Interview with Author Liza Palmer by Deb Smouse
Liza Palmer is a “California Girl” whose 2005 debut novel “Conversations with the Fat Girl” launched Hachette Book Group’s “5 Spot” division. Her sophomore novel, Seeing Me Naked will be available January 8, 2008.
Liza spent some time chatting with All Things Girl….and I found her as engaging and fresh as her novels….
Tell the readers a little about your background.
I grew up in Pasadena, CA – attended public schools, until finally deciding it would be a good idea to drop out of college altogether and go to work full time at In N Out Burger. Thus began my rise to fame.
In what ways did your childhood influence you as a writer? As a person?
What’s weird is I was dictating stories before I could write. It was just inside from the get-go. And I had the kind of parent who just cultivated and cultivated those dreams - let me be who I wanted to be.
Most writers are avid readers. What authors do you read as a child? And today? Do you have a favorite author or book?
Reading was difficult for me – I had/have the attention span of a gnat. So, it wasn’t until high school when I read The Color Purple and Crime and Punishment that I really understood the magic of a good book. Before that I didn’t get the whole escape thing – how a book could transport you into someone else’s mind. These days, reading is still difficult - as the gnat attention span is still very much alive and well. I try to read every night before I go to bed – I just finished and loved Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to an End. I’m also reading some Annie Proulx – so beautiful - and I devoured Elizabeth Hoyt’s Prince Series, as well. All very different reads, to be sure.
“It can get very lonely inside my head, in front of that computer screen day after day.”
Writing can be such a solitary career. How do friends fit in?
One has to wrench them in. Seriously. It can get very lonely inside my head, in front of that computer screen day after day. I’m lucky to have other writer friends in LA with whom I can spend time and talk about the goings-on in publishing. My family is local, as well – so I’m very lucky indeed.
Many of our readers are creative types…and most of the writer’s I talk to write with a schedule in mind. Walk me through a typical day in your world…..
My schedule depends on whether I’m on deadline or not. I have found that I work best under deadlines – the more crippling, the better. If I have to turn something around in a week – I’m in heaven. So, during deadlines – I pretty much write non-stop and drink tea. It’s pretty Spartan. I’m kind of a one-celled amoeba during those times. Apparently, I can’t handle anything except words and Earl Grey.
I’ll either go to the public library here in Pasadena, a.k.a. Writer Jail (no internet, no phones, no nothing) or stay in my apartment and tap away with my Noise Reduction headphones on – listening to a playlist I’ve put together for the book (making playlists is half the fun, and a good procrastination technique, too!).
I joke that a normal day consists of the three W’s and the Big P: Walking the dog, Working out and Writing and/or Procrastinating.
Tell me about the discipline needed to be a successful writer.
“The true discipline is believing - no knowing - that I can.”
It’s a funny sort of discipline. It’s even bigger than just sitting down and writing every day. I have to keep my hopes and dreams on target to believe I can actually finish the book. The Jedi Mind Tricks that go on right around the middle of the book - when I’m slogging around in no-man’s land - are equal to anything Darth Vader could dish out. It’s almost as if everything in the world is telling me I can’t finish. The true discipline is believing - no knowing - that I can.
Tell me about the process of getting your first book published.
I started going to Vroman’s Bookstore here in Pasadena on Saturdays for these little writing workshops they were putting on. This was the first time, since my brilliant decision to quit college and work at a hamburger stand, that I really let my dream of becoming a writer out into the open. I simply never thought it was something I could do as a career.
So, in the months that followed, I learned about the business of writing through listening to Ray Bradbury talk about dialogue, Ron Koertge talk about setting or David Ebershoff talk about writing – all the while working at a full-time job. Every week it was someone new and brilliant.
At the time, I was working at a law firm in LA – and I just…well, I could see my entire life spreading out in front of me – and it was grim. Quiet desperation and dreams deferred. So, I started writing. And writing. And writing. My boss at the time, who was so supportive and excited for me, would ask about my progress every day and even edit my pages during lunch. It was a magical time of all night writing binges and this tiny glimmer of hope for a different kind of life.
Because of the Vroman’s workshops, I knew I had to write a query letter. The mythical query letter. I had finished the first draft of Conversations with the Fat Girl over the summer. The first draft came in at 900 pages, by the way. Worst. First.Draft.Ever. It took me a month to perfect my query letter. Another month to edit down the first draft into something other than a doorstop. I checked in the acknowledgments sections of books I thought were like mine, and sent the query out to four agents. I got picked up by one of those first four. She pitched Conversations to Warner, and they decided to launch the 5Spot line with it in September, 2005.
December 22 – a day that will live in infamy. I was sitting with my boss at El Coyote Restaurant in Los Angeles at our office holiday lunch, when my agent called to tell me the book had been sold. I still celebrate that day every year. The day that changed my life forever.
Where do you get your inspiration for your stories?
I think it starts with a question of ‘What If…’ and then just snowballs. It’s almost like a pop-up book of sorts – you flip some page in your mind and it just becomes 3-D in a way. It’s hard to explain and now I sound borderline insane.
Here…Doris Lessing says it better in her Nobel Speech:
“We have a bequest of stories, tales from the old storytellers, some of whose names we know, but some not. The storytellers go back and back, to a clearing in the forest where a great fire burns, and the old shamans dance and sing, for our heritage of stories began in fire, magic, the spirit world. And that is where it is held, today.
Ask any modern storyteller and they will say there is always a moment when they are touched with fire, with what we like to call inspiration, and this goes back and back to the beginning of our race, to fire and ice and the great winds that shaped us and our world.
The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.”
That speech gives me shivers every time.
Do first drafts go to your agent, a friend, or who? What is your editing process?
My Mom is always my first reader. Thanks to a lifetime of Catholic School her grammar is impeccable, whereas mine resembles Jodie Foster from Nell most times.
After we clean it up and it’s no longer embarrassing, I hand it over to three readers. One writer friend here in LA and two old friends who give it to me straight. After that, I send it to my agent – she gives me notes, as well. Then off to the editor.
My editing process – I can feel myself on the verge of another Pop-Up Book analogy – my editing process consists of remembering just a few key elements: What’s Important? Does this move the story forward? Show don’t tell. And Kill Your Darlings.
I think the key to editing is humility. Being able to sit down and cut whole scenes - whole characters, actually – because it’s what’s best for the narrative.
“I think the key to editing is humility. Being able to sit down and cut whole scenes - whole characters, actually – because it’s what’s best for the narrative. There can be no ego when it comes to editing.”
There can be no ego when it comes to editing.
What one word of advice do you give to want-to-be writers?
Write.
Most writers draw upon their own life, especially in early works…. How much have you drawn upon yourself and your life for Seeing Me Naked (and for that matter, your first book Conversations with the Fat Girl?
A friend of mine, who is a writer herself, says that the books she writes aren’t her, but are of her. I think this simple statement says it perfectly.
I see a lot of similarities in Elisabeth in “Seeing Me Naked” and her routines and discipline, etc. with those who are truly successful writers. Do you see similarities in Chefs and Writers? Is that why you chose a career for Elisabeth as a Chef?
I tend to think that both careers are not careers, but ‘callings.’ The people pulled to these professions are driven by something other than a paycheck. It’s a quest for perfection where the opponent is whatever standard you hold for yourself. I infused my own very real and very single-minded quest for perfection into Elisabeth’s need to create the perfect pastry. It was not a far leap, I assure you.
Have you ever worked as a Chef? If not, tell me about the research process to make it so realistic (If so, tell us a little about it).
I have never worked as a Chef, that’s for sure. My entire family is cackling right now just from the insinuation.
I started by calling the California School of Culinary Arts right here in Pasadena. They hooked me up with Karen Rawers, who was once the pastry chef for Michel Richard (Citronelle). I picked her brain about everything having to do with a French kitchen: the lay-out, the pecking order, the rhythms, the different jobs…everything, every detail. She was more than patient.
We then took a field trip to Bastide here in LA back when Ludo Lefebvre was Chef. Karen and I ordered the Chef’s Surprise Menu and the sommelier came out and paired every tiny course for us. We were invited back into the kitchen, met Chef Lefebvre, as well as the pastry chef at the time: who was the only woman in the kitchen. That night was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It fueled the entire feel of Elisabeth’s time in the kitchen at Beverly.
I love the relationship between Elisabeth and Rascal. And the family dynamics are certainly interesting. Tell us about that….
Rascal…he was really the only character that kind of came out of the gate whole. The name, the look, the melancholy – he was a bolt of lightning from the beginning.
I loved the juxtaposition of this sullen dauphin against Elisabeth’s hard driving perfection. But I also knew that they absolutely adored each other because they’d been in the trenches together and lived to tell the tale.
I loved writing their scenes and kind of miss being in their world a little.
Elisabeth’s parents are certainly not your average chick-lit fodder. Where did you get the inspiration / idea for them?
I knew thematically I wanted to deal with identity. Who are we? Who do our parents think we are? Can we ever come out from under their shadow? Are we more like them than we’d like to think? Once I had that puzzle piece, I went about creating the biggest shadow I could think of. Enter Ben Page.
I couldn’t quite get Ben, even through the later drafts. But, then I found an old picture of my grandfather from his time in the Navy and it all rushed in. Something about that image just sang. The military man vs. the family man. The rough edged man vs. the gentle man. Someone who felt uncomfortable loving and being loved.
Ballard was all about loss and loneliness. Her motivation for every scene was love and acceptance – keeping the family together at all costs. Even when the price may be too high. I love her softness against Ben’s rigidity. I really wanted to play on that dynamic.
Your writing is so realistic and has such a true voice behind it. There are so many women in the same position as Elisabeth – single, career driven, dealing with family issues, crippled (in some ways) by her upbringing…. Tell us how you find that voice….
That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?
The trouble is not in finding that voice it’s in the unleashing of it. The fall-out from it. The strength and terror that comes from hearing it within yourself. The courage to stand behind it.
This should not be a quiet discovery…
What other projects are you working on? Will you carry over any of your characters from current works – or will your next book introduce us to someone new?
The upcoming novel is totally new and introduces Grace Hawkes. And once again, I’m dealing with family. I just didn’t get enough, apparently.
I’m not done with some of the other characters, though. I don’t think they’re done talking to me.
Maybe I’m just having separation anxiety.
Five Favorites :
- Favorite Color: Winter White
- Favorite Beverage: Earl Grey Tea
- Favorite Creation to Cook: Clafouti
- Favorite Room in your House: I have a studio – so the room is the house
- Favorite Guilty Pleasure: Project Runway
Check out the ATG Review of Seeing Me Naked Here. You can find Liza online at her website as well as on Facebook.
(Photo Credit: EdwinSantiago.Com )
Deb Smouse is the Editor in Chief at All Things Girl. She’s is fast approaching 40…and spends her life fulfilling her roles as a consultant, mother, friend, reader, and writer. She loves to read…and appreciates the opportunity to hear from writers….
