Presenting Zack or Zac

I am writing this after two seminars this week and another tonight. To say I’m worn out is an understatement. And the seminars are the only thing on my plate. Though dealing with all those people did have a benefit for the book I’m working on, YARN IT!

I mentioned before that the retreat Casey is putting on this time is for a group of her college girlfriends. I know them all pretty well by now, which makes writing a lot easier. But there was something missing. I kept thinking there had to be a guy they all knew and maybe were infatuated with. But who was he and why would he show up at their retreat?

And then he showed up in my imagination. His first name is Zack. I think I have a last name for him, but I can’t remember it offhand. He’s a field reporter for WNN and a unknown someone invited him to the retreat with the promise of a great story. I decided that he got assignments from WNN, but also could pitch them on ideas. He worked on the college radio and TV station and knew from way back he wanted to be in television news. His illusive gypsy-like life makes him even more fascinating. And, of course, he’s charming.

Zack didn’t come completely from my imagination. All those hours of watching CNN reporters getting blown around in the last hurricanes was inspiration, along with interviews I saw with Bill Weir and David Muir. I like to look at the story behind the story. In other words what are their lives like when they’re not on the air.

I thought of a conversation I overheard at the airport. A guy was sitting adjacent to me talking on the phone about getting a gig doing a segment for one of the TV news shows like 20/20. He was on his way to Phoenix and meeting the camera person there. I gathered that he worked as the producer pulling the whole thing together. What I got from his conversation was that the call for the job had come rather suddenly and without a second thought he’d dropped whatever was going on in his life and taken off. If you work in news that has to be your lifestyle. After all it isn’t called olds.

I already had figured out Zack’s past, but what about his future. Then someone who attended one of our seminars this week made me realize that everyone isn’t going to be Anderson Cooper. I recognized the man who came to our seminar a former anchor on one of the local stations here. I googled him and found that his TV news career had fizzled and he’d turned to radio. And now he was a consultant. He didn’t list a wife and came to the seminar alone. Would that be Zack’s future?

For now I am busy coming up with what Zack’s wardrobe is like, if he should spell his name with out the K and how much would it cost him to have a satellite phone. It is always such fun when a character just shows up and wants to be part of the story.

And now let's go—live!—to a Zombie Gerbil from Outer Space

So I'm looking over my upcoming book tour schedule for DYING TO BE THIN, which launches on October second. The tour includes several highlights that I’m especially thrilled about, including some media appearances (for updates, see my web site.)

Among other places, I’ll be appearing on a morning television show.

That interview will be the first time I’ve set foot inside a TV studio in more than twenty years. And for me, it may prove to be a bittersweet moment.

First, a bit of background:

Twenty-plus years ago, I graduated from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. During my stint at the J School, I concentrated in broadcasting. My dream was to become a television reporter, and perhaps eventually an anchor.
But my academic advisor soon informed me, in no uncertain terms, that to have a career on camera, I’d have to lose weight.

I’d have to lose a lot of weight. At two-hundred-plus pounds, I needed to lose approximately one-half of myself.

This was a tall order, especially in the days before laparoscopic surgery and stomach rings.

To remediate my excess adipose situation, after graduation I packed up my TR6 and sallied south to Durham, North Carolina, the self-proclaimed “Diet Capital of the World.” There, I enrolled in a residential diet clinic (read: fat farm). Nine hungry months later, I left Durham, tipping the scales at 114 pounds. (At five foot five, I figured even TV news would be satisfied with that three-digit number.) Armed with a new designer wardrobe, I soon landed a reporting internship, and later a full-time job, at a station in South Carolina.

But I quickly discovered that the reality of TV news reporting was far different than I’d imagined. The job involved crazy hours (no problem for me), and tons of stress (some problem for me). To my dismay, I also discovered that I suffered from a bit of camera shyness.

Doing live shots was especially challenging. When you do a live shot, you stand there in front of the camera, holding a microphone, addressing hundreds of thousands of people—without a script. To make things worse, you also have a disembodied voice (the studio producer) yakking at you through an earpiece.

Accomplished professionals in TV-News land, like Anderson Cooper and Katie Couric, make live television look easy.

Trust me, it’s not.

There’s a scene in DYING TO BE THIN that addresses the peculiar challenges of live shots:

In this scene, my protagonist, Kate Gallagher, has just finished her first live shot. It’s gone well, and she’s been congratulated by the cameraman:

“Thanks, Reggie,” I said, removing my earpiece. I was riding a huge surge of relief, a high, really, that my maiden live shot had gone so smoothly. I’ve seen first-time live shots go horribly wrong—the reporters get spacey, or they forget what they’re supposed to say entirely and freeze up in front of the camera the way a hairy-footed gerbil gets hypnotized by a cobra.”

True confession time—that was my first live shot I was describing in the book. I was about as polished as a zombie gerbil from outer space.

I eventually recovered from that rough start, and improved. But along the way, I learned that television news wasn’t the right career for me. Nowadays, I’m much happier being ensconced behind the word processor, spinning out stories that turn out just the way I want them to.

To paraphrase Dirty Harry, “A woman’s got to know her limitations.”

But I’m thrilled to get the chance to go back on television as a guest. A studio guest doesn’t have all the pressure of dealing with where the cameras are, or how many seconds are left before the break, or a producer who’s talking through her earpiece.

Guests can just relax, smile, and be themselves.

Ahh…sounds like the perfect assignment for me.