00:00Get lost, out now.
00:02What inspired this?
00:03Cause you were telling us this was a writer's strike baby.
00:07I was walking the, I was at 2023.
00:09I was walking the picket line every single day
00:11with nothing but my terrible brain to keep me company.
00:17And I just, I saw this article about this guy
00:21who walked into this tiny bar in central California
00:23that was like 1500 square feet.
00:25And then he never walked out and no one found him.
00:28And so that story just kind of like was so interesting to me.
00:32And I started thinking about it.
00:34And then I started thinking about characters
00:35and I started just writing this book.
00:37How long did it take you to write?
00:38Like is a, did a novel just kind of pour out of you?
00:40Because if you're kind of from like TV, it's a different,
00:43it's, you know, writing is writing,
00:44but it's such a different piece.
00:45It was a different piece.
00:46I would say I wrote the first like third of it
00:48during the six months of the strike.
00:50And then it took me another two and a half years
00:53to write the rest of it.
00:54Mostly cause I was running Abbott Elementary.
00:57So it was a full-time job.
00:59But also it was just like a muscle I hadn't really used.
01:02It's like a little bit of a different kind of writing.
01:04And it was something that didn't come quite as easy to me.
01:07So it took me a little while longer.
01:09Yeah. During the writer's strike,
01:10when you started to work on this book,
01:12I mean the writer's strike, it just,
01:13it felt like it took forever.
01:15Like it felt like there was no end in sight
01:19where you sort of just like envisioning
01:20like a full pivot to being an author.
01:23Uh, no.
01:24Cause I didn't think I'd be able to finish a book.
01:26Okay. Well, look at you, you did.
01:28I know.
01:29No, I was just like watching my bank account dwindle
01:33during the, that was a stressful, stressful time.
