An Interview with Shelly Lowenkopf

During a magazine writing course I had the opportunity to write a profile piece on a respected professional. For my piece, I was able to share a conversation with adjunct UCSB professor and seasoned literary editor, Shelly Lowenkopf.

As a quiet girl who easily gets anxious and nervous in front of large crowds and my superiors, I was uneasy about this assignment. Yet by the end of it all, I found I can lead a good back-and-forth when needed, I admire the literary world, and coffee places can be surprisingly and annoyingly loud.

Colliding the Past into the Contemporary: An interview with Shelly Lowenkopf

Shelly Lowenkopf could be heard quoting Herman Melville’s famous line, “call me Ishmael!” with the imagined emotion, through the hallways of the excluded green building of the College of Creative Studies at UCSB. He is a man with a history—holding onto and advising a way to grasp onto the changing writing world. Shelly Lowenkopf, 83 year-old editor, writer, and teacher walks into the vintage, unfrequented coffee shop in downtown Santa Barbara where the coffee drinkers consist of the old and the very old. He stands at the entrance for a bit looking around, a bit haunched over, then sits down in a wooden chair, but only after he readjusts the chair to his liking. “I never thought to be an editor,”Lowenkopf begins saying, “and I never thought to be a teacher and in a way, it’s all because of writing.”

Lowenkopf has been teaching for 40 years and has seen 500 books through the editorial process, where they make it to Barnes & Noble’s and on Amazon. He is a man with tales to tell and he has studied and perfected the craft of storytelling. And sitting at this coffee shop on upper De la Vina, through tangents on describing a scene out of a black-and-white film or creating an imaginary flash-fiction scene , he gives sage advice of editing and truths on the evolution of the narrative.

Recently, through his own evolution, he has created a blog. A blog with daily posts that has taken him twenty years to get started. “They’re the attempts to resolve any lingering indecision about works in progress,” he says with exasperated breaths and long pauses between words, “they’re the things I wish I had done, and the things I wish I had not done.” As a man who was been there since typewriters and worked during a time when being a writer and editor was actually one of the more higher paying jobs, Lowenkopf has certainly adapted to the world of contemporary writing. He writes on his blog,www.lowenkopf.com, daily and has published one of his latest books from  its contents. Gleaming with excitement as he shares a quick synopsis, Lowenkopf places the book in the center of the wooden table and rests his wrinkled, shaky hand on it. The book is in bookstores and on the web, but per his standards, it was not self-published.

Lowenkopf explains that a person who is self-published doesn’t go past a certain plateau. Most writers who self-publish are the selfish, the lazy, and the writers whose narcism fill the pages, which this old-soul is more than willing to agree with. “Those who self-publish,” he argues, “end up in a garage full of boxes with their books.” He states the way the Amazon-submitters and the collectors of barely-made-profit, self-published authors are a result of people being too impatient to learn the craftsmanship and to study the technique that creates a best-selling novel. The same technique he has mastered and crafted through over the 35 books he’s published. Lowenkopf readjusts his maroon sweater after the slightly tense reaction and gives the comparison of self-publishing to that of someone who plucks away at the piano—practicing it a few times by learning“Chopsticks” or “Heart and Soul,” until they believe they can play in the Philharmonic.

The adamant and willful teacher, himself, goes on to talk about the competitive and struggling world of contemporary writing. “Twenty-first century writing means the author has to sit back and watch the kids—the characters—do the work,” says Lowenkopf. As an editor and writer of general trade, literary, scholarly, and mass market book publishing, he is a master of the drafting and editorial process. His bushy white eyebrows raise when he goes into a winded discussion on the importance of the character in a story, almost like the importance of a defining characteristic in people. There is a certain type of listening when speaking with Lowenkopf, like listening to every word of a favorite grandparent; a kind of listening that demands your attention, but resonates even more later after he leaves the coffee shop with a handshake and a genuine smile. Only this man can teach countless classes on “Explorations in Literature,” “Reading like a Writer,”without the teaching-mode automatics and stock lines any uninterested student would tune out.

Lowenkopf’s way of avoiding the dull-teacher-method with large waving gestures, which at one point, almost knock over a coffee mug, color preaches of his belief on the story containing and centering on emotion. “It’s the pure emotion that sells,” he hints with almost a wink, “people love it.” Here’s a man who has seen the change of the hard-bound manuscript to the Kindle- read novel and has generated a selling career in the world of writing today. “I saw the raw changes of what was being accepted for publication,” he confesses clouded with almost a type of nostalgia.

Here, the 21st century sits at the dying writing world to the lifestyles of Netflix-bingers and sporadic attentions of the mass culture and there’s people like Lowenkopf who shamelessly publish and teach on the process of book publishing. “The writer is retreating into the background,” he acknowledges looking down into his hardly-touched coffee. Although, it has not affected this still working, publishing, and teaching writer even though others have been defeated. Lowenkopf has had opportunities to work with the likes of the astrologer, Sidney Omarr, the iconic writer, Henry Miller, and the attorney, Melvin Belli. He’s ran Los Angeles publishing offices and now has turned his writing and editing background into the craft of editing, a teacher, and an editorial consultant. His latest book, The Fiction Writer’s Handbook—a compilation of notes to himself and the words, lingo, and hints of the writing world—still sits lovingly on the table(book can’t sit lovingly – but it can be placed lovingly on a table); offering a tool to the young, struggling writers.

The blender noises of the coffee shop die down and the old and the very old have left.“Every story has to have some kind of embedded emotion,” Lowenkopf reiterates. The value in a writer’s consistency, a story’s emotion, and the importance of a character is as important to this Wikipedia-famous man as the hate he feels towards “ands” and adverbs in a novel. A man who quotes Emerson, brings up Faulkner and Melville, mentions Ivanhoe, and invents stories in the moment evolves with the dramatic changes in the contemporary writing world.

This man with a history believes print won’t die and believes in the right-hand-man, the editor, of a writer. “No one can do it alone,” he states with a smirk. He offers that the world of writing is a conversation between an editor and writer, much like between the student and the teacher and the interviewer and the interviewee. “It’s not about grammar,” he says with satisfaction and a bit of winded exhaustion etched on his face, “it’s about feelings.” He gets up from the table and nods a goodbye with a smile; leaving a chair askew, a half-full latte and his book sitting on the table.