Q&A with Liz Alterman, Author of Sad Sacked
What thrillers and humor have in common and the backstory on an unemployment memoir.
This month I talked to Liz Alterman, author of the audio original memoir Sad Sacked. You may also know Liz from her short humor writing and/or thriller books, all of which you can learn more about here.
What is the book's origin story?
When my husband, Rich, and I were laid off within six weeks of each other, I was blindsided. Those initial feelings of shock gave way to fear about our future because, though it's hard to believe, companies aren’t clamoring to recruit middle-aged workers with fairly outdated tech skills.
While there were tons of articles offering tips on how to polish our resumes and hone our interview skills, I couldn’t find any that warned about the crushing self-doubt that accompanies unemployment. There was a surprising lack of content noting that it’s perfectly natural to find yourself facedown in a half-gallon of mint chip ice cream at 3 a.m. wishing you'd gone to law school. So to paraphrase Toni Morrison, I embraced the idea that if there's something “you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
I started a blog and began pitching personal essays about our experience. I received an encouraging response from readers who were between jobs and overwhelmed by the emotions that go hand-in-hand with unemployment. They were looking for someone who wasn't sugarcoating the experience just as I had been.
While applying for full-time jobs, I freelanced and took an assignment that led me to interview the co-founder of a local writing school, The Writers Circle. When I asked her which was her most popular offering, she said it was memoir writing. It got me thinking maybe I could cobble my blog posts together into a narrative. I signed up for a workshop, and six years and millions of revisions and rejections later, Sad Sacked is out in the world.
Your book uses humor to talk about unemployment, which is not an inherently funny situation. How did you find ways to use humor with the topic?
My parents and brothers are funny, and I often joke that humor is my family’s drug of choice. Even though losing our jobs brought on a pretty dark period, Rich and I experienced a lot of bizarre moments that made us laugh. For example, we were completely unprepared for job applications to ask: “What’s your personal theme song?” or require us to sum up how we’d transform a company’s social media presence in 160 characters or less.
Then there was the time I trekked across Manhattan for an interview thinking it was your typical 9 to 5 only to be asked if I'd be cool starting my work day at 2 a.m., a condition I wished the headhunter had mentioned that before I wasted my time, transit fare, and those extra swipes of deodorant. Humor can be a great coping mechanism during hard times, so I tried to find it wherever I could.
You write both thrillers and humor--how do you find it writing in different genres or do you find they inform each other in some way?
It’s funny, when the editor who bought my memoir and I first spoke she said, “I had to skip to the end to find out what happened. The suspense was killing me.” Of course, because I knew how our story ended, I’d never thought of it as suspenseful. But at the time, I was working on a domestic suspense novel and wondering, “Is this working? Is there enough tension here to keep readers turning pages?” So to hear her think my non-fiction was suspenseful was really encouraging.
I love reading thrillers and twisty novels and really appreciate when an author offsets the darkness with humorous dialogue or wry observations. Samantha Downing and Tom Perotta are two authors who come to mind who do this masterfully. In my thrillers, I try to include a little levity through a character's voice and hope it adds another layer or at least some lightness to the story.
What is something you can recommend to readers that makes you laugh?
I can always count on The Onion for a laugh. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is one of my favorite shows, and I’m really looking forward to the return of “Derry Girls.” I also follow a lot of wonderful writers, humorists, and comedians on Twitter who are so entertaining and inspiring.
We had a recent email exchange about the TV show Felicity, so I have a very important final question: Were you on team Ben or team Noel when you watched the show?
Ha! Well, my head said Noel, but my heart said Ben.