Rubbing Virtual Shoulders via the Internet

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are bestselling authors and those who get to interview them. Through the powers of the Internet, I have happily become friends with bestselling author Laura Munson. Along the way, I got the opportunity to speak to her on the phone and even got to meet her IRL (that's In Real Life for those who don't read tech speak). She graciously granted me the following interview about her memoir, how it became a bestseller and where she goes from here. Enjoy.

I Don't Buy It
Article first published as I Don't Buy It — An Interview with Author Laura Munson on Technorati.

We've all dreamed of the perfect comeback — a witty response that displays both intelligence and humanity, at the same time putting our antagonist in his or her place. But what is the perfect comeback when your husband says: "I don't love you anymore."

For writer Laura Munson, four little words — "I don't buy it" — set the stage for bringing her marriage back to life and launched a New York Times bestselling memoir called This Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness (now in paperback).

Laura is neither a doormat nor a masochist. She's a strong, educated woman living in the Montana wilds with her husband and two children. She rides horses, wields an axe, and had written 14 unpublished novels before her marriage hit a wall.

It was her own professional crisis that gave her the resources to react calmly to her husband's pronouncement and give him the space he needed to find his way. "This was not a knee-jerk reaction," said Munson. "I had had years of rejection from the publishing industry. After my dad died and I lost a big publishing deal, I was miserable. I had been working on my response to pain, learning to move through it and use it, when I recognized that my husband was suffering his own crisis of self."

That doesn't mean it was easy. "This was the most powerful pain I have ever felt and I knew it would take me down if I let it," said Munson. "But there was no fear in that moment. My husband had shown himself to be very loving and responsible, so this was a huge departure. Years of failure after years of career success were dragging him down."

In her mind, Laura gave her husband six months to figure things out. Along the way, he was distant, sometimes absent and often angry. Laura chose not to buy into the drama, exorcising her demons with fast horseback rides and long walks screaming at trees.

In July 2009, Munson wrote a shortened version of her story for the popular New York Times "Modern Love" column. The reaction crashed the media giant's website. "Most responses were full of recognition, gratitude and hope," said Munson. But not everyone was positive. Some accused Munson of letting her husband walk all over her or of simply being in denial.

Munson disagrees: "It wasn't really a risk because I couldn't control the outcome either way. It wasn't a strategy to stay married, either. It was a choice to let him find his way without sacrificing our family. You can learn not to take on someone else's issues."

Being a writer helped. "Writers are by nature empathic; we know how to climb into someone else's skin and ask what's really going on," she said. "I wrote my way through my crisis." Munson, who grew up on Chicago's affluent north shore, says the physical realities of living in Montana balance the cerebral life of a writer. "Montana was a big surprise gift to me. There is a tremendous invitation to face your fears. I trust the person I am here."

Seeking publication of her memoir could also have been risky, exposing her family's personal issues so publicly. "I always write to provide relief to myself and others," she said. "I felt a strong call to write the book that I needed at the time, but couldn't find. I wanted to read the story of someone who wasn't going to be buried by crisis, of someone who chose to take the high road."

"The book really isn't about marriage," said Munson. "It's about two people who encountered personal crisis, learned how to be responsible for our own happiness, and came back together as equal loving partners. It's really about two people's relationships with themselves."

Much like her marriage, Munson is ready to move on from being the main character in her own story. "I'm back to writing fiction," she said. "Having people read my work has been incredibly gratifying, but my job is to live in the present, own what is mine, create what I can, and let go of the rest."
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Thanks to Laura for the interview and thanks for reading. We would both love to hear your thoughts, so click here if to leave a comment.

Let's Hear It for Women Writers — CMB Post

This post originally appeared on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

I try not to get my knickers in a knot when I hear younger women say that feminism is irrelevant in their lives. Memories are short, especially young, American memories, and many of these post-feminist young women may not have encountered (or recognized) blatant sexism, but it's still there. I know it is because women still only earn about $.77 for every dollar a man earns.

But I'm a writer, and I can't turn a blind eye to the fact that the recently released Publishers Weekly list of the Best Books of 2009 did not include a single female author. Not one. In fact, all but one of the authors on the list was a white male — not that there's anything wrong with being a white male author. I'm all for them. I'm all for any author achieving any form of success in a publishing industry that is struggling mightily to survive.

So, why is it such a big deal, that a top 10 list doesn't include any female writers? It's a big deal because it shows that women are still not held in the same regard as men who do the same job. PW claims that they "ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz," but what makes these guys "the best"? Any top 10 list is fraught with subjectivity, so not including a single female author on such a list is making a statement — to the world, to writers and readers, and especially to our daughters — that women writers just aren't good enough. In an interesting article about women, literature and feminist theory today published in Eurozine in June (months before the PW list came out), author Toril Moi states: "To make women second rate citizens in the world of literature is to say that the female experience of the world carries less value than the male." To me, that is exactly what the PW list represents — the idea that a woman's voice, a woman's story, a woman's experience is less valuable than a man's. I'm not the only one who was flabbergasted by the omission of women on PW's list. In fact, Women in Letters and Literary Arts (WILLA) started their own list on of great books published by women in 2009. I, personally, would like to recommend four books published this year by terrific women writers: Haven by Beverly Patt, This Lovely Life by Vicki Forman, Invisible Sisters by Jessica Handler; S is for Story: A Writer's Alphabet by Esther Hershenhorn.

Read them. Then read one of your favorite female authors. Share these writers with your mothers and sisters and daughters; share them with your fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. Then, maybe, you can read some of the books on PW's to 10 list.I leave you with this thought from Margaret Mead, a great woman writer:"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place."This is an original Chicago Mom's Blog Post. When Susan Bearman isn't worried that she has offended the editors of Publishers Weekly and will never make one of their top 10 lists, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.