Sophie Brickman

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Laura: Hi, Sophie, welcome to watch your next podcast.

Sophie Briickman: Hi, it's really nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Laura: So happy to so happy to have you here. So tell us what you've been up to.

Sophie Briickman: I've been, well, I mean, it depends how I should answer that question. I've been raising three little kids, the oldest of whom is eight, and the littlest of whom is turning three in a couple months. And I wrote my first novel which I'm really excited about and is coming out in August, on August 6th.

Sophie Briickman: So I've been doing that and I've been, you know, writing for various publications along the way because I've been a journalist for a long time. So I'm sort of, you know, juggling all those things.

Laura: Yeah, so your novel is probably like, I think you may be able to relate with, it plays well with others, but you may be related to being a mother, trying to wrangle kids. And in this case is about kindergarten, you know, applications. Talk to us about the, talk to us about the elevator pitch of your novel, and we'll chat a little bit more about it.[00:01:00]

Sophie Briickman: Sure, Please Well With Others is a book about a woman who Who loses her mind, applying her kid to kindergarten in New York City. It, you know, there are similarities between me and the main character, but it is in no way, you know, biographical. I really wanted to write a book that captured kind of the crazy and intense feelings.

Sophie Briickman: Feeling of having young Children and like, particularly the first few years that are driven by adrenaline and hormones and anxiety and so much love and a lot of joy and a lot of uncertainty and confusion and lots of information coming in at you and you're, you know, kind of a baby yourself. I'm trying to figure all this stuff out and you've never done it before at least for your first kid and then with your second kid it's a whole new thing because then it's two kids so it's like you kind of keep reinventing the wheel.

Sophie Briickman: And I wanted to find a way into that story in a way that was humorous. I had tried a few different ways one of them was like sort of more serious and I realized I'm much more kind of comedic writer naturally, and I thought it would be funny to kind of make a [00:02:00] satire. Out of this very you know, upper, upper crust problem that very few people have and engage with in New York City.

Sophie Briickman: I thought that would be sort of entertaining from a voyeuristic perspective, but more to the point, it was sort of just a way into talking about the, you know, chaos of being a parent. And so this, this, you know, lens allowed me to explore it in a way that I felt was very. True to that feeling and, you know, it's.

Sophie Briickman: It's not written completely through. There's many different parts to it. There's WhatsApp chains, there's emails, there's newspaper clippings. And I sort of wanted to capture that overloaded feeling that all of us feel parents are not getting bombarded with information and requests and just, you know, having a rich and full and slightly crazy life.

Laura: Yeah, you tap into this idea of rich behavior, rich people behaving badly and yet at the same time with the stakes of childhood, , admissions and they do have this is going to make or break kids [00:03:00] future which reality is like, Really, you know, we're trying to like, \ , plan, it's like the control factor planning a kid's future.

Laura: And like the thing you cannot control is raising a child because the child has their own personality and their own will and their own way of doing and it's like, it's a battle of the wills.

Sophie Briickman: I think in a lot of ways, like, that's the biggest lesson of becoming a parent is sort of relaxing into this idea that you can't control any outcome. And, you know, my first book, Baby Unplugged was reported. It was a nonfiction book. I'm a, I'm a journalist by training. And so I was interested in the intersection of technology and parenting because my, my husband's sort of in the tech world.

Sophie Briickman: And so there are all these gadgets and all these things that say they can sort of optimize, either optimize your child or optimize your interactions with your child, or you can be doing this better or faster, they'll be sleeping better if you do this, or they'll be doing this. And I mean, even before technology, this was, this was rampant, you know, of breastfeeding or not breastfeeding or [00:04:00] co sleeping or not co sleeping, and that would be the indicator that would then set your child off to a successful life or not.

Sophie Briickman: All of which is obviously ludicrous. You know, and love and connection is, is the thing that you need to lean into more than stressing out over, you know, how many ounces your kid has drunk in how many hours or whatever it is. So I think that, you know, this kindergarten admissions thing was just sort of a, a silly way into the same idea as my first book.

Sophie Briickman: Same thing that I think a lot of parents wrestle with, which is like, is every decision as important as I think it is? Obviously it isn't, but I can't reset. Like now, what do I do?

Laura: I have to tell you. So I, I grew up in a I was very told education was so important and they need to get out didn't need to get out where I was. And I saw education as a way to go and I need to get to a good school and all different things. And I'll tell you, 20 years later, I'm on learning all the anxiety and all the behavior.

Laura: That, you know, we're in Colgate, like, you know, like, extracurricular, do this, do that, [00:05:00] go have straight A's, go do that, like all the levels that was never enough, never enough, never enough. And now like, You know, I'm in my 40s and I'm in therapy and I'm like, well, I don't have any place to chase. I have to just be okay where I am.

Laura: And it's like, wait, I'm sorry, but I thought this was all planned out. Because as a child, you're told this is how you have to, you be successful and be happy.

Sophie Briickman: And I think I think parents of our generation are are kind of consume that message a very particular way, both the way that we were brought up and everybody got a part in the school play. And also you had to. Go into the play and do everything and be good at everything. And also this sort of, you know, the, the downside of social media, which is that you just see people doing things and it's inevitable that you compare.

Sophie Briickman: And so, you know, a lot of mothers on Instagram are just, you know, seemingly have these perfect lives where their kids eat four course meals that they [00:06:00] prepare for them, you know, in their spare time. And it's like, I can, you know, we recycle the same three meals every week in our house. You know, and I consider that a a coup.

Sophie Briickman: So in any case, yes. So this, this book plays well with others, you know, explores that through a humorous lens. And so I hope that people who read it, you know, laugh first and foremost and feel a little bit less alone and know that, you know, we're all kind of faking it and treading, treading water furiously.

Laura: Let's talk about your writing process. Cause you have kids, you have. You know, I'm assuming you have a busy life already and so how did you get started writing this book?

Sophie Briickman: You know, I carved out time where I could. What I realized was, you know, and, and the more I, the more I read about other people and their writing habits, the more I feel like this is similar to lots of other people. And I kind of came to it just by trial and error, but I had. two to three [00:07:00] hours in the morning that I could carve out for myself and I would leave the house and go to a Library and sit in the stacks on like a metal folding chair with a little school desk in the back with no wi fi And it was like cold and dark and I would give myself two to three hours to write and when I sort of figured out that this book was going to be Fiction and not serious in certain ways.

Sophie Briickman: It was going to be humorous. It came very, very easily, which, you know, knock on wood. I'll have that experience again, but I've never had that kind of creative experience before. I think part of the reason it came so easily is because I'm not a novelist and I never thought of myself as a novelist. So I was like, I don't know.

Sophie Briickman: I don't know if anyone's ever going to read this. Like, let me just try. Let me give myself a couple months. Let me see where I am. I think I gave myself three months and I was like, let me see in three months. Can I have like the beginning of an idea? Can I have something? And I had a lot at the end of those three months.

Sophie Briickman: And I was like, wait, I think there may be as an idea here. And so, so that's [00:08:00] like, it was, there was sort of a freedom because I'm not used to, I haven't written fiction since college. Like I had a couple of college seminars where I wrote fiction and that's it. So it felt very much like just something I was doing to play with.

Sophie Briickman: And then I realized how enjoyable it was. And then I said to my agents, I was like, I don't know if this is, I don't know what this is. And they were like, no, it's a novel. Great. Okay. And so like, then they ran with it. But there was no, there was no pressure and nobody was expecting it from me. And I think that's part of the reason that I had all this freedom to just play around and like, so I'm going to throw in a newspaper article here.

Sophie Briickman: I'm going to throw in a WhatsApp chain. And like, I've written real newspaper articles. Let me see if I can like satirize it and make it silly. And it came pretty easily. So, so like practically I would carve out a couple hours every morning before the rest of the demands of my life came. And then more kind of emotionally, it was just, I gave myself the freedom to try.

Sophie Briickman: Which I never thought I could, but you know, I did. And it was really fun. And

Laura: I love this. I love the fact that you give yourself the freedom and like, I think [00:09:00] they do have, like, nobody's going to see it at this point. And so it allows you to take chances, take risks. It's a gives you the space to be creative and somewhat fulfill, like, fill that hole that you may have missed around and have this experience.

Laura: So just allowing yourself to express yourself or, you know, investigate those ideas, go down those rabbit holes. try to find that voice that you didn't know existed.

Sophie Briickman: Absolutely.

Laura: So,

Sophie Briickman: Yeah,

Laura: all right, so let's check some book recommendations. Do you have any books to recommend our listeners to pick out?

Sophie Briickman: yes, I mean, I think the prompt was sort of like three to five books that you like love or are reading or have read recently and like I had so many books that I could have chose so I could have narrowed it down. In like a few different ways, like the most kind of poignant book that I read in the last year was this book called the best minds by Jonathan Rosen.

Sophie Briickman: It came out last year. [00:10:00] It got an enormous amount of press. I often read fiction before bed. Like, I never I rarely go for a nonfiction book. But I started a book club. With some friends and friends of friends and in September and it's been like this wonderful part of my life and we meet once a month and like everybody shows up and everybody's very different and from very different walks of life and they have lots of different tastes.

Sophie Briickman: And so somebody picked the best minds. And so I read it and like, basically, from the 1st page, I was hooked. It's a memoir. But it's about a man's relationship with his childhood friend and like how they grow up together and he has mental health problems. And so in the course of talking about it, and then there was like a kind of sensational court case that happened that involved his friend.

Sophie Briickman: And he writes about the history of so many different things and mental illness in the country and incarceration and the history of like growing up in the, you know, 60s and 70s and what that was like and being a Jewish boy. And it is so well done and it's so gripping and it's like, it's just an [00:11:00] enjoyable read, but you come out learning all of this stuff and you can't wait to read the next chapter.

Sophie Briickman: So I tore through it and my husband is now reading it and we'll just like, you know, pass it on to all of our friends.

Laura: I love this. I love this. You're passing on the recommendation and you're passing it to our listeners. So there's some more people spreading the wealth.

Sophie Briickman: People should read it. Then another book that, you know, that I had read before and then I listened to because another person picked it for my book club and I was like, Oh, I've already read it. So let me see if I can listen to it. And I, again, I rarely listen to audio books. I find it hard. Often I want to go back and see something or I like get, you know, I get distracted.

Sophie Briickman: But there's a book called nothing to see here by Kevin Wilson, which is, I mean, it's a, it's not an unknown book. I think it's like crazy bestseller, but I was listening to it. It's very, very, very, very funny. It also gets at this idea of being a parent in a sort of crazy symbolic way. And I won't ruin it for people, but it's just so good.

Sophie Briickman: And it's short and fast. [00:12:00] And I. emailed him. He has a website and he has like his email. And I emailed him and I just said I had been going through something very difficult with a beloved family member in the ICU and I was like listening to this funny book while that was happening. And I wrote to him and I was like, I just want you to know, like, I already read it and I loved it, but I was listening to it.

Sophie Briickman: And it took me out of this kind of dark place, and it's so funny, and it's so well done, and thank you. And I like, never expected to hear back. And he wrote back! And he was like, this is such a lovely note to get, and congratulations on your novel. He's like a really good person. Like, I don't know how many authors would respond to a complete Completely cold email, but that made me feel like the world was a good place or at the very least that Kevin Wilson is a good guy so so that was one other book and then, you know kind of pertaining to my book, um the The book Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple was an enormous source of inspiration for me for this book for Plays Well with Others, [00:13:00] like both in the format where there's like a lot of different types of, there's, there's a lot of emails, there's like different documents and things that she includes, but the tone of it is so funny, like you laugh out loud, she's so skilled, it's so hard to do that.

Sophie Briickman: Like it's so hard to be that funny on the page where people like snort in recognition and snort in laughter. And and so she, you know, Maria Semple in that book, it's funny in the stacks, I just picked this, this part of the stacks because it was quiet and no one was ever there, but it happened to be the fiction section and it happened to be near the S's and so like Semple was right there and so I like, would have moments where I'd be like, what am I doing?

Sophie Briickman: Like, nobody's going to read this. I don't know if this is a novel. I don't know, like, shouldn't I just go back to, like, doing my non fiction book proposal that I was working on dutifully? And then I would see her book and if I, like, had writer's block, I would pick it up and read it a little bit. And there's something about her, you know, the [00:14:00] prose and how, like, quick it is and how silly it is that would, like, kickstart me and I could write again.

Sophie Briickman: And so, like, I feel, like, incredibly indebted to her. For having written that book. And she also, I read a bunch about her and she wrote it very quickly. Similarly, like her first draft was a matter of months and same with me. My first draft took me like three months just to get something. I mean, it's changed since then considerably, but it was like, okay, I have 80, 000 words of something.

Sophie Briickman: And now I can like judge it together. And I, you know, I got my editor to help me and agents and everything. But I felt, I feel like a. An enormous amount of respect for her. And so, and then lastly, if we have room for one more, I'm currently reading a book, which I haven't finished yet, called A Thread of Violence.

Sophie Briickman: Which is, I think his name is Mark O'Connell and it's a true story about a Irish woman. guy who is like sort of fancy and important and wealthy, I believe, and [00:15:00] and killed two people. And it was like these murderers that captivated Ireland and I had never heard about him. But so far, and this is also for my book club, I'm like three chapters in and so far, it's very gripping and very interesting.

Sophie Briickman: And again, like I rarely read, you know, nonfiction or like true crime stuff. That's not really my thing. So those are my recommendations, most of them from like a while ago, but I hope that helps.

Laura: those are great recommendations. Those are great. I have to say Kevin Wilson's audiobook was just such a delight, you know, like, it's just like this, like, wrath of like, you know, funny and just like, and it's touching and you're just trying to figure out how to do it. The kids regulate their emotions and you're like, Oh, my gosh, how do I regulate my emotions?

Laura: It's just, you can actually apply it to your own life. And I thought that was like, such a, such a great audio book to listen.

Sophie Briickman: Totally.

Laura: So, Sophie, tell us where we can find you online.

Sophie Briickman: My website is just my name. So sophiebrickman. [00:16:00] com the book is being published by William Morrow, which is part of HarperCollins. So you can buy it through there and it'll sort of like to take you to various places and independent bookstores and stuff where you can buy it. I, we are like organizing, I know this will run closer to the date of publication, but we're still a few months ahead of it.

Sophie Briickman: So we're organizing some get togethers and I will put those on my website. Some in New York, there's one in LA. And I would love to meet any readers that want to meet me and if you want to laugh, please bring my, please, please get my book, and if you have kids for sure, and if you have a mom, do it and thank you so much for having me.

Sophie Briickman: This was really fun.

Laura: And I have to tell you as a non kid, child free by choice, I still find your book delightful because it just, Revisit my own anxiety trauma, so it works. It works well for it. Now. You don't need to have a kid. You can have a child free and be like, Oh, we're going to deal with your own trauma here. [00:17:00] Yes. So thank you so much for being in the show.

Sophie Briickman: Totally. All right. Bye. Have a good day.