Zibby chats with writer Anna Mitchael about her lushly written and emotionally resonant collection of vignettes, THEY WILL TELL YOU THE WORLD IS YOURS, which traces a woman’s life from birth through midlife, capturing the subtle and seismic ways the world shapes her—and how she eventually pushes back. Anna reflects on the origins of her vignettes, many of which were inspired by personal memories or images, like a childhood Easter photo, and then delves into themes of motherhood, relationships, and the tension between creativity and productivity in a content-hungry world. She also talks about her years as a columnist and editor in Texas, and shares how embracing her “weirdness” ultimately led to her most authentic work yet.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Anna. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked. I'm so excited to talk about, They Will Tell You The World Is Yours One, sorry, On Little Rebellions And Finding Your Way.

I need my glasses on. It's empathetic. Anyway, congrats. 

Anna: Thank you. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a long title and subhead. I had a lot to get in there. 

Zibby: But it, it works. It like tells the story. You get a total sense of what it's like. Okay. Talk about what the book is about. Talk about how it's taken you all this time that you had this idea so long ago and it's finally come into fruition.

I'm so happy to hear that. 

Anna: Yes. So the book, it's different. It's uh, 85 Vignettes, little short pieces, and they basically just track a woman's life from birth pretty methodically all the way up through midlife. And it's, um, the beginning of the book, it kind of ramps up as she's just growing and learning and taking everything in and, um, just really not even realizing all the ways in which the world is influencing her and kind of turning her and directing her. And then there comes a point where she starts to see what's going on and there's just kind of a, her reaction to that, which it sometimes is kind of a beautiful and hinging and sometimes is messy.

And um, and then there's the resolution in the end. So I have written vignettes, I think what you're referring to a very long time ago. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Anna: Um, about. Uh, more than two decades. And I was told at that point that they were not publishable, which is probably very true, like very good advice. I was starting out, hadn't published anything, and um, so I walked away from it.

I was like, well, I'll just learn to go write a novel and do all those things and, um, which you did. Which I did. I did, yes. And I've also, I've worked as a writer for a very long time. I worked in ad agencies first. I've worked in editorial, so, but I was kind of maybe a little bit along with the main character in this book, sort of doing what everyone had told me that I should do in order to progress.

And so it's not that I didn't love what I'd written, but I just hit this point, I guess four or five years ago where I was like, I have just been writing what other people want me to write for so long now. And it was like. It wasn't that I didn't like the projects or the people I was with, but I just felt like it had been a very long time since I'd written anything that was like, had gotten deep in me. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm.

Anna: And pulled anything deep in me out and um, and I was like, you know what? It, it probably won't be publishable, but I'm just gonna do it. I don't really care. And so I just, so that's when I started this book and kind of returned to the vignette form and just kind of came alive for writing again. I don't know, it was just, it was.

I, I just thought it was so sweet. I'd really given up. I mean, I literally to, my husband was like, when I finish this, this is really the point. I'm gonna go find something else to do with my life. But then by the end, he was like, you just, you're different about writing. Again. I don't think he'd ever, even in our time together, known me to love writing.

I think it had always sat on me a little bit of something I was striving for. Do you know? 

Zibby: Interesting. 

Anna: Yeah. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Well, you had written this column, this monthly column. Are you still doing that? Boots? So you write advice regularly and to do that, it uses one part of your brain that this is, this is like a different part of the brain, right?

That not that one is better or worse, but just like, yes, writing. But there's so many different pieces of the writing puzzle. 

Anna: I think that's so true and I feel like it's, It's been a constant balance in my life because just with writing professionally to like pay the mortgage and do all the things, like you're always answering to a client, right?

And so then there's that side, and then there's the part of me that wanted, I really wanted to write something in my community. I live in like a small town in Texas and we have a magazine here. And I was like, I just, I wanna be writing here. So for 14 years I've written a monthly column for them. And it is, it's like advice and it's humor and it's, it's like in the voice of a country woman and she's very gritty and raw and probably gives really misguided advice a lot of the times.

But the point is more just to kind of look at the bigger picture of life instead of getting, and so it is, those are all different facets of this bigger picture. And I in my life have found so many times where I've just had to like recalibrate and be like. I've gone too far, you know, into one side. And that's what this book was a little bit, was just coming back and saying like, why are you, why are you here in the beginning?

You know, why are you doing this? So, but I, I do love having different projects and different things to jump around to. Yep. It just, I mean, it's like anything, it's just being able to acknowledge like, oh wait, I've gone too deep here. Like pull back, you know? Yeah. It's, and we all do that. 

Zibby: I know. It's like we all live in one of those sound rooms where like someone's singing, I don't know how to describe and like all those buttons, there's so many buttons, so many levers to adjust constantly.

And then of course something changes, like, 'cause every time a new singer comes in, you have to readjust. 

Anna: So it's so true. 

Zibby: Can I read one of these that I, do you mind? 

Anna: No. Love that. 

Zibby: There's so many. I'll try this one. I have like 20 dogeared. I don't know, sing. I'll say you some of the ones I loved on learning.

Sing, Cicada, sing. I'm gonna read Violence Guys. I also loved conspiracy theory and wherever you go, part three. But anyway, here's Violet. Guys. They will tell you the sky is violet. Your eyes, you'll be told see blue because they can't handle the truth. This will shake you more deeply than you expect. You will stay up three days in a row just to see if you can, just to see if needing sleep is a myth too.

This is what your eyes will see. Bolts of lightning on a sunny day, corn on the cob in an empty bowl. A naked man invisible to everyone else standing in the doorway. When you tell this list to the friend who walks with you to physics, he will say, it sounds like something that might happen in Amsterdam.

This will make you cry because Anne Frank, she never even made it to the age you are now. You'll say you don't know why you are crying. You've never even been to Amsterdam. And he'll put his arm around your bulging backpack and say, you probably just need to get some sleep. Oh, but sleep for so long you thought it was the thing that couldn't be trusted.

Dreams of all those people in places, mishmashed in, in ways that were shockingly out of sequence, yet felt so right. You would wake up ready to shake it all off because after all it wasn't real. But now here you are in the middle of the day, moved by thoughts of a dead girl kept away from a purple sky.

How to know which is the truth, how to know what you need to live by. So good. 

Anna: Oh, I'm glad you like it. I was like, you know, I think it's, it's just been, it's been such a gift to get to like step into just, or step off, I guess just the train of, you know, of where everything has to be linear and move forward and get, and it, and so.

I don't know. It was just really beautiful to hear you read it. I'm like, that's like kind of what I would've always labeled as like all my weirdness. But it is just, you know, I, we finally like kind of let, just let out who, how you think and who you are, and it's just been a really different process for me.

Zibby: Well, all your weirdness, so to speak. Um, that's the art that people respond to, right? I mean,.. 

Anna: Yeah,.. 

Zibby: You just put out the generic stuff. Nobody ever really sees themself. 'cause it's just so anodyne, I guess. Right.

Anna: Right. But I think it now where we are with, where it's just this constant, it's just this constant call for more and more content.

Right? Yeah. And so then it is like to, I think, I feel, I feel that a lot of just like produce, produce, produce, whether in the professional side or wherever. And so I think that that, that's like an interesting challenge, I think to, to resist against that because you can't, you can't get to the stuff that's different and true.

Zibby: Yep. And what about, so you're also. Deputy editor of Magnolia. Are you still or not anymore? 

Anna: I was, I'm not anymore. Yeah, I've worked so magnolia's based here in Waco and I spent many years over there and loved it. Um, but now I freelance pretty full-time. So, 

Zibby: because that's also, you know, being responsible for writers and getting the best from them too, which is yet another skill set.

That you have to, that comes to bear on writing. 

Anna: And I do, I love editing and I love, um, I love that process of like building writers up. And I think especially just having been on the other side of it for so long where you're like, oh, will somebody answer my pitch? Oh, will somebody, you know, I had, I. I had always been an advertising, kind of trying to get into editorial into books and all the things, and then when I had this opportunity to work on the magazine side, I was like, oh, well now I get to be that person.

And like I just create the, create the culture of just, I don't know, finding writers and like, and lifting it up and having it be a, a good experience. So, but I also just really love shepherding stories from start to finish. I think that's, and it makes you appreciate as a writer, kind of that process too, and what people are bringing to your stories.

Like I don't fear it now. Like I used to fear it, like, what are they going to change? What's it going to be? You know? But now I'm like, oh, they're gonna bring like a whole other side. It's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting. You know? I still fight for what I want, but I listen a lot more to what people offer now that I've been an editor. 

Zibby: Wow. What is something you expected? Obviously this is the crux of the book. Right? But you personally, something that you thought was so expected in life and then of course is completely different. 'cause that's kind of what it is. Like all the things people tell you to expect. And then of course life goes a different way.

Nothing is safe, nothing is, you can't take anything for granted. Like the, you know, what is it, what is like your main thing that you would say? I 

Anna: don't know. All I can think of is like marriage. I. Which is just like not, you know, I, um, so I think that that just the, you know, that experience of that of. Of having one person that you're just like, you know, walking through and, and just the depth and the difficulty of it.

I just think I, I just didn't know, you know, I hope that now in our, now in our culture with like our podcast culture are like, inform people of everything culture. I wonder, I wonder what it'll be like for people that are stepping into like long-term relationships in their lives, if they'll be a little bit more equi better equipped than I personally felt for like, just how hard it can be. 

Zibby: Yeah. I was at an event recently and this I was, I made, had made some joke in my talk about, you know, the stress of having kids or something like that. And she like quite seriously said to me after, she's like, do you regret being a mom?

And I was like, no, of course, no. It's like the greatest thing in my life. And she's like, oh, okay. Because like, I don't know, I'm debating. And I was like, okay, great. And she's like, you know, a lot of people, there's this whole thing now of like regretting, you know, mo motherhood regrets or something like on TikTok.

And I was like, what? She's like, yeah. My whole feed is about moms who regret ever becoming moms. Did you know that this was happening? 

Anna: No, I didn't know that was happening. No,.. 

Zibby: I was, I'm like, TikTok can make people think anything. 

Anna: Yeah. 

Zibby: This is like the extinction of our species right there. I know you really can.

Anna: But I do think that's interesting 'cause it's like, I think I have a tendency too to joke about things that are like going on in my, I mean, 'cause to me that's where I really like connect with people. I'm like, okay, this is, this is hard. This is hard for you two. Let's laugh about it because it just is and, and so I think that especially.

I do that a lot with, with marriage, kind of within the context of writing and like boots my column, like things like that. And so I have wondered before if people take that of like, oh, you know, but I think it's good to be able to talk about the bad and the good and, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you wanna like unspool everything.

Zibby: Exactly. 

Anna: You know, it just means that you're trying to, I mean, a lot of times I feel like it's 'cause I'm trying to figure out how to go farther in. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Anna: Because my, everything in me is like, oh, Ron, but like, I want to figure this out, so,.. 

Zibby: And get advice. Right? 

Anna: Yeah. I feel like, and does anybody, anybody have suggestions?

Zibby: Yeah. Especially when we're not supposed to talk about marriage as much. 

Anna: Right. 

Zibby: You can't. It's not like it used to be and all of a sudden, you know? 

Anna: Right. 

Zibby: But yeah. When you think about all of the vignettes, are there favorites of yours or is there one that you're like, oh, thank God for this one, because this is the one that kept coming back to me in my head where I was like, someday I'll get this out or I really wanna get this one out, you know? 

Anna: So the vignettes are like. I think it's funny because a lot of people, and people can read them and take them as they want, but I think it, the way the book feels, it feels like it's kind of about my, my life specifically. And so I've gotten a lot of people being like, even though it's fiction, like kind of being like, but is it really?

You know? And I guess people always think that to an extent, you know? But I've gone back and looked at them because, 'cause really they're all such collages kind of, of I can even, I can pinpoint in so many like stories that close friends told me, or experiences that I had or like. One Easter Best is actually kind of based just on a picture that I have of like a childhood Easter by a large tree and like Charles, where we were living at the time.

And it just kind of, that picture, that image from my childhood had always been there. And then like a story just kind of grew out of it. So I think. I, I love the ones that are, that have like those kinds of visual images to me, like on learning is another one. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. I love that. 

Anna: I, I was like pulling something outta the oven two days ago and just like all of a sudden started.

They, because I do kind of have most of them memorized now. It just started running through my head and I was like, oh, I think this is a good sign that it's actually like really penetrated in me. You know? But I love the repetitive nature of unlearning. 'cause I think that that speaks to how we just kind of go through our days and we just don't even realize all the things that we're picking up or we're showing.

And it's not necessarily something to change, but I think just being aware of it. Adds kind of a, a depth and a beauty too, you know? 

Zibby: Totally. Oh my gosh. 

Do you have more, like, now that this has sold and finally you're like, yes, will this set the stage for future vignettes, or, I know I've been on your substack and everything, so I know you're constantly writing, but 

Anna: Yeah.

Yeah, I did. I started a substack that just, that sends out a vignette every two weeks because I mean, it's so, it's so awesome. Just to, I don't know, be able to, like, these things don't sit in our computers anymore. You know? I remember it's like,.. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Anna: Being, having written for a long time, it's like you just write things and you're like, is the world ever gonna see it?

And now it's like things like Substack. I just love being able to connect and send out vignettes more immediately to people. But, but I have been working on a larger book. It's about, um, grief and like everyday, like the everyday small griefs. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm. 

Anna: And it's more around this idea where this one's around, they will tell you.

Kind of is the beginning. This is around, um, it can happen like this. 

Zibby: Mm. 

Anna: With like grief and then like also the process of healing and how those two weave together. 

Zibby: Wow. 

Anna: And accidentally. 

Zibby: That's amazing. 

Anna: Yeah. I decided to tackle something super light and easy. Yeah, why not? 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Are there models, or maybe not models, but books that you take a lot of inspiration from and are they poetry?

There's something very poetic about this. I feel like you have like a Maggie Smith kind of vibe in a way. 

Anna: Oh, oh, I love Maggie Smith. Yeah, I do. I mean, I do. I read a lot of poetry. I read a lot of things that I don't write, you know, like, um, I read outside, I read a lot of, like nonfiction, I think nonfiction like theology.

There were, there were a lot of things like that that I was reading that I was really inspired by at the time. So I don't think it's necessarily, there's not one place that I go. I usually, my, my stack is usually just a total mix of like 18 different random things, and I could draw a line for you, but.. 

Zibby: Mm-hmm.

Anna: Like it probably wouldn't make sense to anyone else, you know? That's okay. I think that's what I love. I don't know. That's what I love about the library, I guess. 

Zibby: So how would you answer this today? They will tell you the world is yours, but.. 

Anna: They would just be. I don't know. I don't, I guess they would, they'd be trying to keep you from seeing the truth, you know?

I just, I think that that's how I view it as like a lot of things are just a big misdirect, you know, of keep you busy, keep you distracted, keep you running, and as opposed to like having goodness like right here.

Zibby: I love that. Oh my gosh. Anna, thank you so much. This is great. They will tell you the world is yours.

Congratulations, and I'm so glad that you showed us your weird side because it's pretty awesome. 

Anna: Thank you. 

Zibby: Okay. Thanks so much. Okay, bye-bye.