(podcast) Writing Redemption

An Interview with Bobi Conn

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On this episode of What Dreamers Do, host Carla Gover talks with Appalachian Author Bobi Conn about her work, her writing process, overcoming trauma, and offering a counter-narrative to stereotypical,  pop-culture representations of the region. The two friends also riff about their personal experiences with healing and success, encouraging listeners to find their own path and express their best selves to the world.

The episode wraps up with a discussion about Bobi’s two existing books as well as her upcoming novel, which all explore universal themes and Bobi’s lived experiences and struggles, with a focus on women’s lives.

Biography
Bobi Conn was born in Morehead, Kentucky, and raised in a nearby holler, where she developed a deep connection with the land and her Appalachian roots. She obtained her bachelor’s degree at Berea College, the first school in the American South to integrate racially and to teach men and women in the same classrooms. After struggling as a single mother, she worked multiple part-time jobs at once to support her son and to attend graduate school, where she earned a master’s degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing. 

In 2020, she released her first book, an elegiac account of survival despite being born poor, female, and cloistered. In her honest and vulnerable memoir, we find a testament of hope for all vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls caught in the cycle of poverty and abuse. 

Bobi’s second book, a novel called “A Woman in Time,” was published in 2022 and draws inspiration from the true stories of her great grandparents. It portrays a woman who challenges the constraints of life in Prohibition-era Appalachia in this sweeping and richly rewarding novel about endurance, survival, and redemption.

Links:

Bobi’s Website
Bobi’s Instagram

Transcript

Bobi Conn [00:00:00]: You. Carla Gover [00:00:01]: All right. Welcome, dreamers. We're sitting here today on a comfy couch nestled in the foothills of Berea, Kentucky. Actually, we're within a house on that couch in the foothills of Berea, Kentucky. And I am with my good friend and author, among other things, Miss Bobby Conn. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Bobi Conn [00:00:23]: Thank you so much for having me. Carla Gover [00:00:26]: It has taken us long enough to do this, but that's just how it goes. Sometimes I think, yeah, next time we'll. Bobi Conn [00:00:32]: Have to find that couch in the woods. Carla Gover [00:00:34]: Like, directly in the couch, actually sitting out in the middle of the woods. That's the ideal place for a podcast like this. But we'll make do today. We're going to be talking about creativity, about writing, about your process and whatever else happens to drop into our minds. Bobby, for those of you who don't know, her has a philosophy undergraduate degree from Berea College, so our chats often skew fairly philosophical anyway, so you can be a fly on the wall to that. But I was thinking that maybe for people that have not read any of your books and don't know anything about you, maybe you can just give a little Cliff Notes. Bobby Conn 101. Bobi Conn [00:02:12]: My first book came out in 2020. That was a memoir about one of our favorite beloved topics, which is Appalachia. And I really wanted to explore how stereotypes can arise and especially about marginalized cultures and then how those tend to fall apart or create a very limited perspective for people who haven't lived inside of a subculture. As well as, of course, my personal journey and experiences, a lot of which are universal and then some of which is very specific to the culture I grew up in, among a bunch of other issues, of course, and topics that are near and dear to me. My second book was a novel. It came out in 2022. It's called a woman in time. And that was inspired by some true stories about my great grandparents, who were my great grandfather was a moonshiner during Prohibition and the Great Depression. And I grew up hearing stories about his exploits, as well as some of the things my great grandmother struggled to live with and had to contend with as a woman in her time. And I really wanted to look at what women's lives during that era and in that specific context might have looked like and pay homage to those women, the women who are ultimately we're all beholden to them for bringing us into the world. And so my writing typically thus far, explores lived experiences. It's often set in Appalachia and definitely has a focus on women's lives and the lives that I have witnessed or have some sort of first hand knowledge of and then trying to tease out the universal themes that connect all of us. Carla Gover [00:04:29]: Yeah, that's really interesting because I've read your books and I know you, and I've also heard personal stories, and I think you know that I'm all about having actual people from Appalachia help. Define more strongly define the narrative about Appalachia versus it being defined by Hollywood or being defined by writers who didn't grow up with the culture. And one of the things that has always struck me when I reflect on Appalachia is how we are defined by our problems in a way that other areas which also have problems aren't. Other areas have drug or drug issues or crime or whatever cultural, social issues they have in that part of the world. But it seems to define us heavily, in a way, as Appalachians that isn't always true of other places. And so you don't shy away from talking about the problems in our area. Your books, they touch on different kinds of abuse and drug use, some of the societal problems that we struggle with. So how do you balance telling an accurate story with some of the issues and problems and challenges that we all have in our families and communities, but also trying to help shift that narrative so it's not just a stereotype? Bobi Conn [00:06:00]: Yeah, I think that's a great question, and it was a really important one for me to think about a lot while I was writing my memoir because I certainly didn't want people to read it and interpret it as just sort of more ammunition against Appalachian or hillbilly culture. And for me, one way to do that is to balance the negative experiences and the negative socioeconomic issues that we're facing with an understanding of the beauty and the very close, tight knit relationships that a lot of us also have experienced in Appalachia. Like having a granny, for instance, is one of those things. Granny or grandmother, a matriarch of the family. That's one of those aspects of Appalachia culture that I think isn't typically broadcast to the outside world, that we often have these women who are responsible for providing so much love and stability for our families. And when my memoir came out, I had a lot of people respond to that aspect of my writing. I had a lot of people respond to that theme in my writing really strongly, even people from all over the country, people from other ethnicities, just because it is a universal experience. But on the other hand, it is something that's very special about Appalachian culture. So I wanted to bring those beautiful aspects of our culture to the forefront to show the complications. The challenges and difficulties are not the full picture that just happens to be what is often broadcast to the rest of the world and then sometimes lampooned or made into characters. So there's that. And then I think the other element, I think the other piece of balancing out the negativity and the stereotypes is to question whether, as you said, those challenges are specific to our culture. And of course, we know drug abuse is not specific to Appalachia culture. Poverty is not. Neither is child abuse or spouse abuse. So I wanted my memoir to really challenge people to say, why would you believe that these things are specific to this culture and what might have given rise to that? And I think it's a really complicated combination of classism and also just the role that Appalachia has played in our country's history and in our economic development, that the culture has been lampooned and derided for so long, and yet it hasn't been challenged. That perspective has not been thoroughly challenged in our collective minds. Carla Gover [00:09:47]: Yeah. And we have to examine the reasons why that's so. And I know you and I have had a lot of conversations about how can you have an accurate conversation, any kind of real conversation, about appalachia and issues facing it, without looking at the role that extractive economies and sort of a colonial model of the economy here as it relates to the economy of the rest of the United States has played it's a thing, and I don't think it's talked about enough. Bobi Conn [00:10:16]: Yeah, I mean, I didn't even understand that until I went to college, probably. I think a lot of people around the country, including within Appalachia, don't understand the history of Appalachia and how our coal and our lumber fueled the development of the rest of the country while none of the financial gain was put back into the region infrastructure. Yeah, I think there is a serious lack of understanding. Carla Gover [00:10:51]: Well, I think that's one of the things that can be so profoundly damaging about the stereotypes that exist about Appalachia is just how deep it runs and how much we are raised to believe it without ever examining it critically. And thank goodness. I think it was probably for me in college as well when I started to look at that from a different perspective and realize that we're not just all backwards and ignorant and this is just we don't deserve any more than this because that's kind of what you unconsciously soak up. It's not like anybody is outright saying that to you for the most part, but it's just kind of the it's just kind of the overall attitude. And another thing that you kind of touch on in both of your books that I've read so far that is sort of paradoxical and has always confused me a little bit is the fact that in different many parts, of appalachia many households or churches or communities. There's sort of a patriarchal men wear the Britches kind of a mentality where in reality, it's these little grannies that are totally holding families and communities together. And I know certainly in your memoir that comes out, but also even in your book A Woman in Time, the different characters express that in different ways. Some of them are more oppressed or have a harder time asserting their power. Some of them get to be more empowered because of their life circumstances. So I'd be interested to hear any more of your thoughts about that or how you try to incorporate that. Bobi Conn [00:12:33]: Yeah, I think it's a really fascinating phenomenon that we do see these disempowered women. They're not politically empowered or socially and perhaps not personally, but within their homes they do possess a lot of power. In my novel A Woman in Time specifically, I wanted to explore where did that power come from? And I do think that it probably has something to do with the emotional strength that a lot of women have to have in order to be mothers and to take care of their children and the love that just typically naturally flows from that experience. I'm sure there's some much more complex psychological and maybe sociological factors at play that I can't quite parse out. But one of the things that seemed to arise for me as I was letting this story unfold and learning through it was that these women gain strength through experience and through the specific kind of maturation that they go through as they are mothers, as they interact with the natural world, as their spirituality deepens. And then at the same time, I had a really interesting experience at a book festival one time when I was sharing that theme with someone who would stop to look at my books and think about purchasing one. And I said again that I was curious where this women's power came from since it wasn't an external power. And she said, It comes from other women. And I thought that's a really fascinating answer. And I think that kind of holds true in the story that I wrote because you see the mother, the grandmother, the aunt and then sister in law, those relationships between these women help support the women and girls and help them prepare to step into their roles as pillars of strength in their families and in their communities. Carla Gover [00:15:08]: Yes. And what you see, what I saw in A Woman in Time reading that is that the female characters, they have this knowledge, this wisdom, this skill set of the plants and the herbs making medicine and knowing how to take care of the animals, knowing how to take care of the garden. And it's almost like in some instances, they're actually having to do those things because the men are incapacitated or gone. And so the women are having to have the take. They have a knowledge that's almost like that the men don't even understand. They have they're not even cognizant of how much the women are holding things together. And it kind of reminded me a little bit of another book that I love, the Doll Maker by Harriet Simpson Arnold in the main character Gertie. I don't know if you've read that one. It's one of those tomes of Appalachian literature, but they live in Appalachia, and she has been squirreling away money, and her husband thinks, oh, we need to move to Detroit. I need to get better work. We need to make some money up there. And he doesn't even realize how much money that she squirreled away in her jar. She's just so connected to the land, and she loves it so much. They wind up moving. Spoiler alert in the Doll Maker, they wind up going to Detroit. But just this idea that the women have a power that's almost invisible to the men in their lives, but it's still holding everything together. Bobi Conn [00:16:49]: Yeah, and I think that's obviously we don't want to have that come across as a negative theme toward men or a negative message or anything like that. But it seems to hold true in my life and in so many of the lives of other women that I know personally and in so many stories that there is this kind of connection, maybe an awareness or certainly a depth of emotion oftentimes, that seems to be specific to women in women's lives. And there's something really beautiful about that, and I love to celebrate it and explore it to understand it better. Carla Gover [00:17:35]: Yeah, well, that kind of reminds me of something else I wanted to touch on. I know your memoir has been out for a while now, and I know you've talked a lot about that, so I've kind of had a few more questions that I wanted to ask you about a woman in time. And one of the things I found really interesting about the book, because it's something I've wondered about a lot, is you just kind of touch on at these different moments that the women even though these women in the book are christian women. They might have a few elements in their folklore and their family folklore or spiritual systems that hearken back to maybe other religious systems that were coming from the British isles, what we would call paganism. And I think that's very visible to see in Appalachia, probably these traces of both Native American indigenous spiritual systems and, like, maybe Celtic British Isles, irish Scottish spiritual systems that have a little bit more a little bit more focus on intuition and divination and reading the signs and watching the birds and watching the trees. So your book touches on that. And I'm curious about were there any family stories in your family that kind of hinted at those other origins besides just the Christian origins? Because I think those are pretty obvious how those have come through. Or did you do some research? How did you weave those elements in. Bobi Conn [00:19:12]: Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because I really love that topic too and I was so excited to write about it. It wasn't really present in my family history in the same way that it's in A Woman in Time. But one of the things that made me start thinking about how that generation may have incorporated singing and prayers and these sort of more mystical elements into their healing work and their worship. It was the experience in the evangelical church I grew up in where there was an anointing with oil and praying and laying on of hands. It just occurred to me that those are not practices that every Christian sect employs and they do kind of have a somewhat more mystical flavor to them because like the anointing of the oil, it's related to biblical passages. But it's this idea that there's this transmutation that can occur and that there's physical items or products that we can use and combine that with prayer to achieve a physical healing. I think if you really look at that, that is a very mystical kind of idea. Of course, by the time I was growing up in church, the idea of mysticism was fairly frowned upon. Anything that smacked of magic would have been seen as like the devil's work. Carla Gover [00:21:10]: Demonic. Bobi Conn [00:21:11]: Yeah. But it made me want to look back further in time and ask what kind of practices may have been left over from those British Isles, the closer connection with the earth and that mixing of old folklore with newer approaches and really a changing understanding of Christianity that I think must have occurred in the US. Pretty early on. But I don't think that really reached appalachia and fully infused the Appalachian practice of Christianity immediately and not at the same pace that it did the rest of the country. Carla Gover [00:22:03]: The country. Bobi Conn [00:22:04]: So I did a little bit of research, I did some interviews with people to just make sure that my somewhat tenuous understanding of that was correct and that I was writing it accurately for the time and place. And then that's also why there's some scenes where John, one of the patriarchs of the family, he's going to town, he's interacting with traveling preachers, they're going to revivals on a yearly basis. And that's how this more commonplace and a different understanding of Christianity, I would say a more firmly entrenched patriarchal Christianity becomes more and more and more. It encroaches more and more on the Appalachian folklore version that we see initially. So that's another theme that I wanted to explore in the book, is how technology and this they're on the cusp of industrialization, how those things influence religion and the spread of certain understanding of religion and start to dampen. Or maybe just make it more challenging to practice the old folklore and the medicinal wisdom and healing arts that the women are still carrying on. Carla Gover [00:23:47]: This relates to what we were talking about last night in terms of the ballads and as an armchair ballad scholar and a ballad singer myself. One thing I've learned and one thing I've known from listening to so many ballads from both the British Isles and the United States, is that as the ballads came across the Atlantic and as people settled here over time, I don't know when it happened. Like you're saying, it could have probably happened later in Appalachia than it did in other parts of the United States, but the ballads began to be stripped of all of their supernatural references. So there's all these ballads that have ghosts and Fairfolk and different kinds of supernatural elements in the British Isles. And I think those over here begin to be associated with witchcraft or with the devil. And so the ballads here tend to be more they're love ballads or murder ballads or those ballads that are like the bad Mother ballads. I don't know if you've heard those where the mother goes off and leaves the kids at home or her baby dies and she regrets it because it's because she wasn't acting right, that kind of thing. But, yeah, it's that gradual process of where some of the earlier influences on the culture become obscured to history due to the more modern religious influences. But I feel like I have to tell this story. I feel like somehow the book got a divine blessing or seal of approval because I went to Ireland. I'm telling this to you listeners because Bobby knows this, but I went to Ireland last summer and I was bringing back souvenirs for my friends. And I was in a little Irish gift shop and I saw this women cross of St. Bridget and I know they say her name a different way over there, that saint, but I'm going to say St. Bridget. And it was just a little straw cross and it wasn't very expensive, but I knew it would be light in my suitcase. And I thought, this just seems like the right thing to bring to Bobby. And I brought it back and she was like, oh, my God, these are in my book. So I felt like that was very much a synchronicity. Bobi Conn [00:25:57]: Oh, absolutely. I'm so glad you brought that up, because I'm always writing to tell that story to people, because, again, I did some research just to look into what were some of the symbols that may have survived up into this point in Appalachian cultures coming back from the British Isles that might have been specifically woven into healing and praying. And, yeah, when you showed up with that, I was just blown away that you tapped into that aspect of maybe a shared moment of consciousness that we had without knowing it. Carla Gover [00:26:41]: Yeah, well, it's one of the most interesting elements of the book to me is just their folklore and their herb lore and the medicines they make. And obviously there's all the human drama, all the struggles, especially that the women have in one case, especially dealing with a violent husband. And I understand that this is based on some of the stories in your family, maybe like a fictionalized family story. Yeah, with fictional elements. So I recommend reading it if you like Appalachian historical fiction. But now you're done with your third book, and it's in the editing phase right now, so feel like we need to keep moving forward. You've got a lot going on. Bobi Conn [00:27:31]: Yeah, so I'm working on this third book. We'll be wrapping up developmental edits in about a month and then going through proofreading and all of that. We don't have a publication debt in stone yet, we don't have a publication date in stone yet, but it looks like it might be May of 2024 when it comes out. And it's a fictionalized telling of my mother's story. So she read my memoir and really had a desire for people to understand her story, which I thought was really interesting, and, of course, a natural inclination that most of us would want to have, especially if some of our life was made very public, as my mother's was through my memoir. Carla Gover [00:28:25]: And it's a difficult story. It's a painful story. So yes. Bobi Conn [00:28:28]: Yeah. And I had a lot of goals when I started working on her story. And again, it is a fictionalized version. So to paint a really rich picture, I created a lot of scenes and details and even some characters that aren't real dialogue, because memory being what it is, you can't necessarily come up with a very rich description of somebody's young life once they're in their 60s. Not for an entire book, perhaps. So I set out to understand her story better while also looking at how women in her time and place, which she came of age in the 60s in rural eastern Kentucky. What was her experience like, technology being where it was and what it was at that point, transportation being what it was, still so very limited compared to what we're experiencing today. And so I wanted to see what kind of possibilities did she have in her range of understanding, and then how did that affect the choices that she made, how did that affect my life coming out of it? But I really wanted to give her a voice, first and foremost. In a way, this book functions like a fictional prequel to my memoir. But I will say a good number of the events within the book are true, and they're true to her telling the major structural points. And I would say, overall, the plot, interestingly enough, follows what she has shared with me for the purposes of the book. Carla Gover [00:30:39]: I remember you saying that parts of the book you wrote in first person as if you were her. Do you feel that changed your perception of her or did that change your feelings of connection to her? What was that like? Bobi Conn [00:30:56]: Yeah, it was pretty intense. The book is divided into three parts, and they're each called books, as you've seen in other books. So book two specifically is written from her character's first person point of view. And I wanted to do that because I want the reader to be sunk into her perspective and be seeing the world as she sees it, and also, at the same time, to experience some discomfort when they realize what this character is going through, what they feel, what the character is going through. So that's something that I've always enjoyed infusing into my writing, is really trying to draw people into the characters and into their perspectives and then, of course, create a little bit of cognitive dissonance. Carla Gover [00:31:57]: Tension there's tension? Bobi Conn [00:31:58]: Yeah. And for me, the whole experience just made me feel compassion for my mother in a new way that I had never felt before. I think intellectually, I'm at a point in my development where I could say, oh, yeah, she's her own person, she's an individual. She's not just my mother, and she has her own experiences that make her who she is. But I think as children, looking at our parents, it is kind of hard, at least it always has been for me. It's hard to separate my experience of them from their experience of their own lives, my idea of what that might be for them. So I think as children, we have a naturally self centered view of our parents that begins at birth and just extends throughout our lives if left unexamined. And this really gave me a view of her, at least a possibility of what her experiences and feelings and thoughts might have been like, that kind of blew me open. It transformed me in a way that I said I wanted to experience, but I couldn't comprehend it until it really happened. Carla Gover [00:33:26]: Yeah, I don't think it gets more examined than that, other than actually becoming somebody else. That's a pretty rigorous exercise in putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Bobi Conn [00:33:38]: Yeah, it's something I'd like to help other people do. I think that it could be really healing and beneficial, especially for the people that we struggle with the relationship or have resentments or any sort of lingering, unresolved difficult emotions with. I feel like it's a sure fire way to change one's perspective about that other person. Carla Gover [00:34:10]: So you're kind of touching on writing as healing, as a tool for healing, really. Bobi Conn [00:34:15]: Yeah, and not healing like, now I feel better, or I feel I was unhappy and now I'm happy, but more so. I don't know. I feel like my view of my mom and my dad now after writing these books is more my my view is more complete. And I see that there's a lot more complexity and therefore I am in a position to give a lot more grace and just accept that we are humans having this crazy human experience. That there's no blueprint for, no instruction manual. So rather than saying, oh, I'm happy, and I feel healed. I think sometimes we think of healing is going to make you have that kind of outcome. It's more so that I just have such a greater level of peace and acceptance for what has happened and then a sense of intention for what I'm doing going forward. Carla Gover [00:35:30]: Well, I think you're one of those people who is not just a gifted artist, but you have a teacher's heart, and it sounds like you're expressing that you would like to help other people, maybe do in in your writing workshops or in in writing courses and things like that. I'm sure you have many ideas of things that you want to teach, but I know that you have a heart for in sharing your writing. Especially you have a heart for obviously exploring these topics. You love and elevating the discourse about appalachia, but also helping people who have experienced trauma of different kinds find their own roadmap for creating a better life for themselves. Because I know that's very much the path that you're on. Bobi Conn [00:36:24]: Yeah, funny you say that. My intention for my next book, after wrapping up this third one, is to write a book that looks again at my personal life and experiences while really examining what developmental phase they occurred at, where I was at developmentally, and therefore, what was the sort of natural impact and outcome of those experiences. Because our understanding of trauma and the impacts on the human brain and on human behavior, our understanding just keeps getting stronger and stronger. But a lot of people who are having those negative experiences or who are dealing with the fallout from PTSD or whatever else they might have going on, they're not necessarily going and reading the research and finding the solutions that are going to help them resolve these issues. So I want to take a very creative storytelling approach to looking at how traumatic events can impact us, why they would impact us at a certain way, at a certain point in our development, and then what are the steps that have to be taken when to just get your brain functioning properly again? Because it's really hard to have success in any sense if your brain isn't functioning properly, which is just a completely understood impact of trauma at this point. But it's not something I think we socially understand, and it's really not something I personally understood until very recently. Even past my memoir being published, I've had certain therapeutic experiences that have put me in a place where I think I can share some tools and effective techniques with the rest of the world so that other people can get to their better outcomes a lot more quickly and without as much grasping as me and a lot of other people have done. Carla Gover [00:38:56]: Yeah, I don't think we societally have the right kinds of systems in place to help people navigate that journey of trauma. I mean, we're letting so many people fall through the. Cracks and maybe even in some cases, unfortunately, writing people off, drug addicts or whatever, we're writing people off that really should be having a better shot at redemption and having a meaningful life. So I'm all about this idea of sharing what's worked for you. And one thing I notice is that I think whether it's for healing trauma or healing whatever kind of negative programming we have, or just achieving different kinds of success, whether it's financial success, relationship success, we humans often look for that one magic bullet or that one thing that's going to help us finally be the people we want to be. And I think you are like a poster child. I've been knowing you now for close to ten years, right? Yeah. You are a poster child for it's, not necessarily just one thing. You're going to keep trying all of it, right? If it's essential oils, if it's meditation, if it's biofeedback, if it's tapping, if it's whatever therapy, you're going to keep reaching for those tools until you feel better, and then you feel better, and then you feel a little better, and then you're able to do more of what you want to do and what we came here to do. And that's what it's all about, right? We are trying to get to where we can express share our best selves with the world and be happy. Bobi Conn [00:40:39]: Yeah. People have asked me before, especially after reading my memoir, what made it to where you got out? Whereas perhaps 95% of the other people in these situations aren't going to have that same outcome. And when I look at myself and my journey, I've always been very much a seeker and I would say I've had to be very stubborn. Stubbornness has been my friend in my path forward and my path and in creating a better and better life. And when I thought about that and examined it, I thought, we really can't expect other people to do what I did, because what I did didn't make sense on paper so much of the time. I invested money into my well being that any good financial planner would have told you. I should have been spending that money elsewhere or saving it or whatnot? And that stubbornness that I have, and even some of the resources I've had, a lot of people aren't going to be able to follow that path. So I think it's really important that we figure out an attainable and sustainable way to get people to a nice, healthy, functioning place as quickly as possible without expecting them to just draw on inner resources all the time because it's not practical. Most people aren't going to be able to conjure up those inner resources like out of thin air. And also it's in our collective best interest to have a healthy, functioning society. Women, we look at homelessness problems and the scale that they've reached in some cities and understanding that mental illness is a big component of that problem. We can't ignore each other's problems forever because we are an interconnected society. We are societal animals. It's important for us to be able to work together, because we do, in some ways, become each other's problem, whether we like it or not. Carla Gover [00:43:15]: Absolutely. The phrase you hear a lot that I think is just it says it all in the social justice movement is none of us are free until all of us are free. Bobi Conn [00:43:25]: Yeah, definitely. I tend to be an altruistic kind of person, but for the longest time, I have felt like even the most self interested among us should be able to see how having a healthy collective and a healthy environment are critical to our own self interest 1000%. Carla Gover [00:43:53]: I don't care if you're a multi billionaire, if there's no clean air and no nice city for your children to walk down the street and spend their billions in, if there's not a good society for them to participate in and feel safe and happy and watch beautiful art forms, what good does your money do you? Bobi Conn [00:44:13]: Yeah. Carla Gover [00:44:13]: And I think that's a lot of what the fight is right now is between this gulf of crazy ultra billionaires who don't seem to care much about the collective and the have nots who just want a way to live and make a living and have a place to live. Bobi Conn [00:44:35]: Yeah. And I feel like if I can come up with that conclusion that it's in their best interest, it's in all of our best interest, there's got to be a growing awareness and understanding of that. So the next step is how do we do it? How the hell do we get there if we know that we need to start resolving and healing some of these issues that have become so firmly entrenched and widespread? Carla Gover [00:45:08]: That's a million dollar question. But I reckon we can start just like Granny said and take care of one another. Bobi Conn [00:45:14]: Yeah. And my book paperback copy will be 1495 or so, so hopefully that'll be not even a million dollar. It all comes back to Appalachia. Carla Gover [00:45:24]: I keep saying people have been sending mission trips to Appalachia for 100 years now, but it's time for us to send some mission trips to the rest of the United States and just teach people how to raise a garden and take care of your neighbor and have a work party and all those things that we got to grow up doing. Bobi Conn [00:45:45]: Yeah. Mutual aid certainly has been a feature of our culture before it was called mutual aid long before it was cool. Carla Gover [00:45:57]: Well, I know we're just about out of time, so I always like to try to bring this back home to my listeners who I believe care a lot about living their best lives and being creative and infusing that creative energy into their own lives. So do you have anything that you would consider, like a best practice or advice? You'd give to people that want to be more creative or express themselves, or you can give advice to a writer. I don't know. I'm springing this on you. Bobi Conn [00:46:30]: Yeah. A couple of things come to mind. The first thing that I had to do as the precursor to write my memoir was to go to grad school for an Ma in English with an emphasis on creative writing. Now, that's not the only path, but the point of it for me was I needed some structure in my life because at that time, I was a young single mother. I was working full time, and I didn't have the discipline at that time to sit down and write for myself and do something that was actually going to create an output that was really meaningful. I didn't have a book in mind or anything when I sat down or set out to go to grad school. But looking back, I can see how having that structure in my life made it much more easy for me to tap into my creativity. So anytime I speak with aspiring writers or writers who've just not been able to find their inspiration for a while, I encourage them to take a workshop or join a writer's group, find some sort of community or program that's going to work for them and give them the impetus that they need to sit down and do that. And then, of course, the other piece of it for me is because now I'm also a mother and working full time and taking care of a lot of other things, I have to be really disciplined now. So I do have that discipline I didn't have 15 years ago, and I've created word count goals for myself. I have put myself on a schedule to write. I feel like it's really important to not wait for the inspiration to strike. If you do have a creativity goal, you might not get to the point just walking around in your daily life where the muse visits you and you're ready to create your next best amazing piece of art. But if you're sitting in your chair in front of your keyboard and you've told yourself you're not getting up until you've got 250 words typed, then the muse has a lot better chance of knowing when to show up. Carla Gover [00:49:12]: That's a great point. I love it. Well, I think that's a perfect note to end on. You got to make some space for that muse to come and visit you all. Bobi Conn [00:49:20]: Yeah. Let her know when she's allowed to show up. Carla Gover [00:49:23]: Let her know that you're going to have a dedicated time just for her. Well, thank you so much. I'm so glad we finally got a chance to sit down and do this. And I know you have a website. I'd like to get that information for people. And also you post your Boston Terrier appalachia and writer life content on Instagram. So do you want to share those addresses with us? Bobi Conn [00:49:46]: Sure. The website is Bobbycon.com, and I'm on Instagram, just as Bobbycon C-O-N. Yes. B-O-B-I. You'll probably see it on some podcast notes, but pretty easy because and then there aren't a lot of names like mine. Carla Gover [00:50:04]: That's right. All right, well, keep dreaming, everybody. We'll talk to you next time on. Bobi Conn [00:50:09]: That's What Dreamers Do. Bye.