A Conversation with Jennie Dunham

One thing I've noticed during this time of Covid is that people are leaning into their creativity. We are naturally having to be resourceful to cope with this peculiar situation and I feel like, at least for me, it is forcing me to face and move through some mental blocks I've had. I'm noticing that people are dusting off manuscripts that have been stuck in a drawer, that those who have extra time and solitude are recognizing the gift it also brings, and that overall a deeper commitment to self-expression is emerging.

Through all of this, I've been talking with a dear colleague, Jennie Dunham, who is a successful New York literary agent. Apparently, books are still being sold and readers are still buying books! So she and I have put our minds together to create a publishing salon series to demystify the world of publishing, as a way to make it more accessible.

While most of my time is devoted to story development, helping writers discover what wants to be birthed, I believe that stories are ultimately meant to be shared. And as we all know, there are so many ways to share them! Our intention is to create an intimate setting that offers a rare window into the lens of a professional literary agent and a space where writers can learn how publishing works.

We're kicking off our inaugural event, Prepare to Share Your Work, on Sunday, July 12th, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. PST via Zoom.

Details are below, along with my recent interview with Jennie, in which she offers her personal take on the role an agent plays in a writer's career, what in a submission catches her eye, and how to think about the path of self-publishing versus traditional publishing.

If you're curious to learn more, I hope you'll consider joining us in July. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions!

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Jennie Dunham has been a literary agent in New York City since May 1992. In August 2000 she founded Dunham Literary, Inc.
 
She represents literary fiction and non-fiction for adults and children. Her clients have had both critical and commercial success. Books she has represented have appeared on the New York Times Best Sellers in adult hardcover fiction, children’s books, and children’s book series.

Her clients have won numerous awards including: New York Times Best Illustrated Book, The Schneider Family Award, Boston Globe Horn Book Honor, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist.

She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Anthropology and has a master's degree in Social Work from New York University. She frequently speaks at writers conferences and events.

KARIN GUTMAN: At what point did you realize that you were meant to be a literary agent? What drew you to this work?
 
JENNIE DUNHAM: I have always loved books all my life. I love stories they contain and the beautiful objects they are as well. I wanted to be involved with books from an early age, but when I was young I didn’t know that anyone else was involved in making books other than authors. So that’s what I wanted to be. And then I learned about editors, and that’s what I wanted to be. And then when I graduated from college, someone gave me the book AUTHOR AND AGENT about Eudora Welty and her agent. And I thought, hmmm, I need to consider that too.

I like to say it was by accident because the first job I was offered after college was at a literary agency, and I took it. That’s where I realized that I love finding projects and advocating for authors. Coincidentally, I later worked at the agency that represented Eudora Welty for years before starting my own agency.
 
KARIN: What kinds of books do you like? What is your taste?
 
JENNIE: I like literary, character-driven writing with a strong narrative. As I’m reading a story, I want to be surprised, and I don’t want to feel I’ve been there already. It’s a challenge for writers to create fresh stories, but when I find one, it’s a thrill.
 
KARIN: I understand you get thousands of query submissions each year. What catches your eye?
 
JENNIE: I always look for an author’s strong credentials and platform. I look for a fresh premise, unusual characters, and a strong voice in a project. I’m very interested in #ownvoices, LGBTQA, and diversity in general. I was an anthropology major in college which means I was interested in other cultures and voices long before it was trendy. I always like to find out or learn something new.
 
KARIN: How often do you actually find a writer via a query submission? What are some of the other ways that you find writers?
 
JENNIE: This is unpredictable. I receive a lot of queries, and it’s great to know that writing is a vital, important part of people’s lives. A key way that I get new clients is by referral from current clients. I also attend conferences and workshops, so I meet new writers that way, especially when I give critiques.
 
KARIN: What is the number one thing you look for when you take on a new writer for representation?

JENNIE: Getting an agent doesn’t mean that a writer’s work is done; it means the work a writer does will change. An agent is a team member, so I’m looking for someone who has creative talent and has learned enough about the business of publishing to understand how to be an asset to the team we’re making. Agents deliver good news and bad, and someone who can accept the tough news and move forward is essential to a long term relationship. I also appreciate writers who meet deadlines.
 
KARIN: What do you think of this more recent emergence of self-publishing? Would you recommend writers pursue this path? Who should pursue traditional publishing?
 
JENNIE: Self-publishing has made it easier than ever to make books available to the reading public. The bar is high to get published traditionally, and many writers get frustrated so they stop trying and turn to self-publishing. Because it’s so easy to turn to self-publishing, the quality of self-published books varies widely. Once a book has been available to a wide number of people, most often publishers will feel the book has had an opportunity to reach readers already so they won’t be interested. Traditional publishing usually brings a book credibility, visibility, and distribution. Self-publishing, however, allows a writer full control over the look of the book.

KARIN: Right now, in the time of Covid, are deals still being made? I know a lot of writers who are using their time to get their books done. Is it a good time to be reaching out to publishing agents?
 
JENNIE: Books are still selling! Agents, editors, and authors are making deals, and readers are buying books. During the pandemic, there are fewer distractions and meetings, so it’s a good time for writers to work on their projects. But it’s also not a bad time to submit. While agents and editors are being cautious, everyone is looking towards the end of the pandemic whenever that may be. At all times, people need stories, but the types of stories that people are drawn to changes depending on what’s happening in the world.
 
KARIN: I’m excited to co-lead the Publishing Salon series with you! How might this be helpful to writers?
 
JENNIE: Writers know what they’re trying to say, so I find that sometimes they have trouble seeing holes in the plot or how a character isn’t developed enough. An agent or editor can provide feedback which will help writers improve their writing dramatically. It’s also useful to hear feedback given to other writers. Sometimes the lightbulb moment in understanding what isn’t working on the page comes from recognizing the same problem on someone else’s page.
 
All aspects of book publishing need big blocks of solitary work to write, read, and edit. Connecting with other people feels great after hours of concentrated work alone. It is always invigorating for me to go to conferences and workshops to meet people and discuss their writing. I’m excited about this event!

Publishing Salon

Prepare to Share Your Work

Sunday, July 12th

10 a.m. - 12 p.m. PST

with
Karin Gutman and Jennie Dunham


Hosted via Zoom

See all upcoming publishing salons

The path to publishing a book can be confusing and overwhelming. How can you catch the attention of a literary agent? How do you write a good query letter? Do you need to write a book proposal? And what is an author's platform and why does it matter?

The Publishing Salon is designed to demystify the world of publishing. Through a series of intimate and dynamic conversations, Spirit of Story founder Karin Gutman and esteemed literary agent Jennie Dunhamoffer insights and practical steps for navigating your way to finding a home for your work.

For this inaugural event, Prepare to Share Your Work, Karin and Jennie will provide an overview of how traditional publishing works. This path typically involves a submission process via a literary agent to land a book contract. We’ll discuss the key players, how a book gets sold, and the best way for an author to approach sharing their work in a professional landscape.

We’ll devote a full hour to providing feedback on the premise and first page of up to 10 premium participants, whose work will be shown live on the screen as specific feedback about it is shared. If you are not ready to present your work, you can still take advantage of this unique opportunity to listen to the discussion. We'll dedicate the last 30 minutes to an open Q & A for all participants to ask questions related to the publishing process.

We hope you’ll join us for the kick off of this series. This forum is a way to support you and your book projects by illuminating the path forward!

To learn more about Jennie Dunham and Dunham Literary, visit her site.

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A Conversation with Deborah A. Lott

This spring the formidable Deborah A. Lott—author, editor and college instructor—will be visiting the Unlocking Your Story workshop. She'll be offering us an inside view of the creative process behind writing her memoir Don't Go Crazy Without Me, which just hit the shelves on April 7th! It's a coming of age story of a girl who grows up under the magnetic spell of her outrageously eccentric father.

In our interview below, Deborah shares about what she believes to be essential when writing memoir, and imparts some of what she teaches her writing students at Antioch University.

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Deborah A. Lott is a writer, editor, and college instructor. Her creative nonfiction has been published widely. Her work has been thrice named as Notable Essays of the Year in Best American Essays, and thrice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. As an independent editor, Lott has worked with a number of published authors developing articles, web content, books, academic monographs, and other material.

Her memoir Don’t Go Crazy Without Me (Red Hen Press, April 2020) is a coming of age story of a girl who grows up under the magnetic spell of her outrageously eccentric father. Alienated from her emotionally distant mother, she bonded closely with her father and his worldview. When he plunged from neurotic to full-blown psychotic, she nearly followed him. Sanity is not always a choice, but for the sixteen-year-old, decisions had to be made – a line drawn between reality and what her mother called her “overactive imagination.” She would have to give up an identity and beliefs forged in love.

KARIN GUTMAN: Can you tell us about your book and what it’s about?

DEBORAH A. LOTT: The book is a coming of age story. It starts when I'm about four and goes right through adolescence. It ends when I'm 17. And it's basically about growing up in a very eccentric family with a kind of nutty father who then becomes psychotic and feeling very closely bound to him in his worldview and then trying to separate. How do you separate?

KARIN: I imagine it’s a seminal story that very much shaped you. Is it something that you've wanted to tell for some time?

DEBORAH: I've been telling a version of it and pieces of it for a very long time, probably ever since I went back and got my MFA and started writing more creatively. I was a medical writer for years and then I started writing more creatively in a more public way. I always kept journals and did my own writing. But I never put it all together in one narrative.

KARIN: When you say ‘versions’, do you mean published essays?

DEBORAH: Yeah, I published quite a number of essays in literary journals that feature some of the episodes and also a number of episodes from my childhood and adolescence that aren't in the book.

KARIN: At what point did you realize it was a book? Was there a point when you knew that you needed to shift your focus and develop it into a full-length narrative?

DEBORAH: Well, I think I wanted it to be a book. Initially the first step… I took some of the episodes and just put them side by side, and then started to work on shaping a narrative. I had a big whiteboard and I wrote a timeline and also the big themes—that were a throughline through the book. And then I decided at a certain point, several years into the process to add some present-day interludes. I didn't want it to be just a straight coming of age; I wanted to show how my childhood and adolescence resonate in my adult life. There are now these present-day interludes interspersed with the coming of age story.

KARIN: How are those interludes woven into the narrative?

DEBORAH: They're separate episodes. There's one continuous narrative that's pretty much linear in time, and then there are these interludes that just say Present, Bedroom, Midnight or Present, Kitchen, 9:00 AM or Present, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute where I was working as a writer with a group of psychiatrists. So they're interspersed with the story. And they tend to pick up themes that are related to what's going on in the chapters with which they’re interspersed.

They don't talk about the episodes per se, but some of them advance your understanding of the narrator, I would say. And they're not linear themselves, so they don't have their own narrative line. I thought about that. Should they have their own linear line? They don't have a linear arc. They have an emotional arc. They illuminate what's going on in the main narrative.

KARIN: Did you work with anyone through the writing process?

DEBORAH: I worked with a writers’ group. I had a really strong, longstanding writers’ group, which included a number of other incredible women that I shared drafts with. And then at a certain point, I had a conversation with one of my mentors, Mark Doty, and he wanted an editor that he knows, David Groff, to take a look at it. David helped me to come up with more of a linear narrative. And then, of course, once the book sold, Kate Gale, the founder and editor-in-chief of Red Hen Press, helped me take it to another level. She asked really intriguing philosophical and spiritual sorts of questions of the text, and helped me to deepen it.

KARIN: Who is Mark Doty?

DEBORAH: Mark Doty is a poet and memoirist who wrote a memoir called Heaven's Coast that was about his partner dying of AIDS, a gorgeous memoir about grief. He wrote a book called Dog Years partly about his relationship with his dog, about the way human beings interact with dogs, but he's also a poet. He's a National Book Award-winning poet. He has been a mentor, and I had studied with him. I took a weeklong poetry writing course with him, which was really helpful too.

KARIN: Tell me about that.

DEBORAH: I think memoirists should study poetry too, because it helps you bring in that element of lyricism, of close attention to language, so that you're not just telling a story. You're also aware of trying to create a beautiful literary object.

KARIN: What does that mean… to create a beautiful, literary object?

DEBORAH: That you want the language to function as something that's stunning in its own right when people read it. Even though I was writing about pretty sad stuff, I wanted the language to be beautiful.

KARIN: And the poetry class helped?

DEBORAH: Oh yeah. I’m more of a lyrical writer than I am a reporter of fact. Reading and studying poetry helps to amp up the lyricism and fine tunes your ear. You learn to read everything aloud. I think it's important to read your work aloud and hear it. You want it to work on the level of metaphor and you want it to work on the level of the language itself being as glorious as you can make it.

KARIN: At the same time, don't you think there's a risk that a writer overlooks story by relying on pretty language?

DEBORAH: Right, right. You need the story too, of course.

KARIN: Would you agree that story comes first?

DEBORAH: By story, I think you mean an emotional arc, right?

KARIN: Yes.

DEBORAH: You need to know what happened, but also what you learned from it or how you felt about it. I think you need feeling and thinking and beautiful language. I don't think just events do it. Because you can go through some incredible events during your childhood and not be able to write about it in a way that makes anybody else care.

I think if you're really in touch with the emotions and you're in touch with the sensory experience while you're writing, the language will probably follow… if you're writing in a state where you're in touch with the body. I talk to my students a lot about embodied writing.

KARIN: Tell me about that.

DEBORAH: Well, it shouldn't just be coming from your head. It should be coming from a physical place. You should be able to feel it in your body when you're writing it and you should make sure that you include a lot of sensory detail, and the sensory details are also the way you access memory. Right? Memories come through smells and sounds. I know that when my students have trouble remembering an event, I tell them to try to re-create what were the smells, what were the sounds, what were the tastes that you associate with that period?

KARIN: What if you don’t remember a lot of the sensory details, but you remember the general mood and visuals in an impressionistic way?

For example, maybe I remember we were at the kitchen table, but I don't remember what anyone was wearing or any dialogue or sensory details. But I know this event was important.

DEBORAH: You don't need all those details, but if you just recreate at least the emotional texture of it... I think if you start to write about it, some of those details come back. I really do. Obviously it's partly a reconstruction. You're not going to remember exactly what your mother was wearing that day, but you remember what your mother always wore.

KARIN: Right. Like it could have happened, it could have been...

DEBORAH: Do you remember the garments that she wore that stood out and that were important to you? Like I remember the buttons on the coat that my mother wore when she would drop me off at the gate for kindergarten. I remember staring at those buttons and what those buttons looked and felt like. I think there are pieces of it that come back if you sit with it.

KARIN: I love this idea of embodied writing. Do you think the main way into embodied writing is through the sensory details? Is there anything else?

DEBORAH: I think you start with the senses, and then you're just aware of what you're feeling in your body while you're writing about a particular event. And then you share it with readers and you see if it's being communicated. Are they feeling it in their bodies? If they're not feeling it, then what's missing? What is keeping them from getting there?

KARIN: What aspects of writing this book were the most challenging for you?

DEBORAH: I think the depth of feeling that you get to—when you're writing about sad or tragic or disturbing events—can hit you really hard. I think you can be surprised by how much feeling is still there.

I had to write about my father's psychotic break. I wasn't sure for a long time how crazy he really was. He'd always been neurotic and eccentric, and then there was a point at which he was certifiably psychotic. So trying to parse out that moment and how that felt... because when somebody goes crazy, there's a level at which you feel betrayed, like they've abandoned you. So getting to that, those feelings of abandonment and for how long I would try to justify or rationalize how crazy he was and then what it felt like to realize that he was psychotic and that I had to separate from that state of mind or I was going to go nuts too. There were feelings there that I didn't anticipate and that I couldn't have anticipated.

I also had to write about Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, because I was at the Ambassador Hotel the night he was assassinated. For years I'd really avoided looking at the video of it or even thinking too much about it because I was still so grief-stricken. It was still so painful to remember that night. To check on the details, I had to go back and look at TV newscasts. I went to the UCLA film archive, and looked at old film footage. I had to re-immerse myself in that night. I tried to find reporters still alive who’d been there that night and could give me some missing details. There were a lot of feelings I still had that I hadn't felt for years.

KARIN: Are you good at taking care of yourself through all of that?

DEBORAH: Probably not, because I would sit and write for hours and hours and hours and hours. And there were days I was writing this book where I was finding it pretty disturbing. But I think I know what I should have been doing to take care of myself. I can tell other people what they should be doing.

KARIN: What should they be doing?

DEBORAH: Well, eating and drinking and getting up every hour and walking around and not writing about the most disturbing content for hours and hours at a time. And just reassuring yourself that that's not your current life. Whatever happened, it's over.

I say to my students, drop crumbs on the way in so you can find your way back out. Like Hansel and Gretel, only don't let the birds eat up your crumbs. So when you go into these places that you know are going to be emotionally difficult, have a plan—like I'm only going to sit and write about this for the next 45 minutes and then I'm going to go take a walk. Or anchor yourself in the present. This is not still happening right now. It might feel like it is while I'm writing about it and I might need it to feel like it's still happening while I'm writing about it, but it's really not still happening. I'm really safe and okay now.

KARIN: Would you be conscious of those thoughts afterwards?

DEBORAH: Yeah, and I think having a sense of humor. My book is funny and I had a sense of humor even as a kid going through some of this stuff, but I have a strong sense of how funny, even really tragic things can be. That's why I think my publisher calls it a tragicomic memoir, because it's funny and the humor helps. I think you can keep in touch with the humor even while you're writing about horrible stuff or you see it with a sense of irony or absurdity. A lot of what went on in my family was just absolutely absurd. It had a sort of histrionic quality. So if you can realize that while you're writing, it creates a little bit of separation.

KARIN: Right. And you don't lose the depth by focusing on that?

DEBORAH: Well, it's a balancing act. It's a trade-off. You have to stay sane while you're writing.

KARIN: What about your parents? Are they around to read this?

DEBORAH: My parents are dead, so I didn't have to worry about that.

KARIN: Is there anyone you needed to be concerned about?

DEBORAH: I have two brothers and both of my brothers are characters in the book, but it's really interesting… my family has a “don't ask, don't tell policy” about my writing, where they don't really want to know. I don't ask them to read it and they don't ask to read it. One brother recently said to me, “Do you think it would be upsetting to me to read your book?” And I said, “I don't know… you're in it.” And he said, “Well, yeah, and I'm not sure if I want to.” They're not the kind of family who will read it and get offended. They just won't read it.

KARIN: Did you change names?

DEBORAH: I changed my family members’ names. I wrote it with a sense of empathy for everybody involved and tried to be fair. There's no victim/perpetrator mentality. That ruins a lot of memoirs.

If my parents were alive, would it be a different book? I don't know. I don't know if I'd be writing this book if my parents were still alive. I'm not sure.

KARIN: You mentioned that you're apprehensive about feeling exposed upon the release of your memoir, even though you've written and published quite a bit. What is that about?

DEBORAH: Yeah, I did not anticipate how exposed I would feel. When I was writing some of the book, I wasn't thinking about anybody reading it, which sounds kind of nuts. Even though my writers’ group was reading it, I wasn't thinking about a public reading it. And there was an impulse to just lay it all out, almost in a confessional way—just lay it all out, have no secrets. And then when I realized that the book was actually coming out in the world, I thought, Oh my God, what did I do? What did I write? Yeah, so I do feel exposed and wonder what will happen when more people read it and I get more feedback.

KARIN: What are you most concerned about?

DEBORAH: I guess my mind goes to people saying, “Wow, you were really nuts. Your family was really nuts.” It's the unknown. It's not knowing how people will react. Like at my 10th birthday party, when my father put on the outfit that he wears on the cover of the book, which was a little Lord Fauntleroy 19th century child outfit… that party wound up not going so well because the other kids thought his behavior was really bizarre.

I didn't anticipate the extent to which they would think it was bizarre. I thought they would think it was fun because I always thought it was fun that he dressed up like a child and could play. I guess it's wondering about that same feeling I had at my 10th birthday party where I saw the other kids go, “Oh, this is way too weird.”

KARIN: Do you think that writing this story shifted anything for you?

DEBORAH:  Oh, absolutely. It was therapeutic. I think you have to be careful that you're not just doing therapy when you're writing, that you're also creating something for other people. But of course you get clarity and revelation and epiphany and figure out things you never understood before. Just shaping your experiences changes the way you see them and feel about them.

KARIN: Is there anything specific that you're able to put into words?

DEBORAH: There were so many little revelations and so many little epiphanies along the way. There's something satisfying once it's a book and you can hold it in your hand and feel like you've actually created this object. I'm not sure if there's any one thing that I understood differently, that I can point to. There were so many little things along the way. I think every time you're sitting down to write an episode, you're having little revelations about it. Don't you find that when you're teaching your students, that they're constantly having “Oh, wow?” moments?

KARIN: Yes, I find it’s an organic, unfolding process. The whole thing is transformative.

DEBORAH: I think I realized the extent to which I had been holding on to this idea that my father was not crazy until he was. Until he went psychotic, he wasn't really crazy. And while writing the book, I had to question how crazy was he before he went psychotic. How many crazy ideas did he impart to me when I thought he was just neurotic? I had to rethink a lot of what I had taken as reality. Because he had a lot of nutty ideas before he was ever officially psychotic. And is it a spectrum? Or is there really a point at which you fall off the ledge? I still don't know.

KARIN: Do you do have perspective on that now?

DEBORAH: I think it's a spectrum. I think he definitely had psychotic ideas. I don't think he was completely out of touch with reality. But he had ideas that were not reality-based. For example, there's an episode in the book where my mom has a migraine headache and my dad has to make lunch. So we're opening cans for lunch. And whenever he opened cans, we had to stand around and listen for the pfftt, the sound of the air entering the vacuum-packed chamber of the can. Because if we didn't do that, he thought we would all die of botulism.

It was completely irrational because botulism is an anaerobe that can only live in a sealed can. It made no logical sense, but it was an emotional ritual for him. Was that pretty nutty? Yeah, that was pretty nutty.

KARIN: What would you say to the writers out there who know they have a book in them, but can’t yet see it?

DEBORAH: I say just start to put it together and see what you have to start—take those episodes and put them up against one another. I think, especially now, people are writing a lot of experimental forms. They're writing a lot of things that don't look like conventional narratives that work So don't assume that it has to be a linear story. But I think you just have to start putting things next to each other and seeing what happens. There's a certain energy that comes from juxtaposing one episode with another.

KARIN: And yet the editor you worked with encouraged you towards a linear narrative.

DEBORAH: He helped me create more of a linear narrative. But that was a few years ago. I think that times have already changed in terms of what's getting published and how linear a narrative needs to be. I think you put what you have together and then you see what's missing. Is it years that are missing? Is it a formative moment? I tried to include the formative moments. That's one way to think about it: what are the formative moments?

KARIN: When you think of unconventional memoirs, are there any in particular that come to mind you have enjoyed?

DEBORAH:  Paul Lisicky’s book Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, which just came out, about his early years coming out as gay at the height of the AIDS epidemic in Provincetown. It's not linear in its organization, and I think it, totally works. Also, Sarah Manguso's books, especially Ongoingness: the End of a Diary. And Maggie Nelson’s works. Those are just a few examples.

KARIN: How do you find a structure in something like that?

DEBORAH: I think there has to be some kind of emotional throughline and maybe a metaphorical throughline. What are the metaphors that keep repeating? What are the objects that keep showing up? Because sometimes an object that you saw every day in your childhood can become a metaphor for much more than itself.

I just taught this book by Robert Goolrick, The End of the World as We Know It. He reports this episode where his mother who was a drunk, as was his father,  burns a cigarette hole in her dress one night on her way out to a party, and she has to come back and change. That hole in her party dress becomes a symbol for so much in his childhood that went wrong, and for how his parents were trying to maintain this veneer of respectability when they were  going downhill as drunks and that hole in her dress just takes on more and more resonance, the further the book goes along.

Look for those symbols, those objects that can take on more meaning than they might seem to have at first.

KARIN: Thank you for all of these wonderful insights. Do you think some of your upcoming events over the next few months might still happen?
 
DEBORAH: Well, events are being rescheduled for July. I’m happy that my reading at Antioch University’s Literary Uprising will still take place as a virtual event on May 12th at 5:30 p.m. There’ll be info about how to join on Antioch’s website and on my Facebook page. I’m doing some podcasts and radio too. No one knows how the next few months are going to go; we’ll all just have to see.

Buy the book!

To learn more about Deborah A. Lott, visit her website.

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A Conversation with Tara Schuster

Oh my, how quickly things change in just one week!

I'm writing to you from the trenches in Los Angeles where we have been ordered to stay at home as this global health crisis unfolds. I hope this finds you safe, wherever you are in the world.

Let me tell you about the awesome woman I'm featuring this month! Tara Schuster, the current Vice President of Talent and Development at Comedy Central, has a new memoir out called Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies. While it may be an odd time for a book release, the theme of the book couldn't be more relevant. It's all about how to take care of yourself, and in our interview below, Tara offers some helpful ways to think about what that means in the current climate.

Tara, by the way, will be visiting the Unlocking Your Story workshop this Spring! 

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Tara Schuster is an author, playwright, and accomplished entertainment executive, currently serving as Vice President of Talent and Development at Comedy Central. She is currently the Executive in Charge of Lights Out with David Spade and was the Executive in Charge of the Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning Key & Peele. Her plays have been performed in The New York International Fringe Festival and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and Forbes online.

Tara's hilarious and relatable self-help/memoir Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies tells the story of Tara’s path to re-parenting herself and becoming a “ninja of self-love.” By the time Tara was in her late twenties, she was a rising TV executive who had worked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and helped launch Key & Peele to viral superstardom. By all appearances, she had mastered being a grown-up. But beneath that veneer of success, she was a chronically anxious, self-medicating mess.

Through simple, daily rituals, Tara transformed her mind, body, and relationships and hopes to help readers do the same. Her aim for the book is to help readers to create a life they truly, totally f*cking LOVE.

(Photo credit: Diana Ragland)

KARIN GUTMAN: How do you feel about releasing a book during this global crisis that is COVID-19?

TARA SCHUSTER: It's already difficult to launch a book, and then to launch a book within a pandemic is obviously much more difficult. I could get really depressed and down about all the events that we've had to cancel, or... the truth is I wrote this book because I thought this was my mission. As cheesy as it sounds, I felt like it was. The reason I was put on earth was to make other people feel less lonely in their experience. And now, more than ever, that is necessary.

So now I'm taking what could be a depressing situation and instead saying, “Let me be there for people. Let me get the mission of the book out there even more,” because we absolutely must take care of ourselves. In a crisis, if we are ground down and burnt out and not taking care of ourselves, we will not be able to help anyone around us. And so, I think it's really important, now more than ever, that people take themselves seriously and see that they're worth taking care of.

KARIN: What does taking care of ourselves look like?

TARA: The book is about practical, habitual changes you can make in your life. Big, big change scares the hell out of me, so I don't advocate that for anybody else. But the idea of habits and routine, and how rituals build stability... you can very easily get rid of your morning routine right now and stop working out and stop writing your gratitude list and stop journaling, because you stayed up so late watching Netflix, because you were trying to numb out. Or, you could hang on to those really good self-care rituals in the face of crisis.

I write a lot about exercise, which seems so basic. But I don't think everybody gets that message—that exercise, scientifically and just from my own journey, relieved such anxiety. And here in Los Angeles, my gym closed. Then I thought, “Aha, but I'll use my apartment building's gym.” And then, I go to that gym, and it's closed. And then, I went to the manager of the building and she would only talk to me through a glass door. And I stopped myself on the verge of tears, because exercising is such a central ritual for my self-care.

As I was in there, looking through the glass at the manager, I realized, “Wait, there's another door here.” It was the door to the stairwell of my apartment building, where I was like, “Oh, I can listen to Missy Elliott, and do 40 minutes of cardio.” That's a great workout in the stairwell, and there's literally no one here, and I'm not touching anything. The underlying thesis of the book is: you re-frame things. You are the narrator. So, you decide, Is this just total misery and chaos and awful, or is there something to be learned from it? And can you keep up some of your habits?

Yes, of course, this is a crisis. In no way do I minimize that. Obviously, this is a pandemic. But that doesn't mean everything has to be miserable and a worst-case scenario.

KARIN: We can also invent new rituals. I have a 7-year-old daughter who is home right now, and we’re inventing what that looks like for everyone.

TARA:  Totally. For me, it's the opposite case. I've had a lot of people reach out to me saying, “It's difficult because all my kids are home, and so I'm having trouble working from home,” and lack of space. What I reminded them is that I'm all alone. I don't have a family or a partner or anyone. And so, I've had to come up with rituals to connect to people, and remembering that none of us are alone in our feelings of “this fucking sucks.” It doesn't matter your circumstance—full family, single, elderly—we all have to share this. It's a societal pain and disruption that we all are sharing in, right now.

KARIN: As you know, I teach memoir workshops, which you’ll be visiting in June! I’ve decided to teach them via Zoom for the spring sessions while this situation plays out.

TARA: Oh, great.

KARIN: I feel it’s really important to find ways to stay connected during this time.

TARA: Absolutely. I think it's important to also recognize, we say, “I'm going to self-improve this part of my life, when I have time.” Like, “When I've got my shit together, when I've got enough money… I'm going to work on my exercise, or my practice of non-judgment, or my book I've always wanted to write… when I have time.” Well guess what? We have time.

You could look at this as an absolute disaster and disruption, or that this is the reality. So how can I use it to my benefit and the benefit of my community? I think I'm going to use this time to work on the proposal for my second book. I have the time right now, so why not?

KARIN: How did you juggle a full-time job with writing your book?

TARA: I really have two separate careers, and I really thought of them as separation of church and state. So in the morning, I would basically chain myself to my desk, set a timer for an hour before I went to work. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Amazon, no nothing. Just writing. And then go work out, to change the gears in my head, and then go to work.

So that's been my process of writing, because it would be too overwhelming to try to juggle my job and my writing together. So I made them very distinct parts of my life.

KARIN: It sounds very structured.

TARA: Yeah, it was. I literally set a timer for an hour and when the timer went off, I was free to leave my desk. But I'm not a morning person. I had to trick myself into being a morning person in order to write the book. That was the only way I could do it, because I think I'm my smartest in the morning. And then I watch myself become slowly dumb as the day wears on. I could never write after work. I don't even know what I would say after work. I'm usually so tired.

And then on weekends...on Saturday, from 8:00 to 11:00. And if I needed more, sometimes it would be all of Saturday and all of Saturday night. But then, I tried never to write on Sundays. I tried to have one day where I wasn't on the hook. I didn't have to write.

KARIN: When you said you 'tricked' yourself, what was the carrot?

TARA: The carrot was a book. There was no other way this book was going to get written. Something I'd have to remind myself when I'd complain to myself is, “Nobody asked me to write this book.” It's not like a bunch of publishers were knocking down my door for me to do this. I embarked on it because I felt like I had a voice, and I had something to say. And the only way I was going to get to say it was if I fucking did it. So, the carrot was the book. And once I put it that way, it was never a question.

I also set up my home office, something I picked up in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, which is so important to me. She talks a lot about discipline, the difference between discipline and enthusiasm. So many people have said to me, “Oh, you're so disciplined that you did this.” I'm like, “Truly, I wish that the word discipline applied to me, that would make my ego feel very good. It's enthusiasm.” Like… I'm really excited to write the book. I'm ecstatic that I had a place that wanted to publish the book. I let my enthusiasm drive me, and so it was a pleasure to wake up. The trick was, instead of, “Oh I have to do this,” is, “I get to do this,” and I let my enthusiasm drive the process.

KARIN: What was the publishing process like? It sounds like you had someone interested during the writing process.

TARA: I wrote a proposal with my agent over the course of nine months. A very detailed proposal, with a hundred sample pages and a complete outline. We pitched that to a bunch of different publishers, and it sold at auction, which was completely unexpected. I would have written the book for free, which I never want to tell my publisher, but I was determined that it really didn't matter, that I was going to do this. I preferred to do it with a real publisher, that was my dream. But I would have been happy to self-publish, because I felt like it was an important message to get out there.

KARIN: Why do you think there was a bidding war?

TARA: Yeah, why in the world would anybody...

KARIN: You can't take that the wrong way. Come on, now.

TARA: I'm just teasing. Remember I work in comedy.

KARIN: Right.

TARA: I think what it was… I have heard four million pitches. Working in TV, I hear pitches all day. I went to Brown for playwriting and Paula Vogel was one of my professors. The two things that those have in common is: at Comedy Central, we look for an authentic point of view, a real take on something. And Paula once told me that writing is about putting your thumbprint on the world and really getting down to your DNA. What is your unique take?

So I had practice in both identifying point of view and writing my point of view. So I think the pitch was just me on paper. After hearing a lot of pitches, I know it's hard to do that. It's hard to be really authentic and to not try to sell what you think will sell, but to be vulnerable. And actually, what's funny is that, one of the number one pieces of feedback I get from people is, “Oh my God, you're so honest. I can't believe how honest you are.”

At this point I've totally taken for granted that we're not all just honest all the time, because I've spent three years holding myself to the standard of, “Is this honest? Is this kind? Is this the most vulnerable I can be about it?” And I think that came through in the pitch.

KARIN: It's one thing to be able to identify an authentic, unique point of view. It's another thing to access that in yourself. Is that something that simply comes naturally to you? Or is that something that you learned?

TARA: I've talked to my editor about this. Not only did I go to school for playwriting, where Paula Vogel's style of teaching is basically, how much can you write? Like, a volume game. Don't be precious, don't self-edit. Write, write, write. And my number one piece of writing advice is that writing begets writing. I can't explain it, but if you write, you will write more. And if you don't write, you won't write anything. It's so simple, but it's so true.

And so, I think it's a combination of learning early in my writing career not to self-censor, and then taking up journaling in my mid 20s… those two things together. In my book I describe it as receiving DM’s from my soul. Like sneaky private messages of what was most true about me.

And journaling… I don't know of any other way I could have gotten to the point where now I can write consistently, in my own voice. Which is a funny thing because I'm me. After I wrote the book, they give you a style guide of your writing, like, What phrases do you use? Are thoughts in italics or are they in quotations? It's interesting because the copywriters may hold you to be even more consistent with yourself than you already are.

The whole process of writing the book—if you're writing memoir—makes you get more and more precise about your voice, and about how you talk about things. Like, "You call this friend this, but did you mean this?" And, "You use this word… did you really mean this word?"

KARIN: Did your journal voice change when you started writing the manuscript? Was it harder to be honest, because suddenly you're aware that you're writing for an audience?

TARA: For me, when I'm journaling, I know that nobody's ever going to read it and it's just for me. Journaling is how I rev up my engine. My process is: I journal for 20 minutes, then I meditate, then I write. So journaling is almost like, “Let me get all this shit out of my head. All these stupid thoughts, the distractions. Let me just get that all out of my head.”

KARIN: Like Julia Cameron’s morning pages?

TARA: Exactly. It's totally, 100%, Julia Cameron's morning pages. I just word vomit. Then, when I get to the actual writing, I'm more focused and in touch with myself. From that place, I write. I always imagine a reader with me. It's usually me as a little girl. Or, a reader who wants someone to be present with them. Sometimes I imagine a young woman or a young man, but there's always somebody in the room with me. I always think about them when I write. So, it's a two-pronged approach: I get all the garbage out of my head and align myself with my voice; and then I think about, “This writing now is for somebody else.” It is definitely for an audience, which is the big difference from journaling.

KARIN: Are these usually people you know?

TARA: I guess it's a little bit of a combination. I've got some undisclosed people that I think about, that I think could use the book. I'll think of one person, and then I'll think of people like them, and then I'll start to write. It's a little loose in that way.

KARIN: What about exposure? Given that you have a certain professional visibility, how is that for you now that the book is out?

TARA: It's tough. I was a little afraid that in my professional career, where I'm supposed to be a gatekeeper and an executive, that people would look down on me, or judge me, for being vulnerable. But then I realized, “Fuck them.” If somebody doesn't want to work with me, or they judge me because I was vulnerable and open, then why would that be somebody I wanted to work with anyway? So I had to tune it out. But it was really scary. I can completely empathize with other people who are nervous. But once you take the leap you realize, “Oh, that wasn't so scary, I'm going to be fine.”

KARIN: What has changed for you having written the book? Has anything shifted? Have you realized something that maybe you didn't know at the beginning of the process?

TARA: Yeah. So, this is going to sound crazy, but I thought the book might change my life in some material way. Like, I'd meet new people and maybe new career paths would be open to me. And that's all very true. But what I didn't expect was for the book to fundamentally change my life and the way I see everything. I thought it was going to be the end, like, “Okay, I have reconciled my childhood. I've given my offering. Here's the book. It's a tangible thing.” And now I realize, it's only the beginning. And it's fucking shocking. I'm in a process of reevaluating my relationships and the way I live. Because the message of the book, which was so clear to me, wasn't even completely clear to me until I finished it. Until it was in the world, and people were talking to me about it. So, it completely changed my life. It showed me I have so much more work to do, and that the book was not the end. It was just the beginning, as cheesy as that sounds.

KARIN: Can you give a specific example?

TARA: All of my relationships… Do I have strong enough boundaries? For every one of my rituals, I ask myself, What's the evolution of that? How present am I for my own life? How willing to feel my feelings am I? Where I thought it would be a 'period' to my childhood and to re-parenting, it's more like a complete new beginning, which I absolutely did not expect.




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To learn more about Tara Schuster, visit her website.

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