Welcome BlogHer readers
Today I'm speaking on the Blog to Book panel at the 2008 BlogHer conference, though hopefully none of you are reading this while I'm speaking on the panel because that's kind of rude. Eyes to the front please. Oh my God, everyone's staring at me! Look away, look away!
If you're stopping by for the first time, hopefully my blog will make you laugh your ass off. It did that to me. I lost 190-something pounds over two years (via diet and exercise) and blogged about it along the way because typing burns calories. These days I blog about my life through the filter of health, fitness and weight maintenance. Some of my favorite posts include:
- Definitely not the tea room
- My first half-marathon: What, no bagels?
- I support your right to look good
- Feeling strangely fine
- ...more greatest hits
Posted by PastaQueen on July 19, 2008 at 7:49 AM | Tags: blogher, blogher08
Hotter than I thought
"Hey, beautiful!" I heard a man yell. I kept walking towards downtown. "What's going on?" I slowed down and looked towards the voice yelling these words and saw a 20-something, man dressed in street clothes crossing the street, arms open, looking at me. It then occurred to me that, oh my, he was talking to me.
This left me greatly confused.
I gave the man a befuddled look, as though he'd just asked me where the library was in Portuguese. I kept waiting for him to follow up with, "Can you spare some change?" but he didn't, so I kept walking in the other direction. As I continued down the sidewalk, I came upon another man who looked at me and said, "Hey, how you doing today?" Dear Lord, why were people being so friendly on the street? What was this, the deep south? Here in the Midwestern states we typically ignore our fellow pedestrians and let them live out their hollow lives in peace, thank you very much.
I still don't know why I suddenly attracted the attention of two men while walking down the street in the middle of July. I felt like the revolving door of my office building had spun me out into an alternate dimension where I was suddenly an irresistible sex object. I looked down at my outfit and saw that I was wearing the most generic clothing possible, as if I were auditioning to be a extra in a crowd scene of a movie - jeans, t-shirt, and a purse. I wasn't even wearing foxy sunglasses.
My only hypothesis about these events has to do with the fact that I work with a bunch of guys. Typically when I'm walking around downtown, I am traveling with a pack of men, with perhaps one other woman, to get Starbucks or chow on Indian food. They are obviously scaring off the hoards of available men in the vicinity who want to throw themselves at my hotness. My co-workers are holding me back. So, if I want to score with random men on the streets, I will have to walk to get my coffee alone.
In this instance, however, I was walking to Borders to buy a map of San Francisco because it occurred to me that, "Oh hey, I am traveling there in, like, two days, and maybe I should not get lost." Or if I do get lost I should have a map handy to wave around to better alert potential muggers that I am an easy pickins' tourist.
All of this is a roundabout way to remind you that I will be at the BlogHer conference at the Westin St. Francis this July 18th-20th in San Francisco. Registration is closed, but if you are attending, my panel is on Saturday, July 19th and 3:15pm and is called "What We Do: Blog to Book Redux." I'll be speaking along with Ellen Gerstein from Wiley & Sons, literary agent Neeti Madan from Sterling Lord, and fellow blog-to-book author Rita Arens. You can also stop by the BlogHer bookstore right after the panel from 4:30pm-5:15pm where I'll be signing books. You can buy a copy there or bring your own. (I won't tell nobody.)
Last night tell I could tell I was stressed out about travelling because I ate all five of the tasty and delicious, strawberry yogurt protein bars I had intended to stuff in my suitcase as travel food. Obviously, the Topamax has worn off. My appetite has returned. And while stress eating is bad, it's nice to feel like myself again and not zombie girl. I am particularly stressed about this trip because I have never travelled this far before. I've never been to California. I've never seen the Pacific Ocean. I've never been on a four and a half hour flight. That leaves me a lot of flight time to freak out.
I worry that I will forget to pack something essential - like my pills, cell phone charger, my sunglasses - and my whole trip will be a disaster (because it's not like they sell sunglasses in California). I worry that I will forget to bring something obvious, like my flight confirmation number, and I will miss my plane. I worry that I will be sitting in the terminal waiting for my flight, but I won't hear it called because my headphones are on. I worry that the plane will be delayed and I will get there so late that the trains will stop running and I'll have to find a taxi and it will cost five bazillion dollars and the driver will only accept Euros. I wonder why I chose to fly into a strange city at 11:00pm their time, 2:00am my time (because it was cheaper). I wonder if I've packed too much and my suitcase is too heavy to practically tote around the city. I wonder if I haven't packed enough and I will be too cold or inappropriately dressed for the various events. These and a million other hypothetical scenarios are why I've also eaten three fudge pops.
However, I'm all packed now, and I'm pretty sure I didn't forget to pack my brain. On the bright side, I don't feel the need to write out a will in case my plane crashes like I did five years ago when I was petrified of air flight. That's growth, right? Once I'm there I think I'll have a good time, because I had lots of fun at BlogHer last year and I don't remember what anyone was wearing.
If you see me, please say hi. There are going to be about 1000 people there and a lot of weird mojo can happen involving status, popularity, cliques and all that crap when you get that many people together. However, we are all just people, and I think most of us are friendly and want to make new friends, so please say hi if you see me. I am just a person too. A totally, hot, sexpot of a person.
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (60)Posted by PastaQueen on July 16, 2008 at 8:42 AM | Tags: blogher, blogher08, men, san francisco, travel
Decaffeinated
"I need some caffeine," my brother yawned as he climbed off the freshly purchased air mattress on my apartment floor. He opened my fridge door. He closed my fridge door. He stared at me in horror. "You don't have sodas?"
"Um, no. Welcome to the crazy house," I replied. This was coming from the woman who drank five canned diet sodas a day back in February and loved the sweet, fizzy poison. "I don't think I have any caffeine in the house, except for some old tea bags. Technically the decaffeinated coffee has some caffeine, but you'll have to drink a lot of it to get a buzz."
"I can't believe this," he said. My poor brother had spent the previous day moving and needed the insane jolt of consciousness to the brain provided by caffeine if he was going to pack up the rest of his kitchen and closets today.
"Sorry," I said. "I got rid of all the caffeine because of my headache."
I don't know whether essentially eliminating caffeine from my diet has helped decrease the intensity of my never-ending tension-type headache I've had since Februrary 18th. However, I don't think it's made it worse. So, bub-bye sodas. You were rather heavy to carry up the stairs anyway. I would never have gone off of sodas by choice, but now that I have a chronic illness, I'm living cleaner than I ever did before. I'm drinking...water. Water! I know! I've gone completely insane and I go to the bathroom a lot. I drink water and Crystal Lite and some diet flavored teas...and occasionally you can find me in line at Starbucks. But only for one hit of coffee a day. I said I "essentially" not "totally" eliminated caffeine. I tried going off of it completely and felt in perpetual need of nap time.
And still I have a headache. I know people who drink a lot and smoke a lot and they don't have headaches (except early on certain mornings). I eat well and exercise and now I don't even drink sodas and I always have a headache. This doesn't seem fair. But at least I am off of soda, which I know is good for my teeth and bones and my general health, though I would never, ever have done this on my own. But forgive me if I feel like I need a nap.
ETA: By the way, I know you all mean well, but I'm going to start deleting comments with suggestions about what to do about my headaches. I've heard just about everything at this point, and hearing the same suggestions over and over again are just giving me another headache. So, be warned. And yes, that means you, not everyone else except you. Comments about caffeine, soda, and coffee are welcome.
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (64)Posted by PastaQueen on July 14, 2008 at 8:10 AM | Tags: caffeine, headache, nap, soda, tea
Why diet pills are not the answer (unless they cure your headache)
I'm glad my headache doctor opens at seven o'clock in the morning, because no one is awake to see me entering his office. I'm not ashamed to be seeing a neurologist, however he works in a large medical complex occupied mainly by another unrelated practice. That is the reason, and I swear the ONLY reason, I was entering a building Wednesday morning labeled, "St. Censored-For-My-Privacy's Bariatric Weight Loss Center." I feel paranoid visiting that complex, because I know if someone were to snap a photo of me entering the front door for the interwebs, I would be accused of being a big (skinny) fraud. I only have the most recent issue of Neurology Now with Morgan Fairchild on the cover that I stole from his office to prove where I really was.
I was at the doctor because all the IV treatments and medications we've tried lately haven't done anything except make me poorer. I could have paid off my car by now with the money I've spent. So, we're adjusting my medications again, which means I'm going off of Topamax. When I talked with my doctor about going on Topamax a month ago, it sounded worth a try.
"What are the possible side effects?" I asked him.
"Yadda, yadda, yadda, (stuff I don't remember), and possible weight loss."
"Sign me up!" I replied way faster than I should have.
I started taking the pills, slowly upping the dosage to the target level as recommended by the doctor, not really sure what to expect. I've never done drugs, never smoked pot, never even puffed a cigarette. My only forays into altered states of consciousness have been doctor approved pharmaceuticals. As the pills eventually took effect over the following weeks, I wasn't as hungry in the evenings. I didn't feel compelled to raid the cabinets for granola at 9 o'clock. It was like someone had turned off the crazy switch in my brain that I never realized I'd left on. Sadly, they weren't doing anything for my headaches, but they were doing pretty well as diet pills.
And I totally hated them for it.
I didn't want the pills to work like that because I DESPISE diet pills. I think they're evil. When I decided to put ads on my site over a year ago, I decided not to place Google Adsense ads in the sidebar because they are context based. Google ads search the text of your page and target ads "relevant" to your content. Other health, fitness and weight-loss sites that have Google ads inevitably are sent ads for Hoodia, Phentermine, Alli and other products like that which I don't believe in (as well as some other truly crazy ads for anorexia or bulmia). You can try to filter out ads like that with the Google tools, but the people I've talked to say they always get through anyway. I could make money if I put those ads on my site, but I don't, because when it comes to this particular issue, I put my money where my mouth is. That is how much I hate diet pills. I don't think you should take pills. I think you should eat well and exercise.
To complicate things further, although the Topamax was making it easier to eat less, it was also making me stupid. It's nicknamed "Stupamax" and "Dopamax." It made it harder to speak right, like someone had placed the English language on the top shelf where it was just out of my reach. I could still see it, but I had to stand on my tippy toes to grab words, and even then I was just knocking them over instead of grabbing them firmly. I just felt...dumb. I found myself unable to focus as well. It put a damper on my mood. The crazy switch was turned off, but the stupid switch was turned on.
So, I knew I had to go off of them. I don't like to play with my brain chemistry unless necessary. And I hate being dumb. But I started thinking, "I might just go down to 25mg. That would be okay, right? I'll cut the pills into quarters and they'll last longer." At which point I started to wonder if the crazy switch in my brain had really been turned off after all.
What I had really hoped was that the Topamax would cure my headaches, and then the appetite suppressant would be a convenient side effect. I could traipse around saying, "La, la, la! I take these pills for my HEADACHES. My headaches! Not because they make me thin. But wow, the thinness is nice, isn't?" Not only would my life be pain-free again, it would be a little bit easier. I wouldn't have to fight as hard - all the time. But instead it just made me dumber, a little thinner and more broke, because Topamax isn't out in a cheaper generic form yet.
So, I'm going off of them and they will be out of my system just in time for my trip to San Francisco next week. That's good timing, because I love eating when I travel. Vacation calories don't count! The weird thing about the Topamax was I sort of missed being hungry. I missed eating too many ice cream sandwiches at 20 minutes until midnight and feeling pleasantly full. Food is one of life's pleasures and I missed having my desire for it. Wanting food I know I shouldn't have can be painful, but not wanting it at all is empty and lonely.
My experience with Tomapax has also slightly shifted my perspective on diet pills. Before, I viewed them as an all-out evil, equivalent to anthrax as a substance that should be eliminated from society. I still think diet pills are a stupid decision for the majority of people. They shouldn't be used if you just want to drop 5 pounds for swimsuit season or some superficial crap like that. However, I'm now open to the idea of using them to treat people with serious compulsive eating problems. When I think of women who've written to me saying they can eat a gallon of ice cream with a box of Oreos and follow it with a bag of potato chips, I have to wonder if there is something wrong with their brain chemistry that allows them to do that. In those cases, taking a pill doesn't sound like a bad idea. Now that I've experienced what it feels like to turn off the crazy switch, it makes me wonder if some of my own wiring isn't a little off in that area.
However, I prefer being smart to being thin, so no more Stupamax for me. (But if it had cured my headache, I'd settle for some stupid. Who need brain? The dumb not so bad. Ouchies worse.)
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (42)Posted by PastaQueen on July 11, 2008 at 7:44 AM | Tags: appetite, desire, diet pills, food, headache, hunger, pain, topamax
Living in a happier reality (with sex orgies)
When Carla told me she wasn't going to apply to the geek summer camp I'd attended the summer before senior year because she'd heard it was a drugged-out sex orgy, I was befuddled. The only sex I remembered was between the squirrels.
"Where did you hear this?" I asked her.
"From George Johnson."
And that explained it. George Johnson appeared to live in our universe, but actually existed in a parallel dimension where cars were Shinier! and girls were Prettier! than they appeared to those of us in this world. George Johnson never let reality get in the way of a good story, or he might have just seen reality bigger and brighter than the rest of us. (Or there might have actually been secret sex parties going on in the bushes that I was not invited to.)
However, George Johnson seemed to be pretty damn happy in his shinier, prettier, world, even if it wasn't the reality that the rest of us were living in. I was thinking of him when I was sent this article on low leptin levels in people who've lost over 10% of their body weight for the third time this week and I thought of him when I deleted the link without reading the article again for the third time this week. I am grateful that people read the article, thought of me, and took the time and effort to share that information with me. I like that people share their stuff with me. I like to share my stuff with people too. So, I thank the people who sent me the link. However, I've decided that when it comes to articles and books that are going to tell me that I'm doomed to regain all the weight I've lost, I'm going to take the George Johnson approach and live in my own happier, fairyland instead. Fuck you, science!
It's an odd approach for me to take because I love me some science. A friend of mine recently announced she is getting married at the Carnegie Institute of Science and it warmed my secular little heart. However, in this instance science isn't necessarily my friend. I have a distinct goal: to maintain my 192-pound weight loss. To do this I have to think positively. I have to believe that I will do it. I don't see any advantage to reading an article that is going to tell me all the reasons I am going to fail. If it's true, all the things that are true in the article are going to affect my body whether I read the article or not. The only thing that will happen if I read the article is that it will bum me out and eat away at my self-confidence, self-confidence I need to be successful in my journey.
This is why I never read Rethinking Thin, a book by New York Times health writer Gina Kolata that was released last year. It debunked many dieting myths and explained why maintaining weight loss is so hard. I got a copy of the book to review, but it sat on my coffee cart for months, the pear on the cover sitting next to the window like a fake bowl of fruit. It taunted me for months and months, making me feel guilty that I hadn't read this book that everyone was talking about. I would occasionally skim a few paragraphs before I'd find something far more urgent to do, like pick cat fur off the carpet. Eventually I stuck it out of sight on my bookshelf, where it sits today, virgin print not defiled by my eyes. I didn't read it because I didn't want to hear what it had to say.
I've come to realize, this isn't always a bad thing. Sure, there can be dangers to shutting out differing opinions. If you get stuck in an echo chamber, you'll only hear what you want to. That's how we end up in endless wars in Iraq. But I'm not leading the armed forces here, just this army of one. I don't have to be completely open-minded about every single issue in the world. When it comes to certain things, I can defend my personal boundaries and that's okay. I lock my apartment door at night to protect my personal space and I can set up mental barriers to protect the internal areas most precious to me too.
That's something I've come to realize about nasty comments. I used to read all the comments on my blog no matter what. I thought, "People have a right to their opinions. I am putting my thoughts out into the world so I should read theirs too." This is total bullshit. Sometimes people leave comments to attack me. I have a right to defend myself. If I were sitting in a room and saw someone running towards me with a baseball bat, I would run the other way or throw a chair at them. A nasty comment is the same sort of attack, only with words instead of a Louisville Slugger. I can tell within a sentence or two if a comment is meant to harm me, and when I see that, I defend myself by stopping reading. I lock the door and don't let those words into my house. I save the comment in my blog software in case I need it for legal reasons and then delete it from my email, never to be read. Thankfully, this doesn't happen that often, but when it does I've learned how to defend myself.
When I wrote my acceptance speech I started to read one comment that had a sentence that said something like, "...I have to admit I was disappointed..." at which point I stopped reading it. I still haven't read that comment and I have no idea what that person said. I decided I didn't want that information in my head. My weight and my self-esteem are not up for a committee vote, and my decision was final. I decided the comment was irrelevant, it would only upset me, and it was better off left unread in my trash box.
I like having these boundaries. I like enforcing them. It's made my life so much better. A couple years ago I vowed to stop going to web sites that annoyed me and to stop getting into stupid fights on the internet. And I did. And life is so much better. I highly recommend it to everyone.
Which is why I have not read the leptin article and I do not plan on reading the leptin article, unless there is a section in the article that tells you how the low leptin levels work to your advantage. I don't need that stuff in my house. I will live in my happier reality. Keeping that stuff out of my house keeps my reality happier.
And I have George Johnson to thank.
Now where's that sex orgy?
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (67)Posted by PastaQueen on July 9, 2008 at 7:07 AM | Tags: boundaries, gina kolata, happiness, personal space, rethinking thin
Meet me in New York...maybe?
I recently found out that I'm going to be in New York on Thursday, July 31st to appear on CBS's The Early Show and I'd like to plan an event on Wednesday evening, July 30th, for my New York readers. Anybody got any ideas? Book signings are usually planned two months ahead of time, so it's too late for my publicist to schedule anything on her end. The Early Show tapes at Trump International Plaza at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue (next to the glass Apple Store), so a location near there would be good - either a bookstore, coffee house, or some other locale that would be okay with people gathering and watching a woman read aloud and wave a large pair of pants in the air. An independent bookseller would be lovely because they could handle book orders. If not, I still have a handful of books in my trunk that I can personally sell on the street corner of the park if it comes to that. Do I need a license for that? Do they crack down on that stuff? I'd hate to spend the night before my national TV appearance in a cell next to a hooker named Trixie. Though I'm sure my Aunt Lori would have a hell of a story to tell at the family reunion when she came to bail me out.
I would like to schedule the event for either 7 or 8 o'clock. That way I can get to bed early, but it also gives people enough time to get there after work. I'm also assuming that some of you would want to come, right? Please comment below if you think you could come, otherwise I'll just go ride the mechanical bull at Johnny Utah's, which I missed the last time I was in New York.
I would also like to give big props to my publicist, Isabella Michon, for her great work setting this up. It's not like I call Les Moonves and arrange these things myself. Special thanks to Jen Rios at Seal Press for being my travel agent and booking all my flights. I am truly grateful for all the hard work everyone has put into promoting my book and I feel so lucky for all the good things that have come my way as a result. As for the question I know someone will ask - will I be able to say the title of my book on television this time? I do not know, but I'm working on a workaround if I can't. Cross your fingers for me.
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (32)Posted by PastaQueen on July 8, 2008 at 7:33 AM | Tags: book event, book tour, cbs, new york, the early show
Reading burns calories - Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein
I got nine bug bites while reading Stephanie Klein's book Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp, so I felt fully immersed in her camping experience even though I never attended a fat camp myself. I suppose that's what I get for reading on a wet bench in the park after a rain storm. But reading outside was the only way I could stop myself from eating after reading the vibrant descriptions of food in some of the earlier chapters. She has a way a with words. In fact, I stole picked up the phrase "happy weight" from this book which I used in an entry last week.
I was particularly happy to get a copy of Stephanie's book because she is a blogger, writing regularly at Greek Tragedy. She'll also be one of the keynote speakers at the BlogHer conference in two weeks, which I'm also speaking at, so hopefully we'll bump into each other. Until then, the PastaQueen and the former Porno Queen conducted an email interview about her latest book, though you'll have to actually pick up a copy to learn how she got the latter nickname.
You're a triple-threat, with skills as a photographer and web designer as well as a writer. I noticed that you got a jacket design credit for the cover. How involved were you in the cover design?
Originally, my publisher came to me with a cover of a scale, with the numbers of the scale reading MOOSE. I didn't think that sent the right message. "That's a book about the 'Biggest Loser'," I thought as I examined the cover, and while I might have been the 'biggest loser' in the late 80s, it really wasn't the right message. People would have thought Moose was all about weight loss, and they'd have assumed it was a dieting book, a how-to book with tips and tricks. That's not Moose at all. I wanted to design something that reflected adolescence, that feeling of so desperately wanting to fit in, regardless of weight. It's why I chose to make one of the O's in the title pink, with the others green. It's how we all feel when we're in our young teens: like we don't fit in, that we stand out. "Which one of these is not like the others?" was my theme song.
So, how involved was I in designing it? Very. I spent days searching for the right photos, executed several mockups, then played with typography. I chose the photo, positioned her off-center, then played with different fonts. I designed it completely. However, the photo I chose was Photoshop'ed to more closely resemble what I looked like at that age.
Who is the girl on the cover? Knowing how sensitive you were about your weight at that age, do you know what the model's feelings are, if any, about being the girl on the cover of a fat camp memoir?
I do not know the girl on the cover. I do know, however, that she's not a redhead. A designer at my publishing house, like I mentioned earlier, used Photoshop. So I don't know that the actual girl in the picture even realizes it's her photo being used.
In the acknowledgements you thank Chris DiClerico for helping you "turn out such a fitting title." Picking a title for my book was a horrible, anxiety-inducing experience I never wish to reproduce. How did you come to chose the title and was it hard for you considering how much pain had been associated with that nickname as a child?
Titles are always hard. Originally, I just called it Fat Camp, but the title was taken (a YA fiction book). My publisher was going to move forward with Fat Camp as the title if we couldn't think of a good alternative. Chris knew my story, knew the kids at school called me Moose, and knew my father laughed when I finally confided that the kids at school made fun of me, booming Moooooooooose down the hallways at school. It just worked. I also liked that it was a stand alone word that stood for a lot, similar to Judy Blume's Blubber. Plus, with a title like Fat Camp, people would assume the book was about that, only that, when Moose is much more universal, tying in so many themes outside the realm of fat camp.
Your book is about fat camp, but it also about motherhood, your relationship with your own mother and what you hope for your relationship with your own children to be. What does your mother think of the book? What do you hope your children get from the book?
I first gave a copy of Moose to my mother when I was on book tour in Miami Beach. We were in a hotel room, and as I ironed clothes from my suitcase, she sat on the sofa and read. I watched her face as she read, nervous of how she might take things. "Real nice, Stephanie!" she said, repeating parts aloud.
"A dropout of her local community college, Mom had opted for secretarial school instead...That was as challenging as it got for her, I thought. Secretarial school."
Then she looked up at me, shaking her head. "Not nice," she said, and I realized that she was exactly the same now as she was then. She couldn't see that those were the feelings I had when I was eight-years-old, not today, because, I believe, she still feels ashamed of herself. She doesn't honor and respect her decisions.
She looked up later on and said, "I was a bad mother, wasn't I?"
"Well," I allowed, "you never beat me or anything."
I told her what I'll one day tell myself: parents do the best they can. They're human. They make mistakes. I'll make mistakes. I know that both my parents did the best they could do given their own pasts, given their limitations.
You note a couple times that your goal was to step on the scale and have the large weight slide to the 100 notch instead of the 150 notch. Were you as bummed as I was when doctors switched to digital scales and this milestone of weight loss progress was lost? The next generation of girls will have no idea what we're talking about!
Oh, God. My weight cube that slid to the 100 notch is going to become the equivalent of the belt used to keep maxipads in place?!
I know a lot of weigh-in institutions use the digital scales these days, but my doctor's office still uses the old-fashioned Doctor's Scale. I actually prefer the digital scale because once you step off, the number goes away.
I liked that you included excerpts from your childhood journals, triple exclamation points, up arrows, eyeballs and all. Will we ever be able to read the full text of those journals or hear readings at something like Sarah Brown's Cringe sessions?
OMG, I'd love that!!! I'm so psyched + 2 finally B meeting Sarah at the blogher conference in July!!! (I really am)
You mention a lot of songs in your book. I wanted to break out my headphones and listen to the tracks while reading. Is there a Moose soundtrack available to download, such as a playlist on iTunes?
YES! I'm actually working on it now. Oh, how I still love to love Air Supply.
Spoiler alert! Don't read this question if you don't want to know details about the ending.
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You get kicked out of fat camp for flirting with bulimia and point out that it's ironic that a camp that is supposed to help with an overeating disorder removed you for another eating disorder. What do you think the appropriate response is for fat camps to take in response to discovering bulimic behavior in campers?
Don't make the kid feel any more "damaged" for starters. You alert the parents. You take it seriously. You make sure the child gets the right counseling. You don't kick the kid out, shaming them for it. Telling them to pack their things, no real time for goodbyes. I'm sure a lot of camps come face to face with this reality more often than not. I know many campers who flirted with bulimia and came to say, "Eating disorder? I wish!" It's the thinking that needs to be addressed. I was treated the same exact way they'd treated kids caught smoking pot in the woods. That's not how you treat an eating disorder.
As a memoir writer, I am curious to know what your opinion is on how much liberty an author is allowed to take with the past. You tell us in your author's note that the events in your book all happened, but that you've merged them into one summer instead of several. How far do you think an author is allowed to go in making up dialogue, descriptions, and mannerisms to tell a good story? Essentially, what limits or boundaries do you abide by so you don't end up getting crucified by Oprah on national TV ala James Frey?
First of all, an author's note is nowadays crucial. Coming of age memoirs—heck, most any memoir—doesn't usually happen because you've been walking around life with a tape recorder. If I were sitting around a Thanksgiving table, and someone else told a story beginning, "remember the time when..." I'm certain no two people at the table remember it exactly the same way. But so long as everyone agrees on the gist of it, you're okay. It's the nature of memory, and we all observe different things from the same event. I try my best to reconstruct dialogue. With regard to my first memoir, Straight Up and Dirty—which was an adult memoir about young divorce before I turned thirty, encompassing what went wrong in the marriage, what went wrong with the mother-in-law, and what I learned from all of it about moving on—it was much easier to remember word for word dialogue. I kept very detailed handwritten journals then too. The key is being true to who that person was to you, making sure the descriptions, dialogue, and mannerisms all reflect their impact on your life.
I've always been slightly jealous of women who've had songs written about them. It seems like you've done the writing equivalent by writing about your childhood romance with Adam. What was Adam's response to the book?
Adam is a moonbeam. He's just the brightest, most energetic, and loving man I know. He LOVED Moose and even came to New York from Boston for my reading, and appeared with me on the Today Show.
I liked reading all the 80's and 90's references in the book to things like banana clips, jelly shoes, Lisa Frank stickers, Strawberry Shortcake, Jordan Knight posters and crimped hair. Did you pull all that imagery from memory or did you use specific sources to jog your memory, like old photos?
It was a combination of both. I saved everything from fight song lyrics to ticket stubs, dried corsages, and even a few stickers. I also cruised some 80s websites looking for slang to jog my memory. I even posted on my own site, asking readers to chime in with their own 80s slang. Every mention of movies or songs used in the book, I made sure was released that first summer at fat camp, so it was accurate.
There are a lot of descriptive passages about food. Did you get hungry writing this book? Because I got so hungry reading it I had to go outside so I wouldn't start snacking.
I don't think I got hungry because I was so focused on the craft of it. The rhythm of the words, the syllables, and meter. Some words are meatier than others, and a lot of thought went into which food descriptions to keep, and which to cut for fear of being too over the top or repetitive with them. Besides, I'm sure I was eating while writing, so I doubt I was actively hungry.
I noticed on the back cover that Entertainment Weekly gave your last book an A-. Congratulations! But honestly, does the minus piss you off? Because I think it would piss me off just a little.
Nah, it actually didn't piss me off. There have been plenty of things that have pissed me off, but an A- wasn't one of them... not since 8th grade, anyway.
Thanks again for your time, Stephanie! Stephanie's book Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp is available in bookstores and you can catch her on her blog Greek Tragedy.
Bookmark Entry | Permalink | Comments (15)Posted by PastaQueen on July 7, 2008 at 7:28 AM | Tags: interview, moose, reading burns calories, review, stephanie klein
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