17 / Call Yourself a Writer

How much does the Life TK audience know about being a professional dominatrix? That was one of the first questions my interviewee—the remarkable Melissa Febos—had for me when we recorded today's episode. I don't have that data, unfortunately, but it's a fair question because Melissa is the author of the amazing memoir Whip Smart, about the time in her twenties she spent as a college student and professional dom, one of the best books I read last year. Whip Smart is about so much more than the world of domming; it's about power, desire, control, and Melissa's struggle with drug addiction. Get it. Read it. Love it.

Also one of the best books I read last year: Melissa's powerhouse essay collection Abandon Me, which chronicles an emotional, intimate, fraught long-distance relationship she had with a lover, and her reconnection to her birth father. Abandon Me was named one of the best books of 2017 by Esquire, Refinery29, BookRiot, Electric Literature, The Cut, and more, and The New Yorker said that the "sheer fearlessness of the narrative is captivating." What I love about Abandon Me is not only does the subject matter invoke this incredible feeling of vulnerability, but also Melissa is a master of form. A lot of the essays are braided and the prose is amazing, dipping into religion, psychology, mythology, popular culture—this is a book that will turn you inside out emotionally and intellectually, and leave you wanting more.

So here's some more: Today Melissa and I are talking about the process of writing, how Whip Smart poured out of her—and how Abandon Me was different. Whip Smart started as a five-page memoir assignment for a nonfiction survey class, and when Melissa handed in hers, about her first session as a dom, her professor recognized she was on to something. Melissa was told to drop everything and write this book. "Anyone who finds the work they are called to do will recognize this feeling," she told me. "When I started writing that story, it just—it was writing me. It just came out. It wasn't easy, but there was an engine in me for it, and the story wanted to be told."

If you're wondering, like I did, whether Abandon Me felt just as urgent to write, it did—but it was different because Melissa was still living through some of the experiences she was writing about. She didn't know how the book was going to turn out because she wasn't sure, well, what she was writing to. "I just knew I had to examine it in order to move through it," she said.

As I often do on Life TK, I asked the million-dollar question: Did Melissa ever feel like giving up? Here's what she told me:

"Oh God, I felt like giving up yesterday. It's so lonely sometimes. I can't really speak for other kinds of writers, but because I'm writing memoir or work based on my personal experience, I spend a lot of time alone, re-living and examining the most painful, sort of incoherent parts of my experience. Which is a lot. It's not required. It's not even recommended for a lot of people. It's really painful. I have often wanted to give up. ... In my early twenties, when I had graduated college and I wasn't writing and I wasn't reading and I was an active drug addict working as a dominatrix, I was like, 'I feel so far from the life that I thought I'd be living, and from the person I am.'"

But how did she get through it? By getting quiet, she told me, and listening to the inner wisdom that's underneath the fear we all experience. "For me, even in those times when I felt incredibly hopeless, far from where I needed to be, if I got really quiet, I could hear it. It's like those moments when I was like, 'You have to get clean.' 'You have to quit this job.'"

One of my favorite parts of Whip Smart is when Melissa, wanting to use her degree, takes a break from domming and starts a new job working in editorial...and it blows, so she quits. You know I'm the A-number-one fan of hanging in there, but Melissa's confidence made me think twice about my "no quitting" policy. We talk about how she knew that job wasn't the right fit, and what she did after she left (dog walking, assistant to a really rich lady).

And finally, I ask Melissa for her advice for Life TK listeners. Keep going, and call yourself a writer even if you don't write for a living. "Tell people about your work, even if your heart is broken out of rejection, send it back out again," she said. "It doesn't feel good, it feels like the wrong thing to do, but we have to do it anyway." Listen below, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

This episode was produced by Erin McKinstry. Our music, from Blue Dot Sessions, is called The Zeppelin, Drifting Spade, and Vulcan Street. This interview was recorded with the help of Google Hangouts.

14 / Waiting for Life to Start

My interview today is with Mandy Len Catron, author of How to Fall in Love with Anyone, a memoir in essays, and a professor of English and creative writing at the University of British Columbia. You might be familiar with Mandy's name because she wrote one of the most popular Modern Love columns of all time: "To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This."

As her book's title might let on, Mandy studies love—what makes love work? What makes it last? Does it really work the way we see it working in the movies?—so not only is this interview appropriate for Galentine's Day, but also, as Mandy tells me, a lot of the decisions she made in her twenties were because of a relationship she was in.

"When I was in my twenties, and I was trying to figure out how to be a person in the world, I had this idea that if I attached myself to other interesting people, then suddenly I would become interesting, and I could count somehow," she says. "My primary way to do that was through my romantic relationship. If I could go back and do it differently, I would invest more seriously in my own interests. I wish I had just said, 'F*** it, I'm going to be a writer,' and writing is a legitimate way to spend my time."

Mandy and I discuss struggling with the belief that the only path to writing legitimacy is getting an MFA...and the downside to starting an MFA program when you're 22: You might not have as much life experience as your older cohorts. Actually, make that the downside of your twenties in full: no life experience, zero patience, and, as Mandy says, "I was constantly waiting for my life to start."

Mandy also talks about jobs she held while writing (competitive barista-ing to interning at National Geographic Kids), the best thing she did for her writing career (pushing through the fear of sharing unpolished work via a blog), and what Day 1 of Writing a Book looks like (a lot like Day 10).

I asked Mandy if, in the years she spent shaping her book manuscript, she ever felt like giving up—and she remembers a time when she, well, did. Mandy went to a retreat where Cheryl Strayed was speaking, and asked the famous memoirist if she had any advice for someone who was writing and just felt grossed out by her own voice. Mandy's fix was to take a year off, and in that time, she read a book by Queen Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby, that gave her an idea on how to structure her own. What she ended up publishing didn't follow that structure, but it moved the needle.

For more, listen below, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

This episode was produced by Erin McKinstry. Our music, from Blue Dot Sessions, is called The Zeppelin. This interview was recorded with the help of Skype.

13 / The Next Step

Vanessa Hua has done something most of us never will: She's traveled to faraway places including China, Burma, Panama, South Korea, and Ecuador to report. Here she shares what steps she took to transform a career working in business and tech journalism (at the L.A. Times, Hartford Courant, and San Francisco Examiner and later Chronicle) into her dream job of reporting abroad. How do you even conceive of an overseas reporting project? Vanessa shares smart tips for getting started and applying for fellowships.

In addition to being an accomplished journalist—read her column in the San Francisco Chronicle—Vanessa is also a fiction writer (seek out her book of short stories, Deceit and Other Possibilities, and watch for her novel, A River of Stars, coming this year). Listen to her tell me how to get started on your book, and let's make #buttinthechair happen this year. Plus: thoughts on getting the most out of a mentoring relationship and finding your writing tribe. Listen below, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

This episode was produced by Erin McKinstry. Our music, from Blue Dot Sessions, is called The Zeppelin.

12 / Let the Others Be Average

Life TK is breaking the rules this week, because Caitlin Kelly's career didn't begin in her 20s—she started in high school. The award-winning journalist and author of two books recounts how she got her first assignment and a fellowship that changed the trajectory of her career, and tells us how to write a good profile when your subject won't even talk to you. Plus, thoughts on micro-mentoring, the detriments of cheerleading culture, and a dose of tough love. Listen below, or subscribe in Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.

This episode was produced by Erin McKinstry. Our music, from Blue Dot Sessions, is called Colrain and The Zeppelin.

9 / Work Harder! Lean In!

Vanessa Grigoriadis, contributing editor at the New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, and author of the new book Blurred Lines, on reporting about sexual consent on college campuses, the glory days of magazine journalism, influencers, why working in your twenties is so important, meeting Harvey Weinstein, and chillaxing with Mariah Carey. Listen below, or subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher.

5 / Go to the Damn Job!

This is a very special episode—it's my call with Linda Ellerbee, award-winning journalist (seriously, pick an honor...she's won it) and my introduction to current events (Nick News, anyone?). I talked to Linda about the jobs she's never told anyone about—these are not on the résumé—getting fired from the AP, plus sexism, feminism...all the hard-hitting -isms. Please read Linda's And So It Goes and Move On. They. Are. So. Good. Listen below, or subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher.

4 / Things Are Going to Start Happening to Me Now!

It's a reference from The Jerk, everyone. Channel your inner Steve Martin with the Emily Gould episode of Life TK. Emily, co-founder of feminist press Emily Books (emilybooks.com) and author of And the Heart Says Whatever and Friendship, talks to me about what it's like to work in book publishing, when it's time to give up and when it's time to lean in, finding your writing people, and astrology. Spoiler alert: Saturn returned in her twenties, and, according to Emily, the worst years were between 20 and...31. Yikes. Listen below, or subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher.

 

3 / Tenacity...Some People Call It Stalking!

Life TK hero and author of more than a dozen books, Laurie Notaro (humor essay collection The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club, more recently historical novel Crossing the Horizon) cracks me up over trifocals, mullets, unattended babies, the accident that got her back to college, and being tenacious AF (aka Never. Giving. Up). Listen below, or subscribe in iTunes or Stitcher.

2 / If It's Not a Hell Yes, It's a No!

Writer Leigh Stein (The Fallback Plan, Dispatch from the Future, Land of Enchantment) talks about a stint at the New Yorker, starting a nonprofit, the burden of being the hardest worker in the room, feeling comfortable with being uncomfortable, and “Just Ask!®” culture. Listen below or subscribe in iTunes.