Mary H.K. Choi On Her New Book and her AuDHD Diagnosis
Author Mary H.K. Choi is back! They discuss her new novel, Pool House, and why this mother-daughter story had to take place in Los Angeles. They also touch on her foray into hormone replacement therapy, how she dealt with her late diagnoses of AuDHD, and what it’s like in New York as a creative these days.
Photo Credit: Aaron Richter
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Transcript
The following transcript is AI generated.
Doree Shafrir (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 Hu (00:17):
And I'm Elise Hu, and we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Doree Shafrir (00:21):
And today we have a repeat Forever 35 guest, one of my favorite people and authors, Mary H.K. Choi, back to talk about her new book Pool House, which is a great read. And I just love getting to talk to Mary. I hope you had fun too.
Elise Hu (00:44):
Oh my gosh, yes. It's her first adult or it's her first novel. She's written a lot of YA and I've read all of her YA books already and she gets into why she chose to take this on instead of the YA genre and how she doesn't really think about genre that much anyway. She's just a really strong storyteller. Also, Mary H.K. Choi has such a special place in my heart for a couple reasons, not just because she's a brilliant writer and thinker and I feel like her voice is so singular, but she has a special place in my heart because one, she was the neighbor of my college dorm mate, which is pretty wild.
Doree Shafrir (01:23):
So funny.
Elise Hu (01:25):
Tim. So she and Tim, I don't know, were neighbors in New York or something. And then that's how I was first introduced to her very first YA book. He recommended it to me. I think it was Emergency Contact was her first one. And the other is because I read and loved Emergency Contact, I think I was doing a podcast app search for her name because I wanted to hear her talk about her book because a lot of times I'll watch a TV show or a movie and I'll really enjoy it and then want to go back and listen to the artists who are in that TV show or movie or book talk about their work. And so I had searched Mary H. K. Choi's name and that's how I first heard Forever 35. Oh
Doree Shafrir (02:07):
My gosh.
Elise Hu (02:08):
Yeah, the first Forever 35 episode I ever heard was probably in 2018 or 2019 in the early... I mean, it was in the first hundred episodes for sure. Maybe even in the first 50 episodes, I heard you and Kate because y'all had on Mary H.K. Choi. And I think at that time she was just coming out of disordered eating and was very candid about all of that with you.
Doree Shafrir (02:33):
And
Elise Hu (02:34):
I just though it was so real and I loved her, but also I loved you guys and your rapport. And it's so funny, it's just a really full circle episode that we're doing today because it's many years later and here we are. And as fate would have it, we all got to chat and I think that's really lovely.
Doree Shafrir (02:53):
Aw.
Elise Hu (02:54):
Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (02:55):
I love that. I love that full circle moment.
Elise Hu (02:59):
The book is very intense. The book is
Doree Shafrir (03:01):
Like
Elise Hu (03:01):
Mother-daughter stuff. It is adult grown men who are still children, very immature grown men. It has celebrity culture, it has aging and what that means when your daughter is representing youth and beauty and all those things. So I really liked it a lot, but also we love Mary and Mary has been through it. She got a late in life autism diagnosis or was it ADHD? Both. Oh yes, she's twice exceptional. Yeah, so she'll talk about that and her self-care and just love it. But that's coming up later. Let's catch up. How are you doing, Door? What are you doing lately to take care of yourself?
Doree Shafrir (03:52):
I'm like, what is self-care? What is that?
Elise Hu (03:56):
Yeah, this time of year is rough.
Doree Shafrir (03:58):
It is. Yeah. It's just a lot. I mean, I'm playing tennis. That's kind of the only thing that really keeps me going. It's you time. Yeah, it's you time. It's me time. Yeah. Yeah. It's not on my phone, not thinking about anything else, just focusing on this dumb little yellow ball.
Elise Hu (04:21):
That's what's so good about tennis I think too, because it requires such focus and presence. Yeah, totally. Time need to play. I need to get out there and play again. Because of this time period, I just haven't gotten to get the units of exercise that I want. And also I tweaked my knee a couple of weeks ago, but not the knee that I have persistent problems with.
(04:47):
It's bad when you wake up and it's the other side. It's like, oh wait, the other one's now talking to me. That's not good. So that's what happened to me a couple weeks ago. But through all of the volunteering I've been doing at the end of the school year, I met another mom at the middle school who happens to be an acupuncturist and studied a lot of Eastern medicine and came very highly recommended to me by other people. I happened to meet her, but I had already heard of her. Her name's Kateri. And this week, because my knee was still tender and not quite right, I texted her and I was like, "Can I come in? " She got me in on Monday and it was the best acupuncture session I have ever had. I have been feeling great. I felt weird the day of, and she said I would.
(05:38):
She was like, "Look, I had to mess with different channels and things like that. So you're going to feel random pricks and pain throughout the day following the session because I'm working on your inflammation in different places." And she was right. I did feel a little weird on Monday afterwards and achy, just achy in places that I didn't expect to be achy. But then I woke up yesterday feeling great. I woke up unenergized, but also crucially the pain was gone from tweaking my knee. And she was very straight. She was like, "Look, if you have something that requires an ultrasound or an MRI or something, that I cannot help you with. You should go and get an ultrasound or an MRI. But if you feel like you tweaked your knee and this could be inflammation that acupuncture can help with, then I will take a look." And so she did and she helped me tremendously.
(06:31):
And now I'm just singing her praises and on top, I'm like, "Does anybody need an acupuncturist on the west side?" I just feel my whole chi is better. I feel more energetic, but maybe that's because the pain is not nagging at me.
(06:49):
Because I had this persistent, annoying pain. I know the limitations of acupuncture and cupping and all these things, but this practitioner happened to make a difference for me, and so I'm really happy with it.
Doree Shafrir (07:00):
I love that. What a nice thing to find something that you feel like actually helped. Helped you. Yeah. Imagine that.
Elise Hu (07:10):
Yeah,
Doree Shafrir (07:10):
Because I've done
Elise Hu (07:11):
A lot of PT in my life and that could be hit
Doree Shafrir (07:13):
Or miss. Yeah.
Elise Hu (07:15):
I love a Theragun though.
Doree Shafrir (07:17):
You know what? I love a Theragun. I love a therapy. They sponsored this podcast briefly, I don't know, a few years ago. And so they sent us a Theragun.
Elise Hu (07:28):
Nice.
Doree Shafrir (07:29):
And I was like, "Oh, this is nice." I use it when my arm has been hurting. Oh, but something that I will say about tennis and arms hurting is I'd been using the same racket for four or five years. And I had gotten tennis elbow a couple years ago and then I had to go to what I found out was OT, not PT, because when it's your hand or your arm, it's
Elise Hu (07:57):
OT,
Doree Shafrir (07:58):
Fun fact. And I changed my strings and changed my whole setup, but I never changed my racket. And I always had some lingering arm pain. It never fully went away, but it was nowhere near what it had been before. So I was like, "Okay, it is what it is. " And then I was feeling a little more arm pain and I was like, "Everyone says that the racket I play with, which was the Babelat Pure Drive for people interested, it's a power racket. And because it's a power racket, it's very stiff. So it's not good for tennis elbow." And I knew that, but I was always like, "Well, I'll change my strings." And that did help for a little while. But I was like, "I think I owe it to myself and my arm to finally get a softer racket." And so I finally did.
Elise Hu (08:50):
What did you switch to?
Doree Shafrir (08:51):
I switched to a new model head racket called the Head Squared.
Elise Hu (08:58):
Okay.
Doree Shafrir (08:59):
Yonik Sinner
Elise Hu (08:59):
Plays with a head racket.
Doree Shafrir (09:01):
Yeah, I don't think he plays with the head squared. The head squared is for, I mean, it's supposed to be, I think, for beginner intermediate players,
(09:11):
And it's brand new. They just came out with it. And when I went to the tennis store in LA, they explained it to me as the head of the racket is very light, which is some new technology. And I was sort of like, "Okay." And then I just bought it. They didn't have a demo available, but I was like, I sort of definitely need this new racket. And it has been a godsend. Oh, wow. And I was like, oh my God, I waited this long to - Switch it up. Get something that would really... Because I was like, how stiff could my racket be? But it turns out -
Elise Hu (09:49):
Quite stiff.
Doree Shafrir (09:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
Elise Hu (09:52):
So I mean, this is awesome. We both have something that helped fix some sort of bodily issue.
Doree Shafrir (10:00):
Yeah, totally.
Elise Hu (10:00):
Solutions. Solutions. Here's the solutions.
Doree Shafrir (10:05):
So yeah, let's introduce Mary.
Elise Hu (10:10):
Yes.
Doree Shafrir (10:11):
Mary is the New York Times bestselling author of Emergency Contact, Permanent Record and Yoke. Her fourth novel, Pool House out now. Permanent Record is currently being adapted for a feature film and yoke for a TV series. And she is the executive producer and writer for both. She can be found on Threads or Instagram for more musings or you can follow her newsletter and we will link to all of those in the show notes. And just a reminder, you can call or text us at 781-591-0390. You can email us at forever35podcast@gmail.com. Our website is forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mention on the show. Our Instagram is @forever35podcast and our Patreon is at patreon.com/forever35. At the free level, you get access to our semi-monthly newsletter where we discuss pod highlights, product reviews, exclusive discounts, giveaways, and more. At $5 a month, you get access to our casual chat, which is now on video.
(11:15):
You get a quarterly live casual chat, access to our community, chat on the Patreon app and more. And at $10 a month, you also get ad-free episodes and a shout-out on the podcast each and every month. You can also shop our favorite products at shopmy.us/forever35. And we are going to take a short break and then we will be chatting with Mary.
Elise Hu (11:35):
We'll be right back.
Doree Shafrir (11:36):
We'll be right back. Mary H.K. Choi, welcome back to Forever 35. It's so good to see you.
Mary H.K. Choi (11:50):
It's so good to be here.
Doree Shafrir (11:51):
Really nice
Mary H.K. Choi (11:52):
To be here.
Doree Shafrir (11:52):
I cannot wait to talk to you about your new book and all the things. A lot of the things have happened in your life since we last chatted on air, so I'm excited. And I know you've answered this question before, but we always ask our guests about a self-care practice. So what are you doing these days that you would consider self-care?
Mary H.K. Choi (12:14):
So yeah, I would love to tell you that I have an elaborate, very expensive, very, very relevant, pop culturally relevant peptide stack, but it's more just that I am on hormone replacement. I'm on the estrogen patch and I just upped my progesterone. And so I'm sleeping for the first time and I'm not even kidding sleeping deeply for about six months, I'd say. I'm dreaming dreams again and I'm an avid dreamer and I hadn't been for a long, long time.
Elise Hu (12:47):
I was going to ask you what led you to go and get on HRT in the first place?
Mary H.K. Choi (12:52):
Honestly, and it's so non-linear and it's so annoying how every sort of female evolution is this oblique set of clues. It was just that my anxiety was way, way, way up, much more than usual. And my ADHD was becoming so much more powerful. I'm used to having 20 tabs open in my brain and suddenly it was like 80. And I was like, "This is weird." And this is always a little bit... I hated myself more. And I could see that in the way that I was becoming this incredibly strident, stroppy, judgmental person about everything. And I was like, "Oh, this is... " I'm not going to go out and say, "This is not me at all. This is a solid me all the time, but at a volume three." And then suddenly I was just at a 12 and I was like, "Oh, this is burning through a level of cortisol that does feel new." And it was incremental.
(13:57):
And so that was really hard to see coming in. And it's that annoying thing with any sort of medication where you don't really see the effects until you've titrated for a while and then certain things get quieter.
Elise Hu (14:14):
Good. Yeah. And you have found it to be effective for you.
Mary H.K. Choi (14:18):
Effective to the point where I can't believe I'm saying the same thing that so many other women have said, which is that I wish I'd gone on it sooner because I'm in my mid-forties, but now I'm beginning to see I'm like, dang it. Me at 38, 39 is I think when this would've been really, really helpful actually.
Doree Shafrir (14:37):
I'm also on HRT and -
Mary H.K. Choi (14:39):
Love it.
Doree Shafrir (14:40):
When I first started taking it, I didn't read the directions for the progesterone and I was just taking it with my pills in the morning. And I was like, "I am feeling so tired lately. So weird. I though I was supposed to be feeling more energetic now and I'm just feeling sluggish." And then literally two months later I finally read on the thing and it's like, "Take at night or whatever." And I'm like, "Oh, right." Whoops.
Mary H.K. Choi (15:12):
Yeah. I mean, totally. And I go to Dr. Reddit for everything. So unless the Greek chorus has all been like, "Anecdotally, take it at night." I'm like, "I don't believe anything." And so I did start taking it at night and I'm a big sleeper. How much do you guys sleep? No judgment, this is a safe space.
Elise Hu (15:34):
I sleep a lot. I sleep seven and a half hours straight and then on the weekends longer.
Mary H.K. Choi (15:43):
It's not quite like Dakota Johnson levels where she was talking about, I don't know, 10, 12 hours, but I like a good solid eight and a half, nine hours.
Elise Hu (15:53):
Yeah, that's a weekend sleep for me. That's ideal. I might do that because of my kids.
Mary H.K. Choi (15:58):
Yeah. I love that we're team sleep because some people just really do function on four and a half, and that's just not my story.
Doree Shafrir (16:05):
No, I've never been able to do that. I was just having this conversation with a couple of friends who are younger than I am. They all kind of just turned 40 and one of them is on HRT and she's like, "It's great." And the others were like, "Wait, is it time?" And I was like, "Yes, it's time." Totally, totally. The only reason I wasn't on it at 40 is because it wasn't part of the conversation.
Mary H.K. Choi (16:30):
Totally. And it always sort of opens up that conversation, Pandora's boxing of, well, is it that more people need it or is it psychosomatic? And just because we're talking it, the way people talk about increased ADHD cases or late-stage autism diagnoses, which is obviously - There's a lot
Elise Hu (16:45):
Of those in the discourse.
Mary H.K. Choi (16:47):
Yeah. And I'm on all these teams. I'm on every team, apparently. I'm like a ringer for issues.
Doree Shafrir (16:52):
We were going to ask you about this after we got to your book, but since we're talking about it now, we might as well just talk about it. You've written really beautifully about your later in life ADHD and autism diagnoses. And how is that going? How has your life changed since getting your diagnoses? What does it mean to you to have this community and put a name to this?
Mary H.K. Choi (17:18):
And Doree, I'm so grateful for our friendship offline as well because we talked quite consistently throughout both these things. Yes,
Doree Shafrir (17:24):
We did.
Mary H.K. Choi (17:25):
It's amazing. I mean, it's basically the conversation that you and I had times a million where it's so helpful to have a name, to have a handle, to be able to encapsulate a host or series of different things that seem unmanageable because they seem sort of spiritually unrelated. But then once you start tracking, you're like, oh. And so for me, it actually quelled a lot of energy that I was expending when it came to hypervigilance, when it came to urgency, when it came to a kind of draconian and stern and incredibly cunty and punitive way that I was talking to myself about things. Because if things
Doree Shafrir (18:07):
Were
Mary H.K. Choi (18:08):
Like you are the only one, AKA, you are an aberration. Why can't you not function according to some sort of benchmark of norm or whatever? Then all of these things sort of come into play. But if I'm just like, okay, well, this is how you are and this is how not only you will always be, but thanks to cognitive decline and perimenopause and just aging, these symptoms are going to get more extreme. And they're not even going to have the decency to be unidirectionally extreme. It's like they're just going to change and feel weird and wobbly. But for a long time, and I think the late stage aspect of it brings us to the for, for a long time I was just sad. And I sort of moved through a lot of grief and a lot of just contrition almost and just a lot of compassion for earlier versions of myself that I was just so mean and impatient to.
(19:08):
And then anger came up, which was wonderful too, because there's a place and a time for all of that just so that you don't have to carry it around. And the way that looked was just like, I know that usually these things are coded as white male or disruptive or all of these things, but I don't think it is that beyond the reach of collective mutual capability that someone who looks like me, speaks like me, is like me, could be detected earlier. And that would've been incredibly helpful for me. And so to be able to see this as a failing of adults around me was an important part of letting go of being mad about all of it and then moving through the grief and the sadness. I don't think I've been explicit about it, but had I known I had ADHD and autism and it wasn't a series of questions of things I needed to fix, I think I would've made a lot of career choices and risks earlier.
(20:15):
And I might've had a family. I might've wanted to have children.
Elise Hu (20:21):
My closest friend, Dr. Jen, was 46 or 47 when she got her ADHD diagnosis. That's the twice exceptional, right? And she said that it was so freeing and so liberating, but also she had so much grief because it clearly was such a cause of tension with her Taiwanese mother her whole life. And to this day, she's estranged from her mother.
Mary H.K. Choi (20:44):
That's really painful. That's really painful. And I think for me, because I'm obsessed with my mother, I keep writing about just mothers. And I think for me, part of it was also just being able to identify that my mother is so neurodivergent. And so things that were harsh or terse or violent, not no to all of these things, but also I'm like, oh, she had different bandwidth as well and she was functioning differently as well. And she was probably as urgent and violent and strict to me as she was to herself. And so she functioned like she was being chased by dogs and we were constantly in danger. And that's a really tough way to raise a sort of special needs child, especially both of us as immigrants. And so now I have a lot of compassion for her, but I do have a lot of feeling for your friend who is estranged while having this realization while also it's all yes and while also acknowledging that sometimes no contact is the harder choice and it sometimes is the more fruitful choice depending on the person.
Elise Hu (21:54):
Well, you brought up mothers and daughters, which is a great opportunity for us to turn to pool house because the central relationship is really between a mother and kind of aging Starlet. Yes. I guess she's not old really. She's in her late 40s or early 50s. Totally,
Mary H.K. Choi (22:11):
Totally.
Elise Hu (22:11):
She's in
Mary H.K. Choi (22:12):
Her late 40s. She's basically my age. We're in
Elise Hu (22:14):
Basically
Mary H.K. Choi (22:14):
The same age. Yeah.
Elise Hu (22:15):
But she had a daughter younger in life and so her daughter is kind of college aged, early 20s. Set up the book for us.
Mary H.K. Choi (22:25):
Yeah. I knew that I wanted to write about mothers and daughters and I knew specifically that there's something just so intoxicating and ripe in this idea of a mother. It's all of these horrible situations that really make Annie's relationship between two women zero sum, even if they're literally related where it's just like, "Oh, your daughter took your looks." All of that stuff. And it's kind of canonical. And I love things. I love Mildred Pierce. I love how complicated that relationship is. I love imitation of life. I love all of these stories that are just so, so loaded and they are heady if not more heady than any sort of romantic love could ever hope to be. I think just this morning, my partner had come back from two weeks in Switzerland. He's Swiss and he was just like, "Man, first of all, I stayed with my mother for two weeks.
(23:25):
That was a data packet and a half." And I was like, "Yeah." And he's like, "And you know what the takeaway was? " I was like, "What?" He was like, "Fuck if I didn't just marry my mother." And I was like, "Bro, yes, and I married my mother too, so enjoy that can of worms." And so I do love the tension of that and I love enmeshment. I do think that something happens, especially as an immigrant, especially as a minority, where you're just on the spaceship together. Sometimes it does feel like the place you left is a place that no longer exists by dint of time passing in that location and you not being there for it. So basically in the simultaneity of multiverses, it's like you are the two survivors of this alien planet that doesn't exist anymore. And so what does that look like?
(24:18):
And how is it when the dynamic is established that the mother is the shining sun and then her light begins to dim? And then God, lo and behold, what if the daughter starts to shine and what happens then? And it's not like the world would then be like, "What are you talking about? " We all each have special merits at each age and stage of our lives. The entire world is like, "Whoa, you actually finally look like your mother now and your mother looks like someone else." It's just such... And then the panopticon and the sort of concentration of that within celebrity fame, optics, performance and all
Elise Hu (25:02):
Of that
Mary H.K. Choi (25:02):
Stuff as well.
Elise Hu (25:04):
Yeah, because listeners, this book has kind of a Bojack Horseman vibe too. And I say that with the highest compliments because it is Mad Men level anti-hero drama to me, that show. I mean,
Mary H.K. Choi (25:16):
I love Bojack.
Elise Hu (25:17):
Yeah. Same. And I mean that because there is this specter of formerly being on a hit show and then having a fake family, which is what Bojack kind of had to wrestle with. And so I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the son, the fake son in the story too.
Mary H.K. Choi (25:40):
I love a fake son. Just like a large adult son. So basically the entire story is that it's a mother and daughter who live in a pool house because they can no longer afford to live in the big house across the lawn because that's being rented out to people with actual jobs a. K.a. Probably people in venture capitalism, private equity or AI. And so they're renting it out and they're living in this glass house. It's kind of like a terrarium. In many ways it is just a spectacle or an endurance exercise. It's just a box. And it has no privacy, obviously, glass houses. And they have a really tough relationship. They're kind of not speaking to each other. And then what happens is the man and the father and the husband on this TV show, he ends his life. And that's not like a spoiler.
(26:37):
It comes pretty early on. And when that happens, the son on the TV show, the daughter who is not on the TV show has been in love with her whole life, comes to stay with them. And so then they decamp for the big house pretending as if they've lived in the big house all along. And that's where the story sort of starts off from. And so it's not even just drama triangles, it's just infinite triangulation. Yeah, it's incredibly complicated. But there's also a lot of love there. And for the daughter herself, it's kind of like, remember the Osbornes?
Elise Hu (27:20):
Yes.
Mary H.K. Choi (27:21):
Remember there was a daughter who has never, ever, ever
Elise Hu (27:24):
Shown - The not Kelly one?
Mary H.K. Choi (27:25):
Yes. The not Kelly. Right. And so she's kind of the Not Kelly, but unwillingly. She would've loved to be on that TV show. She was just excluded from it. And it was even more confusing because she wanted to be in the son's life. She had a big crush on him. And the father on that show also dated her mother and taught her how to do things and acted like the only paternal figure she's ever had in her life. And so it's really painful that the family, that all the people that she feels closest to is remembered with so much love and it just excludes her.
Doree Shafrir (28:03):
Mary, why was it important to you to set this book in LA?
Mary H.K. Choi (28:08):
Well, I mean, Doree, as an ex - New Yorker, I lived there for two years
Doree Shafrir (28:16):
And
Mary H.K. Choi (28:17):
I'd moved there for work and I really enjoy LA. But until LA opens itself to you, which people tell me it minimally takes two years and usually it's more than that. LA is just this sealed up little clamshell. It will sort of expose its wrist or its ankle to you where you're like, okay, fine. I guess this is like Runyon Canyon. I'll go on a hike or whatever. Or you're like, okay, this restaurant is called All Time. You'll eat here a few times. Or I guess when I lived there, it was just like sugarfish and that's kind of all I knew or The Grove or whatever. But to actually understand what it feels like to live there, you need people. And in order to do that, you need to minimally pick a side of town or if you're going to stay in the middle, stay in the middle and befriend all the people there.
(29:10):
But it takes a lot of work to create a community. And so when I lived there, it felt like I was kind of completely distanced by everyone. And because the weather is so nice and unceasingly just relentlessly same, it felt like I was being dopamined or serotonin to death where I was like, I'm supposed to have no complaints. I don't even know that I'm depressed, but I'm pretty sure that I am, although I have no indication that I am. And there is something about that sort of almost abusive level of sunshine that made every single day feel like the continuation of the same day. And I loved... It's like certain times in a person's life, like hospitals Little time works like that. There's no light, there's no dark. It's like casino time. And so setting a very sort of tight little drama between three people in this kind of beautiful time that has no contours was really attractive to me.
Doree Shafrir (30:18):
So we're just going to take a short break and we will be right back.
Elise Hu (30:29):
Tell us about why you decided to take on an adult novel instead of YA. I mean, we love all your YA books too. Was this just kind of like, this is the next challenge or I want to do something a little bit more complex and darker or sexier?
Mary H.K. Choi (30:42):
I mean, honestly, between YA and adult or literary fiction, I guess. I don't know. I never really set out to write YA either. And so when I came out with a story about kids that were in college, people were like, oh, this isn't quite YA. It's like NA, that's new adult. And I'm like, I don't really understand the delineation. And they were like, well, is there sex? And I was like, yes, there's sex in all my books. And they were like, oh, so then you're not really YA. And I'm like, I am now unconcerned by all of this. And so I've only ever really written the next book that came to me. The next book after this might be
(31:26):
Nonfiction. I think it might be an autism book or it might be a fiction that's actually a romance. And I'm like, I don't know how that's going to be categorized later or if that's going to be a question I'm going to get. But the story of this mother and daughter came to me and that's just the one I wanted to write. And the mother, I don't know if you know this, but the mother was older than the daughter. And so then it became sort of qualified as that this would be an adult novel. And then it became the issue of like, okay, well, who would publish it? What's the vibe? And things like that. And so I've only ever concerned myself really with whatever sort of inkling or signal I was getting and then I would just kind of go from there.
Elise Hu (32:10):
Cool. How are you finding just being a creative person right now and making it in the world? Because we're in this time of media apocalypse. Doree and I were just talking. It's like, how is everyone surviving?
Mary H.K. Choi (32:21):
I mean, it's grim. And every day it's so interesting because there are new ways where I have to become more efficient and I have to be really, really intentional and granular about branding and launching and soft launching and hard launching and pivoting to video. And this response is already 70% too long. It should be five seconds. And have a trending audio sound. Everything needs a call to action. Everything needs a hook. I just feel really, really hyper aware of all these things. And then you have layers and layers and layers insisting that AI is going to save you.
(33:00):
Totally. And I understand the seduction of it. And I understand even too that all the spam I'm getting because my algorithm is so hyper aware that I'm trying to flog a book right now, the spam I'm getting is so exacting. It's like I'm seeing on Goodreads that your book is positioned at blah, blah, blah, which is not as high as it should be. You seem to be underserving. Oh my God. And it's fully spam and you can tell by the syntax and that stuff kind of gets scary. And so on one hand, there's so much to be afraid of.
(33:33):
And on the other hand, everything about this entire enterprise is predicated on an innate trust in humanity. Everything we do in this space is such a wild subversion. A friend of mine was just commenting that they'd heard someone say that a novel is long form content, which I find so, so funny in the same way that someone called reading raw dogging a book. Oh my God. Yeah. And I can freak out about all of this and be caught up in the semantics, but the truth is it's like books getting across, whether it be audio, whether it be written by a content creator rather than an author, whether it's self-published. I'm not worried about any of that. All I know is that people will crave other people. And so whatever that looks like, wherever I'm positioned on whatever trend or trough or wave of that, I can't be too concerned about it.
(34:42):
But what I do know is that I love talking to other creators. Even if it's a commiseration, even if it's complaints, even if it's just like how does one live? I just taught a seminar class and that came with an honorarium. I was like, "Oh look, I squeezed this and then money came out. " And similarly, I still write personal essays or do interviews for other people for money. I've been developing my own books for a really, really long time. And sometimes if you squeeze the right corner of that, some money tumbles out, sometimes some health insurance. And that's how I make it work. But a lot of the time I had these realizations where I'm like, "Oh, that's why all these authors are also
(35:32):
Teachers." I was like, "That's how they get the health insurance and the stability." And then a lot of the times too, a lot of artists, I'm like, "Oh, your partner is in finance." Or I'm like, "Oh, you are generationally wealthy, but very, very effective at hiding it except for you showed your as when you hired an $80,000 publicist out of pocket." So all of these things can be true, but I don't know. I can't doomsday prophesize about it. And I'll move out of New York when I can no longer afford to live here. And I also very consciously decided not to have children because I didn't know how this would work. I'm married to a literal composer of music.
Doree Shafrir (36:15):
You mentioned that you will stay in New York as long as you can afford to stay in New York. And I'm wondering as you pointed out someone who is an ex - New Yorker, but I haven't been there now in a couple of years, what's the vibe these days?
Mary H.K. Choi (36:31):
Well, I mean, it's a lot of things. It's the same thing it always is. It's one, it's so exciting. I love more than anything that I can go to any number of museums. I can go to any number of cultural events, lectures. Everybody comes through here at some point. So you do get to see all of your friends at least once or twice a year. And that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. It also feels like you are living inside a live action for you page. It is so loud with everybody's main character energy and it is very, very distracting. And so any sort of... I feel like New York is perfect for feeling resentful that you caught astray.You're just like, "Oh, what was that? Why do I have to know this? " And then part of the issue is that you decided to be jealous about this other thing that has nothing to do with you.
(37:23):
And so I feel like New York is the best, but it's also like hugging a radioactive isotope. It's both things where you can be denatured. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to make work here. I think I have to leave here for a certain amount of time, make work there and then return here to promote it or synthesize it. But I also, I used to live in Park Slope and now I live on the Lower East Side. It's like I moved to there. Dimes Square is very close to my apartment. And I made that. I did that.
Doree Shafrir (37:59):
Yeah.
Mary H.K. Choi (38:00):
But post - COVID, it's also weird. There's a lot of people around who are criminally swagless. Every third person is a non-playable character in a very, very profound way. They look plenty rich. They have the right little lightweight jacket. They have the right colored right length trench coat, but I know that they're not going to live here forever. They know that they're not going to live here forever. And it's a lot of old institutions being sort of destroyed for really weird, faceless, again, private equity situations that just feel sort of flattened. And also, it's super different after COVID in all the ways that LA is super different after COVID.
Doree Shafrir (38:46):
Yeah. Yeah.
Elise Hu (38:47):
All right. Since we don't want to leave on an everything is private equity note, what's next for you? What are you excited about?
Mary H.K. Choi (38:55):
I'm excited about a lot of things. This is the first time ever that I'm promoting a book without being inside another book. I though about going out with this proposal. I thought about starting to really dedicate my time into writing this new fiction project, but I'm sitting in the place of I've finished something
(39:19):
And I never get to do this. And so I'm just allowing for the completion of something, but then also secretly, because I'm me, I am eyeing these two other books and I'm working on a show that is something I can't talk about, but hopefully can soon. And it's really, really fun. I mean, that's the thing too about everything being a bit of a trash buyer. It makes the stakes kind of funny. I can either be like, "If this doesn't happen, I'm toast." Or I can be like, "Well, if anything happens, it's not a meritocracy. It won't have anything to do with what I have control over. And if it doesn't happen, it's because probably a literal war broke out at some point between the pitch and the execution, which is also not my fault. So the only thing I'm actually responsible for in this moment is making something that I am amused by, that is exciting to me, that is joyful, that it feels like a very specific celebration of my time space continuum and my thought processes for a finite amount of time.
(40:23):
And so yeah, I really want to come at any new project with this real sense of, and I'm trying not to cringe while saying this word, but artistry in the sense of every end product can pretty much be in some sort of hackneyed way arrived at with AI or some other sort of technology. And so how do I make sure that I am altered and that I am nourished by the action of doing something? And so it's as much about whether or not the thing that I work on next gets to exist and thrive. It's also about did I enjoy spending the time to get there? And that sounds really woo-woo, but it's just genuinely where I'm at right now.
Elise Hu (41:15):
Yeah. Mary H.K. Troy, thank you so much. It's so nourishing to speak with you. So thanks for coming on and battling the technical issues and -
Mary H.K. Choi (41:27):
Oh my God. And just
Elise Hu (41:28):
Here with us. You hear
Mary H.K. Choi (41:28):
Collapsing trachea. So dramatic.
Elise Hu (41:31):
Join the club. Join the club. Thank you. Thank you so
Mary H.K. Choi (41:34):
Much.
Doree Shafrir (41:38):
Always so good to get to chat with Mary. And I'm so excited for people to read her new boo.
Elise Hu (41:45):
I've been getting all sorts of pool house content in my
Doree Shafrir (41:47):
Algorithms.
Elise Hu (41:48):
Yeah, totally. I'm seeing a lot of Mary H.K. Troy and I'm not mad about it. No mad about it.
Doree Shafrir (41:53):
No, me neither. Me neither. Elise, did you get to have more family time?
Elise Hu (41:59):
Oh, so much family time. Oh, so much family time. It's really awesome when my mom is here because we are family very oriented around food and eating and eating together. And so not only do I get a home-cooked meal for dinner every night, we all sit around the table and eat dinner together. She also makes sure to cook a multi-course lunch every day and calls me and Rob down for lunch. And we have
Doree Shafrir (42:25):
This
Elise Hu (42:26):
Elaborate lunch with soup and everything. Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (42:28):
Can I
Elise Hu (42:29):
Come over?
Doree Shafrir (42:29):
Yes.
Elise Hu (42:30):
Anytime. She's constantly like, "Do you want to have more people over? We constantly have so many leftovers." So today she's making a bunch of Taiwanese beef noodle soup. And she makes all her scallion pancakes from scratch. So she's been making that for breakfast every day with egg,
(42:48):
An egg crip on it. It's just been such a treat. So family time's been awesome. My intention this week is that this time is flying by and our kids' lives are just flying by. Our own lives are flying by. And so I really have gotten away from reflecting on it. You know how when I started on the show, I used to write those birthday notes to the kids and I would email, got away from it. None of their birthdays in the last birthday have I written them a note. So I think my intention is just going to be reflection and writing.
Doree Shafrir (43:18):
Reflective
Elise Hu (43:19):
Writing, journaling. It's just passing by journaling. I was actually thinking I should do an exit interview for Issa. Now that she's graduated from elementary school, I should just sit her down in front of a camera, like an iPhone camera and just interview her. And this morning as we were walking to school, I told her, I was like, "I'd like to sit you down for an interview." And Issa, who's full of roasts, she's always dunking on me. She's like, "I don't know, mommy. I've heard your questions and they're pretty basic.
Doree Shafrir (43:50):
Wow.
Elise Hu (43:54):
Constantly. That is to live with Issa. As Rob calls, it's the sas house. It's like the most Issa response. I got to write that down in a little... That's something I should write down, her little quotes.
Doree Shafrir (44:07):
Seriously, that is sassy.
Elise Hu (44:11):
Oh, the beast. We don't call her the beast for nothing. All right, what about you, Doree? Your intention last week and what are you intending this week?
Doree Shafrir (44:18):
Yeah, so my intention last week was just navigating the last day of school, the beginning of summer. I think overall it went pretty well. I talked on the casual chat a little bit about this, but Henry's going to a new school next year so a little bittersweet the last day of school, even more so than I think usual, but we got through it. And my intention this week is to kind of figure out what some fun summer day trips could be. Because Henry doesn't have any activities on the weekends in the summer. And so I'm like, we should take advantage of that and do some stuff. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks everyone so much for listening. Just a reminder that Forever 35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu, and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast.
(45:21):
Thanks everybody.
Elise Hu (45:22):
Talk to you next time.
Doree Shafrir (45:23):
Bye.