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TikTok.
Not the dancing kind, the old fashioned sort click clicking away in the back of your mind, counting up and counting down up to that age you always said, I'll do that by then, and down to the inevitable finality of which we do not speak. By mid you've worked out that time is actually the only currency that counts, and you've got holds in your pockets. TikTok. Not the kind your almost adult kid lives inside, but the kind that was so painfully slow when you were young, tick
talk when will I ever be old enough to? And the kind that now flies by at warp speed. TikTok. TikTok terms almost finished doing for Easter? May haven't you grown another fucking birthday? Cake? Winters so long this year? I don't celebrate the cup. We have to catch up before Christmas, wishing time away and then trying to hold onto It is the story, it seems, of a life. Act one that was a thing, the setup, the backstory,
the foundation. Act two finds us here in the thick of the action, wondering if there's some hidden message to the unfolding chaos. Act three, if we're lucky, a satisfying conclusion, an investment paid off, a big reveal. Perhaps, of course, not every life gets divided so neatly, and the perfect finale is almost certainly a dream. So what we're doing with it now feels urgent, important, but brings its own pressures. Can we really live in the truth of time being finite?
As if each day was your last? Rushing between loved ones telling them they matter, hoovering experience to tick off a list, savoring each sunrise, never going to bed angry? Do we really get here and need to despair about how much of it we spent on emails or folding laundry, wiping bottoms, waiting for the pasta water swiping Instagram TikTok, No, not that one, the one that's rushing past like Keanu and Sandra's bus can't slow down. You've got to keep up.
Four thousand weeks, ten thousand hours, break it down, make it count, don't waste a second. So what is the best way, though, to spend the time you believed was infinite before life slowly unveiled the obvious? Is it a waste if you're not on a yacht, summering in Europe, grinding to makee bank? Is it a waste if you're not training for a try making your own cheese, growing
your network, widening your funnel. Is it a waste to spend some of it just lying in bed with a kid a little too long, remembering that farts are funny? Or under a tree with a skyithing friendiding from today's to dos, or under a doner with someone you like
later for work with every kiss. Is it a waste to spend some slow minutes making a meal only you will eat, Or talking to someone you don't really know in a line at a place you didn't choose to be, or reading that book, or binging that show, or laughing at how smart the Internet can be when it's not trying to destroy us. TikTok, not the one that says you're not brat, but the one that whispers how many
more summers while you try not to hear? Hi, I'm Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife, mid family, mid panic some days, and welcome to mid our show for gen X women who are anything but today, I'm talking
to Leanne Moriarty. You might have heard. She writes books, not just books, but enormous books, books that sell millions, that speak to millions, that get made into culture defining TV shows that tell stories about ordinary people, ordinary Australian women actually, that then travel around the world and make entire other continents of women go oh yeah, me too. Leanne would hate this intro already. She hates bluster and
fuss and overstatement. She hates big noting and pretension. She likes telling stories and writing books, and she's endlessly curious about people, which is what makes her great at those first two things. We're talking about time today because Leanne's new book Here One Moment, is in large part about mortality. I'm going to tell you more about that as we go along, because the premise is so clever, so great
and so relevant. But in our conversation, Leanne talks about how some ordinary but extraordinary events in her own life, like losing her father both she and her sister being diagnosed with breast cancer, inspired this brilliant new novel's theme, what to do with the time You've got left? And what would happen if you knew exactly how much that was. Welcome to mid Leanne Moriarty Leanne. This is a podcast for women in their second acts, we often say mid women,
gen X women. And listening to your interviews and reading your stories, I wondered if writing and Family is your second act. If your first act was your career in advertising, you had your own business, and then there's a point at which you decided to lean in to writing fiction, do you consider it your second act.
I could consider it my second act if you want me to.
You don't have to know.
I'm trying to think. It's funny because when I first started writing, I was in my early thirties, so it was twenty years ago now since my first book came out, and I remember there seemed to be a lot of talk as if I was really old to be writing my first book. But now I think I wasn't old.
You talking about I've seen you say that that you thought that you were old too.
Yes, yeah, that was my feeling. I agree. Look at me as a middle aged person now I'm finally writing my book. But now I laugh sort of fondly at myself when you're talking.
About maybe it's partly because I mean I work with a lot of young women, and they often feel like there's some sort of finish line at thirty and then a finish line at forty. Yes, that you have to have done X, y Z, so they'll be like, gosh beyond. Mariotty was over thirty when she published her book. Yeah, when really that's very young. But was there a moment from your advertising career where you were like, I definitely want to change what's next in my life?
Well, it happened because my sister had her book published, so I was definitely in the corporate world. And I can still see my office. I can even see what I was wearing with the shoulder pads. And I got that phone call from her saying that her first book had been septem for publication, and I was thrilled for her because I love her dearly, but I was also filled with a kind of rage that she'd finally achieved our childhood dream and I hadn't even given it a shot.
So it wasn't so much Okay, now here's my second act. It was, well, I should at least try this, and I kept working. Yes, that probably that's why I don't think of it as a second act because the acts all merged together because I was a freelance copywriter for a long time before I finally let clients go. The more successful I got, well, I let the horrible ones
go first, so I do want to enjoy exactly. And then right towards the end, I still kept this lovely lady who did kitchen bench tops, and finally I said to her, I, really, I don't do this anymore. I just kept kept writing them for her. Yeah. So, yeah, well, all the acts merged together.
I've obviously read about you and your two sisters who are also writers. Yes, writing when you were little stories for your father who would pay you a little advance contract mission.
Yeah.
So a lot of us might have passions in youth that we lose touch with, Yes, and sometimes that can make you feel quite far from yourself.
Yes, that's right, But I didn't realize that. I wasn't thinking to myself, I'm unhappy. I wish I was writing my novel. I was pretty pleased with myself with that with the shoulder pads, and I quite liked management because I'm the eldest sister, so I think I'm quite good at delegating. I have no trouble with that. But when I was writing that first year, when I was writing Three Wishes, I was amazed at the feeling of relief that I felt, and that I continue to feel now.
When I stopped writing for a while and then I get back into it, I think, oh, that's right. It's something that I need that I didn't know that I needed.
You said, when you're a little girl, you thought I'm going to be a famous writer. Yeah, And I think you said when we think we know exactly how life's going to turn out, and we're going to talk about here one moment quite a bit later. But it's a book a lot about fate and different paths taken and all those things. You are obviously famous writer. But I'm sure that the path wasn't exactly how you imagined it.
No, I don't think I imagined a path at all. Then, as you said, I thought you could just choose how many children you got to have, and what their names would be, and what your career would be. So I don't know what that little girl would have thought of that path. And people often ask that question, what would you say if you could go back in time? And sometimes I think I'd say well, you should have started, you should have been writing sooner. Maybe you'd be a
better writer now. But perhaps it just had to happen the way it happened. I don't know.
Young writers ask you for advice, you have said to them, lead a bit of a life first, so you've got things in your height.
And I do think that. But then of course there are some writers who you know, they're so young, and they write brilliant novels straight away, So I wouldn't want to stop in a body. If they want to do it, they should do it. But yes, my advice would be leader, Leader a whole lot of different lives, and then you'll have more material to call upon.
I think that one of the things we talk about a little bit on this show is how when you sort of get to sort of what we're calling mid and we're deliberately like reclaiming that term because the young people you probably know this, because you've got young people in your life, use it as an insult. Yes, and so we're reclaiming it. Yes, But often when you get to mid, like the world is sort of telling you
that you're not that interesting anymore. Yes, but certainly you have always known this in your characters, but you write about grown up women beautifully and with a real understand standing of the multitudes they contain. To use a cliche. Is that a deliberate choice? And has anyone ever pushed back on that from you?
No, I don't know if it's a deliberate choice. No. I always just wrote what I wanted to write. I feel like sometimes when I look back on some of my earlier novels and I've got a character in their fifties, now, I think, oh, I don't know. I think I would have written her differently now. And I think that as a reader too, when I go back and read novels that I was more interested back then in the daughter, and now I'm thinking, but what about the mother? So I hope I still did a good job with the
older characters when I was younger. No. Margaret Atwood says to younger writers, you don't know what it's like to be seventy because you're not there yet. But I remember what it was like to be twenty because I once was twenty, which I think is true. But it's interesting
even when I look back at Big Little Lies. I picked that up the other day and I was looking at it, and there was a scene where they have to stop the car and they have to get the booster seat for the little five year old, and I thought, oh, that's right. I've totally forgotten that at five you were still in the boosters seat, because when I was writing it, I was right at that time of my life. So I don't know. I often would like to write about
the age I am right now. And another Margaret, Margaret Drebbel. I've noticed she her characters have just got older and older with her.
That's interesting because as you said about Attwoods saying that I know what it's like to be twenty, that feels like how I talk to my teenage daugher.
Yes I know, and so I do want to say to Margaret, but you don't know what it's like to be twenty now.
Oh yes, yeah, that's true. But it's that interesting thing of you know, when people ask you questions like does parenting change your attitude to work or whatever? And again, the young women I work with will be very anxious about that, and I'll say, well, I know what it was like to be you and working before I had this other focus, and it's okay, Yes, it's all okay.
Yes, yeah, you know that's right bread out, Yes exactly.
Do you pick up your you were just saying about re reading big little lies? Do you sometimes pick up your previous books and them?
No? I never do. I'm the reason is because there's the possibility of a sequel with the kids's teenagers. So no, I hate picking it up and reading my old work. Oh. Every now and then I think that's okay, But other things I think i'd write that differently now. It's like hearing your own voice.
Gives you a cringe, and then hopefully sometimes you read a paragraph though and go, oh yeah, I know what I'm doing.
Yea. Sometimes sometimes when people pull out quotes, I think, oh, yeah, that was nice and I really liked it with big little eyes metal and saying I tend to my grudges like little pets and things like that, so I do.
I like that. It must be interesting for you with this back catalog that gains such momentum with the TV, with every new adaptation and things, of people rediscovering books that you almost left behind so long ago. That must be quite strange sometimes if people really want to talk to you about it, and do you ever go.
Yes, I can't remember can't happen. No, I can't, and I can't remember what they're talking about. But sometimes they do say things which I think, I'm sure that wasn't in the book. And I find that so interesting because I think what they're doing is they're taking things from their own life, and that's why. And I'm thinking that they describe a character who looks a particular way, and
I think, nope, but that's something from their own imagination. Yes, they've taken it, Yes, made it their which is really special to me because I think every single reader, they're using their imagination together with my imagination, and every single one of them is having a slightly different experience of the book.
Yes, I mean this is just related to that. I know people have asked you about the Big Little Lies adaptation a million times because gosh, so brilliant.
It's one of the reasons that I the reason you don't believe them. There are other reasons, Okay, I'm madly in love with him. He adores me, he treats me like a goddess when he's not hurt of you. Look, he's a great father, we have great sex. There's violence, yes, in the relationship, and that's why we came in and it's an issue. But I mean, all marriages are complicated.
Is there ever a little like Oh I didn't think they were like that. Sometimes if I listen to audiobooks, it'll jar me a little bit. Oh, I didn't think she sounded like that. Do you know what I mean?
Yes, yeah, that's right. Oh, yes, definitely. And it just a tiny things like when in one of the very first scenes, metal And twists her ankle, and so in my mind, she twisted her ankle the way I twist, mind, because I do that horrible what's it called spinning? Not spinning? You just twist over, yeah, twist over onto the side. And she went forward. So it's sort of no consequence. So you could get caught up and thinking, no, that's not the way her ankle should go to the.
Side, but you have to let it go.
Yes, yeah, exact, Yes, that's rue. And also I think every actor they bring in their own in the same way that the readers bring their own experiences. Every actor brings their own experiences and things that they've witnessed in their own life, so it becomes their own separate creation.
Talking about hair on moment a little bit, you right, I think what I would term grown up women brilliantly, like I thought Joy in Apples neverfore was just I
love Joy so interesting. And Jerry, who's the main character in Here One Moment, is older and what I love about this And we're going to talk a little bit about the pot but the first time you see her the way that other people see her as this little old lady, almost this neat, tidy, little old lady on the plane, and then as the characters are excavated, you realize all these things that she's lived through and all
these amazing experiences she's had. And that's what I think midlife women often feel like when they're being overlooked, whether they're being overlooked in life or at work or in relationships, as sort of like you're becoming invisible, You're fading away, Yes, but they've done so much more of my conversation with Leanne Murriarty about her new book Mortality and Writing Through the Pain after this short break, can you tell us a little bit about Here One Moment and how it starts.
So Here One Moment, I definitely did not start with the character of Cherry. I started with the premise, so I was on a flight from Hobart to Sydney and there was a delay, so I was stuck on the plane with the flight was delayed, so everybody was becoming increasingly frustrated. People were making lots of phone calls relatives and friends, canceling plans. There was one mother who was talking to her little girl and she was saying, well, you're going to have to wake up daddy and he
can make dinner for you. And she couldn't wake daddy up. So I was listening to this call. She was a few seats in front, and I started to think, I think Daddy's dead because it was going on for so long, and I was texting my husband saying he's dead, He's dead, and my husband was saying, no, he's just the poor man's just having a nap on the couch. So he
was no good. So then I texted mum and the sister's chat and they were saying, oh no, poor little whatever a name, I can't remember a name, poor little Chelsea. What's she going to have for a dinner? Oh no, no, no. Anyway, my husband was right annoyingly but happily for a poor little girl. But that had got me thinking about death. And it's probably not surprising because death was probably a subject always on my mind at that time for three reasons.
So the first thing that happened was my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. Then I lost my father. Then there was sort of directly after that because after he died, as we were walking out of the hospital room, the nurses were saying, wash your hands, wash your hands. It was the first time that was only just starting at the very beginning, and we were very lucky because we got to have a wonderful, big funeral, but a week
after we would not know. And so the whole world sort of stared death in the face for such a long period. And then I got diagnosed with breast cancer. So I think I had just become aware of my own mortality. So I'm well now, my sister's well now, and also probably just being in your fifties, you just have you know, there's a year of a new diagnosis so often. So the cheerful thought came into my head that everybody on this plane is going to one day.
Die, and clearly it's true.
It's true, obviously, And that thing I couldn't get over in my head was we're all going to die, and one day that information will be available as to how and when each of us died. And isn't that fascinating that one day we'll know? And then I was looking around at people, thinking, you know, will you live to be one hundred? Will you be the one whose life
is cut short? And that's when I thought, imagine if somebody stands up and starts pointing it out each of us, end says this is your age of death and your cause of death.
And this is how the book begins because that person is Cherry I was talking about a little bit before. And everybody on the plane gets a different prognosis, and some of them are relatively you know, old age when you're a hundred, and some of them are much more confronting. And then the book then follows a lot of those characters as well as Cherry's story. So it very much focuses this book on mortality but also on fate. And the people in the book have very different reactions to
being given this information. And I know you just mentioned about your own cancer diagnosis, and I've seen you write about it that you know you knew that you were getting off lightly almost in commas because you'd seen your sister go through more invasive treatment. But it still was terrifying and upending.
Yes, yeah, and it was still hard, I realized. Because I'm very close to all my sisters, I would keep thinking, well, I'm fine because she had to go through so much worse, and she definitely never made me feel this way. Nobody
in my family did. But I kept on doing it to myself because I can always remember a school mum saying to me standing in the driveway after a pickup, and she was asking me about it, and I was starting to talk about my sister, and she looked at me and she said, well, I don't want to hear about your sister, what about you? And then I burst into tears because I thought, oh, I realized I'm allowed to It was it was hard, yeah, But I feel
bad saying that because I don't want anything. I don't want my sister to be because it's just like everything that happens to your sisters, you feel like it's happening to you.
But it was nice of that mother to say that, And it must have been a very difficult time because you know your sister and losing your father and then you may, but with the backdrop of COVID.
Yes, because we were in lockdown when I was having most of my treatment. But yeah, that was quite nice. Guy got an excuse to leave the house each day to people and talk to people, and yeah, you see there's all the lockers there in the hospital and it's
just everybody's going through the same thing. But it was only in those very early days that nurse she was saying, oh, I had to have a similar biopsy, and she was looking at the screen and she was holding my arm and I said, so it was your biopsy benign and she said no, and I could tell mine's lot good. I think she knew from looking sort of saying yours isn't going to be benign either, but she was saying.
Back here, I am.
So there was just a terrifying few days, especially looking at my children, before I knew that, Okay, this is caught early, and now here we go on now through the process that so many people have been.
Through before they have And I'm sure once you did talk about that, I'm sure you've got a lot of women talking to you about their own experiences of that. Yes, and that can obviously be wonderful because you realize you're part of a community, but also a little overwhelming. I'm sure.
Yeah, some people want to say this. I've learned this. People want to say, oh, you'll be fine, don't worry about it. You know, it's easily cured. And I can remember saying exactly that to somebody once after my sister. So I saw her and I said, oh, don't worry about it. My sister's running marathons now, which is true. But I should not have said that because I'm not her unconscious, and when it happened to me, I think, well, what do you know? I think what you should say?
If I could go back in time, I just say, I'm so, I'm so sorry. Yeah, and she's not fine. So that's why I feel. I feel terrible that I said that. What did I know? Hopefully she still will be fine. But it's human nature, sure, exactly.
Yeah, And you know, lots of women listening to this, and women in both our lives who will be going through this at the moment, and for the people who love them and want to support them, they're like wrestling with that a little bit. Are we all chipper? Are we like you can beat this? This is going to be great, we're baking cupcakes today, or are we telling horror stories, which is worse. Yeah, So do you think just listen and meet people?
Well they are so Yeah, But you're right, because maybe there are some people would say no, I don't want to hear, oh, I'm so sorry, with a somber look on my face. Do tell me about your sister running marathons. I don't know. So maybe there's not one right answer, but for me, I didn't want to hear that this is nothing. No.
And also, when you're going through something, it is scary.
Yeah, I just don't want to be Yes, you don't want to start them planning your funeral, but you don't want them to say this is nothing.
And obviously we're not going to go into spoilers for what happened to the characters in your book, but there are some within that group of people, there are very different reactions to being given this news. Yes, and to the other people who are on the plane, because obviously we follow closely a few of them, and then we
begin to hear stories of what's happening outside. And that's really interesting because I think we all know that is exactly what people are like you know, they'll handle the same information very differently.
Yes, I think when I first came up with the idea, I think I was thinking, they all have these wonderful revelations about life, and you know the meaning of life. But then when I put my characters in that situation, then I thought, actually, what you would do is, first of all, you would probably disbelieve it, so obviously the predictions have to start coming true before it to mean anything.
You would fight it in the same way that if you get a terminal disease, you ask for a second opinion, and you keep trying, and you enroll in that what's called the.
Brain fall very very familiar with the brain from.
When you're doing it. Why a clinical tual. When you're enrolled in the clinical trials, you do whatever it takes, so you're not necessarily having these amazing revelations. You're fighting.
And also that depends on who you are, as it does with these characters, because the ones who you know. Again, not wanting to give too much away, but there's a character in there who in the past has struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder, so obviously the way she reacts to this information is different to the way that somebody who
doesn't have that in their back. Yes, and so it's the sort of beautiful exploration of that idea that you know, we're not all the same, We're not all going to handle the information the same way.
Yes, yes, exactly.
So the book is very much it focuses on moretality and fate. As I say, because the character Cherry, who I thought was so fascinating, who is the woman who stands up on the plane and tells everybody how they're going to die, and when she's assumed to be a fortune teller and she comes from a family of fortune tellers and psychings. So it really leans into that aspect
of WO and what you believe. And sorry we wo is a dismissive term, but I just found it just fell out of my mouth into that sort of area. Are you a believer? Does that attract you?
It attracts me. I'm a skeptic, but I'd love to believe. Nothing has yet happened to me where it's been proven to be true, but I would love it to be true. And I think it's possible that there are people with special abilities, but I haven't met any of them yet. And I do think there are a lot of them who have special abilities to read the person in front of them, to use probability, but I'm open. I'm completely open to it, and I love hearing people's stories from believers.
Cherry's mother in the book obviously was Madam May, who she did tell fortunes for a living. But Cherry is a very mathematical, scientific person, and so as a teenager, she was watching her mom do this and just being like, what a lot of nonsense. It's like, of course you knew that woman was going to have a baby soon because she'd just got married, and that's relatively likely. So sometimes we often think maybe that these people are just very good readers of people. Yes, and I think that
writers are also that to a point. We look at people and we make calls.
We do, but certainly I still get it wrong. Sometimes I still make a snap judgment and think, oh, you're not that sort of person at all. Whenever I do an avenge, there's always somebody in the audience who's sitting there with a very blank face, and I think they hate me. They've been dragged here by somebody, and I keep turning to them, thinking, why does she hate me, and then in the signing line they'll come up and say something that you know they're a real fan or something,
they're profoundly affected by something I've written. So I've just got that particular face that doesn't show anything. So I'd love to say that I'm a really good judge of character, but sometimes I definitely don't.
Well, not right. There are a lot of characters in this book, and yes, the details of all their lives are so beautifully observed. I think I don't think there's any doubt about whether or not you're very good observer of people. But I also just love there's a theme that obviously has come up in a lot of your work, Madam May the fortune Teller, and there Terry's mom was actually helping a lot of the local women escape domestic violence.
She'd say, I see you leaving and just swing that seed over, andever I love that part.
Yes, I listened to something where a man who was a psychic, and I think he was quite clear that he had no psychic abilities, but if he heard somebody who was clearly in need of something, he would use those lines. He'd say I see you doing this, And he was just trying to help to help, Yeah, which I think is the case for a lot of psychics and fortune tellers and mediums. People just want to come, they want to be listened to.
They want to talk about the people they've lost, Yes, exactly, and feel close to them.
Yeah, exactly.
It's interesting what you were saying before about how this period in your life in your fifties, you know people around you are getting diagnoses or you are. We're also often losing people around us. We did an episode of mid on Reef with Jackie Bailey, who's a doctor, and she was saying how it bringing you closer to death
can often help you know how to live. And that's a little bit of the message of this bit is the rest of my conversation with author survivor Woman of Many Acts, Leanne Murriati after this short break, I've seen you write that you didn't necessarily see your own experience of diagnoses as a gift as a lesson. But is that the message you kind of wanted to run through this book.
Oh, I definitely never set out with an actual message. I think that's a mistake. Even when I thought, oh, maybe my characters will have these profound wisdom that will come from this, and as I start writing, I think, no, no, no, don't try to be profound. But yes, if there was a message that a reader would take, I would hope it would be that it's a simple one and you
can't live every single day like that. But I do remember after I lost my dad, just there be moments where I think, oh, he's not getting to have this, he would love this. And so it does just give you those moments to think, oh, just really love this particular the sky, the breeze, my mother, my child's face, whatever it is to just have that one moment of joy that you hear. But then you've got to go back. You can't. You can't. You'd be pretty annoying if you kept.
That's a great character in this. He's a guy called Leo who is a workaholic and he has this toxic boss who works stop messaging him, you so nail that whole productivity culture around him. And his wife's saying to him, if this was true, how would you want Because like all the other characters, he's been given this prognosis. If this was true, how would you want to live this next part of your life? It can be a helpful clarifying question if you have choices.
Yes, that's right, and most of us don't really, And yeah, it's that foolish thing with what would you do if this was the last day of your life. Well, that's silly because you'd spend all your money, Yeah.
To drink all the wine and yeah that's right, we've got to eat all the fatty food. And yeah, that's true.
And there's pleasure that's part of life in having a goal and working towards that goal. There's pleasure in working hard. And so I do have Leo saying when his wife talks about people on their deathbed regretting working so hard, which I'm sure is true, but I think they are forgetting the person they used to be and the pleasure that work brought them. So there's something in the middle.
That's really interesting. It's true. It's not as binary as not work bad. Yes exactly. Yeah, family smelling the roses and family time.
Because if you tried it for a week, you go crazy. People need to.
Work sometimes, though, that sort of mid realization, if it's that thing of loss and grief bringing you a bit closer to choices, is it can sometimes mean that people do go I am going to do that thing that I've been wanting to do, And maybe that is a career change. Maybe that is trying something new, whatever it is, which can be very galvanizing. I wanted to ask you actually about, at this place in your life, with the unquestionably enormous success that you've had, what your relationship with
ambition is like now? Is it still in you as you get older and have more success or do the goalpost shift or your motivations different.
I think it's still there. I think I think I want each book to be better than the last. And that's a good thing about being an author. It's not like being an athlete where my body couldn't achieve anymore. I think I can hopefully keep getting better. I was interviewed by a young woman who and she was sort of saying, why do you keep doing it? Why don't you just I'm what am I going to do? I'm only in my fifties. I'm not ready to just stop.
So that's such an interesting question because I sometimes think that about some professions, where you know, if somebody is a successful business person, I'm kind of like, why don't you go and do something else? But I never think that about creative professions, probably because of my own biases. I'm like, why would you stop?
I know it is interesting because I would think exactly the same thing, especially really successful they're making huge amounts of money. Yeah, so I guess they would answer exactly the same way.
They love it, so yeah, that's right.
Yeah, as I said that feeling of relief, I'll go through all this promotional period and then I'll think, oh, I can't do it, I can't do it, And then I'll sit down and then I'll think, oh, that's right, this is good.
You could be constantly traveling, constantly promoting, constantly doing events with yourself or with other authors. Have you learned a lot over this very successful period you've been in, particularly in the last decade, about the boundaries you need to put in about what you will and won't do, and how you can protect your creativity.
Yes. I think I've always actually been pretty good with the boundaries because I've always said no to a lot of things. And I do remember talking to my publicist once and I was saying, I just find I can't so I couldn't do this podcast today and then go home write because I'll be going over sing you sounded so stupid when you said, then you've got a teary at that perny. You'll be up in here and I can't write on those days. So I'm not one of those authors who will say yes to lots of things
and then go and write. I need to separate those things. She did say, well, maybe you'll get over that, and then sometimes I think, well, maybe I will, but it hasn't happened yet.
I can't.
It doesn't need to, doesn't know, it doesn't need to. You're right, it doesn't need to.
As a creative person, I imagine you've kind of worked out what you need to be able to do what you do, and so do you sort of design your year almost all your two years or whatever? It is like, this is protected writing time, this is promo period.
Yes I do. I do, and it's true. But sometimes it's like, what do I really need and what am I just pretending I need? Do I really need this time to just think? Or am I pretending to think? So there's somewhere in the middle. I do need certain things, but sometimes I need to just sit down and write. So that's what I'm always struggling with.
Do you think you've ever had like a creative burnout. Have you ever found it like when you maybe weren't as clear about what you needed for your processes to work. Have you ever been in that place where you just feel too frazzled.
I feel frazzled at the end of a book tour, but not so much at the end of writing. Oh well, no, I still I feel a bit exhausted. And I know some authors who write the end and then the next day start something new, which I could not do that. But no, it's more the book tours that the rest.
I can imagine. You came to motherhood late in Verlin Commas, and I wanted to ask you, at this phase in your life and watching your kids grow as they are now, are you finding a lot of joy in this phase of growing kids as well as that little bit of sadness that I think we all sometimes feel when they're not little anymore.
Yes, I'm well with having children late. I don't know if you feel this. I'm desperate for grandchildren. Oh yeah, I want a baby.
It's it's so funny though, because obviously on my another podcast I co host with Mea Friedman, we are exactly the same age. She's you know, we've worked together a few years. We're really good friends. She's just become a grandmother. My youngest is twelve. Yes, it's a battle because my daughter is fourteen and I always say to her there's no hurry, But then there's a bit of me that's thinking about how old will I be? That's right?
So yeah, sometimes I do say, well, you know, you can have a career after children. Don't do it the way I do it.
Are you a person I think I've read maybe on your website or something, that you like to get together with your friends, your old friends and talk about being old.
Yes, we all do.
How are you feeling like in midlife? Are you finding the joy in it? You know, a bit more freedom, a bit more knowing yourself, or are you kind of fighting it?
Yeah, a bit more freedom. I feel like I'm not quite there in that amazing feeling that women talk about where they don't care anymore. And I used to see groups of women at my events and I always thought they're in their fifties where they just seem so relaxed, and I thought that will happen to me when I'm in my fifties. But now I'm wondering if they're in their sixties and they just look like they're in their fifties because they were so relaxed and happy.
Yeah, there's a character in them here one moment Sue who talks about how in her sixties she feels so much better in herself because she's not wrestling with the menopause and perimenopause symptoms. The actual mid bit can be quite difficult because you're going through the transition, but when you're on the other side of the transition, you can feel fabulous.
That's what I hear. I can't wait, hold go when I'm not there yet, I'm waiting for the fabulous.
You've referenced a couple of times in this that obviously this isn't your favorite part of the job, talking about books and your second gas, And you'll think, do you feel that way when you write?
Still?
Do you still get the authors self loathing?
Though?
What have you learned about silencing that?
I just need to keep writing? So it definitely happens in the beginning when I'm starting a new book. It feels so odd to think this is your job, and to think you're just making up a story and you're writing sentences. It feels so embarrassing in the beginning. So my sister jackief she often goes to cafes to write orreas I couldn't because I feel like somebody could be looking over my shoulder and reading a bad line. So
I definitely feel that in the beginning. I need the pages to start forming and the characters to start working, and then it goes away and then it's wonderful.
Do you have rituals? Are like I have to have this cup of tea like this, You have to sit in this place, The sun has to be there. Are you that person?
No, I'm always interested in other people's rituals, so I'm ready to try different things. But honestly, I just need to. Oh, I turned the internet off and put my phone somewhere else.
I love hearing that you struggle with that, because I think so many of us do. When you're focusing on creative work. If I'm writing, I have to put my phone in the house and I write out in a little shed.
Yeah.
So yeah, it comes through in your books that Facebook and social media and phones play a role very much, which is brilliant, but they can be the enemies of our creativity.
Child. It's terrible. Yeah, I'm addicted as everybody is. And that hand reaching out for whatever it gives me. I don't know what it gives me. I'm just I do that mindless scroll, and the algorithm says things like our articles, you might be interested in Jennifer Garner's wearing a stripe top. That's what the algorithm thing. So I'm interested in and then I click all, look, algorithm, Why was I interested? It's so strange.
So, yeah, it's hard. The distraction is right there for us in a way that I guess it wasn't before.
Yeah. I think so, yes, because we had phones when I first started writing. But I definitely feel it's got worse.
I used to have a laptop that was my writing laptop, so I didn't have social media on it, so I couldn't jump on to jump onto Facebook, caically look at what Yes, But then my will broke.
And you got it. Yes, Well, I had a laptop. I had exactly the same laptop. I thought the Internet wasn't on it, but then my son said, of course, it's the Internet's everywhere. So then he showed me, and then damn it. Now I could do the clicking.
Over thank you so much for being so generous and all your answers. I do want to ask you, when you think about what's next with all that you've.
Achieved, what do you really hope is next? What do I hope is next? Such an interesting question. I want people to like the book, and I want grandchildren.
The next phase is the grandchildren, but not at an inappropriately young age.
What else do I want? I think, actually, what I want is good health, and I think, yeah, that's all that matters in the end, that everybody's okay. Everybody I love is okay. That's why you don't want to love too many people, because it increases your risk. I just want everybody to be happy and okay. Yeah, that's where all I really.
Want in this phase of life. You like running through your people at night, you're taking them off like a vase. Well, thank you so much, Leanne, my pleasure, Thank you.
Friends.
That was Leon Murriarty, and I want you to know that that's the first time I'd ever met her, and I was nervous because she's a really big deal and I also write books, and there's something really unsettling somehow about meeting the person who's at the absolute peak of what you're also trying to do. That to be frank just makes eyeballs sweat a bit. But she was great as you heard, and couldn't have been lovelier or more
gracious about my nerves. If this theme of time and lost spoke to you, let me point you to the episode of mid we recorded with Jackie Bailey about grief in season one. It's one of my absolute favorites, no question, and it's one that's being passed around by people who feel like they need it, and that might be you. And also, if you liked that stuff from Leanne about a writer's process and focus and all the rest of that stuff, go back and listen to our episode about
burnout with another extraordinary writer, Catherine May. It's like a bomb for our frazzled souls. Anyway, I am not blowing smoke when I tell you, as I told Leanne Murriati, that her new novel Here One Moment, is brilliant. It is one of her absolute best. It's surprising and suspenseful and insightful. It's just come out so you can go and buy it wherever you get your books. But we'll put a link in the show notes to make it extra easy. Oh and we'll put a link to where
you can buy my books too, because sweaty eyeballs. And as always, I cannot thank you enough my MID friends for being here. Big thanks to the MID team, to our executive producer and I'm a Brown I seenior producer Christel Cornelson, Tom Lyon on sound and our producer Charlie Blackman.