I recently caught up with Suzanne Guillette, whose first book, Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassment, came out on March 10th.
"Much to Your Chagrin follows one woman's discovery of what it's like to finally feel comfortable in your own skin (even while accidentally exposing yourself to your elderly neighbors). Raw, honest, and brilliantly funny, it is an extremely personal memoir about the lengths to which we human beings sometimes go to conceal the parts of ourselves that we are least willing to admit are true..." (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, Inc.)
Suzanne and I met at her home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
EB: Since when have you known you wanted to be a writer?
SG: I've just always written. I've always known that writing was going to be in my life. When I was a kid my mother would buy me journals, she was very encouraging. Yeah, I guess I always wrote. I wouldn't say that I envisioned being a "writer"-- I didn't really think of it as being a "life" so much as something that I knew I'd always do.
EB: What was one of the first things you wrote, or something memorable from when you were a kid?
SG: This is really funny. I used to like interviewing people, so I would interview my family members. I had this whole list of questions about things that they liked and loved. The interviews of my cousin were really funny because it was like: "Mary Ann loves Leif Garrett." He was this teen heartthrob, which was really hilarious. She also liked Richard Gere and a bunch of other people. I also used to write movie reviews. I went to see a double feature of Oh God You Devil, one of the later ones -- part five or something; George Burns was really old-- and Country, this heavily depressing movie with Jessica Lange about everybody getting laid off. I remember going to that and bringing my journal and writing movie reviews afterwards, and giving them grades. I graded them.
EB: Why do you write?
SG: It's a great means of expression. I go through periods where sometimes I write less than others. Sometimes when I'm doing a lot of dancing I'll wake up and have ideas -- I'm not a choreographer, believe me -- but I'll have an idea of how a dance should look, and it's sort of the same thing with writing. I like writing because often times it helps me learn something. It's a great tool for that. Everything I write, there's usually some sort of question beneath it, especially if it's an official project. It depends on what it is. Sometimes I write because it's fun, other times I write because I like to be in the habit of writing. Those times it feels more routine than inspired, but I think that's important also. With essays and stuff that has to do with first person experience, I will write so that I can figure out something -- either what I feel or what I think.
EB: What about on the readers' end? What do you hope to provide your reader with?
SG: It's really tricky. It's not that I don't think of the reader when I write, but -- One of the hardest things about writing is getting out of your own way. You know, removing the ego, not letting the ego get in the way, and not thinking about whether your writing is good or bad. In that sense, I feel like, oh my gosh, it's not even my place to expect that the reader would experience X, Y or Z. However, the stuff that I like to read usually has some sort of learning or discovery so I would hope that that somehow translates for the reader. I don't know what that would look like. That's the fun of it, I guess, not knowing how someone is going to read something.
EB: What are the kinds of things that you have learned from your students of writing?
SG: Oh, so much. Teaching is amazing in that way. In teaching, you have this crash course in hearing multiple voices. You are being exposed to different people and everyone experiences the world in completely different ways. It's exciting as a teacher to be doing free writes with students and hearing their expressions of consciousness and how they see the world. It also reaffirms something about life, I don't know what. But there's something really creative about that. I learn from them on a daily basis.
I feel like for any writer of any level, to write anything is brave. It's a really risky thing. Seeing their courage gives me courage. You never lose that. That quality [of doubt] is always there every time you start to write something new. It would be so easy to think, this is a bad idea or this sounds stupid, you know. So [my students] can be really inspiring. We would do free writes in the beginning of every class and I'd make them read out loud what they just wrote, which can be hard because you are in a class in front of your peers and I've just given this assignment and given you five minutes and want you to read it back. But there's some really beautiful stuff that comes out of being free.
EB: Can you talk about how your book transformed into a memoir, as you originally had a very different idea for the project?
SG: Yes. Originally I started collecting embarrassing stories with the idea of compiling them into a light novelty book and I was going to call it Oh, Shit. You'd have this "oh, shit" moment -- your embarrassing moment. I started collecting them but the problem was I never really liked the idea. I loved taking to people, I loved asking people that question and having these interactions with strangers, it was really fun. That part was all wonderful. But the part where I went to sit down and write about other people's embarrassments, that was not very satisfying.
Simultaneously, my own life starts to get out of hand in a number of different ways. And as this happens I start freaking out more and more and I get increasingly anxious about life and as part of dealing with that anxiety I just try to write the Oh, Shit book. Like Oh, Shit is the answer, but the problem is that it was never really a satisfying thing in the first place. I think that also, on some level, you can't really write about other peoples' embarrassment because only you know what it's like to be embarrassed. It's a very subjective experience, so no wonder that part was hard! There's no way to gage what's embarrassing unless you're going to do it for yourself. We are the authority on our own lives and experience and how we look at them and remember them. So I was writing Oh, Shit and not very happy with it and really struggling in my personal life.
When I started out asking people for their embarrassing stories, they would say, my whole life is an embarrassing story. In the beginning I really didn't understand that response. I thought it was a cop out. Then fast forward nine months later. I had my own Oh, Shit moment and I thought, oh, shit, my life really is an embarrassing story. This is what they meant! So at that point I decide to hang it up and I just finally admit to myself, you know what, this has never really been that interesting to me and if I have to face uncertainty in my life then I have to face uncertainty in my life. It's really ridiculous that I'm holding on to these things--relationships, projects, jobs--that are just not working out for me. Because I don't want to face the unknown.
I decide to put the project aside, and a few months after that I decide to abandon the project all together. And then I think that it actually might make a good memoir. So I start trying to write from my personal experience the story of what happened while I was collecting other peoples' stories. It was really hard because I was writing it in the first person and I felt so uncomfortable on so many levels. Not only did I feel really uncomfortable with everything that happened that year, but I also felt really uncomfortable with the idea of writing a memoir at the age of thirty. I had this idea that nothing had really happened to me, because a lot of what happens is internal, so I kind of felt like, how is that worthy of a memoir? But I did write 100 pages and gave it to a friend and she said, "I see what you mean, why don't you try writing this from a distance--try writing it as a novel." I'm not a fiction writer and that completely intimidated me. So I backed off of it for the summer and did a lot of yoga and wrote in my journal and I didn't know what I was going to do. I just felt like I needed a break.
About three months later I had this idea, based on my friend's suggestion, that maybe I could write the story as a memoir but in the second person. So I started writing it and that really worked for me. My first draft was 600 pages and I wrote it in nine months. Two of those months I had major blocks. When I would hit something really emotional I would have a hard time writing. The bulk of it was written all pretty quickly and I think it was because I had to have that distance. It's also appropriate to the story because embarrassment is something one wants to distance oneself from. In that sense it really worked. I wrote it because I just wanted to find out what had happened. It was kind of a personal fact finding mission. So the writing process was obviously really healing and cathartic in that sense but I still had this idea that if I try to publish it I'll have to change it back to the first person -- but I didn't. I think it would have been just bad. I don't think it was supposed to fit [in the first person]. I sat on it for a little while and then I was eventually connected with an agent and that's how I came around to the decision to publish it.
EB: Writing something as honest as a memoir is really risky and very brave. Revealing all the minuscule details of your life and your mind-- How did you feel about writing it?
SG: When I started writing it, I really was not intending to publish it. Not that I would have said I'm just writing this for myself, but I wouldn't allow myself to contemplate and consider it because I had done that with Oh, Shit; I was only thinking about the final product and it was sucky. It was horrible. It was something I was not proud of. I really forced myself to get lost in the process, which I did, and it was the first time I really successfully lost myself in something. Every now and then I would think, I don't want my grandmother to read this, but it wasn't very present for me during the writing process and the other thing about these concepts of truth and privacy is that a memoir is a very specific moment in time. I'm certainly not the persona that's represented in the memoir and in that sense there is a certain feeling of safety. I think that if I were to blog my daily occurrences, that to me would be terrifying because it's a real-time-present-day type of thing. I really admire people who can do that. That would mess with me. I couldn't do that.
It was a really finite period of time that I was writing about and by the time I reached the end of the memoir I realized that it was so much easier for me to admit things than it was in the beginning of the writing process. That happens to the character -- to the narrator as she goes through the story -- but for me as the writer that really did happen. When I started out writing, there were certain things I thought I'd never be able to write about, and then I wrote about them. And then I would think, it's nothing, what else can I push? So there's always this changing boundary. While it felt personal when I was writing it, now that I look back, I see that all of the things that came after were so much more personal. I don't know if I could write about those things. Maybe someday. So it doesn't actually feel that personal because it's all kind of surface crap. It was this external manifestation of chaos and obviously there was this inner chaos, but to write about the actual unearthing of the inner chaos, that would be a totally different story.
EB: What were some reactions from your family and friends when they heard that you were writing about your life?
SG: When they heard that I was writing [the memoir], my parents were really supportive. But I could tell that there was some anxiety about what might be in the book, which I completely understand. Nobody ever demanded that they needed to see a manuscript before it went to publication. It was nothing like that. They were just sort of like, oh wow, good for you! My mom, for the longest time, would say, now tell me, what's the book about? Every time we spoke she would ask me that same question and finally I said, you know what the book is about, I've been talking about this now for at least two years! I'm guessing it was her way of trying to figure out what parts she was in.
Having people read it was a really good experience, which I told one interviewer. He said, "that's very boring," but I wasn't asking for permission. I know one writer who mailed his memoir to his friends who were in the book and he said, how do you feel about this, should I change anything. I was really careful and thoughtful with everything I included when it came to other people. The story is really about me and what I'm hiding and I think as a result it's certainly not about the other people. As a writer it's a hard line to draw, what I felt comfortable with. There were things that I ultimately decided, this is an unnecessary piece of information or this would somehow violate that person's privacy, if it had to do more with them than it did with me, and the way that a certain event affected me. Because I had been so diligent in doing that throughout the writing process, by the time I was ready to share it, I just made it clear that I was just sharing an offering -- take it or leave it -- I'm not asking for your permission but I'd like to share with you what I've been working on. By land large everyone I shared it with was very supportive.
EB: Everyone you shared it with?
SG: There were some people I didn't share it with, that's true. And also, it's my story. A lot of that book is about this time when I was really repressing a lot and the point of writing it was to write it from my perspective. It is very subjective so I kind of, in a way, didn't really want to be weighted down with what other people thought. You know, you can tell me when the book comes out what you think.
EB: Any ideas as to what your next project will be?
SG: Not exactly. I do know that it will not be a memoir. I can say that with a hundred percent certainty, I am done with the genre. I had been writing more nonfiction profile pieces prior to this. My thesis was a series of boxing-themed essays; that was very sort of journalistic. I don't see myself going back to that either, though. I've been thinking about a novel. I've actually had a few starts that have been crap. You can print that. When I was in Thailand I was trying to write and every three days I'd wake up with a new book idea and I'd get really into it and then on the fourth day I'd be like, oh god, this is so horrible. I'm less anxious about it now. Things are open, and I think about other things too. I think about films and getting more into dance, but I'm sure about writing...I've been telling myself that I'll give myself to the fall to really dive into something new in terms of committing to a project, but something definitely made up!
Please visit www.suzanneguillette.com to learn more about Suzanne and her first book, Much to Your Chagrin: A Memoir of Embarrassment.