Zibby chats with author Marian Schembari about her warm, astutely observed, incandescently written, and unexpectedly hilarious memoir, A LITTLE LESS BROKEN: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole. Marian shares how an autism diagnosis at age 34 changed her life and then talks about the concept of “masking,” how common neurodivergence is in our society, and how important it is to offer neurodivergent individuals support without judgment. She and Zibby bond over how drained they feel after social situations, and Marian delves into her writing process and her next project.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Marian. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time To Read Books to discuss a little less broken, how an autism diagnosis finally made me whole. Congrats. 

Marian: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here, especially with you. I'm just like such a super fan.

So this is great for me. 

Zibby: You are? Aww. 

Marian: Yeah. 

Zibby: Well, your book was so good. I mean, so good. The way you tell both You basically share with the reader all this information about autism, but that's not even the point. But you, at the same time, you're educating us and giving us your whole story. It's like, I learned, I learned terms that I didn't even know, like spoons, like spoons and whatever.

I think it's so brilliant, by the way. I want to talk about that. 

Marian: You're going to use it all the time now, I promise. 

Zibby: I totally am. But also just the heartbreak of growing up and not understanding and misdiagnos I mean, Anyway, it had all the, it had all the good things. 

Marian: I'm so glad to hear that. 

Zibby: And you did a great job.

Really great job. 

Marian: Thank you. 

Zibby: So maybe I should back up. So for people who don't know what we're talking about. 

Marian: Yeah. 

Zibby: Give a little glimpse into the book and when you decided to make it a book and sort of the trajectory of it. of your experience. 

Marian: I feel like you actually already did an amazing job. 

Zibby: Okay, great.

Marian: It's about my autism diagnosis. Um, I was diagnosed autistic at 34 and I had absolutely no intention about writing, about writing about it at all. It felt like very private and personal, but then I did because, you when you're a writer, how can you not? And so I wrote like a very short essay about it for like this lifestyle website of all places.

And the comments just like blew up. It was like their most popular website of the month. And the comments were from a lot of autistic people who'd been diagnosed late in life, but they were also from people who were diagnosed with ADHD or sensory processing disorder or OCD or endometriosis, right? Just like all these women being like, yeah, when I got a name.

For the thing that I thought was broken about me, it completely unlocked my whole life, right? And through those comments, I really felt like there was so much more to the story, not just about me and, you know, like my little diagnosis, but just about the ways that Women and girls in general are like all marginalized genders are so we all kind of wear these masks, right?

There's this like term in the autism community called masking and it's especially important for women and girls where we you know go through our whole lives pretending to be something that we're not and that in particular for autistic people it feels really relevant to women just in general. So it felt it's both. So basically that's my very long answer to it is the story of my autism diagnosis It looks through the lens of my childhood and my first boyfriend and my college roommate and my employment history but it also kind of layers this how are women getting missed? Why do we only care about autistic boys?

And is it bigger than just autism? Is it also all you know, neurodivergence? So yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell. 

Zibby: Yeah, pretty much 

Marian: In a nutshell. 

Zibby: There were so many parts of this that, that broke my heart and then put it back together again. So you start the whole book from hiding in a closet while girls make fun of you and you are writing down the insults and being like, did I get that right?

Let me write this down. Which of course like breaks your heart as, um, as me.

Marian: It breaks my heart. It feels like you're talking about somebody else. Truly. Like it breaks my heart to hear you. I'm like, oh, that poor girl, 

Zibby: right? That poor girl. Should we do a little re parenting today, Marion? 

Marian: That'd be great.

Thank you. I literally, I have that notebook in my bookshelf right now. It's really depressing. 

Zibby: It's so sad. But then you go through all of this and then you get to a point where you finally meet people who get you more, like your roommate in college, and yet you're still relying on external markers. Like all the things, like it, I feel like this is like the sadness of the notebooks could be your subtitle, right?

Because then like you have her diary and you're, you know, like having to think through what are the things that annoy her about you and like, oh, right, this, oh, right, that. And like, it's like, trying to be so intentional, but then you get to like the blackboard and you come out of the notebook on writing on the blackboard with your husband and now it's like freeing and you're like accepted.

Marian: You make me sound like I did all of that on purpose and I did not, but that is such an interesting through line that you identified. Wow.

Zibby: Right? 

Marian: Thanks. That's how you make me sound smart. 

Zibby: Well, it's, you know, as I said, it's you who did this great arc of the story. How, when you're looking back, do you feel about, I mean, I know you said, like, you know, sadness for this little girl, but when you were writing the book and looking back on all the times, like, were there times that made you tear up thinking back?

Were there times where you're just like, I mean, I know there must have been, like, I wish this had been different, or I wish I had just known? 

Marian: It's so funny because I actually don't and I think that's part of the tricky piece about writing memoir is you are yourself as a character, right? Like you, you have to be.

And. I think I've even just hearing you say that it felt like, who was that girl? Like who, it feels totally different from me now as like an adult who has this knowledge. So like, absolutely I wish that I had known I was autistic when I was nine, right? That would have made things so much easier for myself, for my parents who like loved me and didn't understand me.

My relationship with my parents is completely different than what it was three years ago before my diagnosis. So absolutely. I wish things were different. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, I mean, it's so cheesy to say, but obviously, like, I wouldn't be the person I am without that. And I think that, I don't know, I just, I, I feel a distance and an empathy for, like, the Marion back then.

And it allows me, I think, to be gentler with myself now as an adult, knowing that I cannot change who I am and I, I am gonna have the reactions and the behaviors that I'm always gonna have. There's no changing that. So, yeah, I, I kinda, I, I've had to read through the book like 12 billion times and at this point, it feels like it's written by somebody else, even like the diary thing that you mentioned to like for context, there's like a chapter where I read my best friend slash college roommate's diary in college and it's like my deepest, darkest secret is it is the thing that I didn't even tell my therapist until like last year when I was like, Oh, I'm going to write about this in a book and somebody on TikTok left a review of the book and like, yeah, Lovely review.

And she mentions, oh, and Marion read her roommate's diary. And I was like, that's private, ma'am. Like, I just, the idea that like other people are going to be consuming this has not quite hit me yet. So like, ask me this in a month when the book's actually out. 

Zibby: The fact that people are talking about it on TikTok is a very good thing.

Marian: I guess, but I'm like, oh, but that's none of your business. That's why I'm not on TikTok. 

Zibby: You also had something really interesting because you traveled abroad and lived abroad and went to New Zealand and now I'm never going to go because I don't like bugs either. 

Marian: Oh my god. Stop it! 

Zibby: So that sounded like not so good.

But one thing you said in passing was how a lot of autistic people, and this happened to you, feel much more comfortable in another culture because you're not the only outsider. Like you're just different because you are from somewhere else. Like, tell me more about that. 

Marian: Honestly, that was the most interesting thing that I learned through this whole book, because while I was writing it, there were so many stories where I felt like, oh, I have to write about being locked in the closet in fourth grade, and I have to write about the diary, and I have to write about meeting my husband.

Like, there's all these different points that felt really important to tell. But I could not navigate this, or at least I couldn't marry this idea of being a highly, like, easily overstimulated person with the person who lived abroad for essentially a decade, I was like, how could I do that? How could I completely fall apart in college, where I'm like, almost failing out of school, to like, traipsing around New Zealand with like, me and like, 60 strangers?

And so, I had this gap in the book. I had this many year gap where I was like, okay, I'm just not going to write about this because it doesn't fit with this narrative. And that's when I asked Sarah Hendricks, who's this like amazing, brilliant autistic activist in the UK. She's written like a billion books.

I love her. 

And so I called her and I asked her, I was like, I cannot marry these two things. And she's like, Marion, like, I am autistic and I live in France, but I'm not French. In France, I'm not autistic, I'm just foreign. And that, that phrase, I'm just foreign, just, like, hit me like a ton of bricks. Like, oh, like, no wonder I had spent all this time living abroad.

I couldn't stay in one place. I kept having to make new friends. Because I'm terrible at making friends and socializing, so like, of course, every six months, I wanted to reinvent myself and live in this new country, because in New Zealand, I wasn't harsh or moody or oversensitive or all the different terrible names that I had called myself, I was just me, just an American and that's okay. So my weirdness was like easily brushed off by being a foreign person and now that I know that the more autistic people I talk to are like, oh yeah, I lived abroad for like a decade or two decades or I still live abroad now because all of my like quote unquote bad habits are brushed off as being like, oh, she's just not from this place and that's why she's weird.

Zibby: And then you wonder why they think Americans are a certain way. 

Marian: Yeah, 100%. 

Zibby: I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm totally kidding. And that's not even what people think about Americans. They think, you know, we're, I don't know, input your own, whatever, stereotypes of us American folk, you know, traipsing all over Europe.

That's so funny. When you met your husband, you had this heartbreaking moment again in the bathroom where, you know, you were gonna have to have eye contact with him and you were like, I can't do that. Eye contact is the hardest, which by the way, you're doing now, which is like, you know. 

Marian: I'm actually looking at your, this is like fun fact, video calls.

I hate video calls, number one. But number two, it's an easily fixable thing because I, it looks like I'm looking at you, but I'm not. Actually, I'm looking at a screen. It's just a different vibe. Um, also I look at people's ears a lot. That's like my pro tick. Earrings, ears, tip of nose. Interesting. Fun fact.

Zibby: Do you like my earrings? 

Marian: I do like your earrings. I noticed them immediately. I was like, great hoops. 

Zibby: Thank you. Are yours hoops or they're just lines? I can't tell. 

Marian: No, they're actually weird. They're like sea. 

Zibby: They're like feathers.

Marian: I got, I was, I was influenced by like a Pinterest ad. 

Zibby: Yeah, they're cool. I really like them. Okay. What was they say? 

Marian: Husband, bathroom. 

Zibby: Husband eye contact and you're in the bathroom and you were like, I don't think I can do this. You had already moved in. You were totally in love. And you're like, I, once you see the real me, you're not going to love me anymore.

And he was like, no, I am. And I'm here. And that was amazing. But like, take me back to that moment. Do you feel like didn't writing about that, like break your heart? 

Marian: Yeah. It's so funny because now my husband is like my biggest, it's hard to think of him. I love him so much. He's the best. He's kind of like my caretaker a little bit and that sounds like a weird thing to say. And, and sometimes I worry that he has to take care of me more than I take care of him. But looking back on, you know, me at 26, not ever really having any sort of like, authentic relationship because I was constantly trying to be somebody else. And the first six months that Elliot and I were together, yeah, I did all the things.

I went to him, I went with him to a concert and we'd like go running through San Francisco and we'd like go out for drinks at night. And like, I'm fucking miserable because I hate all those things, but I thought I needed to be like this cool girl. And so when he kept saying, well, I love you and I'm not going to leave. And like, it's okay. Like we don't have to do X, Y, or Z. I'd be like, yeah, but you don't really know the real me. 

So I think I got very lucky because I think We got married, we got married before I knew I was autistic. We got married before I'd ever, like, fully revealed myself to him, I think. And so it could have gone very badly, but it didn't, somehow.

And he's only become, at this point, like, even just, I had this in the book, but I took it out because it was getting too long, but. Like, a couple years ago, we were at our daughter's, like, kindergarten, like, meet the teachers and meet other kids at the playground. And so we did that, and it was so overwhelming.

It was just, like, too many kids screaming, too many things I'm supposed to do, and I just had this shut down. And so we get home, and we're having lunch, and my parents are there, and I'm having to force through and socialize and all these different things. And he just, like, looks at me, and he's like, go upstaIrs. And that, like, little, like, he's constantly giving me permission to, like, do the thing that I know I already need to do.

And I don't know. It could have, it could have gone in a terrible direction. And so I think that makes me sadder than, like, looking back on that because it, it turned out so well. He is so, like, do you need me to lay on top of you? Do you need, like, your whatever stimulation? Do you need me to get you something?

Do you need quiet? Let me take our daughter out for the, you know, like, he's just,.. 

Zibby: Wow. 

Marian: He's the best.

Zibby: By the way, the, I feel the same way about the kindergarten, meet the parents, whatever. 

Marian: It's terrible. 

Zibby: Yeah, it's a lot. A lot of the school events I find to be a lot and trying to, you know, I love, I mean, I really like everybody one on one, but it's a lot in a group. 

Marian: It's just for like kids who are trying to, I mean, I could go off on all tangent about this, but truly like back to school night at my daughter's school is my worst nightmare.

And every year I'm trying, okay, I put my earplugs in, I put sunglasses on, so I don't have to deal with eye contact or bright lights. We'll go exactly when our teacher meeting is or whatever, but like, it doesn't matter. It's whatever, 300 people in that, that like echoey school hallway screaming. All these different activities.

And I'm like, I can't meet the teacher like this. Like, I can't hear what she's saying. And my daughter gets so disappointed now that I can't go. And it's just, it's stupid. And I wish we would, I wish schools were a little bit more sensory friendly. 

Zibby: Interesting. Actually, I feel like your depiction of sort of over sensory stimulation was better than any I have read, because you were talking even about brushing your hair.

And I've read a lot about autism for various, whatever, I'm very interested, and, you know, I've heard other descriptions, but the way, and I wonder, I think I dog eared this page, the way you had described, even just, well, describe it now. Putting you on the spot, you know, what you were saying, like, you know, you have the stickiness of the hair product and you have the sound and then you have the brushing of the hair against your shoulders and like, you know, don't get you started on clothes, right?

It's just like all the things like if we could all imagine that like every hair follicle was speaking to us, like how that would drive us all mad and realize that like And that is what's going on here. I feel like people would have a lot more understanding, right? It's like. 

Marian: Yeah. I just don't understand how people can go through life doing the things that we're all expected to do, like, every day.

And like, if I'm going to, like, take this interview. I wanted to look nice. I knew we were going to be on camera. So I had to, like, do all these things. 

Zibby: I'm sorry. 

Marian: Like, no, no, no, this, I'm so thrilled to do it. And I feel cute and I'll go out and do something in the world today. I don't know. Well, actually, I probably, that's sorry.

That's just a lie. I'm not going to. Because it took a lot of, like, it took a lot of, like, sensory, like, sensation of washing my face. I hate washing my face because it's the water and then it goes down your arms and it just feels like I can't, I don't even know how to explain it. I feel like I did a better job in the book, but those things, washing your face so that stuff is going down your arms or putting like acne medication or makeup and then your face has like this, this like viscous kind of texture that's always on it or cutting your hair, blow drying your hair. I have curly hair. So when I brush it, which I know I'm not supposed to do, but whatever, when I brush it, it feels like all these little needles, like each hair follicle is a needle that's like tapped into my head. And then it's being like dragged down my scalp. 

And that's just like one thing, right? So to do all those things before a speaking engagement or an event or back to school night or whatever, means that then that thing is all I can do that day. Like, after this, I will wash my face and it's going to be fucking terrible to like get all this shit off my face and then I'm just going to like lie down and not talk to anybody in like a dark room for the rest of the day.

And I just don't understand how people can do this and then go out and like go to work or teach in front of, you know, 30 students. And obviously I know these people are not necessarily neurodivergent, which is, you know, part of the part of it and why I wrote a book. But I also just feel like, I do continue to do these things because it's, like, expected of me, like, as a woman, right?

Like, I've had so many conversations with people about this lately that, like, if I were to show up to something like this with, like, my shitty, like, my messy bun falling over and, like, no makeup and wearing, like, my old ratty t-shirt, people are not going to take me as seriously. My husband could do it. My husband could show up to something like this in his normal clothes, but, like, it's harder for a woman to do that without being judged or being deemed unprofessional.

So this is all these, like, gendered layers on top of that is, like, the things that I find sensory, like, nightmares are expected of me and I have to choose whether to continue to participate in these things while being like physically uncomfortable or say fuck it and be my authentic self, but like it's hard.

It's not it's not black or white and sometimes they make different choices on different days depending on my capacity, but the sensory stuff is hard. It's like it's a hard to be in a very noisy world, but part of this whole thing is that, well, now I know, right? Now I can actively make those choices without feeling like there's something wrong with me.

Or I can create a life for myself, and to be fair, there's like a lot of privilege here, and like, you know, I've gotten very lucky, but like, I can have my own office space that is quiet and is surrounded by trees, and I have a job where I can work from home so I don't have to be in an office, and I chose to only have one child because children are sensory leeches. So, you know, I've also made a lot of choices to try to mitigate that as much as possible. 

Zibby: Interesting. Wow. I mean, how many people do you think are undiagnosed? Like what percent? Like millions? 

Marian: Yeah, uh, millions probably. I, I think, it's so hard to say, oh, it's so complicated and it's so hard to say, but I can't remember the exact number.

It's like, I think it's like 1 in 36 right now is autistic, and that's up from like 1 in 40 a couple years ago. And I would say this is based on no science at all. 

Zibby: Yeah, that's fine. 

Marian: I feel like a quarter of people are neurodivergent in some way. Most people I know, and part of it is like, I'm in a creative field and most of the people I know are also kind of hermits in their house, have ADHD or OCD or are autistic or just identify with the term neurodivergent regardless of an actual specific diagnosis.

And there's a quote, it's in the book and I don't have it handy, but Katherine May said something really beautiful. Oh my god, I'm obsessed with her. In, in her book, The Electricity of Every, Every Living Thing, about her autism diagnosis in her 40s, I think. She talks about how she might not have been so strange in a previous time.

So part of what she finds over stimulating is the hot, loud sound of a hairdryer, uh, kids screaming at like a local school, the constant pinging of her phone, right? The things that are like available to us in like, our modern times might make us more obvious than we might have been centuries ago. Again, based on science, but I love that.

I love the way she described that because when I think about my perfect life or the least aggressive life on my nervous system, it's a lot of like living in a hut, woods and not talking to people, which might've been okay. It's just, it's not really now for me, but I don't know. Interesting. In another life.

Zibby: I noticed that you had quoted Catherine May and I hadn't read that book of hers. I read Wintering and the next one that came out.

Marian: Enchantment. Enchantment. 

Zibby: Enchanted. Enchanted. Had her on my podcast. Anyway, she's now I need to go back and read that book. 

Marian: Um. It's very good. Her description of sensory stuff is unreal.

Zibby: So what can, and by the way, I should have addressed your, what you have to do to recover from this interview, and I feel, like, very guilty about it. 

Marian: Oh my god, no! Don't feel guilty, I'm so thrilled to be here. 

Zibby: I would not have cared, and by the way, I have had men show up disheveled, some, one man came on, like, having just woken up and was 20 minutes late, and basically in his pajamas, and I noticed just FYI. Like, I'm not gonna not notice that about men. You know, I feel like.. 

Marian: Good. I'm so glad to hear that. No, you should not feel guilty at all. And my, I, one thing I really loved about my publishers is from the very first phone call with them, they said, what do you need on this phone call? Is it okay for multiple people to show up or would you prefer to do it one on one?

Is Zoom okay or can we do phone? And ever since that first call, I have only done phone with my editor. Just and they have always been so accommodating and they asked right before because I'm about to go on like a six city tour and tv interviews and like all the things and they asked do you want to do this stuff or not and the fact that they asked was amazing and I want to like I genuinely want to do this stuff and I do love talking to people and I do like feeling put together and I know I'm good.

There's going to be a recovery time after that, but now I can make these like informed decisions in a way that I couldn't three years ago. So it's not a bad thing at all. And I'm thrilled to be here. 

Zibby: What can people do? Because I'm sure a lot of people listening and out there know somebody who's autistic or neurodivergent in some way, love somebody or are caring for somebody or whatever.

What do you need the most or what should people know who are not neurodivergent living in a world with neurodivergent people to make life better? 

Marian: I think there are two things. Number one, if you're close to a person, and even if you're not like, like Flatiron, my publisher, they literally just asked, what do you need on this call? Is this okay? And I actually didn't need anything in that moment. But the fact that they asked, because at the time I'd been spoken to like a bunch of publishers. And after they asked that, I was like that one. Like that's the, those are the people that I want to work with because they were the only ones to be like, what do you need?

So that's number one is literally like, are you okay? Like. In the book, not to like spoil anything, but there's a scene with my mother where she's like, are you having a meltdown? Do you want to leave? And I was like, Yeah, I do. for asking, because it's hard to like constantly be giving yourself permission to ask for what you need, especially as a woman when we're constantly told not to be bossy or rude or bitchy or whatever.

And so just being asked, do you need to leave? Do you need this? Do you need fewer people? So simple, very easy to give folks what they need. So that's number one. Number two, and this is like hard for people because I think that they don't know that they do it. But one of the things that I, this is such a silly thing, but like in my twenties, I, I needed a lot of downtime.

I needed a lot of quiet. I went to bed early and it was like a running joke in my front. Like of my friends at the time that I was a grandma and any time we were out, I'd start to like shut down a little bit and get really serious and people thought that I didn't like them and so they'd make fun of me.

Be like, ah, Marianne's like gotta go her bedtime again. Brr brr brr brr brr. And it's silly because it's kids in their 20s like teasing each other, but like it, it, messed with my head a lot. It made me feel like I wasn't any fun, that I didn't deserve to have friends. It was part of that, the language that I used to talk about myself, that I wasn't fun.

And like, teasing people for like, just being who they are. I mean, I sound like a kindergarten teacher, but like, it, it makes a huge difference when people I don't know. It's, it's a hard, it's a hard thing to, like, tell people, like, don't make fun of each other. It's so stupid. 

Zibby: It's not stupid. 

Marian: It's so nice, like, now, and again, I'm, like, older, and my friends are, like, a lot more subdued than my friends in my 20s, but, like, I'll go out with two mom friends that I know, and at, like, 9 o'clock, I'll start to shut down, and instead of being like, oh, Marion needs her bedtime again, they're like, oh, like, Time for bed, like we'll see you tomorrow or whatever and like that just like that understanding it feels like I'm being seen and it it feels like I'm still like a valuable member of this friend group and we went out to an event a couple weeks ago it was like an overnight and afterwards they were like you did really great like good job I know that was really hard for you to like be in a room with all those people you did great just like oh people being nice to me and like seeing me for who I am and not making me feel bad like truly, it, it sucks to be teased about the same thing over and over and over again and to like, I don't know, don't be a dickhead, I guess.

You're going to have to bleep so much of this part because.. 

Zibby: I'm not bleeping. I'm not going to bleep. I'm, I'm not bleeping. This is, this is great. This is great. So, in addition to learning all of this about yourself and sharing it, you have accomplished writing this memoir, which in and of itself is a huge accomplishment. So what advice do you have for aspiring authors and what else about the process of writing would you like to share? 

Marian: This is my favorite topic. I love, I love listening to writers talk about writing, especially because I just want people to be like really specific instead of like talking generalities.

I feel like a lot of your guests, Catherine Newman in particular, you had Catherine Newman on a few weeks ago. Oh, so good. And just like so specific about like, here are the things I struggled with, and here's what comes easy for me. So anyway, my favorite topic, I feel like I cannot give advice because this fell in my lap.

The book deal fell in my lap. My agent fell in my lap. I was not querying for like 10 years. I think I wrote and sold my book in four weeks. Sorry, not wrote the book. I wrote the proposal and sold the book in four weeks. No, it took me a lot longer to write the book. So, uh, you know, part of it is that I think this fell into my lap, so I don't know that side of publishing at all. And I, I really think being paid for your work before you do it is great. You know, like I think that we dismiss that a lot that like, Oh, I should have been able, this should have been my like deep passion. And I should have woken up at 5am every day before my day job to right before my daughter wakes up and just hustle like that.

And then eventually you'll get it published. That just, like, wasn't how I was going to do this. Like, I think writing this book was my day job. I got paid to do it, and then I quit my regular day job so that I could do it. I could not have done this on top of parenting and on top of trying to earn money.

So I, I just feel like there's this, like, expectation that all writers need to be these like passionate artists and that's the only way to do it. But I really don't want to discount the like privilege that comes with getting paid before a book is written. Like, I don't know what else to say about that, but I do, I think because of that, it definitely instilled some very good habits in me that I hope to take to the next book, which nobody is paying me to write. 

Zibby: So what is that? 

Marian: Well, Oh, the next book you mean? Oh, I'm writing about abortion. It's fun, but nobody's paid me to do it. But I have these habits now where I get to where I'm like, okay, well, like this is my job and I have a deadline.

So every day I must sit down at my computer and I can't schedule a doctor's appointment for 9am because if I do that, my like energy and creativity is gone. So eight to around 12 is like my sacred. It's not really sacred. I just sit down and I turn off my phone and I write for four hours, and that's it.

If I can do that, I can write a book. If I can outline and do the whole shitty first draft thing, I can write a book. So I learned a lot about my, the things that I need to write a book that were not out there from like other authors and their advice and one of them was money. And the second one was a super strict day job style writing routine.

And the third was, I now know that I am a plotter. Like I have to, I have to have it completely outlined. Writing the proposal was really, really valuable for me because I had to do the whole chapter outline. I had to outline what I was going to do in every chapter. And I thought, I don't know why I thought this, but I thought that people just sat down and wrote an outline in a day.

I don't know where I got that like 24 hour thing from. But it took me a month, it took a month of sitting down and be like, this chapter is going to be about this. And this chapter is going to be about this and many chapters got deleted. And having that outline allowed me to then, okay, I've got however many chapters, I've got 20 chapters.

That's if I do a chapter a week, I can get a first draft done in six months or whatever. I'm not doing math very well right now, but basically that's just kind of how I did. It was like with a lot of rigidity and a lot of structure and like, through that, there was still a lot of, like, creativity and going off in crazy directions and tangents, but, like, having that framework allowed me to be, to follow through on it.

Whereas, um, how many half finished books do I have sitting on my desktop that I never followed through on because I didn't have those things beforehand. 

Zibby: Amazing. Marion, thank you so much. I hope you Thank you so much. Have a peaceful afternoon resting in the dark. I wish I could do that, but I'm rushing to school pickup and then passport agency and then after school and, you know, whatever. Work. When you're like, how do these people do these things? Like, and I'm like, she wouldn't feel like my day, You know this would not work for you. ? 

Marian: No. 

Zibby: Living my life. 

Marian: I think even you just talking about it, I'm like deeply exhausted my bones. 

Zibby: Yeah. I'm sorry. I won't even, I won't even to talk. 

Marian: But are you deeply exhausted?

Like do you feel like.. 

Zibby: Not at all. 

Marian: Not.

Zibby: No. No. 

Marian: Are you neurotypical, is that okay to ask? 

Zibby: I think so. I don't know. 

Marian: My god. 

Zibby: I think part of me does all these interviews 'cause I'm like, well maybe I'm this, maybe I'm that. I don't know. I dunno what I am. I don't know what I am, but I found something I love and now I'm like, call in and, you know, whatever, but yeah.

Marian: If I go to the grocery store, I want to die. The grocery store. I can't. I'd come home and I'd die. 

Zibby: I mean, I don't know. I think I've alsowell, anyway. 

Marian: Our brains are different. I mean.. 

Zibby: Our brains are different. But I have finally realized, like, I don't think I like going out to dinner. This is not good news to my husband.

Marian: No knowledge. 

Zibby: But I'm just like, I always want to leave. And as soon as I get there, I'm like, let's order. And like, let's get out of here. And then I'm like, maybe I just don't like it. 

Marian: Maybe you just don't like it. And that's okay. Oh my god, I love that. I love that knowledge for you. 

Zibby: Ridiculous. Not quite as groundbreaking as figuring out exactly who you are.

But, you know, we all do our stuff. Anyway, Marianne, thank you so much. 

Marian: And this was so fun. Thank you. 

Zibby: This was so fun. Thank you so much. I'm really rooting for you. I can't wait to see what happens. 

Marian: I will see you. I will see you. 

Zibby: I will see you. Okay.