Clare also shows how friendships with people younger and older can be life enhancing and the importance of finding your own community. She does this in a light, never preachy, often funny way that leaves readers, or at least this reader, feeling a bit better about the world. My Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. You can listen to the full interview here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author.

Can you briefly tell us about the path that led you to become a novelist at age 50?

When I was younger, I dreamed of being a novelist. From the moment I discovered stories, I wanted to be able to write them. That was my great dream. But life gets in the way. I worked in advertising for 20 years.

I wrote nothing apart from PowerPoint presentations and emails and shopping lists. And then in 2015 I got to the point where I realized that my life was going seriously off track because I had picked up a rather major dependency on alcohol and my wine o’clock habit was completely out of control.

I was drinking about 10 bottles of wine a week, which is way too much. I mean, that’s way over the government guidelines and it was having all sorts of impacts on my life. So, I knew I had to quit drinking, but I was too embarrassed and ashamed about the situation I found myself in to talk to anybody about it.

I didn’t talk to my doctor. I didn’t talk to my husband. I didn’t talk to my friends. What I did do because I needed some form of therapy was I started an anonymous blog, and I called it Mummy was a Secret Drinker. I wrote in that blog every day. I wrote about what I was going through and all the research I’d been doing and how I was feeling. That blog went viral and then became a memoir called The Sober Diaries, which was published at the beginning of 2018.

And by this stage, my new addiction was writing, and I really didn’t want to stop writing. I absolutely loved it. But I didn’t want to carry on writing about my own life, so I thought I’d try writing about imaginary people instead. And that became my whole new career.

You wrote a wonderful blog about how author Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird, motivated you to keep writing your first book. In a nutshell, for those who haven’t read Anne’s book, can you explain how it applies to so many of life’s challenges?

I love that book. And funny enough, Anne Lamott doesn’t drink either. She quit drinking many years ago. She writes that the expression ‘bird by bird’ comes from a story from her childhood where her little brother had a complete meltdown one evening because he suddenly realized that he had a school project due the next day and he hadn’t done any of it.

He was supposed to have spent the previous semester working on this project about birds. He was supposed to cover I don’t know, 20, 30 different birds. And he was completely beside himself in floods of tears.

He said to his father, ‘I can’t do it. This is the end of my school career. I’m going to be in such trouble.’ And his father sat him down. He said, ‘Now don’t panic. We’ll just take it bird by bird, buddy.’ And they did. They took it bird by bird. And by the end of the night, they had a whole project on birds to hand in.

Anne talks about how writing a novel is very much like that. If you worry about having to produce 100,000 words, the whole thing can seem overwhelming. But if you just think about each page, each chapter, or even each paragraph, you just take it bird by bird, within a relatively short period of time, you find that you’ve got a whole novel.

And giving up alcohol is absolutely about bird by bird. The Alcoholics Anonymous expression of one day at a time, is absolutely what gets you through addiction. If you worry about, can I stop drinking forever? You’ll never even take the first step. If you think, can I stop drinking just for today? The answer to that is always yes. Can I just write about one bird? Yes, of course you can. If you write about one bird enough times, you’ve got a whole project. If you write one chapter enough times, you’ve got a whole novel. If you have one day without drinking enough times, you’ve been sober for a decade.

It’s a really good lesson. Breaking things down to just one little task at a time rather than thinking of something as a humongous project. I have a Post-it taped to my desktop that says, Bird by bird buddy.

Oh, brilliant. It’s good for teenagers as well. If you have young people in your life who are struggling, just saying to them, ‘Look, can you make it through until the end of tomorrow? And if you can do that, you can make it through to the end of the following day and the end of the day after that.’ It helps the whole world stop feeling overwhelming.

Do you know anyone like Daphne, your principal character who at age 70, is sharp, chic, feisty, opinionated, and as witty as they come, an original with a fabulous, checkered past? I want to be Daphne when I grow up. But are there people you modelled her after?

 She’s modelled after the sort of woman I want to be when I’m 70. She isn’t modelled after any one particular person, but she’s modelled after an amalgamation of characteristics that I found aspirational.

At the beginning of the book, Daphne’s not really a very nice person. She’s very spiky. She doesn’t like other people. She’s very critical of everybody around her. And she doesn’t have any friends. She thinks she’s slightly better than everyone else. In many ways, you wouldn’t want to know somebody like Daphne.

I wanted to explore how even the most unlikable people in the right circumstances can be magnificent. And by the end, I think everybody is rooting for Daphne and she’s great, but it’s not where she starts off. She’s certainly not perfect, But I think the most interesting people aren’t perfect.

 I liked that even at the beginning when Daphne was unpleasant and snooty, she was always funny. And had a plan. I never felt sorry for her.

I’m really pleased about that because that was exactly what I wanted to avoid. With older characters in novels, you are encouraged to feel pity for them, and I didn’t want anyone to pity my characters. They’re often in quite precarious situations, and they’re not always the nicest people, but they’ve all got agency.

Daphne does yoga and Pilates every day. And she’s very strong for her age and she carries a walking stick, not because she needs a walking stick to walk with, but because she uses it as a weapon, and she uses it to clear people out of her way if necessary.

The rest of the Q&A can be found here on 26, a UK site to promote the joy of words.

Happy Summer

July 2024

The post Q&A with Clare Pooley – How to Age Disgracefully appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Type a word into the Safari box on the screen,” she instructed.

Sounded so simple. But not when you can’t find the Safari box. It wasn’t where it normally was in the bottom left corner. I promise. I looked everywhere.

I don’t see it,” I said.

It’s right there,” she replied, not moving.

Hmmm, my eyes darted around the screen.

I could feel her eyes boring into my shoulder. Restless. I was slowing her down. Old lady.

Just type anything into the box, it doesn’t need to be a word.”

But I don’t even see the box,” I explained again.

I really did know what a Safari box was. I might have been older than her mother and every other person in that Apple shop—but I didn’t live on the moon. Before I knew it, she’d grabbed the keyboard from me and started typing into the square.

Ahh there’s that sneaky Safari box, I thought. Upper left corner, who knew?

 I whipped out my credit card, showing Miss Impatient that I could be speedy at some things.

You’re good to go,” she said, without looking at me. And with that I was dismissed.

I left Apple feeling stupid and old.

Moments later, as I walked down Madison, an attractive woman in her thirties in a minidress and slingback sandals clicked past. I smiled, trying to meet her eyes. But she looked right past me. When had I become invisible? How had that happened?

That’s when I remembered a podcast a friend had recommended. When she first told me about it, I thought, just as I’m sure you’re thinking now, another podcast? But for all you women who are 60+, you’ll thank me later.

“Wiser than Me” is hosted by famed actress/comedian/producer Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Her familiar voice piped into my ears, it’s both warm and frank and she laughs all the time. It’s good to laugh. I am drawn in from the moment she starts explaining why she  launched her first ever podcast.

When women get older, we don’t hear from them much,” Julia says. “They become less visible, less seen.” Even just hearing her say it makes me feel more visible, more seen. “Our culture just seems to celebrate youth, youth, youth… Fuck that bullshit,” she goes on. “I want to hear from these old women. How do they navigate aging, living? Give us some tips from the frontline.”

 Fashion legend Diane von Furstenberg, one of Julia’s interviewees, recommends Julia not ask guests how old they are, but instead how long they’ve lived. DvF has lived 76 years.

I love this podcast, with all ten episodes providing reassuring, wise life hacks for those who can’t find the nomadic Safari box on our computer screen in front of AppleCare tech support.

Julia begins each episode telling us a bit about her own background and how that connects to the guest speaker, so for von Furstenberg we hear about Julia wearing a pink bikini and white go-go boots at age 7 and realizing the power of fashion. In another episode when Julia is about to meet 75-year-old celebrated food writer, Ruth Reichl, Julia starts by discussing a distressing miscarriage and how her mother’s homemade chili and cornbread comforted her during that difficult time.

During that episode Reichl says that when she faces life’s unavoidable losses, she goes into the kitchen where the smells and flavors help bring her back into the world. To that end, Julia asks for some advice on pound cake—whether to add orange zest and juice to the batter.

Just the zest,” Reichl suggests.

Reichl also says,

You can waste your whole life looking for perfection. Don’t think perfection is your goal.’

The series’ first episode features 85-year-old Jane Fonda, and in the middle of the interview, the power goes out in Julia’s studio. Julia swears when she loses contact with Fonda. She swears a lot. And none of it is cut from the episode. Editing is practically an afterthought. My takeaway? It’s ok to fail. Perfection is the enemy of good enough.

Once Julia gets Fonda back, we are lucky enough to hear Fonda muse about knowing when a romantic relationship is over: When she starts fantasizing about her partner’s funeral.

Her favorite vibrator? The Rabbit.

Iconic New Yorker, 72-year-old Frannie Leibowitz was possibly my favorite guest of the season. Leibowitz is famous for her writer’s block. She calls it her writer’s tower. She hasn’t published a book since 1994, but boy can that woman talk. On the topic of New York City which both Julia and Liebowitz love, Liebowitz says,

 I don’t understand why people move from the city to Vermont to retire? There are no doormen in Vermont.”

Leibowitz is notoriously lazy, doesn’t own a mobile phone, or anything technical. Leibowitz holds grudges and gives Julia tips on how to get revenge. She still smokes. Her honesty is so refreshing that after the interview was over, I went down a very deep Leibowitz rabbit hole. I recommend you do the same. When asked at one speaking engagement if she’d ever consider running a marathon, she laughed and said, “only if a German soldier was pointing a gun at my back.”

Julia ends each episode by calling her sharp, devoted 89-year-old mother Judy for the rehash.  During the episode with Reichl, Julia offers to cook a meal for the famous food critic. Reichl accepts. Julia hangs up with Reichl and immediately goes into a panic.

Why the fuck did I do that? I need to ask my mom what to make. I got to call my mom “

Judy usually answers her phone on the first ring. Their banter is adorable. Judy is clearly so proud of Julia.

Oh Julia, that (meal is) going to be priceless. Absolutely priceless.”

Back to me, of course: When I told Stretch about my Apple experience, he said,

You need to be tougher.”

You’re not a woman,” I snapped.

Channel your mother.”

I could. Because my mother never would have cared about a kid at the Apple store. But now, thanks to “Wiser than Me” I have a lot of amazing women I can channel, women who get me, who see me, who are me—but even better, who are wiser.

Postscript- I went to the Apple in Greeenwich, Connecticut this am- a totally different experience. Full of oldies. Love it there. The  gentleman next to me was explaining to AppleCare tech support, that “no he didn’t know his Apple ID or password, his grandson set it up three years ago and he couldn’t remember it either.”  I felt such warmth for this man, for Apple (in Greenwich) and for all of us of who have lived so long that we remember when an apple was just that.

September, 2023

The post Wiser than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus- Tips from the Frontline appeared first on Elena Bowes.