A Conversation with Charlotte Maya

The birthing process of a book is... well, a process. It starts with the seed of an idea, goes through story development, into a first draft, followed by many rewrites, and then hopefully, eventually, it makes its way into the world, into the hands of readers.

Today a special book hits the shelves: Sushi Tuesdays: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Resilience by Charlotte Maya. I have been privileged to be on this book birthing journey with Charlotte through the story coaching and editing process, which she shares about in the video below. It is deeply rewarding to support a book that I know will affect the hearts and minds of those who read it; a book that handles the very difficult subject of suicide with remarkable skill and humanity.

The book launch event for Sushi Tuesdays is taking place this evening at 7pm at Vroman's in Pasadena (offsite venue: All Saints Church). Come join me!

Scroll down to read my interview with Charlotte where she talks about the writing life and what it's like to work with a publicist in preparation for her book launch.

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Charlotte Maya writes about suicide loss, resilience, and hope. Widowed at thirty-nine, when her children were six and eight, Charlotte explores the intersections of grief, parenting, and self-care in her writing—particularly within the context of suicide. Her work has been highlighted in Hippocampus Magazine and The New York Times. Sushi Tuesdays: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Resilience is her first book.

Charlotte lives in Southern California with her family. She received her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from UCLA.

Read Charlotte's Modern Love essay When A Doorbell's Ring Means Hope.

In the above video, Charlotte Maya shares about her experience through the Story Coaching process. Learn more about one-on-one story coaching.

KARIN GUTMAN:  Tell us about the story behind your debut memoir Sushi Tuesdays.
 
CHARLOTTE MAYA:  The short story is that I was widowed to suicide when my kids were six and eight. I had no idea that Sam was suicidal. So, a large part of the story is trying to figure out where I had failed him, where he had failed himself, and how to heal and move forward. It was really important to me that his death didn't define my life; but then it was impossible for it not to. I did accidentally fall in love again. My now husband had also been widowed and has two kids.
 
As far as crafting the story, it was really important to me that the book didn't end with a fairytale ending because, in my opinion, the grief doesn't really end. There's not a point at which you're done. It's important for people to understand that even though we are living lives with joy and passion and the kids are doing well, we all have our struggles. This kind of loss reverberates, and in some ways, changes who you are. We simply continue to carry that loss with us in a way that doesn't hamper our forward movement. But we don't forget, we don't get over it. We learn to carry it. 
 
It's important for people to know that we do still honor Sam. He made a mistake, and by that I mean, he did not reach out for help. But how he died does not define the whole of who he was. I also had to get to a point where I realized I could continue to live my life in a way that honored myself and honored him. Part of that was becoming the writer who could tell the story.
 
KARIN:  I know you started writing your story with a blog. How did you move from blogging to writing a full-length book?

CHARLOTTE: When I was writing my blog, I had all these posts. I printed them all out and had several 100 pages. I read it and it wasn't a book. I didn't know how to turn that stack of pages into a cohesive story. Then I heard a podcast where they said, “Just because you've read 100 books doesn't mean you can write one. That's why you need a book coach.” What I need now is a book coach, I thought. I was in your workshop and so that was easy for me to call you because I already knew you. I already trusted you. 
 
I didn't have a journalism background. I had a law degree and an English degree. I hadn't ever contemplated being a creative writer. I didn't have an MFA. I felt like my work with you was a mini MFA. It was so exciting to learn about story structure and character arc and how things work. I enjoyed reading, but I didn't really peek under the hood.
 
KARIN:  Suicide is a challenging topic. It feels to me like your story is coming out at a time when people are more open to discussing mental health.
 
CHARLOTTE:  From the beginning, there was a feeling that I have a story to tell, and I believe people want to read about the story. Even though suicide is hard to talk about, and sometimes people clam up, my personal experience showed me that people really wanted to talk about it. People were always asking me questions, and they might say, “If you don't want to talk about it, that's okay.” But I did want to talk about it. Because I feel so strongly that talking about suicide is the way to reduce suicides and to reduce the stigma that surrounds not just the people who have died by suicide, but also those of us who are mourning the loss of somebody who has died by suicide. By destigmatizing, it opens up a place for people to be vulnerable and ask for help when they need it.
 
KARIN:  You’ve described writing as a really expensive hobby. What have you spent money on?
 
CHARLOTTE:  I've spent money on workshops. I've spent money on book coaches. I've spent money on writing retreats. I have spent money on building a website. I have spent money on hiring a publicist. I did not self-publish, so I did not spend money on that. I continue to spend money on workshops. I think it's really helpful for perspective. It can be hard to see out from the work and somebody else's feedback can be very clarifying. Offering notes to other people is also clarifying, like a muscle you exercise.
 
KARIN:  How has writing affected your professional life?
 
CHARLOTTE:  My husband and I have a business. I used to go into the office three days a week. Now I go in twice a week, and my other days are my writing days. I have been much more intentional about how I spend my time. I am not one of those writers who gets up and writes from five to nine. I have always prioritized my kids, and that's prime parenting time until they are off at school. My schedule is easier now that the kids are all launched or launching. Still, I will very rarely not answer the phone when they call.
 
But I am better at getting my butt in the chair and getting something done. I'm better at writing what is very drafty, knowing that it needs to be revised. Giving myself a little bit more space to get bad work done, because that counts. It all counts. I'm better at understanding that now. I feel like I now understand the process that I'm in, which parts I get to control and which parts I don't get to control. I get to control sitting down, getting something written. I get to control revising it. I get to control workshopping it with other people and revising it again. I can choose to submit it. After that, I've done my work. And so, I'm a little less attached to the result. 
 
I'm getting better at being rejected. I think that's a good thing because it is less of a defining factor in whether I'm going to get my butt in the chair again. Validation is great and acceptances are thrilling. I'm not saying that they're not. But if those become defining, then the opposite is also defining, right? Not every piece of writing is for every publication, and that's okay. I always hope that the writing and the audience will find each other, but they are not things I can totally control. 
 
It’s similar to why kids play sports. You can’t control the wins and losses. Wins come or they don’t. But the teamwork. That's something important that we take away with us. Doing your best, that's what counts. There's a lot of really good writing out there, that may or may not be on bestseller lists or on the tip of everybody's tongue.
 
KARIN:  How long was the publishing process for you?
 
CHARLOTTE:  I sold it in February of 2022. When I signed the contract, my editor said, “I want books in hands this time next year.” And she made it happen. My impression is that there are a lot of things that can slow down the book, from signed contract to completed book on shelves. We were able to stay right on track with deadlines all the way through, but even so, I think it's lightning speed.
 
That also informed some other decisions. She wanted to go straight to trade paperback, which we did. That's something I hadn't really thought about—hardback or paperback? She had some strong feelings, because she wanted the book to be accessible and paperback is cheaper to produce, and as a result, more affordable for buyers to purchase. That was really important to her. And it has always been important to me, so those kinds of decisions were very straightforward for me
 
KARIN:  With regard to the book launch, what are you excited about and what are you nervous about?
 
CHARLOTTE:  I'm nervous about interviews. And I'm excited about interviews. I'm nervous about time limits, because I feel like we could talk for an hour and may only have 10 or 15 minutes.
 
KARIN:  Is your publicist helping you prepare?
 
CHARLOTTE:  Yes, she does help with a media training session.
 
KARIN:  What is it like to work with a publicist?
 
CHARLOTTE:  I didn't realize that I needed to hire a publicist of my own, and that in and of itself felt a little disheartening, because I didn't understand why the publisher didn't cover that base. The publisher does do quite a bit. They send the manuscript out for reviews and get it in their catalogs and get my Amazon author page up. So, there's a lot of behind the scenes work to connect the book to potential readers. I hired Kim Dower because she has a lot of experience in LA, and it made sense to me to have a Los Angeles publicist.
 
I did not realize that you have to pitch your publicist, the same way you pitch an agent and a publisher. They all wanted to read the book first, before deciding whether or not to work with me. So that was a little intimidating. It makes sense because you want a publicist who's going to be on the front lines of trying to get people to read this book, trying to get people to schedule an interview. It made sense afterwards, but I was surprised they got to decide if my book was good enough for me to pay them. I think it's especially hard for a first-time writer too, because I don't have a built-in audience. I have a couple hundred followers. I do not have a big platform.
 
KARIN:  How does the publicist work with you as the pub date approaches?
 
CHARLOTTE:  She now has my calendar, and she is the one who has scheduled different podcast interviews or radio interviews. She put together a press release, which she has used to place advertising in different news venues and get people interested in hosting an interview. So, I have several interviews scheduled now around publication date.
 
She's very straightforward about setting expectations and really good at bouncing ideas off of too. I graduated from La Cañada High School, and in fact graduated from high school with the person who now owns the local paper. So, I said, “Should we send the press release to the local paper?” and she said, “That's a great idea. I'm on it.” So, today's paper has a little blurb in it. That's the kind of thing that I wouldn't have known how to do by myself.
 
Having a publicist also gives me a certain level of credibility. Because she has read the book, she has perspective on how it fits into the larger world of books. My publisher has so many books that they're working on, and publicists tend to only take on a few clients at a time.
 
KARIN:  Whom do you imagine to be your ideal reader?
 
CHARLOTTE:  People often tell me that they want to send my book to people who have lost someone to suicide. And while I hope that it resonates with those people, I really hope it resonates with people who don't have such an intimate relationship with suicide, but are open-hearted enough to want to learn about it. I think it will actually be more helpful for people who haven't had an intimate suicide experience, because I think it will take a lot of the fear and stigma away from understanding that suicide is just like any other illness. It just looks so much uglier from the outside.
 
Suicide is a disease. I hope that readers come away from this book with a renewed appreciation for all of our shared humanity. That it humanizes Sam, that it humanizes me, and gives us all space to be glitchy, beautiful people.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.



Buy the book

To learn more about Charlotte Maya visit her site.

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A Conversation with Wendy Adamson

Over the years, I've noticed that writers who are writing their personal stories often have one primary fear.

Exposure.

The fear of exposing themselves and other people—and not knowing how it will be received.

In the feature author interview this month, Wendy Adamson speaks about facing these fears and how she moved through them. Now with her second memoir out, she is blazing trails for anyone who might take that bold step.

A prequel to her first book, Incorrigible is a coming-of-age memoir about a teenager who is reeling from the devastation of her mother's suicide, landing her in the arms of addiction and the criminal justice system.

Wendy says she knew deep down that she is here on earth to tell her story, and that it has the potential to help others and change lives.

Scroll down to read the full interview.

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With over two decades of experience in the field of mental health and substance abuse treatment, Wendy Adamson possesses a deep understanding of the recovery process. She has held many positions throughout her career, but currently she works in Business Development at Polaris Teen Center, an inpatient facility that helps adolescents who are suffering with mental health issues while providing them a safe place to heal.

For the past seven years, Wendy has also headed up Business Development for her son’s nonprofit, Hav A Sole, an organization that has partnered with major NBA teams, and corporations like Nike to deliver over 30,000 high quality sneakers to at-risk youth, and more recently started a mentorship program for marginalized youth. In 2020 Rikki and Wendy’s inspiring story was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Wendy is a published author of two memoirs, Mother Load and Incorrigible, where she documents her own struggles with addiction and mental health issues and the long arduous journey of healing and repair that came as a result of getting sober.

KARIN GUTMAN: Tell us about this new book of yours!

WENDY ADAMSON: My new book is called Incorrigible, which is actually a prequel to Mother Load, my first book. This one starts with me visiting my mother in a mental hospital as a small child, and recounts her suicide at seven years old and shows how unexpressed grief and loss unconsciously directs my life.

As a typical California kid of the 70s I take the reader through my teenage angst and self-destruction until I end up in the same hospital that my mother was in. Using alcohol and drugs to self-medicate I am eventually labeled INCORRIGIBLE by the courts and plucked from a lifestyle of privilege and introduced to the criminal justice system.

KARIN: I notice that your first book follows your journey as an adult, and then you follow it in the second book with the story of your childhood.

WENDY: I had to write my adult story first. I would attribute that to a health scare I had some years ago which made me feel an urgency to finish that book. So, after more than ten years I was finally able to get Mother Load published. It was only later, that I realized that I had glossed over much of my teenage years. And since I work in an adolescent mental health treatment center, I knew first hand that many teenagers were struggling, especially during Covid19 and they would be able to relate to a book like mine.

KARIN: What was the writing process like for this book? In what way was it similar or different from the first book?

WENDY: The writing process has become somewhat easier for me as I have developed a discipline. I go to bed early and wake up early so I can write. The structure developed as a result of having a day job. Over time, I learned that once I start working at the job, it can be hard getting back into the writing flow.

This book was also different because the Covid19 lockdown gave me more time. Like many people during 2020 I was anxious when Covid19 hit, not to mention everything else that was happening in our country. The chaos and uncertainty in some ways felt like my childhood, and I felt like I was on high alert. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but writing became a place to channel my energy in order to get the angst outside of me and onto paper. I strongly believe that writing is a therapeutic tool, but during the isolation of 2020, I found it to be absolutely necessary in getting through my day.

I also have more experience now and know that in order to keep developing the manuscript it helps to have a trusted editor giving you feedback along the way.

KARIN: What are you learning about your creative process?

WENDY: This may sound strange, but I’ve learned that writing about early life experience can be a portal to my ancestors. In writing Incorrigible, I was able to explore the relationship I had with my father. In some ways he always loomed in my consciousness as a monster, but the more I wrote, the more I began to see my own behavior as an unruly teenager. I was not an easy to kid to raise. Since I grew up in a family with a lot of secrets, I felt betrayed and wanted to make my father pay for his mistakes. In writing, as I dove deep into my childhood, I invoked unpleasant memories of how I treated my father. As a result of dissecting many of my actions, unsuspected empathy welled up in my heart for my father. And that was a gift I did not expect.

KARIN: That's incredible.

How easily do your memories come back to you as you write? Are you having to use your imagination a lot to fill in the details of the childhood scenes?

WENDY: Often I get flooded by memories when I write the scenes, but yes, I also use my imagination as well. In writing scenes of Camarillo State Mental Hospital or Sylmar Juvenile Hall I researched online and found articles and pictures of the institutions. This helped me immensely with the details of the environment I was in at the time. With dialogue, I don't remember every word that was said, but I try to capture the essence of the conversation as well as the dynamic between the two people who are talking. I also had the benefit of talking to my sister and brother to see what they remembered as I pieced the chapters together. Sometimes my timeline was off as I am going through dramatic events, and there were a lot of them in my childhood. But I think most writers of memoir use their imagination when it comes to early memories.

If only I knew I was going to be writing about all this one day, I would have taken better notes.

KARIN: Tell us about what you do to market your book, which is such a different mindset than writing.

WENDY: A marketing mindset feels like the other end of the spectrum from creative writing. It feels endless, and since I don’t have a publicist, I’m always questioning if I’m doing enough to get my book out there. There’s just so much to do. Come up with content for social media posts, composing a press release, trying to get on a podcast, a blog or organizing a virtual book launch. All of the details in marketing take me far away from my writing process, and if I’m not careful, I can go down the rabbit hole. Right now, I am considering hiring an intern to help me with details of social media, reaching out to podcasts and such. I just don’t have the time to do it all.

KARIN: Do you have a sense of how the first book is doing? I’m curious about what it's like to publish with a small press.

WENDY: Mother Load is selling slowly but mostly by word of mouth. I have a five-year contract with my publisher and at the end of that we can discuss renewing the contract or I can take it somewhere else.

I have a friend who published a book six years ago. She wasn’t happy with her first publisher, so after the contract was over she brought it to my publisher and was able to create a new book cover and add two chapters. It's going to be re-released again in the fall.

KARIN: Are you working on anything new? Do you have a sense of where your writing will go from here?

WENDY: Yes, I am deep into book three which is about my insane twenties. Seriously, if you’ve lived a life like mine, all that ‘drama’ makes for good content. Besides, it’s very satisfying to take the pain and struggle and turn it into something that might be able to help someone going through the same thing.

KARIN: How does it feel to have your life exposed so completely? I know this was a source of great fear in the early stages of your writing.

WENDY: The fear of being judged kept me small and not taking risks most of my life. I’m at a point now where I still get scared of exposing myself, but I do it anyway. Again, this kind of drive comes from a deep desire to use my story to inspire others to change the trajectory of their lives. After all, if I can do it, so can you.

I often wonder if I had read an author I could have related to when I was a kid, would it have made a difference? I know people that say that a certain book changed their lives, so why not?

KARIN: What would you say to someone who has a story to tell but is afraid of the exposure?

WENDY: I would tell the person I was afraid of the exposure as well because of a deep-seated shame that I carried into all aspects of my life. It was that shame that kept me from telling my story, the same shame that wanted me to stay small. It blocked my creativity, sabotaged my goals, and kept me from pursuing my dreams.

When you speak your truth and expose yourself you’re becoming the alchemist of your own life. It's challenging old thought patterns and constructs that have boxed you in. For me, the biggest payoff of all was that the shame didn’t own me anymore and I was finally free to pursue my dreams.

KARIN: What would you say to someone who has a story to tell but thinks they “aren’t a writer”?

WENDY: I would say I understand, and tell them I was a high-school drop-out with a rap-sheet and didn’t think I could get anything published. I told myself that no one would ever care about what I have to say. I had to challenge all of my old beliefs and take contrary action by doing multiple writing workshops with you, Karin. I had to have a safe place to write, because in the deepest part of me I knew I am here to tell my story. And in spite of the critic that tries to convince me with great authority that I am not a writer, I have been able to publish two books. That would have never happened if I would have listened to my head.



Buy the book!

To learn more about Wendy Adamson visit her site.

See all interviews

A Conversation with Terri Cheney

As the pandemic surges in Los Angeles and across the United States, I am finding it's more important than ever to find ways to bolster my self-care. For me that's deepening my journaling practice, taking long walks by the beach, and staying connected with friends.

I had the opportunity to speak at length with author Terri Cheney, who is a mental health advocate. Her new book Modern Madness dives deeply into the complexities of mental illness and breaks it down in a way that is accessible, seeing it more clearly by unpacking the myths and realities. When I asked her what is most misunderstood about mental illness, she said, "how common it is." It may be challenging to release a book during COVID, but for Terri, the timing couldn't be better. It is not just for readers with a diagnosis but for anyone who is trying to better understand this issue and what we can do about it.

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Credit: Tracy Nguyen.

Terri Cheney is the author of the New York Times bestseller Manic: A Memoir. Terri's writings and commentary about bipolar disorder have also been featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, NPR, and countless articles and popular blogs, including her own ongoing blog for Psychology Today, which has over one million views.

Her new book, Modern Madness, exposes the complexities of the mental health issues currently confronting our nation. Using the familiar framework of an owner’s manual, Modern Madness brilliantly imposes order on a frightening and forbidding topic. Cheney’s juxtaposition of conventional clinical language with real, lived experience unpacks the myths and realities of mental illness.

Read People Magazine's feature story about Terri and her new book.

KARIN GUTMAN: You wrote about your experience with bipolar disorder in your first two books. How is this new book, Modern Madness, different?

TERRI CHENEY: This book is different because the first two were really strictly memoir. I wanted to take this beyond the confines of memoir because since Manic became a best seller, I have heard so many stories and met so many people and am much more aware of myself as being a member of a community of the mentally ill. So I really wanted to reach out beyond me for a change and incorporate family and loved ones of people with mental illness, really see if I could bring them into the conversation more. So it is my story but it's also lessons learned. I think this is the big difference.

We actually have to come up with a new genre to market it, because it's on the edge… it is memoir, but it's also somewhat prescriptive. So my agent and I ended up calling it prescriptive memoir and that seemed to work out okay.

KARIN: What about self-help memoir?

TERRI: I didn't want it to be self-help, it's not what it is. It's memoir. I mean, it's all my story.

KARIN: What’s the difference between prescriptive and self-help memoir?

TERRI: Well, I think prescriptive bounces more heavily into memoir. This is not an advice book. I actually have a story in here where I rail against advice. I think it shuts people down and it turns them off. I have a story in here about saying, “Tell me where it hurts.” Sit down with someone who's struggling and just say, “Tell me where it hurts.”

Five little words that just make a world of difference, rather than telling them what to do, how to do... get more exercise, eat more blueberries, that kind of thing.

It's so hard to be told what to do when you're depressed, because you can barely move or breathe. Being told to take a shower or exercise is almost a slap in the face.

KARIN: When you wrote Manic, weren’t you originally intending to educate your audience? Until you realized, “This is just not working.”

TERRI: That is neat to remember that.

KARIN: That really stuck with me.

TERRI: I was in the hospital at the time and did tons of research when on grand rounds with the doctors. I immersed myself in the science and the clinical aspect of it and was so bored. I just couldn't get into it. When I was trying to write, I just didn't feel that tug, that I need to tell this. I don't know if I was narcissistic or what it was, but my own story was really fascinating to me, and just wanted to be told. So I threw away everything, all the research. I mean, I still have it, but I did a total about face and dove into myself and my own story, my own experience, my feelings, what it felt like inside my body to have bipolar disorder.

To be where I had been as an entertainment lawyer and then to turn into a writer on mental health issues was not where I saw my life going until I wrote the book.

KARIN: Do you think Modern Madness is maybe a different version of the original intention you had with Manic?

TERRI: It could be that it's more expansive than Manic was. It's more all-encompassing and it does have the introductory sections describing for example what depression is or what mania is. It does have that clinical element that I had thrown away. So the research was not useless. It came in very handy to know all that. Never throw away research.

KARIN: Does the book focus on bipolar disorder or is it broader?

TERRI: Much broader. My stories are necessarily partly bipolar, but also as I said, they are part of the mental health community and the mentally ill. So, this definitely reaches beyond just bipolar.

KARIN: How are you doing today?

TERRI: I'm doing great. I waited for the other shoe to drop with COVID because isolation is one of the things I talk about in the book as being a bad coping skill. Isolation is very bad for you when you're depressed or have a mental health issue. But I've done great during COVID.

KARIN: Why do you think that is?

TERRI: First of all, because I'm used to being alone. I'm not married, I'm a writer. I'm used to feeling separate as a writer and as someone with mental illness. I think there is a separateness that is inherent in that. You watch a lot when you're a writer and you stand outside. So isolation kind of comes naturally. It's almost as if I've been practicing for COVID. I'm trained for it.

KARIN: Wow.

TERRI: Yeah. I'm quite surprised.

KARIN: Do you take medication for your illness?

TERRI: Yes, I've been a proponent of medication from the beginning. I've been on every medication there is practically. For me to accept having bipolar disorder, I had to have a story around it. My story is that it's chemically based or it has something to do with physicality, whether it's caused by inflammation (that's a recent theory) or by a chemical imbalance in the brain. That is easier for me to accept and then treat with medications. So, I've always believed that medication is necessary.

KARIN: I recall you sharing that you enjoy the experience of hypomania. Does the medication interfere with that?

TERRI: Kay Jamison writes a lot about this, about not wanting to take lithium because it would dull her writing ability. I certainly love hypomania, it is the best part of being bipolar. You feel so on top of your game and everything connects, everything clicks. The words just come pouring out of you. But the consequences of not taking medication are so great that it's just not worth it. The trade-off is just not worth it because the reactions are so bad. I'm one of those few people who is totally medication compliant.

KARIN: With three books under your belt, what have you learned about the creative writing process, about how to birth a book. Is there anything that is consistent?

TERRI: Yes. I've learned that you can't wait for inspiration to strike. That's been a huge lesson. I struggled for seven years to write Manic because I would just sort of sit there with my pen waiting for the metaphor to come, and trying to force the damn metaphor. And it just doesn't happen that way. You have to put yourself in a place to write and then write something—anything—so you have what I call playdough. Clay that you can sculpt. Because then the next day when you have to face the writing process, you're not facing an empty page, you're playing with words. And playing with words is great, I love doing that. I don't like the blank page.

KARIN: Many writers I work with struggle with finding the structure of their book.

TERRI: I've learned that I am not very good with structure, it's my bête noire. I work better with a short form format—the essay—than I do with a long form. So, in Manic and in Modern Madness I use the essay form to create a book with a narrative thread.

I tried to turn it to my advantage, because I know I have trouble with plotting a long chronological narrative. It's one thing I work at really hard, but I think some people are gifted in it and some people aren't. And I don't feel like I'm particularly gifted that way. I can see the arc of a short story very clearly, I feel it, but I don't feel the long ones.

KARIN: What about your second book, The Dark Side of Innocence?

TERRI: That one was more chronological. I don't think it worked as well. It told the story of my childhood. In a way, it was the idea of my editor to write about my childhood and I didn't have very strong feelings about it at the time. I sort of wish I had held back and waited for something that really felt more like it needed to be written the way that Manic and Modern Madness felt. These are stories that I've seriously wanted to tell and get out there.

KARIN: What was the urgency around this book? What were the stories you wanted to tell?

TERRI: I felt very strongly about incorporating relationship stories into a book because I was too wrapped up in my illness for too many years to see how it affected the people around me. I had watched how it affected men that I dated, friends that I had, my family. I had a little more perspective after all these years, and I felt very strongly that relationships were unexplored in my earlier work because it was mostly just about me.

KARIN: How does your mental illness affect or inform your creative process? Or is it hard to have perspective on it?

TERRI: No, I can see it. I can see it with some clarity. When I'm depressed I can't and don't write and that's something I've learned. It's been a really difficult lesson to learn, that there are simply times when I can't write and I have self-compassion for that, because you feel rotten when you don't write when you're a writer. You feel like you just haven't gotten anything done and you're just all clammy and stuck. I hate that feeling. And when I'm depressed I just don't have the inspiration or the desire really to tackle the words, so I let myself have those days off.

I try to make up for it when I'm in better places. I try to take advantage of the hypomanic moods. There's also normalcy in bipolar disorder. You have periods where you're just like everybody else, when you're not going through a mood state.

So I write as much as I can. When I’m manic I try to write because I think I've got the world's greatest ideas and I'm going to change the universe with them. I see the fabric of the universe, but unfortunately I write very badly when I'm manic. I write almost illegible to begin with, I like to do it in longhand.

KARIN: Do those episodes still happen even on medication?

TERRI: Not as much as they used to. I don't get as high and I don't get quite as low. I still get depressive episodes unfortunately, but they're fewer and for the most part they don't get as suicidal. So that's huge.

KARIN: How long do those depressive episodes typically last?

TERRI: I'm a rapid cycler. It's sort of a curse and a blessing because my episodes are very short, like four days depression followed by three days of mania. So the good part of that is that I know people who have episodes that last for months and I cannot imagine being severely depressed for months or years. But the problem is, it's very hard to treat because you're always chasing the symptoms. They're changing constantly. I think I write in Modern Madness, it's like chasing a comet's tail to try to get the last symptom that you had and medicate that, but then you're on to the next one.

KARIN: How much time typically passes in between?

TERRI: It varies. It can be weeks, months, generally weeks. I'm very aware of my moods and I don't know if that's because I'm bipolar and I've educated myself about it, or because I'm a writer. I'm just hyperaware of my emotions and my moods. I'm always thinking of it as material.

So it really does inform the universe for me. There's this big controversy that's saying, “I am bipolar” versus “I have bipolar disorder.” I get yelled at a lot by people for saying “I am bipolar,” which is part of the way I see the world. It's part of my mindset. It affects everything, so it doesn't feel weird to me to say that. But I understand it's not your whole identity. There are other parts of me.

KARIN: Since you’re so comfortable exposing yourself, is there any part of you that gets nervous to release your work into the world?

TERRI: I have a perfect example of that. I had this big lecture last night in front of 250 people, and it's on Zoom and I had to read a story from Modern Madness. I chose one that has me wondering where my panties went after an illicit interlude. And I'm thinking as I'm reading this, “There are doctors in this audience, there are people I know... what am I doing? Are you crazy?” And yet there's a certain thrill about doing it. Because there's a power to self-exposure as long as it's not too graphic and doesn't make people too uncomfortable. There's a great power to it. I spent so many years, as you know, hiding out and not telling anyone about my illness and just literally hiding under my desk when I was depressed as a lawyer. Lying all the time, pretending that something else was wrong with me and I couldn't go out because I had the flu or whatever. I would get so tired of the lies that telling the truth and being honest about what's going on can never feel as bad, I think, for me as it might feel for other people. I know how sick that made me to be lying all the time.

KARIN: Also, you have tended to expose yourself versus other people.

TERRI: Right. I worried about exposing my family when I wrote my second book. I was very careful with that. Both my parents are dead now, so I don't have to worry about that now and I probably have more to write about them. But exposing yourself... I feel like you're fair game. Who is the famous writing teacher who wrote, “If people want you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better”?

KARIN: Anne Lamott.

TERRI: I love that. That has encouraged me many times.

KARIN: Has anything ever come back to bite you?

TERRI: I've tried not to make people too recognizable, but people that are recognizable have been absolutely thrilled to be in the book. I have an ex-boyfriend who does not come off very well. He brags about it all the time. He said to me, “I'd marry you in a minute if it weren't for your bipolar disorder.” I wrote that in Manic and I think that's a pretty damning statement. He joked about it all the time and loves that he was a character in the book. So that's been my experience. I know other people have had problems but I've been very lucky. And I don't let people read my writing before it goes out. I think that's a dangerous habit.

After years of working for other people, if I'm going to make the self-sacrifice to be a writer, I want to have the perks of it as well. And part of that is being able to say what you want. You're the writer. You live or die by your words.

KARIN: I love that.

TERRI: Yeah.

I miss the money of being a lawyer. Writing is so hard financially.

KARIN: Do you miss practicing law at all?

TERRI: Well pretty much money is the only part. There is a certain instant credibility that went with being a lawyer that I miss, that business card moment when people, men especially, started to take you very seriously all of a sudden. When you say you're a writer there's that pause, that uncomfortable pause like, oh, another one.

KARIN: Even though you're published?

TERRI: Well now I get to say what I've written. Then I get to do my killer line, “And I wrote a book that became a best seller.” That's great. I mean I'm so lucky. I just love being able to say that, because I never in a million years expected that would happen.

KARIN: Why do you think it hit so strongly? What were the forces behind that?

TERRI: I think one of the big things, just from a marketing standpoint, was that my Modern Love essay for the New York Times hit a week before Manic was due to come out. And it was a powerful essay. It got filmed and Anne Hathaway ended up playing me which was such a bizarre turn of events. But that really helped, getting that exposure in the New York Times was tremendous.

KARIN: Was the timing just by chance?

TERRI: Just fortuitous. Yeah.

The same way that Modern Madness has come out in the middle of a pandemic when everybody is struggling with their mental health. I mean, I've been lucky. And I certainly didn't time it that way, and I didn't realize the title would be so prescient.

KARIN: Who is Modern Madness for?

TERRI: Pretty much everybody, because I think one thing I've learned is that when I tell people I'm bipolar there's this... it's not even six degrees of separation. It's, “So am I” or ”my best friend is” or somebody I work with, or I have depression, I have anxiety. That really has surprised me how many people are affected by mental illness. And if you don't have it yourself, you love someone who does.

So when I was writing my proposal for the book, I realized if this goes out, this could be marketed to almost anybody. It's not just for those with a diagnosis.

KARIN: What do you think is most misunderstood about mental illness?

TERRI: How common it is. One in five Americans takes a psychiatric medication, and the suicide rate, even before COVID, has just been skyrocketing. There's one suicide in the world every 40 seconds. It's tremendous what's happening and I don't really understand why, particularly with young people, it's so prevalent. I think it's being talked about more, thank God.

KARIN: Why do you think it’s so prevalent?

TERRI: I think it's easy to say social media is contributing to it. When I look at the people, I don't read my comments anymore, although I hope everybody will leave me an Amazon review! I really try not to read anonymous comments anymore because they were so brutal.

I had one person say, “Terri Cheney writes about suicide so much, I wish she would just go ahead and do it already.” If you read something like that you're like, “Do they not think I'm a human being?” So that sort of cured me for a while. That was for an article I wrote in The Huffington Post.

KARIN: What is your life like now? How do you spend your days?

TERRI: Well, now that I don't go to the cafe anymore to write, I try to set aside time for productivity every day which I am trying to be kind to myself about. Right now I've been dealing so much with publicity. That's been the last few months. But I've started to plot my new book. You have to really be kind to yourself when you're a writer because it's so easy to find fault with not doing enough. There's always that feeling of “I didn't do enough today.” But I think any day that you face the page or you face the project is a day well spent. Because your brain is percolating, I call it.

KARIN: But don't you find a lot of the writing, or the ideas, come when you're not facing the page, too?

TERRI: Absolutely, yeah.

KARIN: So how do you balance that?

TERRI: I write down all my ideas because I have a terrible memory. And it's just getting worse. So I have post-it notes everywhere. I use the software program Ulysses that lets you organize your ideas. I'm very technophobic, so that's the best I can explain it.

KARIN: Can you say anything about your new book?

TERRI: Well, I can say what it feels like at the moment. I'd like to write about recovery from substance abuse and mental illness because that's called a 'dual diagnosis' when you have both.

There's a lot of addiction and recovery memoirs out there, so I'm a little nervous about that. But I don't think there's been enough about dual diagnosis. I facilitated a mental health support group for dual diagnosis for about 15 years at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and heard a lot of stories. I'm still in a group. I just joined one in fact. And I think the issues are different when you have the combined forces attacking you. It's really a tough recovery and I'd like to write about that. It's funny, there are whole areas of my life that I haven't written about because I've been too ashamed, if you can believe that after reading everything that I've written already. But I heard if you have shame, it's probably a good thing to start writing about.

KARIN: It is pretty shocking that there are areas you haven't explored yet.

TERRI: I know. I didn't really want to go there. But I have used up a lot of my life in three books. So I think it's time to turn to the stuff that was very difficult. I felt like with alcohol there was more of a volitional aspect than with bipolar disorder, which feels to me like it was not within my control.

KARIN: I see. So, you relate personally to the dual diagnosis?

TERRI: Very much so. I'm 21 years sober, so I went through quite a journey.

KARIN: How have you become a better writer over the years? Have you always been a writer?

TERRI: Interesting question. I have written all my life since I was a little girl. My father would read to me and encouraged me to write poetry, and that was a huge bond between us. So I always wanted to write. The entertainment law, while it had its perks, was a major detour off my true passion. I was an English major and I always envisioned myself as a writer and never really let that dream go. But I've noticed my writing changing over the years, which is exciting and scary at the same time because I think I write more simply now than I used to. I don't know if that's because I've used up all the words already or if I really just have a clear thought process after writing so much.

KARIN: Are you more confident in some way?

TERRI: Well, I hear a pretty strong rhythm in my head and that guides me. I got that from, of all things, the Hudson Harlem line—the train from Poughkeepsie from Vassar College going into New York City—where I went every weekend to go play and go to the museums. I would hear that train sound and that's when I would do all my writing and my homework and it got into me. It got into my bones somehow and got in my head. So my writing has always been rhythmic, whether it's poetry or memoir. I haven't lost that sense of internal rhythm. That's why I can't write when like rock music is playing. I can only write if classical music is playing. Anything that disrupts that rhythm is going to disrupt my writing.

I don't know if that answers your question but It's just a very lovely memory of going on the train and writing to the wheels.

KARIN: What a great touchstone for you.

So, is the simplicity about less words, or more minimalist in sentence structure?

TERRI: Yes. Less metaphors. A little less flowery, I'd say.

I don't agonize over every image as much as I used to. So I wouldn't say it's easier. I don't think writing is ever easy, but it does flow more than it used to. I used to have terrible writer's block and I don't seem to have that. That's something I'd love to tell your readers. I went to see Dennis Palumbo, the writing coach, and he told me to “write one moment” and those three words have gotten me through so much. Just write one moment, because you get so overwhelmed by a lot of the story and characters. I've found when I write one moment and I focus on my internal sensations, something happens... something comes up.

It breaks through that ice.



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