Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.

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Mindy: We're here with Saumya Dave, author of What A Happy Family, which is available from Berkeley and it features mental health in a very large way. Talking especially about families from a humorous edge and pressures of internal family mechanisms. I know that my family in particular has a lot of their own little jabs and jibes and things that we all kind of assume about each other as the family member that has a certain role. So for example, I'm the youngest, so my role is to always be wrong. 

I would just like to talk a little bit about first mental health because you are also a practicing psychiatrist, so it's a fascinating coalescence of two different journeys, your career, but then also your writing, coming together and bolstering each other. So if you could tell us first of all what the book, What A Happy Family is about and then if you can tell me a little bit just about the mental health in fiction narrative and what it's like to be exploring that also from your profession. 

Saumya: Sure, well, I love the way you described What A Happy Family with that idea about mechanisms in a family, I think that's such a perfect way to think about it, but in short it's about a family that settled in Atlanta. There are five members of the immediate family and then one member Zach, who is married to the eldest daughter in the family. And the book really goes through how each member of this family navigates mental health in their own ways and the ways that all of these family members hurt each other and then hopefully how they help learn to heal each other. 

So I'm a psychiatrist like you said, and I have been reading fiction for my entire life, so when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor and a writer. And it wasn't until I was in high school in college when people said to me, you're going to have to pick one, you can't do both, not a thing, people don't do that. And I saw that reflected in the community and then the greater world at large around me. So I thought, okay, I do have to pick and I picked the pre-med part of it and thought, okay, I will write later, I will write in my free time. And I learned very quickly that it doesn't always work that way. I know there are a lot of disciplined people out there who can put in their time to all the things that matter to them. But I learned about myself that if I didn't block off hours and if I didn't commit to writing the way I committed to this other career that I was going after, it would get lost eventually. And that was something that really scared me. 

So I, from a young age, turned to fiction to teach me about life. As the daughter of immigrants, as someone who felt like an outsider many, many times growing up. And as I started writing more and more and my debut came out during the pandemic of course, which is great. I've had two books in a pandemic When my debut out in July of 2020, I learned by going to a lot of virtual book clubs that a lot of people turned to fiction to teach them about life, to comfort them, to entertain them. And during my residency training, when I was learning about the ins and outs of psychiatry I realized I wasn't finding very much fiction that explored mental health.There are books out there that do that and they do it really, really well. I just couldn't find one about a family and about the things they do and don't tell each other. 

The roles that they put on each other in the way they may be regressed back into those roles when they're together and how those roles impact their own selves when they're not even with their family members. So in their workplaces and their romantic relationships and their friendships. So, after my debut came out, I thought, what if this is what the second book is about? What if I put together some of the insights I've learned through my psychiatry training and through seeing patients and and put it through fiction and see how that comes out as a story, the kind of story that I always hope to read. 

Mindy: Everything that you're saying about learning through fiction...I think that fiction and reading in general are the quickest path to empathy and I don't know about you, but a lot of people that I know that are also creatives have struggled during this pandemic, to both read and write, definitely want to talk to you about having two books released during a pandemic - what a lovely experience for you. But first I would like to talk about something you mentioned - wanting to be both a psychiatrist and a writer. Those are two huge goals. And first of all, it's amazing to me that as a child you were like, I want both of these things that I'm going to get them. That's awesome. I love it. 

I myself always just knew that I wanted to be a writer. However, what I want to point out about your path that I think is super smart and a wonderful thing to share with my readers is that you did two things that I love here. You made the decision to - in essence - be practical and go the pre med route. If anyone were to ask me, hey, what do I do? Do I become a doctor or a writer? I'm like, you become a doctor and then you write on the side because I can say as someone that worked in the public schools. I was the librarian, but I worked in the public schools for 14 years and I think I had published my fifth or my sixth book before I was able to actually live off of that income. So it is a lovely dream. It is a difficult thing to attain and an even more difficult thing to actually make a living from. 

I love that you instinctively seemed to know that. But then also just had that little, niggling - no, I want to write. And that's so beautiful because it should never be ignored. I always tell people, if you get a flash of inspiration, you grab it, you take it, you go. If you have a dialogue or scene or a title or whatever it is, lightning doesn't strike twice. Once you have it, you grab it, you write it down. If you have that urge to write, in the moment, you need to sit down and do it. 

Saumya: Oh, I love that so much because I think there's so much to be said about keeping our passions alive and present no matter what they are. And all the writers I've met over the years, they feel as though it's this core part of who they are. So when they don't do it for very long periods of time, they want to return to it. And of course that time they vary, because life happens and so many things might be going on. But I've always found that you know, whether it's a week, a month, a year, whatever it is, people who love words want to return to words. 

Mindy: So I love what you said because there's so much power in keeping those things with us and close to us and nurturing them and it's so much a part of who we are like you said, I think you're ignoring a very strong sense of self purpose and drive if you just try to put it in a box and set it aside for now. You lose it. Which is something that you did mention earlier and you run that risk of losing it. But I also think you run the risk of losing part of yourself. 

Saumya: That's so, so true. One thing that was going through my head a lot when I was in college and I was completely focused on the premed path was, is my future self going to be resentful? And that question kept coming up again and again and I realized then, you know, I was in my early twenties at that time that I don't want to be resentful when I'm older, I don't want to be resentful. So what can I do to prevent future resentment? And that question has helped me in a lot of daily and longer term decisions. 

Mindy: That is really cool. I like that a lot that you are asking questions of your future self and saying, you know, what do you want? How do you want to feel? Uh I really like that I actually had a conversation with my boyfriend about future selves and how we thought of ourselves when we were younger, Not necessarily what our goals were, but what we pictured ourselves as when we were children and whether or not our core ourselves have changed. So interesting that you bring this up about yourself and knowing this about yourself at a young age.

I had a similar experience. We're a very midwestern family. I'm from Ohio, I grew up on a farm, that's what we do. We are farmers, we are farmers and teachers, that is what we produce. That is who we are. I come along and I don't want those things, I want to be a writer and I knew that from a very young age, but I didn't necessarily have that phrase. I didn't know that that was what I was doing. What I was doing even when I was a very small child was inserting myself into the narrative. 

So, I would be reading a book and I'd be like, well, if I were in this story, this is what I would do, and I would write a scene with myself and it as a child. So I would be, you know, rewriting Bridge to Terabithia, you know, with me in it and kind of fan fiction in a way, is what we would call it now. But I always took tv shows that I loved or stories, books, cartoons, whatever it was. I would insert myself in it, like, as a new character, create storylines for myself and for these other characters. I didn't know that I was writing, this was just what I did. This was myself. 

I think I must have had the assumption that this was a child enterprise, this was what I did as a very small child and that I would essentially grow out of it the way you grow out of your toys. I get to be 6th, 7th, 8th grader and I'm still doing it. This is what I do in my spare time, is writing stories and now they are usually entirely my own creations. I'm no longer inserting myself into tv shows I'm writing and doing these things in my head, this is how I go to sleep as I'm laying down and creating these narratives, and because I don't know anyone else that does this, and because it is very much a different, a new thing in my family, I was worried that there was something wrong with me, I was worried that there was some sort of mental health issue because I wasn't living in the present and I wasn't living in reality, and I was actually very concerned for my mental health, not knowing that what I was doing was creative, and essentially I was writing all the time. 

Saumya: How did that go from then on? How did you know, okay, I'm a writer and this is what I need to do?

Mindy: I think that eventually I bridged that gap, but as a 13, 14 year old, sitting down with my parents and having this big heartfelt, “Guys, I think I'm insane.” You know, and they were like, oh no, you're not, honey, it's okay, you're just creative and you're imaginative, and this is a good thing. My parents are wonderful people and they've always supported and pushed literacy and reading. And they were like, no, this is good. You're just a very creative person and that's okay. You know, the people around you aren't so you're not seeing it. So you think this is weird. I just needed someone to say this is okay, you're not weird.

Saumya: There's so much power in getting that. And I imagine especially in your teens, to hear that from your family must have felt so comforting to you to know that There was not only support, but there was an explanation for what made you, you. 

Mindy: Yes. One that meant that I was not going down an unsafe route. I think that was my concern was that I wasn't spending enough time doing, quote unquote real things. So yeah, I was worried that I wasn't grounded enough in reality and kind of, operating off of a very 1890s mental health standard for women. 

Saumya: Yeah. That somehow still finds its way into things today too. So I hear that.

Mindy: Yeah, somehow, even as a child, as a teenager, I knew this, I knew that someone somewhere would point at me and tell me I was wrong. Speaking about that support then that I had from my family and bringing it back to your work and especially the novel, What A Happy Family when we're talking about family roles. Those are so powerful. Just in my example, I needed my parents to say this is okay, this is acceptable. And of course I was young enough that that was a huge boon to me to have that grant of permission to continue in this vein. So then, speaking about your novel and some of the different family interactions inside of it, what are those, I don't want to call it power struggles - although it can become that - those different dynamics, how do they play out within the novel? 

Saumya: The novel really explored exactly what you said, you know, how our families receive us or how they maybe don't. And the latter is really what comes out through all of the characters, or at least that was my goal in writing it. And what I wanted to show was how each child, there are three Children in the Joshi family there are, Suhani, Natasha and Anuj and Suhani is married to Zach, so he's also a pretty big part of the story and each of those children. They have the same parents Deepak and Vina, but they turned out so differently, even though they have the same parents. I wanted to explore how that can be possible and how a parent can be different with each child.

So even though the child is of course different, they have their own personality and their own experiences and preferences and all of these different things, they also get different parents with each round. So, Vina you know, comes from such a different background than her husband and she comes from parents who really cared about image and her making something of herself and having something to be proud of for a cause that was purely her own and they felt very disappointed in her for marrying someone and not being an actress the way she had been primed to for her entire life. 

So she takes a lot of that unresolved ambition and it goes into her oldest child, goes into Suhani and she tells Suhani, this is what you have to do in life, this is how you're happy, and this is how I'm looking out for you and what she doesn't realize is that that makes Suhani really count on external measures of success to to be equated to happiness. 

She sees a lot of herself as a woman in Natasha as the second child in the family. And so she acts out of fear a lot in the hopes that Natasha doesn't go through the struggles that she does. But a lot of times that fear comes out as criticism, it comes out as complaints, it comes out as them arguing with each other and really butting heads. And so, you know, I really wanted to show how this woman coming from a loving place, and really just loving being a mom and being a member of this family can have such different impacts on her three children. And then of course how that affects her marriage and how her husband may not always have the same perspective when it comes to their kids as she does.

Mindy: So powerful. I know that all of my boyfriend's throughout high school and onward, when you're really interacting with the entire family would always say, oh my gosh, you get mad at your mom so fast! Why? Your mother is so sweet and so loving and so caring and you just get mad at her so quickly! And she is, she is all those things and it's always coming from a positive place. But it's also like my entire life has been correction, not in a bad way, but always towards her and who she is, which is more quiet, more kind, more for lack of a better word feminine than I just naturally am and it continues on. I'm 42, and as soon as there is any hint of course correction, I'm like, no, don't talk to me. 

Saumya: It's so interesting how that is such a universal thing. I'm the same way with my own mom, with my own dad and you're so right, it doesn't matter how old we are, those dynamics just stay, they stay forever. 

Mindy: They really do. We go back into our younger selves with our parents and it's not always negative, always, it's just a cycle. And uh, that's, these are the roles that we play and I love what you're saying about there being different roles for the parent with each child. I have an older sister and I see how my parents are different with her than they are with me. They're always handling me a little more carefully. I'll just put it that way. Always with the, please don't make Mindy mad. It is not worth it. But then also, it's also hilarious when she's mad. So maybe we should poke her a little. So there's always, there's that back and forth that oscillation. 

Saumya: That's so true. I was also so interested in how Family members who are part of the same memories, the same events, the same trips. They can look back on those and have very different perspectives. So that idea actually came from, I was at home for all of 2020. My husband and baby and I lived with my parents and grandparents for the entire first part of the pandemic. And my siblings and I were talking about this vacation, we went on 15, 20 years ago and I thought the vacation was wonderful. I thought we had a great time and I only have happy memories when I look back on the vacation till this day. So I was telling them that they said, you know, we didn't have a good time at all. You were really bossy, telling us what to do and it was miserable. And I didn't know that until I'm here in my mid thirties that they have a completely different view of that same trip that I continue to have very good feelings about. So, I also got very interested in that idea, that we as family members can be part of the exact same events and have such different takeaways from those events that stay with us. 

Mindy: It's so funny that you say that we had this saying when I was a kid, “Mindy is being a butt,” that was what was often said. I hated family trips, I hated going out into public and now, like as an adult, I know why I don't like being in large crowds. It's not necessarily a fear. It really comes down to identity. I have a very strong feeling of who I am, and when I'm in a very large crowd, I'm surrounded by all those identities and it just strikes a sour chord within me. I don't know why I feel a little bit last. I feel a little bit overwhelmed as a child. That was very intense as an adult, I know how to handle it. Of course, I have a better sense of my own identity. So it's a little different, but as a child, I was literally overwhelmed by personalities, having too many people in one place was too much for me. So when we would go to the zoo or we would go to an amusement park and it's supposed to be a big fun time and I am psychologically miserable and just very unhappy and usually it's hot. So, you know, I'm physically uncomfortable surrounded by people and strangers. I'm also scared of heights so I couldn't ride rides. And then everybody was giving me a hard time for being difficult. 

Saumya: That must have all been so overwhelming.

Mindy: So much, too much of everybody wants to take pictures. And even as a child I had this like, real grip on irony and everybody's like, everybody together and have a happy family picture and I'm like, fuck this. So I would literally turn my back to the camera. They would be like, we're taking a picture of all the Children and the cousins together and I'd be like, no, and I would just turn and show the camera my back and everybody would, you know, uh say, “Mindy's being a butt.” Her butt is what's in the picture. So to this day as an adult when we're in public, they'll be like, “Mindy don't be a butt.” 

I'm like, listen, I’m in a better place mentally now and I know my roles, but it was also I I learned that I would get in trouble then if not, I mean quote unquote trouble, everyone was always fairly kind and understanding, but I would be grumpy and angry and fearful in many ways. So I would be lashing out and then I would get in trouble for being rude or having a temper. So I learned to just shut down emotionally mentally, physically, whatever make myself as small as possible. And just this was how I was quote unquote, being good. Then I get in trouble because I'm not happy.

Saumya: You can't win. 

Mindy: No, I couldn't win. Being an adult and moving through space, and like how to handle myself a little bit better, but also being around other people that function in that same way and seeing their discomfort and how it affects other people and you know, can be the wet blanket. I'm like, okay, I understand how I was being interpreted but also God I was so unhappy and so miserable. And so you know, you're right, those roles, they remain the same. That is essentially still my role in the family. I'm the loose cannon. I'm the one that needs to be controlled or tamped down and mitigated in some way all the time. And as you were saying, it doesn't matter how old you are, this is still who I am within that family system. 

Saumya: Well, I think that what you said about the way you know, when you were at the zoo and how you felt and then how you then learned to present yourself, even if that may have been different from what you were feeling inside. It's such a powerful statement because I think as kids, we can learn even if we don't consciously process it, we learn what parts of us are acceptable socially and what parts are not and so we learn how to adapt in different ways and when you said the part about shutting down, I thought, yes, that must be so common. I can't imagine how many kids there are who feel that shutting down is the safer option and it's the more acceptable option. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I see it. I still work in schools as a substitute. I ended up going in and working as a substitute in a long term position last year because of Covid and I was with fifth graders and that was the youngest range of Children I'd ever handled. And I knew from my own experiences, especially with youth, you know, once more than one person is correcting them. It's a tidal wave of social unacceptability. The kids they want, especially the helpers. You know, they want everyone in the class to be good and respectful to the teacher. And so if I correct someone, there's immediately four or five little ones going, Yeah, David, you know, it's like, no, no, no, you guys, I'm the adult in the room. You don't get to jump on David, the person being attacked shuts down or lashes out usually shuts down. And I know that feeling and it's so devastating because you are, you're just like, okay, I'm not acceptable. I won't interact and that's so painful. 

Saumya: It is, it's so painful. And you know, I just did a virtual book club last week and one of the members asked, do you think that the family is happy by the end? She was speaking to the title and I told her that I don't know if happiness is always the goal, whether we're talking about the beginning, middle or end of the story. What I hope for any family, any community, whatever group we're thinking about that's connected is that there's more honesty and there's more of a belief that each person can show up as themselves and they feel like they can authentically do that. So just being a holistic person and being comfortable with oneself is maybe more of the gold and happiness, because happiness might not always be there, no matter what the dynamic is that we're talking about. 

Mindy: Absolutely. And I think happiness to people, I love what you said, happiness may not always be the goal. Happiness essentially should be fleeting. I don't think it is, much like anger, it's not a sustainable emotion. 

Saumya: That's such a good point. And I think we don't say that enough. 

Mindy: No, we don't. I always tell people contentment is underrated. 

Saumya: I love that and I love that distinction also between contentment.

Mindy: Happy couple, happy family, happy marriage because of the phrases we use. I don't know those things exist. 

Saumya: Yes, it's so true. And I don't know if, like you said, that should be the ultimate goal, maybe we should change all of those to contentment. Contentment. Friendship with contentment, parent with contentment, all of those roles. 

Mindy: If you were happy all the time, then I think you're probably ignoring something. 

Saumya: That's so true. I was hoping when Natasha goes through a lot of her own journey with her own mental health in the book, she's very hard on herself, but her family and members of the south asian community that she's growing up around there also hard on her too, so it's not all in her head when she thinks that what she brings to the table is not completely acceptable and what she wants to do with her life. She wants to be a stand up comedian, it isn't always well received and it isn't always celebrated, but my hope is that she also sees her strengths. And I remember once when I was learning about anxiety during my training, my professor actually said, well, people who have anxiety, they also are very, very good at planning. They're thinking ahead, it's a future oriented state because you're always anticipating and there's some strength to that, there are a lot of good things that come from that. So the idea is to make sure that it's in an amount that's not hurting someone and it's not maladaptive to what they want to do, but we also should celebrate our full spectrum of whatever it is, we're bringing to the table. 

Mindy: Yes, absolutely, learning yourself, being aware of yourself, those are powerful tools.

Saumya: They’re such powerful tools and I wish that those were encouraged from a young age because I think we learned so many other things in school, which is great. But I hope that whether it's in classrooms, or wherever it is that we just have that encouragement and support to learn about ourselves and to accept ourselves and each other because I think the world would be in such a different place if that was encouraged from the start. 

Mindy: Yeah, I agree completely.

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Mindy: I want to talk really quickly about your publishing journey and publishing in a pandemic. So I think my eighth or ninth book released the week before we went into lockdown and I know how that affected my sales and my marketing and my promotion. And I already had, you know, 7,8 books out. So I had a built in audience. I had a social media presence, I had a platform that I could operate off of as a debut author coming out during the pandemic. I thought about every debut author, I was just like, oh my gosh, these poor writers that had this goal and they attained it and they attained it at a horrible moment for marketing, for promo for everyone. So, if you could talk about that experience and how that went. 

Saumya: Sure. So it was of course jarring. I think the pandemic was trying for people on so many levels, of course. I spent 10 years working on my debut, so I edited it, I rewrote it. I got rejected over 200 times before I found my agent and my publisher. And the book changed from the first draft, of course, all the way to what ended up being the one that got me the book deal. 

But I think that felt especially like a blow because I thought, oh, here's a decade worth of work. I'm going to be able to celebrate it in person with some friends, I'm going to be able to meet readers and none of those things happened. So there was definitely that let down for quite a bit, but I found within a couple of months of it coming out, there were some unexpected silver linings. So I got to meet so many readers through virtual book clubs. I've done about 100 virtual book clubs in the past year and a half. And it's just been so wonderful because some of them have been international, many of them have been out of the New York area where I live. So I felt that I was able to meet and connect with readers whom I otherwise would not have met if we weren't in the pandemic. So that was really great. 

The second part is that I did feel like a lot of people came together, similar to what you were just saying, that people thought, well what's going to happen to these debut authors and even that sentiment and that empathy for us as a group went such a long way. So I had a lot of other established authors reaching out all the time asking, oh, can I do anything to help you? How can I support you? This just must be so tough. And I felt that support the whole way, I think a lot of those people would have been very supportive otherwise, of course, even if I was publishing in the circumstances that I thought I would, but I just really felt such a movement of that for debuts. And I know that a lot of my fellow debuts felt the same way that a lot of people came together to try to amplify our voices and to promote our work and that meant a lot to us. 

Mindy: Yeah, it's a harsh business at any time to come out during the pandemic. You didn't necessarily have to pivot. A lot of us had to relearn how to promote and you just kind of had to say, okay, we're going to create something new and the fact that you did 100 virtual book clubs, That's amazing. And in fact probably even more effective than a traditional approach. 

Saumya: Yes, you know, it's so funny you say that because one thought that kept coming up again and again when I was debuting in the pandemic was - I wonder if this would have been harder if I was an established author because of exactly what you said. The pivoting. This is all I know, I don't know anything outside writing and publishing in a pandemic. I don't know what the other side looks like at all. So I didn't have to relearn and I didn't have to go through those hoops at all. I just walked straight into this. So I think there are hardships no matter what end that you come from. 

Mindy: I agree. I think too that a lot of people had different experiences of the pandemic. I work from home, my life didn't change knowing that the world around me had gone a completely different direction for everyone else and my life was essentially unchanged, which caused some introspection. I can say that, but also reading changed a lot of people that I know that are very avid readers. Suddenly we're having a hard time reading. People I know that I have never read a book in their lives started. The dynamics of the readership, I think changed in some ways because we have people kind of wandering into this world and being like, I never considered reading and now I'm tired of looking at the screen, I'm tired of binging shows, I had this opportunity and I thought I was going to sit down and watch tv for three months and I'm sick of it and I learned something new. I had the opposite where it was like I'm going to roll through this TBR. I couldn't read, I couldn't read anymore. And so many people I know had the similar situation, my relationship with reading changed as soon as I became a career writer as well. So there's been stages of my relationship with reading changing, but one of the things that changed for me was that I had become a very avid audio book reader because I traveled so much that got cut off and suddenly I'm like holding a book - which used to be my preferred method. I'm hearing a voice in my head and trying to match it with a narrator and I'm just like, oh God, like it was making me crazy, this was not what this was supposed to be. 

Things changed obviously for everyone. Creative world changed. Marketing changed. And I do in some ways as you're saying, I envy you and other debut authors that just walked into this and you have those skill sets and I think a lot of the things that you guys experienced are now going to be a new normal, not necessarily because that's how the world is going to be, but Marketing and promotion changed and we found out that you don't have to fly to Florida for a 20 minute book talk. 

Saumya: So true, that's so true. You guys are going to have some skill sets that some of the alumni are going to have to kind of adapt to. 

Mindy: I know myself, I love traveling. I love meeting people. I don't feel like I get the same connection over virtual, but I think it's changed. I think people are learning how to interact with their screens a little more personally like this and it takes out so many risk factors as well as far as exposure, especially with the things heating up again. 

Saumya: Right, right. I also found that some of the magic still stayed for me as someone who just will always love books. So last year when my debut came out, we were in Atlanta with my family and so my virtual launch was with the bookstore here in Brooklyn, Books Are Magic. So I never saw my book in that bookstore and I've been going there pre pandemic for so many events and when we moved back here when my second book came out and What A Happy Family released, we went straight to that bookstore and I signed copies in person and left them there and I thought wow, this is a magical moment. And yes, it's happening a year later. But that magic is still there and I'm grateful for that because I think sometimes when anything becomes a job, no matter what it is, it can be so natural for it to just become work and for it to not feel like there's a sense of wonder around it. And I think with a lot of the things that we've all lost. I've heard people say, oh I will never take this for granted again. I will never take for granted getting a cup of coffee with a friend or seeing someone from afar in a park or being able to just step outside and walk by people and have conversations that are just daily run of the mill ones. I will never take those things for granted again. So I think there are also these newfound perspectives that have come about and will continue to. 

Mindy: I agree. I wouldn't want to say that I had devalued human interaction, but I wasn't seeing the benefits of it. 

Saumya: Yeah, no, that's so fair. I resonate with that. 

Mindy: Yeah, I wasn't acknowledging even just having a conversation. I go to obviously a very small little grocery store market and talking with the ladies that own the store and just having a little chat, you know, you don't get to do that now. And hanging out with people at my gym after the workout and just be like, man, that was really hard. Like do your glutes hurt? You know, and just having these little interactions. 

Just recognizing the value of those friendships and even business friendships and those, those compartmentalized friendships like at the gym or the market or whatever it is, shopping for groceries, walking through and stopping and getting some water and a mother and her very little boy, like maybe four or five were standing there and he was masked and I was masked and the mom looked over and she was like, oh, I really like your shorts. Because I was wearing my running shorts and she was a runner too. We ended up in a conversation about the benefits of different running shorts. And, and then this little boy was like - my tomatoes are doing really well this year! And he started talking to me about his garden and it was so cute and so sweet and you made me smile for like the rest of the time that I was shopping and it was just, you know, it was like a month ago and I'm still thinking about this little kid that just wanted to tell me about his tomatoes, and it was so endearing. I love that. I love that this child is comfortable doing this. And those little tiny moments that I don't get to have when someone is delivering my groceries to my door. 

Saumya: That's so true. Those daily interactions like you said are fleeting and there's a transient nature to them. I think when we all lost those, we realized how much value they have. Being able to say that quick hello or connect with someone in the grocery store. Those things just make us feel more connected. And it's nice to see some version of that coming back in certain contexts. And I also hope that, you know, that of course keeps going and that we get back to a new normal that's safe and where people still keep those connections alive. I was doing some research on burnout actually just yesterday and found that connecting with others has been proven to help with burnout. There's so many interventions out there for it, but really connecting with others and whatever way that might look is a helpful thing. 

Mindy: Yeah. And I did not give enough credit to the energy that others give me when I'm at home and I'm writing it's all output. It's all output. And if I'm not going out and interacting, I draw energy from other people and those moments they give me an uplift, they give me a smile, They give me everything I need to come back home and be isolated again. Hopefully. 

Saumya: Yes. Yes, that's such a good point. Especially when the work you're doing is solitary work. 

Mindy: Yeah, very much so. Last thing if you could let listeners know where they can find the book, What a happy family and where they can find you online. 

Saumya: Sure. So What A Happy Family is available wherever books are sold. I love supporting independent bookstores. So if you have an independent bookstore in your area, they may already carry it or you can request it and they are wonderful and usually get it within a week. Of course online at all of the online retailers. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target dot com, all of those. And in terms of where to find me, I'm at Saumya J. Dave on Instagram and on Twitter with the same username and then my website is www.saumyadave.com. 

Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.