Talking Book Bans and Zine-Style YA Memoir with Stephanie Kuehnert: Pieces of a Girl

In this week’s episode, Marissa chats with Stephanie Kuehnert about her new YA zine-style memoir, PIECES OF A GIRL, that includes journal entries, original illustrations, and pages from her actual diaries and zines. Discussed in this episode: how a book can take the time it needs to take, how even a memoir can be a challenge to structure and know where it should end, the decision to include zines and poetry, on finding the courage to be vulnerable in a memoir, the mythology and romanticization of suffering contributing to creativity, the current climate of book banning and why book banning is not the answer, how healing can be non-linear and messy, and so much more.

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Transcript

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[01:16] Marissa: Hello, hello and welcome to the Happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you so much for joining me. One thing making me happy this week is that the girls and I have just started reading holes by Louis Sacker for our nighttime, every night read aloud book. This is one of my all time favorite books. I really clearly remember reading it when it first came out and you know how sometimes you just have such a fond memory of a childhood book and then you go back and read it as an adult and it doesn't always quite align with what you remembered? Not the case with this one. Reading it with the girls. I love it just as much as I did back then. And honestly, there are days when I feel like 80% of my desire to be a mom was just so I had someone to read all of these books with that I loved so much growing up. So reading this one together has been making me really happy. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. She is a teacher and former contributor to Rookie magazine with an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College, Chicago.

[02:38] Marissa: She is also the author of the.

[02:39] Marissa: YA novels I want to be your Joey Ramon and Ballads of Suburbia. Her newest YA memoir, Pieces of a Girl, comes out tomorrow on March 26. Please welcome Stephanie Kenart.

[02:53] Stephanie: Hi. Thanks for having me.

[02:55] Marissa: Thank you so much for joining me and congratulations on this new book coming out. How are you feeling? It's coming out so soon.

[03:04] Stephanie: I am so excited. This was a really long process. This is, I think, unusual even for the publishing industry in that it took from sale to publication almost ten years. So I am ready for this.

[03:20] Marissa: So I noticed that your last book came out in. Was it 2009?

[03:27] Stephanie: Yes.

[03:27] Marissa: So 15 years ago. And I definitely want to ask about that and hear more about this ten year long process. But before we go into that, I would like to back up even further and just hear what is your origin story as a writer? How did you get here? How did you get published in the first place?

[03:46] Stephanie: Sure. So my origin story as a writer is I have basically wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. The memoir itself opens up with a page from my diary from when I was like seven years old that says how I want to grow up and write about me and my life. So I meandered a little bit before I ended up in college for writing. I was 21 when I went back to school and started seriously pursuing a degree in writing. And then I got really lucky at Columbia College, Chicago. It at that time especially was really focused on bringing teaching artists into the classroom. So I worked with writers like Irvine Welsh, who wrote train spotting, and like Dorothy Allison, who wrote Bastard out of Carolina. So I had all these great experiences and we had this festival called the Story Week Festival of Writers, and they often brought in agents and people from publishing. And as a student, you would get to meet with them. And so I met my first agent through that festival, and that really motivated me. So at that point, I had finished my BA and was getting my MFA. At that point, I'd finished my BA and was getting my MFA, and that really inspired me to fully finish the book that would become I want to be your Joey Ramon, rather than just kind of doing 250 pages as a thesis or whatever. That wasn't a full story because I had this agent interest.

[05:40] Marissa: So you had already started on that book, it sounds like. Was that kind of the first novel that you tackled, and then did it go on to get published or did you have more in the wings?

[05:51] Stephanie: I had written a version of what would become my second book to be published, ballads of suburbia. And then I put that away, and then I started on what would become I want to be your Joey Ramon. And then that one I saw kind of all the way through and published and then kind of went back to the other one.

[06:10] Marissa: Yeah. Okay, so then you have two books come out in 2008 and 2009, both ya fiction, if I'm not mistaken.

[06:19] Stephanie: Correct.

[06:20] Marissa: And then this long span of time, what have you been doing for the last 15 years?

[06:28] Stephanie: Yeah, that's kind of my origin story. Right. I got really lucky in terms of landed an agent while I was still in grad school, and then I think I was a year out of grad school when we sold my first book. And those books came out during the recession 2008, 2009.

[06:58] Marissa: You really know how to time things.

[07:00] Stephanie: Yeah, it was not great timing. They were contemporary. Ya. And they were with MTV books, which I love, and I was very excited about as a music lover, but they didn't really know. I've always kind of straddled the genres between ya and. Yeah, those books, they didn't get as big as the publisher necessarily wanted them to. And so I went through a lot of trying out other stories. So, yeah, while my first two manuscripts sold and became books, then I have since then had a couple of manuscripts that did not sell that are under the bed or in the closet or whatever term we want to use. So I worked on those. This is also when I switched over to writing nonfiction and started writing for rookie magazine. So that was really my main writing outlet from, let's see, I think rookie was in existence from, like, 2011 to 2018, and I was a contributing writer that entire time, and that was my main focus. And during that time, I moved from the Midwest to Seattle and got a job in academia and had a baby. Have been juggling all of that in the last 15 years. But, yeah, as I mentioned, the book that became pieces of a girl, the proposal did sell all the way back, I want to say, in 2013 while I was still writing for rookie.

[08:42] Marissa: Wow. Okay, we're going to go back to that and how the book has been a ten year long process. But first, would you please tell listeners, what is this book, pieces of a girl about?

[08:56] Stephanie: Yeah, so pieces of a girl is. Well, it's the story of my messy teenage life. It's the story of a girl who wanted to be the girl in the story, who was always kind of looking for the next big real thing. Like, I wanted to grow up fast, and I did. And as a result, was dealing with mental health struggles and abuse and addiction. And this is really a story of survival and of creativity and how it sees us through and how finding our community, our people, our girls, really can help us survive and thrive.

[09:52] Marissa: Okay, so then to go back to the earlier statement, you said, why ten years?

[10:00] Stephanie: Well, so I sold it on proposal and I sold it, and basically we just couldn't get it right for a while. So that was part of it, was it just went through a lot of rounds of revisions because I sold it as we're pitching it right now, which is as a zine style memoir. And so it's a new kind of format. It's not a graphic memoir. It really weaves in some illustrations and some stuff from my outside life. So there was a lot of time spent figuring that out, finding the perfect illustrator, although the illustrator that I worked with, I had in mind all along. So that worked out well. The book design piece, and then on top of that, in the middle of all of that, I had a baby, and we had a global pandemic. There was a little bit of that disruption. But also, honestly, I was still healing as I was writing this book. This book was very much a healing process for me. At first, I was very anxious to get it out and was feeling, like, frustrated that my editor kept being like, it's not quite there yet. Then I realized this book needed the time that it took just because of the type of book it is.

[11:22] Marissa: Yeah, no, that certainly makes sense. I would be terrified myself to try to tackle something that's this vulnerable and this much you on the page in book form. Were there times in that ten years? Did you doubt the book? Did you doubt yourself? Did you want to give up? How did you stick with it for so long?

[11:47] Stephanie: Yes, absolutely. There were times that I doubted myself, that I just had knots in my stomach about telling this story, particularly the aspects of it that are about experiencing abuse and being in an abusive relationship. And there were, especially early on, I would go on a run and be thinking about the book and just get ill, thinking, like, what if this all gets shut down and legal? And there's also, just as a survivor, there's this real doubt, very real doubt, that, does my voice matter? Is my story valid? So there was so much of that that I really grappled with. And again, I was thankful. So I worked with two different editors throughout the process of the book. So the first editor, Julie Strauss Gable, she was really just really supportive in reminding me that my story is important, it is valid, and it does need to be told. And that was also why we were taking so long to get it just right. And then Andrew Carr is the editor that I ultimately finished out the book with. And we were just, like, kind of a perfect match in terms of both being from the Midwest, both being around the same age, both being into the same kind of music. And he helped me push it over the edge by giving me just some particular framing that really worked for me as a music lover. Like we would just talk about music. And he would be like, no, it needs to be like this album, not like this album.

[13:30] Marissa: And I. Yes, that's so fitting for the book too.

[13:36] Stephanie: Yeah.

[13:40] Marissa: When you hear that this book took ten years to write and went through lots of changes, lots of revisions. But it's a memoir. Like, it's based on real life. How much could it possibly change? How did it change? What were some of the things that had to evolve in the writing process? And I imagine even as part of the healing process.

[14:03] Stephanie: Yeah. So a big part of it was structure. I had in my head all along that I wanted it to have this feel of its zine. And now in its final version, it's in parts. And the parts in my head, the publisher, when I'm communicating with people from the publisher, they're like this section, and I'm like that zine as little zines that are in there. But there were so many experiments with the structure. I was lucky enough to do a writer's residency while I was working on the very first round of revisions on this book. And it was at this wonderful place called Mineral school in mineral, Washington. That's an old school building. So I had literally, like, a whole wall of chalkboards. And I remember just remapping out the book and. And that structure. At that point, it was broken into four parts, and then it was really figuring out structure. And then it's figuring out when you've got a whole life and a lot to tell, it's also figuring out what to omit and how to satisfactorily end a story that's like a life that's still ongoing. And that was especially complicated by my story, which was, as I mentioned before, really messy. And healing is not linear. So how do you deal with that? So it was kind of. Those were the two big hurdles, I would say.

[15:56] Marissa: Yeah, no, and that makes sense. And that's an excellent point with the. But where does this story end? I'm still healing. I'm still a person. I'm still living my life. Like, at what point has this resolved? And does it ever resolve, I guess, is a question in memoir, just in general.

[16:14] Stephanie: Exactly. And with this one, I got very nervous at first where I was like, well, it's a ya memoir, but my story goes through, like, a whole other iteration right around the time I turn 18. And so I was like, do I have to stop there? And they were like, no, we've got to find the right stopping point. It was nice to acknowledge that adolescence doesn't just end in high school.

[16:39] Marissa: No, that's a really good point. Talk to me more about the zine style, because that is, of course, part of what makes this book really fun and unique is that not only is it already very vulnerable telling your story, telling about these very difficult memories and experiences you had, but we also get to actually see pages like of your diary and handwritten poems that you wrote as a teenager and lists of songs that you loved and this mixed media collages that you would make. And it's so visceral on some levels. It just feels like I'm hanging out with teenage you reading this book.

[17:24] Stephanie: Well, that's great, because that is the experience that I was hoping for. So the whole idea of that really came from, I did make zines in high school. That was, like a huge part of my healing process. Like, literally just kind of cutting and pasting and writing and putting myself together again. So it felt like very much the only way to tell this story. But at the time, I was like, is that something that anyone beyond the punk scene is going to latch onto? I don't know, but my work with rookie showed me an audience for it and also gave me a new way to experiment with form because rookie was like an online magazine, but it was very much like a zine. And when I would write a piece for rookie, I would get paired with an artist, and it would be like a multimedia experience. And that's why Susie Exposito, who is the illustrator of the comic style pieces in the book, we met through rookie, and we collaborated, and I collaborated with a bunch of other artists during my time at rookie. And that's really kind of where the whole idea came from for me, where I was like, yeah, and then, plus, I'm a cancer. I'm very nostalgic. I have, like, a whole plastic thing full of all my journals and everything. So I've got all of that.

[19:06] Marissa: So I admit I also have a big plastic tote full of all of my journals and poetry and stories that I wrote as a teenager. I have never looked at them. Honestly, I'm terrified of them. The idea of going back to those teen years I find horrifying. And if we're being honest, nothing in my teen years happened that's on anywhere near the same scale of traumatic as some of the things that you dealt with. So, I mean, was that difficult? Was that painful, reading through these old notes? Was it cathartic?

[19:38] Stephanie: How was that a little bit of all of it? So again, I think it was helpful because the process was gradual. Not just because of the time that the book itself took, but because before I proposed the book, I was wading through some of that stuff while I was working, while I was writing things for rookie. So I was digging back into those old diaries and the old plastic tote full of things. That being said, I've joked, but I may be kind of serious about it. It might be time now to have to have, now that the book's out, there might be time to have the bonfire to burn some of those journals.

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[21:55] Stephanie: It was cathartic and it was painful. And there was like some self, some self forgiveness, some real moments of empathy, those moments that I've had therapists say, what would you say to this 16 year old girl? This was me really going back and sitting with her. But now we might be ready to burn the journals.

[22:25] Marissa: Yeah, I admit. So in reading this and reading some of these old poems, which it took me right back, and there's this stigma, of course, against teenage poetry. And so many of us went through the quote, angst phase where we wrote this poetry that's heartbreak and unrequited love and death and all of these things. And as an adult, whenever I'm talking with other writers or really anybody, and this comes up, I, like so many people, have a tendency to kind of negate it and be like, oh, you know, my teenage poetry goth phase. I wrote terrible, angsty poetry. Ha ha. But reading this book, it kind of, for me, shone a light on how much value there is to going through that phase and how much I actually think that that was a part of self discovery. And I have sworn after reading this book that I'm never going to negate those poems again. I've changed my ways.

[23:27] Stephanie: That's good. Yeah. I've also been dismissive. I think my first bio, and my bio may still say this, like some off the cuff remark about got my start with writing poetry about unrequited love and razor blades or something like that, just being dismissive of it. But I think you're exactly right. It's transformative and it's necessary. And especially for anyone, whether because of their experiences in life or their identities, feels it all silenced. Having that outlet to just write what flows is so important.

[24:17] Marissa: Yeah. Let's go a little bit deeper into the book itself. So you've written. It's very. Oh, gosh, what would the word be? I mean, you're not pulling any punches. You're like, here is my story. Here's what I experienced. Here's who I was back then. And at one point, you even say that at the time that you were making these choices, that you were like a protagonist in a novel that you didn't like. And I thought that was a really interesting way, kind of self awareness, to be able to look at yourself from this outside view and say, I don't really like this teenage girl. And then to be putting yourself into a book, I mean, I imagine there has to be some fear with the book coming out that people are going to read it and not particularly like the girl that you were. I mean, is that something that you're worried about? Is that something that you've kind of had to come to terms with?

[25:19] Stephanie: Yeah, that is something that I've had to come to terms with. And that's something. Again, this is another reason why I'm glad it took as long as it did, because I think early on, again, just remembering going on those runs and feeling sick as I was working on the book, I was so much more concerned about being judged for it. I still am going to be very careful about not reading reviews.

[25:54] Marissa: Yeah, me too.

[25:59] Stephanie: That's hard enough when it's like some characters that you created, but when it's you, it's definitely there. But I've really kind of come to peace with the girl I was and the mistakes that I made and how they ultimately led to where I am and who I am.

[26:25] Marissa: Yeah, well, it seems to me like it would take a terrible amount of courage. Do you feel like you had to kind of dig deep and find that courage. Were there certain moments during the writing process when you had to be like, okay, I'm afraid of putting this out there, but there's a bigger reason behind it. Where did you find that strength from?

[26:48] Stephanie: Yeah, for sure. I think part of it is that I really was doing it for my younger self. I was doing it for the seven year old girl who has always dreamed about this sort of thing, but also for the 16 and 17 year old girl who really doubted the validity of her story and her experience drawing the courage up for myself in that way. And then the incredible thing about both my work with my essays for rookie and my first two novels was they've always led to readers, to young folks in particular, like, reaching out and saying how something or another that I wrote validated their experience. That's always like a big. My eye is always on that because I just remember really strongly how feeling alone and feeling like my experience wasn't valid and my voice didn't matter. And if I can smooth that experience for five young people, that would mean the world to me. That's kind of what I would always tap into.

[28:18] Marissa: Yeah. Did you ever imagine that your story could serve as inspiration to some other young girls out there struggling with some of these same issues?

[28:30] Stephanie: Honestly, not until I started getting those. When I would get emails when I was writing for rookie particularly, but from my first two books also, then when I would meet young women and they would say how much something mattered to them, I was like, oh, I'm now stepping into this space that the riot girls that I looked up to held for me. It's honestly just such an honor, and I'm really glad I can do it.

[29:07] Marissa: Yeah, no, I hear that. And I do think the book is so relatable, even. Like, for me, I didn't go through drug addiction or so many of these various things, but just the fact that as teenagers, you are searching for your people, you are trying to figure out who you are and how you fit into the world, and that's pretty universal. And I think so many teenagers are going to see themselves in parts of this. I was going to say this character, but it's not a character, it's you, right?

[29:40] Stephanie: Yes.

[29:42] Marissa: One of the moments, not even so much a moment, but just a line that really stood out to me. And I didn't write it down word for word, but it was something to the effect of, you're talking about rock bottom and how people talk about hitting rock bottom. I hit rock bottom. With this idea that if you fall far enough, you hit rock bottom, and then you just bounce right back out. And you had this wonderfully poignant line about how that doesn't happen. You're going to keep falling and falling unless you make the decision to start climbing. Can you talk a bit more about that? Because I thought that was such a powerful way to think about things.

[30:24] Stephanie: Thank you. Yeah, that was definitely, like, a part of the book that took a lot of wrestling, because there were a good two or three years where I was just in a spiral and just kept breaking down and kept using substances to hide behind and so on and so forth. And there was a whole part of me that was also related to the part where I'm like, I was the character that I hated. That was the point where I was the character that I hated was when I was going through that. And then, yeah, I've also had many other people who've struggled with addiction and with mental health in my life and just recognizing that it is a climb, because if we think that we're just going to fall and then wake up one morning and suddenly it's going to be okay, that's setting people up for failure. A big part of writing this book was the realization of how healing is not linear, how it is messy, how even I think in that part, I talk about, like, you climb, and then you might fall a little bit, and then the climb is harder if you're trying to drag someone with you, which you get into a codependent relationship, and that happens. Yeah, that piece was just a really. That was one of the pieces that while I was writing, I was healing, and I was beginning to understand kind of my own process and what I had to do to get out and, like, honoring my own strength and honoring the strength of people who have been through that. People don't just bounce back from stuff. They climb. They climb, and they get bruised and messy and ugly from climbing, and they feel a lot of shame over it. And I think in some ways, I'm saying, don't feel shame, because that was a hard climb you made.

[32:34] Marissa: Yeah, for sure. I feel like that might also be the point in the book in which you talk a lot about creativity and how you saw yourself as a writer, always wanted to be a writer, and yet for this period of years, when you were spiraling, as you say, you weren't doing much or any writing, and I saw a quote. I don't think it was a quote from the book. I think it was something your publicist sent to me, in which you kind of talked about how there's this mythology of creativity and pain going together and how pain kind of fuels creativity. But in reality, or at least in your story, it was much more about healing. And when you started to heal was when your creativity came back. And I thought that was also important because that's a lot of kind of what we talk about on this podcast is that art and writing and creativity, it does not have to come from this dark period of pain. You don't have to be suffering to create, which is this belief that is still so common.

[33:45] Stephanie: Yes, I totally, for years, I think, mythologized and pathologized depression and addiction and how it intersects with creativity. And that, again, comes from sort of that model that we're given. I quote a bikini kill song in the book that's a song about Sylvia Plath and how we're taught as women that to be a girl that writes means that you must eventually commit suicide. So I feel like I had all of that in my head. Kurt Cobain's death had a huge impact on me at the time. It was the while I thought at that time, to me, it seemed like we were talking about mental health more than my parents and grandparents generation. It still was so either stigmatized or mythologized. And, yeah, I really bought into that for a long time. I was like, well, I romanticized it. I romanticized the. Well, now I'm very dark and depressed, and so I will have stories from this. But the truth was, I was getting so messed up on drugs and alcohol that I was like, yeah, I wasn't writing. I wasn't reading. I wasn't listening to the music I loved. It was dark. And once I did lean into self expression, that's kind of what brought me back from the brink. My creativity couldn't coexist with when I was in my darkest places, and I no longer believe the way I maybe once did that. Yeah, you have to have some big, dark cloud hanging over you in order to be an artist.

[35:45] Marissa: Yeah. Which is a belief, I think, that so many people continue to hold on to and continue to romanticize. I think that's a really good term for that and one that I'm working hard to dispel, because I know for me, I'm so much more creative, so much more productive and prolific when I'm in my happiest times, when life is going really well for me, as opposed to periods of grief or sadness, when I'm like, why would I try to create right now the two don't pair up as well as we like to imagine they do.

[36:21] Stephanie: Yes, totally.

[36:23] Marissa: All right. I do, of course, have to bring up book bands because your book is not out yet, but it's coming out very soon, and if it hasn't been challenged yet, it's going to be you're tackling drug use, you're tackling alcohol, sex, self harm. There's going to be people who want to claim that it's sensationalized. And whatever else. What would you say to those people?

[36:55] Stephanie: I would say that silencing stories like this only causes more harm. I would point to the various, like the opioid crisis in this country, the mental health crisis in this country, and say this is because we are stigmatizing and not talking about these things and that these voices absolutely matter. Yeah, I feel very strongly about that.

[37:32] Marissa: Yeah. No, I agree 100%. I always think it's a mistake to ban books, but of course, many people have very different opinions about that. What are you hoping that some of your teen readers who might be going through some similar situations, what are you hoping that they might get from reading your story?

[37:53] Stephanie: Yeah, I hope that what they get from it, again, as I've been saying, is that healing isn't linear and that it is messy. I'm not saying dive into that in terms of sinking into the darkness. Again, that gets back to that romanticizing of it. We don't want to do that. But since healing isn't linear, the importance is to find the supports that work for you. For me, that was really about creativity and self expression. So writing, making zines, and also just, like, how I dressed and the music that I was listening to, which led me to community in a lot of cases. So finding the community, finding outlets, that is so key for surviving. And then also my biggest thing is just, you matter, your voice matters, and you were not alone.

[39:00] Marissa: All right, I have one last question before we move on to our bonus round, because just here, a couple of episodes ago, I got to talk to John Shu about his novel and verse that just came out called Louder than Hunger, which was also based on his real life story, but he chose to fictionalize it as opposed to writing it as a memoir. So then reading the two books back to back was kind of a really interesting parallel for me. So for you, did you consider writing it as a fictionalization? And regardless, why do you feel that, in this case, memoir was the right method for tackling this story?

[39:43] Stephanie: Well, funny you say that, because my second book, Ballads of suburbia, is like, I think if people have read that book and then they read my memoir, they're going to go, oh, I think for me, because writing is my source of healing, I've needed to tackle these things in different forms. And so I kind of took it as far as I could with fiction. And for me, the memoir piece really was wanting to do this zine style piece. That's really what clicked for me, and that's really what felt like kind of the way to break through this story, because there was a point like one of my editors at rookie, I don't know, when we were like five or six years into the magazine where they're like, wow, I can tell you're still working through this. You have written and rewritten this, and how do you feel about that? Do you feel stuck? So the memoir was my way to get unstuck, to finally work through it.

[40:51] Marissa: All, I think, yeah, no, that's really interesting and just shines a light on how much books can heal us. But writing can also play such a huge role in overcoming trauma. Overcoming may not be the right word, but just in helping us process some of the things we've been through.

[41:15] Stephanie: Totally.

[41:16] Marissa: All right, Stephanie, are you ready for the bonus round?

[41:20] Stephanie: I am here for the bonus round.

[41:22] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[41:24] Stephanie: What book makes me happy? This is a great question. Is it okay for me to not pick a kidlet book? Of course. Okay. I've been really into the locked Tomb series. So. Gideon the 9th is the first book. Just the voice in that book. It's so wonderfully queer and it's funny and it's dark. It just speaks to all aspects of my personality. I don't know, it just makes me happy. It's a book about, I mean, the blurb about it is like lesbian necromancers in outer space. And I guess that's just what makes me happy.

[42:10] Marissa: Good blurb. What are you working on next? And do you think it's going to take ten years?

[42:19] Stephanie: I am currently working on another YA novel and my agent left the industry, so I have to find another agent. So that's the only part that's going to make it take. Hopefully it won't take ten years. Then again, I am working full time in parenting, so I've accepted that my process is a slow one. But no, it should not take ten years.

[42:49] Marissa: I hope not. Good luck with that.

[42:51] Stephanie: Yeah, it's dark, ya contemporary fiction. Fun.

[42:55] Marissa: Lastly, where can people find you?

[42:58] Stephanie: So they can find me on my website, which is stephaniekeenert.com. They can find main my social media of choice is Instagram. So Stephanie Keenert on Instagram, that's the best place to find me. Awesome.

[43:15] Marissa: Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me.

[43:17] Stephanie: Thank you for hosting me. This was so much fun.

[43:21] Marissa: Readers, I hope you will check out pieces of a girl. It comes out tomorrow. Of course, we encourage you to support your local indie bookstore if you can. But if you don't have a local indie, you can check out our affiliate store@bookshop.org, slash shop slash Marissamire. Next week, I'll be talking with Adeeb Kuram about his newest romance, the breakup lists. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe. Subscribe and follow us on Instagram at Marissa Meyer, author and at Happy Writer podcast. Until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today.

[43:55] Marissa: I do hope that now you're feeling.

[43:57] Marissa: A little bit happier.