[music]
LEV GROSSMAN: I am Lev. Lev Grossman.
I’m Lev Grossman and you are, you are Sera
Gamble.
SERA GAMBLE: Yeah, and we know each other
because of a book you wrote, a series of books
you wrote.
LG: Which you turned into a TV show.
SG: I am among the people who did, yeah.
So Lev wrote The Magicians, among other beautiful
things, but The Magicians is what brought
us together.
And you're also a journalist, yes?
LG: Yes, although, less of one than I used
to be.
I was like a real journalist for 15, 16 years,
but I haven't, I have not written much lately.
SG: You've come over to the dark side.
LG: Yeah I sort of burned out a little bit,
um on journalism.
So it was the dark side for me.
I mean they're all, all the sides are dark.
Maybe even, you know, screenwriting is even
darker than journalism.
SG: It might be but also you get to see people
make your movie sometimes.
LG: Oh that has happened to me one time so
far, but it was great.
I would love to do that again.
SG: When is the first time you ever went to
a set where the set existed because of something
you wrote?
Was that Magicians?
LG: Yes, that was The Magicians.
SG: Do you remember how that felt?
LG: It was a really special feeling.
It was a, it was a really good, good special
feeling, on so many different axes.
Writing is a famously, an isolating activity
and profession.
I’d say doubly so for me in that I don't,
for some reason, I don't socialize with writers
very much.
It is rare that I talk to another writer.
I don't know why.
I don't know why that is.
I live in New York City which is just crammed
full of writers.
So I wrote The Magicians in conditions of
such total isolation, uh for lots of personal
reasons, so to come somewhere, someplace where
people were gathered together to tell that
story in a new way was just unbelievably intoxicating.
And that, the whole business of writing fiction,
I mean it can be challenging to believe in
your own fiction.
You get up in the morning and you sit at the
desk and you're like “okay let's pretend
that there's a castle called Castle Whitespire,”
you know, I just made it up!
I just mean, I just came up with that name.
The task of writing is on some level the task
of believing in that in being real and every
morning you have to make it up in your head.
To come to a place where I had, where it had
been built structurally and I could lean against
it and, and knock my fingers, uh my knuckles
against it and have it just be there- that
was a cool feeling.
SG: Though, famously in season one our budget
had been stretched so far that I was like
“here's how we're doing the castle- there's
an invisibility spell on it because we can't
afford to build it.”
I have to say- whenever you came to set on
the show it was like God had arrived.
The actors would get really nervous before
you walked on the set and the, I would hear
the whisper pass through all of the crew and
it's like “the god of the world has arrived.”
LG: I knew that I was making people uncomfortable
and I was like “I probably shouldn't go
because everyone's gonna feel weird.”
SG: Oh no, it was the good kind of uncomfortable.
It was exciting.
It was like your presence, more than anyone
else's, was the thing that reminded people
that what they were doing wasn't just goofing
off.
People walk by on like hooves with tails and
horns, or you know they're holding some weird
prop and we're saying it's made of magic and
like that can go a lot of ways.
It can get kind of goofy but there's something
elevated about your books that I think- it
excited people to go to work because it elevated
the material.
LG: And there was something that I knew, and
like, somehow by definition only I could know-
which was that it was as much your guys as
it was mine.
SG: So I know you've covered this ground before,
but can we talk about it just a little bit?
Like you wrote this amazing essay about writing
the Magicians.
Kind of about how you came to this point in
your life where you were able to unlock this
part of your brain as a writer, I mean correct
me if I’m interpreting it wrong- but it's
almost like you gave yourself permission to
write that kind of story.
LG: It happened you know 15 years into my
career as a writer.
15 years of, you know, banging my head against
like the limits of my talent and my mental
health and then something broke.
I think the key for me that unlocked so many
things was precisely the act of writing something
that felt forbidden, like “they'll never
let me get away with this!”
You know?
Somewhere there's like a nerve center, a headquarters
and all the lights on the dashboard are flashing
red and someone's saying “no he can't do
that!”
That feeling that just “they'll never let
me get away with this.”
It was an amazing feeling and a new feeling
and it was just so profoundly energizing and
for me that was it, was, it was two things-
it was writing fantasy.
I had imagined myself as a realist literary
writer and I had myself all wrong and I just
had the wrongest idea about who I was and
where my voice was and what I had to say.
I didn't understand anything about any of
those things.
You know, fantasy was something that I had
always loved but it was a forbidden love.
And I think I had spent a lot of time in my
life associating with people who were very
literary and very committed to very specific
ideas about fiction about realist fiction
and what that meant to write fantasy was to
go against all of that.
And at the same time I felt as though I was
breaking a ton of rules within the fantasy
genre.
I was doing things which, it's not that nobody
had ever done before but they hadn't been
done that much.
Like, you know, taking this very English genre
and resetting it in America.
Taking what had been a sort of middle grade
shading into a young adult genre and writing
it in a very adult way with sex in it and
swearing and drugs and drinking and stuff
like that.
I felt as though I were breaking some of the
conventions of fantasy and um I never want
to write anything ever again without breaking
rules because I now, I understand that that's
the whole point of everything.
SG: That is the point of everything!
LG: Not maybe everything but…
SG: No I think I’m gonna get that fucking
needle pointed on a pillow and put it in my
office.
I think you're absolutely right.
LG: Not driving for example, but writing,
it's definitely the point of writing.
SG: Not operating heavy machinery.
Fantasy is, has been traditionally viewed
mostly as a little less important than other
kinds of fiction right?
Is that what we mean when we say we're breaking
the rules?
LG: I think it's fair and you can obviously
find many many many many many count examples
but you know something definitely happened
and it happened in the early 18th century
where literature became heavily identified
with realism.
Everything fantastical became pushed into
these marginal places, into fairy tales, into
children's literature, into the gothic, horror.
Stuff at the margins.
Before that Shakespeare, Spencer, Dante, Milton,
Homer- all of these brightest.
Fantasy had been central to their work, not
separable from it, but somehow it was separated
out at that moment in, in cultural history
and then placed on the margins, um in this
way that I still don't fully understand why.
SG: But the thing that I find really resonant
about what you're saying because you know
my parents were educated in Europe.
My dad brought a lot of snobbery about what
it meant to be a writer and what kind of literature
I should be reading and at the same time my
first memory of him is of sitting on his lap
watching Star Trek.
So both things were true of him too, but he
was a perfect example of someone who's sort
of old-world about it and he would not have
considered it as you know as worthy an endeavor
maybe for me to like try to write Star Trek.
I can enjoy that and then do something more
elevated with my talent- was sort of the mandate
that I internalized when I was little.
I think you're describing something that a
lot of young artists experience which is that
we have this idea of the kind of work we're
supposed to do and it ends up getting between
us and our own potential.
LG: It turned out there were so many things
that were about myself that I had trouble
accepting, which is a really bizarre and pathetic
thing for some, for someone to say who is
a straight, white, cis heterosexual guy.
Um both straight and heterosexual.
Both of those things.
And yet even then, even then, there were bits
of myself that I had trouble looking at directly
and it took me a really long time and some
sort of heavy personal shocks to get in touch
with.
Which is sort of a strange, strange thing
and that's what The Magicians is about.
It was that for me and it's also about that
experience finding that side of yourself that
you didn't believe existed.
SG: I’m not surprised to hear you say that.
I don't think there should be any apology
attached to that when guys talk about feeling
constrained and limited in the same ways.
It's not I think the exclusive provenance
of, you know, people who are considered other
than that in whatever way.
You know there's the secret that we know now.
I’m wondering if you were discovering this
while you were writing Magicians- which is
that like the tools of writing fantasy cut
directly into these psychological states we're
talking about.
To me it's like keys that unlock these doors
so quickly and with so much spectacle.
Like, I can talk about all of the stuff that's
hard for me to talk about when it's just like
two people on a farm, you know.
LG: I want to quote that great Kafka quote
about, I’m gonna get it wrong, but something
about- as a way of describing writing is taking
an axe to the frozen sea inside you.
He could really turn a phrase, that Kafka
guy.
Everyone's frozen sea I think is the same
but the axe is probably quite different and
for me that was the, that was the axe.
I mean I had a weird year when I was 35 I
had a very weird year when a lot of different
stuff happened to me.
Uh, I had my first child, it was a big opening
up experience for me and I started having
therapy for the first time and uh I split
from my longtime partner.
I mean just like a whole bunch of stuff happened
in that year.
And I read uh Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
which was a big first personal milestone for
me.
Um and I started writing Magicians so there
was a, it was a, I had a year where everything
kind of gave at once.
Magicians was part of that and it was it was
also about that- that moment where Quentin
can't stop.
He he he finally gets out of his own way for
a moment all this power rushes out of him,
you know, and it was always there and something
in him was hanging on so tightly to it and
wouldn't let it go and then in that moment
of stress and anger and everything else it
all comes out- that was in the Magicians and
it was a description of me writing the Magicians.
Uh, there was a frozen sea under the frozen
sea, as it turns out.
SG: It's a fine line…
LG: I mean was there a moment for you when
it all just broke loose?
SG: I've experienced a lot of moments of like
little tiny dams breaking inside of me because
I started mostly writing poetry and there's
a flow you can get into where you're, the
language is sort of lining up with the feeling
in a way that's really rewarding as it's happening.
It's, it, really it's like that's my most
direct feeling of being connected to something
bigger than myself, but the thing you're talking
about which is about being a more fully formed
writer with more of a skill set and more discipline
and having a breakthrough that takes you more
to the work you're meant to be doing.
I was working on Supernatural for a bunch
of seasons and when I left that show it sort
of like deposited me directly into a script
deal, which is kind of how that tends to work.
So I started developing immediately.
I hadn't really had a rest and so I wasn't
overthinking this very much and I immediately
signed on to do two pilots and one of them
was about a military town.
I didn't know that much about the military.
My goddaughter's dad was in the Navy so he
was helping me, but I was trying to find just
a subject matter to put at the center of it
that would enable me to write a like Friday
Night Lights style small town where everyone's
connected kind of thing.
And he named a case and he said you should
google this and it sent me down a rabbit hole
about sexual assault in the military.
I mean something like one out of three women
in the military is sexually assaulted at some
point.
It's a huge pervasive problem it's not even
gendered it's just a huge pervasive problem
and I immediately knew this is what I was
gonna write.
I also kind of knew it meant the show would
never get on the air.
And I woke up the next day convinced I had
to quit like “I can't write this.
I don't know enough about the military.”
By the way I had not made that connection
at all that it was because it had hit on this
subject matter that was really gonna push
me a lot as a writer.
And so I did it.
I did it to the best of my ability and I came
out of it really understanding that telling
a story like that was part of like the point
of writing a tall, for me, was to write about
stuff that is so upsetting about the human
condition.
About what people are capable of doing to
each other.
That like I will never really be able to fully
explain it in writing but I don't want to
stop exploring and looking for the answers.
I felt really changed as a person in trying
to write this from all of these different
points of view and then honestly the next
time I got the chance was when we worked on
Magicians in telling Julia’s storyline that
was just like, oh okay, I’m just sort of
feeling something inside of me that's like
“oh, this is a reason to do all the blood,
sweat and tears.”
Can we talk about the weirdness of being an
author whose stuff gets adapted?
There are people who are going to watch this
who are looking for their niche and their
path and it's sort of the holy grail for some
authors to have their material optioned.
But I think there's also a lot of fear about
what that really feels like when it happens.
LG: I wanted the Magicians to be adapted and
yet there's something profoundly cliche and
yet true- something profoundly narcissistic
about the business of writing novels which
is really just about the least collaborative
medium that you can think of.
Like most narcissists I wasn't aware of my
narcissism.
When you're a novelist, you know, you figure
out the costumes and you, you sort of describe
the line readings you do all the dialogue
and all the characters are you.
And the transition from that to having other
people write for your characters, having actors
interpret the lines, having actors have the
gall to have their own faces which they put
on your characters.
You know, I mean it was just, it was a real
wake-up call and difficult for me to metabolize.
I had to get over myself and I think that
I did.
It was definitely challenging.
SG: I mean you were always really gracious
about it.
LG: I don't think I was always, I can remember
some moments of ungraciousness, um, which
we'll skate over lightly.
I think I probably didn't signal to you all
the times when you took the characters to
places that I never ever could have taken
them and how amazing it was to watch that.
Arjun was a big part of learning to trust
you guys though, because Arjun was such a
colossal success as Penny and I didn't get
it at all.
I think I was actually even there for Arjun’s
audition.
Maybe I’m hallucinating this but I came
for one day of auditions and I’m sure that
he was there and then the fact you said “oh
that guy- we're gonna we're gonna do as Penny”
and I was like, you know, “whaaat?”
But he was so fantastic and he just brought
the character to this fascinating place and
his dynamic with Quentin was, in some ways,
so much more complex and exciting.
SG: I mean the character's not like that in
the book but he's being reported on by a protagonist
who dislikes him so that's where as a reader
of the book I’m interpreting it as “oh
Quentin's lying.
Penny's probably really sexy.”
I should say for those keeping track you never
wrote a script for Magicians.
We sent you the material and you gave us notes
on outlines and scripts and cuts, but at a
certain point you started writing screenplays.
Is there a connection?
LG: The experience of writing for the screen
after having watched you and John and all
the writers write Magicians- I mean that was
that was my education in screenwriting was
watching you guys do that.
And yet my voice as a screenwriter is, it's
very different from yours.
The rhythms of the, the storytelling are very
different from where you guys did it on Magicians
which was I think one reason why I never pushed
to write for the show, uh which I thought
about doing.
But uh, I have so much trouble with plot.
I've so much, I have so much trouble with
plot and you guys wrote so much plot .I mean
there's three, four plots going on, running
simultaneously in every episode and you guys
just chew through so much narrative.
I don't know, where does it all come from?
SG: A room with eight people in it.
I mean I don't think any one person could
probably, I mean probably someone could, I
couldn't juggle all that myself.
There's so many characters and then everybody's
generating generating generating for each
of them and then we cherry pick.
I’m wondering how we can turn this into
something that, um so many writers watch this
who are, it's sort of like you're rooting
around for the little treasure that you can
take and be inspired and go write for a few
hours or pick something up that you've put
down.
Like if you had to prescribe a way to give
yourself permission to do something that breaks
the rules?
Like get mission control to start sounding
all the emergency alarms?
LG: It all starts with irritation.
So much of me, it starts for me with reading
books or watching things and feeling irritation.
There's a half truth that people are passing
off as a whole truth, you know.
There's just an open doorway that people are
pretending is shut and they just walk by it
over and over again.
“Oh my god!
Just go down there.
Oh you have no idea what's down there!
Just go in there.”
I treasure those moments of irritation because
they, they're all, it's always a portal there
whenever you feel that irritation.
Like it's a petty, techy feeling really.
I’m trying to think of an example of one.
I mean the very fact that um Harry Potter,
I’m a huge Harry Potter fan but it annoyed
me that Harry, that Harry himself- he never
read fantasy.
He had spent 11 years trapped in this cupboard
by himself in this abusive family- why weren't
books his lifeline?
Why did he not simply read the Chronicles
of Narnia over and over again forever?
But when he gets to Hogwarts it's like he's
never read a fantasy novel.
Uh, when I was writing Magicians, it was sort
of like “oh well obviously this is a chance
for me to just pull that little thread that's
sticking out.
Um, and see what's there.”
And out of that came all of Fillory and all
of Quentin, really.
Just sort of the fact that I thought Harry
Potter ought to have read more.
And then if he had read a lot all his ideas
about what a school for magic would be like
would have been shaped by fiction.
And when he went there he would have been
confronted with a very different reality and
so it becomes a whole story about fiction
and reality and trying to negotiate between
the two.
But it started with, it's just a little sense
of irritation that Harry ought to um have
read Narnia and he hadn't.
SG: I love this so much, that this is the
feeling that you're looking for.
It's not necessarily the elevated feeling
of being inspired because the muse has come
to tea, but rather you see something and it
just, you feel fucking petty about it.
It's just and then what's beautiful about
it is it might start with “Harry Potter
would have read Narnia and it's really weird
that that is not present in the Potter-verse”
and then pretty soon you have snowballed into
“the Greek gods are all rapists.
The idea that we should be worshiping a god
is ridiculous because every world is fucked
up.”
LG: Part of it is just when you get up in
the morning sometimes the muses simply are
not singing and you just can't get to that
place, that transcended place but you can
always get to being annoyed, always.
Uh irritation- it never fails me.
It's always there for me.
SG: I mean you're really giving the people
diamonds right now because this is such an
actionable observation you're making about
yourself- that like literally someone is sitting
on the couch, they broadly know the kind of
stuff they want to write, they are claiming
that they have writer's block or they don't
know what to start- go look at some stuff
and when you watch something and you think
that's stupid and it was done poorly, just
go do that better.
Just go do it the way you think the first
people should have done it.
LG: I promise, I’m speaking to the, I’m
breaking the fourth wall now.
I’m saving you 15 years of frustration and
failure because I looked in all the wrong
places.
That would have been a good place to start.
SG: I mean I think it's really common that,
I was the same.
I thought things had to be wildly original
in all ways or don't bother like if I’m
not inventing a whole new realm or world to
be in, then people are just gonna dismiss
it as a repetition of something that's been
done before.
But especially the way that you're describing
it, everything really relies on the execution.
It's just about getting really specific about
what you care about inside of that planet
of the idea.
LG: You've written poetry did you ever write
a novel?
Did you ever start a novel?
SG: I sort of have started them but I haven't
really.
I mean not since I've been a grown-up who
is a writer.
I mean I have to admit I also do think of
them as existing in slightly rarefied air.
I don't know, sometimes I daydream about just
like doing one of those novel sprints, you
know.
They have the novel writing month and stuff.
Just to do it in a really un-precious way.
Do you have an advice, any advice?
So if I told you like “okay I’m gonna
take a hiatus and write a novel, skip me over
some bullshit.”
LG: Well it's, it's like that moment that
you alluded to earlier.
That moment when you're not overthinking things-
it's so tough to catch yourself at that moment.
It's so often it's not the thing it's in front
of you, it's in the thing that's in the corner
of your eye.
It's so often the B- project.
The Magicians started as so many good things,
possibly everything ever good that I've ever
done.
It started as the thing I wrote to take my
mind off the thing that wasn't working.
It’s so how often how the good, how you
get the good stuff….
my children are absolutely shrieking.
I don’t think anybody's actually… killing
them.
I mean I think they're being put to bed, it's
just the, the Covid nightmare has been um
it's exacerbated by the presence of children
in one's house, I must say.
SG: How is that going?
LG: My writing window has shrunk to about,
shrunk to about two hours a day.
SG: Is there a reduction in your productivity,
I mean that might be a stupid question but
if you were writing eight hours and now you're
writing two- can you see that the pages have
slowed down?
LG: Yeah, yeah they've really, they really
slowed down.
I had a day job for so many years.
I didn't quit my day job until the end of
2016, so basically four years ago.
I wrote all Magicians with a, with a 40-hour
week job.
Um, so I was very used to walking around thinking
of things, um thinking, running scenes in
my head while I was doing something else.
Um and I sort of had to go back to doing that
a little bit um and then so when you're actually
at the keyboard everything's very concentrated
and ready to go.
You've built up all this energy but nothing's
the same as getting even you know three, four
hours uninterrupted time.
SG: To just go back to what you said so you
had a 40-hour a week job, at least one of
those children…
LG: By the end of it all, all of them.
All three of them.
SG: When do you write in a world where you
have a family to take care of and a 40-hour
a week job, how do you stay committed to your
writing project?
LG: A very great writer once quoted to me
“books are written with with time stolen
from other people.”
So true.
It's so true.
You really feel that.
You're just ignoring, you're ignoring your
little children and they are three or four
or seven or nine or fifteen and they'll never
have that time back and yet you have to write
something sometime.
Part of it, it forces you to feel like “I
have to make this count.
I have to make this count and my child really
wants to be with me and I really want to be
with them but I’m not.
And so for god's sake, this had better be
worth it.”
It focuses the mind.
SG: At least you're not on twitter for those
hours.
LG: I’m on twitter too.
Twitter's my other child.
I’m on twitter more, I love it…
SG: That child is an asshole.
LG: That’s fine.
I never talk about writing.
I said this before, but I never talk about
writing.
I’m not really friends with that many writers.
Nobody wants to hear about your writing, especially
your family.
Your family doesn't want to hear about your
writing.
Not even your cat wants to hear about your
writing
SG: The artistic process in general- hearing
about it isn't for everybody but it can be
for people who want to have an artistic process.
LG: I should ask you about tv-writing because
I pretend to do it and I’m such a fraud.
I’m such a fraud.
It's so terrible, my fraudulent tv-writing.
SG: Wait why do you say that?
LG: Because I don't know what I’m doing.
I never trained to write for tv.
I never studied it.
SG: Me either.
I mean I read a book.
No, I didn't, there were no books about tv
writing.
I watched tv.
LG: But how did you learn?
Did, didn't you feel like a fraud when you
first started?
Because I feel like a fraud now.
SG: You know I felt like someone who was like
learning someone else's choreography.
I remember writing our first set of specs
when we were going to break into tv because,
you know, I had written a couple screenplays,
that's how I got an agent with my then writing
partner.
And that- there's a treasure trove.
You know you can read Sid Field.
You can read Blake Snyder.
There's a lot of really great books.
Maybe there's a lot on tv, but there weren't
years ago.
We just literally got some copies of Six Feet
Unders and Nip Tucks and whatever was around
then.
Um other people's originals.
Somebody gave me a Charlie Kaufman pilot that
never got made and I read that and um…
LG: That’s all I do all day- I googled for
pdfs of scripts.
SG: I didn't go to film school or anything
though.
And I actually remember um so you know we
wrote, we wrote these samples, it got us meetings,
we're like meeting with showrunners, we're
talking as intelligently as possible about
like “here's what I think is great about
the script of yours that I read.” and do
I feel like a fraud?
I just feel like so- day one just an interloper
who has slipped in the door and I’m trying
to somehow hit on what people are supposed
to say in this instance.
And then the night before our first day in
the writers room, because I had never been
an assistant, I had never been in a writer's
room.
Our agent calls to wish us luck and I say
“so what happens in the writer's room?”
Like, the line just goes silent because she
doesn't even know how to answer the question
she's so embarrassed for me.
LF: Oh my god, I've had so many of those moments.
SG: So I walked into the first day on a writing
staff not really knowing what it was gonna
be.
I've said this before but like, I was afraid
to get up and go to the bathroom, like I sat
there needing to pee really bad for most of
that day cause no one else is getting up.
It's like “am I gonna get fired if I just,
the fucking youngest person in the room just
gets up and leaves because she has to pee?”
By season five most of the writers in the
room on The Magicians had started as our assistants.
Some of them went to film school and some
of them just want to be in the business and
are willing to fetch coffee and work their
way up the ladder.
And they're writing the best possible specs
they can and originals they can.
When we give them their shot, when we say
“you're going to co-write this one” which
is your way of like- if you do that and you
don't fuck it up maybe if there's a spot you'll
get promoted the next season.
They have somebody holding their hands.
A lot of what we're judging is just hunger
at that point.
Just hunger.
And like if I explain something to you- are
you listening and will it be better the next
time?
It's not like they get handed a manual and
then they're supposed to replicate it and
ta-da then their script is a professional
tv writer script.
They do the best they can.
We rewrite them a bit.
They get in the room and I've seen it enough
seasons now where I usually can feel the moment
when a writer on staff graduates from doing
a lot of pieces of being a tv writer really
well to suddenly seeing the matrix.
I hate to be a downer but all it is is just
they put in the hours.
They get a lot of really hard notes for like
four or five scripts and then suddenly they
turn in a script and I’m like “oh my god!
This scene starts like the latest it could
start and it ends the soonest it could end
and like the most happens in it and there's
no extra conversation just to be clever.”
It's like just there's a moment where they
get it.
That probably didn't help at all.
LG: Ah, the matrix.
I feel like I see it and then I, I lose it
again.
SG: It's possible that what's going on with
you is that you are an experienced enough
writer that you're seeing more problems sooner.
LG: That'd be nice.
That would be nice if that were true.
I’m trying to do this pilot for Amazon and
I've rewritten the script, I, I actually wonder
how many times I've rewritten it.
It's, we're high double digits, you know.
And, um, actually I’m glad I don't know
how many times it's been.
I’m not sure maybe it never gets easier.
I don't know.
SG: I know it doesn't get easy.
LG: yeah
SG: I think it gets a little easier than what
you're describing.
LG: Definitely true with novels, it never
gets any easier.
And there is, there's a little bit of bullshit
that you can skip, but it's amazing how many
times you can make the same mistakes.
And amazing how many times you can invent
new mistakes to make and then make ways to
solve them.
SG: Do you plan and or beat-sheet or outline
in the case of scripts and in the case of
books?
LG: I plan everything.
I’m a poor improviser.
I need the structured outline to work with
and occasionally I'll riff a little bit and
it's always the best stuff.
Always the best stuff.
SG: So we've established, um, that you're
a New York Times best-selling writer, yet
it's still hard.
LG: Yeah, yeah…
SG: I hope it makes people feel better.
LG: I hope it does.
I hope, I hope that people are experiencing
schadenfreude.
SG: Not that way!
Not like “fuck that guy.”
But like I don't know, we could have picked
a simpler pursuit, I think.
LG: You know, ironically the whole business
of writing is to make it look natural and
and easy.
I mean that is the whole job is to make it
all look tossed off and to just plaster over
the cracks and erase all the footprints um
and make it look like it was just one shot.
Pure intention.
SG: That's the rewrite.
LG: Yeah.
[music]
