Episode 349: Bird-Watching, Pet Mediums, and Sticker Charts with Annie Hartnett
Writer Annie Hartnett joins Doree and Elise to chat about why stickers work as a motivational tool whether your five or thirty-five ,why her latest book, The Road To Tender Hearts, is a road-trip novel, and the almost supernatural ability of our pets to understand our world better than us.
Photo credit: Molly Haley
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Transcript
The transcript for this episode Ai generated.
Doree (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise (00:16):
And I'm Elise Hu. And we are two friends who like to talk a lot about serums. Welcome back.
Doree (00:23):
Welcome back to the show. We have a great show for you today.
Elise (00:28):
We do. We're so excited you're here. We are helping welcome new listeners to the show because I learned that this is one of the tricks of Mel Robbins, who has now surpassed Joe Rogan in the podcast listener rankings. And one of the things she does really well is welcome new listeners. And so, hello. This is a full length Monday episode where we interview someone of note or lots of writers, lots of other luminaries like we do musicians and comedians, but often a lot of writers. And today we're going to have a great writer on the show named Annie Hartnett, who we'll introduce after we catch up because we have some catching up to do.
Doree (01:09):
We do. Well, Elise, you just pointed out that we have not fully discussed your daughter's middle school dance that you first
Elise (01:20):
Dance. Yeah, first middle school dance. I was in charge of food sales, so I wasn't inside the gym where all of the dancing goes down, but I was just outside where I could observe some of the comings and goings and the social patterns of these kids. And I will tell you, I do think a lot of the ways of middle school are exactly the same in that the girls were clustered in groups of girls and the boys were clustered in groups of boys and narrow the twine shall meet until they do, where the eighth graders were more flirty with each other and there were more couples. And I saw some quick pecks here and there as they were walking in and out and some handholding. But my daughter's in sixth grade and she was just in her group of very dressed up friends. The girls looked super cute. They were all in their fits. And with sneakers, it was the sneaker ball. So everybody could wear sneakers, which is how I think the gen alphas are dressing anyway, dresses with sneakers.
(02:27):
And they looked all, I mean, they curled their hair, they wore some light makeup, they pulled it together for this dance, whereas I'm sure they coordinated outfits amongst themselves. And the boys just rolled in dirty sweats and a baseball cap most of the time. Nobody, none of the boys tried. And I was just like, Ugh. And I sent a photo, an anonymized photo of the boys group and the girls group to a mom friend of mine whose son went, and she was like, well, I guess girls should just get used to the fact that they have to do most of the labor in a heterosexual relationship early.
Doree (03:07):
Oh my
Elise (03:07):
God. So that was kind of funny. And then there, there's no slow dancing. Now, I remember when I was in middle school, there was all this anxiety around slow dancing because some of the chaperones were worried the kids would be just up on each other and too close. And then you actually had to separate couples and then the kids were worried about who they were going to slow dance with. And I don't think they're slows dances anymore. I didn't notice the music ever changing beyond big hits that everybody can dance to. So it was a lot of group dancing. The kids, I guess since they spend so much less time in real life, hanging out in real life with unsupervised playtime as we did when we were growing up, I think socially they're different. There's certainly interacting. There's less co-ed interaction than I expected.
Doree (04:07):
Oh, that's so interesting.
Elise (04:09):
Or at least less than I was hoping to get to catch just as a parent interloper
Doree (04:16):
Person, there's probably a lot less Humpty dance than there was at my eighth grade dance.
Elise (04:25):
We were really excited about Nirvana. Smells like Teen Spirit. That was a huge song in my middle school years. It was like the beginning of grunge or squarely in the middle of grunge. And that wasn't it. Kendrick Lamar was huge at this dance. Obviously we're in LA and a lot of TikTok songs, all the TikTok songs got everybody out on the dance floor. Of course, of course. Wow. But I haven't even updated YouDo on my real crisis with one of my children. My dog child swallowed another foreign object. No Oscar wtf. So I was away in Vancouver at the big Ted and my parents are staying at my house. And my mom texted me a day before I was supposed to come home with a photo of Oscar's barf, and he had barfed up a gigantic stuffed toy again, this one, why does he just eat stuffed toys?
(05:24):
And he eats them without chewing. He just swallows them. He just inhales them. And this one was like a pizza, a pizza stuffy that was the size of a tennis ball. And so it was really significant and he managed to barf that up. But then the next morning she was like, he's not eating anything. He's lethargic. And when he does try to eat, he just regurgitates. No God. So I'm just like, God, God, it's happening again. Listeners, longtime listeners probably know that around New Year's when I came home from an international trip, Oscar had to go through major abdominal surgery to remove a squish meow from his intestinal tract. And so I was really triggered and I did not move my flight up or anything. I was already scheduled to come home on Friday afternoon. I landed Friday afternoon, gave the girls the human children hugs and then promptly took Oscar to the emergency room. And I was really excited because I had tickets on Friday night to Morgan Jay, my favorite singing comedian at the Wiltern. And I had to just eat the cost of that ticket and couldn't go because I was in the emergency room again with my dumb dog. No, my God, I didn't even text you about it. I knew you were away and I was also just, I was so pissed, just angry, frustrated, angry, disappointed, exhausted. I would be
Doree (06:53):
So annoyed. Oh my
Elise (06:55):
God. Yeah. So I'm sitting in the er, the vet emergency room waiting room, and I felt like I was in an episode of the Pit because it was very crowded. And I've been watching The Pit, which is my favorite new show on television. Thank you listeners who brought it up and suggested it in our Patreon chat. And the pit's waiting room is always crowded. It's like teaming with people and they're trying to triage the cases from the waiting room so they can move you out of the waiting room. And it was sort of like that in the vet emergency room. And so I had to wait for hours before he could get an x-ray. I eventually just left because I was like, Ugh, just call me whenever. Because they were able to take him back and I was just like, just call me whenever you have a scan. And they were like, yep. And they called me about 10, 10 30 at night and they said, yep, another foreign body, it's round. We don't know if he's going to pass it. We're going to have to hospitalize him overnight and tomorrow morning,
Doree (07:56):
No,
Elise (07:56):
We'll call you if he doesn't pass it. And I called Rob and I was like, I don't think I can go through this again. He was in Phoenix for Passover and he was like, well, I guess I'll just pay for it. You don't seem like in the right mental state. He's like, have them send me the link, the payment link, and I'll just pay for it. Oh my God. I was just like, I can't do this. I can't go through this again. I don't want to pay for this. I was just really overwhelmed. And then fast forward 12 hours, Rob calls me because I guess I must've missed the call from the emergency vet, and he was really good news. He passed the object into his colon overnight, so we were able to avoid surgery for now. And now he's not allowed to have anything, any stuffy toy he's done with stuffy toys, period. Because these ones that he consumed weren't explicitly his toys, but he's able to swallow dog toys. I just feel so tapped out by this whole thing. I couldn't even tell you. I was just like, thanks. Moving on. We do have a very exciting show in store for you. And the author's Road trip book that's out now features a psychic cat. And you know what? I'm a cat person now. I prefer my cat to my dog. So if I had to choose, yeah, if I had to choose my cat. Abe hasn't gone to the emergency room once, not once. How many times has Oscar gone in the last six months? Twice. And the first time it costs $19,000. So I'm kind of like, I love cats.
Doree (09:45):
You're over it.
Elise (09:46):
Bring me all cats. Yep.
Doree (09:49):
Oh my God. Well, Elise, let's introduce our guest who I have known for eight years. I think our first novels came out around the same time. Her novel was Rabbit Cake. My novel was Startup and she did a book event with me in Maine, which was awesome. And we've kind of stayed in touch and I've been doing her accountability workshop and she's just wonderful. And her new book is called The Road to Tender Hearts. And I really, really loved it and I think it sort of got me out of a reading rut that I was in.
(10:27):
So if you are in a reading rut and you need to be unlocked, read Annie's Road to Tender Hearts. Her books have won a Gajillion Awards. Her second book, unlikely Animals, was one of the best books of 2022. According to the Washington Post and book list, it won the Julia Ward How Prize for fiction. It was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates prize. Rabbit Cake was one of Kirk's best books of 2017, et cetera, et cetera. She has accolades out the wazoo. I found out she grew up in the next town over for me and now she lives in Massachusetts with her husband, her daughter, and her dog. We didn't discuss if her dog has eaten any foreign objects, but hopefully not. Hopefully
Elise (11:20):
Not, hopefully not. It would be very triggering for me.
Doree (11:22):
It would be very triggering. And before we take a break and get to Annie, just a reminder that we are doing a listener survey. The link to that is in the show notes. It is in our link tree, which is a link in our bio, on our Instagram. It's also on our website. So please respond to that survey. It would really help us out. Our website is forever 35 podcast.com. We have links over there to everything we mentioned on the show. We're on Instagram at Forever 35 podcast. Join our patreon at patreon.com/forever 35. We have a ton of bonus content over there. Our favorite products are at Shop my us slash forever three five. It's our favorite products. And then also Rachel Goodwin, makeup Artist of the Stars who comes on our show every quarter. And we have a shelf of her favorite products over there. We have our newsletter at Forever 35 podcast com slash newsletter. And last but definitely not least, you can call or text us at five nine one zero three nine zero. Your message may be read or heard on an upcoming episode of the show and email us at Forever 35 podcast at gmail com. Alright, we are going to take a short break and then we'll come back and chat with Annie. We'll be right back.
(12:43):
Annie, welcome to Forever 35. We are so excited to have you on the show.
Annie Hartnett (12:49):
I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Doree (12:52):
Yeah. Well, we start off by asking our guests about a self-care practice that they have. So we are wondering, is there anything that you do that you would consider self care? Self
Annie Hartnett (13:05):
Care? I have started lifting weights, which is my, I've become really dedicated to it, but I have not yet figured out how to be dedicated to working out and be dedicated to writing. I go through these periods where I do one of the other really well. Oh,
Doree (13:29):
Interesting.
Annie Hartnett (13:30):
So I'm really inspired by Amy Tan is a super weightlifter. She got really into it. I know that just to keep up. I had no idea. Yeah, I know. Yeah, Google, her arms very inspirational and she did it because she said, if I'm going to keep writing, I need to be strong because you spend so much time sitting. So I've gotten kind of serious about it.
Elise (13:58):
What is your weightlifting practice and what is your writing practice?
Annie Hartnett (14:03):
So I work out three days a week. I hired a trainer to help me, which is very expensive, but so far it's actually been very worth it. So she is been helping me and she says the best thing for perimenopause menopause is lifting heavy weights. So I have just thought that if I can start doing that and my writing routine practice is, I kind of go through phases consistency. It's not quite fair to say that I'm not consistent because I'm consistent. It's just that I need new attack methods. I can't just say I'm going to write at 5:00 AM every day for the rest of my life. That would never work for me.
(14:56):
I'm too rebellious a person, so I'm always coming up with new routines and new strategies. I'm an ideas person, so I can be really consistent for a while because I'm like, this is the idea that'll fix my life forever. So I've done all sorts of different things. I'll do sticker charts. So I'm actually, I am doing a sticker chart right now that Dori knows about where you write one sentence a day for a hundred days and you give yourself a sticker. And I started doing the sticker chart. I have a 5-year-old, she'll be six this summer, and she had a potty training chart and getting stickers and I was like, these are so motivational for her. I am just as simple a being. So I made myself a sticker chart and I wrote Annie's potty chart and then crossed out potty and wrote novel at the top. And it made me laugh every time I looked at it and I gave myself a sticker and at the beginning of a project, which is really hard for me. So the weightlifting is coming easier to me than the novel writing right now.
Elise (16:05):
Can I ask for both of you all who do sticker charts, are these sentences in order or are they just nicely crafted sentences?
Annie Hartnett (16:15):
Mine are in order.
Elise (16:16):
Okay.
Annie Hartnett (16:18):
I don't think I could do it out of order. I mean, I guess I could write sometimes when I'm deeper in a project, I'll move around and hop around and do different scenes, but right now I'm just trying to inch forward until I really, I'm still kind of searching for my idea. So they're in order, but there.
Doree (16:37):
Okay. Annie, we want to talk about your new book, the Road to Tender Hearts, which is just delightful. Thank you. Let's just start by, do you want to just tell us about your new book for the benefit of our listeners who probably have not had a chance to read it? And then I have a few questions.
Annie Hartnett (17:01):
This book is about an older man named PJ Holiday who is reading the obituaries of his hometown paper. And he comes across an obituary of his high school friend and his high school friend died and he realizes that if that man is dead, then the woman that man married is single again. So he decides to get in the car and drive from Massachusetts to Arizona to win her back or he had a crush on her in high school, but before he can his live town and there's a tragedy. So he ends up with custody of them, decides that he wants to, kids need a vacation. So he decides to take them on the road trip to his daughter, ends up coming with them because she's worried about these two children in her father's care. And also onboard the car trip is a cat who can predict death. So that's the elevator pitch.
Elise (18:15):
And then technically PJ can't drive. Right?
Annie Hartnett (18:18):
Technically PJ should not drive. He is a alcoholic hoarder who has three DUIs to his name. So his license has been suspended for the past eight years. So he shouldn't be driving
Elise (18:33):
Children in the car. Yes,
Annie Hartnett (18:36):
And it's funny, it's a comedy,
Doree (18:39):
It's funny. I have notice that animals and dead or dying parents play a large role in all of your books. And I'd love for you to just talk a little bit about why you're drawn to these themes,
Annie Hartnett (19:01):
Kind of different reasons for each book. Although the first book is about rabbit cake is about a little girl whose mother drowns while sleepwalking and then the fallout from that. And then the second book, unlikely Animals, is about a dad who's dying from brain disease and his daughter comes home and is trying to, she was born with slight magic healing powers, so she's kind of expected to come home after dropping out of med school and heal him. I was writing from the children's perspective from the first book, so I was like, what is your worst fear when you're a kid is losing a parent? And I wanted to explore grief from a kid's perspective. And then the other books are much more about me being older and knowing that my parents are not going to be around. My parents are still alive, but coming to terms, my dad had a heart attack in 2016 right before my first book came out.
(20:02):
And so I think ever since then I've been kind of waiting for, I know he's going to die someday, but it's something that every time I hang up the phone with him, and this is sort of insane, but I think what if this is the last time I talked to him. So I always try to say something nice. I'm always trying to solve problems. I give my characters problems that I try to solve for them. That's the whole thing that they struggle with. There's a problem that they want to solve, which most novels are about, but I am trying to solve the problem of death. Some people just are morbid and I'm just a morbid person. I've always joked about things. I have kind of a twisted sense of humor. So sometimes it's like what makes laugh is the morbid thing.
(20:51):
And then animals are more like what gives me reassurance about the world. So it's kind of what I'm afraid of. And then where I'm able to find meaning, even if I find a lot of meaning right now in the birds in my backyard so that I can consistently feed the birds and I can watch them from my window and I can care for something and I can feel like I can pick flowers to put in my garden that will be good for the bees. I can work on how to make a backyard habitat, those to feel like I'm making some sort of positive difference in the world. There's so many things I don't control that. I mean, I guess that's another self-care is taking care, trying to make my backyard a habitat for animals, which is easier to do if you live in the middle of nowhere. I do.
Elise (21:52):
My mom has become a birder recently, I guess post-retirement. And every once in a while I'll go on bird photo walks with her. And it's really astounding how much patience and observation and curiosity that you have to have or just be open to as a birder because you're spending so much time just waiting or observing and there is something kind almost spiritual about it. It's really quite lovely.
Annie Hartnett (22:22):
Yeah, my mom is a super bird watcher too. She's been a bird watcher actually since she was a kid, which is rare. I feel like we all end up bird watchers certain age, but she was a bird watcher. She had a life list when she was a kid.
Doree (22:38):
And
Annie Hartnett (22:38):
So when I was a kid, she'd wake me up at four or 5:00 AM to go owling and go hear the owls in the woods. And she used to take me to, there's a cemetery in Massachusetts, Mount Auburn Cemetery, and it's famous. There's a couple of famous people buried there, and I think it's America's oldest cemetery that's a green cemetery, not a graveyard. But she used to take me there to look at the birds. And so that life and death together like the animal. Yeah, I guess that was when my childhood is graves next to looking at the birds and finding that we're here to look at the birds. We also used to listen in the car to other kids sometimes. My friend had to always listen to NPR, which she thought was boring, but in our car we'd have to listen to bird calls,
Annie Hartnett (23:31):
So
Annie Hartnett (23:32):
Would play, they play the actual bird song and then they play the human pronouncing the bird song. So everyone knows chick DD is, but there's lots of them. Does everyone know that? Okay. I feel like most people know that a lot of birds are named the things like kill deer is named the kill deer because they say kill deer. Kill deer. Oh. So you'd hear the actual bird song and then the way that it human pronounces it or owls would go, who cooks for you? So that when you can listen, you can hear, okay, what am I, I'm trying to hear the words that the birds are saying. So I could go on about this. Even my mom took me to California to drop me off when it was my first job out of college. And she went and took me out to move me out there. And it was in the woods, it was this sort of camp slash outdoor school, so it was in the woods and she was just listening and I was like, oh, what birds do here? And she goes, it's like we landed in another country and everyone's speaking a different language.
(24:43):
And I was like, oh, that's so, you're so weird.
Elise (24:48):
So she's not just a bird watcher, she's also kind of a bird interpreter. She can interpret.
Annie Hartnett (24:52):
She's a super bird watcher. She's getting an award this month.
Elise (24:57):
That's a amazing deal. You need to put that on your bio. I had no idea.
Annie Hartnett (25:01):
I know. I know. I should award-winning bird watcher mother. Yeah, we have stumbled on something new.
Doree (25:07):
This actually kind of leads into my next question because I know that you talk to a pet medium after your dog Harvey died and the animals in your book books do seem like invested with these sort of human supernatural slash supernatural powers. And I'm wondering what is your take on this sort of animal human relationship, communication, understanding? Do you think that they do have this understanding that we're sort of not aware of? I'm also just obsessed with pancakes the cat. He's so cool.
Annie Hartnett (25:44):
Well, the cat in the book is no secret because it's in the first chapter that he can predict death. And he's based on this cat Oscar who is a cat in Rhode Island who still occasionally he'll pop up on social media, although he died a while ago. But for 10 years he was a therapy cat in a Rhode Island nursing home and he predicted the deaths of over a hundred people.
(26:12):
So he would go to the room right before someone died and he would comfort that person or snuggle with them. I had heard about that cat and I thought that was very cool. I don't know how much I believe with the animal medium and with people who are tarot card readers. I like them. I don't know if I believe them, but I also don't care. I'm like, it's useful to go to a tarot card reader because they will give you advice and they'll give you some direction and you can ignore it or not or buy into it. But I find it very helpful too, to hear someone say something with certainty you should break up. When I was in, I guess I was in high school and I went to a psychic with my brother, and the psychic told me, the boyfriend you're in with now doesn't really love you.
(27:19):
And if I had heard her, I would've saved myself a world of pain. But I was like, she doesn't know anything. He's obsessed with me. So I just like that it's advice from somebody who's going to really try to tell you things with complete certainty, whereas your friends will be like, I don't know, should you break up with him or No, he's great. He seems to really like you. He's cheating on you, but I'm not going to tell you so. And animals, I know they have a sense about the world that we don't have kind of just like we can accept that people who are blind might have a better sense of smell.
(28:06):
So I think that we know that animals are really intelligent and I think they're intelligent in ways that we aren't. And I just love collecting stories about the way that animals interact with people. And even I have a friend who in the middle of the night she had sleep paralysis and she woke up and she couldn't move her body and her dog didn't sleep with her, but as she's lying there unable to move, having this frozen panic attack, she hears her dog go and click, click, click, click, click, click his nails on the floor, and he came and he lay on top of her and that broke the spell of the sleep paralysis. So it's like that's amazing that he wasn't even next to her and could help her. He could sense that there was something wrong with her. So that I can't explain that other than there's something woo woo about animals
Elise (29:00):
Or that we're connected. Our consciousness can be connected with a natural world or is.
Doree (29:07):
So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Elise (29:18):
You mentioned high school and obviously the inciting incident of this book is about a high school crush and going to chase a high school crush. So I'd love for you just to reflect a little bit on what is so enduring or compelling about our old crushes, especially in our adolescence.
Annie Hartnett (29:39):
Well, this is very funny to me because when my last book came out, when Unlike the Animals came out, I had this crush that I was just in love with in middle school, which I think are even worse than high school crushes even more enduring and deep in your soul. So I was friends with this boy. I never dated him, he never knew that I had a crush on him, and we had stayed kind of in touch. We went to different high schools, mostly through social media kind of. And I think he had read my first book and he showed up to the reading at my hometown launch
(30:30):
And he was the last person in line. And I was like, oh my gosh. There were these other older women in front of him and I was like, move out of the way. And everyone he showed up and I was like, oh, well, everyone already went. The signing line had taken a while. So everybody else had gone. My whole family had gone to the bar and a lot of our friends, there was a lot of people waiting at the bar for me. And so I said, do you want to come over and get a drink? And we're all at an after party. So he comes over with me and we're catching up, and then I run first into my husband and I say, oh, drew, meet my friend Jesse Sid, and who is my crush? Husband goes, oh yeah, Jesse, Annie talks about you all the time.
(31:22):
And I was waiting for this scro to just open up and swallow me. And then my little brother yells out. Jesse said, I know everything about you. And I'm like, oh my God. And so Jesse had had no idea up until this moment that I had been in love with him for several years. But he is to his great credit and his true crush worthy credit, he was so nice about it, didn't tease me about it. Love it. Just a nice, and then my husband sees I'm embarrassed and tries to recover. And he goes, I mean Annie talks about all her ex-boyfriends all the time.
Elise (32:11):
Oh no. Oh no. And I'm like, no, no, no. We didn't date. Didn't date, didn't date. Oh no. Bless his heart. Bless his heart. He was trying to do you a solid, he was trying to save it and only God exacerbated it. Oh
Annie Hartnett (32:29):
Yeah. So I mean, the fact that I could still feel that embarrassment, that was something that was feeling of seventh grade grade. I just feel that it was so formative, high school crushes and middle school crushes, or just that raw emotion of feeling like this is what true love is and wanting to be seen and wanting and wanting to connect with someone who is in your French class or PJ who's trying to connect. He's really looking for a way to connect with his. He's actually had a lot of tragedy in his life and he is looking for a way to connect with his younger self and trying to get back to when everything felt possible because he has been in a place where he feels like nothing is possible and everything is meaningless. And so he's hopeful that this could be a second chance for him. So the novel is really about second chances in many ways. And so he's driving to see this person who he hasn't seen in 45 years knows nothing about her other than that he imagines she's still good looking.
Doree (33:50):
I want to talk about the accountability workshops. Oops. Which I've been a part of and I find extremely valuable and helpful. And could you just tell our listeners what they are, how you and Tessa started them? Just kind of give us the rundown.
Annie Hartnett (34:12):
Yeah. So after the accountability workshops, we've been around for three years, but our origin story starts, I guess it starts pretty much right after Tess's book came out. So my first book Ate, came out in 2000, and then her memoir, the Electric Woman, came out the next year in 2018. We had gone to graduate school together, but we were not really friends in graduate school. She was two years above me in the program and she had her own friends and I had my dog and lived in the graveyard and was kind of just nose to the computer. So we became friends because I blurbed her book and it's a masterful memoir. And I was just like, this should win the National Book Award if life is fair. So I blurbed it and then she wrote to me and was like, thanks so much for the blurb.
(35:14):
Do you have any tips about writing a second book? And I said, no, I'm miserable. I'm not writing. My dog died. I'm talking to animal mediums. I, I'm in the worst place ever, but I'm trying at that point, I think when she wrote me, I was starting to be aware that I had to dig myself out of the hole somehow I deep in the hole. But I had gotten to the point where I had to dig out and I knew that there had to be a way out and I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I had seen this essay on oprah com, I dunno how I stumbled upon it, but that is by Amy Bender that says it's called The Best Way to Get Creative is to make some rules. And it's about her and another friend of hers making a contract about how they're going to keep each other on track with work, and they're going to email each other and say, check and email each other.
(36:15):
They'll email each other and say, done. And the other person will say, check. And that's all the only exchange that they'll have. And so I emailed Tessa back and said, I don't have advice, but I would do this with you if you wanted to. They kind of sheepishly because I felt like it was a lot to ask of a person I didn't really know. But she had opened the ask for advice. And so she said, yeah, if you want to do that, sheepishly back, we both, we were not friends, but it's such a low, it's not, you're both asking a lot of a person and you're not asking that much because you're not asking them to read anything. And so we started doing that in 2018, I think early in 2018. And that is what pulled me out, the depression that I was in and what I started to write a book and that later became Unlikely Animals. And so she really, and then we became friends over the course. We became really good friends, I would say she's one of my best friends. And so then fast forward a couple of years, I had a kid, she had a kid and she was just like, how do I keep writing? And so we did two things. I also, I had a 2-year-old, so I was out of the infant period, but I felt like I was actually in the worst part of parenting.
(37:55):
And so I was miserable and she was looking to me again for reassurance and I was like, I'm again in a bad pitch. So we did two things. We started an actual more of a writer's group, so we added two writers to our mix, Ruthie Thorpe and Claire Beams who are awesome writers. And I knew both of them a little bit. And so they were easy ask. We had thought we were going to add more people, but we only asked those two people in the beginning and haven't grown it. And we started meeting every two weeks on Zoom in different
(38:35):
And just updating each other on what's going on. And Claire and Ruthie both have kids that are older than our kids. And so sometimes it was just like, tell us this won't kill us. Tell us having children will be worth it someday because right now it's not worth it. And then other times we'll talk about the business. We always tell each other about how much money we get from something we just will always talk about is this normal? And having that sort of open friendship, supportive friendship or be like, this happened and it sucks. And just hearing other people agree that it sucks, it was helpful. So then what we did from there is we were like, this is Tessa. And I realized this is what more writers need and we lucked out into having it work for us to do it just us two.
(39:28):
But a lot of writing groups fall apart and most people I know are like, I need more support to get work done, especially if I have another job, if I have kids or even especially if I'm retired and I dunno what to do with all my time. So there's no real, it kind is useful for everybody to have some sort of accountability structure. So we started it as an experiment and it grew to, we now have 80 members across the groups are like, no bigger than 15. We meet every two weeks to hear what's going on. Everyone has a contract. They have Anytime access to me and Tessa. So if you need to talk something through, you make an appointment. When we do phone calls, I'll text with people if they want to text with me. Tessa doesn't text, but I like to text and we have a monthly speaker and we have a book club. So it's become a real community and the people are awesome because it's kind of this self-selecting group of people who are like, this is what I need in order to be successful with my work, but I don't have the ego about I need to prove that I'm better than anybody
(40:46):
Or that I don't care about listening to what is going on with other people. It just is this. So it fosters this real generosity between other writers that, I mean, I've been in really good workshops too, but sometimes it can be, those can be toxic environments as well. And it's kind of a, you can't control what you're going to get and I guess you can't really control what you get in the accountability workshop either. But I just feel like because of what people are looking for, everybody's been super great that we've worked with and we do it month to month so that people can come for any time that they want. We try to keep the price point low in terms of how much these things typically cost. So it's a hundred a month, you can come for one month, you can come for three months. A lot of people are long haulers because they realize, or what I've realized about my own life is that if I don't have that structure and support, I'm not going to do it. And I need some sort of external structure. I heard Gretchen Rubin talking about this that a lot of people who do well with deadlines or do well with some sort of external structure should accept that she wasn't talking about. May be great if Gretchen Rubin was talking about my podcast or my accountability group, but Gretchen, she was talking about how there are a lot of people with personalities that need this structure and that we should accept that accountability groups are not our tools, that they're not training wheels.
(42:28):
So it's something that if you can accept, you need a partner of some kind rather than that, someday you'll be fixed and it'll be easy to do the thing you love the most, which is writing for all of my clients. Certainly.
Elise (42:43):
Yeah. Because my approach to writing is do nothing, then panic, it's forward. It's a very simple method. It's the Elise Hu method, do Nothing then Panic. Annie, we've learned so much from you. You mentioned that the accountability workshops also has a book club. So before we let you go, what are you reading or what have you read recently that you're excited about?
Annie Hartnett (43:08):
We are reading, I haven't read it yet, but people are excited about it, the new Lydia Vic memoir, and it's called Beyond the Waves I think so I haven't read it yet. That's our book, club book for the spring. And then we read for winter, we read All fours by Miranda July, which was, everyone loved that. So we just do four book clubs a year. But that one was great because scheduling wise it was hard because we have people, we have some people in other countries and everyone wanted to come to that book club because everyone wanted to talk about all fours, so it was spicy.
Elise (43:52):
Well, thank you so much for building community in that way and with your accountability workshops and for taking care of the birds in the backyard, and thank you for coming
Doree (44:02):
On and for writing such great books.
Annie Hartnett (44:05):
Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was great.
Doree (44:08):
Yeah. Annie, are you doing any events for your new book?
Annie Hartnett (44:14):
I'm put them on my website probably in the next couple days, so they should be on at annie harnett com. They're also on my Instagram, which is Annie Harnett. I'm going all around so far. I'm not coming to la, but I'm going to Portland, Oregon and Seattle. Washington are my West Coast states because my husband's from Seattle and then I'm doing a lot in New England and a bunch in North Carolina, and I'm trying to go everywhere trying to, it's a road trip book and I love events, so I'm like, invite me and I'll try to go if I can.
Doree (44:59):
Well, thank you so much. This is super fun to get to talk to you.
Annie Hartnett (45:03):
Thank you guys.
Doree (45:08):
Annie was just so delightful. I'm bummed she doesn't have an LA tour date yet. Maybe we can manifest that. We should. If you are a bookseller in Los Angeles and you're listening to this podcast, please book Annie
Elise (45:23):
Booksellers. Listen, people in the publishing industry listen to Forever 35. That's true. Since we do have so many conversations with authors, that is, if that conversation that you just heard was enlightening and entertaining for you, consider hosting Annie here in la,
Doree (45:39):
Consider hosting Annie. Alright, last week I was going to just try to enjoy my trip to DC and I think I did that. I had a great trip to dc. You can hear more about it on the casual chat that we did last week. And yeah, it was just a really, really great trip this week. Henry's birthday is coming up and I got to figure out all his birthday stuff. So that's what I got going on this week. Elise, how about you?
Elise (46:14):
Last week, I really just wanted to be present because I was in that sensory overload of Ted and I was present enough. I did a better job at TED this year of not staying up too late and going to random parties where I might not have a good time just because I had fomo. And so this time I actually got home at reasonable times and went to sleep and slept pretty well in my hotel. And it helped me during the day really be on when I needed to have conversations and interviews for work. But then also when I met new people. And so I mentioned on our Patreon casual chat that I made some good friends. I made some new friends that I don't think that I would have unless I was kind of really there and making space for that in my life. So that intention helped. And then this week I'm traveling, so traveling with family. So I guess lemme just set my intention for family time and just paying attention. I've been talking about how I need to improve my attention and I want to improve my kids' attention too. So attention is the intention. Attention is
Doree (47:29):
The intention. I love
Elise (47:30):
It. And attention on my family members. So
Doree (47:33):
Great,
Elise (47:34):
We'll set it out there.
Doree (47:35):
Alright, thanks everyone for listening. Just a reminder that February 35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partners, Acast. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you soon.