really was that that sense okay
elephants and and elephants moms and
daughters they stay together forever so
what does that really mean for humans
when people leave us do they ever really
leave and I think that was really that
was really the end point that I came to
physical distance means nothing that’s
details that when you love someone
they’re always with you
so we have up this skirt a wonderful
woman in the front in purple and black
what kind of events inspire you to write
cuz it like in your book 19 minutes um
Peter Hughton goes on a school shooting
rampage in his school so as it vents
like doesn’t inspire you to write I
could write about any number of really
devastating topics or things that are
very upsetting but I think there’s more
to it than that I don’t rip things out
of the headlines what I need to do is to
find something that has intersected in
my life at that moment in a way that
really moves me deeply and what moves me
today might not be what moves me in five
years so a book that I think that’s
interesting but not that interesting
right now could completely change five
years from now I could be dying to write
that book so there is this it’s a dual
feed part of it is things that I hear
about things that I read about in the
world that that I have a curiosity about
and the other part of it is where I am
in my own life it’s funny because
sometimes think you know very
self-serving ly about Jody Pico 101
which is gonna be taught clearly one day
you know and if you look at the
trajectory of my career my very first
book was about a mother and a daughter
this book is about a mother and a
daughter again what’s the difference
when I wrote my first book I was closer
in age to the daughter now I’m closer in
age to the mother and in between I wrote
about the relationships between men and
women because I got married then I wrote
about all the really scary things that
can happen to your children because I
had children it was like a whole run of
that for many years and now you know I’m
moving into more theoretical stuff the
nature of good and evil you know and and
race for example things that are bigger
because that’s I have the luxury of
worrying about those things and not just
worrying about my kids anymore I keep
telling my mom that one day I’m gonna
write about putting your parents in a
nursing home she’s really happy to hear
that’s great well on behalf of all of us
thank you so much for sharing thank you
thank you
you
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