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00:00:01
Lana Schwartz
38 Plays6 hours ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Lana Schwartz.
To keep up with or connect with Lana:
✨ Lana’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lana-schwartz-79b3b830/
✨Lana’s Instagram: @characteractresslanaschwartz
✨ Lana’s Website: https://www.lanalikebanana.com/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Dislike for Eye Doctor Visits
00:00:02
Speaker
trees Perfect. It's like at the eye doctor when they make you look into that thing. And do you know what I'm talking about?
00:00:13
Speaker
Yeah. It's ah that you have to look at the balloon. And then it like slowly comes into focus or goes out of focus. It's always like that. I hate that. I hate going to the eye doctor. I don't like it either. i hate the eye doctor more than the dentist. Really? yeah do If they don't do, the last time I was there, they were like, we don't do that puff on your eye thing anymore. They have a whole new digital thing that they do. Have you had that?
Introduction to Lana and Her Work
00:00:36
Speaker
No, they still puff on my eye.
00:00:39
Speaker
There's something like so violating about it. I'm like, do you really? i remember being a little kid and just being very stressed by it. No, I really hate it. i always feel like I'm failing they all of their tests.
00:00:52
Speaker
and it's your vision are you like nearsighted farsighted astigmatism think i'm nearsighted think it's what it is or i'm negative 3.75 okay i yeah super close and yeah myopic and it happened since i was a kid i blame it on reading so much oh wow but wow yeah i think we're a special breed yeah yes and we both have contacts in i presume yes yeah Lana, I'm so happy to get to have this conversation with you. Thank you. excited as well. Thank you for having me.
00:01:25
Speaker
For anyone who doesn't know you, they now know your eyeglass prescription. But if they don't know your name, who you are, what you you do, could you say a little bit? Yes. My name is Lana. um I am a writer living in New York City. And I have a book set piece that came out with 831 Stories back in May.
00:01:47
Speaker
am. usually only do one podcast recording like a week but for today i have two today and right before this i was talking to zan romanoff who also she i think she's on her third book with 831 yes yes each other have you met zan no she lives in la we haven't met but yeah i've obviously read her work so i'm big fan Yeah. um Today's like a super fun day for me I just get to talk to cool writers basically. Oh yeah, that's so nice. Yeah, cool.
00:02:20
Speaker
You have written, so other than 831, I know you've been published in a lot of important places like The New Yorker, McSweeney's, The Onion. How did you get into this? What's been your career journey from like college till now?
Lana's Creative Journey
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, so i went to the University of Delaware and at the time I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't know how to do that or how one becomes a writer. So I went to college and I majored in English, but we didn't really have like a robust writing program.
00:02:53
Speaker
So when I graduated, that was around the time that upright citizen Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, UCB, was really catching fire in new York City. So I'd seen a couple improv shows, that sort of thing. And I i always wanted to write books, but I did not know again, how to do it. And I was like, here is this very immediate thing, sketch classes, where you learn to write a sketch, and then maybe if you're good at it or if, you know,
00:03:25
Speaker
You work hard, you can get on a sketch team at UCB. So it felt very tangible, at least comparatively to not having any understanding of the publishing industry.
00:03:36
Speaker
So from there, i took a lot of classes at UCB, made a lot of friends and was on sketch teams, like not at the theater, but indie teams as they were called. And one of them, we did have a show run there, which was really fun. But then also at the time, there were a lot of ah humor sites, like the hairpin, the toast, McSweeney's, as you mentioned above average. So I started writing humor pieces for them.
00:04:02
Speaker
And through that, I think I got back on track to books eventually. That's very good. It's funny. you mentioned the hairpin because actually Zan and I were talking about the hairpin. Cause she and I, you I know you said you're 36. Is that right?
00:04:17
Speaker
and I are
Challenges in Writing for Different Publications
00:04:18
Speaker
both 38. And I feel like there's a year, like there's a three to four year, like late thirties. woman who was read and has read and was obsessed with the hairpin it was like a moment in time in my memory yeah how did like how did you get onto those mcsweeney's even i thought was so cool everyone wanted to write for mcsweeney's i remember i was working at the time as a copywriter at this big agency there were like 50 copywriters and everybody was submitting how did you like make it on but Well, I should say I only really wrote for McSweeney's recently I got rejected maybe no fewer than 1 million times I was. ah I got on the New Yorker before I got on McSweeney's I think some of it's a case of just voice and that sort of thing like for whatever reason I think especially at that point.
00:05:06
Speaker
Maybe my voice or what I was writing about was more suited for the New Yorker than McSweeney's for one reason or another. And obviously there's a ton of overlap there, but for me personally, i was finding more luck elsewhere. So with like the toast and the hairpin, I just submitted some short humor. The first thing I wrote for the toast was i wrote about Drake, the singer, superstar.
00:05:35
Speaker
superstar becoming friends with the author Meg Wallitzer. Yeah. To give you a sense of the kind of stuff I was into. And I guess I'm still into, but there are fewer maybe places for work like that.
00:05:51
Speaker
Are you the type of like, comedian slash humor writer where you're always just like randomly thinking of funny bits and writing them down or is it more like focused and processy for you how do you come up with your ideas I really just try to write anything I think is even a little funny or interesting to me in my notes app and then I go and if I have more ideas of how to flesh it out in the moment I like write notes and stuff and then come back to it when I am like oh I need to do some writing today. I feel like ah like I haven't really
Structured Writing Process for Novella
00:06:24
Speaker
worked on anything. I'd love to just get some stuff out of my brain or I'm so excited about it. I can't like wait to go back and do something more with it because I think I'm already like laughing at it in my head.
00:06:35
Speaker
Got you. So if we're writing it like a novella for 831, I'd imagine that's like a super different process than short form humor writing. Mm-hmm. What was that process like for you? How did you approach it? How long did it take you? Did you have a schedule? Did you just bang it out when you had time and felt like it? What was your approach? Yeah. So I think it took, I want to say like about all told a year, maybe a little less. And that's all told. I did have an outline that I worked with 831 on. So I had an outline to work from, and then we had due dates for kind of each draft.
00:07:15
Speaker
And so I had to sit down and work a certain amount each week because there were due dates. And also i was meeting at first with Claire and Erica, the founders of 831 weekly and then just with Erica weekly. I had to, had to deliver. Yeah.
00:07:33
Speaker
So they're like super hands-on. They're like in the weekly meetings, looking at your stuff with you. Yeah. Yeah. At least, and I don't want to speak to too much of their process just because I think it's changed since I was first working with them. Now I know that they have like more staff and different people i'm involved in the process. But when I was working on my book with them, none of the books had come out yet.
00:07:55
Speaker
Wow. So yeah. So it was still really brand new. that was at least what it was like for me. What is the gist of your novella? The gist of my novella is it's about a it's a second chance
Inspiration from Polly Platt
00:08:08
Speaker
romance with a up and coming actor, boy boyfriend of the moment and a production designer who have a shared love of their work and what they do and but very different lives and seeing if they can figure out a life together.
00:08:29
Speaker
How did you land on that for the story? So that was something that we had talked about. Like they had been interested in the idea of an actor and then somebody behind the scenes. And I really wanted to make her a production designer because I listened to this podcast. I'm like a huge fan of You Must Remember This.
00:08:50
Speaker
Oh, I love you must remember this. obsessed Okay, yeah. so I just finished re listening to the season about Polly Platt. And I was like, Oh, it's so good. And I was so fascinated by her and her work and her life and how she had such a strong vision and how it it both was like her her kind of it was both her strength and her weakness.
00:09:18
Speaker
you know, is being so uncompromising and always saying what was on her mind and knowing what, like what was right. Cause she was, ah she was correct most of the time, but not everybody likes to be bossed around. And also she was coming up in the seventies in this extremely male dominated scene.
00:09:39
Speaker
So she never really got credit for all of her contributions to some of the greatest cinematic works of our time. Wow. All right. I'm to have to go listen to this. like it's It's so good. And so I was like, one thing that you get to do with fiction obviously is be
Influence of Podcasts
00:09:55
Speaker
inspired by these people's lives and maybe give it like a happier ending or say, what would a person like that, what would their experience working today be like in a completely different film media ecosystem? So that was something I was really interested in
00:10:13
Speaker
That's really cool. feel like i feel like Have you already maybe, but you should email Carita Longworth. You inspired this book. I know she knows about it and because she posted about it. Yeah. And I like freaked out. So she is aware of it, but I am such a big fan. I've actually, and I've seen her. I went to see her speak in conversation at the New Yorker festival. So i have, and I watched her introduce a 4k restoration of Thelma and Louise at film forum in Manhattan. So I have like seen her in person before. But I think because again, like, I'm such a fan
00:10:55
Speaker
i I don't want to push too hard. Yeah, I totally get it. Have you ever met someone, have you in real life, you are a huge fan of? With this book coming out, I'm also a big Who Weekly fan. i don't know if you know, the it's also a podcast. It's about, it's also about pop culture, but it's really about like media and how we,
00:11:15
Speaker
Like how stories are like crafted and media narrative and what we take away from that, if that makes sense. Like it's about like B list and C list celebrities and even like lower than that.
00:11:29
Speaker
I'm going to check this out immediately. And it also sounds relevant to Medbury and what we do for. Oh yeah. appealing And anyway, sorry. i Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. One of the hosts blurbed my book and we had we did a Q and A together for my book release.
00:11:44
Speaker
And her name is Lindsay Weber and I'm like a huge fan and she knows this, but because she knows I listened to the podcast. So that was like very exciting and like also intimidating for me. But she's still cool and nice. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. You just gave me two amazing podcasts. Oh my God. Yeah. My, I feel like
Experiences with Famous People
00:12:01
Speaker
I'm a, an evangelist for both of them. And my friends are like, this is all you talk about, but they're both good there. So it's worth it. Yeah.
00:12:11
Speaker
Once I met, And patch it. Have you ever read any of her? Yeah. It's just like a book signing Q and A. And I was like, oh, I now know how I react when I meet someone famous and I admire. And the answer is like, i basically blacked out and babbled for three minutes and she like very graciously stopped me at one point and she's just I really like your dress and we moved on like when was this it was a lot I was like 25 so I guess it was 13 years ago maybe I've up leveled since it's hard it's hard one time I was at a Q&A or a book signing for Mindy Kaling a million years ago and I'll never forget I said to her you're the reason I watched Breaking Bad, because she would tweet about it constantly in like the earlier days of Twitter. And she said, if that's true, then it's all been worth it. Oh, that's pretty funny. It was pretty, it was a good like back and forth.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah. Can you see it? So you wrote, is there a lot of humor in your book? I like to think so. I think it's funny, but I guess your mileage may vary. You think of yourself, do you ever have trouble?
00:13:17
Speaker
Okay, say someone is like, all right, what do you do? Is it a really easy answer for you? are you like, I do a lot of things related to writing? Like, how do you orient yourself around your professional identity since there's so many kind of very cool, but slightly different parts of it. Yeah, it is challenging. People will be like, what do you write? And I'm like, everything. If you can imagine it, I've probably written it because I've done 1 million different types of writing. So I just say a little bit of, like I said, editorial, copywriting. And I say like that for me, everything starts from comedy or has a comedic element to it.
00:13:54
Speaker
But I do a lot of stuff for fun, to pay the bills and both. I feel like it's a weird time right now for a lot of writers. I don't want to get too cliche, but it's like, there's AI. There's very changing media models for outlets that maybe 10 years ago would have been like really lucrative projects or now not.
00:14:16
Speaker
how are But like, you seem to be super busy. How are you navigating this crazy landscape? Every day is a winding road. It's really hard. i read or I don't know if you're, going to give you another podcast recommendation. There's this podcast that i also really liked that I just re-listened to called Once Upon a Time at Bennington College.
00:14:35
Speaker
Have you heard of this? I have heard of it. And i have a couple of friends who went to Bennington. So I feel like that won't put on my radar. Wait, tell me more, but I don't really remember what it's about. What is it? it's about Donna Tartt, Brett Easton Ellis and Jonathan Lethem and how, and how their time at Bennington was so influential on their like work as writers.
00:14:55
Speaker
Because they want the three of them went on to be like three of the biggest voices of their generation. And sometimes when they talk about
Challenges of Modern Writing
00:15:05
Speaker
New York and writing in the 80s and 90s, I'm like, I cannot even fathom and Like any of what they're like, how, how much more money like was in things or just that you could survive off of book sales or Brett Easton Ellis is talking about how him and Jay McInerney were invited to the MTV show.
00:15:27
Speaker
VMAs or something like that or the movie awards or whatever. and it's can you imagine just like novelists at that? Maybe Sally Rooney, but that's really it. Like that kind of there used to be this celebrity in writing, and that's diminished so much.
00:15:41
Speaker
Like i I want to say, at least or like there's maybe a handful of celebrity writers in that sense, but not as glamorous. And just there's no like middle class of artists anymore.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah. And it's really difficult and frustrating. And I think there will always be art and there will always be art created by people, but the kind of bandwidth we're going to have each one of us to do it is shrinking every year because there's not money in it anymore. So the only people who can make it are rich kids often, and they're not going to come up with necessarily something as interesting. as somebody who's had a different lived experience.
00:16:25
Speaker
Yeah. Was that a really depressing answer? Yes. ah yeah No, I think I don't disagree. i feel like when I feel like I've had a lot of conversations that relate to this lately, but the idea of when it comes to maybe more commercial content, which is more like the realm I'm in, like copy and but whatever for like B2B brands, I think it's like,
00:16:52
Speaker
there will there does still need to be like people doing the work, yeah but those jobs are, and if they're more and more just like assisted by AI or, and so it's some really crazy talented people who are like looking at stuff, bringing a lot of taste and creativity to it, but there's just like fewer and fewer of them. So it's it's almost, it's like an an extreme meritocracy, but one that kind of sucks because especially for younger folks, I don't really know how they get on I don't know how they get to learn anymore how to do these things. But anyway, yeah, so that is depressing, but yeah that's okay. ha
00:17:31
Speaker
So what is a, what's an average week in your life like or month if week is too hard?
Balancing Writing and a Full-Time Job
00:17:35
Speaker
No, right now that's changed a lot for me because I, I was a freelance, like more of a full-time freelancer or I had a part-time job and then I was freelancing.
00:17:46
Speaker
So more 50-50. And now I have a full-time job again. i try to be pretty strict with myself. So i wasn't doing this initially. Now i'm like, okay, I really need to block off weeknights, at least like one to two weeknights and at least one weekend day, every weekend for writing.
00:18:04
Speaker
Wow. That's a lot. Yeah. Is that hard for you, that discipline? Or can you're like, I can get that done. I can stick to it. It's just, yeah, it's just what it has to be is how I feel. And I've always done that at least with my weekends, the weeknights I'd say are harder because it can be hard to carve out good, even like brain time by the time it's eight or nine o'clock at night.
00:18:26
Speaker
But in my mind, even if I'm not as productive as I would like to be, if i wrote anything, it's still something. but I came up with an idea.
00:18:38
Speaker
i looked at something. I thought that's important to me is just getting something done, whatever, even if it's small. Are there particular writing goals you're working toward? Like you want to write a long form piece for XYZ or you want to write a different type of book?
00:18:55
Speaker
Right now. Yeah. I had been working on a novel for a really long time that I'd been working on even before the 831 book. And I didn't have an agent.
00:19:06
Speaker
previously and now I have one and i just got notes back from her on the book so I feel pretty ready to take it home. so Congratulations that's huge. Yeah so that's I can get like a one-track mind
Upcoming Novel and Inspiration
00:19:24
Speaker
with a big project and I'm like this is the only thing that matters. Yeah. Sounds intense and dramatic.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah. No pressure if you want to keep it close to the vest, but do you want to give any details around? yeah Yeah. I'm happy to talk about it. Yeah. It's about like a young DIY musician who gets swept up in a toxic triangle with an older female mentor type and ah a guy who is a rock star who are longtime friends and her navigating these relationships with both of them.
00:19:58
Speaker
Wow. yeah Shut up and take my money. Oh, thank you. I'm going to put that on the back of my book. It sounds really cool. All right. I think I know it's hard because for newer writers today, like younger writers, the landscape is so different, like every two
Advice for Aspiring Writers
00:20:16
Speaker
years. But if you were talking to a younger writer who was like, Lana, I just love your career. i love everything you've done. I want to do what you do. What advice would you give them?
00:20:26
Speaker
The advice that I would give them is the advice that this is something I always, somebody once said to me, and I always say it and I say it to myself is don't be the person to say no to yourself. Let someone else say no to you.
00:20:39
Speaker
So if you have an idea or you have a pitch or whatever it is, put it out there. You don't have to tell yourself. It's not a good idea. Let them say that. Not necessarily they'll say it's not a good idea, but aim higher than you think.
00:20:53
Speaker
because you don't know somebody might come back and be like, we love this or something. Or they might say, this one doesn't work for us, but try again next time. Yeah. so you don't have to shut yourself down before you give somebody else the chance to. And the other thing I'd say, and this was something that, again, like advice that I try to give myself or I wish I could is don't be so scared to put yourself out there.
00:21:17
Speaker
I, one thing like for me that I'm like, I wish I guess I made front-facing videos. I don't know. Or I wish I was more comfortable with the video aspect of social content, but that's not really my thing. But I think learning to adapt is really important.
00:21:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I hear you on the video thing. I feel
Self-Promotion Challenges in the Digital Age
00:21:40
Speaker
conflicted about it. yeah think like Medbury, we're doing content for execs. We're really not doing much video and certainly not like from that. Yeah.
00:21:51
Speaker
And on LinkedIn anyway, video doesn't matter, but I know we've done some Instagram projects and it's imperative. Don't even bother if you're not going to do it. Exactly. And, but I do feel sometimes it's one thing I'm not sure of interested for your take on it. Is it like, it's an internal thing holding you back where it's like, it's just uncomfortable to be vulnerable on camera that way, but you should do it. Or is it totally normal to feel weird about it? And it's just, we live in this dystopia that really requires that level of self abasement.
00:22:21
Speaker
I don't know the answer. What do you think? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's like, you shouldn't do something, I guess, if you really dislike it, but don't be afraid to try, i guess. And maybe just stay, it's good to follow. i think it's also good to have different skills. Like I'm not good at editing or any of that. And that's basic skills like that can take you just a step further. I think like knowing how to edit video, all of that.
00:22:49
Speaker
i think that's all super good advice. If anyone wants to reach out to you, follow you, get in touch with you, where can we send them? um You can send them to my Instagram, character actress, Lana Schwartz, my website, lanalikebanana.com. And we'll put those things in the show notes. So if you're listening and you're like, I want to follow Lana, scroll down and do it. well Lana, thank you so much. I love getting to chat with you and really appreciate doing this. Yeah, I really appreciate you having me. Thank you.