Legendary memoirist Abigail Thomas doesn’t give a shit

A Q&A with the bestselling 83-year-old author who writes fearlessly, for fun, and to capture liquid moments

This is one in a series of Q&As with [b]old women, about their writing and their life. - Debbie

“Make sure you are not avoiding the dark places. What you keep buried out of sight takes all its power from the dark. Drag it into the light.” -

Abigail Thomas

Abigail Thomas

, who turned 83 in Oct. 2024, is funny, profane, and direct. She doesn’t give a shit about stuff that most of us worry about, like the downsides of old age, death and dying, and others’ expectations. We’re exactly ten years apart in age and, although this is dreaming big, I want to be just like Abigail a decade from now. I want to be brave in the face of loss¹, if need be; I want to relish being old and stop judging my aging body; I want to be fearless as a writer (and publish another book²); I want to capture fragments of life with perfect clarity; and I want to eat as much no-guilt French Toast as she does. And why not? Abigail’s unsentimental but considered approach to life and writing are the perfect expression of what it means to be a [b]old woman. 

Abigail Thomas

She’s entirely comfortable with how she lives: she still smokes³, she no longer drives or takes long walks, she’s all about easy-to-make sweet meals like French Toast, and she writes in deliberate fragments,⁴ no apologies or explanation necessary. She says her Substack, What Comes Next, is the perfect platform to publish her fragments as she writes them. I interviewed Abby (as her friends call her; she said I could too) on my podcast last year, and I had forgotten something important until I listened again to the episode. Abby challenged me to start writing after I confessed that the podcast was my five-year procrastination project.

She gave me a writing prompt, “Here’s a lie I’ve told before” and I jotted down a few sentences about not grieving for my mother, who had died a few months earlier. Of course, that was a lie; I WAS grieving, but it was complicated. Her prompt is one of the things that got the ball rolling and I started [B]old Age shortly after, in June 2023. Thank you, Abby, for giving me a push, and for our conversation below.

DW: What is your morning ritual? Tell us everything! Do you journal? Coffee? Dogs? Clay vs. writing? Do you write everyday?

AT: I wake up early, feed the dogs, make and drink coffee, sit in my chair and pick up wherever I left off in what I was writing yesterday. Great to wake up already in gear, dying to see what I will find out today when I write. If I run out of energy for writing, I pick up a great handful of clay and look for what’s in there. I like going back and forth. One thing nourishes the other.

DW: What is your writing process? Do you work in a favorite spot in your house?  

AT: I sit in my chair by five windows that stretch around me. Sometimes I think I’m outside. I try not to smoke but fail. I look at yesterday’s work, do a little distilling if it seems necessary, maybe move something around or take it out. 

DW: You worked for many years as an editor in addition to being a bestselling author yourself. What are your two or three best writing tips?

AT: If you are writing memoir, make sure you are not avoiding the dark places. What you keep buried out of sight takes all its power from the dark. Drag it into the light. You will see it is finite, it has edges. It loses all its power in the light. 

Find a reader you trust completely, if you want someone to look at what you’ve done. Don’t think about publishing, just do the writing. Thinking about publishing will sap your energy for writing.

And when you write, leave your ego at the door. Writing badly is necessary to get to the first line that is the real beginning. Nothing is wasted when you write. You can write 300 pages to get to your first sentence. But those 300 pages were necessary.