Julie Vick | March 2022 Newsletter

​

I am back from a spring break trip to California and very happy to have gotten a little beach/sun time in when things in the world are once again less than ideal. I found this tweet relatable this month:

Jennifer Wright @JenAshleyWright When they said “History repeats itself,” I wasn’t expecting all of the twentieth century in two years. March 3rd 2022 28,200 Retweets 168,000 Likes

Jennifer Wright also wrote the book Get Well Soon, which I read early in the pandemic. It was written before COVID and overviews some of the worst plagues in history. It was informative, had some humor in it, and is an interesting overview of how history tends to repeat if you are up for some plague-related reading, although, if not -- I get it.

This month I've got a Q&A with Liz Alterman about her humorous memoir and plenty of other distractions and resources.

Books, humor and other distractions:

• Internet commenters are a great source of humor, so I appreciate this Instagram account that collects some of the comments from NYT Cooking.
• I am in the middle of 5 or 6 books, but the one keeping my attention currently is Dave Grohl's Storyteller (shout out to Tina Neidlein who recommended this one to me on Instagram). The height of Nirvana's success coincided with my high school years, so it's interesting to read about Grohl's time in the band as well as just his background and relationship to music.
• Apparently cats like butter, learn more about this and other cat facts in this Twitter thread.
• I randomly found these fancy cherries in the grocery store and am now addicted to them. Highly recommend them for your cocktail/mocktail/eating cherries straight from a jar needs.

​

Q&A with Liz Alterman

This month I talked to Liz Alterman, author of the audio original memoir Sad Sacked. You may also know Liz from her short humor writing and/or thriller books, all of which you can learn more about here.

What is the book's origin story?

When my husband, Rich, and I were laid off within six weeks of each other, I was blindsided. Those initial feelings of shock gave way to fear about our future because, though it's hard to believe, companies aren’t clamoring to recruit middle-aged workers with fairly outdated tech skills.

While there were tons of articles offering tips on how to polish our resumes and hone our interview skills, I couldn’t find any that warned about the crushing self-doubt that accompanies unemployment. There was a surprising lack of content noting that it’s perfectly natural to find yourself facedown in a half-gallon of mint chip ice cream at 3 a.m. wishing you'd gone to law school. So to paraphrase Toni Morrison, I embraced the idea that if there's something “you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

I started a blog and began pitching personal essays about our experience. I received an encouraging response from readers who were between jobs and overwhelmed by the emotions that go hand-in-hand with unemployment. They were looking for someone who wasn't sugarcoating the experience just as I had been.

While applying for full-time jobs, I freelanced and took an assignment that led me to interview the co-founder of a local writing school, The Writers Circle. When I asked her which was her most popular offering, she said it was memoir writing. It got me thinking maybe I could cobble my blog posts together into a narrative. I signed up for a workshop, and six years and millions of revisions and rejections later, Sad Sacked is out in the world.

Your book uses humor to talk about unemployment, which is not an inherently funny situation. How did you find ways to use humor with the topic?

My parents and brothers are funny, and I often joke that humor is my family’s drug of choice. Even though losing our jobs brought on a pretty dark period, Rich and I experienced a lot of bizarre moments that made us laugh. For example, we were completely unprepared for job applications to ask: “What’s your personal theme song?” or require us to sum up how we’d transform a company’s social media presence in 160 characters or less.

Then there was the time I trekked across Manhattan for an interview thinking it was your typical 9 to 5 only to be asked if I'd be cool starting my work day at 2 a.m., a condition I wished the headhunter had mentioned that before I wasted my time, transit fare, and those extra swipes of deodorant. Humor can be a great coping mechanism during hard times, so I tried to find it wherever I could.

You write both thrillers and humor--how do you find it writing in different genres or do you find they inform each other in some way?

It’s funny, when the editor who bought my memoir and I first spoke she said, “I had to skip to the end to find out what happened. The suspense was killing me.” Of course, because I knew how our story ended, I’d never thought of it as suspenseful. But at the time, I was working on a domestic suspense novel and wondering, “Is this working? Is there enough tension here to keep readers turning pages?” So to hear her think my non-fiction was suspenseful was really encouraging.

I love reading thrillers and twisty novels and really appreciate when an author offsets the darkness with humorous dialogue or wry observations. Samantha Downing and Tom Perotta are two authors who come to mind who do this masterfully. In my thrillers, I try to include a little levity through a character's voice and hope it adds another layer or at least some lightness to the story.

What is something you can recommend to readers that makes you laugh?

I can always count on The Onion for a laugh. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is one of my favorite shows, and I’m really looking forward to the return of “Derry Girls.” I also follow a lot of wonderful writers, humorists, and comedians on Twitter who are so entertaining and inspiring.

We had a recent email exchange about the TV show Felicity, so I have a very important final question: Were you on team Ben or team Noel when you watched the show?

Ha! Well, my head said Noel, but my heart said Ben.

Thanks, Liz! Follow Liz on Twitter and Instagram.

Writing-related links:

• The deadline for this funny poetry contest is approaching quickly.
• In Jane Friedman's Facebook group, she shared a link to book query and proposal examples that look really helpful.
• On a similar note, this blog post with the query letter that Catherine Baab-Muguira used when she was looking for an agent had great info.
• Scary Mommy recently went through a site redesign and they did not have a submissions page up for a while, but it looks like there is a new one up now. I don't know what their current status is re: payment as that has varied in the past, but if you happen to know, let me know.
• I also appreciated this interview about book publishing and parenting in the Evil Witches newsletter.

News from me:

• I did a guest post for John Sucich's Sunday Paper. John and I have overlapped in the parenting writing world and known each other on Twitter for several years, so it was great to get a chance to write for his site!
• I appeared on Zibby Owens's podcast Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books this month. (Fun fact, when I was pitching my book to various places last fall I had an anxiety dream that Zibby had sent me a rejection letter via the mail. So I was happy when in real life that did not happen). In addition to being a lovely supporter of books, Zibby has an upcoming memoir and children's book and recently launched a book publishing company, which is worth looking into if you are shopping a book. Check out what she is up to here.

On a final note, I hesitate to actually write this because for the past couple of years, every time I say I'm going to a conference that conference typically gets cancelled or delayed, but I think this time it may actually happen? I'm supposed to be at the Mom 2.0 conference in LA in April. If you are going to be there too, let me know!