ATA-5 Ann Aikens

This is Author to Author. I'm Tim Trott, and this is where I introduce you to interesting authors like Ann Aikens. Her book is A Young Woman's Guide to Life—5 stars, by the way. I'm neither young nor a woman, but I found the book to be like a conversation with a friend I just met, with a blend of humor, wisdom, and practical advice. Ann lives in Vermont. In a moment, we'll visit Ann Aikens, and I'm certain you'll enjoy the experience.

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Welcome to Author to Author, Ann Akins. Thank you. If your book is a young woman's guide to life, how come I liked it and I'm not a young woman?

I have a couple answers for that. Um, one is I don't know, but I have like a lot of guys in their 50s, 60s, 70s that really dug it, and I think it's because I have probably a lot of cultural references from our lifetime. And also maybe it's a little bit of, you know, getting inside info from the other team. Rob Reiner said something like, and I don't know the exact quote, it is very close to this. He is the son of Carl Reiner. And he said, if you hang out with funny people, you will be funny yourself, because he had breakfast every day with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, which I can't even imagine. So I just heard really funny people all the time, and we laughed a lot working there. I mean, I really saw comedy almost 7 days a week.

You had comedy, you had influences there, but were you influenced by any members of your own family?

I— that's a good question. Both of my parents, um, are and were funny. Um, my dad taught me sarcasm from an early age. He's very, very good at it. And my mother was just kind of salty. You like the party kind of salty?

You also write a newspaper column, The Upper Valley Girl.

Yes, that's going on, God, 20 years, I think, or something. That I started when I had just moved to Vermont after escaping New York. And I did not realize how lucky I was to get this column, this little humble column in a Vermont weekly newspaper. I did not realize until sometime later that the editor said, people come in here every day pitching a column, and I just got lucky. But I find that I'm a funny person. I like to be funny. I like to spend a good deal of my time laughing, and I like to— I don't want to make it sound premeditated, but I like to get messages across or communicate using humor in person and in print. I think it's a good way to go about it.

Speaking of print, what made you want to write a book at this stage of your life?

Ah, my nieces, to whom the book is dedicated. I was flying a lot for work during a certain time in my life, and I, every once in a while, it seemed like the plane was going to go down. As will happen if you fly a lot, right? And sometimes when it was really bad turbulence, I would say, "Oh no, I forgot to tell my nieces that thing, that one thing. Oh, I forgot to warn them about this." And so I started writing stuff down for when they were older, or should I perish, they could have my Auntie Anne advice. And so I had sort of amassed it over the years, and then all of a sudden they were old enough to handle all of the material, and then I just started writing in earnest. It was fun. It was not difficult at all. I always say the book was the puppeteer and I was the puppet. It was like I would want to take something out and the book would say, "Oh no, you're leaving that in." And then, you know, after the book was published, my niece would laugh at something out loud and I'd say, "What? What do you think is funny?" 'cause you're the intended audience, and she would say XYZ, and I— and it was one of the things I was going to take out.

What has been the most rewarding part of the author journey for you?

Ooh, uh, I like that. Um, first of all, I would say, um, And anybody that's published a book will know this: holding your author copy in your hand— I'm showing the back because I don't want to be bragging about my book, you've already showed the cover— when you get it, I think almost every writer bursts into tears. And all the interactions I had with people, asking them if they agreed with certain precepts I was, you know, wanting to put in the book. And all the people that showed up to help, like whether it was doing graphics or giving me advice on my background for Zoom, or how to or how to not throw a book launch party. And also It was just like this sort of unintentional group thing where you come up with a project and then they say some, there's some saying about this and people, you decide to build something and somebody will walk by and say, "Hey, I have some nails, do you want them?" And, "Hey, I've got a hammer and an hour, do you want me to come help you?" Like, I think it's if you're going to create something that the world would benefit from, helpers will show up. I think that's the expression.

A lot of times marketing becomes a big, big thing. An analogy that I saw one time was writing a book is like a race, and when you complete the book, you've made it to the starting line.

Yeah, and I would say That you asked me what was like the rewarding part, and I would say the most tiresome for me, and probably most artists of all kinds, is marketing. Um, for me particularly, I don't like social. I don't really want— I had cut out of it a long time ago, and you pretty much sort of have to get on it, although I can make arguments against that. And, um, your taxes become really complicated, and I have always detested doing taxes anyway. And also, you do not have very much time between writing, editing, editing again, editing again, and then promoting your book. Um, to read. You have very little time to read, and most writers are readers, right? And I'm not retired. Like, I say I'm glad I knew so little going into this, or I might not have done it. Um, and I say that it's a young man's— people say it's a young man's game. I say it's a retired man's game, or somebody that has a lot of help from, like, you know, willing children or nieces to do a lot of the tech stuff. It's so much easier to have somebody toot your horn for you, right, Tim?

Don't you find that? It can be. Um, did you hire an editor? Did you hire out the COVID design? How much of it were you able to do yourself, and how much of it did you have to rely on others?

Without going too much into the details, I would say that you can hire a publishing services company, and they may do à la carte offerings of these things you mentioned. I did go to the writers conference for Writer's Digest in New York to get going on this and learned how impossible it is to get an editor unless you have a bazillion followers and/or are famous. And still then it takes a long time for your book to get to print. Whereas if you self-publish one way or another, the hybrid is another thing I won't get into. I didn't use that. You get to print much quicker. And I— your original question was how did I do it? Well, I used something called 99designs. They'll throw a contest for graphic artists all over the world. And that's worth looking into because I had a hard time picking which cover. There were quite a few contenders, and you can have people vote on it in your world. You can pick people to vote on which cover they like. I did not need a line editor, and I knew that about myself. I'd been writing my column for, you know, 20 years, and, um, I did have some professional advice that was of good use. Could I have used more? Maybe. But what's done is done, and I'm actually really happy with it.

If you're like a lot of authors, that faucet is never turned off. You're always looking and seeking for advice and ideas and concepts and different ways to explore marketing, and it's a never-ending battle. Getting into the content of your book, I noticed a couple of things. I do my homework. I noticed a couple of things that were interesting. In one point you say blood is thicker than water and you said that's a myth. Why is that a myth?

Because so many people have a not a good birth family and many people I know have a a sibling or a parent that they've had to write off. And I tell people to make their own families. It's not my original idea. This has been said before, but I don't— and some people would completely disagree with me, but I think by and large those are people that have really, you know, supportive, tight families.

Do you mean that Ozzie and Harriet was not true? Maybe it's like more Like All in the Family? Is that what you're getting to?

No, I think different families have such totally different dynamics. You can have maybe an irascible parent and a fighty sibling and an absentee other parent, but it works well for you for whatever reason based on your personality.

It applies to family as well as others because in one point you say it's okay to say no.

Yeah, that's not just about families. This is kind of a woman thing. Women are notorious not only for agreeing to help when asked, but offering to help when they haven't even been asked. Like, somebody will say, 'Oh, I can't believe I have to move in 100-degree heat on Saturday,' and a woman will go, 'Oh, you— do you want me to help you?' Like praying that they're gonna say no. Um, and it's been going on for a while in, in the women's world, and I don't mean to be so binary in a non-binary world, but this is my audience is, I would say, for mostly cisgendered females. But as you noted earlier, a lot of different people have read it and liked it, but I just think that we kind of need constant reminding that you can say, like a man would say, "Oh, I'd love to, but I can't." And he doesn't give you 27 reasons why he can't help you. He just says, you know, and that's okay to do that. So I think that's one reason people our age like the book, because it kind of tells you stuff you already knew or had learned along the way, but it certainly Bears hammering home anew.

What has changed for women, and is it for the better or for the worse, or a mixture?

Well, not as a non-parent. I can only go by my nieces and my friends' kids and what I see out and about in the world, and I am out and about in the world a lot. I would say that we have a lot more, obviously, freedoms than we have and than women have in other countries. But also, um, there was a certain ease and comfort, I think, in times gone by where you didn't have so many options. So if you didn't become like fabulously successful as a farmer or whatever was your option, you didn't feel like you didn't choose the right thing. So now we have so many options, and it's— we're told that we can have it all and do it all and be a mother and kick it in the boardroom and all that business. But the reality is it's very hard to do both those things. And the reality is men still, per all of my, um, advanced degree friends, still make more money than women in the same exact positions. So that's what I would say hasn't changed. What has changed is it's easier for us to, um, not get married, um, have— you could create, which I'd love to do, a group housing situation with a bunch of friends, either your age or a bunch of different ages. I've heard of people that love that kind of situation. And, uh, we have more responsibilities that have come with the freedom, which is great because, you know, we get to, um, do things in terms of social activism that we weren't able to do. And, um, I think a lot of people in general are lonelier now because there's less— there's less impetus from the many articles I read to get married or cohabitate or find one person and spend many years with them. And, and those things have their benefits. So there's, you know, the loneliness epidemic the former Surgeon General spoke about. And I experienced that myself. So it's been a mixed bag. And I think that women need to cut men a break and say they had a defined certain role. '60s particularly, '60s and '70s, women went, "Hey, wait a minute, this isn't a good deal. I don't like this deal." And then started railing against the system and railing against men And the men didn't know how to adapt to the new system. And I think that it was not really their fault.

Tell me about your audiobook.

Oh, that was the most fun. I have a couple people in my life that are— they don't use the word handicapped now. I forget what— and they're in such different ways, I wouldn't even know the right word anyway. But so reading was out of the question. And recording an audiobook generally is somewhere around $6,000 that I did not have lying around. And then I found a woman in Vermont that not only gave me a discount as a Vermont, her— she's a total pro like you. She has all this like editing and audio experience, and she has a lovely booth and a lovely quiet neighborhood, and It was so affordable and I could drive to it, you know, it's like an hour away. So I was like, this will be my gift to these two people that can't read my book. And I was advised by a person who does audio voiceovers and whatever, what to do, what not to do in terms of eating, drinking for days before, how to behave in the booth. And I was a little terrified, like we don't even like to hear our own, we didn't like to hear our own voices on answering machines, remember? You're like, oh, I can't stand the sound of my own voice. Well, try recording a whole book. But I knew that I could read it with the right cadence and everything best because I wrote it, um, and it's not fiction. So I just kind of sucked it up and went in there and let it rip. And she said she thought it was fabulous, this woman who's done dozens and dozens of books. And my friend just read it and said— she's a librarian— and said She's going to nominate it— nominate it, I lived in Boston for a while— for an Audie, the Audiobook Awards. She thought it was fantastic. I was so excited.

You have a website. What could people find there?

I actually have two websites. One is annakins.com is my book and how to connect with me on various ways, in various ways. And uppervalleygirl.com, spelled as you would suspect, all one word, all lowercase, is my column from the time I started the blog, which some techie guy made for me in 5 seconds. He went, you really need a blog. And I was like, I don't have time or inclination to learn how to do that. And he said, I'll make it for you right now. We were sitting in his coffee cafe that he owned, and it was like, you know, thank you, forces. And I always have always loved blogging, and they fell into disfavor. But I would advise your writers and listeners to go back to blogging because the beauty of blogging is you have all of these hits that you can find in the, um, the interverse, uh, of your name, type topics that you have posted where people from all over the world find you randomly. And then you get to see on the maps like, oh, somebody from Australia read this thing I wrote 15 years ago. Like, it's really fun and rewarding. And maybe they'll make a comment or not. But, um, blogs fell into disfavor, I guess, maybe over podcasts, and I'm trying to think what the— I guess just social media, but they're coming around again. It's fun, I love it. You get to— I'll put my column in and then I'll put a couple shorty. You were talking about writers always, um, processing information and seeing stuff out in the world, uh, to share or analyze.

They don't just put in a couple little shorties there with some fun photos, and it's always been a gas Be sure to subscribe to this channel and click the bell so you'll be notified when it's time to turn the page to the next chapter of Author to Author.