Note: Text has been edited and may not match audio exactly.
Margaret Hargrove: I'm Audible editor Margaret Hargrove, and I'm delighted to be talking to Terry McMillan, bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale. Her new novel, It's Not All Downhill from Here, follows Loretha Curry and her group of 60-something friends dealing with aging, relationships, and loss. Thank you so much for being here with me today here from the comfort of our homes.
Terry McMillan: Thank you very much.
MH: It's Not All Downhill from Here was released at the end of March, when most of the country was under stay-at-home orders. You've been putting out books for more than 30 years and I imagine that you've probably never seen anything like this.
TM: No.
MH: What has the experience between like, not being able to do the usual book tour, book signings, and store events?
TM: This is a first. My first novel, Mama, I didn't do a book tour. Well, I sort of did. I created my own but I don't count that. But this will be the first time out of all my books that I haven't done a book tour. When I found out what was going on in Seattle—because Seattle's a big book town and I have a lot of fans there. I have gotten up to a thousand people at a reading. I've been reading up there for years—When I saw what was happening there, I said to my publisher, "You know, I can't go to Seattle. I can't do that." From there, it was — for lack of a better cliché — all downhill.
Prior to my pub date I had already resigned myself to the fact that there was not going to be a book tour. I've been able to live with it. The book hit the bestseller list and it's just at the bottom, which is a little disappointing but I'm trying not to go there because I know that right now is a very difficult time for a lot of us. I'll take people's lives more than the sales of my book — and our safety. That's much more important. Books don't have a heartbeat.
MH: Right, understood. I think that's a big theme in It's Not All Downhill from here—picking up the pieces after something unexpected happens, when it feels like your world has stopped. We have Loretha, or Lo, the main character, and we meet her on the eve of her 68th birthday. Now, you choose very early on in the book to introduce a fairly traumatic moment for Lo. She has a tragic loss and she has to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. I'm struggling here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't listened, but what drew you to this story about Loretha?
TM: Well, first of all, I wasn't 68 when I started the book but I am now. I wanted an age that was under 70 but older than 60 because 60, to me, is still young. I mean, I have a lot of friends and I know a lot of women in particular who are lost and for whom their whole lives are not what any of us really expected.
I'm the oldest of five and I've lost quite a few friends, I'll be honest, over the years. I know a lot of people who are gone, and I was just worried about our longevity and what we do to ourselves. Years ago, way back in the day, I had a drinking problem, but I couldn't really drink, so after two glasses of wine I was drunk. It didn't take me long. I was in my 30s or, I don't know, maybe 40, I don't know, but it's been 37 years since I've had a drink. I just realized, "You can't drink, Terry." I was living in Manhattan at the time. Everybody said, "Always make sure you have cab fare to get home." Then I realized one day, when I woke up and I couldn't remember how I had gotten home. I was like, "This does not make any sense." I went to AA for 90 days, got that little coin, threw it away, and have not had a drink since.
I realized after eating cheeseburgers, everything you could think of, that I was real thirsty. I had this insatiable thirst and then my doctor said, "Terry, your numbers are high. You might have diabetes." My mother was diabetic. My father was diabetic. I said, "Oh no, I won't." They put me on medication. I do a lot of research when I write books and I realized, "You know what, Terry? You can stop this. You can reverse this." That's what I did. So I don't eat sugar, and I always exercise. I just changed a lot of things. I realized that there's a lot that we can do to help ourselves and to extend the longevity of our lives as well as the quality of it.
I'm not trying to preach, but the bottom line is that I know that some of us inherit a lot of things but, at the same time, some of us are also lazy when it comes to taking care of ourselves. I don't mean just women in their 60s, I mean all of us. If we can get away with it, we get away with it. I just find that as we get older, it's a little more threatening. I personally decided that, "You know what? I lost my mother at 59, a sister at 60, and a lot of friends, so I just want to be able to slide into home if at all possible."
That was the impetus behind the book. You said, "Why did I have this tragic thing happen?" Well, because I know that, at this age, all of us have experienced loss, and it’s usually unexpected. I didn't know when I started the chapter that it was going to happen. I had no idea, none. I don't plan it out. I don't plot my stories. I do not.
MH: Did you feel that Loretha needed this kind of tragedy to happen to really spark the change we see in her throughout the rest of the book?
TM: I don't know, but I think tragedy does spark change. It can do that. But I don't know because I don't have my stories mapped out. I didn't know what was going to happen to Loretha's life. All I know is that I was writing a novel about a character who was early elderly—whatever you want to call it—with a host of friends that all have different issues. They've been friends forever. Everybody has flaws and issues. I wanted them to realize that there are times in our lives when we have to take ourselves seriously—what we do, how we treat ourselves, how we take care of ourselves—and there's always angst. Everybody that I know and love—sometimes we don't speak, sometimes we don't get along, sometimes we judge each other. And that was primarily the story that I wanted to tell about women who have been lifelong friends and each has opinions about the other. They love each other, but what happens when things happen to us in this age group, which it does in real life, and also how can we learn to accept responsibility for our own lives and what we do and not make excuses for our behavior because we don't really get a second chance that I know of?
So, I figured this would be a good way to do it, but I don't believe in being didactic. I don't want to preach. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I do know that even if I drop dead tomorrow, up until now, I am very proud of what I have done to make changes in my life. It ain't over, but the bottom line is that if I'm going to die, I do not want it to be because of something I did to myself or because of something I didn't do for myself. That's all I want us, as women, and not just black women, to feel and think. That's it.
The bottom line is that if I'm going to die, I do not want it to be because of something I did to myself or because of something I didn't do for myself.
MH: Got it. Like the character Lo who struggles with diabetes in the book, you mentioned that you also experienced that. Now, she struggles where she doesn't want to give up, like you said, the cheeseburgers that she loves, the French toasts, the ice cream, the cheesecake, the peach cobbler. Did you struggle as well? Did you have the same difficulties?
TM: No, it doesn't work like that. That's why she's not me. A novel is full of friction, and conflict, and stuff. If I just made her be able to do all these things and make all these changes, then where's the book? People, we struggle to not eat that hamburger, to not pick up the phone and call whoever. We struggle with everything. When you get a little bit older, some things are a little harder. When my doctor told me—she couldn't believe I was sitting there and I had just polished off a turkey sandwich, French fries, and I was on my last five Good & Plenty. She didn't even know how I was sitting there. I didn't know what she was talking about. They put me on this medication but the bottom line is that I don't like the idea of taking medication. It still took me a couple of years.
I did exercise. I always sort of exercised but, when I found out that you can reverse this, that's when I took it a lot more seriously. Even now, at Christmas and Thanksgiving I still make a sweet potato pie and a peach cobbler. I will still have a bite of it. I will have a slice or two of sweet potato pie but, for the most part, that's the only time out of every year that I have it. I might even have a hamburger every now and then, but I can count how many months in between. Sometimes, I can't really eat it. Sometimes, I just inhale them. All I know is that when I read that Toni Morrison died—she was 88—I was thinking, "Wow, I'm 67. I would love to live to see 88." I realized that I have to take what I do to myself a lot more seriously. And I've been doing it.
I mean I'm a little boring. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't get high. I like that feeling. When things are hard, I still prefer it this way versus the other way. Plus, when I die, I don't want to be because of something I did to myself. This book isn't about death. Okay?
MH: Yes, no spoilers. Going back to something you said about the friendship: these are lifelong friends, Lo and her four best friends Lucky, Sadie, Poochie, and Korynthia. There's a line that you wrote where you say that they've loved each other longer than they loved some of the men in their lives. They're as close as sisters. I think that's true for a lot of friend groups, mine included. You often work within this framework of black sisterhood, from Waiting to Exhale to now. Why is that so important to you?
TM: I think sometimes the stereotype is that women don't get along, that we are competitors, we envy each other, and stuff like that. But I have a girlfriend I've known for 45 years. She was in the hospital when my son was born. She's moved and I moved, but there are people in our lives that you love from the beginning. There are some of my friends I went to college with and we stay in touch. There's usually a small posse—as we used to call them—of women that, no matter where we go, who we marry, divorce, grandkids, whatever, we just stay in touch.
I have a girlfriend I went to high school with. She is shocked that, after all the things that have happened to me, I still remember her birthday. She can't believe it. She was just like, "Oh, God." I was like, "What's the big deal?" "But Terry, you're famous." I said, "What's that got to do with anything? We were in kindergarten together, girl."
I've watched over the years and there are people that you love and people that you trust. I also think that the stereotype is that we are competitors as women. You know, "Who's got the biggest booty? Who was cuter? Who's sexier? Who's smarter? Who's richer?" I want it clear that black women don't all think that way. Most of us do not. We respect each other and those are the people, the kind of women, that I write about and always will write about. Even if things go wrong and they don't get along for a minute, they disagree, they always come back to each other. Unlike an ex-husband.
MH: I hear that. Because you write a lot about these friend groups, when writing about groups of friends, how do you manage so many different personalities? Lo is one way. Sadie has her own opinion, she's in the church. Poochie's in Vegas with the mom and she's dealing with the knee replacement. Ko has a son. Everyone's got their own thing going on. How do you handle having so many different personalities, opinions, voices in the same room and melding that all together?
TM: Well, I know my characters a little bit in advance. I do character profiles. I give them astrological signs. I give them virtues and weaknesses and flaws, all of them. Everybody has them. I just have a good time. I want their personalities to often conflict so sometimes people side with one versus the other. It's true in a family. Your sister, sometimes you can't stand her. Sometimes, you don't speak. And friends are the same way. But the bottom line is you don't just say, "Well, we're going to get a divorce."
I try to create characters that are at least smart enough to know, even if they may not know it right away, when they're wrong or when somebody has their best interests at heart even if they're critical. In order to do that, there's this yin and there's yang. You have to have polarizing things going on in their personalities, but not enough so that they don't still love each other. I think that’s the way all my characters are. They disagree with each other. Sometimes, they curse each other out. Sometimes they don't speak, but the bottom line is that it doesn't mean they want to divorce. No, that's not happening. Sometimes, it does for certain lengths of time. Sometimes, it could happen within families. Your sister, you can go without speaking to your sister. I've done that, and it has happened to me where my sister don't speak to me for months at a time. But I do not write about my family. I don't do that. No way. No, no. But some people, they just disagree. Some people get mad at you for things. Sometimes, I just play it out. Sometimes, we need distance. But characters in a book are different. It's a compact world that I am creating. I can't afford to go to a commercial break. You know what I mean?
MH: Right.
TM: It's a lot more intense than that. It's like putting our lives under a microscope. That's what makes it a novel to some extent, but I love all of them.
MH: I noticed looking at your catalogue on Audible that you've narrated all of your novels. Do you really love doing it? Is that a conscious choice that you've made to narrate your own books? Why not use a voice actor for the narration?
TM: Did I? I thought there was one that I didn't.
MH: I think there may have been one… Yes, it's a multicast, but your voice is still there. Do you enjoy doing it?
TM: I did this time. I like reading. When I read from the book publicly, I don't hear it the same way you hear it on Audible because I make inflections and I'll change words and all that. There's nobody in the studio saying, "Terry, could you repeat that, please? Go back," which drives me crazy.
If you want to know the honest truth, I have never listened to any of my audios, ever, because I don't like the sound of my voice. I've heard a little, like when they have to replay it back for me when I'm in the studio. I'm like, "Oh, goodness gracious, it sounds like I have tin in my voice. Ugh, I don't like it," but other people don't hear my voice the same way because sometimes I can pick up a phone and call and they'll say, "Hold on a moment, sir" because in real life, yeah, my voice is deep. But when I'm talking like this on Audible there’s something kind of tinny and deep in my voice, and I don't like the sound of it. People that listen to it don't know that. It's once every three years.
MH: How long does it take you to record from start to finish?
TM: Seven hours a day for five days, and then you have to come back maybe for pickups. It's long. I mean, I do get an hour for lunch.
MH: At least that.
TM: Yeah. The thing is this, I know how to read my own work but, sometimes, what they catch you on are: "Something is not clear, you need to say a word right or you [makes garbled sound] you do that." It's the one time that I really read the book from start to finish. I do it another time but this is a little different because you get to hear how the characters talk and what they say and what they think. At home, I'm just hearing it in my head. I'm not sitting and reading it aloud. But when somebody's reading it, they hear it. But then when I read it, they're hearing it coming out of my mouth. I don't know, like I haven't heard this one and I may never… maybe when I get older and bored, I might go back and say, "Girl, go see what you have."
MH: I enjoyed listening. I feel like you do give the characters inflection. I remember I was listening in the kitchen. I was doing something and you were talking to Cinnamon, Lo's granddaughter, about giving her the house, her mother's house. You said something like, "her stupid ass." I just started laughing. My daughter was like, "What are you laughing at, Mommy?" It was just hearing it come out of your voice and giving it that inflection, and I just thought it was hilarious. Hearing you read it, I enjoyed it. I know you haven't heard it, haven't heard yourself, but you really bring it to life and give it those inflections that really just make these characters seem even more real than they really are.
TM: Well, the thing is that I know how to read them. I can change my inflection for each character. When it's four or five of them—or four of them or whatever—I can change my inflection because I know how they sound when I was writing. When Cinnamon is talking—she's a dingbat sort of, and she's kind of a hippie-type thing—I just imagine how she sounded. Each time she does have something to say, I don't lose that because she's nice and sweet and all that, but she's still kind of dingy. As the writer, from Lo's point of view, she knows her granddaughter's a little dingy. I put that in her voice but I don't try to treat her like she's dingy. It's only from Lo's perspective.
MH: So two of your books have been major motion pictures. We had Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. If you had to cast It's Not All Downhill from Here as a movie, do you have anyone in mind that you would want to star in it? Maybe Angela Bassett again, though I'm sure how old she is.
TM: First of all, no.
MH: No, okay.
TM: I never think of my books as movies, never ever. I never have and I never will. People have been asking it of course: "Girl, who do you think...?" and I said, "First of all, the book just came out." I have never thought of my books, especially since Waiting to Exhale, as movies. I don't cast them. I don't think of wanting to see them on the big screen. I swear, I have never done that and I never will. I just don't. If somebody wants to buy the movie rights... I mean, right now I Almost Forgot About You is going to be a movie. Viola Davis is going to star in it and all that, but that didn't happen before I finished the book and before the book came out. That's a whole other dimension. But I am not thinking when I'm writing, "Oh, I can't wait to see this on screen. Who will play Loretha?" No.
Even now that the book is out, that still hasn't crossed my mind. It has not. And I really don't care. The only thing that I do appreciate about Hollywood is that they pay you a lot of money. I'll take their money. But I do think that this one could be fun because you don't see older women on screen unless they're dying, and this isn't that kind of story. So, we'll see. I wouldn't say no, but I'm not casting a movie.
MH: We’ll give it a few years, like you said, to simmer and see what happens.
TM: Well, we'll see.
MH: Like I said, Waiting to Exhale came out about 30 years ago. Now, here we are 30 years later, and it's like the characters have aged as your readers have grown up. I'm almost 40, and it's the same thing if someone were in their 30s reading Waiting to Exhale. Now, they're likely in their 60s so there's a lot that they can see in It's Not All Downhill From Here. But do you ever think you'd go back to writing about 30-somethings or do you feel that you'll continue to write about older characters?
TM: No. I'm already 100-some odd pages into another novel. The characters in this story are… no, I don't think any of them are elderly. No, they're not elderly. Kind of the opposite. [Laughter] I've got about four or five characters. It's a multi-viewpoint story. That's all I can say right now, but they're different ages. I think the oldest is maybe in their 50s or maybe barely about 50-something. But most of them are probably 30s, 40s maybe. But in this story, it's not really about ageism or anything like that. There's a diner involved and that's all I can say.
MH: We'll take that. We'll sit and wait. Hopefully, for your next book, maybe you'll be able to go back on a book tour.
TM: Yeah, but I've had fun doing this virtual stuff. The only difference is you can't see your audience but they can see you. I love that interaction. I got a little depressed not being able to go on tour...
That's the thing: they celebrate you because they respect that you, as the writer, have captured something about the world that they live in, and as black women or black people that they appreciate. And hopefully, that they are encouraged, inspired, and are entertained by, because I don't write to tell anybody how to live. We are all out here trying to figure that out. but I do know that there is a way to capture certain moments in our lives that are important and can affect the rest of our lives. That's all I try to do and I just pick the moment that fascinates me or that I'm worried about or I care about or I'm scared about. In this case, it was misconceptions about getting older because I don't think it's all downhill from here.
MH: It's not, and you definitely did encourage and inspire. I could even speak personally. I saw a lot in Lo in how she tried to put the pieces of her life back together, losing weight and struggling with her eating and dealing with friend relationships, and just trying to find out who she was again. You definitely encouraged and inspired me in this book. Thank you.
TM: You're welcome. Thank you.
MH: Thank you for always writing authentic black women. It's always a treat to read a Terry McMillan novel.
TM: Thank you, sweetie.
