GRANT GRINDER TALKS ABOUT WRITING SO OLD, SO YOUNG ON ABOUT THE AUTHORS TV

Indexed: 2026-05-21

[00:00:06]All so young follows this group of six friends that the friends that you just mentioned over a course of 20 years but kind of the the twist is that we only see those friends at five parties over the course of those two decades kind of catching up with them in these these bursts as they you know stumble their way through adulthood and honestly the book started with Mia Mia is I would say kind of like our our touchstone throughout the novel the novel works in a rotating third person so we got lots of different perspectives but each of the sections each of the parties Mia starts it and it's through her eyes that we were first situated these parties she she honestly was the the character that was the closest avatar to myself she's like filled with all of my insecurities of you know being an imposter and kind of not reaching these stages of adulthood as fast as my friends and the people around me and so so I could hear her voice the clearest when I first started writing the novel and then from there the you know I sort of just started populating her world I was like you know who would be her friends who would she be living with who's the kind of person that she'd be more romantically interested in and and those people kind of you know started started growing those characters started growing and you know and then I I kind of I took my own neuroses and plugged them into each of the characters and then just sort of you know put them out put them in a bunch of sandboxes and let them play around a bit when the book opens Mia she's 22 23 she's just graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and her roommates are Sasha and Adam who are her best friends in in college and Sasha is kind of everything Mia is not she's incredibly confident she's beautiful she uh she has a great boyfriend, um and yet despite all that, she's kind of plagued with this dissatisfaction and plagued with thinking that there's always somewhere else that she should be. Uh and then their their third roommate is Adam, um who has just come out uh when the book opens, and um he's endlessly helpful. Uh Mia at one point compares him to uh to a roll of duct tape, uh which is a you know a a kind of nod to my father who used duct tape to fix everything when I was growing up. Uh and then then in the first section of the book, they uh they're going to a New Year's Eve party at this guy uh Richie Fournier's apartment, and Richie was kind of this party boy that they all went to Penn with, and and so, you know, they figured that there's going to be some some shenanigans at this party. And Richie's new roommate um is um uh this guy named Marco Bernardi, who also went to Penn with them, um and who's just back in town, who's just moved to New York um after completing a Fulbright. And he and Mia meet at this party.

[00:03:02]The visuals sort of the visuals start coalescing like midway through the first draft. Um you know, I'll write a description of what they look like, but then that'll change, and I'll go back and and and kind of, you know, rejigger that that description a little bit. Um the dialogue, you know, I I'm I'm like a professional eavesdropper. I love writing dialogue. It's like my favorite thing to do is like go alone to a restaurant and like have dinner at the bar and have a book as a prop and like open it but not read a single word and just like listen to the conversations of people around me. I think it's like it's super fascinating to to hear the way that people never actually say what they mean. Um and so I So So writing dialogue, I will often construct entire scenes around dialogue, as scenes around an entire conversation between two characters, and then kind of build out the rest of the scene in terms of setting and and gestures and interiority from there.

[00:03:58]Um I I just I love writing dialogue. I think it's it's it's one of my favorite parts of writing fiction. The events themselves, you know, I I chose uh because they track onto various stages of life, you know, the the first party takes place at this like um shitty blowery side um apartment uh on New Year's Eve, right?

[00:04:20]It was the sort of party that when you were 22 and living in New York you thought you were was so excited and you're you're so fun to go to, but like you couldn't pay me enough money to do that party now.

[00:04:29]Um and then the second one, as you pointed out, is this destination wedding and I chose that because um I mean, I don't know about you, but I feel like in my late 20s and early 30s like I started going I I started getting invited to these weddings that were just like I had to take out a mortgage to go to every single one and they're like each one was like more and more over the top and like eventually you're like, am I going to have to get like a like, you know, like a yellow fever vaccine to go to this wedding? Like, you know, it was just ridiculous. And so I um I wanted to like kind of capture that moment in everyone's life when when weddings were just so over the top. Um and then, you know, once they hit the third section, which which is in Amagansett, is is how you pronounce it, and it's this tiny town out um out in the Hamptons, and um you know, at that point like people are starting to settle down a little bit.

[00:05:18]Some people have kids, so the need for the party is a little bit different. Um and so they end up renting this massive house, um which I you know, so so each of the parties tracks onto I think a different phase of life. Um the fourth party before we get to the funeral is in the suburbs, for example, you know, two a couple has moved to the suburbs, and so it's this backyard barbecue with like all these kids running around. Um I also, you know, I as much as I love writing dialogue, I also really love uh writing place. And talking about and exploring how place informs both character and plot. And so So it was fun sort of moving these characters around to these different destinations and and and writing about these different places.

[00:06:03]And sort of made me kind of have to court in my own life off into like five discrete moments and think about like, "Okay, well, if I were to take a snapshot of who I was and who my friends were at 30 years old, like what would it look like?

[00:06:21]What were we doing?

[00:06:23]Um where were we in our careers?

[00:06:26]Um who was married? Who wasn't? Right?

[00:06:28]Um And so it was it was To a certain extent it was like nostalgic. Um because because I was there was so much like kind of looking back and thinking um about about and where I was a certain year and in a certain year.

[00:06:43]Um which you know, when you think about it is like not is not actually how we experience time, right? Time just sort of accumulates. Um when we look back on it, it's it's moved at this sort of bewildering pace. I I you know, I'm 43 now. Like I can't believe it. I thought I was going to be 22 forever and I I don't know how I am suddenly 43. It It felt like I blinked, but but in fact, like the day in and day out of it, um we don't really notice it as it's happening. And so um so it took a lot of of kind of looking back and thinking to myself like, "Okay, well, what was I doing when I was X age?

[00:07:23]And what did it feel like?

[00:07:25]What were my anxieties then that I don't have now? What anxieties do I have now that I didn't have then, right? When I was 30 years old, I wasn't thinking about the fact that I'm like, "Oh my god, I'm middle-aged. I'm you know, all I have plantar fasciitis, I whatever, right? There were like different kinds of anxieties. And so so it was a lot of kind of tapping into these past versions of myself.