I was in Tuscany last month. I played around with trying to say that in some humblebrag way — The sun was just beginning to set over the Tuscan hills, sending lacy shadows across the loggia where we were eating dinner/I was poolside in Tuscany when — but I think this text exchange with a writer friend1 expresses it best.
The friend had texted me to tell me that the trailer for Lady in the Lake had gone live. As I conceded, it’s not the worst life, despite some ups and downs over the past few years.
Ann Hood has been running this writers workshop at Spannocchia for more than a decade and I have been going there since 2015. It’s not quite annual — the workshop has to work around a lot of complicated schedules, and there was a pandemic — but this summer marked my sixth visit to this lovely, rustic farm that has transformed itself into a retreat for travelers. I have taught workshops here, but the past few years I’ve done one-on-one manuscript consultations, focusing primarily on structure/balance/POV, using my unique2 system involving art/craft supplies.
I teach at most twice a year — at Spannocchia and the annual Writers in Paradise conference, which is where I met Ann in 2007. On the Italy trip, I more or less break even: My room and board is included, but I have to pay for my plane ticket and if I bring my kid, as I did this year for the third time — oofa! So I’m not in it for the money. And, as much as I love the people on the faculty, I’m not sure I would travel all that way just for the pleasure of their company. After all, I get to see most of them in Florida every January.
But at dinner one night — maybe technically not a loggia, but close enough — I was bubbling over with happiness and enthusiasm. (It helped that I was finally done revising my novel and that there was plenty of wine.) “I love this!” I proclaimed, and Ann’s husband asked me why I like to teach.
That’s when I confessed I’m a vampire. I teach because I draw inspiration and energy from my students. Thirty years and thirty books into this gig3 — I finished my first novel in September 1994, found an agent in 1995, saw it published in 1997 — I still make the mistakes I’m trying to help others not to make. At a session in Spannocchia, I found myself urging a student to “flip it,” a term I use for taking an expected/obvious/cliched character or situation, then inverting readers’ expectations. I also drilled down on a particular character I felt would be more interesting if he weren’t so villainous.
It was basically the same advice I had been given after submitting the first draft of my novel last fall.
I guess I should be embarrassed at making the same mistakes over and over. But I’m not because I’m willing to revise over and over. I made five passes on my current book, which took almost exactly two years. Pass #1 took 14 months; pass #2 was four months; pass #3 was three months; pass #4 was 12 days; pass #5 was 72 hours. (We were down to five questions by then.) Important to note: I did not disagree with a single note. Oh, sure, I had moments where my editor asked (paraphrased to avoid spoilers) “Why does this thing have to be here” and my knee-jerk answer was: “BECAUSE I NEED IT TO BE.”4 I had moments where — I’m always going to be honest — I cried a little, because I was working so hard and I just could not get across the finish line.
But I also was trying something different for me. Like — really different. I embraced Brene Brown levels of vulnerability writing this book and I cannot wait for people to read it.
However, it won’t be out until 2025 — but there is a really good television show you can watch in the meantime.
Read/reading: Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner; Miss May Does Not Exist, Carrie Courogen; Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively; Cue the Sun, Emily Nussbaum; Bear, Julia Phillips. The Friday Afternoon Club, Griffin Dunne (audio); Brat, Andrew McCarthy (audio).
Rereading/Relistening: Bright and Precious Days, Jay McInerney. Nerd Do Well, Simon Pegg.
Me, me, me: Prom Mom is now in paperback! You can buy it through your favorite bookseller.
Lady in the Lake premieres July 19th on Apple+. May I tell you a funny story? When the trailer dropped I was impressed anew by the feverish energy Alma Har’el brought to the story. I was especially struck by the use of “The Impossible Dream,” which was historically accurate; the song was a modest hit single for Jack Jones in 1966 a year after Richard Kiley sang it on Broadway. How smart of Alma to use that, I thought. Several days later, I remembered the song was referenced in my book, in one of Cleo’s memories of her time with her married, older lover. Anyway, here’s the trailer. You know, the one I watched poolside in Tuscany. Also an article from Vanity Fair.
In addition to going to Italy, I went to Los Angeles for a wedding, fifty years to the month that the mother of the bride asked me to take the bunk under hers at camp.
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I’d tell you who it was but this paragraph is already too braggy and it’s about to get worse!
As I always tell students: I’ve never met anyone else who does this quite the way I do it and there’s probably a reason.
Twenty-six novels, two short story collections, one book of essays, and a children’s book.
This cannot be the answer. Duh.
I've found scores of things to admire about you, Laura, but that outfit—was it for the wedding in LA?—takes the cake. I, too, was recently at a wedding in LA, where I froze my ass off in my fancy dress, and had to step out of my heels and into my Birkenstocks even before the ceremony. Kudos to you for keeping it all together (assuming you did). xo
As one of the privileged people on this planet who was a student of yours (Personal Essay, Writers in Paradise), I’ve only had one other writing teacher in my life give me such insightful and precise instruction. Thank you and good luck/congratulations to each of your future students.