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Nick & Night with Nicholas Sparks · Dear Chelsea

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I just announced all my tour dates. They just went
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: on sale. It's called the High and Mighty Tour. I
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: will be starting debuting my new material in February of
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: next year, So I'm coming to Washington, d c Norfolk, Virginia, Madison, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Detroit, Michigan, Cleveland, Columbus,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and Cincinnati, Ohio, Denver, Colorado, Portland, Maine, Providence, Rhode Island, Springfield, Massachusetts, Chicago,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of Course, Indianapolis, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, Albuquerque, Masa, Arizona, Kansas City, Missouri,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Saint Louis, Missouri, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, Tennessee, Charlotte, North Carolina, Durham,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: North of Carolina, Saratoga, California, Monterey, California, Modesto, California, and
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: port Chester, New York, Boston, Massachusetts, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I will be touring from February through June. Those are
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the cities that I'm in, So go get your tickets
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: now if you want good seats and you want to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: come see me perform.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I will be on the High and Mighty Tour.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: Hi, Gatherine, Hi, Chelsea. I publishedn'tays, but Happy Halloween.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Oh god, I was trying to be a flying Hall
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: on Halloween so that I wouldn't have to show up
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: at any parties.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not going to show up at any parties.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Somebody invited me to a party with like that Severance
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: logo and it was the bottom half of my head
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and the top half of Severance, and I was like,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I hope this is just the invitation.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: For me and not the whole party. But no, I
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: don't you know how I feel about Halloween.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Dude, You're not a dresser upper.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: No not.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Are you looking forward to it? You'll die for me
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: to ask you so you can talk about it.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm just going to have a little party because
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: Brad's birthday is around this time, so we'll be throwing
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: a little parties. We're gonna have like a Halloween slash
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: birthday party and yeah, just you know, still kind of
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: cobbling together a costume.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: But you know, I love Halloween.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: I know I know how you feel about Halloween.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: I want to remind listeners that I've added to my
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: boycott of home Depot because of companies that cooperate with ICE.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Now we're adding Spotify. I deleted Spotify. I've deleted TikTok.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I still have a TikTok account that my social media manages,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: but I don't scroll TikTok anymore.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: I think the government running that is a shit show.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And I so I'm boycotting home Depot and I'm boycotting
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Spotify and more to come.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: Great, great, And I'm sure continuing on with the Target
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: boycott after the removal of the DA.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Target is over. Which is the good store Walmart?
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: I mean they were always like the traditional evils. Costco
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: is pretty good, Like Costco.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Is Costco's good? Right they do?
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, cause I'd like to promote these good companies that
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: do good things, and like for hardware stores, like you know,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: local hardware stores.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: If we could all start shot.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: There's supposed to be some economic blackout that starts November
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: twenty fifth through December second. I saw Rose O'donnald posted
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: about that, So that would be great if we can
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: all get on board with that.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: No shopping, no restaurants.
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  Speaker 1: I mean that's a little conflicting because I have a
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: show on November twenty ninth in Vegas.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: But I care more about the country than I care
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: about my show.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, anyway, Economic Blackout November twenty something, I'm gonna
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: post about it.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: The only thing that anybody cares about is money. I
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: can't These ice videos are so disgusting. This administration is
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: so gross. Who's our guest today? Are they going to
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: cheer us up?
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: Our guest today is Nicholas Sparks. He co wrote his
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: first spooky novel with m Night Shyamalan. They made the
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: story together, and his new novel, Remain Also is now
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: a New York Times number one bestseller.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Oh right, we have another author today. We have we're
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: back to back author weeks. By the way, I've read
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Malala's book this week.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And I've read Laura Lynn Jackson's who are both upcoming guests.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Malala's funny. I'm into her, She's real funny good.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, So Nicholas Sparks is here today, another best selling,
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  Speaker 1: very famous all. I'm so excited to have him on
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  Speaker 1: and talk to him about his new novel.
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  Speaker 2: So let's get going. Nicholas Sparks, Welcome to Dear Chelsea.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: Hey, I'm thrilled to be here. How fun is this?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's the King of Romance.
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: The King. That's what they say, aren't you inspiring today?
• 4:16
  Speaker 5: I appreciate that.
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  Speaker 2: Oh no, oh, I'm here to inspire the whole world.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: We're in a dearth of inspiration, so I'm here to
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: help and you're here to help. I was just going
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: over the list of books that you've written. I mean
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of them have been made into movies, so
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a lot of them. But let me just read them
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: out loud to you in case you've forgotten any remain.
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  Speaker 1: Counting Remain is the newest one. That's what we're going
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: to be talking about today. Everybody Remain, a Counting Miracles, Dreamland,
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  Speaker 1: The Wish, The Return, Every Breath, two by two, See Me,
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  Speaker 1: The Longest Ride, The Best of Me, Safe Haven, The
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Last Song, The Lucky One, The Choice, Dear John, at
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  Speaker 1: First Sight, True Believer, Three Weeks with My Brother, The Wedding,
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  Speaker 1: The Guardian, The Nights in Rodanthe. Yeah, I've watched something.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I've watched that a couple of times. I like Diane
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Lane And who's the guy in that in the.
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: Movie, Richard Gear.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, of course they were so hot together. They
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: were in that. Yeah, they were in a couple of
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: a walk to.
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  Speaker 1: Remember message in a Bottle, which was another classic, and
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: The Notebook, which I think is probably the most popular of.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Them all so far so far.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: But what's interesting, We're going to get into your movies
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and your well, your books that were made into movies,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and your books that you've written in a minute, but
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I wanted to talk a little about your latest Remain,
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  Speaker 1: which you co wrote. Is this the first time you've
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: ever co written something with anyone?
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: Well, I did a nonfiction book with my brother years ago,
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: three weeks with my brother that you you referenced there,
• 5:43
  Speaker 5: and so he and I were the co writers on that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: And then for the last song the screenplay, there was
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: a I worked with a co writer on that.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, So what tell me about the difference in between that,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: because this is you co wrote with M. Knight Shamalan,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: who I used to call m Night Shaka Khan until
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: I could figure out how to pronounce his name properly.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: So now I can, and I'm pretty excited about it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this was very different. The way we worked together
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: primarily was I gave him a long leash when it
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: came to the film, and he gave me a long
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: leash when it came to the novel, and you really
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: the way to think about this is the two of
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: us conceived this story together, and then he did one
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  Speaker 5: side of the coin, the film side, and I did
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: the other side of the coin, the novel side. And
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: so I didn't really dig in and hammered down and
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: give long detailed notes on the screenplay, and he didn't edit,
• 6:41
  Speaker 5: for instance, the novel. We both decided to take this
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: story that we both came up with, and I did
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  Speaker 5: my medium and he did his. It's the best way
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: to think about it.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Did you guys check in with each other like what
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: were did you have ten polls that you had to
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: follow or any sort of storyline that you had to
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: stick to so that they would be now and goetes
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: to each other.
• 7:01
  Speaker 5: Oh yeah, here, So here's how it came about, right,
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  Speaker 5: it's a very Hollywood thing. In the original part, it
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: was I have people in Hollywood. He has people in Hollywood.
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  Speaker 5: My people got to with his people. I don't know,
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  Speaker 5: they're at a party or something, said hey we should
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: get Nick and Knight. They should do something together.
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  Speaker 6: You know.
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  Speaker 5: I hear this from my Hollywood people all the time, right,
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  Speaker 5: And ninety nine percent of them amount to nothing well.
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  Speaker 5: That was in early January twenty three, and then in
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  Speaker 5: March twenty three, my guy calls me and he says,
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  Speaker 5: you've got a meeting with Knight. It's going to be
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: an in Pennsylvania at Knight's place. And the goal for
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: that meeting was I was going to come up with
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  Speaker 5: an original story that would work as both a novel
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  Speaker 5: and a film and that would satisfy my readers and
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  Speaker 5: his fans. And then he was going to do the
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: same thing. So then we met in May of twenty
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  Speaker 5: twenty three, primarily to see if we wanted to work
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: with each other, if we could work with each other,
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: if it was going to be more hassle than at Worth,
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: because are we both Prima Donna's. You know, people can
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: add stress to your life, and neither of us want
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: where we've reached. We've been at this thirty years. We
• 8:10
  Speaker 5: don't need more stress, right right, So we had this
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  Speaker 5: great meeting. I pitched my idea, he pitched his. We
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  Speaker 5: decided jointly to do his idea, and we hammered out
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  Speaker 5: all of the or most of these specifics on the
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: idea that eventually became remain So then I didn't hear
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  Speaker 5: anything until August of twenty twenty four, just a year
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: a year ago, August, so not that long ago. And
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: he calls me up and he says, I think this
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  Speaker 5: is going to be my next movie, which means he's
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: going to write, direct, and produce. And so I say, oh,
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: then I guess I'm going to do a novel. Because
• 8:49
  Speaker 5: I didn't know what. He didn't know what we were
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: going to do. What were we going to do together?
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: Was I going to write a short story and he
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: would produce it. Was I going to do a novella?
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: Were we going to do a TV show? We didn't know. Anyways,
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: said this is going to be my next movie. So
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: I decide to do a novel. So he works on
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: the screenplay for about six weeks from late August till
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: about October twelfth. I talked to him two or three
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: times a week. You know, I'm cheerleading, I'm brainstorming, I'm
• 9:18
  Speaker 5: doing whatever.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: And are you guys making sure that you're on similar pages? No,
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  Speaker 1: pun intended, he was.
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  Speaker 5: We already knew what the story was because we had
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: hammered that out in May of the previous year. So
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: then I get the script. I said, Okay, this is great.
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: This is exactly the story we talked about. But I'm
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: in a different medium. You know, I have more room
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: for backstory, I have more runway. I can hop into
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: the character's heads a little bit more.
• 9:43
  Speaker 6: So.
• 9:43
  Speaker 5: I set aside the novel I was working on and
• 9:47
  Speaker 5: started writing Remain in October, all of a sudden, on
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: a very big deadline. Finish it in January. This was
• 9:54
  Speaker 5: just last January. Go through the editing process. Here we are,
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: the book's coming out, the movies all ready been filmed,
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: and he's in the editing room. The novel's coming out,
• 10:03
  Speaker 5: and the film will be out in twenty twenty six,
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: very fast.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: That's such a tight timeline.
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: You wrote the book starting in October and it's coming
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: out the following October.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Basically, why do you have any separation between the book
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and the movie coming out? Because I would think it
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: would be fun to have them both released at the
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: same time.
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: Primarily because you want to have a couple of lives
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: on the book. Basically, you want to have a hardcover
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: life and then a paperback life. So if you see
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: the cover of Remain, right, so it's really pretty and
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: it's a great book cover, but so we'll have that cover.
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: That'll be the hardcover, and then when the paperback comes along, well,
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: now we're probably going to see Jake and Phoebe on
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: the I say, right on the paperback.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so Jake Jillen Hall starring in the movie with
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Phoebe de Neever right our dinover din Okay, okay, the
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: girl from Bridgerton who Yeah, she's really good.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: So as a writer, I mean, first of all, you're
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: responsible for so many broken hearts. I just want to
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: come out and say that I don't know. I mean,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: there must have been so many couples that lee that
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: read your books and or leave the theater after seeing
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: these movies and just leave their boyfriends. They're like, where's
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: where's my fucking message in a bottle? You know, like
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I could only imagine because I remember as a young
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: person when I would watch, like when I would read
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: something really like romantic, because these books aren't like lusty,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: It's not like smuty. I mean, their love stories.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: You're kind of known for writing romantic novels, right, and
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: not all of them have happy endings, right, right, So
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: it's not like it's just always the same formula. But
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I would imagine that you've gotten a lot of feedback
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: about setting a measure of a standard of love and
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: romance at a certain level that a lot of men
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: probably can't attain or can't measure up to.
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: I have heard such stories at my book signings, right
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: They're like, where's all where's my no, or where's my
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: John from dear John, or where's my land? And from
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: a walk to remember. I do hear those stories. And
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: at the same time, I think, in the course of
• 12:08
  Speaker 5: my career, I've had seven marriage proposals in lines to
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: sign my book. You know, I'll get up to the
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: table the duodle dropped to his knees, and I feel
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: so bad for him. I'm like, dude, you're you're in
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: a Walmart in Birmingham, Alabama. You know you really would
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: have proposed it a Walmart and Birmingham or something like that.
• 12:28
  Speaker 5: But it's happened, and you know, I hear. I get
• 12:30
  Speaker 5: a lot of letters also from people who who say
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: that the stories either remind me of their love story
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: or someone they love. I can't tell you how many
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: people wrote said the notebook is the story of my
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: grandparents or the story of my parents, or I lost
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: my sister, you know, or I lost the love of
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: my life to cancer, or I was, you know, in
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: love with a girl and she left me because you know,
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: I was deployed too long, like happened in Dear John.
• 12:56
  Speaker 5: And so, you know, you get a lot more of
• 12:59
  Speaker 5: those kinds of stories. Then people coming up and say
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: I've ruined I've ruined men for them for the which
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: I'm glad. I would feel bad if that was more common.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Actually, no, that's what you come to Dear Chelsea for. Yeah, yeah,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: to get upraided.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, so how did you begin your Like, did you
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: set out wanting to become a romance novelist?
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: No? No, I was a I was a regular guy.
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: I was a good student, right, I was. Well, let's
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: see how far back I was regular suburban family, high
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: school valedictorian. I was also a pretty good runner. I
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: got a full scholarship to the University Notre Dame for
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: track and field. Broke the school record there still hold it,
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: by the way, after forty years.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Wow, no one's broken your record.
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: Not for forty years.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's lucky.
• 13:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, they they've had the horse races, they
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: just haven't had the horses, right, That's what I like
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: to say. And let's see, I spent the first couple
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: of few years after graduation trying to figure out what
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: I wanted to do, and I was writing on the side.
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: I wrote a novel when I was nineteen and another
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: at twenty two.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Was it a romance novel at nineteen?
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: So first one was horror novel and the second one
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: was a murder mystery. Okay, so when we look at
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: remain right, a little supernatural little mystery. See goes right
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: back to my roots. Then I was selling pharmaceuticals, had
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: a midlife crisis about twenty seven years old. What am
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: I doing with my life? And I decided to give
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: writing another shot because those first novels had been unpublished,
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: and I wrote the notebook and here we are.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Oh god, well, let's talk about that, because I can't
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: tell you how many times we've had callers come in
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that are working jobs that are dissatisfying and they want
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: to take a leap of faith and get into their
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: creative zone and do something like write a novel or
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: write a book, and they're always torn in betwixt in between.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: So let's just talk about that moment in time for
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: you personally when you were a pharmaceutical wrap and how
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: you made the decision to just kind of take a
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: huge leap like that.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: Oh well, you know, thank you for giving me way
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: more kudos than I deserve.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Well, you already pumped up your track record.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just trying to support that, trying to
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: support the storytelling.
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: I'm really proud of that.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: We're all proud of you right now.
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: So at that time, I was married, I had two kids,
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: and my second son was real young. He was months
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: old and he was not a good sleeper, so he
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: was up all night basically. So my wife at the time, Kathy,
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: she was going to bed very early, you know, maybe
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: eight o'clock because she wanted to get maybe three or
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: four hours because she knew she was going to be
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: awake the rest of the night. So I was kind
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: of alone. I would work my job during the day,
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: but then I have a choice, it's eight pm. I
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: can watch TV or chase a dream. I said, you know,
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: I'm going to chase a dream. Goes to TV and
• 15:51
  Speaker 5: on and then then I begin to write. So I
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: wrote that in the evenings and maybe one morning on
• 15:59
  Speaker 5: a weekend when the family hadn't yet decided what we're
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: all going to do, go to the beach or whatever.
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: And over a period of six months, while working, I
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: finished the novel. Now get this, I finished it. Then
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: I had to go do the agent thing and you know,
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: work with her and edit the book. And I sold
• 16:16
  Speaker 5: it in October nineteen ninety five, a year before came out.
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: Sold it for the advance was really big back then.
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: It's kind of big now. It was like a million dollars.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: How did you get a million dollars for your first book?
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah? A million dollars for the first It was the notebook.
• 16:34
  Speaker 5: It's the notebook, I know.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: But like, was there bidding war created? Like how did Yeah?
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: There was a yeah, everybody wanted it and there was
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: a bidding war. I get a million dollars and the
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: book doesn't come out for a year. But at that time, yes,
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: that's a great deal of money. But you know, when
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: I was pretty good in math, and I was a
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: business finance major, and you do the math, you're like, okay,
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: after agent, you know, fifteen percent, and.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: Then you're saying an acquire yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I say.
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: And then I say Okay, I got enough to pay
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: off my very reasonable two hundred thousand dollars mortgage. I
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: have enough to put money away for my kids to
• 17:12
  Speaker 5: go to college. I got enough to maybe, you know,
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: put some in retirement. But that's about it. You know,
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: I'm twenty eight years old, and I'm going to have
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: to turn on the lights and eat food the rest
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: of my life. So I don't quit my job, and
• 17:28
  Speaker 5: I don't even tell anyone at work that I've just
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: basically won the lottery here. I worked for another year
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: until October nineteen ninety six. Now the book comes out,
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: and now I have to tell everybody because I'm on
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: you know, CBS this morning, and I'm in all the newspapers.
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: My boss finds out. So I did not quit until then.
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: I think the Notebook had been on the list for
• 17:54
  Speaker 5: fourteen weeks. It was February of ninety seven that I quit,
• 17:58
  Speaker 5: and I wasn't even willing to quit then, except Message
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: in a Bottle was going very well, and the publisher
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: had made an offer on that one, and it was
• 18:08
  Speaker 5: more than I earned for the Notebook, and I said, okay,
• 18:11
  Speaker 5: maybe I can make a living doing this, so way
• 18:15
  Speaker 5: less bravery than you give me credit for I kind
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: of played both sides. I guess.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: So you were able to basically write two books while
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: you were working as a pharmaceutical rep.
• 18:24
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 18:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I was about half done with Message in a
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: Bottle when it was sold. But yeah, I do.
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: Think that's such great advice, and it is what we've
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: told people in the past.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: You don't have to like quit your job and then
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: go try to be an actor or whatever your thing is.
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: Keep doing what you can do while you're still like
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: keeping lights on.
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: Like you said, Well, and I had two children, right,
• 18:43
  Speaker 5: and my wife was not working at a time. We'd
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: made the joint decision that she would stay home when
• 18:48
  Speaker 5: the kids were little. So what was Yeah, it just
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: seemed like the logical choice. And you're writing a novel. Yeah,
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: it's a lot of work, and it's a challenge in
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: this and that. But depending on how long it is,
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: if you're not writing war and peace, you know, I mean,
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: it's reasonable Like when I sit down to write, I
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: try to write two thousand words. What typical novel is
• 19:11
  Speaker 5: one hundred thousand words, So it might take me, let's say,
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: one hundred and thirty thousand to get the one hundred
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: thousand that I keep right, Well, that's sixty five days
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: of writing over a three hundred and sixty five day year. Now,
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: even with a notebook, let's say the notebook wasn't even that.
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: The notebook I think was about fifty to sixty thousand words.
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: So even if I'm only writing it a thousand words
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: a day, of course I had time in the evenings. Right,
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: you crank out five hundred words or one thousand words.
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: Eventually the novel's going to get done. I think it's
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: more because I had written a couple of novels earlier
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: in life that were never published. I never went to
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: the keyboard and said to myself. There was never the
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: thought that I wasn't going to finish. There was the thought,
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: am I good? It was going to be any good?
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: Going to be terrible? There was thought there, but not
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: the thought that I wasn't going to finish. So hey
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: a little bit closer, Hey, a little bit closer.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, Now a real question. Do you cry when you
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: watch your movies the books that have been made into movies.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Did you cry during the notebook?
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: Uh? Yeah, of course you got to cry. Yeah, right,
• 20:22
  Speaker 5: I don't think. Look, I'm not weeping and reaching for tissues.
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: But I get a little tearry, you know, I got
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: tiry at the Notebook musical too. I mean, they just
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: did such a beautiful job.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: What about when you reread your material at times?
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: Sure, I'll get choked up sometimes sometimes, and and of
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: course I don't reread all the time. I'm not that vain,
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: but I'll pick up a book. You know, when you
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: first finish a novel, you don't want to see the
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: thing for about five years. You're you're it's just like
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: the worst friend ever here, he just abused you for
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: years and you're done with them, right, So you got
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: to give it some space.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Well, and nowadays, when you publish a book, it's like, okay,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: you finish a book, it's a labor of love. Then
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: you know, you go through the editing process, which.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: Is less creatively fulfilling.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, it's just kind of tedious, and I mean
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: it's important part of the process, but it's not like
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm acting like I'm from Canada
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: saying process. But anyway, it's an important part of it.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: But it's also it's just not a fulfilling part. It's like, yeah,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: I liked learning about language and set in structure and
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: making sure I'm using the right words and the most
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: powerful words when that's you know, appropriate. But also then
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: you get then the book is done. Then you have
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: to shoot the cover. Then you have to agree on
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: a cover. Then they send you ten thousand book slips.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Now this is the new thing where they send you
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: ten thousand bucks slips, which are the slips or the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: first sheets that go into the book, and you have
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to sign ten thousand fucking copies. And that really takes
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the joy out of the entire process.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: It gives you a carple tunnel.
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I've often joked about that. You know. People say,
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: they'll say what do you do? I say, I'm a
• 21:56
  Speaker 5: writer and they say, well, what do you write? I say, well,
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: mainly I write my name over and over.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Over and over and over again. Yeah. I just got
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: the e.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: Schwab's new book.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: She did The Invisible Life of Eddie LaRue, and she
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: did thirty thousand for her.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: I'm like, that's too many.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Somebody needs too many.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Next time I threw my back out twice, it stagning
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: my last ten thousand batch of books. The next time
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I write a book, I need to be suspended from
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: the ceiling, preferably a ceiling fan in some sort of
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: suspension gear where my back.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Is not the position in an awkward way.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: So I could just go like this, because you know,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: you could stamp them, but nobody wants to do that.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: When you care about your readers, you want to, you know.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: So I mean, it's not that your pigeon holed in
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: wrote like romance novels, but you've kind of sort of
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: like you've kind of chosen to write those books. Do
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: you feel at all like that's what you're supposed to write,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: or do you feel pigeonholed in any way?
• 22:50
  Speaker 5: Look, I write because I want people to read them,
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: and look, I know what my readers have liked, and
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: so I try to write in kind of that. But
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: there's less pigeonholing than you'd think, because I try to
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: make each novel very different, even though we know the
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: ideas very simple. It's a love story. It's going to
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: be said in North Carolina. But other than that, I
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: want it to be as different as possible. So I'll
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: write some in first person, some in third person, some
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: in third person, limited omniscient. I'll do some with a
• 23:21
  Speaker 5: stories and b stories that collide in the end in
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: a way a reader don't expect. I'll do epic novels.
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: I'll do characters in their teens or their forties, or
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: characters in their eighties. I'll have happy endings, bittersweet endings,
• 23:33
  Speaker 5: and sad endings. I'll have tragedy and other forms. With
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: that said, I also vary the themes. So some might
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: be love and danger. The one remain here is love
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: and the supernatural. I've done love and mystery. So the
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: great thing when you're just really writing about human emotion
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: is I have a great ability to add the elements
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: of all kinds of different stories. Right, I've had I've
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: had soldiers in my knowledge. I've had mysteries in my novels.
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: I've had arsons, you know, in my novels. So all
• 24:06
  Speaker 5: sorts of different things. So while it is pigeonholing, yeah,
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: it's a love story in North Carolina. Aside from remain
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: which is said in Cape Cod, it's okay. What I
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: would tell people is, even though it's those two things,
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: it's different than anything else I've ever done. There's going
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: to be other themes you don't expect, and you won't
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: see the ending coming, and that's there's a lot of
• 24:28
  Speaker 5: a challenge in that, and I enjoy it.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the key things
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: you said is instead of like, you know, your wife
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: goes to bed at eight eight pm, when you had
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the little kids and you had a choice to sit
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: on the sofa and watch television or shut the TV
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: off and write a fucking book, And I think there
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: in lies your answer. You know you could be so,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wrestled with this all the time. Yesterday
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I was reading my friend's book Who's Coming on the podcast?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And I was like, I went to go turn on
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: the TV and the TV's weren't working. I'm in this
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: rental house, were working, the cable was down, And I
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, and.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Then, well I could possibly read a book, idiot.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So I went and I got the book and I
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: was read a chapter and then I saw the TV's
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: come on, and I'm like, you have a choice right now.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: You can either continue reading, which is better for your brain,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: or be mine, you know, mindless, Like you know, watching
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: TV can be so numbing, and you know it's very
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: rare that there is an incredible show out there. Now,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of shows out there, but
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: to get a really good one. So but I think
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: therein lies the difference. You do have to make it
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the choice to do the work. You know, in order
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: to take the chance to try something new, you have
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: to put the effort in.
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and of course these days you also have to
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: put down the phone. Yeah, right, I think people. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: think some people might spend more time in front of
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: a screen than a TV screen. I don't know, I'm
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: not it seems like it, especially, so you have to
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: now put two things down, I guess to chase it.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: How do you manage your phone, Nicholas.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: Oh, it's not a big deal, you know, once you
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: get into look fart around on my phone, just like
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: everybody does. But I probably you know, I work out
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: a couple hours a day. I probably read two or
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: three hours a day. I work five or six hours
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: a day. And I know I'm on the phone talking
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: to friends and visiting with friends. Not every day. I'm
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: not that social, but yeah, enough in the in the
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: course of a week. So and then you know you're
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: sleeping and you're on your phone the rest of the time,
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: usually playing games. I'm a big backgammon. Nut. So I
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: play a lot of.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Backgamming, okay, And so do you write five to six
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: hours a day?
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Is that what you said?
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: Thinks about five on days that I write, but I
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: don't write every day.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: Do you write first thing in the morning.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: I write after coffee and after my workout.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Oh okay. Interesting.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: We talked to a Mitch Album last week and he
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: writes first thing in the morning. And I was telling
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: him about this book that I had picked up years
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: ago called Daily Rituals, which talks about all these famous
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: kind of authors, physicists, philosophers and what their kind of
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: work ethics are were, and a lot of them just
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: get up, you know, five in the morning, and they
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: work for three hours and then they're done for the
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: rest of the day. Their creative juice is pretty much there,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: just first thing in the morning. That's I'm a first
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: thing in the morning kind of person. That's when I
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: get my best shit done.
• 27:14
  Speaker 6: Well.
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: I'm an early riser. I'm usually up about four thirty
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: or five most morning, but I can't start my day
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: without coffee, and I like to. I like to get
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: my prayers in and get my dog out because I
• 27:26
  Speaker 5: like my dog too, and then I like to exercise,
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: you know, I mean, I just I know, if I'm
• 27:32
  Speaker 5: not after i'm done writing, I'm too tired to exercise.
• 27:36
  Speaker 5: So I got to write first. Yeah, and you know,
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: so I'm usually in the you know, in front of
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: the computer, not late about nine, and it's not five
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: or six hours, usually three to five. Today I think
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: it was like three. It really depends. Again, I don't
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: write every day. Some days I edit, and some days
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: I'm just trying to figure out what I'm supposed to
• 27:55
  Speaker 5: do next. So and that it's not a faucet that
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: you can turn on. I say with my way of
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: describing writing a novel is you have to know what
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: to write. That's part of it, and then you have
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: to know how to write it. Now, if you know
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: what you're doing the how, you can always get through that.
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: It may take more or less time than you think.
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: But if you don't know what to do, man, there's
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: no reason to put any words down at all. I
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: think I spent three or four days trying to figure
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: out what the next five hundred or seven hundred words
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: were in this novel, and didn't do anything for three
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: days or four days, and boom seven hundred words came
• 28:35
  Speaker 5: in like twenty minutes. I'm like, literally, I'm like, this
• 28:38
  Speaker 5: is ridiculous. I wish I could turn it on and
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: off like a faucet. But I don't understand that.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: You're saying, the idea has to come to you and
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: then you can put it to paper.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: You have to have a direction.
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right, exactly if you don't know what you're writing
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: and what would work exactly best within all these other
• 28:54
  Speaker 5: ideas about what the novel is supposed to be, not
• 28:57
  Speaker 5: only what specific like how do I discribe this thing,
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: this particular passage of time without being repetitive or boring,
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: and knowing that I have to do this again in
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: a couple of chapters where I am going to have
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: to use this one way to do it, But what's
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: the other way to do it? And how can I
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: do it? And what's a new way and what's going
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: to be interesting and flow? I had no idea. I
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: had no idea. It took a little editing on what
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: I'd already written, and then okay, I was ready to
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: write the words and they just literally poured out.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: I love it as somebody who writes a lot of
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: romance novels. What is the most romantic gesture that you've
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: ever done for someone else, Oh, gosh.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Or one that's been done for you.
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know. It's funny. When I was married, when
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: my Kathy liked at the time because we had children, right,
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: we had two, and then we had three more, so
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: we had five kids. So it was always a very
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: bustly busy house. And well, what she really most appreciated
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: were evenings off, like where she could just you take
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: care of the kids. I don't want to feed them
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: the whole bit, all the way into bed, you know,
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: do this one's soccer practice and do this with the others.
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: I just want to sit on the back porch for
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: a while. Then I want to take a long tub.
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: Then I want to go lay in bed and watch
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: brainless TV and then pass out. So I made a
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: point to do those those kinds. That's what she swore
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: she wanted more than anything.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's real, real life romance.
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: And she told me that was romantic.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, no, no, no, I can appreciate that that's romantic.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not interested in getting flowers from a
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: lover like I find actual traditional and I don't even
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: have children. But I find very traditional romantic things unnecessary.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: It's really those deeper meaning, like very thoughtful gestures that
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: really actually make a difference in everybody's lives.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: When you really know somebody and what they need. That's
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: real love and romance.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to take a break and we're going
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: to be right back with Nicholas Sparks.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: And we're already back with Nicholas Sparks. How quick was that?
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: You know? The wonders of technology, they never ceased to amaze. Yeah,
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: I love it.
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Whoever came up with Zoom, and whoever came up with
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: docu sign, and whoever came up with an airflyer. I need,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I need to personally thank all of those people because
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: those are three of the biggest game changers.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: In my last in the last three years.
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: Yes, all right, what do you put in your air
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: fire with anything?
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Everything? Everything? I can't cook, so I put anything in there.
• 31:36
  Speaker 5: Okay, I like that. I like that.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I have one of those.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It's like a toaster oven also airfire, so you can
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: turn it on toaster, you can turn it on air fryer.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how to change the settings.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: So it's always on air fire.
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: I got well, air fires are great. They're especially great
• 31:52
  Speaker 5: when it comes to reheating things.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's usually what I'm doing anyway, which is and.
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: Literally that I will be using my air fryer tonight.
• 31:59
  Speaker 5: So I'm with you.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: There's nothing better than seeing, like you know, if I
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: love salmon, I love chicken, like putting it in just
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: for two minutes and just hearing the sizzle to get
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: the crispiness. I'm like, oh my god, this is all
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I've ever wanted was crispy food.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: That's really my that's what I want.
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I agree, I agree. Amazing And yeah, I'm with
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: you on the others too. I like docu sign and
• 32:20
  Speaker 5: and Zoom. They're very they're very handy. I remember I
• 32:23
  Speaker 5: used to get a lot of contracts that I used
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: to have to sign. I'm published in like fifty different languages.
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: I mean, so for every book, you're getting this, and
• 32:33
  Speaker 5: then I mean I get I get that, X's this
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: thing you know, uh, you know, just filled with contracts
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: I have to sign. Yeah, now it's click click click.
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: I love it. It's great.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, docu sign is really the best, the best thing
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: that's ever happened. I mean not to have to sit
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: there with somebody with a notary and sign contracts.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god, fingerprints. I'm like, no.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: And once you check into docus it's like a commercial
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: for DocuSign. Once you check into docuside and give them
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: your first signature, that's it.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: It just does it.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, I just want to like,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I want to perform for that person and some whatever
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: way they want.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: Me to, and I will find the CEO of docu
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: sign and get you.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Nicholas. This is a part of the show
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: where we take questions from callers.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, great, okay.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Well our first question comes from Keisha.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: She says, Hi, Chelsea and Catherine and any other beautiful
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: folks who read this.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: I'm a writer.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: I'm actually sometimes part time, sometimes contract sometimes unpaid sometimes
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: for myself writer and have been for many years. I'm
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: in my thirties and make my money in a career
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: that's not writing. That said, my writing has been published
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: and I've been paid for my writing for over a decade.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: Now here's what I want to get a read on.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: Are any freelancers currently making it out there? Do you
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: really have to have a whole online persona read impressive
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: Instagram or TikTok to get traction. These days, the best
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: luck I've had to make a career ie money is
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: copywriting in my technical field subject matter. It's extremely sane
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: ties and I obviously can't put much of a stamp
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: on anything. Should I just be grateful I'm getting paid
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: to write at all? And why is this reading like
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: a diary entry?
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: Dear Chelsea.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: I'm interested in thoughts and advice to advance my writing career,
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: or perhaps to redefine it very very best, Kisha. I
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: thought about making this anonymous, but isn't that empathetical to
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: my whole thing?
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, you can't be anonymous, Kisha. But actually we
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: were just having this very conversation. This is our special guest.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Nicholas Sparks is here today.
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: Hi, Wow, nice to meet you.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how are you?
• 34:29
  Speaker 6: He was just the person?
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Nicholas. Tell her what you were telling us?
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Please?
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: Well, when I first began writing, I ended up writing
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: my novels in my spare time after work, usually in
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: the evening. I would write from eight o'clock to eleven
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: o'clock or maybe even midnight and then i'd work my
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: regular shift. I'd also write one day on the weekend.
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: I had a wife and I had two young children
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: at home, so and I really felt like writing was
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: important to me. I wanted to chase a dream, so
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: I made time for it. So I think if I
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: was you, I were to really start and really answer
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: the very first question is what kind of writing do
• 35:11
  Speaker 5: you want to do? Is it? Do you want to
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: be a novelist. Do you want to be one of
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: the people that, let's say, publishing houses call to write
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: a famous person's biography. Do you want to be a
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: you know, an anonymous biographer. Do you want to be
• 35:27
  Speaker 5: someone who publishes on substack and journalistic pieces? What kind
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: of writer do you want to be? And I think
• 35:36
  Speaker 5: until you're clear about exactly the kind that you want
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: to be, you're probably just better doing what you're doing
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: and mastering the skills that you're developing, because, as you said,
• 35:51
  Speaker 5: you know, you do some copy this, you do some
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: writing on your own, you do some writing that gets published,
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: and that's all great. All of writing is a skill
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: and you do need to practice it. And it's wonderful
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: that not only do you get paid a little bit
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: to do it, but you also make time to write
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: what you want to write. So once you decide then
• 36:13
  Speaker 5: what you want to write, then you have to break
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: it down further. Can I ask what your dream writing
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: thing would be? Screenplays, novels, nonfiction? You know, what are
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: you thinking?
• 36:24
  Speaker 7: What I've really enjoyed that I've actually been able to
• 36:26
  Speaker 7: do has been some short stories, some short format fiction.
• 36:31
  Speaker 7: The problem is obviously, like short format as a medium
• 36:36
  Speaker 7: is kind of shrinking. We'll see how that goes. But
• 36:39
  Speaker 7: I have actually really enjoyed that. I kind of like
• 36:42
  Speaker 7: those sort of pernal storytelling. It's very powerful to me,
• 36:46
  Speaker 7: it's very fun. I do have like half a novel
• 36:49
  Speaker 7: geared towards adults that I actually found not that fun.
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: And then there's like some.
• 36:56
  Speaker 7: A little bit longer, maybe middle children age books that
• 37:01
  Speaker 7: I have.
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: Been really getting into.
• 37:02
  Speaker 7: Okay, I have a little kid now, and now I'm
• 37:05
  Speaker 7: thinking about like sort of stories that I sort of
• 37:07
  Speaker 7: tell her, and like how would that change when she's
• 37:09
  Speaker 7: like in the second or third or fourth grade, and
• 37:12
  Speaker 7: how fun that would be. And I'm actually really enjoying
• 37:14
  Speaker 7: sort of plotting that out. And I'm a warning person,
• 37:17
  Speaker 7: so I like, what you're saying about you would carve
• 37:19
  Speaker 7: out your time in the evenings.
• 37:20
  Speaker 6: Honey, I'm in bed. But what I do do, and.
• 37:22
  Speaker 7: I love that you said that, is I do tend
• 37:24
  Speaker 7: to get up around four thirty or five nowadays, and
• 37:26
  Speaker 7: everybody else.
• 37:27
  Speaker 6: Is a sleep till seven. Yeah.
• 37:29
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I think I should make more of an effort
• 37:31
  Speaker 7: to protect that.
• 37:32
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: Sure, that's a great thing, and you're right. Short story
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: fiction is really tough these days, but it's been tough
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: for probably twenty or thirty years. With that said, you know,
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: it's a wonderful way to develop your storytelling ability. What
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: you might consider is maybe taking and this is an idea,
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: and feel free to throw this out because it's not good.
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: But you know, you think of some of these ideas
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: that you're thinking about for your daughter maybe in second
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: or third grade, and fairy tales or whatever, whatever adventure
• 38:03
  Speaker 5: tale or a mystery tale. Right, what if you actually
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: compile those and it's you're not trying to just publish
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: one story in an offbeat magazine, but you eventually try
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: to publish those stories as as a collection and anthology
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: or another option is to perhaps and you don't have
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: to take these ideas is perhaps if you so much
• 38:25
  Speaker 5: enjoy short story fiction, think of a broad story with
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: multiple characters and somehow tell a dozen short stories that
• 38:33
  Speaker 5: all come together at.
• 38:35
  Speaker 6: The love that.
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: So there's different ways you can chase your dream. But
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: of course, you know, we only have so much time.
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: And good for you for really developing your skill.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's great advice.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: I was going to say one of those things, not
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the second one, which is even better advice than the
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: first one. I mean, you can combine all of those
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: stories and I mean make that a big book, or
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: you can make one, you know, all of these stories
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: within one big book, but you could have a book
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: of short stories, you know those those are still relevant.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: And also just like I had this conversation with a
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: group of women from like Silicon Valley last night. We
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: had a tech kind of meeting, and it's kind of like,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: don't let I hate letting like the market dictate what
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: you're going to bring to it. Like, you know, when
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: you have a talent and you have a desire, do
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: what you love to do and bring it to the marketplace.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Don't let whatever's popular or not popular dictate what you're
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: going to do in your spare time. You have the
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: spare time, that's the first thing you need. You have
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: the time in the morning, as you already mentioned, just
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: use that time, like dedicate that time to really focusing
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: on one of those two options that Nick mentioned. And
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, like in a couple of months,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: you're going to be farther down the road. Listen, children's
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: books are always going to be viable. They're always going
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: to be a selling People always want a nice parable
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: or an adventure series. You know, that's something you can
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: make more and more out of in success. You know,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: remember Ramona, what was her name, Ramona? Those are the
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: book yeah, other than Judy Bloom, like Ramona and yeah,
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the cat ate my jumpsuit was Judy Bloom. But then
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: there was another series with Ramona who was always in
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: trouble and I love that. But like you know, when
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: you're thinking about children's stories, like that's that's something that's
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: kind of always has the potential to resonate. So it's
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: really about picking exactly like where you're going to put
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: your energy into and just giving yourself that time every
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: day and doing it.
• 40:27
  Speaker 7: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think
• 40:29
  Speaker 7: sometimes you see somebody to say like keep going, keep
• 40:31
  Speaker 7: doing it. And also the whole thing about you know,
• 40:34
  Speaker 7: building a platform. I think that's part of where it
• 40:38
  Speaker 7: does get a little bit rough, because it's like you're
• 40:40
  Speaker 7: kind of going to the marketplace.
• 40:42
  Speaker 6: You know, what's marketable? Am I marketed? Bull?
• 40:45
  Speaker 7: It's like part before the horse, and so that can
• 40:48
  Speaker 7: be pretty like kind of a bummer. But I like
• 40:52
  Speaker 7: that you guys are like, don't even think about that
• 40:54
  Speaker 7: right now.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And also like don't make it a bummer making
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: an adventure, make it like okay, fun, Okay, I'm I'm
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: going to go online. I'm going to go on my
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: social media platform and ask people what would they like
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: the most. Would you like a short you know, would
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: you like a short story for your second or third grader?
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: A book about being a young person or a young child,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: would you like you know, maybe you could get feedback
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: that way, you know, But don't be worried about the
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: response of anybody at this point. Just be worried about
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: moving towards your goal, because what you said in the
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: letter is like, should I be satisfied writing this kind
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: of sanitized stuff, Like no, you shouldn't be satisfied with that.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: That's a way for you to make money, but you
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: should go after your dreams. Like we only have a
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: short time here, you might as well make them count
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: for you.
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: I forget where I heard this, but recently I read
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: something that said something along the lines of your desires
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: are what brings you towards your purpose, So like, don't
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: discount that you do want more than that.
• 41:51
  Speaker 7: And like mister smacks, it counts. It's a good experience.
• 41:56
  Speaker 7: Like I'm definitely learning self editing is a really.
• 41:59
  Speaker 6: Big yeah that I've learned a lot from copywriting.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, edit to amplify, edit to amplify.
• 42:06
  Speaker 6: Yeah, for sure.
• 42:07
  Speaker 7: It's also just hard, you know, you start to get
• 42:09
  Speaker 7: older and you start to think it all ties into
• 42:11
  Speaker 7: sort of like youth culture and tacking up these audience
• 42:14
  Speaker 7: numbers on these sort of arbitrary formats that maybe that's no.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't matter.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: But also on the subject of age, like that is
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: there's a million people that are your age. Who cares
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: about what young people are doing? Focus on the people
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: that you're going to be servicing. Focus on your group
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: of people. Don't worry about what people who are twenty
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and thirty years old are doing.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: That's not relevant.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: To you, you know, so I just like, don't forget
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of other people. It's not like you
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: have to be this new, young, fresh hot thing all
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: of the time. That's not real. That's just what we've
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: been served up. So just enjoy like where you are
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: in your life. Appreciate it. You have the passion and
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: now you just need the commitment and the drive.
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: I really appreciate that.
• 42:55
  Speaker 7: And you're a great testament to that of you're not
• 42:58
  Speaker 7: chasing anything you've own and developed sort of based on
• 43:01
  Speaker 7: your interests, and that's been really powerful to see.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Oh well, I love that. Thank you. Will you follow
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: up with us? Yes, keep us posted absolutely.
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: Thank y'all so much. I hope you have a good one.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Thank yousha good writing question for us for our special
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: guests today specially.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: Well, this next question isn't about writing, but it is
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: about a family secret. And I feel like you are
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: someone who is a special a specialist in juicy secrets.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: And fictional family special families unless you have some real
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: ones you want to smell necklaces.
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: Well, our next question comes from Lynn. She says, Dear Chelsea,
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: three and a half years ago, I rekindled my relationship
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: with my older sister without telling the rest of my family.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: She was nine when I was born, and as a
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: little girl, I idolized her. My love of tied I
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: and the grateful dead comes straight from her. In the eighties,
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: when she was applying to colleges, there was a huge
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: fight between her and my parents. My parents told her
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: they couldn't afford to pay the tuition to the college
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: of her dream. There were some harsh words on both sides.
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: It destroyed their relationship and she cut herself off from
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: my family. Growing up, I asked questions about why I
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: no longer saw her, and basically was told it was
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: her choice to be so selfish. Years later, her husband
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: actually wrote me a letter and told me that she
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: missed me and would like to have a relationship with
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: just me. I hate to admit it, but at the
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: time I was not ready for that. I was still
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: under the impression that my dad was perfect, and I
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: told her as much when I called her.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: I was awful and so hurtful.
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: After I had my own kids, though, it started to
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: dawn on me that parents are just doing the best
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: they can. In fact, I started thinking that it was
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: my parents who fucked up more than my sister.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like it.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: At eighteen.
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: She was a child when the rift happened, and it
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: all just made me so sad. I felt like I
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: was missing a piece for thirty years and I just
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: flat out missed my big sister. So I reached out
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: online and we agreed to meet. Over the last three years,
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: we have become so close again. We have a ton
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: of similarities beyond just how much we look alike. We're
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: both teachers, same political beliefs, we love cats over dogs,
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: even our mannerisms become part of each other's families. Here
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: is my problem. All of this has happened in secret.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: On my side. I haven't told my parents our younger
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: sister that I have a relationship with my older sister,
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: And at first it was to protect the fragile relationship
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: I was trying to form, but now it's just out
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: of worry and guilt.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: She wants nothing to do with my.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: Parents or younger sister, and I worry about hurting my dad,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: who is in the early stages of dementia. I would
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: keep this a secret forever, but now my kids have
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: formed a relationship with my older sister and her family too.
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: We're very close with my parents and my kids see
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: them every day. I feel awful having them lie to
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: my parents when we have plans with my older sister
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: and her family. I don't want my older sister to
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: be some guilty secret. Do I confess to my parents
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: and younger sister? And if so, how do I do
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: it in a way that's not going to hurt their
• 45:42
  Speaker 4: feelings since I've been hiding this from them for years?
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: Help?
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: Lynn?
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: Hi? This is Nicholas Sparks, our special guest today.
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: Hi, and yeah, do you want me to answer this question?
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Would you like to go first? You're welcome to I don't.
• 45:57
  Speaker 5: I don't think I have the expertise to answer such
• 45:59
  Speaker 5: a question other than to say, you know, if you're
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: still close with your parents, I don't see how you
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: can continue to lie to them. Right what they do
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: with information is going to be up to them. They
• 46:11
  Speaker 5: might be reasonable, they might not be. But I certainly
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: don't think it's good that your kids have now kind
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: of got caught up into it. Not like they're lying
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: to them, but when you're going to go see the
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: sister and her family and they have to lie about that,
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: I always kind of lead my life and I really do,
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: and most everyone who's very close with me would agree
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: with this is Look, this is who I am. I'd
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: rather you know the real me and choose to have
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: a relationship with me or like me or dislike me
• 46:46
  Speaker 5: after this. But here's the real me, and I don't
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: try to hide that. And I don't recall ever losing
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: someone with that kind of honesty. That was an important
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: to me. Now I don't know your parents, and they
• 47:03
  Speaker 5: might be that kind, but I would say, you think
• 47:06
  Speaker 5: you have a relationship with your parents, but they don't
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: even know the real you. They have a relationship with
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: a facade of you. And I'm older than you, so
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: I yeah, I just don't really care anymore. What here
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: I am? And if you don't like me, you don't
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: want to talk to me any more. Okay, good on you.
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: Wish you well, Lynne.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Can I ask you this all happened because of college,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: because she was they had a disagreement over where she
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: was going to go to college. Yeah, are your parents
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: religious or something like?
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Is there?
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: I just can't believe, like an un blow up?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one blow up and they're so close with the
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: rest of the family.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: And they just extricate it.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: She was like ostracized from the family for the rest
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: of her life.
• 47:51
  Speaker 8: So it wasn't that she was well, I mean, I
• 47:54
  Speaker 8: guess she was kind of ostracized. So now I was nine,
• 47:57
  Speaker 8: so this is Yeah, I've piecemealed it back together a
• 48:00
  Speaker 8: little bit and we've talked a little bit about it,
• 48:02
  Speaker 8: but we've just tried to kind of move on. That
• 48:05
  Speaker 8: was I guess the biggest argument that set her over
• 48:10
  Speaker 8: the edge, to be like, you don't even care about
• 48:13
  Speaker 8: me going to college. Therefore I'm going to do what
• 48:16
  Speaker 8: I want to do and i want nothing to do
• 48:19
  Speaker 8: with you. So she removed herself from the relationship, and
• 48:24
  Speaker 8: my parents just basically pretended she never existed after that,
• 48:28
  Speaker 8: as did the rest of my dad's side of the family.
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would just I mean, honestly, it's really that's
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: it's not your problem. You're you're the fact that you
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: reconnected with your sister is beautiful and that's exactly what
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: you should do, and you should probably encourage your younger
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: sister to reconnect with your sister too, because anybody who
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: can write their own child off at eighteen years old,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: is that's not right, you know, and I mean, obviously
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: that sounds like I'm passing judgment on your parents, But
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: like I.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Agree with Nick, Like you want to be upfront.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with what you're doing reconnecting with one
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: of your face family members who was kind of taken
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: out of your life as a nine year old kid.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: I lost my brother at nine, Like, it's not the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: same circumstance, but I would do anything to be able
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: to reconnect with him, to be able to have a
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: conversation with him, you know, Like, of course, that's a
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: natural instinct, that's a natural way for a human being
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: to relate to another person in your family and your Yeah,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: your father is in the beginning stages of dementia.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: That's unfortunate.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: But it's also not your responsibility to take care of
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: your parents' feelings. You're an adult who has children that
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: you want to set an example for, right.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: I completely agree.
• 49:34
  Speaker 8: So I have intentions of telling my parents, Like, I
• 49:39
  Speaker 8: feel bad that I've waited.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Four years to tell them.
• 49:42
  Speaker 8: I'm just trying to figure out at this point how
• 49:43
  Speaker 8: to do it without a feeling like a bomb.
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: I have an idea. Okay, it's the best way. Go over,
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: have a nice stay with them, and then when there's
• 49:55
  Speaker 5: ten minutes to go until you have to leave, send
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: the kids the caar, talk to them. You'll give them
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: a hug, say oh before I go, you should really
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: know this. Tell them. Then go get in the car.
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: Let those two deal with it without you having to
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: see their reaction. Okay, and then call, you know, a
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: couple of days or whatever your date your call schedule is,
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: say hey, hey mom, hey dad, how you doing or
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: whatever you do? That's what I would do. Yeah, and say, okay,
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: we're going to talk about this for the next three hours. No, No,
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: this is more of a you're not doing anything wrong.
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: You tell them, and then you let those two deal
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: with it.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: I also think some of the guilt of this is
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: coming from like how long it's been. I think get
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: nebulous on that detail.
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: Just say, look, I've reconnected her with her and we've
• 50:46
  Speaker 5: become pretty close, and I just thought that you should
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: know that. I just didn't feel I felt it wouldn't
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: be good of me to lie. I don't want to
• 50:54
  Speaker 5: raise my kids, you know, knowing this lie. And I
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: just wanted you to know that we've reconnected, we're really
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: getting along my kids. It's like her kids, and I
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: think she's a terrific, wonderful person. Done walk to the car.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about that, Lynn?
• 51:07
  Speaker 8: Yeah, No, I feel like I could do that for sure.
• 51:12
  Speaker 8: I actually had talked to my therapist about ways as
• 51:14
  Speaker 8: well to try and just like drop the truth bomb
• 51:17
  Speaker 8: and run. The funny thing is I don't. Actually I'm
• 51:20
  Speaker 8: horrible at keeping secrets, so the fact that this is
• 51:24
  Speaker 8: a secret that I've been keeping is like me alive.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I would also just not You don't
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: have to explain every single detail, you know what I mean.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: You just kind of give them the information that's absolutely
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: necessary and walk to the car and follow up with
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: them a couple days later. And if they don't want
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: to talk to you for a while, then they don't
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: want to talk.
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: To you for a while.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: But it's better just to tell the truth, you know,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and also for you for the sake of your children,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, You just have to demonstrate
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: how you want them to go through life. And lies
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: are the worst and they all always come out. Everyone
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: finds out about everything, So I don't understand why people
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: continue to lie, But I mean I understand your situation,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: but just you know, you want to live in truth.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. Okay, Well, good luck with everything. Let
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: us know how it goes. Okay, yeah, I appreciate it.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, we'll take a quick break and then we'll
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: be right back with Nicholas Sparks.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: How do you like our therapy session so far?
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: Nicholas, Wow, these are tricky questions.
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: Seriously, I don't know.
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: That I'd like to do this every like you guys too.
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: I don't want to give people advice. I've really handled
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: my life, let alone trying to help other people with
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: their lives.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: No shit, I mean I wish I gave the advice
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: I give to other people to myself, because it's much different.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: What do we have to wrap up?
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: Well, we do have one last question, so Carrie says,
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: Dear Chelsea. I've never really referred to myself as an artist,
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: but I've always needed to outwardly express myself. I love
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: to sing, dance, draw, and I was a gymnast as
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: a young girl. I've been through a lot in my
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: fifty six years. White and Jewish and my father is black.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: Growing up in the suburbs of New York in the
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: seventies and eighties, there were no other families that resembled mine.
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: I grew thick skin and learned how to thrive in
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: survival mode. I had subscribed to the belief that we
• 53:12
  Speaker 4: can all be happy, but we must do the work
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: on ourselves in order to live a happy life. I
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: have often thought about writing my story of resilience to
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: share with others, with the hopes of inspiring people who
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: have struggled. Two years ago, my husband and I went
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: to DC for his college reunion with a group of friends.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: We stayed in a big Victorian house and hung out.
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: A few of us were in a transition phase and
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: longing for something, but not sure what it was or
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: how to achieve it.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: One of our friends suggested we do an exercise.
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: We had to describe our dream life five years from now,
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: as if it had already happened. I told them that
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: my husband and I have been traveling all over the world.
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: I blurted out that I had written a New York
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: Times bestseller and I was currently on my book tour.
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: I had toyed with the idea of writing a book,
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: but had never said the words out loud. When we
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: got home, I committed to writing daily and began with
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: essays about my childhood, adulthood, trauma, all of it. Kept
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: at it, and eventually there was a book.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: Here's my issue.
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: I haven't read the book since I finished it or
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: taken the next steps to find an editor. I'm very
• 54:08
  Speaker 4: proud of myself for this achievement. I know it's a
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: big deal. I also know that my stories will resonate
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: with so many as the struggles I've been through are
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: not uncommon, and my basic message is that we can
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: get through anything. I realize that it is the fear
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: of revealing myself and being vulnerable that's holding me back.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: Do you have any advice on how to push through
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: the fear and take the next steps?
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Carrie? Yeah, walk through that door, Carrie, you got it.
• 54:29
  Speaker 6: What I mean.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Fear is there to face the challenge. I look at
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: fear always as a challenge that I will overcome. If
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I'm scared of something, I move towards it even more forcefully.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: Unless you want to keep this book to yourself, you're
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: going to have to take the steps to get it
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: read by people and to get some feedback and some direction. Nicholas,
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: what's your advice for a first time author trying to
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: get their stuff read.
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: Self edit, self edit, you know, if you haven't even
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: read the book, since you have to.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: Go back and read it.
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: I cannot tell you, guys, how many times I edit
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: everything that I write. I edit every fourth sentence, I
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: go back and edit those four I edit every clump
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: of two pages. I ed from the beginning, clump of
• 55:10
  Speaker 5: ten pages. Then I go back and I edit from
• 55:13
  Speaker 5: the beginning. Once I hit a section, then my agent edits,
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: then I edit, then I edit some more. I would
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: say every sentence in every one of my novels, I've
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: probably examined closely, word by word and within the context
• 55:27
  Speaker 5: of a page or chapter fifteen times. So and I did.
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: I did the same prior to trying to even find
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: an agent or are a publisher for the notebook. If
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: you're going to try to find an agent who are
• 55:43
  Speaker 5: very selective because lots of people want to have books published,
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: or you want to try to get your novel published
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: by a big publishing house who also have a lot
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: thousands and thousands and thousands of submissions, you're not doing
• 55:57
  Speaker 5: yourself any favors by handing it, by not handing them
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: the very best possible work that you could do.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you have to reread your book also, like
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you have to go because you're gonna
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: I know you think like, oh, you're done. You have
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: a book that's everything he says is absolutely true. And
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: also you can give it to a couple of people
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: get some feedback that'll help you with your editing perhaps,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: but you definitely have to get it out there. Like
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: the fear of showing it to people. You got to
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: get past that. You have to be open to criticism
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: and constructive critique, like you just have to be open
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: to it.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: That's part of the process.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: So good luck to you and hopefully we'll hear about
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: your book in the future coming out and being published.
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: And that's our episode for today.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: You guys, everyone go out and get Remain the novel
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: by Nicholas Sparks with m. Knight not Chaka Khan Shyamalan,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: and it's going to come out as a movie, so
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: you want to make sure you read the book before
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: you see the movie. That's the order of business out here.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thanks so much, Nicholas, what a pleasure to.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Speak with you.
• 57:02
  Speaker 5: Hey, thank you for having me and you did you
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: said his name exactly right. I listen. Thank you Samalan ex.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Say please let him know.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: Please, Okay, take care Nicklas so much.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Bye bye.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: I just announced all my tour dates. They just went
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: on sale this week. It's called the High and Mighty Tour.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: I will be starting in February of next year, so
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: I will be touring from February through June. So go
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: get your tickets now. If you want good seats and
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: you want to come see me perform, I will be
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: on the High and Mighty Tour.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Do you want advice from Chelsea?
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: Right into Dear Chelsea Podcast at gmail dot com. Find
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: full video episodes of Dear Chelsea on YouTube by searching
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: at Dear Chelsea Pod. Dear Chelsea is edited and engineered
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: by Brad Dickert executive producer Catherine law And be sure
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: to check out our merch at Chelseahandler dot com