Little Happier: Novelist Amy Tan Didn’t Ask Her Unnamed Goddess for Good Reviews, But for Something Else.

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Lemonada Media

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2021

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Novelist Amy Tan recounts that as she was writing her second book, she prayed to unnamed goddess that she “be able to write the best book I could, and that no matter what happened to it, I would have no regrets.” Wisely, she didn’t pray for a particular outcome or some metric of success; she prayed that she would feel no regrets. Get in touch: @gretchenrubin; podcast@gretchenrubin.com Get in touch on Instagram: @GretchenRubin Get the podcast show notes by email every week here: http://gretchenrubin.com/#newsletter Order a copy of Gretchen’s new book OUTER ORDER, INNER CALM here: http://outerorderinnercalmbook.com Leave a voicemail message on: 774-277-9336 For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to happiercast.com/sponsors. Happier with Gretchen Rubin is part of ‘The Onward Project,’ a family of podcasts brought together by Gretchen Rubin—all about how to make your life better. Check out the other Onward Project podcasts—Do The Thing, Side Hustle School, Happier in Hollywood and Everything Happens with Kate Bowler. If you liked this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.
0:04.1	When I think about my own happiness and when I talk to other people about happiness,
0:08.4	I often find myself thinking about regret.
0:12.5	Sometimes when I'm considering a course of action, I think about what all regret or not
0:18.0	regret in the future.
0:20.0	What would my future self think?
0:22.9	Along those lines, one major benefit of doing our best is that it alleviates potential
0:27.8	regret.
0:29.2	If I can tell myself, well, I did the very best I could, I feel less regret.
0:34.9	Say with my book 40 ways to look at JFK.
0:37.7	That book did not, as they diplomatically say in the book business, find its audience.
0:45.3	And yet I loved writing that book so much that I can't regret doing it.
0:50.1	And I made that book the best book that I possibly could.
0:53.6	So I don't regret anything I did or didn't do.
0:57.2	Lately, I've been reading a lot of the work of writer Amy Tan.
1:01.0	I was very struck by a passage from her essay, Inferior Decorating, from the book, The
1:06.0	Opposite of Fate, Memories of a Writing Life.
1:09.9	Amy Tan's first novel, The Joy Luck Club, had been a gigantic hit.
1:15.1	In this essay, she writes about working on her second novel, The Kitchen God's Life.
1:21.0	She writes,
1:22.4	I chose an unnamed goddess while writing my then entitled Second Book.
1:26.9	I didn't think it was good manners to ask her for anything as crass as good reviews
	...

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