Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Sharing The List

I just did my first magazine interview to promote The List! I was nervous beforehand . . . don’t ask me why. I’ve spent the last year talking to anyone who’ll listen about the stories I’ve heard while writing the book. But faced with a formal interview, I wasn’t sure I could express it all. As it turned out, I didn’t need to worry; the minute we started, I couldn’t stop. At one point, the interviewer asked what kept women from doing the things they want to—and that answer was easy: fear, lack of time, insecurity, a sense that things are set in stone. When it came to talking about ways women might motivate to shake up their lives, something tumbled out of my mouth that I’d never thought about until then, amazingly enough: The power of sharing our own lists—the things we’ve done and the things we want to do.

Women are such great motivators. When I think of the stories in The List, so many of them involve friends or mother/daughter teams taking the plunge together. Brazilian waxes, bike riding across the country, swimming with manatees, going topless. The interviewer naturally asked what was next for me on my own list. When I said glass blowing, she said she’d always wanted to try it, too. So I said we should do it together. We haven’t set a date, and maybe we’ll end up doing it on our own, but it was fun and energizing just to talk about it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glass blowing! I've always wanted to do that, too. There's a place near me, called The Crucible, where they offer classes in arts like glass blowing, metal work, welding, etc. A coworker of mine absolutely raved about the class she took there. Just the idea of creating something solid out of that liquid, molten mass of STUFF is so appealing to me!

Anonymous said...

It's pulling out that big ball of fire that got me. When I saw the video on You Tube that I talk about in the book, it blew me away! According to the interviewer, there's a place near me, too. I'll have to check it out.