Guest Blogger - Clea Simon

What I learned at Camp Manchuria

Here goes, I’m at it again -- the round of promotion and guerrilla marketing that probably will have little or no effect on sales and yet makes me feel less helpless about the fate of my newest book. I’ve already been turned down by the one NPR show that let me plug my last two ventures. And as a small author on a small press, I’m not expecting any major newspaper attention. So what (else) is a midlist author to do?

What I have been thinking about as I make my rounds of the local bookstores ("Are you stocking? May I sign?") is the relative utility -- or lack thereof -- of big-league media training. Because, yes, at one point, someone thought to send me for 48 hours of intensive schooling. Call it my time at Camp Manchuria.

The occasion was a pharmaceutical giant’s public relations campaign. The drugs the company were pushing did, in fact, relate to the illness that had affected my siblings and, thus, the memoir that I'd just published. But the campaign centered on the idea that this disease, schizophrenia, wasn’t all that bad. Or, at least, that good drugs-- if only folks knew about them-- could alleviate most of the problems.

Truth be told, the portrait of treatment contained in my book could be summed up in one word: failure. My sister was as resistant to treatment as people with thought disorders often are. But as someone who’d grown up getting the fisheye from folks who knew my family history ("she crazy too?"), I liked the idea of anything that fought stigma. So when they said they’d do a big media blitz and take me out to an American Psychiatric Association conference, well, I signed on.

When I arrived early the prearranged morning at the PR headquarters, I could’ve been walking onto TV soundstage. The lights, the desk, etc., all had that perfect and yet fake look -- even-toned walls that ended right beyond the spots’ reach -- and soon, if my handlers had their way, so would I. I’m a writer. I have frizzy red hair, not-great teeth, and a tendency to complicate sentences with dependent clauses. I figured we'd focus on the soundbites, but it quickly became apparent that their ambitions for me extended beyond the verbal plane. As I read over a folder of the campaign’s message points, the clothes I’d brought with me were examined and quickly rejected. As even I could see as we taped and reviewed training video after training interview, The white blouse produced glare and made my sallow skin look positively jaundiced. The patterned one went crazy on camera. My eyebrows, meanwhile, completely disappeared in the lights, giving me an even more startled look than usual. And they didn’t want startled. They didn’t want traumatized memoirist either, really. They wanted calm, reliable. The voice of the campaign.

Which led up to the way I answered questions. The problem, as I eventually understood it (and it did take awhile), was that I was answering questions. Often I’d pause, then I would try to respond to whatever my mock interviewer had said. Mistake. The would stop the video at that point. No matter what was asked,
I was told, respond with a message point. Not exactly relevant? Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t pertain? Viewers at home won’t remember the question. They’ll remember your answer and, if you’re lucky, your well lacquered and yet somehow reassuring smile.

"Tell me about your family." For a memoirist, this is probably a pretty standard query. But instead of launching into any particularly tantalizing anecdote, I learned to parrot back: "My brother and sister were two people who exhibited Signs of Schizophrenia." (That was the campaign’s name.) I’d go on about this treatable disease, naming the relevant drugs, and ignoring the fact that neither of my sibs was in fact treatable and one had since killed himself.

I tried to break the mold, to expand the 'conversation' to include some real details pertaining to my real family's experience. But by the middle of the second day, I’d given up. "S.O.S. -- watch out for the Signs of Schizophrenia," I’d say at the slightest provocation. If I didn't have readings coming up that forced me to go back to my own work, I don't know if I'd have remembered the truth of my own experience. Once home, even my husband took to muttering under his breath, "Schizophrenia is a treatable disease..."

I went to the conference. I sat through a series of satellite interviews with over a dozen television stations ("Good morning, Cleveland!"). And I have very little recollection of anything that I said. Immediately upon my return home, I tried to forget my training.

Some of this is because I’m also a journalist. I hate getting "message point" answers. I want a real response to my actual question. When I watch so-called pundits on TV as they resolutely stay on point and ignore their interviewers’ questions, I think they sound quite dorky, if not downright evil. But some things stay with you: When I’m doing a quick interview, say, for an AM station or a typical morning show, I’ll say the title of my book in full as often as possible (never simply "the book" or "it.") And I’ve learned to darken my eyebrows whenever I’ll be anywhere with bright lights.

But I’ll take the risk of sounding vague. Of rambling and even, yes, losing the occasional listener. Cause at heart I don’t think that an author should sound like a toothpaste spokesman. Sure, these days, with a new book out, I sometimes wish I looked like, I don’t know, Elizabeth Wurtzel in her prime or the female Sebastian Junger. But I don’t, and I like to think that my readers prefer someone who looks normal, like them. Maybe that’s why I’m a small author, with a small press. But that’s my message point, and I don’t know if it’s treatable.

Clea Simon's nonfiction includes MAD HOUSE: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings; FATHERLESS WOMEN: How We Change After We Lose Our Dads; and THE FELINE MYSTIQUE: On the Mysterious Connection Between Women and Cats. Her debut novel, MEW IS FOR MURDER, has just been published in hardcover by Poisoned Pen.

Comments

[Danyel]

awesome, Clea.

When I’m doing a quick interview, say, for an AM station or a typical morning show, I’ll say the title of my book in full as often as possible (never simply "the book" or "it.") And I’ve learned to darken my eyebrows whenever I’ll be anywhere with bright lights.

exactly.

[Barbara Quinn]

Clea,
I've been meaning to comment on this for days which is like months when you're in the nanosecond world of the net, but I guess better late than never. Absolutely loved your guest column which was mighty informative. (I have to fill in the ole eyebrows too!) I don't trust evasive people who don't answer direct questions. Why should I? So do what feels right and get those message points out in other ways.

Barbara Quinn

[Clea Simon]

Don't know if anyone will see this -- though MJ does make her archives available -- but a curious post script: New research seems to indicate that the new generation of psychopharmaceuticals are no better at treating schizophrenia than the old ones! Oh man.... not sure whether to laugh or cry at that.