Debut novelist Meredith Turits joins Zibby to discuss JUST WANT YOU HERE, a riveting, honest, and incisive novel about love, lust, self-discovery, and the complications of youth. Meredith reveals the inspiration behind her protagonist, Ari, who navigates heartbreak, an impulsive move to Boston, and a complicated entanglement with her boss and his wife. She also reflects on her unexpected career path (she was the founding editor of Bustle!), her ten-year journey to publication, and the novel that almost was.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Meredith.

Thanks so much for coming on Totally Booked to talk about Just Want You Here. Congratulations. 

Meredith: Thank you. It's still a little surreal. 

Zibby: Tell listeners what your book is about. I. I'll put your spot really fast.

Meredith: Okay. 

Zibby: Right outta the gate. 

Meredith: So I think of it kind of as a second chance coming of age story. It's about a girl named Ari.

She's 28, has been engaged for a couple years to her high school sweetheart. They've been together for a decade and the book opens with him breaking up with her and she is left without a compass. She has no idea what to do, so she kind of blows up her life. Moves to Boston and quickly gets in an affair with her new boss.

And, um, then he, uh, she gets very, uh, closely entwined with his wife. And so the story is sort of about finding yourself trying to do as little harm as possible and, you know, looking at desire and love and kind of what we, what we do to, you know, find ourselves in that. 

Zibby: Love it. And we have the same editor with Carmen Johnson, who I love.

Meredith: She is just the best. I think, you know, the thing about Carmen is she really saw into the soul of this book, honestly, in a way that I hadn't yet. Mm. Um, and the work we did just made it so much better and so much more real. Um, I feel really grateful. 

Zibby: Aw, well, I feel like you did a particularly good, well, you did a good job with everything but this, this feeling where your life is pulled out from underneath you, like a rug being snatched out.

And what do you do in every when the, when the world just feels so wobbly. And how do you write yourself? And sometimes you, you don't get up all the way, right. You make mistakes and you're, you know, halfway there, but you're trying, and I feel like that's what makes your character so sympathetic, right? You, you, you root for her even though she's doing things that maybe you don't necessarily think are the quote unquote right things, and that she doesn't think are the quote unquote right things, but we understand it, right?

Yeah. Was that part of the goal, or tell me about that. 

Meredith: Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know. For me, I'm really interested in these second chances. Like I was saying, you know, you feel like your life is going to go a certain way and you are, you know, ready to follow this linear path and then everything kind of explodes and you have no compass.

And the things that you thought were gonna work out don't necessarily. And I think you have to really think about your life in a different way and take chances and gonna cross your fingers that they work out. And if and when they don't, you gotta pivot. Mm-hmm. And so I think that was one thing that I was really excited.

Excited about exploring with Ari. She thought things were gonna, you know, work out in a really linear, linear way, and they absolutely did not. 

Zibby: Has your life taken a turn that you didn't expect? 

Meredith: I think so, you know, I lived in the city. I thought I was gonna be, you know, the, the Brooklyn for life. I grew up in the suburbs and I just got to a point where my life didn't fit there.

Um, and I moved back to the suburbs like three miles from where I grew up. I live in Connecticut now and just sort of didn't. Didn't think I would be that person. And you know, moving away from the city, I figured out what my priorities were and was able to put my life together in a way that made a lot more sense for me.

And I think, you know, having that change and sort of being like, all right, I'm gonna try something. You know, we'll see how it works out. That was something that definitely, you know, resonated with me in the book. 

Zibby: So I read that you wrote a lot of this at Sterling Library at Yale, where I have also done a bunch of work in the past.

Tell me about that and your process of writing this book and how you got this done and, and why now? Why did you decide to write it at this time? I. 

Meredith: So I had been working on a book for 10 years before this, and we finally went out with it and got this close to selling it and then did not. And it was devastating.

It was, you know, I put my heart and soul into this book. This was a story I had to tell, and all of a sudden it wasn't out there like we thought it might be. And so I thought about what was next, and while I was. Thinking. Um, I have this story that I just sort of started casually writing, and all of a sudden it just took over.

It was the only thing I can think about. And my writing process is very absorptive. It's pretty manic. Um, I don't sleep when I'm writing, and I just got into this groove that I, I never had with the book before. And the draft came together in six months, which is just like mind blowing, considering it took me 10 years to get the other one together.

So I had a draft in six. Months. I sent it to my agent, but at the same time, I got into the Yale Writers Workshop, which is a week of really intense work on the Yale campus, which I'm about 45 minutes from. And I had, you know, 10 people introduced to this character that no one had met before. And it was just so interesting to see them latch onto her and understand her immediately.

And I was like, oh, I, I have something here that I just didn't have with, with the first book. 

Zibby: Wait, so what was the first book about? 

Meredith: The first book was about a very rough marriage. It was a woman who was about 10 years younger than, um, a man she'd met. And he kind of brought her into this life that she really didn't wanna live.

Uh, she wanted to live in the city and, you know, do young people things. And he was set on, you know, working in finance in the suburbs, having a family, and she found herself really suffocated by this marriage that became abusive, you know, and it, it was tough to swallow. And, you know, the, the market was not.

Super looking for stories that were suffocating and emotional and in ways abusive, especially right after Covid, you know? And so it's definitely not the market forces. Like I stumbled over the book a lot. You can tell them the prose when you go back to it, but it wasn't the right fit for me. It wasn't the right fit for the market.

And then all of a sudden I had this new book, um, this new idea that I didn't even know would be a book and just everything about it. Clicked in terms of timing and my writing and my process and the market, and it just ended up where it needed to be. 

Zibby: That's amazing. Yeah. I mean, I know everybody has a novel in a drawer, but like.

My novel in a drawer was like, that represented so much pain, you know? Yeah. It's not just like an inanimate object. It's like, oh, there were, look at all those hours that are now just like on these pages in my cabinet. Do you know what I mean? Like that was so much time, but you could never have written the next book had you not written the first book.

So I try to remind myself of that, and I'm sure you do as well. Like it all works out if, but. You know, sometimes it 

Meredith: does. And I really believe in that. You know, that book I rewrote from scratch eight times. My husband was just, is just like, you just keep throwing it out and writing it from scratch. Like why don't you edit it?

And I was like, Nope. That's just what I'm doing. And I must have written hundreds of thousands of words. And even actually before, you know, the new project I'm working on, I wrote 200 pages of a new book and I sent it to my agent and she was like. This is great. It's not your book. And I had kind of, I plucked two characters from that, you know, a hundred thousand words that I had written.

And they're the, you know, I, I learned about them through that draft and now I have a, a fun draft I'm working on, and I think you never. Throw out words. Mm-hmm. They just live in you kind of a different way, even if they don't live between the covers of a book. Right. 

Zibby: Yeah. Although I'm always like, well, is there anything I could cut and paste to just like speed this next draft along, even a scene, even like five lines of dialogue, and then I'll spend so much more time looking for a discarded, five lines of dialogue that I could have just like easily rewritten it.

But it's like, it's like the, you know, the principle of the thing. 

Meredith: But that's fair too, because it's like if you write a line that sticks with you, like maybe it does belong in the new draft. Right. You know, you are like, oh, that's the distillation of the feeling that I want on the page. And maybe it's in a different context, maybe a different character is saying it, but like, if that thing reads true to you mm-hmm.

Like put it back on the page and see if it fits, you know? 

Zibby: Yeah. So what did you wanna be when you grew up, when you were young? Did you always wanna be a writer? Like where, how did your life path take you here? 

Meredith: I think I, I was not one of those children who was like doctor, lawyer, astronaut. I was just always a writer.

And I think as you. Kind of go through life and you figure out like, Hey, that can be a career. Um, I just kind of started following that path. I'm a journalist by trade. Um, I started in digital journalism and women's magazines at Glamor. Um, I founded a website called Bustle. Um, and now I am in sports business journalists.

A journalism, and I think what's been cool is that from a path perspective, I was able to just learn about myself through writing and that was the right path for me. Whether it was fiction or whether it's, you know, writing about hockey, which was what I do to pay the bills. 

Zibby: So you founded Bustle, like the bustle, like bustle.

Mediocre bustle, yeah. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Yes. 

Meredith: It started in my studio apartment, basically. It was a lot of right place, right time. Uh, fifth employee, first editorial hire. And I just remember sitting in my studio apartment in Park Slope, like resetting the router. 'cause there were way too many, there were like five of us trying to like build a website on it, you know?

And I stepped back and I'm like, oh, that was, that was really cool to be a part of. 

Zibby: Wow. That's amazing. I mean, it's grown so much and. To be at the beginning and have shaping a content site, like that's really awesome. Wow. Thank you. Yeah. Very cool. I'm hoping that you didn't have a, a boss, like, well, you were kind of the boss at the time, but have you had these types of experience or are you drawing more from the Me Too movement in general?

Not that it was that, 'cause it was consensual, but I don't know, blah, blah, blah. Anyway. 

Meredith: I think desire is just what I wanted to mine and I, you know, I think in college it was, had this like. Weird, emotional something or other with a man who was 14 years older than me and it never went anywhere. But it taught me a lot about desire and kind of things you shouldn't have and how this like incredible feeling that Burns is compatible and incompatible with, you know, something that that is just not gonna pan out.

And I think it was really interesting to kind of pop inside Ari's head and be like. Well, what if it did happen? Mm-hmm. And what does permission look like and what does longing look like and how can and can't it live in your life? 

Zibby: I kind of wanna know more about what happens to Morgan after the book. 

Meredith: Me too 

Zibby: funny.

Where did his story end 

Meredith: up? So the funny thing about Morgan is I was most comfortable inside his voice of the Four voices and he has the fewest pages. Mm-hmm. He only has two sections and I just. I just so spend so much time with him in my head, still in the post publication process because I love him. I connect to him and I just didn't get a chance to explore.

So, you know, for me, I think it's really important that readers take what they take from the end. Mm-hmm. You know, including the path of Morgan. But like, I have the same questions. I really wanna know what happens to him too. 

Zibby: I think it was like the Cocoa Puffs that endeared me to him. Like, and how he was embarrassed to eat them in front of his friends.

I mean, that's, that's sweet too. I don't know. Very funny. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And I also, you know, when she, I don't think this is too much of a spoiler. What? I mean, I don't think it is, but when Ari goes to Morgan's mom, Kathy's funeral and, you know, she can barely stand seeing Morgan so upset and she ends up leaving without.

Saying anything or you know that wanting to do right again and not knowing the right thing and not even sometimes being able to. Do the right thing or you know, socially appropriate or whatever. That moment. And also the loss of someone who was so important to her in her own life too, I felt like was such a poignant scene.

Meredith: Thank you. And it's funny 'cause I rewrote that a lot. You did. Um, one of the things, yeah. One of the things that Carmen pointed out, I'm trying to think. She never went to the funeral in the first draft, in the draft that sold to Carmen. And she was like, that's not Ari. Um, she wouldn't do that. And um, a reader wouldn't believe that she would do that.

And I was like. Hmm, I think you're right. And I think, you know, Kathy was a mother figure to her, her home life was bad to her mother, um, was so distant from her. She's not even named in the book. You don't even know what her name is. And I think thinking about, I. You know, this idea of what is right and doing as little harm as possible and, you know, balancing sort of how you hurt or do not hurt others while taking care of yourself.

Um, that moment was really interesting to me because she was there as much as she could be, you know, and it really felt more like ra to do that instead of having her. Not show up. Right? 

Zibby: Yes. I also felt the pain of her broken ankle and the surgery needed and that whole mess very acutely as well. And honestly, the future sort of medical related stuff, which I won't go into, you know, but all of that felt so moving and real and you could like feel all that pain as well.

Meredith: Thank you. Um, it's funny, it's funny, I guess it is what it is, but my mother uh, fell down our front steps on Christmas Eve, oh no. A couple years ago and she broke her ankle and I was like, Hmm, I guess I'm gonna take this. 'cause I knew all the details of healing and all that. And it's funny 'cause she is one of my earliest readers.

She always is. And I was like, there's gonna be something in here that's like. A little familiar to you. And she got there and she's like, are you kidding? So, and that was taken from personal experience as well. Um, and then I had an absolutely wonderful friend, um, named Cy Tha Chen, who is a cardiologist.

She literally works with heart transplants. She's just like this incredible human being who actually read an early draft to make sure that, you know, the medical stuff was believable. And even, you know, Luke and summer as doctors. You know, that that fell into place, and I think I'm so fortunate to have these readers who are invested in drafts before they even, you know, become books.

Yeah. 

Zibby: That's smart. I know you, you mentioned Lu, how he's like on his feet 10 hours a day or something like that. It's like, I'm just thinking wow. Like it's not enough that they're geniuses. Right. They also have to like, I don't even stand up. I haven't stood up in hours. 

Meredith: My husband made me a, um, like hack together, this standing desk for me.

He like bought a standing desk and kind of adhered it to my regular desk and he was like, you are in front of the computer all the time. Like when I am not writing for my job, I'm writing fiction. And he was just like, you have to stand. 

Zibby: Yeah. It's so true. I mean, sometimes I'm like, my knees are cracking. I feel like I'm much, much older than you, but like, I feel like.

I'm not like the, the, the creeks and cracks. This is not good. Not good at all. So wait, tell me a little more about your day job and the type of writing or editing and all of that that you have to do, and how does that type of journalism inform narrative fiction? 

Meredith: So I currently am in sports business. So basically that's looking at like, not like reporting on the score of the game.

It's sort of like what is the sports doing to grow? Or what were the ratings? Mm-hmm. Or who's hosting what. And so it's a really, really different part of my brain and I think I have always. Considered journalism as a different part of my brain. I've kind of gone in and out of writing journalism versus editing journalism and I think it's interesting 'cause I think a lot of people are like, oh, you're constantly writing isn't exhausting.

And for me they've just never been the same thing. It's just, you know, part of your brain A and you. Turn off the journalism when you want to go to part of your brain. B, you know, that said, anything you put on the page, anytime you spend time with your writing or even anybody else's writing, you are constantly learning.

So, you know, even if I think from a compositional perspective, they are two totally different worlds. Just just that, that muscle and kind of how I was talking about like you never actually like throwing out words. It just builds and builds and builds. 

Zibby: Did you have someone in mind? Like was there a visual for you for some of these characters, like actors or actresses, like I'm thinking in particular of Leah and you know what it is to be this like jilted wife, but she doesn't feel like some sort of Dowdy wife that you would think of in like old, you know, eighties literature, something like that.

You know what I mean? 

Meredith: Like hot wife who's got her own stuff going. Yeah. Thank you. That's, 

Zibby: that's, I guess I could have just said that. 

Meredith: It's funny because I am not a real like film watcher. Like I watch television, but everyone actually makes fun of me that they're like, oh, you've seen like. You know, insert classic movie here that literally every human has seen.

And I'm just like, what's that? So, so it's funny because like these characters have always just been very visual to me outside of kind of, you know, who people are on screen, you know, that's. Said, I think of Wells as like a Theo James. I loved Light Lotus, of course, and uh, a little obscure, but search party, of course, I can't think of the name of the extremely tall blonde character, but like that, that was Luke.

And it's interesting because they are a lot more visual to me in terms of like somebody tangible in the outside world than the women. The women just like. Are fully formed to me, and they just are their own people, which is interesting. 

Zibby: Wow. Yeah, I feel like I always have to have some sort of general reference point to describe someone.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. So what advice do you have for aspiring authors? 

Meredith: I think. It's important to examine the feeling inside yourself as you're writing. The best writing advice I ever got was from Meg Waller, who, a billion years, I interviewed her for a publication called Book Slut. That doesn't exist anymore.

And we were just kind of casually talking. And one thing she said to me, and this, this feels so obvious, but she said to me. If you are reading back your work and you skip something on the page, whether you're like, oh, I've read this a million times, or you know, I know how the scene works, or whatever. If you physically skip something on the page, the reader is gonna do it too.

So I think that's a really important thing to think about. And you know, I think about the 10 years that it took me to struggle on that first novel. Right. And something just like. It was off and I had all these questions and I didn't know how to solve them. And then this thing came together in six months and I just was like, oh, there's a different feeling in me.

And as I'm working on this new draft, the reason I think it's gonna work is because there's that same. Manic desire to write and continue to be in that world and tell that story that I had with just want you here. And it's not just about production, it's about how you listen to yourself during the writing process.

And you have to be really honest with yourself if something just doesn't work. 

Zibby: Yes. Good advice. Very good. Have you read anything that you love or are there books that are some of your favorites or just recent reads that you could recommend? 

Meredith: So the best book I have read in eons, uh, is tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.

You know, just this masterful book that touches every literary device and every voice. And you know, I actually didn't pick it up at first because I was like, video games, not my bat and ball. And everyone was like. Take it, pick it up. It's about relationships. And it was so I feel, you know, grateful to have picked up that book.

I love that sort of like sad millennial women canon. Mm-hmm. You know, so I've read a ton of Sally Rooney and NEA Dolan. Um, she gets a lot more. Kudos for exciting times, but I loved the Happy couple. Mm-hmm. Which I read, you know, recently. And, uh, Megan Nolan also, I think there's a lot to learn from those books.

If you are a writer who writes a lot of interiority, you know, a woman kind of at a turning point because those like sort of girl walks around books can get really suffocating. So you can learn a lot from how to make people care about a character, even if not a lot happens. 

Zibby: Love that. That's really funny how you said sad millennial characters.

I feel like I might need to make that a shelf in my bookstore. That's really funny. 

Meredith: And it's funny 'cause so much of it is like Irish and British writing and like obviously there's a lot of like sad girl walks around books, you know, here. But I just. I 

Zibby: don't know, 

Meredith: there's something about 

Zibby: it. Would sorrow and bliss fall in that category?

Have you read that Uhuh? No. Okay. I don't know. Maybe that's, maybe she's too old. I don't know. Now I'm gonna think about who I would put in that category. That's funny. 

Meredith: I mean, the other two books by American authors that I've read during this process that I think really helped me were, um, all this can be different by Sarah Thinking to Matthews.

I thought that was beautifully done as just a look of like. What am I doing with myself? Mm-hmm. And I loved acts of service by Lillian Fishman, which I think should get way more kudos than it does, because as you're thinking about desire and interiority, that book just knocked it outta the park. Hmm. So I think, I think those kinds of books really appeal to me.

You know, I've, I've read. Different kinda stuff. I just read Mad Woman by Chelsea Beaker, which I loved. Yeah. That was, uh, the wedding people. I've not read something so funny in such a long time. 

Zibby: Me too. Love. 

Meredith: Yeah. But you think about kind of the books that like inform your own writing and you're just like, oh, there's definitely a theme.

Zibby: Mm-hmm. I love that. Thank you. Good recommendations. Well, Meredith, it was lovely to meet you. Thank you for coming on, and congratulations on, just want you here. Congrats. Thank you. 

Meredith: I really, really appreciate it. 

Zibby: Okay. All right. Take care. Bye.