writing life

Actor-turned-writer Gina Sorell: How “Method Writing” led to my first novel

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Long before I called myself a writer, I was an actor. Even though writing had been my first love, it wasn’t how I made my living. I’d attended performing arts schools from the time I was 9 years old all the way through high school, and I went to college at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

Although I’d devoted so much of my life to being an actor, the part that I enjoyed the most were the stories that my characters got to tell. I loved building my characters, writing elaborate histories that explained how they came to be the people they were at the moment the audience met them. A script can only tell you so much about the character, presenting them as they are in the here and now. Maybe there will be clues, or lines about their past, but it’s often up to the actor to decide the rest.

A character breakdown on a casting notice might say, “A divorced, polished, hard as nails lawyer, who clawed her way to the top without anyone’s help, she knows her way around a man’s world.” And I’d wonder: What made her so hard? How did she claw? Intellectually, sexually, ethically, mercilessly? What did that sacrifice cost her? Is she polished in her appearance? Did her Armani pantsuit put her over the top on her credit card, maxing her out after paying student loans and the debt from her deadbeat ex-husband who gambled away all their savings and slept with her best friend?

I write the back story and the front story, not just to know where my characters are, but how they got there, and then I wrestle with how much of their history to reveal.

The script may give insight into her past, but it might not, especially if the role is small, and it would be up to me to imagine the rest. I’d write pages about who my character was and what had gone before the audience met her, a back story so detailed that I knew what music she liked, what her favorite drink was, what her politics were, and what her secrets were, even if I never got to share this information with the audience. These details made the characters real, made them complex and fascinating, and I often wondered what adventures they’d have beyond the time I got to spend with them.

Now, as a writer, I still do all of this work, and much of it never makes it to the page. I write the back story and the front story, not just to know where my characters are, but how they got there, and then I wrestle with how much of their history to reveal. But it’s through this exploration and examination of the people in my work that I can come to really understand who they are and what motivates them.

But as a writer, my time with these characters is no longer limited by shooting schedules of days or weeks. We get to spend hundreds of pages, years together.

In that way, my acting work was no different than my writing work. I strive to make the pages and the people who inhabit them come alive, finding their way into our hearts and minds long after we meet them. But as a writer, my time with these characters is no longer limited by shooting schedules of days or weeks. We get to spend hundreds of pages, years together, and if I’ve really done my work, they will not only reveal themselves to me, but will lead the way I write the story or novel as well.

When I started writing my debut novel Mothers and Other Strangers, I was still working as an actor, but slowly transitioning out of it. On set I had found myself increasingly talking more about the script and the story than about my own particular role in the projects I was cast in, and it was clear to me that I wanted to spend more time creating my stories than acting out someone else’s.

As I began to write, I spent a lot of time thinking and walking and getting inside my characters’ heads, trying to see the world through their eyes. I’d improvise dialogue that they’d say and conversations they’d engage in, and wonder about the people that really lived beneath the exterior they presented. I came to know  intimately the cast of characters that I created, reserving judgment in order to allow them to be flawed and complicated and often broken.

And because of this I think I was able to stay true to them, even in the face of outside concern or criticism. There were times when early readers told me that Elsie, my troubled 39-year-old protagonist, who had endured an unhappy childhood at the hands of her cruel and narcissistic mother, was too depressed, too bitter, her dark humor too biting. Why would anyone want to spend time with her, when she seemed so unlikable?

I fought for Elsie to be the way she was, resisting suggestions to make her happier, simpler, as if difficult and complicated people are not worthy of being liked.

But in my heart I disagreed. I saw her as a survivor, trying to find her way in spite of the scars her childhood had left, her humor a coping mechanism, her struggle with depression understandable and real. I fought for Elsie to be the way she was, resisting suggestions to make her happier, simpler, as if difficult and complicated people are not worthy of being liked. I trusted that by knowing who she really was, I could take the reader inside her head, so that they could understand her, and in doing so, come to love her as I did. I strive to do this for all my characters, so that even the malevolent ones, responsible for the psychological wounds that Elsie carried, would be worthy of some empathy. And I believe that they are.

As an actor, my job was to bring my characters to life off the page, and now as a writer, my challenge is to bring them to life on the page. The medium may have changed, but the goal — creating lives that give us insight into the hearts and minds and world of others — has remained the same.

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Born in South Africa and raised in Canada, Gina Sorell now resides in Toronto, and lives in a world of words. Some of those words are: writer, namer, creative director, artist, daughter, sister, wife and mother.

After two decades as a working actor of stage and screen in NYC, LA, and Toronto, Gina decided to return to her first love–writing, and graduated with distinction from UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Gina likes to balance out the long solitary hours of novel writing with her work as Creative Director of Eat My Words, a SF-based branding firm, where she collaborates with innovators and entrepreneurs whose identity she establishes with only one word, their name. 

Chaos Outside the Study Door: Virginia Pye on Balance in Writing and Life

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Virginia Pye author photo 2_0  virginia-pye-books

Last night, at a bookstore reading in Boston to celebrate the launch of her second novel, the author mentioned the “mental multitasking” required of women writers. We must live double lives, she said, or even triple, I’d suggest, as we juggle writing, paid work, and often, family.

The day before, an aspiring writer and friend sat on my back patio and lamented how she can’t make time to write during the academic year. Her job as an elementary school librarian and her community involvement are so time consuming, though also greatly rewarding, that there’s nothing left in her mind late at night or early in the morning when she finally pushes aside the tasks of the day and sits down to write.

Another friend, a best-selling author with three young children, recently texted me: “I’ve not been working, in any real way, for something like two months. And I feel almost panicky about returning to my manuscript.” That she is highly successful and widely respected seems only to ratchet up her anxiety, not calm it.

Frantic, worn out, and living multiple lives, the woman authors of probably every book that Bill Wolfe so skillfully reviews on this blog writes with chaos just outside their study door. Male authors no doubt face similar, difficult pressures as those experienced by women, and of course each artist’s challenges are unique, but for the purposes of this blog that focuses solely on women writers, I’m interested in sharing my own experience and that of other women I know who have pursued writing through various stages of life. They may not have recently made a big transition in their lives, as I have by moving to a new city, but with children careening about, or paid work to complete, not to mention spouses or partners who require a certain amount of attention, we women writers must struggle to block out the noise of our lives.

In her journal, Virginia Woolf wrote, “My mind is churned and frothed. And to write I must be a clear vessel.” If anything, achieving this ideal state of mind has become even more elusive for women writers. To succeed at putting meaningful words on the page, the woman writers I know juggle complex schedules, financial pressures, and the needs of loved ones in order to find the clarity Virginia Woolf described.

Before I had children, it was easier for me to create the ideal conditions for writing. I taught writing at a university and tutored at a high school, but I still managed to write daily. When my first novel didn’t sell, I pressed on and wrote another one. I had a strong second draft under my belt when I gave birth to my first child. The delivery was complicated and left me exhausted and debilitated for months. The experience of having almost not survived made me all the more grateful to be a mother.

In the first months, my attention was focused on recovering and and enjoying my daughter. The thought of writing hardly occurred to me. I remember my husband setting up the changing table on what had been my writing desk. The irony of that choice wasn’t lost on me, but it didn’t matter: I had no regrets about putting writing aside. And in the following years, I continued to prioritize being a mother over being a writer of long form fiction.

But eventually the urge to write began to return. I first found myself penning poems, mostly about motherhood, but also about nature and gratitude for life. Eventually, these became prose poems. Then they became short essays on mothering. Then finally, I wrote short stories in which I created fictional characters and worlds, my imagination reignited and engaged once again.

By then, my son, born three and a half years after my daughter, was ready for preschool. I had spent almost eight years being a full time mother. Although not every moment was idyllic or easy, I loved those years with my children. But as I returned to writing, I was now ten years older and with no published novel to my name. I felt greater internal pressure to write than when I’d been an aspiring writer in my late twenties and thirties and had all the time in the world. As a result, I dove back into the practice of novel writing each day when the children were off at school. I returned to my craft with a vengeance.

I remember feeling keenly aware that some of my peers had continued to write published novels while having children. That hurt my ego and made me ache for the legitimacy that being published bestows. But in looking back, I can see that I couldn’t have done it any other way. I needed to recover from childbirth then commit myself fully to being a mother, building up my reserves in order to raise my family, and perhaps also in order to have the mindset to eventually return to novel writing. Now, as a recent empty nester, I relish my uninterrupted days. At the same time, I miss the clamber and vitality that I had grown used to in our home.

Today, I see more women writers who are young mothers and who also somehow manage to publish highly accomplished work at the same time. I envy their sense of purpose and success, though I know it can’t possibly be easy.  The pressures on these women are enormous, but they still manage to maintain their imaginations and inner lives. Pursuing their work, even in brief, free moments, helps these admirable women maintain a sense of themselves when they might otherwise feel like they’re drowning in the monotony and challenges of motherhood. I remember that feeling and how hard it was to strike a balance.

The world continually distracts us from our work at the same time that it nags us to be successful. We feel we should be at peek productivity all the time, in every season of our lives. But for many of us, that isn’t possible. We need the fallow periods as well as the ones in which we write with sharp focus. Both of my published novels were written fluidly and with a clear sense of purpose, but I have a half dozen other unpublished ones, including the one I’m working on now, that took years to write. Each book has its own rhythms, its own demands on our imaginations and lives. If everyday living swamps us, then I think it’s helpful to accept that fact, until, once again, the balance shifts and we reach a place where writing can become a top priority.

On Facebook and Twitter, every other friend seems to be publishing a new book every other week. I’ve recently seen posts by women writers who have dashed out final scenes before going into labor, or written right through chemo treatments, or while dealing with the death of a parent. If true, those are remarkable achievements. But I’ve also seen mention recently in reviews and interviews that some authors have “lost” whole years to travel, or childrearing, or in the case of a recent young man who was compared to Dickens, to years of playing video games. While I don’t recommend that distraction, who can say what feeds the mind of the writer?

We need to have faith that our skills as writers will still be there when the time is right for us to create. My best-selling author friend and my school librarian friend will each get back to their writing when the time is right, and perhaps because their lives are so full right now, they’ll return to it with a new and more enlightened mind. The increased wisdom and empathy that we gain from living our lives well is surely reflected in our writing.

Virginia Pye’s second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, was chosen as a Best Book of 2015 by the Richmond Times Dispatch and was called “riveting” by Library Journal. Gish Jen wrote, “Gripping, convincing, and heartbreaking, Dreams of the Red Phoenix is a real page-turner and thought-provoker—wonderful.” Virginia’s debut novel, River of Dust, was an Indie Next Pick and a Finalist for the 2013 Virginia Literary Award in Fiction. Caroline See in The Washington Post called it “intricate and fascinating,” and Annie Dillard described it as, “A strong, beautiful, deep book.” Her award-winning short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times Opinionator, Literary Hub, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Tampa Review, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. Please visit her at www.virginiapye.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Roxana Robinson: The Two Worlds of the Writer’s Life

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Roxana Robinson is the author of nine books: five novels, including Sparta and Cost; three collections of short stories; and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, which was short-listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of The New York Times Most Notable Books of the Year. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BookForum, Best American Short Stories, Tin House and elsewhere. She teaches in the Hunter MFA Program and divides her time among New York, Connecticut, and Maine. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation and is the President of the Authors Guild.

This essay is reprinted from the Winter 2016 issue of the Authors Guild Bulletin.

 

While you’re working on a book, you’re living in two worlds.

There is the world that you inhabit with everyone you know—your husband, your children, your friends, your colleagues. This is the tangible world, and you inhabit it easily. You don’t have to try. You can e-mail people, or call them or talk to them at dinner. The things you share with them are immediate. But your presence there becomes increasingly insubstantial: you realize that it doesn’t really matter if you’re there or not. This world will go on without you.

The other world you’re living in, the world of the book, is just as vivid. You’re living with people you’ve never seen, though you know them as well as you know everyone else in your life. But it’s not always easy to connect with them. Sometimes it seems as though a translucent scrim separates you, and whenever you’re not writing, you’re worried that you won’t be able to get past the scrim.

In the novel Time and Again, the protagonist is asked to live in circumstances that exactly mimic those of a century earlier, in hopes that he’ll be able to slip through a portal into another era. He does, of course. I think about this when I’m trying to move into the world of my novel. I’m never quite sure if I’ll be able to get there. “This novel” is the place that I inhabit while I’m working. In this world, I’m necessary. It won’t go on without me.

When I began writing fiction, the rule for young writers was, “Write what you know.” It’s a good rule, meant to avoid the inauthentic use of places, people, and feelings. The idea was that the writer should know herself first, examine her own world before she begins to examine others. It’s still a good rule for young writers. But it needn’t hold true throughout a whole career. It is beginning to seem that contemporary novelists have used up what they know. The present seems over-explored, so why not write about the past and the future?

Futuristic and historical novels are becoming all the rage. There are lots of distinguished ones: Frankenstein, The Handmaid’s Tale, Never Let Me Go and The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five. And of course Wolf Hall, Mary Reilly and The Blue Flower. (I know, I know, I’m naming mostly works by women, and I’m sorry. It’s just that there are so many more good books by women than there are by men! If I could think of more by men, I’d name them, of course.)

When you are writing a contemporary novel, you’re already living a covert life. You talk to your family as though you’re all occupying the same place—the kitchen. And you are in the kitchen, but you’re also in that other place, the place where the novel lives, with its great rolling landscape of emotions and conversations and characters on their way to the unknown destination at the end of the narrative. Those people in that other place are all around, constantly swimming through your consciousness.

But when you’re writing about another time, you are in even more trouble: you’re doubly removed from the tangible world. The words and sentiments from the people of that other time become more and more real. You’re fascinated by them. You’re bemused by people who talk in today’s language, the one you’ve stopped speaking. You’re deep in another era. You can hardly believe that your husband wants to discuss this year’s politics, when he could be talking about those of that other year, which are so much more vivid, those candidates so much more astonishing in their declarations, their dastardliness, their ambitions, their facial hair.

And all the time you feel as though that other world, the one where you’re writing, is elusive. It is slipping through your hands like water. You can’t quite close your fingers on it, yet that’s the place you’re living. You can’t quite close your fingers on it, yet you’re swimming through it. It’s become your medium. It’s all around you, but you can’t quite breathe.

One afternoon, when I was writing my biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, I was driving down the street in the small town where I then lived. A man was driving toward me, and I recognized him. He was handsome, with a square face, a dark, serious gaze, metal-rimmed glasses and a mustache. I knew I knew him, but couldn’t think of who he was in time to wave. After he’d driven past, I realized it was Alfred Stieglitz. The funny thing was that Stieglitz never learned to drive.

Once you’ve finished the book, you stop living in that world. It’s lost to you. People ask me afterwards if I’m thinking of writing a sequel. Don’t I want to know what happens next, they ask? But I can no longer find the portal. Sometimes I’ll hear from a reader, years later, reminding me of that place, telling me how it felt while she was reading it.

Then I remember what it was like when I lived there.

The Writing Life: Jane Delury talks and laughs with Jessica Anya Blau, Caroline Leavitt and Elissa Schappell

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Three of the most interesting and entertaining writers on the contemporary fiction scene are Jessica Anya Blau, Caroline Leavitt, and Elissa Schappell. Each has a distinctive voice and style, but their fiction probes individual character and cultural shifts with an accuracy and emotional intensity that makes their books particularly satisfying reads. They are smart, funny, and intellectually restless people, and that shows in their work. In this interview for Read Her Like an Open Book, Jane Delury explores the serio-comic writing life with the three East Coast authors. After you read this, you’ll want all of them to be your next-door neighbors. But for now, you’ll have to enjoy their books.

Since you began writing, what has changed from book to book? Are you consciously trying to do something new with each project?

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Jessica Anya Blau:  I’ve actually tried to do the same thing over again, but when I do that, I feel like a complete fraud and a failure . . .  an asshole who has nothing new to say. So, each book I’ve written has been new to me. In that way, each one was difficult in novel ways and with a whole new depth. There’s a general terror in writing—the fear of failure, fear that I’m dumb, fear that I’m not up to the task I’ve set out for myself—which only seems to grow with each project. In general, I write despite my feelings.

Caroline Leavitt 2016Caroline Leavitt:  I’ve always tried to do something new, whether it’s setting things in different time periods, or changing point of view, but I seem to do it in twos. My first two novels were in first person, my last two were in the 50s, and then the 70s in third person. Of course, this adds to the terror. Like Jessica, I am on the verge of nervous collapse ALL THE TIME. But I have to share my favorite John Irving quote. If you don’t feel that you are on the edge of humiliating yourself, or losing control of the whole thing, then you’re not trying hard enough. I loved that quote so much, I tracked Irving down and wrote him a letter about how much better his quote made me feel. To my shock, he wrote me back a two-page handwritten letter talking about all sorts of things, and ended with, “But I didn’t say that. Though it sounds like I COULD have.” So, I’ve learned that doing new things, getting more ambitious and complex, equals nausea, terror, shock.

JAB: A two-page letter from John Irving?! That’s amazing. I wrote Alice Munro once and got back a post-card that said, “Jessica, keep writing.”

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Elissa Schappell: Clearly I need to start writing some fan mail. God knows I admire so many writers. Anyone got a Ouija board? I’d love to get in touch with Dawn Powell and Jane Bowles, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys…

Every time I start a new project, I think, I want to do something different. With Use Me, the idea that you could write a novel in stories was all new to me.

With my second book, part of a two book contract—a promised novel—I had decided I was going to write a “big” Tom Wolfe-style novel—an IMPORTANT book—socially relevant, with a capital T, Topic. My subject was race—the relationship between white upper middle class liberal mothers and their black and Filipino nannies—it was about privilege and drug addiction, plastic surgery, passionate female friendship, sex… all the hits.  I spent almost two and a half years working on that book—working against all my better instincts, slogging through it like I was writing a book report—and it was shit.

At the same time I was writing stories so I wouldn’t stab myself, which saved me. Because when I wasn’t trying to be a good girl and finish my homework (which is what that novel felt like) when I let myself write what I couldn’t say out loud, or say without screaming—when I let myself be angry and bold, when I chucked the map and just felt my way in, the writing wasn’t terrible and every other word wasn’t a lie.

Has the process gotten easier, or harder? Did you know what you were getting into when you chose to be a writer?

CL:  It’s always impossible. I have what I call writer’s amnesia. I forget how hard I cried and whined and panicked about the book prior to the one I am writing at the time. I think somehow that being so panicked is something new, and then all my writer friends sigh and laugh, and my husband says, “You were just like this last book. And that’s how I know your writing is going well.”

JAB: Yes, I guess it’s like having a baby. You forget until you remember. And you don’t remember until you’re there, vomiting and pissing on the table, screaming for someone to knock you out and make it end.

ES:  That’s exactly my process! Have you tried laying a rubber sheet out on your desk? It really helps quite a lot.

JAB: I’m so going to try that!

ES: As to easier or harder, I think this book I’m working on now is by far the hardest book I’ve ever written, and I’m in a flat out panic. It’s true, I tell my friends and family, I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s not working—I’m lost. And its exactly what Jessica is talking about. They all nod, and say,Yep this is exactly what you said last time.

Although no one has suggested this means the work is going well. It’s more, Buckle up it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

I didn’t think about what I was getting into—I never thought about a career as a writer. I thought I was going to be a painter, or an actress or a veterinarian, or a DJ (yes, really—I was that far gone) writing was just what I did.  I have no other wage earning skills, and certainly not at this age. I could tell you all about my checkered employment history but it would just make you sad.  Three words: Balloon delivery girl.

However surprised I might be that I became a writer—no one else, not my parents, or my friends from childhood or college seemed surprised. I was so disappointed at my 20th high school reunion, here I thought I was finally going to out myself as a writer—show them my true face, and instead they nodded at me…. “Oh, yeah”, smug little fortune tellers, “We all saw that coming. You were always a writer. Except for one woman who said, “I thought you’d be a toll booth operator.”

JAB: I ran into a high school friend once and when she asked what I was doing, I said I was writing. she said something like, “Oh that’s cool you’re riding. Do you own your own horse?” I said, ‘No, I don’t own my own horse.” And that was that. My father said to me (and this is a near-exact quote): “You were a beach bunny, I thought you’d grow up to be a wife.”

CL: No one thought I was going to be a writer except for me. My mother wanted me to be married and have a man take care of me (writing could be my little hobby) and my dad wanted me to be married and to be JEWISH-married.)  I had a high school teacher who sniffed at me, “Sorry, you don’t write that well.” A Brandeis writing professor told me that I would never make it, that he could see me as a Montessori nursery school teacher because I was such a “sweet little girl.”

I had no idea what I was getting into when I sold my first novel. I was so scared, I threw up a lot. Then, when the book took off, I thought, oh great, this is my career, every two years I’ll write a book and it will do as fabulously as this one did. HA. HA. My second book didn’t do as well and my publisher folded (not because of me, though!). The next publisher folded just as my novel came out. Then, I got a three-book deal with a BIG publisher who did absolutely nothing for me and refused to take my calls. I got another three-book deal with a different big publisher, and guess what I’m going to say? By then, I had a great new agent (I was always terrified of my first agent and had to pretend to smoke—I have never smoked in my life—to make myself feel brave). Even with my new agent, my ninth novel was rejected by the big publisher as not being special enough. Algonquin bought it and made that ninth book a bestseller the first month it was out. The editor who rejected it as “not special” sent me an email the day it made the NYT bestseller list, only she meant the note to be for her gynecologist, and it was really, really graphic! I let it go, but she emailed it again, so I had to tell her that I was not her doctor. She said, “Fine, how are things?” I told her, and she never wrote back.

How do you feel about the pressure put on authors to promote themselves now? When you release a new book and go on tour, what gratifies and bugs you the most?

CL: It’s tremendous pressure. Most writers I know are socially awkward, scared, nervous, and the ones who aren’t drink or drug themselves to be outgoing. What I love about being a writer is being able to write, to be in my house with Jeff, my husband, who also works at home. I actually love social media because I don’t have to leave my house to do it! I can go on twitter and Facebook and feel that I have been given a shot of human interaction and then go back to my day. And I’ve made and met real friends there—people I never would have met if I just awkwardly approached them! I haven’t figured out how to do Instagram, yet.

JAB: Yeah, you’re actually great at Facebook. You’re real. Authentic. It’s like everyone’s your best bud—the kind of bud you talk to on the phone while you’re emptying the dishwasher. I like seeing your stuff. And Elissa’s great on Facebook, too. Elissa’s political and says all the things I would say if I weren’t afraid and too shy to say them. I feel a little embarrassed promoting myself but I accept it as part of the package—I want my books to be out the world so I’ll do whatever needs to be done. The very kind marketing woman at HarperCollins just set up an author page with me—the whole thing made me nervous—I was worried no one would tap that like box. I also recently started Instagram but was told by several people I was “terrible” at it because I kept posting pictures of my diapered, fishy-smelling, one-eyed dog. One of my daughters has my Instagram password now and she randomly goes in there and deletes the photos she thinks would turn people off. She also randomly posts pictures, too.

ES:  I understand that social media makes some people queasy.  I also think that when a writer says, I don’t understand it, or, It’s not my thing that they sound a bit like an old codger complaining about newfangled technology, What do they call it, TV? It’s nothing more than radio with pictures. Just a fad!

My publisher told me, or let’s be real, threatened me, “You have a choice you can make a Facebook page, or we will set up a Fan Page for you.” That did it. I didn’t like it, but I did it. In the beginning I didn’t say much but posted videos of bands I loved and whatever nice press I got. It felt artificial to me, but obviously I got over that. Now I really dig it.

It’s good to have a place to hype the things you love and hyperventilate over the things that make you insane.

I agree with Jessica. Caroline is great at Facebook. She’s a natural, very open and intimate—you feel like you know her and you like her. And Jessica’s page is sly and beautifully curated. In both cases, you can see how the work grows out of each author’s unique sensibility.

I am much more political on my page then I am in my fiction. What is more tedious for a reader then to turn to a book of fiction and find instead a diatribe about the venal, blood-and-money-drunk radicalized Republican party’s depraved indifference to the lives of ordinary human beings, particularly people of color, women and the poor?

What about touring?

JAB: I love touring. I love meeting people at readings. I love staying in hotels. I love watching people in airports. I’m so grateful for my publisher, so happy that they’ll send me on a tour.

CL: I don’t like the plane wait, the plane ride, and the plane descent. I do love having a hotel room and getting room service (though on my last tour, I was obsessed with bed bugs, and I kept having to look at every bed until I simply was too tired to bother about that.) I love speaking to large crowds (lunches! Dinners! Organizations!) because it feels exhilarating and I love to talk. I always want to be paired with another writer at bookstores because I worry less that no one will show up, except two people who heard there was going to be cake.

JAB: I showed up at a reading once where there was one guy. Front row. Center. Holding the book.

ES:  I know that guy! The guy in the tinfoil hat!  I am always so grateful for his presence. Sometimes it’s just him, the bookstore owner, and whomever they could rustle up in the bar next door. If it’s cold maybe we get a couple of guys who were just standing around a trash can warming their hands. Books can throw some serious heat.

I had a panic attack on my first tour. I ordered room service—roast chicken and a bottle of Evian—and the bill was something like $50. I flipped. I called my husband, literally hyperventilating, and gasped, “I ordered a $50 chicken… I am in so much trouble…”  I thought I should return it, or at least the ten-dollar bottle of water, it seemed reckless and like I might be taking advantage of the company’s largesse. He talked me out of it. Can you imagine?

CL:  I love speaking to readers. I worship indie bookstores and book clubs. The only thing that bugs me is if people get my name totally wrong (okay, this happened only once, but I was introduced as Mrs. Harriet Lev. COME ON!)

JAB: Is there a writer named Harriet Lev?

ES: I agree with what Caroline said. Indie bookstores are the lifeblood of book culture. The people who work in those stores—no, who work in those temples—the folks who hand sell books, they may be our last best hope of saving the culture from the nincompoopery of the mass industrial entertainment complex.

JAB: Agreed. Hooray for indie bookstores! Down with nincompoopery!

Jane Delury’s stories have appeared in publications including Narrative, Glimmer Train, The Yale Review and the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. She’s an associate professor of writing and literature at the University of Baltimore.

Jessica Anya Blau’s latest novel, The Trouble with Lexie, is out June 28th, 2016.  Her previous books are The Wonder Bread Summer, Drinking Closer to Home, and the national bestseller The Summer of Naked Swim Parties. Recently, Jessica ghost-wrote a memoir that is coming out with HarperColllins in the fall of 2016. Jessica grew up in Southern California and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. You can learn more about Jessica’s new book and all things JAB at www.jessicaanyablau.com.

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author (she wants to tattoo that on her forehead because she still fears it was a mistake) of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You–and 8 other novels. Her new novel Cruel Beautiful World will be out October 4th and she begs everyone to please buy it, read it, and spread the word—and if you want to be her best friend, she also insists that everyone buy and read the work of Jessica Anya Blau, Elissa Schappell and Jane Delury. More fun facts at www.carolineleavitt.com

Elissa Schappell is the author of Blueprints for Building Better Girls and Use Me. She is the former Hot Type book columnist at Vanity Fair, a former senior editor of The Paris Review, and co-founder and now editor-at-large of Tin House magazine. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.