Speed Dial with Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the author of the New York Times best-selling collection of essays I Was Told There’d Be Cake and follow-up How’d You Get This Number, garnering praise from the likes of David Sedaris and Jonathan Lethem. Now, literary’s it girl is back with not one, but two new titles: her much-anticipated debut novel The Clasp and Read Bottom Up, under the pen name Skye Chatham with pal Neel Shah. She happens to be my friend too. Fifteen years ago (eek!), we shared an office space at HarperCollins Publishers as publicity assistants. There, she worked on novels by greats like Joyce Carol Oats and Ann Patchett. There was no doubt, in my mind, that she would one day join them. She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, hilarious, quirky, infectious, impossibly chic and so damn likable. One dinner with her and you’ll walk out feeling pretty bad about yourself! Except, you won’t because she makes it seem as if you’re equally entertaining and interesting. I caught up with my old friend to reminisce, chat writing styles and discover what it feels like to finally live her dream.
Nat: What was the best thing about sitting next to me at work?
Sloane: You had just come from working at the now-defunct Talk Magazine and I thought you were pretty fancy and media savvy.
Nat: So fancy. What was the worst thing about having a cubicle next to me?
Sloane: Probably hearing each other leave the same message on people’s voicemails forty times a day, using the same material.
Nat: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Sloane: I always knew I wanted to write and always did write but during college I realized I wanted it to be my profession. And then it was another decade before I got comfortable with it being my only profession.
Nat: What did you learn from working at a publishing house that helped inform you as an author?
Sloane: You have to get creative to get attention.
Nat: Why book publicity instead of editorial?
Sloane: Well, it’s where I got a job. That’s not such a great answer but I wouldn’t have said I wanted to be a book publicist when I was nine. And then it turns out that, when it’s going well (important caveat), it’s one of the best and most important jobs in the world. You can effect what people read. It’s oddly personal.
Nat: Do you have a favorite author you worked with?
Sloane: I plead the fifth. There are too many.
Nat: What was the hardest part of being a publicist?
Sloane: Feeling like no matter what you do for a book, it’s not enough. That can be motivating as well. But if you have a couple of books in a row like that, it’s hard and thankless. Literally thankless. Often a publicist is assigned too late to be in the acknowledgments of a book.
Nat: What finally made you make the leap and start writing your first collection of essays?
Sloane: It was slightly more organic than a leap. I accidently locked myself out of two different apartments in the same day while moving in Manhattan. I had left the old one, settled into the new one and went to throw away the first empty box. The second the door shut behind me, I knew immediately I had done it again. Miraculously, the same locksmith who busted me back into Apt #1 came to do the same for Apt #2. So I wrote an essay about it and The Village Voice published it. I was out-of-my-mind excited and knew I wanted to keep doing it.
Nat: Why a collection versus a novel out of the gate?
Sloane: Essays are a totally different beast than fiction. Also a novel requires immersion. Essays do as well but it’s really a matter of real estate. The Clasp is just under 400 pages. I think the longest essay I’ve ever written is 14,000 words and that’s a whole lot of words but….
Nat: How would you describe your writing style?
Sloane: Vogue called my first collection “slightly cracked” and I always liked that. Also: Vogue. I’ll leave the style questions, writing or otherwise, to the experts.
Nat: What was the most challenging part of writing a book?
Sloane: Making yourself turn on the computer every day.
Nat: How do you handle self-doubt? Days you think it sucks?
Sloane: I take a walk. I know it will pass. Or I read something that will inspire me without intimidating me into paralysis. So: Yes to Lorrie Moore and Tobias Wolff. No to Dickens.
Nat: How, when and where do you work best?
Sloane: I work best when it’s either very early in my apartment or I’ve borrowed or rented someone’s house in a quiet place.
Nat: What’s your writing routine?
Sloane: I will tell you but you should know that I break my own routine on a regular basis. I wake up early, write in the mornings until about noon or 1PM, have lunch, work again for a couple of hours but by the afternoon, my concentration tends to break and I worry I’m doing more harm than good to my writing. Because it’s no longer fresh and I can’t see it properly anymore. Then I read, email and edit at night before bed. But that play-by-play leaves no room for travel, life obligations, side projects, Twitter, trips to the refrigerator, socializing, etc. So it’s not fixed.
Nat: What made you take the leap and finally leave your corporate career and write full-time?
Sloane: I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number were both written while I had a very fulltime job, which I adored, but it was just an untenable situation for me. Lots of people have busy jobs but they generally fall under the same umbrella. I was leading a bit of a double life, taking my vacation time to write or promote the books. So a big part of the reason I left was because I had to. But this also goes back to the immersion concept. I needed to be away from the real world, for a little while at least, to get my fictional one going.
Nat: What did it feel like to see your first jacket? First collection in stores?
Sloane: Absolutely insane. You look at it and it’s like you can’t even read your name. In that first moment, it looks like a spoof of a book cover.
Nat: Tell us about The Clasp.
Sloane: The Clasp is a comedy of manners about a group of friends who are forced together a decade after college when they all attend an over-the-top wedding in Miami. Within that group is a bit of a love triangle consisting of two men and one woman: Victor, Nathaniel and Kezia. I delve into all their voices and daily routines (their careers, for instance, were important for me to capture). They’re all kind of faking it for each other, falling back into old routines. At the reception, Victor falls asleep, drunk, on the mother of the groom’s bed and she wakes him and tells him this possibly-insane story about a necklace that went missing during the Nazi occupation of France. And thus a kind of madcap adventure is set into motion and the second half of the novel takes place in Normandy. Really, it’s about taking the trope of the belated-coming-of-age story and giving these characters what they wish for: more international mystery, less gazing at their own navels.
Nat: Describe your most challenging moment while writing The Clasp.
Sloane: I realized (with the help of my editor, who told me) that I’d have to cut out more than 200 pages from the first draft. That’s a tremendous amount of material but it just wasn’t serving the story. I print my drafts so I can work on them in my hands. I bled pens dry, crossing out line after line after line. And then I drank whiskey.
Recent Book
The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Author
James Joyce or Guy de Maupassant
App
I have almost no apps on my phone. I’m basically a 90-year-old person inside.
Website
The New York Times
Social Platform
Time Suck
Twitter. And not being able to find my keys before I leave the house. But mostly Twitter.
Guilty Pleasure
The Bachelorette
Swear Word
Fuckstick
Motto
“The genius in the room is the one most like himself” – Thelonious Monk
Movie to Quote
Noah Baunbach’s Kicking & Screaming
Movie Snack
Popcorn with peanut M&Ms sprinkled in periodically
Book Adapted into a Movie
Adaptation
Splurge
Hat from Lock in London, a good leather jacket
Save
Cheap paper products
Way to Sweat
Being late for things, which I often am
Mood Music
The National
Writing Music
Silence
Cooking Music
Anything that makes me think I’m in a Nancy Meyers movie.
Thing to Gift
Tea or chocolates from foreign countries.
Best Gift You’ve Ever Received
This one scarf I have. Paper-thin cashmere.
NYC Spot
Buevette
Quickest Way to Get You to Dance
Violent Femmes
Best Party You’ve Ever Been To
I had a friend who got married outside Dublin on Halloween and most of the wedding guests stayed up until dawn. That was pretty good.
Baking or Cooking?
Baking. Tricky but worth it.
Go-To Recipe
Lemon pasta inspired by the Da Silvano cookbook
Sand or Snow?
Snow
Salty or Sweet?
Sweet
Front Row or Back?
Front
Go-To Outfit
Black jeans, white top, blazer, sneakers or boots
Girl’s Night Out
Sushi and a bad movie
Date Night
Live music and a walk in the park
Me Time
Reading a book at a bar or café or watching a movie I’d already seen and eating cake/chips/tacos/a mango (anything messy) over my kitchen sink.
Getaway
Northern California, Sonoma County
What’s Sloane’s next adventure?
I just finished the book tour for The Clasp and my next adventure is getting back to writing!