Frances Kuffel

Among the eighty-two thousands things an author now needs from the web in order to publicize her book is a simple gadget called the Google alert. This alert can be used for any word or phrase one wants. I still get updates on "obesity research" which I relied on while writing ANGRY FAT GIRLS and I get daily updates on "Frances Kuffel".

This alerts have grown more necessary each year because so much is being written exclusively on the web. Despite getting a lot of updates on how my books are selling on eBay, I'm also clued in to what people are saying about my writing in blogs.

Sometimes it's not pretty.

Sometimes I have to respond, as creepy as that makes me feel.

One such blog drifted on to my radar this week. I think the real problem the writer had with the book was actually with me. It's Okay to not like me. I don't like a lot of memoirists and the ones I do, I'm scared of. However, if I was going to blog about a memoir I didn't like, I would at least check my facts.

Bloggetta scoffed at how small incidents like being yelled at when my dog jumped and barked at a man who startled her can start me on a binge. I can certainly see that most people would not gain weight over such a moment but a slightly closer reading of the book would have reminded her that I suffer from depression combined with social anxiety and that one of the things that really finished off my weight gain was realizing I had been willfully ignorant about the options I had in dealing with my abusive boss.

Obviously, someone who couldn't tell her boss not to twist her nose is going to be sort of a weenie. Part of the book is about my struggle not to be such a weenie.

Nor could Bloggetta understand why being fired, with a severance package, from a bad workplace could jeopardize my thinnosity.

What are the three things considered most stressful in life? Death, moving and job change. Job loss IS job change, and I had truly identified myself as a literary agent so much that it was difficult to find another meaning in my life -- despite the fact that I was ten months away from publishing Passing for Thin. I hadn't made the transition to being a writer.

I'm venting here because Bloggetta posts on a site that allows less response than a fortune cookie. Still, I think a slightly more sensitive reading would have revealed to her that this fat lady, for one, has to factor depression into any equation. She would also have remembered that I lived in self-blame for not having defended myself in that job, or with the guy who verbally abused me over Daisy's misbehavior.

And Daisy was OF COURSE on leash, Bloggetta -- a point you really got wrong.

I often respond to thank blog writers for taking the time to read my work. If the review is simply nasty (go look at Amazon comments on PFT if you want to know what it's like to be publicly disliked for perceived venalities), I let it go. But when it's wrong, either in fact (Daisy off leash on a busy Brooklyn Street? I don't think so) or in spirit (hadn't I described how hard it is for me to identify what emotion my reaction is and how to properly express it?), I have to respond.

Because along with Google alerts, the Web is becoming the end-all of publicity. A couple of years ago, Blogalina might have read a review in the Post and decided to read the book but now it's more likely she'll read Bloggetta's take and decide to give the book a skip.

For someone who has a hard time standing up for herself, I sure have to do a lot of it lately.

Gad, have I been remiss with this blog or what?

The time to strike is while you're "hot" (I wish!), so I and my Oscar-winning ankle have been home working on two new books proposals, one for a group of essays, and the other another memoir that I'm not yet confident about discussing. I had an essay to write and the bulk of it took about two weeks, then I pressed home by finishing it and the other proposal in about three days.

I sent it all off to my agent on Monday night and have been lurching around in a coma/post-partum thing since. I'm determined to be more productive today while I wait to hear back. Waiting is hard at any time. When you're in a cast & you're hit with a sleet-snow storm that produces many inches of icy snow, waiting is f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

Many thanks to the comments from my last post. The yo-yo is tiring, isn't it? The worry about what to eat, whether you can pull yourself together the next day if you eat THAT -- I'm amazed at how we live.

I've kind of gotten the drift of how to use Twitter as a marketing device. I find an interesting person or product, follow it, then look at who is following that Twit. When they follow back or someone initiates a follow, I have a canned response pointing them to my book.

Ninety-nine percent of the people who follow me are weight-loss/fitness experts. My response is always, if you want to know more about why people have such a hard time with this, read my book. (The other one percent are women associated with chubby porn sites. I learned only this morning that there is such a thing as a double-L bra cup...)

I only have some hundred characters to make my point. If I had more, I'd say, "Look, Mr. Abs, you work with flabby, desperate people who have a history of trying, succeeding, failing. Why don't you think about the underlying causes of eating?"

A terrific radio interviewer recently asked me what I think of THE BIGGEST LOSER, and in particular an incident in which a coach berated a contestant during a work out.

I tried to contain my fury on the radio. We don't get fat because, gee, life is swell. We get fat for a lot of reasons, but one of the very big ones is, as a commenter said about the last post, we're stuffing down anger. What is anger but a reaction to being hurt? And being hurt is a reaction to being denied love and/or respect.

So when a coach viciously attacks an obese contestant, I freak out. The coach is pushing exactly the button that says, "Eat!" but expecting that the pressure of the show will keep him or her from doing so.

Making weight loss a competition is a crime. I could no more watch THE BIGGEST LOSER than I could a dog fight.

I remember that some years ago there was a recovery clinic for anorectics that claimed phenomenal success rates because they smothered the girls in love. This was long before I began the process that became Passing for Thin but I thought, "THAT is what we need. We fatties need to be held, reassured, coddled, LOVED. We need to be touched. We need to learn that we have all the reasons in the world to fight for our lives."

So I get furious at THE BIGGEST LOSER & the comments about laziness. If I ran a clinic for obesity, I'd have massage therapy every day. I wouldn't let patients see the scale. I'd make my staff hurrah for every clean meal eaten, every effort made to build self-respect & self-confidence. You made your bed? Gold star! Washed your hair? Aces for you! Put on EARRINGS? Go to the head of the class!

Anyone who forgoes any substance that represses scary feelings is THE BEST LOSER.

Fuck the biggest. Rejoice in the small gains & losses.

The third flat-out, crawl-to-a-fence-to-hoist-myself-off-the-pavement fall occurred on January 16. This time I heard a snap. My left ankle immediately doubled in size. I could move my foot so I assumed I'd sprained it but by the time I got Daisy home I knew I was in trouble.

I have a World Class Sprain. It sounds so so-what but my podiatrist explained why a very bad sprain is worse than a fracture or some breaks: sprains involve ligaments, either tearing them or stretching them. Whereas bones have a great blood supply, ligaments do not. Therefore they are much slower to heal. I'll be in a cast for another three weeks but I get to take it off for therapeutic minutes and I can start to walk again.

I told my publicist that if Oprah calls, of course I can go. I just won't get to wear [both of] my beautiful new shoes.

Luckily, I've only had a couple of radio gigs in the last ten days. I did them in bed with my Frankenstein foot elevated. Unluckily, I've only had a couple of radio gigs.

I wasn't with it enough last week to do more than piddle around with Twitter. Today I read some blog posts that mention me and AFG, one based on the book, one on the Marie Claire abortion. I answered each, clarifying a little on the issues the writers were concerned with.

It's interesting to see what triggers people. One blogger (http://fashionablyfit.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/weighing-in/) wrote, "I would never follow a diet that cut out all of the foods that made me fat — the pizza, the jalapeno poppers, the french fries, the ice cream – because I know it would be destined to fail."

People are enormously afraid of what they might have to give up. This involves not only specific foods, but the fear of parties, holidays, rituals that revolve around food. But I speak mostly for myself or in the collective when I've made it clear that the collective is of a certain kind of make-up.

Merry Perennial (http://merryperennial.blogspot.com/2010/01/perseverating-no-i-dont-mean.html) writes that, "I fear the reason is something mentioned in Frances Kuffel's book: we eat because that is all we have."

I LOVE the Holly Cole song, "I Am the Onion Girl". We have layers and layers of family, friends, work, hobbies, interests, chores and occasions. But -- again, for some of us -- when all those layers come off because we find them flawed or unusable, the core can be eating.

When I published PASSING FOR THIN seven years ago, I wasn't sure what a blog was. It wasn't a book mention I depended on.

Publishing had changed. Every blog helps; every misreading or laud helps. But I have to be active about participating...which is, luckily, a hell of a lot easier than opening up the Word document for the essay I'm writing...

I went to Fort Lauderdale on Thursday to tape an interview for BALANCING ACT, a morning talk show on the Lifetime network. I was out of the Bat Cave at 7.30 a.m. and got home around midnight but it was fun to be in a...h'mm, how to put it: national studio? It's not that doing Phoenix TV was unprofessional, but BALANCING ACT had the accoutrements of the networks: a dress code (jewel tones or pastels: I went with coral and a print skirt), a hair and make-up person, PASTRIES IN THE GREEN ROOM, two takes for the final version.

And a town car at my door and at the foot of the airport escalators -- such luxury.

Daisy stayed with her Uncle Gerry and it was wonderful to sleep in a little on Friday, then get up and do some of the chores that haven't been done in a while. One of my tasks was to speak with my agent. I think I'd rather scrub the kitchen floor than go through that conversation again.

I love my agent. When she was editor-in-chief of Little, Brown and I was a peon assistant in a literary agency, she was always kind and encouraging. She's stuck by me and she's a fabulous cheerleader. But we're at a new turning in my career.

No more fat books, or thin books. I want to write a collection of essays about the rest of my life, the sillier, more lighthearted life that's not all bound up in Issues. My editor agrees and my agent spoke to her while I was eating rugalach, hoping for the beginning of a negotiation, but my editor wants a sample essay and table of contents. I came home to an email that made me feel as though I'd failed in some way.

All of this, while it sounds like complaining, is actually PART of publishing a new book. The iron is hot and we strike for a new contract. Essays will keep my audience better than whatever other nonfiction I could make a hash of suggesting. And I see no reason to feel disappointed in Berkley's wish to see a table of contents (which is done and which I'd sent my agent back in December) and a sample essay.

DO YOU KNOW HOW INCREDIBLY LUCKY WE ARE TO BE ABLE TO TALK ABOUT THE NEXT CONTRACT BASED ON, LIKE, TWENTY-ONE PAGES??? I wanted to say.

Sometimes having been an agent is tricky that way.

We disagree on the subject of the essay, which will be comic, and, probably, on the theme of the collection. My agent tends to push for perky and sexy; my nature is more phlegmatic and sly. She's Piglet (or possibly Tigger) and I am Eeyore.

But we belong in the same book and I'm writing the essay I want to do because I'm trying to listen to my instincts this year and because I have a passion for that particular topic.

So now I'm being bother Author and Writer and trying to stay away from Adversary even while I do what I bloody well want to do.

I'm flying to Florida for a minute on Thursday to tape an interview with BALANCING ACT on the Lifetime Network, then borrowing a friend's living room to tape an interview with LX New York on Friday morning. This means that each day this week I have to do some spiff-thing. Hair yesterday. Face today. Manicure tomorrow. I hate having my nails done. They are more responsibility than I am capable of.

I seem to gotten back into my life however, which feels good. Finally put my suitcase away, as well as rain boots, which I won't need until March. Small things but proactive because they're one-offs. I don't have to do them again.

What doesn't feel good is the profile that came out in Marie Claire yesterday. (more…)

Promoting a book at my level of (ha ha ha) fame is a matter of an adrenaline rush followed by lots of down time -- a lot like my father's description of anesthesiology ("long periods of boredom interspersed with moments of panic"). Today is a down day. That means it's internet housekeeping day. (more…)

Like everyone else, I wear many hats. The Author Hat, however, is a rarer one, that lasts for about six months after publication. I put on that hat back in December when I was interviewed for a feature in MARIE CLAIRE and went on to do some television and radio interviews in Phoenix and elsewhere.

How is the Author Hat different from my other roles?

I'm a dog-walker in between advances. My vocabulary is studded with words like, "Out!" and "Wooza-wooza-wooza." My wardrobe is even more limited. I let my hair go, struggle to shower, my fingernails are a wreck and my nose looks like Bozo's.

As a writer, I'm quiet. My words are dedicated to getting them on my computer and get used up by the end of a day's work. I let my hair go, struggle to shower, my fingernails are a wreck and my house, which I call the Bat Cave, is even worse. (more…)