0:01

Ted Audio Collective. Hi,

0:07

I'm Debbie Millman and I host

0:09

a podcast called Design Matters from

0:11

the Ted Audio Collective. Every

0:14

episode I have conversations with

0:16

designers, writers, artists, and other

0:19

luminaries of contemporary thought. People

0:22

like Roman Mars, Ai Wei Wei,

0:24

Ethan Hawke, and Ashley Ford. We

0:26

not only talk about their crafts, but

0:28

how they design the arc of their

0:30

lives, what they've learned, what obstacles they've

0:33

overcome and how they've done it, and

0:35

how they see the world. Join

0:37

us for an inquiry into the broader

0:39

world of creative culture. Find

0:42

and follow Design Matters with Debbie Millman

0:44

wherever you're listening to this. I've

0:50

had books that did really well. I had books

0:52

that have done less well. And

0:54

I've gotten really good at failing.

0:57

And I'm proud that I'm good at it.

0:59

You know, I'm proud that I don't experience

1:01

it as devastating. Hey

1:06

everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back

1:08

to Rethinking, my podcast on the science of

1:10

what makes us tick with the Ted Audio

1:12

Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist

1:15

and I'm taking you inside the minds

1:17

of fascinating people to explore new thoughts

1:19

and new ways of thinking. My

1:24

guest today is Gabrielle Zevin. She's

1:26

best known as the author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow

1:28

and Tomorrow, which won the Goodreads Choice Award for

1:31

the Best Fiction of 2022. It's

1:34

her 10th book, and it might be my

1:36

favorite novel published in the past decade. While

1:39

the book is more for me than

1:42

maybe some of the others have been, it is

1:44

with a great awareness of all

1:47

the yous that exist on the other side of the thing

1:49

that you have made. The

1:51

book centers on two characters, Sadie and Sam,

1:53

who start a video game company together. I

1:56

was torn between racing through it to find out

1:58

what happened, and savoring every sentence so it

2:00

would never end. When I finished

2:03

it, I went through withdrawal. What

2:05

do you mean these characters in their world don't

2:07

exist? I managed

2:09

that by inviting Gabrielle to my

2:11

podcast to discuss the many questions

2:13

she raised about success and failure,

2:15

creativity and collaboration, and friendship. I

2:25

have a confession to make, which is, I

2:28

love tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow so much that

2:30

I'm afraid to read your other books. I

2:33

think that's okay. Is it? For

2:36

a very long time in my career, I

2:38

knew that the likelihood of

2:40

anyone liking any two of my books

2:42

was very unusual. So I was always

2:45

really happy if somebody just really loved

2:47

one. I was like, yeah,

2:49

don't risk it. I feel that way about writers

2:51

too. Sometimes you feel that I want to read

2:53

everything by that writer. And sometimes you feel very

2:55

sated by the experience that you've been given for

2:57

me tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow is my 10th

2:59

novel. We had other novels that did well before

3:02

that, but I think, and it's

3:04

something I talk about in the book. There's a

3:06

long period of time when your taste and your

3:08

abilities do not completely align. And I'm not saying

3:10

that all my other books are bad. Some people

3:13

truly love those other books, but

3:15

you know, for me, I didn't

3:17

necessarily feel that I had reached that

3:19

place where taste and abilities had aligned

3:21

until tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. This

3:24

isn't a necessarily great promotional gambit. I should

3:26

be telling you, read every single one, Adam

3:29

Grant, because they are all equally wonderful. What

3:31

I really think will happen if somebody was

3:33

to read all of my books is they'd

3:35

have a sense of like

3:38

the progression of an artist over time.

3:41

And maybe that would hold interest, but

3:43

I don't think one could have exactly

3:45

the same experience or anywhere

3:48

near the same experience from the books that came

3:50

before. That's a really unusual

3:52

thing to hear any creator confess to.

3:54

It's a horrible thing to say. And

3:57

again, very early in my career, I

3:59

wrote this fantasy novel called elsewhere. And

4:01

for some people, there'll be nothing I

4:03

do that's ever approaching elsewhere. They love

4:05

elsewhere. But I wasn't that

4:07

person. I was

4:10

like, what am I going to do after that?

4:12

And I like as an artist, the fact that

4:14

the blank page is truly a blank page. I

4:16

like when I write the next book that I

4:18

get to burn it all down and start again.

4:21

And so I do think

4:23

maybe a little bit more than some other

4:25

writers I know where there's maybe

4:27

more of a continuum from

4:29

book to book. To me, it would be

4:31

a nightmare to, for instance, write like a series

4:33

that lasted my whole life. I like starting again.

4:35

It's something I think Sam and Sadie like too,

4:37

you know? For better

4:39

or for worse, I definitely don't want you

4:42

to burn it all down because I had

4:45

this feeling while I was reading the book. So I read

4:47

it in Europe and it was one of those

4:50

moments where I ended up pulling

4:52

an all-nighter because I could not put it

4:54

down. It was completely immersed in Sam and

4:56

Sadie's lives and in the world you created.

4:58

And I was really torn between racing through

5:00

it to find out what happened and

5:03

reading in slow motion so that it wouldn't end. And

5:05

I think I probably did a mix of the two,

5:07

but I put it

5:09

down and I honestly felt like I was going through withdrawal. What

5:12

do you mean these people aren't real? What do you

5:15

mean there's no dong and bong pizza? Can I get

5:17

one of my restaurateur friends to start one? That

5:20

was devastating. So I do want you to continue

5:22

that world at some point. I would

5:25

be okay if you waited a few years, but maybe

5:27

ideally in the next decade, is there is there

5:29

hope? When I first started writing books,

5:33

I didn't necessarily understand that the hardest

5:35

part of anything is the beginning of

5:37

the thing and that once

5:39

you sort of had the people there,

5:41

once you had gotten through the business

5:43

of introducing all the things you needed

5:45

to introduce, that you could kind of hang out with

5:48

those people for a long time. And so originally I

5:50

would say that, you know, I feel like the book

5:52

ends exactly where I want it to end and I

5:54

would say to you, I'm done. I'm never

5:56

going to revisit those people again. But now

5:59

I think it's possible that someday I'll

6:01

revisit them again. I do

6:03

like the Phoenix-like aspect of writing

6:05

novels. I do like that once

6:07

the novel is done, I am

6:09

done with that world for

6:12

some time. I would say

6:14

that's music to my ears and to many

6:16

other listeners' ears, that you're not entirely sure

6:18

you're gonna abandon this forever. It's more a

6:20

never-say-never. I'm really intrigued by this observation

6:23

you made about this being the first

6:25

novel where what you produced actually

6:27

lived up to your vision. I'm

6:31

curious about how much of that you actually think

6:33

is skill versus taste. Well,

6:36

I think the taste you get fairly

6:38

early on, you have a sense of

6:40

the things you like or don't like,

6:42

the things you're drawn to or not

6:44

drawn to. I was not thinking of

6:46

irreglass, but there is an irreglass quote

6:48

that is very similar. You

6:51

have to tell yourself a little lie to kind of

6:53

make yourself work at the beginning, that this isn't quite

6:55

as bad as you think it is, but it may

6:57

be just as bad as you think it is. It

6:59

was something I had experienced. There were so many things,

7:01

I think, when you start out that you just don't

7:04

know how to do, you don't even know what you

7:06

don't know how to do. And then you don't

7:08

understand why the things you're making aren't coming out

7:11

like the things you love, when you kind of

7:13

have to ignore the fact that the

7:15

things that you have made are not

7:17

like the things that you love, and you can't always

7:20

know why that is. When did

7:22

you know during the writing process that

7:25

you'd made it? On tomorrow and

7:27

tomorrow and tomorrow? Yeah.

7:29

When I was finished with it, I

7:32

kind of knew that people

7:35

would be resistant to the concept of video games,

7:37

and I knew that because I was resistant to

7:39

the concept of video games. I knew the ways

7:42

in which people would say, like, you

7:44

can't make serious art about this subject, that

7:47

there is such prejudice against any art form that's

7:49

new. But the thing that drew me to video

7:51

games was that, it was that

7:53

the coming of age of that industry had

7:55

taken place entirely within my lifetime, and the

7:58

entire history of video games is... between

8:00

the 70s and now, you know? And

8:02

so that it was exactly the same age as me seemed

8:05

to me a perfect way to tell a

8:07

story about, again, the story of tech, the

8:09

story of art, and the story of an

8:12

artist across time. Because

8:14

I knew there would be these prejudices against the concept,

8:16

the book would have to be better than anything I'd

8:18

ever written before. I'd have to be more

8:20

thorough and demand more of myself than I had before.

8:23

So it wasn't until I was done that I

8:25

actually thought I had done it. I

8:28

remember saying to my partner that I didn't

8:30

care what happened with this book because

8:32

it pleased me. You can't understand quite

8:35

how needy and ambitious I am. So

8:38

for me to say that I don't care

8:40

what happens was a big

8:42

thing for me to say, and to actually

8:44

feel this sense of pleasure and

8:46

satisfaction in the work I had done. I

8:49

think one interpretation of what you just

8:51

said is that, you know, essentially,

8:53

you found the right story or the right

8:55

characters. And you had the skill all along

8:58

to make something that was as

9:00

great as your expectations. A

9:03

different explanation is you actually gained skill

9:05

through writing the previous nine novels. And

9:07

then this was the culmination of all the growth. Which

9:10

arc describes your experience better? The

9:14

second. There is a part of

9:16

every creative person that tells

9:18

yourself little lies just to make

9:20

yourself be able to do the thing. That

9:22

helped me get through, again, all of the work over time.

9:25

But I don't think I started with the skills.

9:27

I learned things from both doing

9:30

work and then also seeing

9:33

the way people responded to work, you

9:35

know, and to kind of figure out how I could

9:37

be a more effective communicator in my novels, especially

9:40

as the novels I wanted them to be more

9:42

complex than they had been before. I

9:44

spent the past few years thinking and

9:46

writing a lot about hidden potential. I

9:48

don't think your potential is at all hidden. I

9:51

mean, it's clear that you've been a brilliant

9:53

writer for a long time. Where

9:55

did you level up skill wise to use a

9:57

gaming metaphor? When you write

9:59

your first nine novels... novel, you have

10:01

no sense of what

10:04

it is to have an audience interact with

10:06

that novel. In a sense, it's the purest

10:08

you'll ever be because you're not thinking about

10:10

the audience. And so over the years, I

10:13

would say I thought probably more

10:15

about the audience as time went on.

10:18

And then it became that I thought excessively

10:20

about the audience where that wasn't very useful

10:23

to think about them that much. As a novelist,

10:25

I had wanted to write

10:27

books that everybody

10:31

could understand in the whole theater.

10:34

And then as time went on, that became

10:36

less interesting to me. And I was fine

10:38

with the idea that maybe the

10:40

job wasn't to communicate with as many people

10:42

as possible, but maybe the thing was to

10:45

communicate something very specific about being a human

10:47

that only you can know. So

10:49

I think some of it was that I had changed as

10:51

a person and the work changed during

10:53

that time as well. When I

10:55

first started to engage with notes that people would give

10:58

me, so I mean professional notes like from editors

11:00

or those kinds of things, I

11:02

would have to hold them literally physically away

11:04

from myself, you know, that I would hold

11:06

them at arm's length because it felt very

11:08

tender to go in back into work. And

11:11

over the years, I have

11:13

become somebody who doesn't feel that way at

11:15

all. I am ruthless. And I realized that

11:17

my special skill was that I could pass

11:19

over work thousands and thousands

11:21

of times. Every day that I worked on the

11:23

book, I read everything that I had ever written

11:25

on the book before I got to that moment

11:28

in the book that I would be working on

11:30

that day, which gets really difficult when your book

11:32

approaches 500 pages, you know, and I wanted to

11:34

be not like just a novelist in it. I

11:36

wanted to be in the same place that a

11:38

reader would be that day when coming to that

11:41

piece of information. So things like that, just realizing

11:43

that there weren't as many

11:45

shortcuts, except that all

11:47

you could do is throw tons of time

11:49

at something and that you could improve

11:51

it that way. And that I

11:53

may be, again, my fear of both criticism, my

11:55

fear of going back in and really grappling with

11:58

the text in an aggressive way.

12:00

had prevented me from writing as well as

12:02

I could be writing. And

12:04

unlearning all the things that you've learned because

12:07

you think I'm a professional. At this stage

12:09

in my life, I don't think publishing is

12:11

at all interesting. I think publishing is this

12:13

boring topic that gets in the way of

12:15

telling really unique stories. Once upon a time,

12:17

it was an accomplishment to publish. It

12:20

is an accomplishment to publish. I'm spoiled in

12:23

that sense. I was fairly young when I

12:25

published my first book, and I thought I

12:27

had made it. There's never

12:29

a time in your life when you'll feel

12:31

as happy about where you are as when

12:33

you have that first publishing deal before you

12:35

actually see all the ways in which that

12:37

ostensible success will be followed by a series

12:40

of obvious failures. That was something I have

12:43

grappled with. It was funny because

12:45

I was listening. You were on a hidden brain

12:47

not that long ago. A lot of the ways

12:49

you're thinking about failure are the

12:51

same way as the book addressed failure. Tell me

12:53

about your thoughts since you already

12:55

know some of mine. Yeah. I

13:00

actually really enjoy failure. I'm sorry,

13:02

what? I do. I know, it

13:04

sounds- You like failing? I have

13:07

gotten really good at it. Are you a real person? I

13:09

am. I've never heard

13:11

someone say they like failing. I don't mean I

13:13

like it. I mean, I find it to be a really creative

13:15

place if you let it be. So

13:17

when my first

13:19

novel came out, I had two novels come out

13:21

that year, one for children and one for adults.

13:25

And the one for adults did quite poorly, like

13:28

devastatingly poorly for me at that time. And

13:30

the one for children did quite well. So

13:32

I had the whole gambit of success and

13:34

failure within that year. And

13:37

I remember when the adult novel failed, like

13:40

going out into New York city and walking

13:42

into Zabar's and thinking like, the deli

13:45

man knows I failed. They're not gonna

13:47

give me like smoked salmon because Gabrielle's

13:49

oven is a failure. And just really

13:51

feeling like that I was walking around.

13:53

I think Sadie describes it as coded

13:55

with a fine coating of ash, that

13:58

kind of thing. And then you really,

14:00

realize that when you fail, like in

14:02

a sense, it's not the

14:04

worst thing that can happen because nobody calls

14:06

you, you're completely alone and you get to

14:08

kind of focus in on creatively the thing

14:10

that you want to do next. When

14:13

you have something that succeeds, then

14:15

your phone rings a lot, you're very busy,

14:17

it's hard to find a place creatively

14:20

to go that's quiet enough and private

14:22

enough. And so in a

14:24

sense, success can be a less creative

14:26

place. At least it has proven for

14:28

me at different times. That's

14:31

fascinating. I hope it's not awful

14:33

to say, but you and I went to

14:35

Harvard and so that wasn't something on the

14:37

agenda for me. Like I didn't see that

14:39

being the way my first novel went down.

14:42

And so failure wasn't part of a thing

14:44

that I saw for myself. And then it

14:46

ended up being so

14:48

creatively interesting once

14:51

I kind of gave myself over to it. It

14:53

seems to me that it's completely backward. As a

14:55

psychologist, I think being a Harvard alum

14:58

allows you to still feel like you're

15:00

smart and to still carry around

15:02

an image or reputation of being intelligent. And

15:06

you get this not only a cushion when

15:08

you fall, but you get many

15:10

more opportunities than to bounce back and bounce

15:13

forward. And so it's

15:16

ironic, I guess. The more devastating part

15:18

is there's a bigger gap between

15:20

what you expected of yourself and the outcome

15:22

you got. It

15:25

wasn't that I was unprepared to fail,

15:27

I think, from going to Harvard, because

15:29

in fact, the truth is I

15:31

was a terrible Harvard student as well, or

15:33

not terrible. I was just not exceptional in

15:35

any way there. But I think

15:38

there is a mentality you have when you go

15:40

to an elite institution that once you kind of

15:42

pass through a certain hoop that you are there.

15:46

And that was the amazing thing

15:48

was realizing how little

15:50

it mattered that I had gone to Harvard in

15:52

terms of how people were going to read anything

15:54

that I wrote. In a

15:56

sense, I could have gone anywhere. And what really

15:58

mattered was the book. at hand and the

16:01

thing that you made. And that, you know, that in

16:03

a sense that Harvard was not going to provide any

16:05

buffer from that. But I do completely

16:08

agree that when I'm talking about failure, I

16:10

also have the structures in place where

16:13

I can fail more than most people and it

16:15

isn't devastating. And I think that has to do

16:18

with class and all of those things that are,

16:20

again, external to this. I'm talking about more if

16:23

you are fortunate enough to have some kind of safety

16:25

net where you can keep going at

16:27

the thing. It's interesting though

16:29

because your experience initially of

16:32

failure tracks with some of the research in the status world.

16:34

So years ago I was the editor on

16:37

a paper that was accepted led by Jennifer Carson-Mar looking

16:40

at when you lose status by failing or

16:43

being rejected,

16:45

how that affects your subsequent

16:47

performance depending on

16:49

your initial status position. The short

16:51

version of the finding was that if you started

16:54

out relatively low status, failing didn't

16:56

hurt your future performance. But

16:59

if you started out with high status, you

17:01

were crushed by failure. Jenny and her

17:04

colleague did a couple of experiments where they

17:06

showed that self-threat was the mechanism, that when

17:09

low status people failed, it

17:11

didn't really destroy their identity or

17:13

their self-esteem. They didn't expect that much of

17:15

themselves to begin with. But when a

17:17

high status person failed, boom,

17:20

the entire world around

17:22

them came crashing down. They were crippled

17:25

by self-doubt and they felt like they were

17:27

never capable of doing anything good again. So

17:30

given that, how did you recover? How

17:32

did you get out of that zone? The

17:35

thing that happened was, so this one adult

17:37

novel comes out in May

17:39

and then in September this children's novel

17:42

comes out and it instantly does really, really well.

17:44

The success was wonderful because it gave me more

17:47

money and I realized that that's what it really was going to do,

17:49

that that's what success was going to

17:51

do, that it would give you more money to try to be

17:55

creatively more audacious.

17:57

And so every time I

18:00

had a success, what I realized was that

18:02

it bought me freedom. So that if you

18:04

could kind of have enough successes to balance

18:06

out the failures that you were basically winning

18:08

in life. And by the way, by the

18:10

time I write tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

18:12

it's the longest period of time in my

18:14

career between books, you know, and that's because

18:16

I'd had enough books at that point do

18:18

well that I could

18:20

take five years to try to figure out if a

18:22

novel about video games was a terrible idea and researched

18:24

on a thing that was very complicated. And

18:27

I think so much of the book really is about how

18:29

much finance is determined the kind of art

18:32

that you make at different times. I think

18:34

Sam and Sadie have very different approaches to

18:36

art because of differences in their

18:38

class and their background. Part of

18:40

the way that you avoided wallowing in despair

18:42

for... I did wallow Adam Grant. I

18:44

did wallow. I wallowed for some time. Um,

18:47

and I... How long? Tell me what the wallowing was like. Did you

18:49

still write? I wrote in this kind

18:51

of strange defensive place that I don't think

18:54

led to necessarily good creative work

18:56

where you want to write the next novel

18:58

to prove everyone wrong, you know, that kind

19:00

of thing. I, I don't

19:02

actually mind working from a place of revenge. I

19:04

don't mind that. I find that to also be

19:06

creative. Like there are a lot of sort of

19:09

negative emotions that can be creatively fueling in a

19:11

way, but at that time it wasn't that great.

19:13

And I don't remember how I got out of

19:15

it, except that I did continue to write every

19:17

day. Eventually, I think

19:21

I just had a perspective on, on,

19:24

on both of those things. That again, that this was going to

19:26

be a part of my life forever.

19:28

If you agree to get on the roller

19:30

coaster, that is a career in the arts.

19:33

I mean, this is a corny metaphor, but there's

19:35

going to be ups and downs. So in a

19:37

sense, I feel very fortunate that I had all

19:39

those experiences in this very short time, I think,

19:42

if I'd had, and I sometimes see novelists

19:44

that have like first, their first novels out

19:46

and it's like a wild success and it

19:48

sold millions of copies and you know, there's

19:51

the movie and all of that. I can

19:53

honestly say I don't feel fully

19:55

jealous of those people. I don't because

19:57

I know that. In

20:00

a way, it's very difficult to

20:02

follow up with success. Having a true

20:04

failure and a modest success is

20:07

a lot easier in terms of plotting a path forward for you

20:09

in the arts. I want to come

20:11

back to the wallowing and failure for a second. And

20:13

think about this research on status loss and how it

20:15

hurts people who have a lot of status more, even

20:18

though it should hurt them less. And

20:20

the antidote that the researchers studied

20:23

was self-affirmation, the idea

20:25

that if you could validate a different skill

20:27

or a separate element of

20:30

capability, that then losing status didn't

20:32

hurt so much. So your

20:34

book fails, but you're still a good

20:36

friend. And then you can deal with

20:39

it more effectively. Talk

20:41

to me about that experience and whether that's

20:43

part of what you did to move forward

20:46

and whether there are other tricks or techniques

20:48

or forms of self-talk that you used. I

20:52

don't know that I'm good at anything else. I

20:55

don't think I have any self-affirmation for myself.

20:57

I wish I was a great friend. It's

20:59

funny because people will say that tomorrow and

21:01

tomorrow and tomorrow is a book about friendship.

21:05

But really, it's about how difficult it is to, I

21:07

think, be a good friend to somebody across time, or

21:09

maybe how simple it is just that you need to

21:11

keep reaching out and trying and that kind of thing.

21:14

I think an important distinction to make is just

21:16

that something can creatively

21:18

fail or creatively succeed and

21:21

also business-wise fail.

21:24

And so a failure is not always

21:26

across all elements of the thing that

21:28

you're talking about. So for example, in

21:31

the book, there's the game they make

21:33

called Both Sides. It's a

21:35

creative success in many ways, but it is definitely

21:37

a business fit. It's a commercial failure. And

21:40

I think learning that was useful for me as

21:42

well, learning that there were ways in which you

21:44

might succeed within a failure. You might have learned

21:46

to do some things that you didn't do before.

21:49

You might have gotten closer to the thing. So

21:51

sometimes, I think what I could find in

21:54

it was enough reason to go on, that

21:56

there was enough that

21:58

was there that could lead to failure. lead me to

22:00

the next thing. I'm thinking about some

22:02

work that Tori Higgins has done

22:04

on being promotion versus prevention focused.

22:07

And the basic idea is that both

22:10

people and projects vary in

22:13

whether you're trying to attain a good outcome or

22:15

avoid a bad outcome. And

22:17

if you're aiming for success, when you hit

22:20

it, you experience joy.

22:22

But if you're trying to avoid failure, the

22:25

best case scenario when you reach your target

22:27

is relief. I do think that's true.

22:30

Well, I guess then that begs the question,

22:32

where did you land with tomorrow and tomorrow

22:34

and tomorrow emotionally? So it's

22:37

my 10th novel. The eighth novel did

22:39

really, really well. Sold close to a

22:41

million copies here, but also it sold

22:44

like an insane number of copies in

22:46

China. And so I had so many

22:48

financial opportunities from there to really think

22:51

without the pressure of time, what would I do?

22:54

Because before that time, I didn't think I

22:56

was rushing my books, but I

22:58

felt a pressure to again, publish regularly and

23:00

that kind of thing. I don't have a

23:02

trust fund or something like that. And

23:05

the funny thing was the ninth novel came out and

23:07

it did really poorly. It sold like a 10th of

23:10

what the eighth novel had done. I

23:12

thought after that eighth novel had done so well, I

23:14

had walked through a door that was success and that

23:16

there was no coming out of that

23:18

door again. But it turns out you can come

23:21

out of that door again for whatever reason.

23:23

And so by the time I wrote

23:25

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, I

23:27

think it kind of came out of both

23:29

the success, the financial success of that other

23:31

novel and the failure of the one that

23:33

followed it. And also just feeling like, if

23:35

you ever got locked into a Barnes and

23:37

Noble, say, and like you just ended all

23:39

of time in

23:42

a Barnes and Noble civilization ends and you're

23:44

there, there's plenty to read forever. Like in

23:46

a sense, no one needs another book from

23:48

anyone. And so just the realization of that,

23:50

how many books were published every year, and

23:53

that really the only reason to write a book is because

23:55

you had the absolute and utter conviction that it needed to

23:57

be in the world. And so for the first time, I

24:00

was able to kind of use that as my place from

24:02

which I would work. I

24:04

was talking with two of my favorite

24:07

collaborators, who also devoured tomorrow at all.

24:10

One of them said that you wrote

24:12

beautifully about the power of creating something

24:14

for someone and creating something

24:16

with someone. And

24:18

the question was posed, if you can only do one,

24:20

which would you rather do and why? But

24:23

now I'm rethinking that question. And

24:25

it seems to me that based on what you've said

24:27

so far, that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow was not

24:29

created for someone or with someone, other than yourself. In

24:34

a sense, the book was written for myself, but

24:37

also with a very strong awareness

24:39

or experience of how audiences come

24:41

to a novel. You

24:44

think, for example, that a book should be fast,

24:46

fast, fast, the pace should always move. But

24:48

as I had gotten further in my career, I realized sometimes

24:50

you want to slow the pace. You want

24:52

to slow the pace to nothing. You want to make it go quiet.

24:55

And so that's maybe antithetical to just thinking I'm only

24:57

thinking about a reader. And yet I am thinking about

24:59

a reader because I know that I'm

25:02

going to give you a different experience of pacing, that

25:04

I'm just not hoping that you turn through this as fast

25:06

as possible. I think when I started

25:08

out as a novelist, I thought a fiction is

25:11

a mask I could wear and the characters I

25:13

wrote were as far from me as possible. I

25:15

didn't want anybody to possibly mistake me for anyone

25:17

in any of the books. I

25:20

didn't want anyone to think those parents were

25:22

my parents. And then over the years, that

25:24

became less interesting to me. And I let

25:26

the mask slip and I came to a

25:28

place where I was writing, I think, closer

25:30

to myself. You've spoken about being

25:32

good at solitude and liking

25:34

it as well. And yet your

25:37

writing is so infused

25:39

with relationships. I feel like it's the

25:42

connection between the characters as

25:44

much as their individual lives that makes them leap off

25:46

the page. What kinds of

25:48

relationships were you drawing on when you wrote this

25:50

book? I have a partner that

25:52

I have been with a long time and

25:54

that we collaborate creatively together. And sometimes we've

25:56

made things that have succeeded and sometimes we've

25:58

made things that have been made. things that

26:01

failed, and we probably made more things that

26:03

failed than succeeded in the balance of things.

26:05

And yet, I think we just really enjoy

26:07

working together. We enjoy making things. And I'm

26:09

drawing upon that relationship, all the kind of

26:12

petty squabbles one has, and to make something

26:14

silly like art, and how it can feel

26:16

so important, and it can feel like everything.

26:18

And so that was a huge source of

26:21

a lot of my Sam and Sadie and

26:24

Sadie and Dove and

26:26

even all the other game designers like Simon

26:29

and Ant and Charlotte and Adam Wirth

26:31

and all these other relationships

26:33

of couples that are making things. And

26:37

I'm sure there's a lot of Hans and

26:39

myself in that. But I'm also drawing on

26:41

all the professional relationships I have as a

26:43

novelist. I think people think of novel writing

26:45

as solitary, and largely it is, until it

26:49

all of a sudden just isn't. If it goes

26:51

well, there are lots and lots of people in

26:53

the room with you. And understanding that

26:55

at some point in every process, there has

26:57

to be someone who goes out and says,

26:59

you should read this thing, you should watch

27:01

this thing, you should play this thing, because

27:03

I'm telling you to. So that was really

27:05

what, say, the Marx character was about

27:07

for me. Marx isn't an

27:10

artist. He's perhaps more of like a business person.

27:12

And yet he's very creative. He has a lot

27:14

of ideas of his own and just realizing that

27:16

you need to have those people in a creative

27:18

process as well. I

27:23

have always been running with Brooks, but now I

27:26

run with the Brooks Ghost 16. It

27:28

has soft cushioning, smooth transitions,

27:31

and there's an engineered air

27:33

mesh upper. It provides

27:35

the right amount of stretch and structure to make

27:37

sure that the shoe accommodates the movement of my

27:39

feet. The Ghost 16 is out now. I encourage

27:42

you to try them out. My runs My

27:44

runs feel great. I love

27:46

these shoes. They're really breathable. You

27:49

can visit brooksrunning.com to

27:51

learn more. to learn more. That

27:55

is a great segue to the lightning round.

27:57

Oh my God. Do you have a favorite?

28:00

video game. Today

28:03

I'm going to say my favorite video

28:05

game is Duolingo. Interesting.

28:09

Okay. What is the

28:12

worst career advice you've ever gotten? I

28:17

think people telling me to repeat myself. In

28:20

what sense? I think the

28:22

world, when you make anything that's successful, they just want

28:24

you to do the same thing over and over again.

28:26

When I think that's to be resisted. What

28:29

is the worst writing advice you

28:31

hear given regularly? People

28:34

confuse the idea of show don't tell from

28:37

Sid Fields screenwriting book. And it has to

28:39

do with how you write a screenplay, but

28:41

people apply that to novels all the time.

28:43

And it drives me crazy because novels are

28:45

all tell, they are not all show. Do

28:48

you have a favorite writing tip? All

28:50

I know is that I have done it every single

28:52

way that you can write a novel at this point.

28:55

So the only writing tip I really have is

28:58

to read a lot

29:00

and get a really good chair. So

29:04

you've written more books than I have

29:06

and the two I'm proudest of the

29:08

biggest difference between them and the others

29:10

is just how specific and clear the

29:12

starting vision was. I felt like they

29:14

ended up at a different level because

29:16

I knew exactly what my thesis was

29:18

going in. And the

29:20

idea was sort of already fully

29:22

formed as opposed to what I was working

29:25

it out as I went in. I know

29:27

that's not true for every writer, every book, but

29:29

I've come to increasingly believe that in fiction

29:31

as well as nonfiction, a book lives or

29:34

dies on the quality of the initial idea.

29:37

First, first question is, do you agree or

29:39

disagree? No,

29:42

I think fiction is just so different

29:44

than nonfiction in that sense. I think

29:46

any idea can be something amazing if

29:49

one fully exploits that idea, you know?

29:51

So I'm not sure that

29:53

I fully agree. For me, a good

29:55

idea is an idea that is a

29:57

big bowl. I also agree with that. I

29:59

think that creates. creativity is abundant, but

30:01

great execution is scarce. Yeah. So

30:04

then the second part is given that

30:06

you have to start somewhere, as

30:08

a novelist, what do you think is most important, a

30:11

compelling character, an interesting world,

30:14

or a rippeting plot? And

30:17

I know they're interdependent to some extent,

30:19

but which piece do you personally feel

30:22

is most critical to figure out first? As

30:25

a reader, I don't read for plot. I

30:27

understand that people do, but I don't care.

30:29

As a writer, I think the thing that matters

30:32

the most is character. It's

30:34

interesting to hear you say that because I normally

30:37

don't like novels that are

30:39

character driven. I read for plot,

30:41

and it was one of the reasons

30:44

I was so surprised by tomorrow and tomorrow and

30:46

tomorrow, because it does feel like a story that the

30:50

characters really animate, and the plot

30:52

was secondary. And I did not

30:54

expect to love it so much based on that. I

30:56

think the thing that separates a good novel from

30:58

a great novel is not that it

31:00

doesn't have a plot. It should have a plot, and

31:02

it should have a world. And honestly, Adam, I

31:04

want all the things. I want the world, I

31:06

want the plot, I want the characters. And I think

31:09

readers should want all of those things. But

31:11

I think the thing that makes a great novel

31:13

is the character you talk about after you've closed

31:15

the book, the people that you're left with, because

31:17

the things that happen to them, maybe

31:20

you'll remember them, maybe you won't. But when you

31:22

think about Gatsby, you think about Nick, you think

31:24

about Gatsby, you think about Daisy, or something like

31:26

that. I think a great novel is

31:28

a great character. What is something

31:30

you've been rethinking lately? What is

31:32

something you've been rethinking lately while I think about

31:35

what I've been rethinking lately? I

31:37

feel like every podcast we do, I

31:39

end up rethinking something. But something

31:42

I haven't spoken about yet that

31:44

I've been rethinking is how

31:46

I gauge productivity. So

31:50

I used to think about it as how much I got

31:52

done in a given week. And now I

31:54

think about it much more as the value I create

31:56

in a year. That's smart. I think that

31:58

is really smart. But to your point,

32:01

it's gotten easier with the luxury of

32:03

some successes that create

32:05

freedom. I guess something I've

32:07

been thinking about a bit recently

32:09

is empathy. When I think

32:11

about so much that's going on today in the world,

32:14

I think empathy may be

32:16

a flawed system, but I don't know a

32:18

better way for writing novels or for living

32:20

in the world. To take

32:22

the moment to imagine how somebody feels other than

32:24

yourself, to me, seems absolutely vital

32:27

for the survival of our species.

32:30

Maybe this is semantics, but I've

32:32

come to prefer thinking about it as

32:35

compassion. To say you don't

32:37

have to be particularly good at imagining

32:39

somebody's pain or definitely feeling their pain

32:41

in order to see it and try

32:44

to acknowledge it. Or

32:46

even just something less than compassion,

32:50

even just trying to

32:52

imagine before you post or

32:54

before you do something. How does it feel to

32:56

be some other person in the world? I think

32:58

this is a useful exercise, even though it is

33:01

a potentially flawed system of going through the

33:03

world. I wanted to ask you about some of the

33:05

mic drops in the book. There

33:08

are an unusual number of them for a

33:10

novel. I thought you wrote

33:12

the best critique of

33:15

cultural appropriation concerns that

33:17

I've seen. You

33:19

gave more eloquent words to the reaction I've had

33:22

over and over again when people are told

33:43

you can't write that character because you don't represent

33:46

that race or you don't come from that culture.

33:49

Well, this is not like a movie

33:51

where you're taking a role from somebody.

33:55

I will say that first of

33:57

all, that isn't necessarily my point of view.

33:59

It's something that the character says in the

34:01

book. But from my point of view, I

34:03

am a person of color, half

34:06

Asian and half Jewish, much like Sam

34:08

in the book. If I

34:10

could only write about exactly what I was,

34:12

that would certainly like take

34:15

me out of writing about all of life's

34:18

rich pageant, really, which I think is kind

34:20

of the job of the novelist, you know.

34:22

The job of the novelist is to imagine

34:24

people other than yourself. Novels do reflect the

34:26

world and they reflect right now. The world

34:28

we live in has many, many kinds of

34:30

people in it. And so I don't think

34:32

a fiction that is devoid of

34:34

writing about the experiences of other people

34:37

is preferable to a fiction that occasionally

34:39

gets it wrong when writing about those

34:41

other people. And that's just kind of

34:43

where I've come down on it. I

34:45

would rather see a badly written, half

34:47

Jewish, half Korean person in somebody else's

34:50

book and to have

34:52

at least had that person who wrote it

34:54

if it seems as if they tried to

34:56

honestly endeavor to imagine somebody who is different

34:58

from them. I don't want to fault that

35:00

person just because they tried to do that.

35:03

Next, Mike Drop. You

35:05

wrote about the delight of other people's

35:07

parents. Yeah.

35:10

That cracked me up. I've experienced it. Your parents

35:13

are your parents, but when you introduce them

35:15

to some other people in the world, all

35:17

the kind of things you might have complained

35:19

about them are instantly erased because they become

35:21

people again. Do you think that's because

35:23

they're on better behavior when

35:25

they're interacting with people who aren't their

35:27

kids? Or maybe there's

35:29

a public-private difference. I think it's

35:32

both those things. I was thinking about how

35:34

much of that is parents

35:37

and kids being stuck in a pattern. And

35:39

then not unlearning that as

35:41

they grow up. I know so

35:44

many people who had

35:46

difficult relationships with their parents as kids.

35:49

And then suddenly as adults, they realize

35:52

it's much smoother, but the transition

35:54

was very slow and also vice

35:56

versa. I think that happens, but it's so

35:58

slow. I think it's not just

36:00

slow, I think we fight it at

36:03

every step in a sense when you kind

36:05

of give up on the idea that your

36:07

parents are your parents, you're giving

36:09

up on youth almost, like in a sense

36:11

you benefit from them being in that role.

36:14

You wrote about love as a constant and a

36:16

variable. I do think that love

36:18

is a constant and a variable, but the

36:20

difficulty, and when I even kind of wrap

36:22

my mind around it, is at one point

36:24

does love become a constant. You have to

36:26

decide that it is a constant at some

36:28

point. Another thing that is a constant and

36:30

a variable at the same time is time,

36:34

time itself. It always moves

36:36

forward at exactly the same rate, but

36:39

it feels different to us depending on

36:41

how we perceive it, but I did

36:43

think it was a good metaphor for allowing

36:45

a love to change while also knowing

36:47

that it is fixed in a way once

36:49

you've decided, for some people, once you've decided

36:51

you've loved something, you love it. Okay,

36:53

last thing before we wrap. I

36:55

think my favorite phrase in the

36:57

book as a psychologist was, Gate-Shut

37:00

Panic. Yes. It

37:02

was definitely something I felt. You know, so much of

37:04

the book is about what it is to be in

37:06

your 20s and super ambitious, and

37:09

I think it's not necessarily something that gets

37:12

written about a great deal, like the kind

37:14

of what do you do after you've graduated

37:16

from college, but before you've kind of made

37:18

your place in the world. And so I

37:20

wanted to write about that. So Gate-Shut Panic

37:22

is Torschlusspannik from the German. It's

37:24

this fear that a door is closing behind

37:26

you and you are running out of time

37:28

and you'll miss an opportunity. And as soon

37:31

as I heard about that word, I

37:33

was like, oh yes, that was how I felt my

37:35

entire 20s. Well,

37:38

it's another one of those

37:40

interesting paradoxes because having

37:42

that fear the gate is going to shut

37:45

is often what leads you to sprint to

37:47

get there, but it can also

37:49

lead to some really suboptimal choices on the way.

37:51

And in a sense, it's an illusion. It's something

37:53

you feel and it can drive you. And I

37:56

think that it gives you this like super energy

37:58

to kind of get things done. but

38:00

really it's a long time before that gate

38:02

actually shuts. It's your perception that the gate

38:04

is shutting that ends up being the frightening

38:06

thing about it. Yeah, so

38:08

it might be good for motivation, but bad for

38:10

judgment. Maybe, yeah. I

38:13

thoroughly enjoyed this and it took a

38:15

lot of willpower to not just nerd

38:17

out in the book the entire conversation.

38:20

This was just a blast for me. Thank you

38:22

for taking the time. Thank you so much. I

38:29

think the point to underscore here is

38:31

that the most important consequence of success

38:34

is not accolades or fame, but the

38:36

freedom to do what you want to

38:38

do next. And I

38:40

actually think that should push us to rethink

38:43

the very meaning of success. I

38:45

think the most important measure of success

38:47

is not status or power or wealth.

38:50

It's how much freedom you have and

38:53

true success is the freedom to stop

38:55

caring about anyone else's definition of success.

39:02

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. This

39:04

show is part of the TED Audio Collective.

39:07

And this episode was produced and mixed by

39:09

Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah

39:11

Kingsley Ma and Asia Simpson. Our

39:13

editor is Alejandro Salazar. Our fact checker

39:15

is Paul Durbin, original music by Hans-Dale

39:18

Stu and Alison Leighton Brown. Our

39:20

team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob

39:23

Winnick, Samia Adams, Michelle Quint,

39:25

Banban Cheng, Julia Dickerson and

39:27

Whitney Pennington-Rogers. I

39:35

think the whole enterprise of writing novels

39:37

actually revolves around the depicting

39:40

of humans. I

39:43

said like a robot. The

39:46

depicting of humans. The depicting of humans. It's

39:48

a great sentence. Or

39:50

the depiction. We'll revise to that. It's

39:53

even better anyway. Even more

39:55

robotic. you