Thank you to Susan Shapiro for joining me on my podcast. We met this month at Zibby’s Bookshop for her live and in-person Los Angeles Summer Writing panels.
Lisa Niver, Yvonne Liu, Susan Shapiro and Melissa Monroe at Zibby’s Bookstore 7/11/2023
Listen or watch our interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or your favorite podcast platform
READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF OUR INTERVIEW BELOW
Lisa Niver:
This is Lisa Niver from We Said Go Travel, and I’m so honored and excited to be here with the prolific writing professor, Susan Shapiro. I’m so excited to actually see you live at Zibby’s Bookshop today.
Susan Shapiro:
My former student.
Lisa Niver:
She is prolific. She must’ve learned well from you.
Susan Shapiro:
She mentioned me in her fantastic memoir, Bookends. She talks about taking my class where she first got published.
Lisa Niver:
I did read about you in Bookends. You and I have a lot of connections, because I know in your book The Forgiveness Tour, you talk about the Los Angeles Press Club.
Susan Shapiro:
Yes. I’ve done great events there. I love the LA Press Club.
Lisa Niver:
I love the LA Press Club, too. One of the things everybody might not be know about you is that you have written 17 books.
Susan Shapiro:
I always say that I’m the author / co-author of 17 books my family hates. One of the rules for my class is that the first piece that you write that your family hates means you found your voice.
Lisa Niver:
You have a lot of very clever, pithy statements. What is the one about your class?
Susan Shapiro:
“Instant gratification takes too long” is my method where the goal of the class is to write and publish a great piece by the end of the class. Many people do.
Lisa Niver:
Many people have loved your books. The Book Bible, I think it’s a great name for it, because people really use that to get published.
Susan Shapiro:
Thank you, and Byline Bible, also. Byline Bible is to help people publish newspaper, magazine, literary short pieces, and in The Book Bible, I tackle 20 different book genres.
Lisa Niver:
Please tell people about your upcoming class this summer. In your book you talk about: pitch vs write and the core part of a pitch “why you, why me, why now?”
Susan Shapiro:
What’s really exciting is the online class. I taught in person for 25 years. During the pandemic, I realized how much fun the online classes are and how successful they are. The goal of the class, in five weeks, is to publish a piece in a good newspaper or magazine or literary journal and get paid for it.
Through trial and error during the pandemic, what I found was that what people loved the most was meeting editors, because especially people who were outside of New York just never get a chance to meet people from the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Magazine, and they just don’t know who to pitch. They don’t know which editor to try.
What I started doing is having as many great editors as I can during the class. What people hated the most was, in my long, 15-week, four-hour-a-week classes, we used to read long pieces that people wrote, modern blogs or a thousand-word pieces, and people hated that online. They just thought it’s really boring.
During the pandemic, it seemed as if there was a switch where, instead of wanting full, fleshed-out pieces, a lot of editors would prefer short pitches. So, you say the title of your piece and what your piece is about. As you said, why me, why you, why now? And a lot of editors were saying yes, and they’d prefer to see the pitch first with the title of the piece and the subtitle, one line about you. So, they like short pitches.
Since what people like the most is meeting editors and what they like the least is reading long pieces, I focused on pitches. The first time I tried it, it was like a miracle. Out of 40 people in the class, 30 got published right away in the LA Times, the New York Times, New York Magazine, 500 dollars, 1,000 dollars, and then in the Washington Post, and then people started selling books. They would publish a short piece, and an editor would say, “I love this. Is there a book in it?”
It just got so exciting. What’s really interesting is a lot of my students in New York just want a refresher course, so they started Zooming in too. Another great thing is that anybody that’s getting published, the five-week class is 500 dollars. So, everybody that’s making 500 dollars or more takes the class again because they want to meet 15 new editors.
I had one student that said one of the editors who pays 500 dollars a pop, she said she has done 12 pieces in a row for him. Because it is online, it’s not only all around the country now, but I’ve had Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brussels, India. On one Zoom, you’ll see people from Asia, and it’s light out, and they’re outside on their balconies in the morning, and in the same Zoom in Brussels and Italy, it’s night, and you could see that it’s dark.
What people say is that even if they have to start really early or stay up late, there’s really no other way to meet all these editors. I’m constantly switching them around because they’re all switching around themselves.
It’s perfect for a beginner. I’ve had a 14-year-old, and I’ve had a 90-year-old in different fields. It is okay if you don’t know where to start because you get these great editors that’ll just say, this is what I want. I’m looking for short, funny pieces that are 700 words that play off the news, and this is what I don’t want, and could you…and they’re so specific, and it’s exciting, and then, interestingly, I’ve been getting, lately, a lot of book authors whose agents and editors say to them, okay, your book is coming out. Now you have to do short pieces. Go try to publish a few short pieces in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and they say, how do I do that?
And they take his class. I’ve had a lot of authors, who you would think…they certainly know how to write, but they just don’t know how to pitch this specific thing. So, it turns out, I get this really fascinating mix of people, and I’ve got a lot of students who’ve taken my classes before, and what’s so funny is they say, I took it last time, and I published three pieces, but are they the same editors coming?
There’s some of the same editors, because if they keep buying stuff from my students, that’s the goal. So, I’m going to keep having them come, but I said, what? They were 15, and you only sold work to 3. So, that leaves 12 that you didn’t get a yes from yet, so might be worth it to take again, and then they take it again and get more clips. I didn’t expect it because I’m a technophobe, but it’s really fun.
I also feel like people have been publishing some really important stuff, especially during the pandemic. There were a lot of brilliant George Floyd pieces, including a book that came out of it. There’s articles in response to anti-Semitism and anti-Asian, horrible slurs that were happening. People have taken on a lot of medical misconceptions concerning what was going on with the pandemic as well as abortion. Important work is coming out of it which is so cool.
Lisa Niver:
Wow. I’m ready to sign up. It sounds fantastic. I know one of the things that I’ve read about you say: write the story only you can write. Can you talk a little bit more about what does that mean?
Susan Shapiro:
What happens is that some people write a straight A paper where they’ll write something well, whether it’s the humiliation essay, which is write about your most humiliating secret or the op-ed assignment, which is it really pisses me off when. They’ll write something, and it’s well written, and it’s well thought out, but you just heard it before.
We know that war is bad and that COVID sucks and that breakups hurt and public schools don’t have money. We already know that. Tell us something we don’t know.
People have asked me to record my classes.
But truthfully, I think the reason it works is I’m a really tough critic. I think that’s part of why people have luck, because, I’ll read a pitch, and I’ll say, yes, this is smart. It’s boring. I’ve heard it before. What can you tell me? And I’ll start asking…I’ve been in therapy a million years, so I’ll start asking really intrusive questions, and they’ll uncover something.
And I will say, “ Oh my god, now that, I never heard.” So, pitch that, and it’s not like getting an MBA or a medical degree or a law degree where you follow a certain path and you’re just going to be successful. It’s complicated and editors have to fall in love with what they’re reading to decide if they buy a piece or not.
I help my students figure out: is this original? Is it something new? Is there something we haven’t heard before, or is it provocative? I think it’s Arthur Miller who said the only thing worth writing is the unspoken and the unspeakable. I try to get people away from from their comfort zone and writing things that are too easy and to take a risk and be more provocative.
Lisa Niver:
You bought up years of therapy, which reminds me of your book that I loved so very much, The Forgiveness Tour.
Susan Shapiro:
Thank you.
Lisa Niver:
I really love that book and the journey you went on through different faiths. I’m also Jewish, and I have a memoir, Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty, coming out in September. The whole piece about– forgiveness doesn’t mean what someone else did is okay— really spoke to me. Can you tell people that haven’t had the opportunity yet to read The Forgiveness Tour about the journey you went on?
Susan Shapiro:
Thanks. The big question with The Forgiveness Tour was what if someone who you care about, who’s important in your life, hurts you and they refuse to apologize, and can you forgive them? And that’s what happened to me, and it was a confusing mind-bogging situation, because I wanted to forgive, but when I said I think you owe me an apology, he said, I’m sorry for the imaginary crime you think I committed. So, that’s not so great. That makes me want to commit a real crime.
I really struggled with it for a long time, and the book took 10 years to finish. I was trying to figure that puzzle out, and at the time, I was working at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen with the really brilliant Reverend Liz Maxwell. She explained to me the concept of forgiveness and when Jesus said forgive them, for they know not what they do. And then I have all these rabbis in my life, from conservative to Hasid to reform.
And I asked their opinion, and there were really fascinating stories about it. In Judaism, you’re mandated to forgive, and if somebody asks your forgiveness three times and you don’t give it, then you have to ask forgiveness for not forgiving. So, that was this interesting concept, and then, in the meantime, I had a friend who was Hindu and actually gave me a really brilliant, Hinduistic viewpoint, and Buddhist.
I wound up asking people from all religions to explain to me their concept of forgiveness and can you forgive somebody who doesn’t apologize? And just as I started figuring out I can and how I could do it…and by the way, you could forgive someone and decide never to see them again in your whole life. So, forgiving someone doesn’t mean that you have to continue the relationship in any way.
So, just as I was at the point where I was about to be able to forgive without wanting to see the person again, they came back and apologized. So, it was a mind-blowing…I mean, it pissed me off because one of the first critics of the book, on Goodreads said, I really liked it, but I didn’t like the ending.
There was a happy ending, and I wanted it to be more realistic, and I waited 10 years until I had a happy ending because I didn’t want to write this manically depressive book about someone who never gets the apology they needed and is bitter and angry. So, I finally figured it all out, and they were complaining that it was too happy an ending, but I waited a long time for that ending.
Lisa Niver:
I think that’s a really important story for aspiring writers to hear, that everything doesn’t have to happen right away, and I think you talk about that in your class. That you’re only one yes away from it working.
Susan Shapiro:
Right, and there’s also a difference when I say instant gratification takes too long, I’m talking about very short pieces. There are editors who will buy 3, 4 and 500-word pieces and 1,000-word pieces, which are 3 or 4 pages. I could absolutely teach somebody how to do that in five weeks. A book is a different animal, and there are certain books that I think one could do in six months or a year. My first novel, it took 13 years from start to finish. So, instead of a book launch, I got a book mitzvah.
Lisa Niver:
You’re so funny. You had a book mitzvah?
Susan Shapiro:
Thank you. I had a book mitzvah, and I had a cake, and people came up and lit candles, all the people that sort of helped me with the book over the years. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I did a lot of therapy, and I’ve had a lot of mentors. What’s actually exciting about teaching it, about writing the writing guides, is that it feels like all my mistakes are worth something.
I was writing full time when I was 20, and my first real book, Five Men Who Broke My Heart, came out when I was 43 years old. That took a really long time to figure out. What’s so great is that all the mistakes that I made —I could use everything that I learned to help other people so that they don’t have to go through all the suffering, and also, there are some shortcuts, and there are some things that I didn’t realize for a long time.
What is your goal? And you could have a different goal for each piece or each book, but everybody wants to have some standard rule, and there is no standard rule. What do you want? What’s going to make you happy in your life? For my classes, I ask people, what’s your goal? If you’ve never had a clip, sometimes it’s just really good to get paid for your clip, but some of my students already have clips. So, they want to give themselves a promotion and write for a better place.
Some people want to change the world with their opinion, or sometimes I have doctors and therapists who want to impart wisdom during a rough time. Some people want to sell a book, so let’s think of a short piece that’s going to get editors and agents interested in your book. Based on my own rejections and failure for so many years, I can work with writers at any stage and help them get to the next step.
Lisa Niver:
I know that you had written about Barbie and that you had 68 Barbies, and the movie’s coming out, and I loved your piece in The Sun about Barbie.
Susan Shapiro:
Thanks, and I just did one for Tablet, and I’m working on another piece, too, about, why Barbie’s a feminist and what the women’s movement always got wrong about her.
Lisa Niver:
It’s really interesting how people are mesmerized by Barbie.
Susan Shapiro:
Yeah, there’s good reasons. She was a very important role model. When the doll came out in 1959, a real-life woman could not get a credit card in her own name or buy a car or an apartment. And then you had this teen model who has not only one job, she had many. She could be a college grad, a nurse, an astronaut. She had all these different professions. And her own Dreamhouse.
Ken didn’t buy the Dreamhouse. There’s no father in the picture. She had her own Dreamhouse. She had her own car. Pretty soon, she had her own airplane, and that didn’t exist. For myself, I know there were really cool fantasies attached, and it was very empowering and a lot of people don’t realize how empowering it was.
It really wasn’t until 1974 that a woman was able to get a credit card in her own name without a father or husband co-signing. By that point, there were black Barbies, and there were president Barbies. So, Ruth Handler, the woman who invented it, she was very ahead of her time. She was really an important trailblazer, and I don’t think people realize that she made the doll in her own image.
Lisa Niver:
I knew her name, but I did not realize it was so much in her own image. That’s amazing.
Susan Shapiro:
At a very young age, her family gave her a car. She had her own car at 16. When she found her husband, the guy that she liked, she was the one who proposed to him. Her family let her go out to California as a teen and work at Paramount Pictures. She was living in an apartment with girlfriends, and this is the ’30s.
Ruth had a very unusually independent life, and then her kids were named Barbie and Kenneth. She named the dolls after her family, and she was a clothes horse. She was a workaholic and a clothes horse who loved jewelry and makeup. There was a lot of stuff from her own life in the dolls. She had experienced anti-Semitism, and so it was very important to her to have a black Barbie in 1968 during the race riots. That was a really important statement. Many people don’t understand how prescient and important the doll really was.
Lisa Niver:
Before you leave us, can you tell people about your new book that’s coming in November?
Susan Shapiro:
That’s called American Shield, and I’m co-authoring it with Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who’s a veteran, and he was a sergeant who almost got killed during the January 6 insurrection. He wrote a great piece for the New York Times Opinion Section, “I was betrayed by President Trump.” So, while Trump was announcing his bid in his 70s to run for office again, the real hero Aquilino Gonell can no longer be on the police force based on injuries he sustained trying to defend democracy. The event I’m doing in LA tonight is with my Counterpoint editors for that book, so I’m excited.
Lisa Niver:
You have done so many incredible books and stories and helped so many writers. I want to read you one sentence I loved so much from your Forgiveness book, which was: “Forgiveness takes back your power. You refuse to let someone else’s misdeed rattle your soul any longer.” I think the book you’re working on now and the class you’re doing is really helping people change their lives. Thank you.
Susan Shapiro:
Thank you, and if anyone wants to email me, four of my books are about addiction. Now that I quit all my other addictions, I’m addicted to email. Message me: ProfSue123@gmail com
Lisa Niver:
Where’s the best place for people to find you on social media or your website?
Susan Shapiro:
My website is SusanShapiro.net, and I’m on Facebook and Insta and Twitter. I like all of them.
Lisa Niver:
Thank you so much for spending this time with me. Congratulations on the new book, and I’m going to sign up for your class, too.
Susan Shapiro:
Fantastic. Thank you so much.
Lisa Niver, Melissa Monroe, Yvonne Liu and Tara Ellison at Susan Shapiro’s event July 13, 2023
In her new piece for @tabletmag, NBCC member @Susanshapironet mentions the upcoming "Barbie" movie by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, and several top Barbie books, along with research (and outtakes) from her own 2019 book "Barbie: 60 Years of Inspiration": https://t.co/wJjY6CPMcF
— National Book Critics Circle (@bookcritics) July 10, 2023
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Lisa’s book: Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty
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