Q & A with Journalist, Blogger & Memoirist Sarah Barnes

Welcome back, people. Today I am thrilled to present to you an interview with my great pal, Sarah Barnes. I met Sarah back in the mid-90s when I was volunteering in a special needs classroom over at Casis Elementary. Sarah has two lovely daughters, Meredith and Caroline. If you read the Statesman and have seen Sarah's column, you know that Meredith is disabled-- the hemispheres of her brain do not have a way to communicate with each other. Sarah has been documenting Meredith's progress for many years, and it has been wonderful not only to read the reports but also to see, with my own eyes, how far along Meredith has come. You can still read Sarah in the Statesman. You can also catch her onstage whenever there's a Dick Monologues performance-- she's part of the amazing cast. And now you can also read her great blog: A Different Road: Saccharine-Free Stories on Special Needs. For this interview, Sarah discusses everything from her early days in journalism to her writing process. 

SG: Tell me about your background as a writer-- you got a degree in journalism, right? And from there, where did you go for work?

SB: Yeah, my journalism degree was from here at UT-Austin. I was unhappy and in a sorority, so, you know, finding journalism and The Daily Texan was my salvation. God I loved the Texan…I loved the people. We were news addicts and just outraged at everything and everybody and we hated the Statesman, where I worked later. We used to literally pin it to the wall with snarky comments about inaccuracies. The parties were hilarious because we’d talked about the same serious stuff we did in the newsroom, only slurring. Good times.

After graduation, I did the newspaper tour hitting all the garden spots like Lubbock where I covered obits, records and the medical school. Covering records in Lubbock meant you had to record births, marriages, probates and funerals every day. And that was just one family. Ha,ha. I mean I’d write “babies” on one page and “deaths” on the other. Circle of life, my friend. But, you know, that did introduce me to the importance of accuracy because you did get a nasty phone call if you screwed up a death.

The first day on the job at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal - oh did I tell you it was named that for the avalanche of news? Awesome. Anyway, that first day I was routed calls from four different funeral directors with their dead person information. I was on deadline for another story and I’m like, what gives? We actually had a phone operator for the newsroom that answered the main phone line and he sat perched above the newsroom on a raised platform looking out at us like an eagle over its nest. It was truly bizarre. He apologized for giving me so many obits, saying, “Oh, “sorry darlin’ I thought you were the new obit girl.” I’ve been called many things, but never an obit girl. My favorite obit? Just one line: “He was a retired cowboy.”

From there I went to The Des Moines Register, which is certainly the best place to be in journalism once every four years.  I was too inexperienced to get a decent assignment for the caucuses, so my friends and I would entertain ourselves looking for broadcast celebrities. My favorite moment was when Tom Brokaw came into the newsroom and started walking down the aisles talking to department heads and then he kept going and I was like oh my god, he is coming over here! And he did and he spoke to me! That man was hand-SOME.

During my stay in the Midwest frozen tundra, I got assigned “loaner” duty. This meant as a reporter from a Gannett paper (the Register) I got tapped by an editor to be sent to USA Today just outside Washington, D.C. for four months because it was also a Gannett paper, thus a loan. Isn’t that weird? This was an absurd but beautiful plan: Loaners were given free room and board at 925, the name of a high rise just down the street from the Kennedy Center and the Watergate building. I couldn’t believe I’d be shopping for my groceries at the Watergate. I mean it made me feel like my vegetable selections were being scrutinized. In addition to paid rent, I got a $1,000 stipend every month and a free roundtrip ticket to pretty much anywhere in the country I wanted to fly or I could fly someone in to see me. It was crazy ridiculous. So, basically the job just got in the way of shopping and museums and weekend trips to New York, Boston and Philadelphia.

The job was really difficult. I mean how much can you assimilate if you only have four months? The staffers weren’t real interested in befriending us, so I mainly hung out with other loaners. My favorite assignment was reporting and writing briefs for the left hand column of the Life front. It was celebrity gossip, music and most any pop culture reference that would draw readers. When they gave me this assignment, I was like what am I going to do for the next seven hours of my day? That was the craziest week I have ever had. Ever. I had 50 calls a day. Make it STOP. The Bananarama people were the worst. They just hounded me ever day for publicity.

I got one true front page story when I was there when we broke the news on Oprah Winfrey’s diet. I wrote the “don’t try this at home” sidebar. It was kind of cool to see it in newspaper racks knowing it was all over the country.  For another story I interviewed Dr. Spock, Dr. Ruth and Dr. Joyce Brothers about where they thought babies came from when they were children. Do you even remember these people?

SG: When did you start at the Statesman and what did you do/are you doing there?

SB: Yeah, I had two different eras there, the first from 1990 – 93. I was a business reporter, which was a good experience, but I’d never go back to that beat because I wasn’t that great at it and I found very few things I was interested in writing about. I did love the oil and gas beat. I had assignments in places like Giddings where we would go out into the field and talk to roughnecks about the benefits of a new technique called horizontal drilling. Yee –haw.

Then I went to city desk.  I once had to interview a mother an hour after her little boy got killed trying to “outrun” a car on Interstate 35. That was one of the toughest assignments I ever had and I can remember thinking this is what reporters do, but when I raised my fist to knock on that door, I felt my stomach churn. So naturally I moved across the aisle to the Arts and Entertainment department, where I became an editor for the first time. I have to say editing heavyweights like Michael Corcoran and Don McLeese was a formidable challenge, but the free pass to SXSW was an outstanding reward. I saw so many showcases that had a “buzz” band and first time acts that were sure to be noticed. I really loved all that.

But when Meredith was born and we found her neurological problem, I felt I had to leave. I remember being so angry, not at Meredith, but the facts. I guess I could have hired a nanny or something, but it just didn’t feel right. So suddenly I was making runs for physical therapy instead of lunch engagements. Before, when I walked into my job at the Statesman I knew exactly what I needed to do, but with Meredith I just had no idea what to do, how to fix her. I started writing and two years later I would have a regular column, “A Different Road,” written in first person, something entirely new to me.  It was a small ray of happiness in my irrevocable abyss of responsibility. Does that even make sense? It was like I had found something good to say about this, this horribly wrong turn for my family

SG: In one of your pieces for the Dick Monologues, you talk about the sexism of working at some small town papers. Care to elaborate on that here? Do you think that happens any more?

SB: Ugh. Yeah. As long as there are dicks, there will be trouble. I think women are much better equipped to deal with it now because they have history behind them that I didn’t in terms of sexual harassment laws and zero tolerance and more women are in management now. God, I hope so anyway. You know in the old days, reporters seemed to never go home. It was the 12-hour-days and heavy drinking that created stress and led to unwanted behavior. I think so much of that has changed now with health issues and family dynamics.

So I did find world class harassment in Lubbock, but I also had a little problem at the Dallas Morning News. Ok,I won’t name names, but let me just give you the facts. I had been working for the Dallas News for a year in the Austin capitol bureau and I was really tight with the reporters there and the Dallas editors welcomed me to the stable even though I was an intern. I really, really wanted to work there, so you know, I was hopeful. They flew me in for a tryout of sorts and I did well, they told me, but nothing more was ever said about it.  Then one month before I was going to complete a layout class for my journalism degree and graduate, I got a call from one of the Dallas editors who said he had a good opportunity where I could do clerk type work and sort of get to know the newsroom for a week, but I would not be doing stories. 

I told him a week in Dallas would prevent me from graduating. I also mentioned that clerking was not on my career path. Then in a sweetening of the pot gesture I found extremely disturbing they said they’d put me up at the Four Seasons. What the hell kind of shenanigans is that? Why would they shell out that kind of money on a 21-year-old unproven reporter to file clips when it’s cheaper just to get a temp? I remember the stunning inappropriateness of it ….  they were sort of dangling this opportunity in front of me as an “in” to the paper. Pretending to be a secretary or whatever job description they were attaching to this seemed a hell of way to earn my stripes. They were incredulous that I didn’t want to do this and even offered to talk to my professor, who told me he would likely just tell them to go to hell.

So, go on.  This next incident wasn’t exactly harassment, but a huge blow to my apparel expectations. I asked the Morning News for an official interview about six months after I graduated and I snagged one with a top-ranking editor. Ok, great, so I drove to Dallas with clips and a resume, which was sort of ridiculous since I knew everyone, but you know I was steeped in that career girl earnestness of the 80s, so I put on heels and hose and waited for him at the restaurant. He was like 30 minutes late and as we sat down at a booth, I thought why is one of the most powerful editors in the state of Texas sitting across the booth from me in running shorts dripping with sweat? Was that a compliment or was I just not worth a pair of pants? Or, maybe he just couldn’t wear the pants. Ha, ha.

You know it’s all good, since it prepared me for Lubbock. I swear to god you will not believe this. Just six months into my job there, the executive editor with his own glass cubicle summoned me to his office to ask me if I was interested in being interviewed for a book he was writing on sex. And, you know, we could meet at the hotel bar. I’m not making this up! What is it with hotels and editors? I never got back to him and the other male reporters told me it was something he did to all the new girls. This is as humiliating as it sounds and are young women putting up with that shit now? This happened at the same place where boxes of Kleenex were issued to the women only. I’m not kidding. Is this because I’m going to cry over a story? Maybe an obit?  There are no words.

SG: You have a brand spanking new blog-- tell me about it. 

SB: Yes! I’m so excited. The website is sarahbarnes.com and it’s called A Different Road: Saccharine-Free Stories on Special Needs, which is primarily stories about raising my daughter Meredith, who has disabilities. Wait! Don’t run screaming from the room. Yes, it is a rather narrow niche, but my whole mission here is to offer stories that not only foster understanding of my role as a mother, but also evoke empathy from people not in my camp. I hear from so many readers that have been dealt the wrong set of cards and they can relate with me even though their issue may have nothing to do with kids. I always feel like those are the most important connections I can make. I mean everyone has some sort of “different road” in life, so why not share it and I hope they will. I think the blog is all about catharsis.

The thing about writing it is that I never thought I’d feel so liberated. Wheeeee, I can write about anything. It took me forever to come up with those six words “saccharine-free stories on special needs” because I didn’t want to be boxed in by the special needs label, but I also knew the journalist in me really wanted to break it open and give a realistic portrait of what my life is like on a weekly basis. So the blog is a much easier medium to write about all that. I still love the newspaper, but it’s a different demographic and expectation. When I push that “publish” button for the blog, it’s like, ok, people in Australia are now reading about Meredith.

I also have a Resources Page with contacts and news and a section I love called Darts and Laurels, which is sort of a way to applaud businesses and individuals that have done something good for people with disabilities. If you get a dart, you are not doing something right, ranging from bad access to your building to bad legislation or writing really inexcusable things on Dick Clark. He has speech impairments from a stroke, but still does co-hosting of the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, a live network New Year’s Eve countdown in Times Square. His performance was called touching, morbid and retarded, depressing and inappropriate. You know if you listened, you could understand everything Clark said. Where’s the advocacy?

SG: You're also working on a memoir. Regular readers of this blog know I can't resist asking all my interviewees about The Way Things Are Now vs. How They Used to Be in publishing. So, given that you have a new blog and a memoir on the same topic-- well what do you think? Think people are reading less long-form (book length) stuff? What are you doing to get the memoir published?

SB: It’s funny but some pretty weighty writers are telling me to not even go the NY agent route. It’s frustrating and no one is taking memoirs anyway. Still, do I want to end up hawking myself on KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) next to some guy who has written about his ship in a bottle collection?  Hopefully I can land somewhere in between at a small specialty press. I’m just hoping to get it published at all. It’s short so theoretically I could publish it on my website, but, you know, I think first time book writers want to hold out for real paper. I’d like to think people are still reading books, and if that’s true, many more are doing it electronically.

 

I’m talking to a professional editor because being a former newspaper creature, I want my book to read like a memoir, not a bunch of newspaper clips about my daughter. This should give me a better manuscript to ship to potential agents. The blog is definitely there to support the book. So far I have talked to one agent in New York and said she wasn’t accepting memoirs, but she thought I had “writing chops”. Oh, I love that term!!! I’ve always wanted to hear I have chops, like a good musician.

SG: How to ask this delicately? Oh, wait, "delicate" is not in my repertoire. But, okay, so you write about Meredith specifically and disabilities in general. In fact, you've won awards for your writing. What's it like-- you have a lot of really intense challenges as the parent of a kid with disabilities and yet this part of your life, well you've used it to enlighten and console and educate so many people. Will you talk about that?

SB: Oh, Spike. I lost “delicate” the night I got Meredith’s diagnosis. You know something weird? The next day after I talked to the doctor one of my first thoughts was well I’ll just write about this. I mean the whole diagnosis seemed like such an affront in a way. I followed the pregnancy book to the word in each chapter-- I was perfect. And then I get this call from a doctor I don’t even really know saying my daughter is missing part of her brain and I was like holy shit. I will write about this fucked up call. I will write about how I became the other mom, the one with the baby that looks nothing like yours. It’s uncomfortable and it makes me cry every single day. I will write. So I lost “delicate” that night. And I did begin writing.

Every morning when she slept I’d go to the computer and spill it. I did this for two years and then I realized hey maybe others want to hear about it. I always tried to write it from a populist viewpoint so as not to offend the Gerber moms, a term I used for those with typical children who ignore me because they don’t want to think about what could have gone wrong. I’m not here to threaten, just inform, you know. One of my main themes is that I don’t believe there is a real blessing here. Hard work, humor, poignancy, yes. Meredith is one of the funniest people I know and I love sharing the unexpected quirky side of her too.

Providing information on topic so that people understand is the heart of what I did at newspapers, so it was never a foreign concept. I just can’t suppress it all, you know?  If the whole deal with Meredith had not happened, I would have stayed at the paper and maybe followed the editor track. Of course I’d probably be out of a job by now. I also think I’d do more freelance writing like travel stories and profiles for magazines and newspapers. A few years ago, I edited the H.E.B. magazine and it was fun but you can’t do a narrative on a casserole recipe.

SG: I've watched you In Process building the blog, writing the book. Will you tell us a bit about what your process is like-- when do you find time to write? Do you do multiple drafts? 

SB: Yeah, I am lousy with multiple drafts and I never seem to learn that when I’m writing first person stuff my story can really lose its color and spontaneous nature when I continue to rewrite. So in the first draft I get the initial concept and key metaphors – if there are any -  and descriptions. The second draft I may change some word choices and add more color and description to pull people in. At this point I should just quit and turn it in to my editor, but I’ll usually sit on it for another day or two on idle and that’s when the piece can get really bogged down. I always joke with you that my writing is Victorian somehow, like it should be read in the parlor because it’s not very edgy. My whole new plan is to become conversational, more edgy. You know I just want to find the punk rocker in myself, like you Spike.

The question about when I write is always humorous to me. You know I get some of my best material when I’m in the car or falling asleep. I keep a notebook in the nightstand. I’m not a morning person, but my brain is best then so I usually get to the computer right after the kids are gone. It’s weird because if I go upstairs even to brush my teeth, I begin to lose momentum.  Yeah, pajamas, coffee and typing are definitely my writer trifecta.

.

SG: Are you going to focus fully on the blog now? Or will you be pursuing other writing opportunities, too?

SB: Well, time is the main deal killer on adding new writing on top of my blog. Meredith will be transitioning to high school and Caroline to middle school, so I’m expecting much change next fall. I wish I could be one of those moms that multitasks, but I’m not good at it and it’s not like I get a do-over with them.

So, yeah, focusing on the blog will be top priority. I mean just building that blog was unbelievably complicated-- God, do not get involved in the backend of the site and learn about widgets and plugins. They are not your friends. I also love taking the pictures for the blog. It’s goofy, but it feels like my own mini newspaper when I do that.

SG: What else? 

SB: Being a writer is so powerful and though much of the traditional media is going away, writers will still be needed to explain nuclear physics, to tell a powerful story and to piss people off. Why would I ever consider doing anything else?

A Delightfully Long Q & A with the AMAZING Hank Stuever!

Hank Stuever Thinking: Photo by Michael Witchita
copyright 2009

Y'all,

I am beyond beside myself with joy to be bringing you this latest installment in the World's Slowest Moving Blog of All Time. Please allow me to introduce you to my wonderful friend, Hank Stuever. I met Hank back in the '90s when he wrote for the Austin American-Statesman. If memory serves (and I'm going to say it does, even if we don't always like what it serves) the last feature Hank wrote for the AAS before he left to take a features writing gig at The Washington Post was a profile of yours truly. My first book had just come out, and Hank followed me around, quizzed my friends, and put together a piece that was super excellent. Why is that? Is it because I am such a super excellent subject? I'd like to think so. But the truth is, Hank is such a super excellent journalist that you could give him a litter box full of year old cat shit and he would write the heck out of a story on that topic. 

After ten years of reporting and writing features for DC's daily, Hank took over as The Washington Post's TV critic. In Hank's words, "All told, I've been a newspaper reporter/writer for 21 years and I feel very fortunate about that, even now. I hope to be one for many years to come, but I'm not hanging my existence on it anymore."

But wait, there's more! Hank also has two books out: Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere, a collection of his essays and articles; and Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present. To research the latter he spent three consecutive Christmas seasons in the Dallas exburb, Frisco, TX. Again, in Hank's words: "I follow the stories of three families as they shop, decorate, and pray their way through the nation's most over-the-top celebration in 2006, 2007, and the economically downbeat denouement of 2008." 

I read Tinsel huddled in bed on a Christmas Eve and morning in 2009 in Paris, where I had (as I often do) fled my home country to escape Christmas. But reading Tinsel-- with its great insights and descriptions-- counted as an okay activity despite its contents. See? Hank is so good he can make me dig something holiday related. Toward that end, the one other thing I like about the holidays is the same thing that reminds me of Hank every time I see it-- the old air traffic control tower in Mueller, when the big NOEL lights go up each year. (They're up now.)

I sent Hank about five million questions recently. Below you'll find what he had to say. For still more Hank you can Check Out His TV Reviews and Read His Blog TONSIL. Thanks, Hank!

The Symbol of Hank Stuever!!

SG: Brief arc of your career-- NM, TX, DC, right? Am I missing anything? 

HS: That's right. I graduated from Loyola University (New Orleans) in 1990 with a journalism degree. I had done some summer internships at papers and, of course, donated most of my life to the college newspaper, but my first real job was at The Albuquerque Tribune (RIP), an evening newspaper in a two-newspaper town, where I started out in 1990 as a general-assignment reporter on the city desk, which means a I wrote a little bit of everything. There's always a lot of strange and bizarre news in New Mexico, which is why "Breaking Bad" has for me the ring of a documentary instead of fiction. I learned all the basics there: how to look stuff up, how to knock on doors, how to handle yourself in touchy situations, how to empathize with sources, how to hang around long enough for something to happen, and how to write rillyrillyrilly fast.

After a few years, they moved me to the features department to write narratives, where my stories (and the time I spent writing them) grew exponentially. The great thing about the Tribune was that it had sort of embraced its fate and decided to go down with guns blazing. Actually I don't like guns, so my preferred inappropriate metaphor for life at theTribune is that is was kind of like a Make-a-Wish foundation for journalists. Faced with death, we took ourselves to the journalistic equivalent of Disneyland. We always felt the paper could close next week, so the editors put a big premium on risk and creativity along with strong journalism. That newsroom was very alive, very passionate; 60 people arguing and laughing a lot. In spite of the diagnosis, the paper stayed open long past its sell-by date. (Scripps-Howard closed it down in 2008.)

In 1996, I was hired at the Austin American-Statesman where I worked for a little more than three years, writing feature stories for everything from page 1 to the XL.ent section (also RIP). It was a really good time to have been there, part of an effort to expand and improve the Statesman's feature writing. Also, like everyone else who has ever lived in Austin, I think the city was at its most interesting when I was there. (That's a joke.)

In 1999, I was hired by the Post and moved to Washington. Working for the Style section, the best newspaper features section in the country, had been my number 1 goal all along; I had interned there as a college student in the summer of '89.

SG: Are you tired of being asked about the Pulitzer nominations? I am just SO PROUD OF YOU for that. Well, I'm just so proud of you, period. Maybe you can just say what it feels like to find out you've been nominated.
HS: Nobody ever mentions it anymore because it happened so long ago. There was a rom-com many years back with George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer in it. Clooney played a newspaper columnist in New York. He was having a big fight with his editor and shouted something like "I almost won a Pulitzer last year!" And the editor snaps back, "Nobody 'almost' wins a Pulitzer." 

That's pretty much how everyone feels about it. Still, the jury does nominate three finalists in each journalism category. Somebody wins and the other two finalists get a very nice note on Columbia University letterhead, reminding them just how close they came. 

I was a finalist in the feature writing category twice, both times for when I worked at The Albuquerque Tribune: In 1993 for a 9,000-word story I wrote where I followed an Albuquerque couple through their engagement and wedding. And again in 1996 for a 5,000-word reported essay I filed from Oklahoma City, my hometown, in the immediate days after the federal building bombing. I was too young (24, then 27) to put the nominations in proper perspective, but I did put them on my resume'. Luckily, nobody around me really made too big deal of it, and all I can hope is that I didn't act like too much of an asshole about it. I think it was just an early, weird fluke.

 

SG: If you can stomach it, let's talk about Changes in the World of Writing. Crap, I don't even know where to begin. I, personally, have a theory that there is a collective grieving going on among those of us who came up in "traditional" newspaper and magazine writing. It's not that we are necessarily bitter, but the whole thing just sort of came crashing down and I, for one, have felt pretty unmoored at times, trying to figure out What Next?. And you? What's it been like for you?HS: I read an essay by futurist/tech guru Clay Shirky a few years ago from which I gleaned a line that he either wrote, or my brain thinks it read and has magically attributed to him, but basically it is this: Stop taking the renaissance personally.
That's been my mantra ever since. Whether you are a writer or a reader, we are all collectively living through and definitely grieving the undoing of six centuries of mass media and the printed word. 

The last renaissance (which we call, um, "the Renaissance" and the more pretentious among us pronounce "the re-NAY-sahnz") took, like, what, a century or more, right? And how long was the Industrial Revolution? Well, we're going through a big renaissance now. And it just destroys everything I love. Newspapers, for one. Magazines. The notion of paying a writer for her work. The notion of paying editors. Book releases, book signings, book parties, and worst of all, the loss of bookstores. No longer being able to see what someone on the subway is reading, because even book covers are gone now. It took the music industry, too -- our record stores, our record collections and the idea that everyone makes out and/or gets laid to one hit song in the same summer. It's taking away shopping malls, so it's taking away something I consider key to the American adolescent experience. 

The Internet abhors fixed destinations. Everything has to be in motion, temporary, here and gone. It's also going to destroy the lovely act of going to a movie with a theater full of like-minded strangers. And what it promises in return has not, for me, been a heartwarming or sentimental experience -- not yet. And it keeps wanting to replace "new" things before I'm used to loving them. My MacBook for example. I've recently been informed that nobody will have a laptop in 10 years. Well, I was just starting to love my MacBook.

Nevertheless, it is a renaissance. We're all headed there together, do or die. And I remind myself five times a day to stop taking the renaissance personally. Which means, when the renaissance snuffs out my job and/or my newspaper (and it will come), I have to not take it personally, which is really fucking hard. Because all this new stuff came along and usurped the collective experience of media and fragmented it, personalized it, to such a degree that I feel lost. Note that I am 43. Maybe the 22-year-olds are just loving it, but when I talk to them, they are as apprehensive as I am, unless (and this is key) they are being paid to proselytize about the new ways, products, etc.

The problem is, when you work for a newspaper or write books for a major publisher (both of which I do), you're sort of participating in this frantic hurry to FIGURE IT ALL OUT. You become emotionally invested in helping find the new "business model" that will magically meld the new technology with the old literary conventions in a way that makes money, even though customers demand that everything be free. 

The Shirky essay, as I recall, suggested that none of us will figure it out or see it in a settled state, nor will our children -- at least not the business part of it. Something else will rise from the rubble of our technological agitation and perhaps our grandchildren will get a taste of what media really becomes. Or maybe people 100 years from now will get it right. I believe that, if only because it helps me not take the renaissance personally. It reminds me that we're all just swept up in something very big. When it's long over, we'll all be reduced to the tiniest footnote in this story -- all of the journalistic nonfiction of our era, from Horace Greeley to Rolling Stone to Woodward & Bernstein to Tina Brown to the Huffington Post. It will all just be crammed into a single footnote, if people of the future even DO footnotes.

I admit my thoughts may be fatalistic. My latest coping mechanism is this: When I get super pissed or worried about it all, I go to my online bank account. I think about how pissed (or anxious) I am, and I transfer a relative amount from checking to savings. I'm storing nuts for the long winter. Something about that just makes me feel a little better. But most days, I'm actually optimistic in a strange way. Or accepting. Then again, ask me the day after I get laid off.

SG: How did you get into/wind up/fight for your current position writing about TV? And really, I confess, my fantasy image is that your job involves a really nice, really comfy couch that you can just sit on all day and watch TV and eat lots of snacks and it's just all super awesome. Will you give me a reality check?HS: The Post's previous TV critic did the job for 34 years, which, while impressive, was way too long in my opinion. He also took the buyout (retirement) offer but remained on contract. There were enough signals that the job would come open sooner rather than later, so I just asked for it. I had been writing feature stories for 20 years, my only break being the time I took off to write a book. Some of my feature stories were done in a day's work, and some took weeks and even months to finish. But they all had this in common: The minute they were finished and printed in the paper, my editor wanted to know what was coming next. So that rock always rolled back to the bottom of the hill. I could tell I was starting to run out of ideas. It felt like I had done a lot of subjects the same way, in the same style. I also felt like I always had a term paper due, and realized I had been feeling that way since 1986, when I actually had term papers due. So I needed something new, but fun-new, not boring-new.

So, TV critic. Nowadays I never have to wonder what I'm working on next. There is always too much TV to write about -- a full-blast firehose of 800 channels pointed at me. My approach to it is that I am still writing stories about society and culture. Only I am doing it through the prism of television (or screened media, since people now haughtily insist that watching an entire season of "Boardwalk Empire" on their iPads is NOT like watching TV) and I'm doing it in the form of a critical review or essay. My sources are the shows themselves; watching a show is like an interviewing a story subject for me. I interrogate it. I ask why (or "hunh?") over and over. It never answers. So I'm forced to ask another source, which takes the form of research into how the show was made, by whom, why it is the way it is.
Writing criticism is harder than it looks. Everyone thinks it's easy and the Internet has only encouraged that impulse. I never thought it looked all that easy but I have learned just how hard it really is, day in and day out. I'm out of words for "fascinating" ("intriguing" "mesmerizing," "absorbing" -- all spent); there are lot more words for "boring," and a lot more shows that are. There's a lot to accomplish in 700 words or so. You have to evaluate the work on its own terms, its own genre, and sometimes ignore your own biases and tastes, only to find yourself coming back around to the fact that, no, you are being paid for your taste and readers await your judgment. You also have to write very sharp plot summations without pulling the spoiler alarm in every other sentence. You also have to be entertain-ing about enteratin-ment, if you catch my drift. And there are a lot of mistakes to potentially make -- cast names, character names, references to other shows, other years, history, fiction, geography, and most of all, what night/what channel/what time. Every show has fans who will pelt you with spitballs when you make a single, tiny error about the show or the plot.

All that said, your fantasy is not so far off. It's a great job and I'm lucky to be doing it. Sadly, there is no couch in my office but I do get paid to watch a lot of television. I try to evaluate everything that comes to me. I get new shows weeks in advance -- about a dozen new DVD screeners a day, sometimes more than that if fall is approaching. (Or I get them sent me via encrypted network press sites.) I look at everything long enough to know which stack it goes in. A lot of my job involves just keeping track of everything and when it airs and whether or not I'm going to write a full review of it. 

I file about 140 reviews/essays/stories a year, which range in length from 500 to 2,000 words. The real trick is trying to just keep ahead of the watching. I've tried to separate the "work watching" from the pleasure watching. There is also an amount of watching I have to do on shows I've already written about, but in order to stay current, I have to keep watching the new episodes. I've also tried to shield my partner, Michael, from having to watch any seriously bad TV with me at home, to varying degrees of success. I have a TV in my office in the Post newsroom. I sit in there in the dark and try to do all my work-related watching there -- which can sometimes mean I don't leave the office til 10 at night. But at least Michael will never have to watch "I Hate My Teenage Daughter."

SG: Do TV bigwigs try to schmooze you/curry favor/get in your pants?
HS: Once a year, in the summer, I go to the Television Critics Association "press tour" in Beverly Hills, at which the broadcast and cable networks do their annual dance of the seven veils for a few hundred journalists and critics. It lasts almost three weeks. What I've realized is that I'm the last of a dying breed: I'm a newspaper TV critic who has the luxury of mostly just reviewing TV shows and thinking critically about the upcoming season and "What it Means" and all that. Everyone else is multi-platform bonkers -- they're tweeting, blogging, filing constant items about TV industry gossip and cancellations, renewals, hirings, firings, ratings. They do write some reviews too, but they have to do so much else. I'm very lucky because my colleague, Lisa de Moraes, writes the Post's daily "TV Column," and she's all about that other stuff. She's also very funny.


So TV bigwigs don't even know I'm alive. But they definitely know about Lisa, and she's nobody's fool.




SG: You've written two books. It's a tough process in my experience-- not just the writing but the marketing, the whole enchilada. Got any thoughts on book writing for us-- will you ever do it again?HS: My first memorable exposure to "the whole enchilada" was, interestingly enough, when I first met you. I wrote a profile of you for the Statesman in 1999 when All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy came out and you were, as ever, a study in DIY promotion. Even though you had a big publisher, you had recognized that the fate of the book was going to depend on your own hustle. That always stuck with me. The biggest mistake authors make is thinking their work is done when they hit SEND on a manuscript. In a way, the hardest work begins there.

I keep wondering when either of my books will really be "done"? Because if I keep checking their Amazon ranks, if I keep in touch with the people portrayed in my books, then how can I honestly say they're done, that the experience is technically over? You are correct -- the research, the writing, the marketing, the worry. Bah!

But I also loved it. Bringing out a book is still a form of writerly validation like no other. My first book was kind of an easy induction into the publishing world -- it was a collection of my previously published essays and stories from the 1990s and early '00s, called Off Ramp. It was published by Henry Holt. The editor was very enthusiastic about it -- my voice, the stories, the sensibility, the themes. It was published (in 2004) with the understanding that I would come back with a longer, all-original work of non-fiction. We batted around a few subjects and in 2005 I came to him with an idea for a journalistic narrative about Christmas in modern-day America, in which I would move to the suburbs someplace and follow a few families through a few consecutive Christmas seasons -- to study the intersection of myth and reality, not just in the whole idea of Christmas, but also the retail economy, the wars, politics, popular culture, religion. But gently so; not a harangue or a Bill McKibben book. 

Everyone loved the idea, I wrote a proposal, a contract was signed, I got a leave of absence from the Post, I moved to suburban Dallas for many months and it just went on and on and on. When I came to, it was 2009 and I had spent almost four years reporting, writing, editing and marketing that book, called Tinsel. I had followed my first editor to another publisher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and then, after some drama, my book went to another editor and so on and so on. In many ways it was exactly the book I set out to write, and in some key ways it was not. You just don't know until you do it -- and that goes for nonfiction books as well as novels. You have no idea where the material is taking you. Then it comes out and you go through a very peculiar form of grief for it.

Totally worth it, but also hard to make a case for doing it again. It doesn't add up on paper -- what I was paid to do the book [a nice sum], divided by how many hours I actually worked on it [equaling mere pennies per hour], times the square root of the money I chipped in to promote it [traveling to book signings, calling in every multimedia favor I could think of], and on the other side of that equation is the publisher's own math, which is just a series of minus signs, because the book wasn't a best-seller. Yet, to their credit, no one at my publisher had anything but nice things to say to me, ever, about the book. They loved it, they tried to sell it, we got some good press, radio, TV. Now what? They left the door open to new ideas for another book.

I've tried to open myself up to the idea of new book. I get little pieces of something and jot them down. I go on wild Google chases after the spark of an idea. I've even toyed around with a novel, something totally new to me. But really I've just been too busy with my real job to get another book proposal launched. 

And while I dither, the book industry has changed as much if not more than the newspaper industry. The E-book revolution is now moving at supersonic speed. I'm not even sure I could sell a book proposal now, or sell one for enough money to live on while I write it. Just thinking about it makes me antsy.

SG: You seem to really have hopped into the virtual life-- you have a blog, a lively FB page, etc. Did you resist this at first-- I mean, if I recall, your cell phone is an orange juice can and a really long string.
HS: I'll have you know that I upgraded my orange juice can to a banana, which has a sliding Qwerty keyboard circa 2008. A "dumbphone" works for me -- I can do calls and texts, that's it.

Meanwhile, if my blog was my front lawn, the Homeowners Association would have taken me to court by now. I've left old cars and refrigerators on it, and I almost never mow. 

My personal Facebook page is great fun, but I have whittled down my "friends" list to about 580 people I actually know and/or like. (I also have a Facebook "fan" page, as an author, with 458 people on it, none of whom I hope are waiting with bated breath for updates because they would have suffocated by now.)

I Tweet, too (@hankstuever), a few times per week. I fleetly flee I fly. And I don't think any of it makes a damn bit of difference.

I'm treating all of it the way some people buy empty land. Maybe we'll retire here, Martha, right here on this blog.

I was off work for a week recently, a total do-nothing staycation, and I was driving somewhere and in a moment of private clarity, I decided that I'm STICKING TO MY WAYS. 

I'm entering a cranky cuss phase. I'm entitled to that, because I have rolled with a lot of change. But for now, I'M STICKING TO MY WAYS. I'm sticking with my dumbphone. I'm not joining Google+. I will tweet if I want and I will Facebook if I want but I'm not going to meld them into some social reader account that synchs me up to instantaneousness and lets the world know what 10 articles I just clicked on and what bar I just walked into. I'm still without an e-book reader or a tablet. I like books; I like they way they smell and the way they feel and how I feel when I buy one and have it with me. I still read my newspaper in the morning. I refuse to check my phone for texts while having dinner with a friend. I'm sticking to my ways as they currently are in 2011. I will be exactly where we agreed to meet at the time we agreed to meet, and if you start sending me last-minute texts with amendments to the plan and GPS coordinates of the new location and a change to the cast of who is joining us, I will probably just bag it and go home, because I still believe that a plan is a plan, and that plans are worth sticking to. 

I do have all my music in the cloud but I'm never ditching my vinyl. I do a lot of the "new" things, but I'm drawing a line for now, because where does this end? Just because you CAN have something new doesn't mean you have to download it. From now on, I will need to be CONVINCED. Not just sold, not just tantalized, but CONVINCED that this new thing is indeed better and worth it. Otherwise I just feel like we're all being too easily manipulated.

SG: Is it wrong for me to ask you what you see as the future of Commercial Writing (in general) and Your Own Professional Writing Life? If it is not wrong for me to ask, please answer me.
HS: Stop taking the renaissance personally?

SG: In my writing workshops I often find myself sort of accidentally saying things like, "When I write less I feel better"-- not the best marketing strategy for a writing workshop. But sometimes I find that with less writing work coming in, the silver lining is that I have more time for other stuff. Have you encountered any unexpected silver lines as things have shifted?
HS: I'm not 100 percent sure about any silver lining, but one thing I'm trying to embrace, because it seems like the only way to survive but it also seems like a path to some sort of happiness, is the Internet's disregard for perfection, since the Internet can always Fix It Later. 

The copy editor who lives inside me, as well as the designer, is learning the zen of the fast file, the ephemeral quality to what we do know and how we read, the sense of "good enough." These days I file a lot more, a lot faster, and have at least learned to let it go. Somewhat. I think "letting it go" was going to have to come for me anyhow, in my 40s, as I learned, as all grownups do, that sometimes your best really does have to be good enough. It is what it is, and all those other sports cliches that absolve failure in the face of a good try. 

I think, subconsciously, the undoing of mass media is relieving us of some of the internalized pressures that come with the fact (or delusion) that "everyone's going to read this, so it has to be perfect." Take away everyone, fracture the concept of "everyone" into a thousand little niches, and suddenly you're a little bit more free to be less than perfect. 

But you and I both know that as soon as I e-mailed you all these answers, I asked to have them back, so I could correct some typos and rethink some lines. But I do think the Internet gives as the freedom to be less perfect. You've known about this a lot longer than I have -- the freedom that comes when you remove the pressure. Like, how about we all quit beating ourselves up over the fact that whatever we're working is not going to win the National Book Award? 

I don't think things like the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prizes are going to survive the renaissance. That's another tradition that's going to have to be solved by people 100 years from now -- how to discern quality from everything else. Also, there will be this notion that nothing is ever done. You can always go back and improve a novel and re-upload it, based on reader suggestions. You can keep building a non-fiction piece after the first upload, when new information comes to light. You can't give a Pulitzer to a moving target.

Let me beat this renaissance metaphor one more time, which I've said before somewhere else, to someone else: The point of living in (or through) a renaissance is to leave behind some really lovely frescoes. Paint your brains out and disregard the cultural upheaval around you. For all you know, 400 years from now, someone will be restoring all your Information Age works, to preserve them. (For all you know, and for all you don't know, because we'll all be dead. How's that for some sign-off sunshine?) 

Announcing Three New Workshops Including Two Quickies!

Hey Y'all,

So I've got three workshops coming up. The first two are mini-workshops-- a three-class Zine Workshop Tuesdays in December and a three-class Write to Read in Public Workshop Thursdays in December. The third workshop will be the first six-week session of 2012. I know it might seem a little early to be signing up for 2012 BUT the six-week workshops have been selling out so I want to give y'all a heads up now (plus, selfishly speaking, I like to get my calendar worked out in advance). Here are some nitty-gritty details. If you want to sign up for one or more of these, please EMAIL ME and put WORKSHOP in the subject heading. A 33% deposit holds your place in the class.

Thanks,
Spike

'Zine Workshop
Dates: 12/13, 12/20 & 12/27
Time: 7 - 9 pm
Cost: $75
Description: Zines-- those wonderful and amazing homemade magazines from the '80s-- are making a big comeback. Even the NYT knows-- check out this article on the topic. Or do some local investigation and head on over to DOMY Books to check out their amazing selection of locally produced zines. In this three week workshop we'll each make one (or more if you're fast) zine that addresses some passion. So maybe I'll do a knitting zine or a haiku zine or a Boston Terrier zine or a zine about how when I'm 80 I'm going to start smoking and drinking and eating fried chicken again. I'll bring some supplies-- paper, pens, glue, scissors, magazines for collages, etc. We'll also schedule two optional field trips (not held during class time) to go to Kinko's and DOMY-- so we can make copies of our zines and explore other people's zines.

Write to Read in Public Workshop
Dates: 12/8, 12/15 & 12/22
Time: 7 - 9 pm
Cost: $75
Description: At the end of our last six-week writing workshop the class did a public reading at Hyde Park Theatre. It was AWESOME. This success, combined with a request I got from past attendee LM (thanks LM!) to do a mini-workshop has led me to offer this three-week session. Each attendee will pick a theme or two on the first night and start writing in class. We'll spend the three sessions whipping one piece into shape and practice reading it out loud for maximum effect. Then we'll have a public reading. (The reading will not be held on one of the meeting nights, but shortly thereafter.)

Winter Six Week Writing Workshop
Dates: 1/5, 1/12, 1/19, 1/26, 2/2, 2/9
Time: 7 - 9 pm
Cost: $300 (ask me about a discount for returning students)
Description: We'll spend six weeks talking about all aspects of memoir/creative non-fiction from process to publication. There are weekly homework assignments, in-class writing as time allows, group feedback and one-on-one coaching via email during the course of the six weeks. See the testimonials page to find out what past attendees have to say about their experience. The six-week workshops sell out super fast so don't wait to sign up.

Join Us for Word Up: An Evening of Readings at Hyde Park Theatre

Hi Y'all,

I've been offering my six-week writing workshops for over a year now. And every new session we talk about the possibility of presenting in public work created in the workshop. Well we've finally done it-- an evening of readings is scheduled. I was at rehearsal last night and I am SO PSYCHED. This reading is going to be great. I hope you'll join us. Here are the details:

WORD UP

An evening of readings hosted by Spike Gillespie @ Hyde Park Theatre.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

7 pm until we're done (around 9 pm)

Cost: $3 cash at the door

What is this thing: Members of Spike Gillespie's ongoing writing workshop are taking the stage and offering up readings on a list of topics so broad they make the side of a barn seem narrow. 

Please join us as we celebrate The Word-- thinking words, capturing them, sharing them, feeling them. Refreshments (soft drinks, beer, wine, and H20) available for cash donations

Reserve your seats-- email: spike@spikeg.com 

Interview with James Pennebaker-- Author of The Secret Life of Pronouns (and a Personal Hero of Mine)

If you’re at all like me, the prospect of a book about parts of speech makes you salivate. So when I saw a NYT book review for Jamie Pennebaker’s latest book, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us, I pretty much needed to hang a drool bucket from my chin. Besides being excited about the book, my thrill was compounded because I am honored to call Jamie my friend, and any time a friend of mine publishes a book it is SUPER AWESOME. (Not long ago, I interviewed Jamie’s wife, Ruth, also my friend and a brilliant and hilarious writer, when her most recent novel, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough, came out.)

Despite his crazy busy schedule—in addition to authoring books, he is also a Professor and Chair of the UT Department of Psychology—Jamie made time for an email interview with me. As I told him, I wish I could just corner him for days or weeks on end and ask him eighty billion questions. The pronoun book, which I just started reading and LOVE, isn’t the only thing I’d quiz him on. I also am a huge fan of his work that demonstrates how writing down your emotions can have a tremendous healing effect. I’ve used two of his books on this topic—Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions and Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma & Emotional Upheaval – to bring healing to my own life, and also as the basis for some of my work as a writing teacher.

I just cannot recommend Jamie’s work highly enough. Not only are his ideas and research fascinating, he presents them in a super accessible way. As a glutton for psychology books, I find that accessibility isn’t always the case and the dry nature of some works can totally cause the big snooze effect to kick in—not at all the case for Jamie’s work. In fact the pronoun book comes out of the gates with quotes from Lady Gaga and Paris Hilton.

And so, without further adieu, my Q & A with Jamie Pennebaker.

SG: In this new book you talk about how you sort of accidentally came upon the idea to study pronouns and function words. In your previous work, studying how writing about trauma can have a good impact on physical health, you also noted that you sort of stumbled into that work. I'm sure you aren't being falsely modest and yet... surely there is something beyond stumbling going on? Do you come up with these ideas by keeping an open mind? 

JP: I think I'm blessed with a short attention span and without a fixed world view.  I'm always attracted to odd things that don't make sense.  Perhaps this is the art of stumbling.  When you fall down, you have the unique opportunity to see the ground up close and see things you may have never noticed before.  Never in a million years would I have predicted that one day I would write a book on expressive writing or on parts of speech.  Neither of these topics held the remotest interest to me in graduate school or earlier.  Rather, in both cases I was studying something else and some remarkable patterns kept coming up that no one else seemed to notice.  I couldn't control myself -- I had to see what was going on.

SG: I have dog trainer friends loathe to reveal their occupation at dinner parties lest they get hit with requests for training advice and tales of "my amazing poodle." When people learn what you study, do you sense that they are monitoring themselves around you? For example I sort of want to not use the word "I" when writing/talking to you, lest I get classified as a narcissist (my worst nightmare). 

JP: This recent work on pronouns and other small everyday words can't help but make people self-conscious.  Even I get self-conscious talking about them sometimes.  Let me assure you that the human ear can't pick up most of these words.  You need a computer to analyze them. So you're safe.

SG: Speaking of narcissism-- let's talk about how your work relates to ME directly. I have written a lot about trauma in my life. I feel a whole lot better now, and I chalk a lot of that up to the writing. These days, I write far less often in general, and when I do write I'm more inclined to do theater and food reviews or interview people who fascinate me than I am to reveal "I"-laden deep dark secrets. Hm.... now I forget the connection I was going to make when I thought up this question days ago. I guess I wonder if there is some irony-- if people journal a lot of their bad memories, might they eventually journal their way away from first person commentary? Or maybe what I want to know is is there a direct connection between your trauma writing work and your first person studies?

JP: Let's talk about Spike.  You are no different than most people.  When terribly bad things happen to us, we naturally want to figure out what went wrong.  We almost have to be somewhat self-reflective in order to avoid the same mistakes in the future.  Writing about the upsetting experiences and your role in them is healthy.  They also coincide with depression -- another time that people use I-words at high rates.  As you note, the goal is really to get through or past the upheavals and start living a normal life again.  When people are immersed in their worlds, they stop using I-words at high rates.  So my advice is to write when life sucks and to stop writing or introspecting too much when life is going well.

SG: Have you changed the way you write and speak since you did your studies about first person pronouns? In particular, did you go out of your way to limit pronoun usage in your book about pronouns?

JP: No, I don't think that restricting your natural language is normal or even healthy.  I sometimes analyze my language but only as a gauge of what I'm thinking or feeling.  If I have some pronouns that have to be expressed, then they will be expressed.

SG: Are you ruining language for all of us? Just kidding. But so far, what I have read of the book throws me back to the moment in college when I first became aware that a lot of rock bands have four components: lead singer, bass, guitar, drums. Prior to that, I just sort of appreciated a song as a whole and didn't break it down. After that, I started straining to hear the individual parts. When you're reading/speaking, does all the research you've done make you hear and see in a different way? If so, any regrets?

JP: It is very rare that I even hear people's use of pronouns.  The only time I notice it is when someone says something that just doesn't fit -- when they use "we" when most normal people would use "I".  So no, my work has made my life richer and happier.  Regrets?  None that I can think of.  Wait.  I shouldn't have bought that striped shirt that I felt would look fabulous on me.

Announcing Next Six-Week Writing Workshop

Okay, Y'all...
At long last, I have the dates for the next Six Week Writing Workshop. The dates are:

October 20 & 27,  November 3 & 10 & 17, and December 1. Basically, that's six almost consecutive Thursdays, excepting November 24th which some people think of as a holiday called Thanksgiving. I'm more or less opposed to these pressure-filled occasions, thus I'd be perfectly content to meet for a session. But sensing no one else would show up, I'm going to skip it.

As usual, the focus of the workshop will be memoir writing, creative non-fiction, and blogging. Sessions follow a very loose structure that sometimes looks like this: approx 40 minutes of discussing Writing with a Capital W (from process to business angles and everything in between); 20 minutes of Q & A; 20 - 30 minutes of in-class writing (though sometimes we get so carried away talking this doesn't happen); 30 minutes sharing our writing and feedback. I also provide written class notes and one-on-one writing coaching via email over the course of the six weeks.

Returning students get a discount. First timers-- it's $300. I prefer to get $100 to hold a spot and the balance first night of class, but I'm glad to work with you to break it into smaller payments if necessary.

I limit the sessions to 15 people and, since there are usually many returnees, that means slots are pretty limited. So give me a holler SOON if you want to sign up. Email: spike@spikeg.com.

Thanks!
Spike