Alisa Bowman: Writer, Marriage Ass-Kicker

Alisa Bowman: Writer, Marriage Ass-Kicker

Alisa is one of those gems that I found on Twitter that turned into a real friend. It was hard not to get addicted to her and her ProjectHapillyEverAfter blog when the premise revolves around her plotting how exactly to off her husband, and then, instead, deciding to make a project out of saving her marriage. Some of my favorite advice? Whenever there’s turbulence, just give him a blowjob. I mean, really – how can you deny the power of those words?

I’m thrilled to let you all know that Project: Happily Ever After (the book) will be released by Running Press in February, 2011—just in time for Valentine’s day. And that Alisa is a highly sought after ghostwriter – having penned nearly 30 titles, 6 of which have been New York Times Bestsellers including: Back to Life After a Heart Crisis (Avery 2010), The Skinny (Broadway 2009), The 90 Second Fitness Solution (Atria 2008), Stop Aging, Start Living (Crown 2007).

You can also read Alisa on Ghostwriting Revealed (yes, that’s a blog about ghostwriting) and SexIs (yes, that’s a sex column).

The Interview

The Daily Norm: My readers and I would like to make sure you are, in fact, human – it levels the ‘normalcy’ playing field. So do you eat, go to the bathroom, bleed and cry?

Alisa Bowman: My taste buds adore flavor—the stronger the flavor the better. I love olives, anchovies, garlic, butter, burgers, guacamole, sea salt, cayenne pepper, jalapenos, curry, margaritas, extremely hoppy beer and dry red wine. I tend to overdo it on the eating part of life, which means that I’m constantly mulling over the idea of forcing my body to fit back into my clothes.  I manage to pull off the Incredible Shrinking Body Routine once a year, usually in the spring.

Then I soon gain back the same 5 pounds and my clothes are tight again. Because of this, I spent a good portion of the year living in sweatpants, as they are the only clothes that don’t make me feel like a stuffed sausage. This all causes me to feel a bit inadequate, considering the fact that I’ve ghost written a number of best-selling diet books and here I am gaining and losing the same 5 pounds over and over again.

As for crying—I seem to require a good snot-clearing catharsis about once a season. In the middle of the night after I learned I’d gotten the book deal for Project: Happily Ever After, for instance, I woke up with tears in my eyes, got out of bed, grabbed a box of tissues, and heaved big sloppy girly tears for a good hour or so. My eyes were swollen puffy the next day, but I told everyone that it was from allergies. I was too embarrassed to admit that a good thing—getting a book deal—had reduced me to those types of tears.

But that’s how I am. I never know what will set off my tear response. I cried the same sloppy tears the night after my daughter was born. I cried them at the end of reading A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Certain types of music will move me to tears. And, it must be said, I’ve cried during every single one of my daughter’s holiday pageants.

TDN: What’s your daily schedule on a normal day?

AB: I get up around 6 a.m. with the intention of meditating. Sometimes I check email instead. I check Feedburner every single morning so I can see how many people have subscribed to my blog in the past 24 hours. On Mondays, my stats always fall by about 200 subscribers and I, without fail, go to the, “Crap I must have really offended them! OMG! What should I do about it?!” place. Then on Tuesday the stats are back up and I’m like, “Oh, phew, people still love me. That’s a relief.”

The rest of the morning is about breakfast and getting my 5 year old ready and off to Kindergarten.

Once back at home, I write. I write books. I write magazine articles. I write blog posts. I write essays. I write all day long. Periodically I take breaks to 1) drink tea 2) walk the dog 3) run 4) look out the window 5) Twitter 6) eat 7) ponder whether my life is on the right track.

Then, in the evening, I either have family time or personal time (book club, girl’s night out, a dinner date with a friend). Sometimes, after my daughter is in bed, I check email, do more Twitter, work on my blog and generally bow to the shrine that is my computer. Other times I cuddle with my husband while we watch gory crime shows on TV. I’m usually in bed by 10 p.m.

TDN: Name one thing that you have to do on a regular basis that you despise. What lengths would you actually go to, in order to delete it from your schedule?

AB: I hate scooping my dog’s poop. I use old newspaper and grocery store bags. I’m almost certain that these companies have been using cheaper bags due to recession. Sometimes the bags have holes in them. That’s a bad dog-walking day when the bag has a hole in it, that’s for sure.

I have a very elaborate system for getting my dog to poop in places that won’t require scooping—such as the big empty lot that no one seems to care about.  I try to slow down my pace at such places—giving him every chance in the world to poop there. I say things like, “Go to the bathroom” over and over again, because I’m neurotic and I like to imagine that my dog understands things like that. Usually he decides he’s just not feeling it at that moment. Then, at the next house, he drops his load and I’m like, “Are you TRYING to torture me?!”

TDN: What would you change about your work, industry, profession or self if you could change anything?

AB: I embrace change and am continually changing myself into a new person. At the moment, I’m trying to become a more compassionate, loving being. I’m also trying to become more passionate in bed. I also wish I had more energy and that I worried a lot less than I do. Those latter two things are directly related, because the unnecessary worry saps my energy.

As for what I would change about my profession, it would have to be the value people place on writing. I’ve managed to make a good living as a writer, but many writers don’t, and it’s not necessarily because they lack the talent. It depresses me that so many large websites ask professional writers to write for free or for sweatshop wages. It should be illegal to pay $5 for a blog post—considering the fact that it takes most people an hour or more to write one. That’s less than the minimum wage. High school dropouts can earn more by flipping burgers at a fast food restaurant.

TDN: Is there any life stage or event you would have skipped (like geometry) on the way to where you are now? Would it have been missed?

I’ve had some traumatic things happen to me that I don’t like to talk about or think about, but I would not undo them. They’ve shaped me into who I am, and I strongly believe that they’ve made me a better writer. People who read my blog often write to me and tell me that I make them feel normal and understood. I think that’s because I know pain, and knowing pain helps me to empathize with others.

That said, I would definitely skip that stage in school (roughly 7th grade through 12th) when I felt like a complete dork. I was a shy, introverted kid, and I always thought that the other kids were making fun of me behind my back. I also had terrible self- esteem. I thought I was ugly. I thought I was fat. I thought I was a dweeb. I thought this so strongly that I rarely allowed someone to take a photo of me, and most of the photos that people did take I later threw away. Sometimes I look at some of the few photos that I do have from this time period and I think, “Why did you think you were fat and ugly? You so were not.”

TDN: What was your main stepping stone to getting to where you are today? (Person, place, thing, luck, pluck, virtue?)

AB: During my sophomore year of college, I had the privilege of taking a class from a visiting professor who’d once been the editor in chief of a small, but incredibly well respected newspaper—one that had won a number of Pulitzers. I missed the first week of class because my maternal grandmother had died, and I spent most of that semester in a deep depression. He seemed to understand my grief implicitly. Toward the end of the semester, I mentioned that I was struggling to find a summer internship. He said that he knew the editor in chief at a Colorado newspaper. He picked up the phone, called this editor, told him that I was “one of his best students” and suggested that he would be lucky to have me as an intern. That internship led to me landing another one at a larger paper—the one that eventually hired me upon graduation.

Later in my career, an editor hired me to work on his biggest book of the year. The entire publishing house had high hopes for the book, and everyone all the way up to the company CEO had their fingers in the dough. It was only the second book I’d ever ghosted, so I was honored that he trusted me enough to handle such an important project for him. That book was my first best seller. It launched my ghosting career in a big way.

Of course, I’d be totally remiss if I didn’t mention the impact of that my almost-failed marriage had on my career. If I hadn’t have once thought my husband dead and then done the hard work to save my marriage, I would never have started doing the type of writing I am doing today. I had no idea that experiential writing was inside of me until I had the marriage experience to write about. Once I started writing about my marriage, I couldn’t stop. The essays, blogs and life stories seemed to ooze out of every orifice. Now it’s hard for me to imagine NOT doing this type of writing. It seems as if this is what I was born to do—to share these experiences with others.

TDN: What word or phrase do you say most often?

AB: I’d love to tell you that it’s “blowjob,” but I abuse the words “actually” and “really.” I actually think that I really do. Like that.

TDN: What is your single biggest accomplishment?

AB: I am proud of many accomplishments. I’ve written best sellers. I’ve run marathons. I’ve delivered speeches that have gotten the audience rolling on the floor laughing, despite my incredible fear of public speaking. I’ve launched a successful business. I’ve taught myself the finer points of the US tax code. I even once helped to put out a real fire.

On my deathbed, though, when I look back over my life, I will be most thankful for one thing–that I took the time to get pregnant and have a baby. It’s not as if I had to work all that hard to get the egg and sperm to unite and then eventually grow into a baby. But that baby? She’s my gift from God.

TDN: Is there anything that you can’t live without? (besides food, water and oxygen)

AB: I love words. I love how they sound. I love the process of stringing them together. I love trying to use them to accomplish certain feats—to get people to laugh, to think, to emote. I love working with words in a way that some people love playing video games. It’s timeless for me. It’s joy. If I couldn’t write, I’d probably end up in a mental health ward.

TDN: What’s the best part of your life?

AB: That it’s mine to live, and that I have found a way to get paid to do something I love to do.

TDN: And have you figured out how to get more of it?

AB: I’m constantly imagining types of projects that I want to work on—books I want to write, authors who I’d like to work with, stories I’d like to tell. Once I know what I want, I create a map that will get me from where I am and to that writing goal. On my good days, I believe that anything is possible for me. That belief allows me to persistently take one step after another toward that goal. Yes, sometimes I get sidetracked. Sometimes I get lost. But it’s the belief that anything is possible coupled with the persistence that arises from that belief that always, without fail, gets me back on the right path.

TDN: Who do you most admire?

AB: I admire many people. I admire other writers—Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Gilbert, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion, Gloria Steinem, David Sedaris, Nora Ephron, Barbara Kingsolver—for their craft—how they use words, how they tell stories, how they argue a point. I admire certain spiritual leaders—especially people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi for teaching us to never give up on good. And I admire many regular every day people for making me laugh, for allowing me to feel loved, and for encouraging me to be the best person that I can be.

TDN: What is your ultimate motivation tool?

AB: Myself. I am my own boss from hell.

TDN: If someone wanted to be you or do what you do, what would you say to them?

AB: Do it because you love it, and not because you want to make money, become famous, or earn the respect of others. Writing isn’t about you and it’s not about your ego. It’s about joy and it’s about making a difference. If you write for others—to help them, to make them feel normal, to lighten their load, to brighten their day–success will follow.

To read more from the creator of The Daily Norm…go here.

Tagged as: Alisa Bowman, co-author, ghost writer, marriage, marriage advice, marriage blog, project happily ever after