Living Renewal – An Interview With Cathy Alter Part 1

Cathy Alter is the author of the memoir Up For Renewal – What magazines taught me about love, sex, and starting over.  Long before Robyn Okrant began Living Oprah, Cathy used the wisdom of the almighty O – and 13 other women’s glossies – to fix her shipwrecked life.  Since it’s publication in 2008, Up For Renewal has enjoyed acclaim from critics and readers alike. 

I wrote a review of the book for Ask Miss A.com and also had the pleasure of conducting an in-depth interview with Cathy Alter about this book, her other works, life, and process as a writer. This is Part 1 of 2 of that interview.

Did you intend to write a memoir when you started writing Up For Renewal?

Yes, I always knew this would be a memoir and I would be chronicling this year spent with women’s magazines. But because it was a prospective memoir I had no idea what was going to happen. I just assumed it was going to be a really fun romp through my closest of really poor clothing choices and getting to use all sorts of bad one-liners at bars to pick up men. Just poking fun at myself for all my attempts and failures following the advice of women’s magazines. I had no idea that it would turn into the book that it did when I started out.

A year is a long period of time to cover. You did an excellent job of summing up your experiences during your year of renewal. Was there a lot of material that didn’t make it into the final manuscript?

Oh definitely. And the hardest thing for me to do was edit myself and edit what was going in. My contract stated how many words could be in the book so I had to be really tight and focused.  If it didn’t have to do with me trying out things from women’s magazines, the aftermath of trying out these things or providing a history that would explain certain decisions or motivations for me I had to cut it out.  And that was hard for me to do because I really wanted to tell everybody everything.

People have commented that this book is so revealing and there is so much about myself that I reveal but there is so much more that I didn’t.  Like I’ve had friends say to me, “Why didn’t you put in the story about ‘Stalker Light’?”  I once dated this guy who was charged by his ex-girlfriend with stalking her and I was a witness in the trial and had to get on the witness stand and be cross-examined by his crazy ex-girlfriend.  This is a fantastic story but it didn’t make sense to put it in the book because I had to stay very, very focused on the experiment.

It sounds like most of these edits came from you and not the publisher. Are there even more that came from the publisher?

No. My manuscript went through some readers, especially one of my friends who read every single word in the book, before I handed it off to my editor at the publisher. My publisher’s editor told me when I handed in my manuscript that she had never received such a clean manuscript.  I was very surprised.  She had very little to do and it was mostly just clarifying stuff. But she didn’t take anything out.

Wow! That’s impressive and refreshing to hear. Typically you hear author’s say they turned in a phone book and the editor had to take a battleaxe to it.

Oh, no I wouldn’t do that. I rarely do that, even when I write for magazines or newspapers. As you know the business model is really changing and a lot of editors are scared for their jobs so I want to make their job really easy and I want to be easy to work with. 

It’s not like the old school editors you read about, like the great New Yorker writers who sat down at desks with the editors and really went over the manuscript. It’s so much different now, though I still think there are editors who will still do that. But being an editor at a publisher it’s really just business. They are searching for the next big thing – the next great book.  They read and help you with your writing and career but it’s not this very collaborative process. 

They couldn’t spend that much time to really work with every writer because they have this stable of writers.  Which is why I took the time to work with this friend who is a really good editor because I wanted to turn in the best possible manuscript I could knowing that my editor would be really busy. 

Is there anything from that cut material you wish had ended up in the book? 

That’s a good question. No. I snipped out stuff myself I had a sense I shouldn’t put it in but it was always after I showed it to somebody. There were a couple of lines I had about my mother and I showed it to my husband, who knows my mother and loves her very much, and he said, “Don’t put that in there, that will hurt her too much.”  For me it was just important to write it and I think getting it down on paper made it easier to take off the paper. But I don’t regret anything that’s in or out of the book.

Which really brings me to my next question, which is you dedicated Up For Renewal to your parents and asked them not to “disown you.”  How has the reaction from friends, family & colleagues been?

Oh, boy… Well that’s part of the risk and danger of writing memoir when the people you’re writing about are still alive. You never can predict what someone is going to do.

My mother stopped reading the book at about page 76 so all those worries I had about how she’d react and what she was going to think turned into a different set of worries. Now my father did read the book and he was really offended by the line in the book that said, “Even though he was only an optometrist I still went to my father for all my medical questions.”  And he called me and said, “What?! Am I only an optometrist? I’m ONLY an optometrist?!” So that surprised me because I thought, “Why is he only focusing on that?” since I assumed he’d be upset about the drinking, the sex and the smoking. 

Karl’s mother pretends that the book doesn’t exist. We’re never allowed to speak of it and that’s hard for me because the book has been so much a part of my life the past two years. We’re unclear what she’s bothered by. Karl and I have had conversations about is it the fact that her daughter-in-law would psychoanalyze her – there is a section where I try to figure out what motivates her. Or is it that I reveal that at some point in their family history the Chinese had intermingled with some of the Brittish colonists and so some of their relatives have these blue eyes? Or is it that culturally she’s much more closed off about any sorts of revelations on the page and is uncomfortable knowing so much about me and my history? 

It’s very hard to encounter yourself on the page. You know that’s such a really hard feeling. Even reading interviews where someone has interviewed me and I read the story afterwards it’s just bizarre – to be seen through someone else’s eyes. So I completely understand it. 

What about from the public and media?

I get e-mails from readers who just adore it and they are all different ages. I’m always surprised when I get an e-mail from someone in their 20’s who says this book is such an inspiration and then one from someone in their 60’s saying the same thing. I just thought everyone who’s been divorced and dated jerks would like this book. Women who haven’t lived long enough to make huge mistakes somehow relate to it.

I know on Amazon all my reviews are either really good or really bad but I haven’t read them because I’m so sensitive. I can’t handle any sort of bad press and I know it comes with the territory but I’m sort of like my mom in that way in that I just don’t want to read it. 

But I have had the pleasure, and I’ll use that word lightly, of going to book clubs and being the special guests.  The last one I went to the women there were the next generation older than mine and they were really hard on me and saying stuff like “Writers from our generation would never be so revealing,” which is completely untrue and I had to sort of tick off writers from their generation that did write very revealing personal essays or novels.

This one woman started telling a story, and at first I didn’t know what she was getting at, about being at work and some of her young employees wanted to send e-mails to the boss. They were mad about some things and wanted to vent and were going to send these e-mails to their bosses. So this woman said, “Well you should write the e-mail but don’t push send. Print out the copy of your e-mail and put it in the top desk drawer and go home, have dinner and sleep on it.  Come back in take, that e-mail out of your desk drawer, read it again and then decide if you want to press send.” She tells this story and then looks at me and says, “Why didn’t you leave your book in your top drawer?” I just thought, ”that is probably the worse review I have ever gotten in my life.” I was so shocked and I felt like saying, “Why didn’t you leave that comment in your top drawer?” I was so flummoxed and couldn’t believe it.

That was rough on me and it took me a while to sort of get back in her good graces. These women were not huge fans and I couldn’t understand why they would invite me to the lion’s den like that. I managed to really charm everyone by the end of the evening but I was pretty tired.

One women at another book club came up to me holding my book and said, “Is this really you?” And I thought she meant my author photo because my hair is much straighter and I said, “Yeah it’s really me, my hair is naturally curly” and she said “No, no I know that’s you – you look much more tired in person. What I want to know is if that’s really you in the book?” And I said “Yeah, it’s a memoir” and she said “Oh, because I don’t like that character.” I got such a kick out of that and I said, “Well maybe there’s something in me that you don’t like in yourself” and that totally stopped her. For once I had the perfect comeback line – that never happens to me. And she said “Yeah, maybe…” and she was pretty nice to me after that. But I thought, “Who says that to someone’s face?”

It seems like your experience in writing and publishing this book has been very empowering beyond what you went through during the course of it.  How has the post publication experience affected your continued growth and confidence level?

If I had considered that people would actually read this book – like if my dad or my boss – I never would have written a word. So in a way I wrote the book that I thought I needed to write. I didn’t consider “Oh this will be embarrassing” or “Oh, my mom might be upset by this.” I just had to write it and what I’ve learned is that people who say things like “I don’t like that character” or “Why didn’t you leave that book in your top drawer” that says more about themselves. I understand that not everyone is going to be my fan – that’s why there are tons of books when you go into the bookstore or the library. That’s OK – there are writers I like more than other writers.

What I’ve found has been the biggest lesson to me is that I still need to protect myself when I come in direct contact with people who’ve read the book – that I’m allowed to say, “I don’t want to answer that question”. I was in control of what I revealed in my book, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to give that control over to somebody else. And people seem surprised that I’m actually not as willing to reveal some things about myself or my life. 

I think when you write a memoir and you write in such a personal way, people feel that you can take anything from them, whether it’s harsh criticism or being asked really personal questions – which I get asked a lot ‘cause they figure, “Oh, wow she revealed this much on the page she must be really open to anything.” And that’s not necessarily true. 

I have to say that most of the people I talk to just love the book.  And when I ask somebody like this book club, “what is it that bothered you so much? Can you point to a passage or can you point to anything specific?” they can’t. So I don’t know just what it is, maybe it’s just my writer’s voice.

Were there any parts that were difficult to write? Was there anything too painful to reveal?

The toughest stuff for me was the beginning of the book but I think it’s the best part – the most powerful and resonant.  When I had to write about the Bruno character I was trying to figure out “Why was I allowing this person to treat me so badly? Where was I in my head, heart and world that would allow this to happen” and I couldn’t come up with a good answer. I just couldn’t and it was very frustrating for me because I felt I should have enough self-reflection and insight into myself to say, “Ah, ha!  This is what that means” and I was really getting over the guilt of all that in trying to write about it. And even though I was in a different place when I was writing, it was like a rabbit hole that brought me right back to that painful time when I was floundering. I had no idea what was good for me or what was bad for me or when I should run away from somebody. And that was a very painful part to get through.

Knowing what you know now, is there anything that you would have done differently with the experiment or the book?

I think I wouldn’t have been so afraid to sit down and start writing. It was really hard for me once I was ready to go to believe I could write a book. I really struggled. At the beginning it took me about 3 weeks to write one chapter and by the end it took 3 days. I really wish I had not been so afraid. It’s really true that there is this wall of pain that you have to break through before you start anything new.  You have to just break through it and go. I think that would have stressed me out way less. I was totally stressed out writing this book. There were some days I would go outside and I’d have to look down to make sure I had pants on because I was so stressed. All I kept thinking was “Oh my God, I’ve never done this before how am I going to pull this off?”  I wish I had started off on my own team. I was not prepared for how grueling and intense the process was – all the living in my head and the self-analysis. 

Many artists don’t revisit their work once it’s been completed and released. Do you ever reread your work? Since its publication, have you re-read Up For Renewal?

I’ve reread it quite a bit because you have to reread it when the galley comes in because you have to proof it. I work, work, worked and then handed it off and two months later it came back to me – my first reaction was like, “Oh my God this is horrible! What was I thinking?” and then I had some distance and had time and reread it again and said, “This isn’t so bad, maybe people will like this” and I read it again when I was on the train to New York to do the Today Show because I was freaked out and afraid of what they were going to ask me that I felt I almost had to memorize the entire book and be ready to recall anything. And I read it again a year later and I thought, “This is pretty good.”

There are parts of it I think that are stronger than other parts. So I’m constantly looking at it, especially when I give readings – I’ll read the crowd pleasers. But occasionally I’ll read something different and I’ll see words I wish I hadn’t used or a cliché that seems so tired and lazy. I think I could rewrite forever and there comes a point I have to just be proud with the accomplishment and not so critical. I think many writers tend to be so critical and self-doubting it’s hard to reread your stuff again. But I feel really good about this book.

Often times when I read stuff I’ve written in magazines or newspapers they have been reedited so they stop feeling like my stuff sometimes, because it’s my stuff plus the editor’s stuff. But this book is all my stuff – there is no editor writing, making new transitions or adding new words. It’s 100% me and that’s why it’s such a personal thing and so hard to put it out there because it’s truly mine.

In the two years since you ended your magazine experiment have you been tempted to re-subscribe or pick up any of the publications you used to follow?

I still get Self Magazine because I write for them and feel like I need to stay on top of what’s been published so I don’t re-pitch anything they’ve already published. I get Elle Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar because I feel the writing is really good – and I don’t mean fashion writing. They are some of the few magazines that still publish personal essay and memoir. It’s getting harder and harder to find outlets for that sort of writing so I am constantly reading their writers because they attract really good writers.

My favorite magazine on the planet is New York Magazine – I just love it. I probably shouldn’t say that living in Washington but New York Magazine has some of the best writing and most interesting quirky articles ever.

It’s interesting to hear another perspective on magazines like Elle, since most people would assume that they contain just very airy content. It’s interesting to hear that you’re picking up these magazines not because they are giving you fashion tips but because they are giving you other content that is often overlooked.

I was reading the magazines very differently during the experiment – I was reading them like a 12-year-old boy reads Playboy.  I was just looking at the pictures for the bullet points and takeaways. I wasn’t enjoying reading – I was crazed. Once I turned the book in and sort of started back in the reading for pleasure vein I started reading the words and stories and I think they have really good writers. I would love to get something in Elle Magazine. The writing is not those little cutesy 800-word, beginning, middle, end stories – they’re deep and dig right in there. There’s a depth to some of the articles and stories, even the investigative reporting goes a lot deeper than some of the fluffier magazines.

I see why women’s magazines are picked on for being so silly and shallow. But there are some very good writers like Amy Bloom, who is one of my favorite writers, writes for some of those magazine and she’s spectacular. I wrote an entire Huffington Post blog called “In Defense of Women’s Magazines” because I feel that – not because they saved my life or anything – that there is a lot of value in some of these magazines. Not every month but I’m not a huge detractor.

That’s not to say I didn’t dread reading women’s magazines for an entire year – I hated it after a while. But ultimately they were really quite helpful. I think they get accused of trying to make women feel imperfect or inadequate but the truth was I was inadequate and wasn’t perfect. Just look at how the book begins. I was fully happy to admit that and the magazines to me represented this better life. A life where I wouldn’t date a jerk, or eat my lunch out of vending machines, or spend all my money on crazy purchases. I saw a better life for me, and whether that was crazy or impossible it didn’t matter to me.

I really had to buy in to that idea and I think that’s what bothers some of the people who hate the book so much. That doing that is wrong. But for me it wasn’t wrong. I needed help and the truth is we get advice from all over the place and not all of it is good and the same is true of women’s magazines. The trick is that you have to find your filter and figure it out for yourself.

I really enjoyed your experience with the “Index of Dread”.  While it’s only mentioned in the one chapter, was that a tool you continued or have continued to use? Are there any other techniques or tips like the Index of Dread that you picked up from the magazines and have continued to use in your everyday life?

I haven’t physically created any other indexes of dread but I have used it in the way cognitive behavioral therapy works – where you identify the problem or fear and the feeling attached to that and replace those bad feelings with something else. Then you consider how you’re feeling when you do that and you don’t feel as crazy or scared. I definitely do that and learned that the anticipation and the anxiety about something is always worse than when you actually do something. The index of dread exercise was the first time I’d quantified that and getting it all down on paper and seeing that the experience wasn’t so bad.  Doing that exercise really laid it out for me and helped me make fun of myself.  You can survive anything with a good sense of humor, that’s another lesson I learned.

Post-subscriptions, what types of other projects and challenges have you taken on as a way of continuing your journey of personal improvement?

Now that my insides are better, I’ve decided to turn my outsides over to this team of personal trainers at this gym here in Washington called Sterling, which has been the greatest time of my life. It has been huge for me because I’m not a big exercise person.  And I think at my age too – I’m in my 40’s – you start to see things going south and feeling that you look a little older and can’t do what you used to be able to do when you were in your twenties. In turning my body over to these trainers in a similar way to the women’s magazines it’s just been a Godsend. The way my body has changed – I’m so much stronger and I look different.

I just finished writing about it too for Washingtonian. They asked if I would do the same – like a mini book – about my transformation at the gym. What I like to do the best is to be a guinea pig, to put myself in the story and be the fish out of water – the sort of weakling at the gym with all these buff guys. That’s what I really like to do. First person narrative is where I think my strength is. Sometimes you get tired of yourself so I do like to profile other people and get into their worlds.

Read Part 2 of this interview with author Cathy Alter.

Also, be sure to pick up Washingtonian magazine’s February issue to see an article Cathy Alter wrote about Miss A, Andrea Rodgers. Here is Andrea’s take on the article.