Episode 4: What success means to us, and we remember Grace’s first novel, the Year of the Dog

Grace and Alvina talk about their weeks—Alvina talks about having a three-day weekend for President’s Day, and binge-watching The Great British Bakeoff.

Grace talks about being on deadline, while at the same time wasting two days on the internet, getting sucked into negative comments, including one comment about how the only reason certain books won was because they were “diverse.”

For “what’s on their minds,” Grace and Alvina talk about how they measure success in their fields. They talk about the difference between joy and satisfaction. Grace dispels the myth of the “tortured artist” (as discussed in Elizabeth Gilbert’s book BIG MAGIC). The talk about external and internal factors to what they consider contribute to feeling successful.

They take a trip down memory lane and remember when Grace first wrote and published her first novel, The Year of the Dog. She mentioned her first picture book, THE UGLY VEGETABLES, as being one of the reasons she started writing a novel. Alvina talks about the acquisitions process at Little, Brown, and its subsequent success after publication.

Alvina and Grace with THE YEAR OF THE RAT and THE YEAR OF THE DOG

The redesigned cover of THE YEAR OF THE DOG for the 12-year anniversary!

They end with what they’re grateful for. Grace is still crazed with her novel deadline, and talks about how grumpy that makes her, and realized that instead of being grumpy, she needs to focus on being grateful for the work, and for having a family that understands her grumpiness, and for the opportunity to push her to be a faster writer.

Alvina is grateful for the reality television show The Bachelor, and watching every week with her friend Tracy.