Because I’ve had to take a step back in my book process, this is a super writerly issue. First, I’m excited to report that my pilot, “Blissful Thinking,” (not to be confused with the memoir) made it to the quarterfinal round of ScreenCraft’s TV pilot competition. That right there is the universe doing for me what I could not do for myself. Naturally I signed up for another screenwriting class, so more on that soon.
Next up is an overdue homage to this essay from Jenny Shank, in which she describes how her mentor, who herself became successful later in life, taught her to continue writing when the odds are stacked. And here I’ll speak for myself—as a sensitive person, I first turned to writing because it didn’t judge me. I could say what I wanted. Likewise, I often feel I have to struggle for air in group settings. Writing was how I expressed myself. Especially fiction. As a kid I wrote books—compete with covers—that I stapled together. I also wrote and staged plays with cartoons taped to popsicle sticks as a child. Yet I didn’t put out a book till I was in my 40s, and it took still more time to summon the courage to give those words to others to speak aloud. None of it would’ve happened if I hadn’t stuck with the work. If you want to stay with your creative endeavors, no matter what they are, read her essay immediately.
Of course I had to get Shank’s book, Mixed Company, right away. Interview to come. She’s also on Substack, you can follow her here.
Speaking of talking to authors, it’s one of my favorite things. But our conversations can get so lengthy I have to cut juicy tidbits that don’t fit with the arc of the interview. Below are great outtakes from some recent author interviews.
BONUS INTERVIEW MATERIAL
Laura Davis
The author of six best-selling books including The Courage to Heal and I Thought We’d Never Speak Again, Davis has a new book out about healing her relationship with her mother at the end of her mother’s life, The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother Daughter Story (not affiliate links).
On writing about her wife:
My spouse of over thirty years is a hyper private person. For her to give me permission to write the book was an incredible act of love.
On correspondence with her mother:
The letters were a huge part of coming to terms with more of the truth of our relationship than I’d been able to face before I thought about writing the story. The story I’d been telling was only part of the truth. The letters were so remarkable, I included a few in the book. There were hundreds.
I started writing a series of letters to her after her death so it was part of my grieving process.
On versions of a book:
I thought I’d write a book of letters. I was going to call the book Dear Mom. I wrote a whole draft like that I sent it to a bunch of beta readers, and the core response was, “I feel like I'm on the outside of a private conversation.”
On memory and writing memoir:
I have a terrible memory. And dissociation was my favorite coping mechanism. Then I had cancer when I was fifty; with the chemotherapy my memory got much worse. And my grandmother was senile—they called it senile—and my mother had dementia, and I'm getting older… So I have a lot of negatives about my memory. Writing a memoir seemed impossible. I didn't know if I was capable of writing what I've told my students is “the story under the story” when, for so many decades, I never really revealed anything about myself.
On healing:
Healing from trauma was my stock-in-trade for a long time, but it was different thirty years ago. It keeps becoming. It’s less and less of the original trauma. When I was in my 20s, if you’d asked who I was, incest survivor would’ve been at the top of the list, the only identity named, because it was such an all consumed healing process.
Now I’d say, I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm a grandmother. I'm a teacher. I'm an author. I'm a friend. I’m a swimmer. I'm a hiker. A sister. Incest survivor would not be on the list. And it's not because of denial, right? Because if denial in any way worked, well, I tried it as much as I possibly could. You don't get to ratio history. Things that impact us that deeply will continue to impact us until we die.
The relationship with my mother was more of my childhood. The incest with my grandfather… that’s the fabric of the cloth that shaped me. It's integrated into who I am and certain vulnerabilities I carry because of that. There are also some incredible strengths I carry because of it. So It's almost neutral now.
I never would’ve imagined—in my 20s—that I’d be taking care of my mother at the end of her life. There was absolutely no way. So there’s certain humility about all the things we think we know about life when we're young that we don't know.
For the full interview here’s a link to “If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother.”
Or you can buy it here (NOT an affiliate link):
Kate Nason
Though a first-time author, Nason has lived with the details of Everything Is Perfect for years. We all have. In a book rife with observations and plot, Nason was also an unwitting member of the Clinton impeachment scandal.
On being targeted:
I believe was part of the reconnaissance mission that sent the press to our front porch. The Clintons, or their people, hired this detective to dig up dirt on Monica Lewinsky because they knew that the scandal was gonna break. They wanted to show her past and vilify her. We were surrounded by press who wanted the story that she’d had an affair with a married man previously. I haven't watched [American Crime Story: Impeachment] but I know that episode four Monica talks at length about my ex husband.
On what to include:
There is so much I could have put in this book because Monica and I were friends. She told me things that I couldn't, I would never consider putting in. And there were things that were in that I took out at the last minute.
On the long demise of a marriage:
The discovery of the affairs was one thing, and then the Washington tie in was another. Any progress or hope that I had, that maybe with a good therapist my husband and I could get through it—which I was already having serious doubts about—but that was the kick in the… well not to mention finding him with our babysitter on the couch.
On self-publishing and having a book in print:
The strategy was a wide submission and my agent’s pitch was the Monica piece, this is a part of the story that we don't know when. And in the end I got thirty-six glowing rejections. A lot of editors were really excited about it but, and one editor even put it in an email, I can't be the editor to bring Monica more pain.
So my agent sent it to Audible. That's weird, I said. Does audible have a print arm? And then we didn't hear anything for months, so I was rewriting a pitch to give to my agent to go out to indie presses when we got a call from Audible, so in the end I went with it. And I'm really grateful for the experience, but I would be thrilled to see my book in print.
Though I’d prefer to have this with a publisher, I have thought about self-publishing. There are enough people out there saying they want this in print. I'm preparing a list of indie presses, and I just rewrote the pitch, but you know, you make more money if you self-publish.
Authors now are making like six figures. Okay, they’re turning out a book a year, but all the money is coming to them. So it’s something I’d consider.
On using pseudonyms for real people:
I changed everybody’s name in the book—my kids, all our friends. It was much more fun to writ that way. And in the end it freed me from the story.
The fact that [American Crime Story] came out a month later, and they used my ex husband's real name was kind of funny.
On moving on:
I didn't read a lot of the stuff that came out around the show, but there was one in the New York Times, where the reporter asked Monica, “Do you think you'll ever be done with this story?” And she, you know, she said, “Here it is 20 years later and people are still interested in in it. So, I don't know.” And I thought, really? Don't you hope so?
I’m writing my next book. A novel. Historical fiction based on my great grandmother and her fictitious ancestry. My working title is The Liar.
For the full interview here’s a link to “What If Your Husband’s Affair With Your Friend Was National News?”
Or you can buy it here (NOT an affiliate link):
TRY THIS AT HOME
LOVE this! Insert your text and see your punctuation in one place. Shout out to Clive Thompson for bringing this to my attention on Medium.
Click this, cut and paste your text, and let the comparisons begin! Here’s mine, from the first chapter of my forthcoming memoir, Blissful Thinking (not to be confused with the pilot 😋. According to the Medium piece, I’m a little like William Faulkner? But show me your results.
(And don’t worry, it doesn’t save your text anywhere.)
Update on Dad:
Not great. He had another seizure and is still in the ICU. It just goes to show how fragile we ultimately are, no matter how strong we feel.
For paid subscribers I’ve uploaded some videos that show him, at 79, cutting down a tree in my yard in Pittsburgh just before I moved to St. Pete, and then at 82, when he came for our wedding in 2018 and took his FIRST EVER ride on a motorbike (my beloved old Vespa). His sister was killed in a motorcycle accident so he’d promised his mom (my formidable Nana) he’d never ride a motorcycle. Well, a Vespa isn’t a motorcycle, and as you’ll see, we both wore our helmets.