Category Archives: Writing

Marc Maron’s Lessons for Journalists

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MM_Dmitri_von_Klein_04I interviewed podcast host/comedian/now TV star Marc Maron a few months ago for an upcoming issue of Fast Company, and honestly, I was a little nervous going into the call. He’s got a bit of a prickly personality — that’s his thing — and he’s so damn good at interviewing people. The only time I was more nervous for a phone interview was with Barbara Walters, for the same reason times a thousand.

But Maron’s also a great talker, and we had a fine time. It turned into one of my favorite interviews ever because I actually learned some pointers that I now often think of during interviews. He was careful to say that his methods may not work for traditional journalism because he simply follows his conversations wherever he personally feels he wants them to go — essentially, he’s working out his own demons through the discussions. As he said, “I don’t know if you teach or encourage that in journalism class: Get your emotional needs met.” But I was doing the same thing while talking to him, and it turned out to be a fine way to go: The more the interviewer stays engaged and asks genuine questions, the better the exchange goes.

Here, a few other tips that I think are specifically good for journalists, and thus didn’t make it into the more general piece about Maron for Fast Company:

Confront them with their own, one-dimensional public image and see if they argue against it. I love this one, since I interview so many celebrities, who are often boxed in by what people think of them: If you’re dealing with someone famous whom you’ve never personally met, “you have a one sided relationship. A lot of times what I do is I impose my idea of them and let them fight it. Sometimes I don’t believe them. Sometimes I insist that they are who they think they are.”

That said, don’t get too distracted by their celebrity image. “I had Bryan Cranston in there for a fucking hour, and I wanted him to be Walter White. I’m so impressed by Walter White, I forgot to bring up Albequerque, where they shoot the show, and I’m from fucking Albequerque.”

 

Writing Lessons from Mary Roach

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gulp_300I’ve been doing some pre-book-event research to see what other nonfiction authors do at their appearances. Fiction authors and memoirists pretty much universally read from their books, but it’s a little weird to read long passages of narrative nonfiction, for the most part. Suddenly you find yourself, say, reading aloud a quote that Cloris Leachman gave you during an interview, and unless you’re a gifted impressionist, there’s no good way to dramatize this. So I have lots of activities on tap for my appearances: trivia contests, screenings, panel discussions. But I’m always looking for new ideas, so I headed to the Union Square Barnes & Noble last night to see Mary Roach, who writes these amazing books in which she investigates weird little worlds that are kind-of science-related: Stiff was about the death industry, Bonk about sex researchers. Her newest, Gulp, is about the digestive system. She’s a great example of a good writer who found not just a niche, but a thing: Her books are hilarious, filled with colorful characters and a gleeful take on the absurdity of human existence. There’s this constant sense of, Isn’t it wonderfully ridiculous that humans are so into themselves that people dedicate their whole lives to studying what we do to reproduce? She also uncovers loads of fascinating tidbits. (Example: Penguins can turn their stomachs into coolers, essentially, to bring fish back to their young.)

It was cool to hear about all that, of course. But during her conversation last night at the bookstore with Chop’t host Ted Allen, she said two things that stuck with me as a writer:

1. She follows her joyful sense of curiosity wherever it leads her during research. If she finds somebody trying to market pork testicles as a delicacy, and that person is a researcher at Ball State University, that’s funny enough to investigate further, whether or not it fit into her original vision of the book. This seems obvious, but it’s hard for me — I suspect because of my journalism training. I’m used to ferreting out whatever interests my editors, not me. Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted‘s manuscript got infinitely better after my brilliant editor, Jon Karp, gave me a talking-to about finding my sense of passion for the subject. I need to remember this from the beginning when I write my next book.

2. She imagines her readers as “a bunch of Mary Roaches.” First, I love the image of one’s audience as just a sea of clones. But more importantly, this works with #1. She trusts that what fascinates her will fascinate enough other people to be worthwhile. This takes confidence as a writer, but it comes through in the writing.

Basics of Smart Pop Culture Writing

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Pop culture writing is a much-maligned profession in certain literary circles. I once went to a Paris Review party where I mentioned what I do for a living and the guy I was talking to — it was in the lead-up to the 2008 election — said, hiding none of his snark, “Oh, you write for Entertainment Weekly? Who are they endorsing in the election?” Yes, because media coverage of elections is so much smarter than anything I read about pop culture, right? Sorry, but if it were, The Daily Show and Colbert Report wouldn’t have enough material to go on four nights a week. And guess what! The Daily Show and Colbert Report do have an important impact. And guess what they are! Pop culture.

I understand: A lot of entertainment-related coverage is embarrassingly insipid. No one hates gossip magazines more than us overly defensive pop culture writers who aim to say something real and strive for truth and fairness in reporting. And even a lot of the “smart” pop culture writing, particularly with the daily grind of blogs, is becoming strident, over-dramatizing the impact of every little event. (What does Beyonce’s tour name mean to feminism? What does this one Girls episode mean for racism?)

As I prepare to teach my (free!) online class in May, How to Write (Smart) About Pop Culture, I’ve been analyzing what makes good, great, and bad pop culture writing. Here are a few things I’ve learned through that, as well as through attempting to write my own pop culture pieces:

1. Analyze something bigger; make sense of something fans may have noticed. The Atlantic recently ran an irresistible piece, “Why Are Romantic Comedies So Bad?” Writer Christopher Orr took an observation one might just moan rhetorically on the way home from seeing Playing for Keeps, and he analyzed it. He walked through the evidence — the terrible Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler movies, the box office receipts, and the stars’ careers, as well as the social trends and the theories of experts — to offer some real, interesting conclusions.

2. Translate strong emotional reactions into explanatory or opinion-driven pieces. Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance launched a zillion Tweets, even from luminaries like Michelle Obama and Martha Stewart. Everyone had an opinion about it, one way or another. A good next-day blog post asks, “Why?” Many concluded: Feminism. (I’m in the business of feminism, so I know: Feminism gets blamed a lot, and inflames a lot of message boarders.) Okay, great. There’s nothing wrong with a reaction post that explains “why” or exemplifies a writer’s bigger point. A non-Beyonce-related example of this was The New Yorker‘s piece on Seth MacFarlane’s sexist Oscars, which took the analysis a step beyond just shouting “Sexism!” Writer Amy Davidson drew a connection between the specific kind of sexism displayed at the Oscars and continued hostility toward women in the workplace. That made her piece stand out. That being said …

3. Don’t force analysis and connection. I particularly worry about something I’ve noticed happening in these pop feminism related pieces (a genre that I personally traffic in quite often). We’ve been drifting toward victim-blaming, essentially, under the pressure to say something significant about the hot online issues of the day. There is a world of difference between, say, Seth MacFarlane doing a musical number making fun of actresses showing their boobs in artistic, often deadly serious movies like The Accused, and a teenage Taylor Swift writing lyrics about Prince Charming. MacFarlane and the Oscar folks who hired him are grown people who should know better, and who ended up poking fun at rape, possibly, among other things, triggering victims among the millions watching. Not cool. Swift wrote some catchy songs that happened to reflect the fairy-tale-princess culture she was raised in. A little different. We can point out stars’ missteps as part of larger systemic problems, but let’s not end up blaming, say, Beyonce or Swift for all of sexism. In fact, I wrote a post pointing out this exact situation.

4. Write into your passion. Feelings matter deeply here. All of us in the entertainment blogging biz have been forced to write about something we barely know/care about, and it always shows. On the other hand, I started writing a piece yesterday ostensibly about a Taylor Swift interview in Vanity Fair, and ended up working out all of my feelings about her intersection with feminism. I had written 500 words before I knew it. (I eventually cut back once I found my way.) Of course, this doesn’t mean we ignore facts. Facts help make your case. But the best essays and posts always start with passion.

5. Listen to what you talk about with friends. If you’re not totally aware of where your passion lies, a good starting point is to notice: What do you discuss with your boyfriend after you watch Girls together? What do you post on Facebook? What do you react to on Facebook? All of these are great fodder for ideas.

Advice for ‘Aspiring Writers’

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from Wikimedia Commons

from Wikimedia Commons

Almost every place I go, if I tell people I’m a writer, especially if I tell them I have written books that have their very own ISBNs, someone there wants advice. Namely, they are, or they know, or they have kids who are, “aspiring writers.” Having chatted this afternoon with my dentist about this — I should say, having listened to my dentist chat about this while I had a bunch of devices in my mouth — I was going to write a blog post offering my “advice” to “aspiring writers.” Then I came across this amazing post that says a lot of what I would, and does it fantastically. So here are my addendums to those 25 great pieces of advice:

1. Seriously, go read that piece. And stop using the word “aspiring.” In his post, Chuck Wendig explains why that word is not only irritating and a way to diminish the aspirant’s status, but also insulting to real writers. I can’t tell you how many people at cocktail parties, wanting to make innocuous conversation, send me up a wall by responding to my statement of my profession with something like, “Oh, I was going to write a book once.” Were you really? No, you weren’t, or you would have. See, the main difference between me, professional writer, and you, person who was going to write a book once, is the fact that I did. It’s actually kind-of a big deal. As Wendig says, “Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It’s as ludicrous as saying, ‘I aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor.’ Either pick it up or don’t.”

2. If you want to be published, figure out how to do it, and then start doing it. There are a zillion books and classes that will help you on your chosen path. Get a book, take a workshop, and get it done. I hear many complaints from my students about the laborious processes involved in getting published; believe me, I relate, I do it every day. But we all do it every day, and it’s hard to imagine someone figuring out how to change the system of query letters and proposals and manuscript submissions. If you want to be published, follow the rules and do the work. If you don’t want to do those things, you don’t want to be published that badly.

3. Those books and classes I just mentioned? Read them and take them. If you’re stuck in any way with your writing, I really recommend a class, and not just because I teach (and consult, and edit, and etc.). I take them myself when I’m struggling with a new project or just looking for an inspiration refresher. They’ll often tell you a lot of things you already know, but you may have an insight — and you’ll definitely get feedback and ideas. Books about writing are a good alternative. (If you’re interested in private classes in NYC, email me; I hold small group classes/writing groups in my living room periodically.)

4. For the love of God, read, especially the kind of stuff you want to write. One of my students in Creative Writing this term told the class that someone in her writing group claims not to read at all. I don’t understand this. So much of writing comes from reading. Not all of it, but a lot of it. Reading shows you what others are doing, so you know how to give readers fresh insights and twists. It allows you to see how others do certain things — transition to flashbacks, write good dialogue, make supernatural events believable, whatever. It inspires and informs you. How can you give the world something new if you don’t know what the world has already?

5. Embrace rejection. Even as a person who prides herself on taking feedback and rejection quite well, I’m still getting used to the idea of bad reviews. Point being, there’s always a new level of rejection out there for writers to master, like an endless, painful video game.

6. Know we’re all just making this up as we go along. Those of us who are published probably don’t know that much more than you do — we simply went to the classes and read the books and wrote, wrote, wrote, and did what we needed to. We did stuff. You can, too.

Between Books: Making a Living Writing What You Love

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People ask me all the time if: 1. I think it’s possible to make a living as a full-time freelancer. And 2. I think it’s possible to make a living as a freelancer by writing only about subjects that interest you.

The answer to the first is: Yes, definitely, but it’s not easy. Some people I know have been doing it for years, but this requires sacrifice of one kind or another. Maybe they don’t have much, or any, health insurance. Maybe they do a lot of industrial copywriting about boring subjects. Maybe they sold their soul to PR. For me, the reason I can do it right now is that I had two book contracts promising to pay me enough that for now, all I need is supplemental income.

The answer to the second is beautifully answered today at one of my favorite blogs, The Renegade Writer. I suggest you check it out.

Between Books: ‘Tour’ Dates and Other Busyness

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I didn’t post earlier because I was very busy today! Here are the things I did:

Planned more “book tour” dates for Sexy Feminism and Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Here’s my full schedule.

Started my regular blogging gig at Hollywood.com. I wrote today about why Beyonce transcends political boundaries and why it’s okay to obsess over Michelle Obama’s bangs.

Between Books: 10 Common Mistakes in Book Proposals

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1408767_87215604I’m working on my next book proposal now while editing some proposals that clients have been kind enough to entrust with me. And I like doing this concurrently — anyone who has ever edited anything (or, really, read anything) knows it’s much easier to see missteps in others’ work than it is to see them in your own. Though I do see plenty in my own work when I read it over, even after writing three proposals thus far! Herewith, I give you the most common mistakes I’ve seen in my first drafts, as well as many other first drafts — maybe we can all work together to avoid these in the future:

1. Switching points-of-view. Book proposal examples are often written in third person. In other words, I would write: “In this book, Armstrong will expose the juicy details of what went on behind the scenes of Fraggle Rock.” (This is not my next book, but now that I made that up on the spot, I sort-of wish it were.) But this can feel unnatural, obviously, so many writers end up switching back and forth; in some parts they call themselves “me,” others they call themselves by their last name as if they’ve never met themselves. Because I write non-fiction about other people, I favor the last-name approach, weird as it feels. It lends authority, I think, and allows you to brag a little. (You know: “bestselling author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong …” or whatever. That’s also made up. For now.) But if you’re writing something closer to a memoir, in which you are a character, I advise using first person, lest things get very strange very quickly. (Are you going to write your whole book in third person?)

2. Lots of hype, little substance. Temper your hype with the old writers’ adage: “Show, don’t tell.” One is trying to excite potential agents and publishers about a potential book, so it’s tempting to adorn your prose with constant “fascinating”s and “mesmerizing”s as if you have already collected reams of effusive reviews. But you need to show those agents how fascinating your proposal is by telling them a fascinating story without the word “fascinating” anywhere near it. You need to show him or her how “popular” your blog is by revealing your traffic numbers, not by calling it “popular.”

3. Backing into the point. If you don’t get immediately to what is actually interesting about your book, agents and editors won’t bother continuing to read. They have a huge slush pile to get through. If you don’t catch them immediately, you’re going in the recycling.

4. Assuming too much. You’re the expert on your subject matter; the agent or editor is not. Don’t assume they know certain lingo, people, or historical events that are unique to the world you’re describing. Tell me why this particular horse trainer is a big deal, or this old-timey movie producer made a name for himself.

5. Presuming that the publishing business is easy and bestsellers are the inevitable reward for good storytelling. When you get to the marketing and promotion sections of your proposal, the idea is not to cavalierly assert that obviously this book, due to its inherent merits, will cause lines to form around the block at Barnes and Noble. I don’t know if this ever happened, but it doesn’t now (if your name isn’t J.K. Rowling). The book business is tough, you guys, and very few books get a concerted marketing push from publishers. Publishers simply can’t afford it. (Or don’t want to do it, or whatever. It doesn’t matter why; the point is that they don’t do it.) Instead of telling the potential publishers why you believe your book will be the one to turn around an entire industry, tell them what you plan to do to get your book into as many hands as possible. Tell them how you will plan promotional events, to whom you will send review copies personally, how you will finance your own book tour. (In case you’re wondering, the vast majority of “book tours” these days are just authors buying plane tickets and pitching themselves to bookstores where they’re flying.) That is what this part of the proposal is for; not for you to tell them they ought to get you on The Today Show.

6. Burying the good stuff. Oftentimes, under a lot of bluster about how awesome an author thinks his or her own potential book is, there lies some actual information that is important to selling the book. Flaunt your contacts, the high-profile people who will write your introduction, blurb your book, or tell their high-profile friends about you. Emphasize your own expertise. And get to the good part of the story. These will sell the book. The hype, quite frankly, makes you seem amateurish, and possibly even a little insecure. Ironically, the more you brag, the less confident and qualified you seem, whether or not that’s true.

7. Lacking basic knowledge of how the book industry works. This can show up a lot of places, some of which I’ve already mentioned. I’d recommend reading up as much as you can while you’re putting together your proposal. Publishers Weekly and MediaBistro’s GalleyCat are good starting points. Or you can just make friends with writers and then listen to them bitch. You’ll learn a lot, and we like to bitch about publishing. We can generally be found drinking heavily at small bars that host literary readings.

8. Thinking your book is unique. I mean, it is, but it also isn’t. Chances are you have not reinvented literature as we know it with this idea. The good news: That’s not really what sells anyway.

9. Thinking a broad audience is best. This is an easy trap that we all fall into: When it comes to the marketing section of the book, we are tasked with defining our audience and backing it up with numbers. You know, “This book will appeal mostly to professional, urban women under 35 who read Elle magazine, which has a circulation of 1.1 million.” It’s hard to resist the urge to make your audience as big as possible by adding, “But it also will appeal to retired men, and middle-aged women, and hell, there’s that one part I think tween girls will really dig.” You want to show the publisher/agent how much money you can make him/her. I know. But well-defined is actually better than universal, in this case. The publisher would rather get a clear idea of your ideal reader, the better to target-market.

10. Waiting until your sample chapters to give us the good story. Hit us with the best part of the story immediately in the proposal — don’t save the good stuff for the sample chapters to create suspense. Again, you’ll be in the recycling bin before they ever glimpse a word of those shining sample chapters.

For more on my proposal editing services, click here.

Between Books: Music and Writing

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My band, No Ambition. (photo by A. Jesse Jiryu Davis)

My band, No Ambition. (photo by A. Jesse Jiryu Davis)

My band played a gig last night, which inspired me to ponder the connection between playing music and writing. Many artists do both, from Stephen King to Jewel. Though it’s worth noting that it is a rare creature who does both exceptionally well. And then I came across this quote from Dave Barry in How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead that sums up my situation, and probably many, many others’, quite nicely:

“Playing music is good for my writing, because it reminds me that I am a really terrible musican and if I want to feed my family, I had better get the hell back to writing.”