This week’s article is an interview with author Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.  Her latest book is Loving in Flow: How the Happiest Couples Get & Stay That Way.  Susan makes good use of her personal experience in a second marriage as well as the experience of other couples to help her readers understand how they can get and stay happy with their partners.

Before we spoke, to show me how she uses personal experience in her work, Susan shared an excerpt from Loving in Flow:

CHAPTER TWO: INTIMATIONS OF REALITY

THE FIRST FIGHT

In my own marriage, it took three months of dating to reach this scary-at-the-time milestone. It was our first holiday season, when expectations run unnaturally high anyway.

A bit of background: it is difficult for me to make decisions about gifts. No one ought to respond to my question of “Should I get this?” with a casual “Why not?”  I can think of dozens of reasons “why not” to every possible selection. It’s too expensive, he’ll be allergic to it, he’ll think I got it at a bargain store, he has one, he never wanted one, it’s the wrong size, color, shape, brand-name, and on and on. (Deeper background: growing up, I could never seem to buy the perfect gift for my parents, and they’d as often return what I bought for them as keep it. We’re all practical in my family.)

Thus, shopping for Stephen’s Christmas gift precipitated a more-than-minor trauma. As should befit a remarkable relationship, I wanted it to be an astonishing gift. But with no child support coming in, my freelance writing was barely keeping my two boys in Cheerios. On an impulse, I drove over to Farmer’s Market, a place I never shop. I saw a $75 snake-skin wallet, so soft to the touch, but $75 was more than I’d ever spent on a gift for anyone in my life. It was more than I could afford. But Stephen wouldn’t already have one (I’d seen how tattered his old wallet was). Tortured by indecision, I finally bought it as the store was about to close.

Stephen gave me some sweet little crystal wine glasses. He seemed to like the wallet, and began using it. When he arrived at my house the next weekend, he tossed his laundry into the washing machine.  Later, when I took his sopping clothes out to put them into the dryer, there was a suspicious—and drenched—lump in a pocket.

“Is this all you think of my gift?” I asked, perhaps ungently.

 Rather than responding sheepishly, he made some irrelevant comment about the paucity of nice things in my house. I already felt inferior when it came to aesthetics, so I tossed some barb about his stupid wine glasses, which I said he’d obviously purchased with selfish intent— after all, he’s the drinker with his mental pinky in the air. He took his hurt feelings and withdrew. Somehow, I didn’t know what I’d done wrong (using hindsight, I have no trouble figuring it out), and I was afraid to ask until the next day. We spent an evening under a damp cloud of confused silence, with me desperately trying to find a way to reconnect. It was my first experience with withdrawal as a conflict strategy. I felt like I was hugging a ghost.

We tried to talk about the problem the next day, but he said I was a bundle of neuroses when I tried to explain the problem I have with money and gifts. It was scary because I would drag him down.

Only a day or two before this fight, Stephen had said he loved me more than he’s ever loved anyone, but now the tension was horrible. Our usual connectedness didn’t fully return for days. We realized we had a lot to learn about seeing each other’s point of view and disagreeing fairly and effectively.

Sheila
After reading the excerpt, I am eager to learn more about the way weaving personal experience into nonfiction how-to books has worked for you.

Susan
For the first of my books, Writing in Flow, I had interviewed 76 top novelists and poets as to how they access their greatest creativity.  I integrated their reports of their experience and observations with my graduate studies of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, those moments when we are so totally immersed in our activity that we forget ourselves, are stimulated and feel very productive.   After that, I was ready to tackle a more intimate book that explored how my own marriage had rebounded after hitting bottom, halfway into its now-20-year length. Although I was going to be writing about “us,” I figured I could write a much richer book if I employed the skill I had developed interviewing writers to interview other very happy couples.  I wanted to learn their own strategies for finding flow in their love lives. 

Along with detailed stories from the lives of my interviewees, I integrated my own hard-won insights about how my marriage nearly fell apart and how we repaired it to be stronger than it had ever been before.  I connected all this with the requirements for creating flow, and added practical methods couples can use to improve their daily lives with one another – methods that have worked for those who faced major challenges.

Sheila
What were the challenges for you in working on this book that required you meld academic psychological information with personal information and information learned in interviews?

Susan
It’s always very difficult to know how much of oneself to put into a book, especially if the book is not overtly a memoir.  With each revision, and following the suggestion of my agent and various major publishers who turned the book down in proposal form, I eliminated more and more of my journal entries and letters in order to keep my focus firmly on benefits to the reader.  Any part of my own story that I finally included had to serve my main purpose of helping others overcome crises in their relationships so they could find flow.  I came to think of Loving in Flow as “self-help for those who don’t read self-help.”  I also call it “intimate nonfiction.”

Sheila
This is a wonderful term, “intimate nonfiction.”  There must be pleasures in writing this way, in imagining your audience needs and wants the information you have from your own experience as well as the experience of many others with whom you have talked intimately.

Susan
The pleasures were many: being honest in writing (something in which I’ve always delighted), becoming familiar with the intimate lives of other happy couples, learning nearly everything there is to know about a subject (which you can’t do when you are only writing an article) and having a chance to be as creative as possible in the way I told the stories and titled my chapters and subsections.  I often felt like I was “getting away with something” when I included a particularly personal or amusing tidbit.  Years of writing to a near-formula for magazines had gotten me out of the habit of such freedom.

Sheila
Can you address this phenomenon of having a formula and then being able to break away from it?  What was the formula you had to observe for magazines?

Susan
It’s not one particular formula, but rather the formula preferred by each magazine.

Sheila
 What kind or which magazines did you write for?

Susan
I had numerous articles published in Parenting, Child, various regional parenting magazines such as L.A. Parent, and Valley, which is my regional city magazine. I also wrote for Psychology Today, Writer’s Digest, Personal Journaling, Los Angeles Magazine, and even Muscle Media, where I wrote about flow related to bodybuilding.

Sheila
And what were the formulas?

Susan
For many of the major magazines, you have to interview several so-called experts, regardless of whether you’re an expert yourself.  Each one of these has to be either a book author herself or an academic or a clinical psychologist who has specifically studied the phenomenon you’re writing about.  You generally also have to include the stories of “real people,” usually individuals who illustrate some particular theme the editor wants to highlight as a trend, and you usually have to use their real names.  If you want to write about something that doesn’t illustrate a trend or leaves a question in the reader’s mind instead, forget it.  For a book, you can depart from this.  In books, the author, in my experience, is typically trusted to use her own voice.  The author is allowed to be the primary expert.

Sheila
And now that you are the primary expert in your book, you must have to promote yourself.  How are you doing that?

Susan
I’ve done some of just about everything an author can do to get the word out more widely.  From the top: I’ve managed to get onto TV a few times, including “Inside Edition” and some local TV shows; I’ve been quoted in many major magazines as a relationship expert; I’ve given talks at bookstores and various organizations, from Hadassah to a Moms’ Club; I’ve appeared on panels at writers’ conferences and given workshops at writers’ organizations; I’ve made contacts with colleagues who wrote reviews of the book in newsletters and journals and newspapers; I’ve had reviews and interviews and excerpts published on the Internet; and I’ve kept my web site updated.  And I’ve recently gotten myself gigs as an advice columnist on more than one site.  Meet Dr. Susan!

Sheila
Being Dr. Susan sounds exciting.  Did this kind of recognition help you get on “Inside Edition” and local TV shows? 

Susan
Actually, I am on a listserv called SmartMarriages, and I saw a listing there in which “Inside Edition” needed a couple to talk about an affair.  I immediately contacted the producer on my own and got the spot.  When it came to the local TV shows, I had become friendly with a local sex therapist (I met her by writing to her on the Internet after seeing her column on ivillage.com.)  I signed up for her free newsletter, in which she mentioned her own spot on a local news show.  I asked her how she did it, and she put me in touch with the producer. 

Sheila
You sound like an effective networker and one who is not hesitant to use experience others might try to keep undercover.  This must help you in giving advice in those columns on line.  How did you get yourself those gigs?

Susan
With persistence, inquisitiveness and chutzpah! A writer had contacted me for an “expert quote” for one of her articles on Netscape.com, and I asked her about her own experience with the site.  She generously gave me her editor’s name and contact information, and I approached him and discussed my experience.  My timing must have been good, perhaps along with my willingness to work for their very low rates (!), and he drummed up a column for me.  For the one on CouplesCompany.com, I discovered the site and figured how I could help it, then kept after the editor (nicely) for months before she set up a new column just for me.  There’s no pay in that one, just the exposure, but I can re-use material from the other column, so it’s worth it.

Sheila
It sounds like you will be involved in love advice for a while based on your book and willingness to promote it.  I used to think that authors could put something out there in book form for others to use and then go on to another project in a new direction.  Instead, I think the need to promote our books means we remain attached to the material for a long time.  In other words, what we thought would help us go on to our next effort may actually keep us so busy we can’t do that. What has been your experience?

Susan
I know myself pretty well by now, so I can admit to myself that I get bored.  I wouldn’t want to write the same or a similar book more than once.  I learned so much about writing for Writing in Flow, such as what it takes to set up a writing ritual, why such rituals aid the flow process, and how the challenge and mystery of not knowing what’s coming next is a great motivator for the majority of fiction writers.  But since I want to keep learning, I have to find new ways to do that. 

In another writing arena, I’ve been writing articles on parenting topics for two decades.   I will still do it when I’m asked to do it – but I don’t bother specifically marketing that expertise any longer.  It’s become tedious to write on the same subject time and time again, and my own kids have grown, so my personal interest in the topic is long gone.  I’ve learned what I wanted to know.

I switched to writing about relationships and wrote Loving in Flow.  I learned that each happy couple is happy in its own way, that it’s not necessary for others to do what my husband and I did to create a great relationship.  This was exactly like what I learned with my writing research: there are many routes to flow.  I don’t plan to write another relationship book, but I’ve been answering people’s dating and relationship questions on my web site and via my columns as Dr. Susan, so I may find a way to take those and put them into a book. I do enjoy the aspect of writing books that involves trying to be comprehensive.  On the other hand, with advice columns, I know I’m only expected to provide a few paragraphs of thought-provoking help and that reduces the pressure, allowing me to extend what I know in smaller, targeted bytes.

It’s certainly true that by the time a book comes out, I feel it would be so great if I could just put that topic behind me and go on to a new engaging passion.  But it doesn’t work that way.  I’ve had to find new angles to keep my own interest up.

Sheila
Many people would be excited about being able to build the platform you built to promote your book.  How do you feel about it? The pluses and minuses.

Susan
I never expected to build a major relationship expert platform after Loving in Flow came out.  If I’d had this before, I would have had a larger advance! One thing leads to another.  So here I am, playing Dr. Susan on the Love Channel at AOL’s Netscape.com and also at CouplesCompany.com in my Second Marriage column.

In addition, Loving in Flow is among 150 plus books used for mental health professionals’ in-service training at CE-Credit.com.

All of this increases my visibility and credibility.  And it’s fun and different for me, too.  The fun is purely from being trusted to have my own voice and expertise.

The minus might be that I fully intend to try my hand at fiction next.  Though I suppose I’ll use the platform no matter what I do, since it’s the name recognition that counts.

Sheila
How do you think you might use all you know about flow in turning to fiction writing? Do you think your characters and plot might benefit from your research and experience of previous years?

Susan
At this point, it’s hard for me to answer that.  I know how to enter flow now: all you do is let go and tap into your subconscious.  But for me, to let go is the hardest thing of all, so I still have a lot to learn. That’s where the fun comes in.  I’m highly motivated to try something utterly new to me.  I’m doing a little of that by giving talks on “intimate nonfiction.” I’ve put together my experience writing on the topics of writing and about relationships to help others examine how they might write intimately for others on life topics.

Sheila
Those talks sound very interesting. What are the points you address for your audiences?

Susan
The first I cover is the subject of risk.  What are the real risks of writing about real people and real experiences?  Some of people’s fears are legitimate, and you have to consider the legal ramifications of your writing about others.  But if you’re afraid to tell your own story because you think people won’t like you, or your mother will be embarrassed, or people will think you’re self-centered, there are ways to write about personal material in a way that is of use to readers without antagonizing too many of them. 

I also tackle ways to get at your own stories, including recognizing when your own life contains material that is worth writing about.  My talks are pretty free-form, so that I rarely get through my own notes due to responding to what the needs of the group are.  It seems to work well that way, but I’d still rather write than talk!

****

Writing is a way, as the late poet William Stafford is noted as saying, of finding out things you wouldn’t have known you knew if you hadn’t started writing about them. But although writing is always worth it for the writer, readers’ requirements are different.  They need to understand why the insight and the information is of value to them and they have to trust that the author really does know what she is writing about. In addition, they have to be convinced to drop other things to read what we have written.

I believe that if we want to use personal experience to help and instruct others, as authors we must ask ourselves, “How might I make reading my life experiences worth another’s time?” Sometimes that means being sure I find the entertainment value in my words. Sometimes it means just speaking up on an issue others skate past.  Always it means being honest.  It means addressing my work to people who need the information now to make their way more easily.  In the case of instruction, it means weaving anecdotes about my own experience into the fundamentals of a knowledge base I’ve acquired from studies and research as well as practice.   It also means using the words and actions of others because they validate that my experience is a shared experience. 

In other words, to use your writing to help others, you must put it forward as grounded in your experience, in the experience of others who can corroborate your truths and in a greater area of study.

This quote from Publisher’s Weekly certainly demonstrates Susan Perry’s knack for recognizing when her own life contains material worth writing about for others.  The reviewer wrote this about Loving in Flow:

Perry, a social psychologist, draws on the ups and downs in her own marriage as well as interviews with other couples, both straight and gay, to glean many of her insights in this detailed exploration of the complexity inherent in coupledom…To demonstrate that everyone gets on his or her partner’s nerves at times, Perry makes [a]… funny list of her husband’s annoying habits, like “Jiggles his glass of ice cubes repeatedly” and “Mixes big and little spoons in the drawer when he puts silverware away.” Perry admits the trivial nature of her gripes, but reminds readers that integrating “the positive and the negative is necessary to maintain an overall positive view of your partner.” From that obvious assessment, Perry writes more specifically, providing engaging case studies and the lessons that can be learned from them. Perry handles more serious relationship challenges such as adultery, illness, and dealing with a partner’s interest in pornography in a straightforward manner. Maintaining a healthy, happy relationship isn’t easy, but Perry’s methods, based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Flow, show that “a superior relationship…is achievable if you both want it enough.”

There is a good lesson here for those of us wanting to share lessons learned, research, our studies and hard won skill:  be willing to sound real and human, to show foibles as well as knowledge.  Be willing not only to teach something, but to show your readers how you learned it in the first place.  If you concentrate on the human qualities in your experience of learning and growing, your work will resonate with others.