First Draft Episode #227: Courtenay Hameister
JANUARY 7, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Courtenay Hameister, debut author of memoir Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went From Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things, and former host, co-producer and head writer of Live Wire Radio.
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Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Courtenay Hameister, debut author of memoir Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went From Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things. Courtney is also former host, co-producer and head writer of Live Wire Radio. I love what she had to say about how writers are wired to find meaning where other people may not, questioning the inherent value of enthusiasm, the ins-and-outs of putting together a nonfiction proposal, and the shame-busting power of honesty. So please, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: Hi, Courtenay, how are you?
Courtenay Hameister: I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to chat and to get into this. I have traditionally done a lot of young adult authors, so I'm getting into more different age categories and I love reading memoirs. So I love talking to people about that.
Courtenay Hameister: Great. Yeah, and this is decidedly not a young adult book. [Both Laugh].
Sarah Enni: No, I was reading it. I was like, "This is a very grownup book."
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. A little racy. She got a little racy.
Sarah Enni: Okay, well we're going to build to that. So I like to start my interviews right at the very beginning. I'd love to hear where you were born and raised.
Courtenay Hameister: I was born in Fort Benning, Georgia. My father was in the military, he was in the Army. And so I was an army brat. I lived in very many glamorous places like San Antonio, Texas and Shaker Heights, Ohio. And I actually did live in Monterey, California, which was absolutely gorgeous. But yeah, I grew up all over the place. I'm really grateful for it because I think that it really helped my mind to be flexible.
Courtenay Hameister: Honestly, the reason that it's good for people to travel is that it helps you recognize that your way isn't the only way. And I think it does make you more likely to be empathetic and all the reasons that people talk about.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I totally agree. I didn't move that much, but the longest I've lived anywhere is six years. And as a kid it was like, "Okay, moving from Texas to California." Like, "Let's adjust."
Courtenay Hameister: Well, and it's funny, I had the funniest experience. So I had moved from Aurora, Colorado to San Antonio and I think I was twelve. And when I was living in Colorado, nobody wanted a bra. All the girls were super sporty, and we skied and it was so gross. And my mom had to drag me to get a bra. And I was so mad. And we always would take them off. Like we'd pretend to wear 'em in the morning, and then take them off.
Courtenay Hameister: I moved to Texas and I wasn't wearing a bra. And I was in this choir concert and this girl, who was like two people down from me in the row, leans out and she's like, "Oh my god, are you not wearing a bra?" And I was like, "Oh my god, can people just write the rules down for different places?" Like, "That would be super helpful."
Sarah Enni: That would! Like a welcoming committee that's just like, "Just so you know, here's the tactics for survival at this particular middle school."
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. Yeah. And I remember that so clearly as like, "Oh, things aren't the same everywhere. Isn't that shocking."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I think then you also... tell me if this resonates with you. I feel like something I've had to work on in therapy as an adult, is being in a new situation and having that like eagle-eye, roving-eye, and being like, "What's normal?" Like walking into a new room and being like, "Okay, I never assume anything." I'm always like, "You have to adapt instantly." And there's a tension there.
Courtenay Hameister: Absolutely.
Sarah Enni: You kind of have to have. I'm like, "Okay, we can move past that and just be yourself everywhere."
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that it's also, as far as like being a writer, that noticing is really important.
Sarah Enni: It's so true. It's so true. Yeah, you're right. I'm not gonna put that down entirely. We gotta take the good.
Courtenay Hameister: Well, I mean, yeah, you have to give whatever your story is it's sense of place. And that's a part of it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Oh yeah. That's such a good point. Okay. I want to hear about how as a young kid, reading and writing was part of your life.
Courtenay Hameister: I adored reading from like day one. And I think that that was my mom. I mean my mother also introduced me to theater and she was she was a huge reader. And I think that I got that from her. But I just would, I just read voraciously. I loved Beverly Cleary (author of Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Beezus and Ramona, and The Mouse and the Motorcycle). And then I loved... god, I was gonna say Margaret Atwood... Judy Blume (author of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, Forever, and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing). Like, oh my god. And I remember in, I think that it was middle school that, oh my gosh, what was the name of her book that was like super racy?
Sarah Enni: Oh, Forever?
Courtenay Hameister: Forever. Right? And you had the copies that were dogeared and highlighted.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh.
Courtenay Hameister: All the sex stuff was highlighted in it.
Sarah Enni: The library ones?
Courtenay Hameister: It wasn't the library ones. Like people would have paperbacks that would just be passed around.
Sarah Enni: Oh, uh-huh.
Courtenay Hameister: And they were all highlighted.
Sarah Enni: That's so funny.
Courtenay Hameister: And yeah, I remember he had named his penis, Ralph, her boyfriend had named his penis Ralph. Which is like, that's the least sexy name for a penis I've ever heard. What about rod? That's an appropriate name.
Sarah Enni: You're like, "You're so close. It needs a punch up" [Laughing].
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. "Let's give this one a bunch up Judy Blume, cause I know you're not a very successful writer." [Laughing] But anyways, and then I got into, I loved Arthurian legend like The Crystal Cave. Weirdly, I've stopped really reading a lot of fiction. And I am obsessed with memoir. And I'm obsessed with, well, [laughs] I'm obsessed with self-help books. I'm very susceptible to them it turns out.
Courtenay Hameister: But at the same time, I mean, I think that memoir just [pauses] and I think reading memoir as a writer, I think helps so much in terms of recognizing just what we were talking about. Just how different people can be and people's interior lives. Part of it is I'm just super nosy. Like I just... you know?
Sarah Enni: Yes!
Courtenay Hameister: I'm super nosy. And also, I think I've always been fascinated... I've always been a romantic as a romantic realist, which is odd. Super pessimistic romantic, but but a romantic nonetheless. And so I'm always, always asking my friends questions like, "How do you make your relationship work?" And especially making things work over time. And communication is a huge question that I have, and how people communicate difficult feelings and communicate about difficult subjects.
Courtenay Hameister: And so I'm just always interested in reading memoir, and figuring out how people deal with the relationships in their life.
Sarah Enni: So it sounds like you were an avid reader, but when did you start creatively writing?
Courtenay Hameister: Like any other kid, I started some creative writing classes, or at least creative writing portions of my English class. And I did actually like to write. At the time, I liked to journal a little bit, and just write about my own life. And I never really considered myself a great fiction writer when I was younger. I also liked really writing... I liked writing essays. I liked talking about how I felt about things and what I thought things meant. And I remember it was really college where I started realizing, "Oh, I actually feel like this is something that I can do."
Courtenay Hameister: I think writers recognize connections between things that maybe other people don't. And I think that as an anxious person, I'll have an experience in say, a grocery store. I'll be buying detergent for my clothes, laundry detergent, and I will buy one with a floral scent. And I just remember this experience one time of me pulling it off the shelf and just putting it into my cart and being like, "Oh, of course I can buy a floral detergent because there's no one in my life and there will never be anyone in my life. So all my clothes can smell like flowers. Because if I had a man in my life, he wouldn't want his clothes to smell like flowers. And I'm just going to be able to buy floral detergent for the rest of my life."
Courtenay Hameister: Now [chuckles] I talk about it in my book, how how I believe that what anxiety has done to me is that it's created neural pathways in my brain that tell me everything is gonna suck. And that's something that I tried to fight with the book. But what that does is I believe it turns you into a pessimist. And it makes you able to kind of turn any experience or information into negative information.
Courtenay Hameister: And what I'm getting at, this is very long, is that I gave meaning to things that other people wouldn't. Like buying fucking laundry detergent had all of this greater meaning. And I think that that is something that essayists are particularly good at, like giving meaning to really anything. And I think that that's what my brain naturally did that. And I think that that's what really helped me as a writer.
Sarah Enni: And it's interesting to think about how your brain will naturally do that, and you've found a way to acknowledge it, and try to shift it to a way that's healthier for you to experience.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. And that's what's interesting is that it doesn't always have to be that negative side. I work with a group in Portland, this extraordinary group, called Create More, Fear Less that works with anxious kids. And one of the things that it tries to do for these kids is to help them see their anxiety in a different way, and see the gifts of anxiety.
Courtenay Hameister: And one of the gifts of anxiety is that you have an extraordinary imagination, right? You can imagine the worst case scenario in every way. But I think that's actually a gift that my neuroticism and anxiety gave me, that sort of pessimism gave me, was to help me see connections between things and help me see things in a larger context. And hopefully, I'm able to actually make that positive sometimes as well.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I'm also so interested in that, even as a young person starting to express yourself, it was always nonfiction and always exploring the internal as opposed to making things up. I speak to all kinds of writers and it's just fun to me to see how innate your style really is.
Sarah Enni: I want to talk about college and what you went to study because I read that you went to NYU. I'm so interested in the fact that you studied acting because of how much you talk in the book about being anxious, and we'll get to it. But had to step down because of stage fright, or related fears. So not only [do] I want to talk about acting in college, but also humor because you went to college with The State guys.
Sarah Enni: So whichever direction... let's start with The State and humor writing, because the acting will lead us into Live Wire, but for listeners who might not be familiar, do you want to explain what The State is?
Courtenay Hameister:
The State is, oh my gosh. Yeah, you have to be oldish in order to remember The State.
Sarah Enni: Or a comedy nerd.
Courtenay Hameister: Or a giant comedy nerd, because they are revered I think in the comedy world, understandably. So, The State, when they were at NYU, they were called The New Group. They were a sketch comedy group and I think there were maybe, I want to say twelve of them at the time, I think that's maybe a high number. Anyway, it was mostly men (made up of Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black, Robert Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter, and David Wain). One woman, Kerri Kenny, absolutely hilarious, who people may know from Reno 911 and now lots of things. In any case, they were a sketch comedy group at NYU and I'd had a couple of them in my acting classes. And I went to see a show and I was absolutely blown away by them.
Courtenay Hameister: They were incredibly talented people and it wasn't just that they were great writers, they were also really talented comedic actors with just absolutely extraordinary timing. And so I just wanted to work with them. And of course I wanted to be in The State, but I was never brave enough to try. So I would art direct their short films that they made. And then I also would stage manage their live shows and help produce them.
Courtenay Hameister: So what that meant was that I got to sit in on their writer's meetings. But Ben Garant, and I think they're doing a reboot of Reno 911, and the reason I mentioned Ben is he was, and probably continues to be, the most prolific writer I've ever seen in my life. No matter where he was, he would be writing.
Courtenay Hameister: And part of my job was to actually type up the sketches. And so I would just have this pile from Ben of different, like here's a matchbook, here's a napkin [laughs]. He and Tom Lennon actually have written some of the highest grossing, comedy films out there. They've written a book about writing.
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, I read that book, the How to Make a Billion Dollars... or, We Made a Billion Dollars Writing Movies and You Can Too, or something to that affect.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. So anyway, Tom Lennon, Ben Garant, Ken Marino, Kerri Kenny, Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black. So if you look at the work of these people in the past couple of decades, I mean, Reno 911 was such a fantastic show in so many ways. It was so brilliant. And Wet Hot American Summer, David Wain directed that film and he has since directed many blockbuster comedies.
Courtenay Hameister: So I was surrounded with just some of the most talented people in comedy.
Sarah Enni: Like a generational talent.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah, exactly. And I just would go to those meetings and I would just take it all in. I would just watch them talk about their ideas. The funny thing about The State was that there was very little editing that went on in those meetings. Those guys brought pretty buttoned up sketches to the table.
Courtenay Hameister: And maybe they had meetings that I didn't know about where they made edits. But just being able to see the timing and see their ideas was just, I think, a great lesson for me. And I ended up being the head writer of Live Wire which was a radio variety show. And it was basically just like, "Well, I was around these really funny people for like two years. So does that count?" And our producers are like, "Sure."
Sarah Enni: Yeah, totally. I love that that was like not an NYU class, but in some ways worth the price of college admission to do that extra-curricular class.
Courtenay Hameister: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I had some wonderful teachers at NYU. I took film theory classes, and what I learned was that I was a writer in college. Even though I wasn't taking a lot of creative writing classes or English classes, all I wanted to do was write, and oh god, who was it that said this? I can't think of the writer who said it, but she essentially said, "I don't know what I think about something until I write about it."
Sarah Enni: That's Joan Didion.
Courtenay Hameister: Yes. Thank you! And that is what I learned in college. And it was such a thrilling experience as you're writing, have the stuff that was somewhere inside your brain, but you didn't know it until you actually put it on paper. It's this wonderful discovery.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's creating. It's really magic.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly.
Sarah Enni: It was just so striking to me that you studied acting in college. I'd love to hear you talk about that because you mentioned at that point you didn't have stage fright, or experience anxiety the way that you do now.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah, and I didn't. The reason that I stopped studying acting was that I just had this epiphany at one point, when a friend had come back from some auditions, and just talked about... the thing about when you study acting is what they're trying to teach you is to get rid of all the layers, right? And just be your true authentic self and also just be able to access your emotions instantaneously.
Courtenay Hameister: And I thought, "Wait a minute. So you need to go into a room, just clear off all of your protective layers, be your true emotional self, so that someone can sit across from you and say, "I don't like any of this." Like, "None of this is working for me. This thing, your true authentic self, is absolutely not working for me." And I thought, "That's a terrible idea. And I'm not gonna do it."
Courtenay Hameister: So, that's kind of why I got out of that. And I can't really tell you why it started happening to me. I mean, I was absolutely anxious when I would go on stage, but I would never say that I had stage fright or panic attacks. And it wasn't until I was at an event one morning and... What had happened was I'd walked into the room and I just hadn't realized how many people were gonna be there. And for some reason it immediately gave me an anxiety attack to see all of the tables. It was about 450 people.
Sarah Enni: That's a lot of people.
Courtenay Hameister: And I also have OCD. So OCD has many ways that it can affect people. And oftentimes what happens is that you have an obsession, like hand washing is the one that most people know of. You're obsessed with the fact that there are germs everywhere and it makes you have to wash your hands sometimes hundreds of times a day. But you can also have OCD without any compulsion's. And that is Intrusive Thought OCD. And so that's what I have.
Courtenay Hameister: And so, it was just the strangest thing. I was onstage, and just reading through my script, I was just hosting this event. And I started to become obsessed with how insane it is that we can stand on a stage and read through a script, be saying words, but also be reading forward. And our brain knows how we should say those words as well, while we're saying these words. And I became obsessed with the idea that my brain was gonna stop knowing how to do that.
Courtenay Hameister: And so that was my panic attack. My throat closed up, and I was just having trouble speaking. And of course, I get my anxiety mostly in my chest, and so my chest tightened up, I was having trouble breathing. So the problem with panic attacks, is that once you have one, you then have what's called anticipatory dread. Essentially, your anxiety is about a fear of having an anxiety attack and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Courtenay Hameister: So moving forward, that's what tended to happen, is that I would have anxiety around having anxiety and that would trigger a panic attack on stage.
Sarah Enni: Got it. How old were you when you had that experience at first?
Courtenay Hameister: So that was, I think I was probably like thirty-six at that point, so I was hosting Live Wire already. So then I had to figure out how to manage that. And the week of the show, I talk about it in my book, what I would call my "dread ball" would arrive. And then it would just grow until I was inside of it [laughs] on the day of the show.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it consumed you.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah, exactly.
Sarah Enni: Well, I don't want to go any farther before describing what Live Wire is. So, do you mind giving the audience a little background in what that radio show is.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah and it still exists. It's a radio show out of Portland, Oregon. We started it in 2003. And it was this essentially, it was what you think a variety show will be. It was sketches. We did radio sketches. We had a musical guest every show, and then we would have filmmakers or writers or actors or entrepreneurs. We had like the [unintelligible] on the show.
Courtenay Hameister: People like Mike Birbiglia (who is best known for Sleepwalk With Me, which was also a comedy special and a New York Times bestselling book, Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories, and his new comedy special, The New One is also going to be a book, coming out in May 2020 The New One: Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad) was one of my favorite guests. Carrie Brownstein, and Todd Haynes, the director. People like that. And so many writers, Cheryl Strayed (author of Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar and memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail), and David Rakoff (humorist and author of Fraud: Essays, Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems) and just some of my all time favorite writers I got to talk to, which was really, really lovely. And I used to tell people that it was like the world's longest MFA program for me with like really good snacks in the green room [laughs]. It really was. I got to ask people who I so admired, how they did what they did. And I felt so lucky for that.
Sarah Enni: So the thing I love, I read it a couple of interviews with you talking about the genesis of Live Wire. And it made me think about you ending up doing this book. But it sounded like you had a couple people you knew who were putting this together, you were helping them do it, and then you suggested yourself for the role of head writer. Do you mind telling that story?
Courtenay Hameister: Well, I mean, there are a few things that I've done in my life, where the whole reason that I was able to do it was that I had just sort of... most people you think that they're very bold. And they just boldly are like, "I'm gonna do this. I should be your this." And they boldly say this. But I was in a band for the same reason. That I just quietly said, "You know, maybe I could try to do this." [Speaks hesitantly]
Courtenay Hameister: And that's what I did with Live Wire. I mean, I was working with these two producers Robin Tannenbaum and Kate Sokoloff who created the show. They had actually had the idea of having an improv troupe. And I think that I had said, "Well, I worked with this..." And they knew I was a writer. In fact, they brought me in wanting me to help them write the materials for the show in order to sell it to our local affiliate OPB. So they'd seen that I could write humor, but they weren't considering, I think, even having a head writer. And so I just sort of very quietly mentioned, "Maybe I could try." And they said, "Sure, why not?"
Courtenay Hameister: And so I think this is part of the lesson of my book as well. There's a big lesson that I learned over the course of doing this, was that we as a culture, we really admire and applaud enthusiasm. And I don't believe that you need to have it. There are many of us who don't feel enthusiastic about things, and we feel badly about that. We're like, "Oh, I'm a Debbie Downer." But you can still do all of this amazing stuff without having to be enthusiastic about it. It still can affect your life in a positive way.
Courtenay Hameister: You still have the experience and it enriches you, and it changes you, and you don't have to be like all, "You go girl" about it.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. You don't have to be bouncing off the walls.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. I mean, if you have enthusiasm naturally... good for you, and I'm so happy for you. But you don't have to see it as a character flaw.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I think that's great.
Courtenay Hameister: That you're tentative about things. You know?
Sarah Enni: Yeah, yeah. I love that. And in a second I'll have you talk about the genesis of the book specifically, but it seems like you, for someone who does experience anxiety and dread, you seem pretty brave about putting yourself out there. [Courtenay giggles in the background]. I mean, I relate to that actually. I find that throughout my life I have subconsciously put myself in positions to address major fears that I have. And I think it's benefited me so much. So I relate to it. But I was reading interviews with you, and reading the book, and being like, "Well, for someone who's anxious, she seems pretty brave also."
Courtenay Hameister: Well, I mean, another thing that I talk about in the book is, if you are an anxious person and you go about your life every day, and you do the same shit that everyone else is doing, you are brave. That is the definition of bravery. That is doing things even though you are afraid. Right? So I think that people beat themselves up for being anxious, but those people are braver than the people who don't have anxiety.
Courtenay Hameister: So I think that that's a big deal and a huge thing to recognize if you're an anxious person. I mean it's funny because I did this show for nine years. And it was recorded in front of a live audience, anywhere from like four hundred to eight hundred people in that audience every week. And so I think that some people might be like, "Well, I would just say you're not an anxious person cause you're able to do that."
Courtenay Hameister: But I gotta tell ya the number of [pauses] I had this conversation with one of my all time favorite musicians in Portland. I had gone to see his show and he was like, "Man, I heard about your anxiety and I think it's so great that you just keep on doing this." And I said, "Yeah, I really appreciate that." And he's like, "You know, I'm anxious." And I was like, "What?" And he said very casually, "Oh yeah, it's why I'm an alcoholic."
Sarah Enni: [Both laughing] Oh my gosh.
Courtenay Hameister: I was like, "Well, okay." But the number of performers who have said to me, "Oh my gosh, I'm completely anxious." I used to have a friend who was in this amazing band and she would call me. it was so funny, we called each other prior to each of our shows, both going, "Who thought this was a good idea? This is a terrible idea. Why am I doing this? Why do I keep doing this to myself?" And then she would perform. And what was so devastating about this to me, was the amount of joy that she brought to people when she sang, and she didn't get a taste of it herself, she was too busy feeling anxious to get that herself. So yeah, I don't believe that I'm brave for doing the things that I did in this book.
Courtenay Hameister: I think that for myself, I was brave. There's not some scale of bravery for activities, but certainly I just dipped my toe slightly outside my comfort zone. And that's another huge lesson that I learned during the course of that year, is that every single time you very, very slightly stick your toe outside your comfort zone, you're expanding it out a little bit more.
Courtenay Hameister: And so you don't have to jump out of a plane. You just have to continually, just a little bit, just inch it out. And that's how change happens. Movies and books have lied to us, I think. Mostly fiction has lied to us, because we see a character have an epiphany and their life changes. And what happens is, you usually don't have an epiphany. An epiphany will last for maybe two years. It will all add up to an epiphany. And then your life will change incrementally from there.
Sarah Enni: That's more of a montage.
Courtenay Hameister: Oh yeah. And it's a really long montage. And I understand. It's really frustrating how long it takes to change. But it's also, it's change. Even the smallest change in your life is change. And if you have two more interesting hours in 2020 than you had in 2019 good for fucking you. And that's an improvement.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Somewhat related, or this is what my mind goes to is, I forget where I heard this first, but someone was saying, "We overestimate what we can do in a day. And underestimate what we can do in a week."
Courtenay Hameister: Oh, that's interesting.
Sarah Enni: And it feels like this human brain thing of being like, "If change doesn't happen right away, then it doesn't count." It's like,"Well, we're really bad at making five year plans or ten year plans, or thinking about things like that." But if you force yourself to be like, "Well, I can't do everything today, but let's map out a week. Let's map out a month. Let's look back over the year and see how much has actually accumulated." You can do yourself a favor by doing active reflection like that, I think.
Courtenay Hameister: Oh yeah. And I mean, I think that we just, we want things to happen immediately. I mean, some of my favorite ways to shift behavior, are those plans that are about like [chuckles] and, of course, I have so much stuff around food. I've been struggling with food my whole life. And it's like, "For this month you're just going to eat more vegetables. For this month. That's the only thing you're doing. And then the following month you're still doing the vegetable thing, but you add one other thing for the next month."
Courtenay Hameister: So people are like, "No! It takes too long." It's like, "This is how things change."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And how habits form. You don't freak out or, yeah. So let's dive into, Okay, Fine, Whatever. And do you mind, I would love to hear like the pitch for it and I think within the pitch you'll kind of explain how you go from Live Wire to writing about this experience you had.
Courtenay Hameister: So, Okay, Fine, Whatever is the story of the year that I tried to teach my anxious brain that everything was gonna be okay. And so what had happened was that these panic attacks got worse. And then on the evening before the ninth anniversary of our first show, I had a massive panic attack that ended up lasting for a couple of days. And I couldn't do the show.
Courtenay Hameister: So I actually, we were gonna have Luke Burbank on the show, who now is the host of the show. And so I called our producer and I said, "What if Luke just hosted?" And we did two shows in a night. So he had to do two shows. And then I spent two weeks trying to figure out what I was gonna do, and I just decided to step down as host. But I did continue as producer and head writer of the show.
Courtenay Hameister: And I just, once that happened, I had this hole in my life where massive anxiety used to be. And I also realized that I had lost this wonderful, extraordinary thing, like I said, this amazing MFA program where I got to talk to all these people and help figure out how they did what they did.
Courtenay Hameister: And I didn't wanna lose something like that again. And so I thought, "What if there was a way to teach my brain that everything was gonna be okay by doing things that scared me a little, and then processing those experiences by writing about them.
Courtenay Hameister: And so, like I said, I didn't jump out of planes. I did things like I went to a sensory deprivation tank, because I'm claustrophobic and afraid of the dark. And I went to a professional cuddler because I don't like talking to strangers. So like I spooned with one to see how that went. And then there was also this huge dating portion of it because I really never dated in my life. I was a very late bloomer dating-wise. So then I did things like dated polyamorous people. And I went to, of course, a Build Your Own Burrito night at a sex club [laughs].
Courtenay Hameister: And over the course of that year, and it was really a year and a half frankly, but that just doesn't fit on a book cover. But through the course of that year, spoiler alert, my life didn't completely change. But there was a positive effect of that experience, and my life absolutely changed for that year. I had the most interesting year of my life. And the most enriching year, and the most educational year of my life. Even without being this enthusiastic person, I was able to do that.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, and it's such a fun read, which I want to get to in a second, is how you write not only memoir, but humorous memoir. Which is so fun. And that was the tone of the column that you were writing, right?
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: Cause you were having these experiences, writing about them for a column, and like I mentioned, we're talking to a lot of writers here. So I'm interested in how you went from writing about this as a column, having these experiences for your own sake. How did you then transition to thinking about it as a book?
Courtenay Hameister: Well, interestingly, I didn't. Because I hosted this show, I was lucky enough to have friends who were really successful writers. And my friend Daniel Wilson, who I was in a writer's group with, Daniel wrote a book called Robopocalypse that got optioned by this guy Steven Spielberg. I don't know if you've heard of him?
Sarah Enni: [Chuckles] I'm familiar. Passingly familiar.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. We were like, "Really Daniel?" [Laughs]. But yeah, so he had an agent that he introduced me to and actually I became Facebook friends with his agent, his lovely agent, Laurie Fox. And Laurie, because I would post my columns to Facebook, Laurie started reading them. And she contacted me at one point, and she said, "I'm pretty sure this is a book." Like she just saw the episodic nature of it and really saw it as an arc. And so I was super lucky in that way.
Courtenay Hameister: And also because of my anxiety, I didn't reply to her for a while. And it was so funny. You know the thing that happens when you don't respond to an email, and then you're like, "Well now it's been a week. I just can't. What am I supposed to even say?" And then it's like, "Well, now it's six months, so I'm the biggest asshole in the world."
Courtenay Hameister: And it had been like five months. And she'd contacted a couple of our mutual friends going, "Why? Is she? What's going on? Did I make her mad?" And it was just... anxious brains just fuck with us in the oddest ways, you know? I think that we're afraid of success sometimes. I think for me, I used to dream of being a writer, being an author. And I think there absolutely was this fear as I was writing the book, and just all along, just the idea of the book for me was, "What if I write it and it's a failure? What am I?" Right? Because I've always thought, "Well yeah, I mean, I could be an author." And what if the answer is, "No, you can't." So I think that that was probably why I didn't write her back immediately.
Courtenay Hameister: But then I did. So the process with her was, she has this amazing proposal structure that she has for her writers that she helped create. And I think it's very similar to other... a proposal should have, obviously your bio and it needs to now have your platform in it. It needs to have the connections that you have. People who might blurb you, ideally. My proposal actually had pre-blurbs from people that I knew who were willing to say the kind of writer that I was.
Courtenay Hameister: And it needs to have comparable books in it, and talking about not only those books, but how your book is similar, or different, from those books. So these are all things that tend to be in proposals. And then obviously sample chapters. Hopefully the people who are writers who are listening to this understand that structure.
Courtenay Hameister: And if you go online, oh my gosh, cause people will say, "Oh, can you send me your proposal?" And I'd rather not do that because it's Laurie's. But what I would say is, oh my gosh, you're gonna be able to find so many proposals online, and you're gonna be able to find the one that's perfect for you. So anyway, we did that and Laurie... and I say we did that like, "Oh, it was so easy to come up with!" I think we had three or four sample chapters. It's not [chuckles]. And also with a memoir, which are the sample chapters. And it's the same thing with a fiction book. Just like, "Well, it has to be all the beginning chapters because otherwise, I can't give you a later chapter because you're gonna be lost."
Sarah Enni: Yeah, you gotta establish something. So I'm just interested in like in your thought process and your experience as you're going through this. It seems like you felt pretty comfortable putting yourself out there with these columns and that's a world that you're familiar with. Now you're stepping into packaging, and it's this other thing, what was that experience like for you?
Courtenay Hameister: Well, just like the writing of the book?
Sarah Enni: The writing of the book, and then what you just said about your anxiety taking the form...I've never thought about it that way, but anxiety taking the form of fear of success is like, I'm taking that to therapy on Monday, like that's so real. [Courtenay laughs in the background]. Cause that's what I felt very intensely for the year before my book came out, which was ten months ago. And I had to really look at that right in the face and be like, "Well I'm not gonna ever do anything if I don't just get over this.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: And cognitive behavioral therapy was just having the book come out basically.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah, well yeah, and that's the thing. I mean, it's so funny, I did an event in San Francisco for the book, when the book came out last year, and I had this absolutely equal fear of, "What if no one comes?" And. "What if everyone comes?" Both of those things are terrifying in their own special way. So for me, I just thought, "Oh, it's mostly already written." Because it's basically a bunch of my columns that I'm turning into a book. I absolutely needed to expand them. There were about a thousand to twelve hundred word columns and we were thinking my chapters would be thirty-five hundred or four thousand words somewhere around there. And I had a lot to expand on, right? And I added a bunch of chapters.
Courtenay Hameister: And I thought that that would be easy. But what was interesting was, so I wrote my first draft, and Jean Garnett was my editor at Little Brown. And she is just, it was so funny, because I thought, "How is she gonna...?" Because I'm fifty now and at the time I was like forty or forty-sevn, something like that, and I think she's thirty-three. And I was like, "How is she gonna relate?" I mean, she was so smart. And she so appreciated and got the book, which was really interesting to me. Because I do feel a lot of it was some of the issues that we have as women in our forties. So Jean is an amazing editor, and she helped me so much in helping me to envision what the book should look like, and how to structure these stories, and how to turn a bunch of essays into a story with an arc.
Sarah Enni: And it's interesting with the memoir format, because it's an invisible arc. It's less obvious than fiction. It's like a documentary where you're like at the end of it, you're like, "I see what they did there." But it's not like you can as easily identify like; Act One, Act Two, Act Three.
Courtenay Hameister: Because it's just like, I don't know which act I'm in right now! God, I hope it's Act Two, not Three. But, no, that's what's so interesting is that I think that some people are like, "Well you don't need to create an arc, cause there is an arc. It's your fucking life." Right? Like your life has its own arc, but it's absolutely not that way. Because you have to figure out where's the [unintelligible]. I don't know. Am I in it right now?
Courtenay Hameister: And what was really interesting about what happened to me is, at least to me it was interesting. So normally you turn in your first draft, and in an ideal situation you initially get some comments from your editor. And they do line edits oftentimes on the first draft, and just some basic maybe format, maybe structural stuff. But if there's a deeper problem, you get an editorial letter, right? And I got an editorial letter. And the biggest issue was that I had been an essay writer. I had written two-hundred-and-fifty essays for Live Wire and I'd been an essay writer for a decade. And what Jean had said was, "You keep tying everything up in a little bow at the end of each chapter. And there's no reason for me to keep reading."
Courtenay Hameister: Like, "You've got to turn each essay into a piece of a story that is moving forward and that you're not solving everything at the end of each chapter." And, of course, I didn't solve every problem that I had at the end of an essay. But when you are in essayist, what you're trying to do is really figure out, "Okay, what did I get from this at the time?" Or, "What can I get from this in reflecting on this?" And so it is completely tied up. And so I tend to find, and it's normally something that's kind of positive. And it's just like, "Well, why am I reading on? You've solved all your problems." So then I had to go back and deal with that issue and then also just some other issues.
Courtenay Hameister: There were a lot of chapters in this, in my first draft, that didn't really have an emotional heart. She really took out any chapter that was just kind of funny, that I found something that was kind of funny and interesting. She wanted the stuff that in some way, truly affected me emotionally, and changed my emotional life.
Sarah Enni: I think in another interview you mentioned that the Zoomba chapter is left behind.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. The Zoomba chapter died. What was interesting was, there's a chapter in this about me going to a water aerobics class, and that died initially. But I told Jean, I was like, "Let me play with this." There were a few different arcs in this book. There was definitely my professional arc of what it was like to lose this thing that I felt defined me so much. There was obviously a romantic arc. There was the arc of my body and how I've always struggled with that.
Courtenay Hameister: And of course the anxiety was arc A. And the other ones were all sort of B's. But I felt like that chapter was so important for my arc about my body, and how I felt about it. And I actually had an epiphany in that pool. What had happened was that the teacher had us walking very quickly in the pool and I was watching how much of that water I displaced. And I felt so embarrassed by that because my body was so big. And I remembered this thing that actually Lidia Yuknavich had said to me, just about how she'd gotten a little bit bigger over the years. And she's this amazing swimmer. And she said, "I've just decided that this is how big my body needs to be to hold the stories that I tell."
Courtenay Hameister: And I was just like, "I just need to own this." And then I started moving more quickly to see how much water I could displace. Even though as soon as I started to step out of the pool, and worried about the person stepping out of the pool behind me, and how big my ass was. So I didn't have this epiphany and suddenly I'm a different person. But it was a moment where I actually felt what it would be like to be that evolved.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. You talk a lot about the shift in perspective. And it seems like just gaining a new lens. That you realize is in your arsenal, to mix several metaphors. I'm happy to hear that the chapter came back cause it was one of my favorites. It was really beautiful.
Courtenay Hameister: Thank you. I think you should make sure that your editor is completely comfortable with just saying, "This doesn't belong. Here's why it doesn't belong." And Jean did it in such a thoughtful way. She explained everything really clearly to me. And then she was also super open to me saying, "I think that this belongs. Let me play with it and give it back to you." And she was like, "You did it. It belongs now for sure."
Sarah Enni: That's so great. I'm interested in, one of the things that is most stunning to me about memoir, is like you're saying. You're putting this somewhat superficial arc on... truly this was like an interesting, confusing, random year of your life. Then you are having to super impose an arc. And you kind of deal with this in the book, but I'm interested in how you thought about it. It "ends", quote unquote, ends with you in a new relationship. And that's kind of obvious from the beginning, so I don't think I'm spoiling anything. But what was your comfort level with establishing a story with that as the ending? Do you know what I mean?
Courtenay Hameister: It was really low actually. And that's the thing. That happened at the end of the book, and there was nothing I could do about that. Right? Like that's the truth of that experience of me dating. But I had a lot of conversations with Jean about this, where I said, "I do not want this to be a book where the happy ending is, I met someone." Like, "It's really important". And so what I tried to do, and I hope I was successful, but what I say in the book is, "I'm still with this person. I have no idea what's gonna happen." And also, I mean, of course it matters to me what happens, I care. I love him at this point, but I tried to give everything else equal weight.
Courtenay Hameister: The epilogue to the book is just another chapter of the book where I try to say, "Here are all of the things." And I tried to cover each one of those arcs. Like, "Here's where I am with my body stuff that I'm still struggling with. Here's where I am with my job stuff that I'm still struggling with.It so happens that I also am still with this person and we haven't fucked it up yet."
Courtenay Hameister: But I really hope that it doesn't come across as a book where, "Oh, I met someone, so everything worked out." Ugh. But I think it's the same thing with documentaries, right? Supposedly when people go into making a documentary, they're not supposed to really think about, or have a hope for, what the message or outcome is going to be.
Courtenay Hameister: We all know that with Michael Moore, that's not true. It's generally not true. And, of course I had a hope for what this process would give to me, and how it would change me. And I was surprised that it didn't change me more. But you have to write about what the reality is. There's a note in the book that says, "Everything in this book happened. But it didn't all happen in the order that you're reading it in."
Courtenay Hameister: And I know that there are people who feel so strongly about this with memoir, that it needs to be exactly as it happened. And there are people who wouldn't want to read my book because of that. But I think that as long as you say that, as long as you're honest with people about like... In order to make this a narrative that I felt flowed correctly, I moved some stuff around.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I like the term creative nonfiction for that reason. That's the format I like best. And it does take some liberties, but it's like, "Well, we all know that life is messy. When I pick up a work of art, I want it to be art." And that means that it's manipulated somewhat, for us to tell human stories. It doesn't lessen the impact of what you're saying.
Courtenay Hameister: I read Wild a long time ago, but I think Cheryl had two siblings in her real life, and I think there's just one sibling in Wild. The book is obviously a classic and I adored it so much. And the thing is, not every character in your life is an important character in your book, and you don't need to include them just because they were there.
Courtenay Hameister: Because if you do, it just opens up so much. It's like, "Well, so now I have to introduce who they are. I have to introduce their relationship. I have to say why they are in this story." And if there's not a why...
Sarah Enni: It's detracting.
Courtenay Hameister: It is detracting! It's information that doesn't necessarily need to be there for the story. So I completely respect people who feel like they need to be completely honest about every single moment. I absolutely respect that. But I also just have to say, for me, I'd rather read a good story where someone was honest like, "There's some stuff that could have been in here but isn't, because I wanted to make the story more pleasant for you to read it."
Sarah Enni: And what you're saying about your editor and her and her prioritization. The focus, especially for a book like this, is about emotional truth rather than say journalistic truth. I read Bad Blood this year, and I was like, "Well, you should probably have all your facts straight about Theranos." Like, "You're a Wall Street Journal reporter. I expect you to be very rigid about that stuff." But not when you're turning to a memoir or something like Wild, is such a great example. It's about her journey and that can be laid out however she wants to tell it.
Courtenay Hameister: Have you read Moonwalking with Einstein?
Sarah Enni: No.
Courtenay Hameister: Oh my gosh, it's such a great book. Joshua Foer wrote it. It's about memory. He talks about how every single time you visit a memory, you change it, your brain changes it. We cannot truly trust our memories anyway, I mean, there's all of those levels of things, right? There's your truth of an experience, and my truth of an experience that we had, and they are always different, right?
Courtenay Hameister: And so there is no objective truth. You can try everything you can to get to that objective truth, and I respect you for it. But if we know that our brain is changing the truth anyway, it's okay to me to go with that creative nonfiction version of the story.
Courtenay Hameister: And there are conversations in this book. Of course I didn't remember that conversation exactly, but I remember the nugget of it, right? And I tried to recreate it from there. Even experiences. There's a story in this, not to brag, but I didn't lose my virginity until I was thirty-four. Accidental, it wasn't on purpose. And there's this moment where I'm with the first man that I was ever with, I was at his house. I'd spent the night and nothing had happened, but I had still spent the night. We were just chatting, and he was brushing his teeth. And we were still chatting while he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, and I was in his bedroom. And somehow during the course of whatever conversation we were having, he figured it out that I was a virgin.
Courtenay Hameister: I had said something. And he just showed up in the doorway, holding his toothbrush in his hand, he had toothpaste all over his mouth, and I had written, "Are you a Virgin?" And he points at me. And I'd written that. And the funny thing is, I actually sent him the chapter. And he wrote back and he said, "I didn't ask that question. I said it. I was very proud that I had figured that shit out. And I said, "You're a Virgin. Right?"
Courtenay Hameister: Those are very different. And also a hugely significant moment in my life. And I believe that I remembered it wrong. Like I got it wrong. And so, I changed it in the book. I changed it to his version because he had felt so strongly about that. And I was like, "You know what?" Also, "It came out of your mouth." So I wrote his version of it.
Courtenay Hameister: I don't want this to be a rationalization. And I don't think that it is. I am totally saying, "If this is the way you want to do it, do it that way." I think lying in a memoir, overtly lying in a memoir, is terrible.
Sarah Enni: That's beyond. There's a rubicon there, right?
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I think that it's okay to write your version of a story, as long as you let the audience know that some things might have shifted, or that a character might be an amalgam of two different people. As long as they know, and they're cool with it, then it's totally fine with me.
Sarah Enni: I remember this happening with James Frey and Oprah, right? That whole kerfuffle. And ever since then, I've felt very strongly, I'm like, "Well, we call it a memoir. It's not a journalistic retelling of my life." There's a word for it, for a reason. It kind of implies all this.
Courtenay Hameister: And memoir has to do with you looking back. And it has to do with your current perspective. Did you ever read Night of the Gun by David Carr?
Sarah Enni: No.
Courtenay Hameister: Well, that's so fascinating in terms of this idea that we're talking about, right? Because he was, I want to say a crack addict.
Sarah Enni: Yes, I believe so.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah. And essentially he was trying to tell his own story. He's a journalist, or was a journalist, he passed away a few years ago. And the Night of the Gun is his journalistic retelling of his own life, by going back and interviewing all of the people who were there. And there were many experiences, including the gun experience, where in his head it was this experience where this guy had a gun and it was really scary, and it turns out he had the gun. It was him.
Sarah Enni: Whoa.
Courtenay Hameister: I know! It was such an amazing book. And I think it's such an important part of this conversation that we're having.
Sarah Enni: I want to ask about writing with humor. I love humor. I'm a comedy nerd. I'm obsessed with it. I read this book, and right before it I read John Hodgman's new book( a collection of personal essays, Medallion Status: True Stories From Secret Rooms). He's such a gifted humor writer. Do you think about writing with humor, or do you think that's your natural state of writing? How do you kind of think about that?
Courtenay Hameister: I do think that it's my natural state of writing. So I just, speaking of Lidia Yuknavitch, I just took a workshop with her and Jen Pastiloff. Jennifer Pastiloff just wrote a great book called On Being Human: A Memoir of Waking Up, Living Real. Lidia has a book coming out, I think it's called Verge: Stories. Did I get that wrong? Or Verve? Verge, I think it's called Verge. Anyway, that's coming out in February. She's a stunning writer. Her memoir, The Chronology of Water just broke my heart, and then fixed it immediately after. And Jen's book, On Being Human, I say to people, is just like this, "It's like a warm blanket and twenty years of therapy, in a book."
Courtenay Hameister: Anyway, I took their workshop, it's called "Writing in the Body." They use yoga and writing at the same time. And the work that comes out of that tends to be very powerful work. The work that the women in that workshop wrote just was stunning, and a lot of it was very heartbreaking.
Courtenay Hameister: But what I found was, and you're just reading it as you go along, your little pieces. And what I realized was like, "Oh, I can't write without trying to put something funny in there." It doesn't matter what I'm writing. But I think that so much of it, and so much of humor, has to do with having an eye for the absurd and the ridiculous. And so when you're talking about the things in your life that are difficult, or the things that you struggle with, there's so much absurdity in there. One of the pieces that I wrote about was suicide and the ways in which having a suicide in your family affects your life. And there's really nothing funny about that. But what I ended up writing about was how you carry that around with you.
Courtenay Hameister: Like it's chained to you wherever you go. Because people might ask you about your family and then you've gotta talk about how your dad died and then you've gotta decide whether or not, "Do I want to bum this person out for the next twenty minutes and make this uncomfortable?" I wrote something about how it comes everywhere with you, and it always comes to family reunions and it wants too much potato salad or whatever [chuckles]. And that's not the most hilarious thing in the world, but it's just my language, right?
Courtenay Hameister: I remember Steve Almond (author of Bad Stories: What Just Happened to Our Country? and William Stoner and the Battle For the Inner Life: Bookmarked). Steve Almond is a wonderful humor writer. I mean, and that's the thing, he's also a very serious writer. But I remember in a workshop he was talking about where he puts humor in his writing. And he said, "Where I end up putting humor is where I cannot take it anymore. As I'm reading through my own writing and I cannot take it anymore, it's too much. And so I inject humor right there in that spot."
Courtenay Hameister: Obviously pacing is really important in humor. There's a rhythm to humor. And I think that for me, I never am like, "Okay, I need a joke. I need a joke in every paragraph," or whatever. But I can absolutely feel if I'm writing a piece that is a humor piece, I can absolutely feel where it's lagging in humor as I'm reading through it. It's a very, very different way of thinking than writing non-humor. And so you're trying to figure out the kind of rhythm of the humor in the piece. You can tell when the rhythm is off, and where you need to inject something into that.
Courtenay Hameister: I think it was my friend Mark Casidos who said this, or it might've been Dave Barry, him quoting Dave Barry. But they, or he, were talking about how writing humor is different, and more difficult, because there is an inherent promise in writing humor. And that promise is, "You are going to find this funny." And I think it was Dave Barry actually. And so you're reading through everything with that lens.
Courtenay Hameister: And so you're trying to add, essentially, a layer of something, right? Because if I'm just telling you a story, well okay, that's one layer. But now I'm trying to tell a story that's gonna make you laugh, or you're going to chuckle, or you're going to find funny. Now I've got to add another layer to that story.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, it's like how comedies should really win best picture every time.
Courtenay Hameister: Yes!
Sarah Enni: Movies are already juggling so intensely and then comedy is just adding a weird wonky ball.
Courtenay Hameister: Yes. And I just saw Paul Provenza last night, actually, at Setlist at The Improv. And he said this great thing. He's like, "Comedy is the only genre in the world where the audience gets to decide whether or not it is what it is." Right? Where you walk out of a comedy film and you're like, "That wasn't a comedy. That was terrible." It's not like you walk out of a drama and say that wasn't a drama, you just say that wasn't good. So it's definitely harder to do.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, and your thoughts on voice and pacing are so interesting to me, because it did strike me in reading this book that you have so many years of writing for being read, writing for being performed and being spoken out loud. And I felt that rhythm, I think, in reading it. I was thinking to myself the audio book of this is probably also phenomenal because it really rewards you reading at that pace.
Courtenay Hameister: Well, and that tone, right? Unquestionably, I have a conversational tone. And I think that I'm in the land of, I would never say that I'm as good as, but like Samantha Irby (author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays, Meaty: Essays and omg she has a new one coming out this year, Wow, No Thank You!), or Jenny Lawson ((author of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir and Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things), these people who were bloggers. And you write blogs conversationally. And so I am not a literary writer, and I know that about myself. And I have many people who know me who said like, "This was crazy. It was like sitting in a room with you, for seven hours."
Sarah Enni: What a compliment!
Courtenay Hameister: "Just because I could hear you say everything. I could hear you say all of this." And I think that there are people who like books like that, and there are other people who are like, "Write a book." Like, "Don't have a conversation with me." And I'm fine with that too. I get it.
Courtenay Hameister: You mentioned John Hodgman, and I remember Vacationland, just starting Vacationland. He wrote this whole piece about his mustache and his beard and what it says. And it's just like, "My beard says, "I'm done having sex." Like, "I am no longer a sexual creature." He writes so beautifully, and his sentences are so beautifully constructed, and I admire the hell out of it. I actually listened to Vacationland. And of course it sounds lovely when he's saying it, but it doesn't just sound like John Hodgman is chatting with you. It sounds like he has constructed this beautiful story to tell you.
Courtenay Hameister: So I like both of those things. I'm just not John Hodgman. And it wasn't okay with me for a while. When we were talking about how the writing of the book went, I had a four month period in my second draft, where I was paralyzed. I could not sit down to write. I would sit down to write and I literally would just be like, "I need snacks." And then I'd go get snacks. Or, "I'm thirsty." I would go get water. And then I just didn't write. And my book was actually four months late. And really the only thing that won over my terror of actually writing the book, was the terror of losing my book deal.
Sarah Enni: Yup. That'll do it.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah. And I just got in my head. And all I could think about was, I was really thinking about cancel-culture a lot. And about how much of myself I was putting into this book, how much I was revealing. And I just knew that there are sentences that you write, where that one sentence can end your career if somebody reads it. There was something that I wrote in the book now, that I feel differently about. But in our cancel-culture, you're not allowed to change your mind.
Sarah Enni: Right. You can't evolve.
Courtenay Hameister: You can't evolve. And humor also is a fucking minefield. You cannot be funny and be [pauses] I want to say just uninteresting or just bland. You have to have a perspective and a point of view.
Sarah Enni: Humor is a point of view. That's what it is.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly. So because you have to have a point of view, somebody's gonna hate it, right? Somebody's gonna hate that point of view. So, that paralyzed me.
Sarah Enni: That's why it exists. People to either laugh because they relate or they laugh because it's so unusual to them. Which I think is what people don't understand about... I don't know. And then people get too self righteous about it and comedians think they can say anything. It's like, we're all trying to find some middle ground where we can exist and actually have humor cause we can't lose that.
Sarah Enni: That brings up a couple of different things that I do want to ask about. One being what it was like to write the book as an anxious person, and how you maintained your health during that process. And how honest you were in the book and how you grappled with those two things.
Sarah Enni: So I'd love to hear about your process of writing the book as an anxious person. How did you stay well or attempt to?
Courtenay Hameister: Right. I don't know that I did stay well. I mean, I think especially during that second draft. I had this experience where I was just having dinner with my boyfriend, and I don't even remember what I was talking about. And he looked at me and he said, "What are you gonna do if this does well and they ask you to write another one? Because you are fucking miserable right now." I was like, "You are correct, sir." [Laughs] "We'll talk at dinner. Just, not gonna finish my nachos now."
Courtenay Hameister: And I didn't do a great job of taking care of myself. Because I feel like if I did, I wouldn't have been as miserable as I was. I think Elizabeth Gilbert has that amazing TED talk about artists being miserable, and how as a culture we seem to be okay with that. You know?
Sarah Enni: Right. We Except that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Courtenay Hameister: So I wouldn't recommend what I went through with this. And what I would say though is that since then, I do have some techniques. I've read some wonderful books that include cognitive behavioral therapy techniques in terms of being able to fight all of our automatic thoughts, and some of our core beliefs that are just wrong. And I think Dan Harris's book about 10% Happier (10% Happier Revised Edition: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story) and he also wrote a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics ( Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book.
Courtenay Hameister: I believe meditation is extremely powerful, and breathwork is very powerful, and it just takes you to kind of a different place. So yeah, I a hundred percent would recommend people that they find a way prior to their book happening, to ground themselves in reality. As much as we know what reality is. But to really work on any techniques that you have to fight intrusive thoughts and any self doubt, all of that stuff.
Courtenay Hameister: Because writing a book exacerbates that problem. And it amplifies those voices significantly because the stakes are higher. And that's absolutely true of while you're writing it. And guess what? You know this. It doesn't get better once the book's out. That's the thing. And so many writers talk about this like, "I know I'm supposed to be grateful right now. I know that I am living a dream that I've had forever. And it is hard right now." Because that's another thing you're preparing for.
Courtenay Hameister: Did you read Susan Cain's book? Quiet? Holy balls! That's a great book. She wrote a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. And what's amazing about that is, she is an introvert herself. She did this extraordinary research and work to write this book, and then she had to travel with it. She did a TED talk on it, right?
Courtenay Hameister: And so writers are generally introverts. And then they have to go off and do book tours and talk to all of these strangers. Another reason to figure out, I mean self-care is such like a... I hate that term just because it's been so overused, but figuring out ways to calm yourself down. I think that what's amazing about meditation is, part of the reason that I think that I started having these panic attacks was that, I was doing a thing that was heightened.
Courtenay Hameister: It's not a normal thing to get out in front of four hundred people for a human being to do. But the problem was that as an anxious person, I was starting my day at a four or a five, then I did this heightened thing and suddenly I was at an eleven. And the thing about meditation, the thing about breathwork and starting your day like that, is if you're a person who normally starts at a three, you do meditation, you do breathwork, and you get to start at zero.
Courtenay Hameister: So that you're not gonna fly up past ten, ideally. You're gonna be able to handle shit better. So anything that you can do like that, any kind of practice that you can begin, begin it now before you get successful. Plan to get successful.
Sarah Enni: Yeah! That's a great way to say it. I love that.
Courtenay Hameister: Have it be part of your plan to get successful.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I think that's so smart. And speaking of heightened and things like that, I do want to talk about how honest you are in this book. It's funny, we just met today, but I feel like I really know a lot about you because I read this book.
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly.
Sarah Enni: Which is a very interesting situation to be in, I know. How does the honesty that is in, Okay Fine, Whatever relate to the honesty you had in the columns? And how did you negotiate how far you wanted to go in this actual finished product?
Courtenay Hameister: So the columns were just this kind of light thing that were fun, but I did not reveal a lot in the columns. I'm not quite sure why. The outlet that it was for, was not a great outlet. But I think that also, I had such a short... I had like a thousand words. And so I just didn't really feel like I could delve into things. And I absolutely felt like it was very important for me to be as honest as possible about my experience in the book. Because that is, I think, how you help people to see themselves in your life, and to feel better.
Courtenay Hameister: I really feel like my experience with Live Wire, any of my experience reading for groups of people, so much of it has been about how much I have felt like a freak in my life and trying to make other people feel less like a freak. Maybe my mantra is "If we're all freaks, none of us are freaks. Not a single one of us."
Courtenay Hameister: So it was very important for me to reveal as much as possible, so that people didn't feel ashamed if they felt the same thing. If they were a virgin until they were thirty-four. If they struggled with anxiety. All of that stuff. So really there were things like, when I wrote about my experience at the sex clubs, so I went to Build Your Own Burrioto Night and there was a couple's room that we went into among lots of other things. And we had this experience where the guy that I was with, he was like, "You wanna make out?" And so we just started making out in the couple's room. And there were people having sex all around us. And so I ended up having sex in a public place, which was like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe that I'm doing this."
Courtenay Hameister: What I think is hilarious is like, "Oh, sure, I'm willing to have sex in a public place, but I will not show my midriff in a public place. That's where I draw the line." It was like, "Well, I guess we're figuring out where our issues are, aren't we, right now." And I did not reveal that in the column, but I felt like in order to truly tell the truth of that experience, I got to say what I did. That I did something that was shocking to me that I did it. I couldn't believe that I'd done it. And kind of how easy it was. I think that part of it was that I looked around and I was like, "Nobody gives a crap. Nobody cares. No one's paying any attention to us." So, sure!
Courtenay Hameister: But it's not something that you really want to be honest about with people in your life, because it felt like I had crossed some sort of line by doing that.
Sarah Enni: Also, how does it come up? You don't want to be the one that's like, "How was your weekend? Well, let me just throw it out there." There needs to be some, context is everything for this kind of story, right?
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah, absolutely. And I had a great conversation, it wasn't like a verbal conversation, I think it was over Twitter or something, with Michael Ian Black. Who I believe his evolution as a writer over the years has been so amazing to watch. I think that his work around toxic masculinity lately has been amazing. And his latest memoir I think was so, I don't like to use the word brave. But man, he talked about, men don't talk about their body issues, especially straight men don't talk about their body issue (Navel Gazing: True Stories of Bodies, Mostly Mine (But Also My Mom’s, Which I Know Sounds Weird). His newest book, A Better Man tackles toxic masculinity in the form of letters to his son as he goes off to college). And for him I just think that he was so revealing in that. And talk about beautifully being able to weave in serious subjects with really incisive humor.
Courtenay Hameister: Anyway, so we were just talking about this experience of revealing in a memoir. And when we are in a relationship with someone, I think one of the biggest struggles that people have when they're in a relationship is how much should I reveal to this person? How much do I trust them not to use something that I say to them as ammunition later against me. And I think we struggle with that all the time as people. And so Michael and I were talking about that and just how there's something actually quite freeing about putting something that you feel maybe a little bit of shame around, into a memoir because no one can use it as ammunition against you, cause it's in the book.
Courtenay Hameister: So somebody's like, "Oh, you're pathetic. You were a virgin until you were thirty-four." And it's like, "Yeah."
Sarah Enni: "You bought my book?" Thank you."
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly! "What else do you have? Everyone knows that. I told everyone that. Because guess what? I'm not as ashamed of it as you think I am." Or, "I put it in there so that I would stop being ashamed." So there's such an interesting dynamic around that. Around how giving everyone all the information, is just like, "Well, it's out there and now you can try to attack me with it. But it's really not gonna land."
Sarah Enni: It's just like taking the air out of the tires. But what brings... I think immediately of Jeff Bezos and the APM guy, blackmailing him about his "dick pic."
Courtenay Hameister: How amazing was that!
Sarah Enni: The only time I've ever had anything nice to say about Jeff Bezos was him being like, "You know what? Fuck you! Do what you want." Like, "Here they are. You don't get to have this power over me." And I just read Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed, and his thinking about that. I have thoughts on that book, but it was interesting, his chapters of being like, "What made this person immune to it was that they just refused to be ashamed of it." He was like, "Well, I'm not bothered that you know that about me." So then understanding that that's a choice even, I think, is a step in this direction.
Courtenay Hameister: Absolutely. We are a party to shame, right? If someone shames us, we are a part of that equation. We can either be ashamed by what they're trying to shame us into. I think that with slut-shaming. Oh my gosh, Stormy Daniels, I follow her on Twitter and she is a pleasure. She is just a hoot. And she's so smart and she refuses to be slut-shamed. She's proud of the fact that she makes her money in this way.
Sarah Enni: I mean, she's a multimillionaire. She does what she wants.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah. And I think that that's an interesting thing for me too. I think that I don't have any shame around sexuality. I've realized that in the past five years or so. And I think part of the reason is that because I was a virgin for so long, I consider myself like a virgin emeritus [chuckles]. It was like, "I was a nun for thirty-four years. For you to call me a whore now is ridiculous."
Sarah Enni: Okay, well I can't keep you here all day unfortunately. So we're gonna talk about money and then advice. I'm gonna throw the question out and seeing how comfortable people are with sharing. But the way I'm trying to frame it is just like, how do you pay the bills as someone who is a creative professional? What's most of that for you?
Courtenay Hameister: So right now I'm working part time at an ad agency in Portland as an associate creative director and writer. It actually really helped me because for the year after Live Wire, I was freelancing and working out of my home and trying to work on the book and then trying to find a job, trying to figure out what I could do.
Courtenay Hameister: And the thing is, I had a book deal at that point, right? I think that right now, you either get like a million dollars, or you get ten thousand dollars [laughs]. There used to be this land in the middle of about like two-hundred-and-fifty thousand, or whatever. And it still exists. Two-hundred-and-fifty thousand dollar advances still exist for sure. But just not as many of them. They really are advances. I couldn't have lived for a year on my advance. It absolutely helped for sure, for me to live. And you may not know this, but with an advance, you usually get half of it when you get the deal. And then the other half when you turn in the manuscript. And I think it was the final draft, that still needed some copy edits. But for the most part was the final draft.
Courtenay Hameister: And the majority of the writers that I know, even people that you see their names all the time, they have to do something else. I think that believing that you can just be an author, I don't want to say that you can't do it, because it is absolutely done by some people. But it is very, very few people.
Courtenay Hameister: So I have friends who teach workshops. I have friends who teach at colleges and they are editors also of other people's work. I teach classes. I teach humorous memoir classes also on the side. I'm also working with, I think I mentioned, the Create More, Fear Less organization. I am currently kind of volunteering with them, but they actually pay a stipend for people to go into the schools and work with those kids. And I also do some voiceover work.
Courtenay Hameister: It's really just about cobbling together a career. And there are people who can absolutely do that. They're hustlers. I really struggle with it, and part of it might be my anxiety. But it's really hard for me to get started, and I hate reaching out to people. It's a difficult life. But man... I would also say, you can write for online journals and online magazines. It is very difficult to be paid enough doing that work in order to keep things going.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, keep the lights on.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah. So I'm still trying to actually figure that out. Also, if you get a book published, do whatever you can. Talk to your agent. Cause it's generally your literary agent's, it's not necessarily their job, but it behooves them to find you a film agent for your book. Because they also get a cut of any deal that happens. So you absolutely get a film agent. If you can, please talk to your agent about what they think the possibility of you getting something like that happening.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. What other lives can your book live?
Courtenay Hameister: Exactly.
Sarah Enni: What's it called? Passive Income is when you've already done this work and then it can take several other iterations, or make money again for you in some other way. Very important to keep in mind. And always good to just ask your agents about everything. They're there to help you.
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah. Yeah. They are. And yeah, Laurie Fox has been so helpful to me because this was my first book deal. And so I would have all of these questions, and she was really honest with me. And that's priceless for sure.
Sarah Enni: Absolutely. I like to wrap up with advice. I mean, advice for someone writing about their own life. Whatever tips you have for someone trying to start that journey.
Courtenay Hameister: What I would say is that, you know, I talked about The Chronology of Water. What else have I read? My favorite memoirs are the ones in which people reveal things that you know they're uncomfortable revealing. Because those are the things, those are the pieces of our humanity. The places where we hold shame are the pieces of our humanity that, when we share them with other people, that's where they... actually, Jen Pastiloff calls it, "Fall in Lovable", right?
Courtenay Hameister: And in fact, I just mentioned the thirty six questions. The thirty-six questions were an experiment that was created by a psychologist in the seventies. And the idea was, they were thirty-six questions of increasing intimacy (“To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” the Modern Love essay by Mandy Len Catron, references Dr. Arthur Aron’s study, which included 36 questions to generate intimacy. (And hey, look at that, Mandy has TED talks about love stories, too!). So you were just more and more revealing things that you were ashamed of, or that scared you, or that you were vulnerable about. And that's why they say thirty-six questions to make you fall in love with anyone.
Courtenay Hameister: If you know someone's story, truly know their story, you're going to fall in love with them. Because you're going to see their humanity and you're gonna see yourself in them. And you feel honored when someone tells you something about themselves that's hard. So that was Jean's feedback after my first draft was, "You have got to go deeper. That's my note for you, kind of across the board." And then she gave specific examples.
Courtenay Hameister: It was just like, "I know that you don't want to talk about what it felt like to have this anxiety attack. I know that you don't want to talk about what it felt like to lose your father because it's really uncomfortable. You've got to go deep and reveal things that you're uncomfortable revealing because that's where you are. That's where people are gonna truly see you."
Sarah Enni: Isn't that funny? It's the scariest thing, but it is the most rewarding thing. It's really one of those paradoxes of being a person. But yeah, totally. What generates empathy more than sharing a secret?
Courtenay Hameister: Yeah. Yeah. And it's this lovely reciprocal gift, right? If you reveal something that you used to be, or you are humiliated by, or you feel shame around, and someone looks at you and either laughs or says, "Oh my God, that just happened to me last week." It is a gift to them. They're like, "Oh, thank God someone else did that." And it's a gift to you that they said that. And that sense of like, "Oh, I'm not a freak." Or, "I'm not a bad person." Or, "Maybe I'm a bad person but not for this reason." [Laughs].
Sarah Enni: Right, right. Yes. Yes. That's so funny. I love that. And you had such great advice the whole time. So this is was such a fun conversation. Thank you so much Courtenay.
Courtenay Hameister: Oh, thanks for having me. It was a total pleasure.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Courtenay. Follow her on Twitter @wisenheimer. That's W I S E N H E I M E R and Instagram @wisenheimer_PDX and follow me on both @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram) and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram). For links to everything that we talked about in this episode, please check out the show notes which are @firstdraftpod.com. Please seriously check these ones out. They're so fun. It took me forever to put them together because I just watched all the links and ordered all the books. Courtenay has a ton of amazing recommendations, so seriously, go check out those show notes.
Sarah Enni: I don't know if you guys have noticed, I've been doing these mailbag episodes recently. I'm releasing them not only in this feed as podcast episodes, but putting them on the First Draft Instagram at our IGTV channel. It's been really fun and I've been getting some awesome, awesome questions from you guys. I can always use more. I'm gonna try to do this once a month. So at any time a question comes to mind, would you please call and leave that question at the voicemail box at (818) 533-1998. Myself and a future guest will get right to answering your question.
Sarah Enni: Hayley Herschman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey, and the logo was designed by Colin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you, sex club burrito enthusiasts for listening.
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Have a question about writing or creativity for Sarah Enni or her guests to answer? To leave a voicemail, call (818) 533-1998 or send an email to mailbag @ firstdraftpod dot com!
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