Interview with Travel Memoirist and Author-Nomad Stephanie Elizondo Griest
This is the second interview in the “Make Your Own Kind of Music” series.
I’m very excited to share it because the interviewee is freakin awesome!
Stephanie Griest has written two travel memoirs: Around the Bloc
She’s fascinating.
What’s in the interview –
Stephanie spills insider tips on
- Writing, finding an agent and publisher, making money from writing, and how to construct a book tour.
- How she deals with fears, blips in her confidence, and disappointments.
- What being an author/nomad is like psychologically (she travels so much she doesn’t have a home of her own).
- What it was like inside the famous GooglePlex (she got invited as part of authors@google).
Once you’re done reading the interview (or before), you can watch a video of Stephanie’s authors@google talk (embedded at the bottom of this page). For people interested in travel – you can listen to an audio podcast on itunes of a talk she gave at the University of Arizona. If you search “Stephanie Griest” in itunes you’ll find it (using itunes). It’s got great tips about creative ways to finance your travel and on safety for women traveling alone.
How Stephanie Wrote and Published Her First Book
Alice: I’d love to hear the story of how you came to write “Around the Bloc” [which Stephanie wrote when she returned to the US after spending four years living in Russia, China, and Cuba].
Stephanie: I worked as a reporter for the AP when I first got back from traveling. It was a 6 month contract – sort of a probationary period.
I would wake up at 6 in the morning and write for a couple of hours, go to work, then when I returned at 8 in the evening I would edit what I’d written. One day on the weekend, usually Saturday, I would spend writing. Sunday I would completely take off.
I was writing all day long, because the AP, of course, was all journalism and all writing.
That was a really intense mental period.
At that time, I didn’t think that Around the Bloc was going to be a book about communist countries. I just thought it was going to be a book about traveling.
I was planning to go to India after my 6 month AP contract finished. I’d got a job working for a feminist magazine in New Delhi. I had everything ready. I had guidebooks, visas, a place to live. I’d been studying Hindi.
When I finished my 6 months, the AP offered me a full time job.
I said no and they’re like “what you mean no? How come you don’t want to come work with us?”
I said I’m going to India. They’re like “you’re crazy,” but I just knew I wasn’t put on this planet to be an AP reporter. I was put on the planet to do other things. So I said No.
I was about to jet off to India, and about 2 weeks before the trip my Dad got diagnosed with prostate cancer.
I moved back to Corpus Christi, Texas where my Mom and Dad live to take care of my Dad.
Thank God they caught the cancer early, he got treatment and was totally fine .
That took about two months and I thought “Now it’s time for me to go to India”.
Everything was still going to be available – the job, the house. I just needed to change my plane ticket.
I thought I should brush up on my Hindi before I went, so I wrote off for some Hindi Language tapes. They arrived and all four tapes were blank. I thought “whoa – that’s kind of crazy.”
There was an Indian restaurant in town, and thought I might be able to hire one of the workers to teach me Hindi. I started making phone calls to the restaurant. I called and called, and they were never there. Finally I drove to the restaurant and it had burnt down.
I had a lot of Indian friends at the time, so I told them what had happened. They were like, these are signs you shouldn’t come. This is not your time to be in India.
I actually read it as a sign – three strikes. It didn’t seem like the universe wanted me to go to India.
I really try to be very receptive to the universe. So I decided the reason these things were happening was because I was meant to write the book. Until then, I’d being working really hard on it, but it has been my “creative project” and I hadn’t been sure what the next step was going to be.
I made a commitment to finish writing the book.
I had no money. I’d lost a lot of money on all the things I’d done to prepare for India. That money kind of went into the water. I didn’t have health insurance, a job, friends, money, a car. I had nothing. But I had a dream. I really wanted to make this book work.
So I stayed at my parents house. I took at whole year to write Around the Bloc.
I knew that if I wanted to have a shot in hell of getting the book published I needed to move to New York City and make something happen.
I moved to NYC 2 weeks after 9/11. Early Oct of 2001.
I was very afraid to move there because of all the news reports about terrorism but as a journalist I was very interested to go at that time.
I was very, very lucky to find a job relatively early on working for the National Coalition Against Censorship.
Getting Around the Bloc published was really an ordeal. It took many rejections from many agents, many publishing houses, until it finally, finally, finally took.
But, I really knew that this is what had to happen. I had to be an author, I had to be a writer, I had to dedicate myself to this profession.
I handed in the finished manuscript of the book to the publishers in May 2003. [Stephanie talks lots more about how to get a book published later in the interview].
What Came Next: From then till Now
Stephanie: After I handed in the manuscript, I spent a week sleeping it off and then started working on promotion. But I was doing all this while I still had a full time job. When the book came out in March 2004 I did a massive book tour. My employer was incredibly amazing and understanding and let me take off a month to drive across county and do book events. After that I came back to my job part time so I could keep doing promotion.
You kind of have your little shtick for book promotions and you do it over and over. It occurred to me after about the 50th time, around the end of 2004, that as amazing and incredible having the book out was, and how proud I was to promote it, it was kind of lame to be talking about something really fun I did when I was 21 years old [when she started her Around the Bloc travels].
I realized that I could spend the next foreseeable future talking about this thing I did when I was 21, 22, 23. I thought “this has gotta stop” [laughs]. That’s not a good way to live life.
More importantly, after traveling to those different nations I began to feel a hunger for my ancestral nation of Mexico. I wanted to go to Mexico and learn more about my own roots.
So that’s what led to my journey to Mexico [The topic of her newest travel memoir, Mexican Enough]. Very symbolically, I left on Dec 31st 2004 because I wanted to spend all of 2005 in Mexico.
I ended up not being able to do that because I got a fellowship to Princeton that began in September 2005 but I did spend from Jan to Aug in Mexico, and returned for a month in ’06.
I spent a year at Princeton. Once my period at Princeton ended in Aug 06 I began my period of total nomadism. I’m still in that period. Since Aug 06 my stuff has been in storage and I’ve just been doing a ton of events, and in-between the events I’ve been doing artists’ colonies and residencies.
And, when there’s not an artists’ colony or book event, I usually go to Corpus Chrisi and stay with my boyfriend or my parents.
Stephanie’s Insider Tips on Writing and Getting Published
Alice: Can you talk about the usual sequence of events involved in getting a book published?
Stephanie: When you’re writing, you don’t have to necessarily start at the beginning. Some of the best books were started at the end, or page 25 or page 85.
For memoir, I advise my students to begin with whatever is most vivid – the thing that’s most exciting or that you remember the best. Start with what you most want to write about and then take it from there.
When I wrote Around the Bloc, I’d ask myself “what do I feel like writing about today? Do I feel like writing about Russia or do I feel like writing about Cuba”. Just depending on the mood.
The way I write is kind of masochistic. The instant I wake up – I might brush my teeth and wash my face but I won’t do anything more than that – I sit down at the computer and I won’t move until I’m literally passing out with hunger. That’s usually about 1 or 2 o’clock. I’ve skipped breakfast so I have a colossal bowl of oatmeal and lots of fruits, then I go out for a bike ride, then I come back for Round 2. Then I have dinner, and if I can stomach it, I do Round 3. So, it’s an all day thing but you have to build up to that. You have to think about a book as a marathon.
As soon as you get a piece of your book that stands alone and is really polished, then what’s really important is that you send it off into the universe. For example, I sent essays from Around the Bloc to Travellers’ Tales, which publishes these beautiful anthologies. They’ve published over 15 of my pieces over the years. There’s a great website called WorldHum.com that people can submit pieces to. There are so many great magazines and journals and websites out there.
You want pieces of your work to get published as you go along because you use those pieces to send to agents and show you’ve got a track record.
As soon as you get pieces done, you need to send them out because it takes so long to get a response from magazines or journals (6 months to a year). I was constantly sending pieces out.
When you write nonfiction, it’s possible to sell a book based on a book proposal. If you write fiction, you generally have to write the whole book before anyone will even look at it. I advise even nonfiction writers to write the whole thing before they try to sell it. Very often when you start writing a book it’ll turn out to be something totally different to what you envisioned when you began.
When I was finally done with the manuscript I had already published several pieces and that was what enabled me to find an agent. The agent helps you to get your book proposal into tip top shape and then you send it out to the publishing houses.
Then you go to a church and light a candle. You go to a temple and light some incense. You bow down to whatever God you believe in, and you just send out as much positive energy as you can.
If your book gets blanket rejections across the board then you have to somehow swallow your pride and your pain and start again, and over and over again.
It can take years – decades even –to sell one book, especially in today’s economic climate. That’s why you need to want it so bad. It needs to be the most important thing in the world to you.
Alice: What would you recommend for people who might know a lot about the topic they want to write about but haven’t taken writing classes?
Stephanie: The easiest way to take classes is probably to go to your local college or community college, but in the event that doesn’t work out, there are a ton of online classes on every conceivable topic.
The one I personally recommend is MediaBistro.com
I teach online memoir writing classes with them. Anyone can take a class with me – woohoo! [Laughs]
I also taught with a group called Gotham Writers’ Workshop. They’re based in New York but have an online component.
Classes are great. They can really help you get work done, but I have to say about classes that everything I’ve learnt in the business I’ve learnt on my own.
I’ve learnt it by trial and error, by reading books, and a lot of networking. I think it’s really important to go to writers’ conferences, to go readings. I spent years of my life going to every reading that occurred wherever I lived. I’d stick around till everybody else had left and the writer was by themselves, and I’d say “Can I take you out for a coffee?” I’d try to make friends with them. A lot of times they said No, but sometimes they said Yes. That’s how you start making contacts. I always had a great time with that.
Alice: Are there any books you recommend for people who want to improve their writing?
Stephanie: “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamont. I found it really funny and whimsical. It’s a delightful book. That can be inspiring.
About the publishing process – “How to Write a Book Proposal” by Michael Larson.
Coming from journalism, I tend not to read books on how to write. I’m more likely to read books about the subject that I’m writing about.
Book Touring and Making Money from Writing
Alice: Can you explain how the book tour process works? Does your agent book the events?
Stephanie: That’s a myth I’d like to dispel! Unless you’re a huge rockstar writer that doesn’t happen.
The reason I tour is because I send myself on tour. If left to the devices of my publishing house and agent I wouldn’t even do local events in NYC. I’ve never had anyone book an event for me.
All 200 plus events you see on my website are things I’ve booked myself. Although now I’m getting to the point in my career that I’m having people invite me to events.
About 20% of my events are people asking me to do something, 80% are things I’ve found myself –sending repeated emails and getting invited that way.
It’s a massive, massive undertaking. I spent all of 2008 – except a month I spent in Barcelona and a month I spent in Africa – every waking moment was spent on promotion. I need at least 9 months prior to a book coming out to promote it.
It involves so many different components.
For my books, one component is reaching out to every professor in the US who might be remotely interested in the book. Like all of them. All of them in America. For Mexican Enough, it was all the Latino Studies departments. For 100 Places Every Women Should Go, it was all the Women’s Colleges.
I’d say I’ve got this book coming out. Do you want a copy? Do you want me to come and talk at your campus?
That’s Round 1.
Round 2 is thinking of every single reviewer. Not just at newspapers, radio stations, and magazines, but also blogs.
That alone takes 6 months.
Round 3. Then you need to round up every single person you’ve ever met in your whole life and send them an email saying “I’ve got a book about to come out and here are the dates of where I’m going to be”
Round 4. You have to do a radio campaign, a TV campaign, an internet campaign. It’s never ending.
I’ve done it totally, totally by myself.
So to give encouragement – It certainly can be done. But, you have to be a little crazy to do it! You also have to be totally free to do it. That’s the reason I’m nomadic. Literally every penny that I make from my books goes back into the promoting and writing. I don’t make enough money to pay rent.
For Around the Bloc – I lost a ton of money – I came out about $8000 in the red.
100 Places Every Women Should Go – I came out about $2000 ahead.
For Mexican Enough – I’m about $15,000 ahead.
So, I’m starting to make more money. I’m starting to get better at it.
I pretty much no longer do free events. When the book first comes out I’ll do bookstores for free because obviously bookstores don’t pay. I used to go to anybody who would invite me. Now I only go to paid gigs.
It gets easier, but it’s like easier in the sense of climbing Kilimanjaro rather than Mt Everest.
It’s still a hell of a workout. It’s still really hard work.
Alice: What are your favorite events to do?
Stephanie: Definitely the ones my readers organize. The best are when students who’ve read my book organize events.
For example, for Around the Bloc there was a guy from Oklahoma who loved my book and he said “What’ll it take to get you out here?”
I said $1000. They went to 10 different student groups at the University of Tulsa who all contributed $100. They sent me a cheque for $1000 and I’m like woohoo I’m coming out to Tulsa
It was delightful. The students hosted me. That’s hands down the best – when students who get excited about reading your work invite you.
All of the events are amazing in their own way, but the ones when the students actually make it happen, that’s amazing and beautiful.
Alice: That’s an awesome story.
Inside “the GooglePlex” (The famous Google Campus in Mountainview California. It’s Google’s Corporate HQ)
Alice: How was it going to Google? It seems like it would be such as interesting experience. Was it?
Stephanie: I was incredibly lucky. A friend on mine from college has been working at Google for years. They have a prestigious program called authors@google, which is mainly for big authors. She joined the committee so she could invite me [laughs].
Just being at Google is astonishing. It really is as big as a university campus. Everything is free. There’s like an Odwala juice bar – which cost $3.50 for a very small bottle – and they’re like totally free. You could take 20 of them back to your desk if you wanted to.
The food is astonishing. At the end of every section of cubicles there’s a kitchen. The kitchens have a cappuccino machine, an espresso machine, all kinds of cereals, dried fruits, cocoas, beautiful nuts. It’s insane. You can make yourself a really nutritious snack, a smoothie, anything.
For lunch and dinner, you can go to an Asian restaurant, an Indian restaurant, a restaurant where every ingredient has come from within 100 miles.
They’re very smart. The food is so good and free there’s absolutely no reason to leave for lunch because you won’t get any better food anywhere else!
All of this is done so you never leave! You go to Google early in the morning for your breakfast. You can bring your dog with you, your child with you, there are no limits, so you stay there all day.
They hire these really brilliant people and they spoil the hell out of them. You can take a nap there, you can bath there, you can workout there. You can do anything you need there so there’s no reason to leave. They get maximum, maximum work hours and they have happy employees but they work really hard.
So, Google was a great event, just to get a preview into this amazing sort of work culture.
Alice [laughs]. That was awesome to get to ask you what it was like. It’s like someone who’s been inside the pentagon or something like that.
Stephanie [laughs]
Psychology of Being an Author-Nomad
Alice: You seem like such an interesting personality. You do these incredibly brave travel things, and you’ve been nomadic for the last couple of years. There are some elements of being incredibly free-spirited, and then you have these elements that are so tenacious and dedicated.
Is that how your personality is for the rest of your life or is that confined to writing?
Stephanie: That’s a very, very sweet question. I think that’s spot on about my personality.
To make it as an author/nomad, you really have to have a very schizophrenic personality. You have to have the all-is-beautiful-in-the-universe, free-spirited, hippie. “If I don’t have a place to stay tonight something will materialize”. You have to be really peaceful and at home with the universe and trusting that something will come through.
But on the other hand, you also have to be a hustler, like you’re going to find a place to stay.
I am free-spirited to a degree, but I wouldn’t be as stressed as much as I am if I was totally free-spirited. It’d probably be better for my stress levels and my heart if I was a little more that.
But, if I wasn’t so on top of things I could very well be abandoned and at the airport. I guess you have to have a balance of those two.
As far as other things in my life – up until very recently, this past year, I haven’t had other aspects to my life. This has been my whole life. I’m incredibly dedicated to my mother and father. Of course I have a lot of friends, but the people I’ll move mountains for are my Mom, my Dad, and my sister.
Apart from that, there’s been no other priorities. No dog, no job, no boyfriend, nothing else.
That’s just now beginning to change. Just for the past year I’ve had a relationship. It’s been totally different. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! But, I’m just now learning to not be a shark, which is what I’ve always been.
Alice: Where do you get the confidence to be so brave?
I’m actually not really that brave.
I think I have as much fear as the typical person, I’m just afraid of different things.
I sometimes get frightened sleeping by myself at night. Like not sleeping around a lot of people.
Driving terrifies me. I’d rather hitchhike across Kyrgyzstan than drive on a highway.
I think a lot of people are afraid of traveling the way I do but they’ve never actually done it. I’ve never had a really bad experience traveling so I’m not afraid of it.
Alice: What self care do you do to keep yourself in good shape emotionally? Do you exercise? Journal? Mediate?
Stephanie: I have to exercise at least once a day. Whenever I’m in Corpus Christi I always take an hour a day to do a bike ride or something like that. No matter how bad the weather is, or how much I have to do, I have to exercise. I’m pretty intense about that. One reason I’m almost fanatical about exercise is because when you’re nomadic you’re often not in control of a lot of things.
I’m not often in control of what I eat because I’m often being hosted by other people. I like to be a polite guest and eat what they’re eating. When I am in charge of my diet I eat a very healthy diet, but I’m not often in charge of it. That’s one of the reasons I have a lot of health problems. Also, I spend many of my days in airports so that’s not good for being healthy.
When my thoughts are muddled and I’m confused, journaling is one of the first things I go to. But, I don’t journal as much as I used to.
I don’t meditate. That’s something I need to learn for my next book project. At the moment, if I’m going to sit anywhere for more than 5 seconds I’m just going to fall asleep, crash.
Alice: When you’ve experienced disappointments, self doubt, or blips in your confidence, what’s helped you get through it?
Stephanie: This is the kind of hippie talk you take on when you become an artist…
I really, really, really believe that everything happens for a reason.
I almost believe it to a fault, so whenever something bad happens I just really try to trust that there was a very logical reason for it.
Professional disappointments don’t affect me as much as the average person because I put myself out there in so many ways that I know something is going to come through. When I send out an essay to a magazine I don’t just send it to one, I send it to 20, and I’m constantly sending them out.
For books events, I send out an email to 100 people and if 2 reply, great.
I apply for so many things that literally I hardly bat an eyelash at rejection letters.
Alice: Cool – I think a lot of people don’t realize that’s what goes on behind the scenes for most successful people. I think it’s really important for people to hear that on the road to success there are often a lot of roadblocks.
Next question – How have the people in your life enabled you to do what you’ve done?
Stephanie: Our wisdom comes from… I think we all build on the collective wisdom of all the people we’ve encountered. People just blow me away. I’ve gained so much wisdom from every single person I’ve met. Collectively, that’s made me who I am.
One thing I really, really love about having a partner in my life, this wonderful man, is that its helped enable my nomadism.
There was a period when my nomadism was becoming quite psychologically damaging.
I realized I was only having two conversations – The who am I/who are you introductory conversation, and the “what have I been up to since I saw you last 6 months ago” conversation (because I’m in the big cities in the US twice a year, I see my most of my friends twice a year).
I began to think I was growing stupid. I was never talking about what was happening in Iraq or the Bush administration, or now the Obama administration. It was one or the other of those two conversations.
I think that’s one of the most difficult things about nomadism.
I’m so grateful now that I have a partner who I talk to every single solitary day, who I’ve talked to everyday since we met a year and a half ago. He only needs a one day update. It’s nice to share “I had a hotdog in Aisle B at George Bush International Airport” and he knows exactly the difference between Aisle A and B and which has the better hot dog. That’s so amazing. And I can talk about political events with him.
That’s just really kinda cool. That’s enabled me to have a life that feels more like a life! I’m so grateful for it.
– end
Amazon Links for Stephanie’s books
Mexican Enough: My Life between the Borderlines
Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana
100 Places Every Woman Should Go (Travelers’ Tales)
Video of Stephanie Griest Talking to People Who Work at Google
Thank you to Stephanie Griest. If you want to read more of Stephanie’s insights, her website contains more tips about getting published and about artists’ colonies.
It also lists all the dates/locations of her current book tour. Stephanie Griest’s Official Website.
Dr Alice Boyes is Clinical Psychologist from Christchurch, New Zealand who likes to encourage people to think creatively, bravely, and openly about their dreams.
Related posts:
- Interview with New York City Publicist and Writer Stephanie Schroeder about Publicity Tips for Creative-types, Artists and Independent Business Owners, and about Flourishing with Bipolar Disorder
- “Make Your Own Kind of Music” Interviews
- Interview with Jen Ozawa from Podcast about Lost – The Transmission
Fishpond.co.nz Recommended website (discount online book store) for New Zealand readers who want to purchase books I've mentioned on my blog. Fishpond is similar to Amazon.com but for kiwis.
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