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Episode 502: Christa Hillstrom Takes Pride in Her Rejections
0 Playsin 16 hours
"Take pride in your rejections. It's a tough industry for putting yourself out there. You're like, doing a ton of work up front, not knowing if anyone will be interested in it. It's very easy to feel deflated about it. Your rejections are reaching for things that maybe aren't easy reaches," says Christa Hillstrom, writer of 14,445 and Counting for The Atavist.
It’s that Atavistian time of the month. Not much by way of spoilers, but you know you’re in for a double dose of CNFin’ insights as we will hear from editor-in-chief Seyward Darby and, of course, the writer of this month’s feature, Christa Hillstrom. Her story is titled 14,445 and Counting: Inside a Texas nurse’s quest to document the life and death of every woman killed by a man in America. You can read the story at magazine.atavist.com. A sub is only $25 a year. No, I don’t get kickbacks; yes, I pay to subscribe as well. I’m the hipster doofus of the people.
The Atavist doesn’t usually do profiles, per se, but this profile is of Dawn Wilcox and her “sacred work” of logging every femicide in the country, which is to say violent deaths directly against women by men. It’s a tough one, not gonna lie. Not because it’s not well done, but because, well, read the title.
OK, so this piece is pretty heavy, but it’s a story of obsession and what the central figure calls her “sacred work” to bring attention to this epidemic of sorts.
The credits for this piece are: Ed Johnson was the art director, Sean Cooper copy edited it, Emily Injeian fact checked it, Naheebah Al-Ghadban illustrated it and Jonah Ogles and Seyward Darby edited this suckah.
Christa Hillstrom is a freelance journalist based in the Pac Northwest, but hailed from Minnesota originally and even attended Northwestern’s grad program in journalism. Doesn’t get better than that.
She’s an award-winning reporter, editor, and multimedia producer in human rights, global health, gender-based violence, and trauma/resilience.
We talk about:
- The little treasures in research
- The cost of doing this kind of reporting
- Outlining
- Task initiation
- How she wrote herself into this story
- Justing doing the writing
- And taking pride in your rejections
Check out her story at magazine.atavist.com and check out this conversation … right now.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Mention
00:00:01
Speaker
Oh, AC and Effers, if you want signed, personalized copies of The Front Runner for the holiday season, email me, creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail.com, and then I'll email you a PayPal invoice, or you could mail me a check. you Remember those things? So PayPal doesn't skim off a fee.
00:00:17
Speaker
ah Whatever you want. Doesn't matter to me. And ask how you want your book signed, and I will oblige. It'll be $30 total, and that covers media rate shipping. What a guy. While supplies last.
00:00:30
Speaker
And this podcast is sponsored with this house ad by Pitch Club, the monthly substack where you read cold pitches and hear the authors audio annotating their thinking behind how they sold and crafted their pitches that landed a publication.
00:00:46
Speaker
There are three out of his writers featured in a few others. It's at welcome to pitch club dot substack dot com. And lastly, this podcast is sponsored by the word failure noun defined by the lack of success, an unsuccessful person or thing and or a lack of a desirable quality failure.
00:01:05
Speaker
I think I said when I turned it in, I was like, this doesn't work. And don't reply. She's like, yeah, it doesn't really work.
00:01:18
Speaker
It's been a long time since we had a word from the dictionary pony up and sponsor the show. Good for them. This
Introducing the Atavist Feature Story
00:01:25
Speaker
is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell and your mom. Sorry, I'm Brendan O'Mara. Should I even admit that?
00:01:34
Speaker
It's that Atavician time of the month. Not much by way of spoilers, but you know you're in for a double dose of CNF and insights as we hear from editor-in-chief Saber Darby and, of course, the writer of this month's feature, Krista Hillstrom.
00:01:49
Speaker
Her story is titled 14,445 and forty five in Counting. Inside, a Texas nurse's quest to document the life and death of every woman killed by a man in America. You can read the story at magazine.atavist.com. A subscription is only $25 a year. No, I don't get kickbacks or commissions. Yes, I pay to subscribe as well.
00:02:11
Speaker
I'm the hipster doofus of the people. The atavist doesn't usually do profiles per se, but this profile is of Dawn Wilcox and her sacred work of logging every femicide in the country, which is to say violent deaths directed against women by men.
00:02:28
Speaker
It's a tough
Highlighting Krista Hillstrom's Article
00:02:29
Speaker
one, not going to lie. Not because it's not well done, but because, well, read the fucking title. Show notes to this episode and more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey, bookmark it so you can browse for hot blogs and sign up for my two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm and that sponsor, Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.slubstacker.com.
00:02:47
Speaker
Also, if you care to support the podcast with a few dollar dollar bills, you can go to patreon.com slash cnfpod. More perks are just popping up all the time there. Kind of neat. ah Let this be the time that I welcome the great Mark Armstrong to the CNF and Patreon gang.
00:03:04
Speaker
Thanks for joining the $4 tier, man. Means the world. We're going to do it. We're going to make a living from this one of these days. All right,
Discussing the Atavist Piece and Upcoming Content
00:03:12
Speaker
so this Atavist piece is pretty heavy, naturally, and it's a story of obsession and what the central figure calls her sacred work to bring attention to this epidemic of sorts.
00:03:21
Speaker
and I'll share more about Krista during the intermission. you Since these Atavis pods tend to run long, we're not going to have a parting shot this week. But I'll have another one. i i shouldn't say another one, but I will have one next week when I run ah the last of the four live podcasts. This one that I recorded with the memoir writer Jason Brown at Gratitude Brewing.
00:03:44
Speaker
Next week. Next week on the podcast. For this Atavis piece, the credits are. I'm going to start
Acknowledging the Atavist Team
00:03:50
Speaker
reading the credits now because you've got to give people their flowers.
00:03:55
Speaker
Ed Johnson was the art director of the piece. Sean Cooper copy-edited it. ah should just say, Sean Cooper was the copy editor. Saying edited it it, it doesn't roll off the tongue.
00:04:09
Speaker
Emily Njayan, probably going to pronounce some of these wrong, fact-checked it. Nahiba Al-Gadban illustrated it, and Jonah Ogles and Sayward Darby edited this sucker. So let's get on with phase one of this Atavistian adventure. Here's Sayward Darby. Huh.
00:04:35
Speaker
It's just calm music and you're just running around trying to find a horse. Cocaine is so expensive. I don't do it anymore. I ran out of money. You know, you get rejected and it's like, well, fuck you. Who cares? This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:00
Speaker
When I talked to Peter Rubin, and you are someone of void of ego, so I imagine you'll bristle at this question. But when I talked with Peter, and he was talking about how he came up in like magazines, and he was just like, yeah, you know, like Granger's Esquire and so-and-so's GQ. Like,
Sayward Darby's Editing Approach
00:05:17
Speaker
you've been at the head of Atavist for a long time, and do you see it as, like, how do you see your fingerprints on the Atavist? So it's like Darby's Atavist.
00:05:27
Speaker
Oh God, that's so, yeah, you're correct. That makes me want to like, it's like, what is it like the armadillo that like the little meme of like the armadillo, like going into a ball and hiding? Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, like hedgehog too, does the same thing. Yeah, all of the above, yes. Yeah, my son has a little stuffed hedgehog named Zoran because we've got him the day that Zoran Mamdani won the primary in New York. um And you can like tuck him in, like the the little stuffed animal. You can like put him in his little shelf. Anyway, That's how I feel right now. i feel like Zora on the Hedgie. But ah I don't know. I mean, i think that I'm a bit of a bleeding heart and I feel like that's probably evident in a lot of the pieces that we publish.
00:06:12
Speaker
I'm really deeply interested in social justice. And i like, even if a story, I'm trying to think of some good examples, but like, even if a story like on its face,
00:06:24
Speaker
isn't necessarily a about a social issue. Like I'm always the type of editor who's gonna be like, well, what about the social issue? um And I mean, I think that I will say that over time, like I certainly you know have found myself working with writers who are similarly minded and interested in a lot of context and interested in, you know, really teasing things out and making sure that we're not sacrificing complexity for, you the sake of like what makes for a good rollicking narrative.
00:06:57
Speaker
But you know, it's so funny because like, I don't think that the Atavist wasn't like that before. i think it very much was. um So it's hard for me to say that there's any distinction.
00:07:07
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, I think to... I think that we have continued to, this isn't a substantive like story content issue, but um I think that, you know, we have continued to be a place that works with writers who, you know, aren't the biggest names in the, in the industry. um In some cases, people who are really still, you know, getting their footing, starting out. And ah it's like exciting to me that we can be a place where people can start to find, know,
00:07:39
Speaker
their footing um and you know maybe kind of take, or or if they've already gotten their footing, you know take that next big step in terms of projects they're working on. um And I think that that is definitely something, i mean, something I'm proud of, honestly, because I don't think that there are a ton of places doing long form still where that's the case. And as the, you we're cresting to the end of 2025, thank goodness. But as we, but as you're, you know, you're, you know, getting into like the 12th story of the year and now you're kind of can cast your gaze back at ah what you've done this
Balancing Work and Maternity at the Atavist
00:08:15
Speaker
year. And granted, like half the year you were kind of, you're on maternity, but you're still connected to it. So like, what what do you make of, you know, just the year to date as we kind of bring it to a close?
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, great question. um Well, I think that um it it was such a weird experience because of my my son was born in December. he actually turns to one next week.
00:08:41
Speaker
And so it was truly, the year was divided almost exactly in half for me, right? Because I was on maternity leave for six months and then I've been back for almost six months or just around six months now. And so, ah you know, if he had been born in like February or March, like but the division would be different, if that makes sense. um And so ah I think that looking back on this year, i mean, first of all taking that amount of time off when you're the only full-time employee of a magazine is very nerve wracking. And I'm so, so grateful that Peter and Jonah, like,
00:09:16
Speaker
just steered the ship so well um and published some great stories. And I think that this this year has been interesting. Like we had a lot more historical stories um just from, I mean, we published plenty of historical stories, but I feel like we had a real critical mass of them this year. I couldn't tell you exactly why that is um other than we got some good pitches and that's what happened. But it's it's interesting to me in a year that has been so incredibly newsy, like overwhelmingly newsy, you' just getting punched in the face constantly with news um that we actually wound up running
00:09:53
Speaker
stories that by and large, and we all, we, you know, often run stories that don't have much of anything to do with current events, but like we we ran a bunch of historical stories, you know, things that were just really in the past. And I don't know, maybe there was some degree subconsciously that we were thinking, you know, how do we get away? How do we get away from the shit storm?
00:10:14
Speaker
You know, we we ran a photo essay this year. It's kind of like a bonus feature at one point, which, which was cool. It's, yeah, it's just been a wild year um in in every direction. um it was funny, you know, that I think the timeliest story that we ran was obviously Marshall Hamilton's piece about going, you know, driving up I-95 and talking to people about America.
00:10:35
Speaker
and And I'm glad we ran that because I do feel like in a year that feels so incredibly consequential to the United States, to the world, from a news standpoint, you know, it's nice to have something that feels like a bit of an anchor. But then
Pitching the Atavist Story
00:10:49
Speaker
I also hope that the vast majority of our stories were escapes for people, um which isn't to say that they were light stories, but you know, something that at least kind of took you away from the maelstrom for a little while. For sure.
00:11:03
Speaker
but and And Krista's story here is, ah yeah, it's yeah pretty, it's powerful and bleak in um in its subject matter for sure. But it's wonderfully spun, wonderfully told and sensitively told. I was really struck by that. But when her pitch came across your desk, you know what was it about this particular story that just that really struck you?
00:11:27
Speaker
Well, okay, so here i have to kind of give not a... disclaimer exactly, but um I actually did not assign this story. um It came in while I was on maternity leave. um And so Jonah and Peter assigned it, and then I just wound up taking over a primary lead edit it. So I cannot tell you precisely what their thinking was. um Although having you know spoken to Jonah a bit about it, um I think that it felt, mean, first of all, Krista is a wonderfully compassionate
00:12:01
Speaker
thoughtful, just talking to her on the phone about the story was like a real pleasure, despite the subject matter, despite, you know, the darkness and intensity. Like, I just think she is an incredibly compassionate and thoughtful person. um And so i I think that that certainly came through in the initial pitch, you know, this sort of profile of ah Dawn Wilcox, but then also, you know, sort of these branches in the story pertaining to other people who are tracking murders of women. um And then sort of the bit of a surprise branch where you get to know a family member of one of the murdered women. i think that there was just a lot of heart in the pitch. um
00:12:42
Speaker
And it felt like an unusual crime story too, because like there are many many, many, many, many crimes in this story, but that's not really what the story is right? um It's about people working around crime. And so i think there was an interesting way in which it also bucked against true crime trends.
00:13:04
Speaker
um And, ah you know, it's, it's kind of like Don Wilcox's database is the oxygen network or whatever it's called.
00:13:15
Speaker
But reality, you know, it's like, this is this is what it looks like to spend an inordinate amount of time consuming true crime, meaning actual details of crimes.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah. And so I think there was a bit of like a counter narrative appeal to the idea overall. Yeah. And it's broken up into these six chapters. How did you arrive at the the structure for this?
00:13:46
Speaker
Oh, gosh. um It initially opened, if I recall correctly, with, or at least the the draft that I saw, there may have been one draft before that I, you know, didn't see for maternity leave reasons. I just can't remember. um But it, you know, kind of opened with Dawn in her home counting, right? Like doing her work at the computer. And to me, when I was reading through, I was like, well, that is almost a culmination, right? Like we want to kind of know her journey up to the point that she already has, you know, more than 14,000, you know,
00:14:22
Speaker
murders, like logged in her database. And so when Kristen and I spoke about revision, we talked about the arc being essentially the evolution of the project, but also the evolution of Dawn's thinking about the project. Because, you know, I think initially, and we certainly, we open, right, with the with the particular murder um that was kind of the last straw for Dawn, where she was like, i'm going to start doing this work.
00:14:52
Speaker
And so we kind of see the the immediate catalyst. And there's a bit of a kind of like, well, I'm going to do this if nobody else is going to do it, which continues to be a driving force. But then you really see over time, like her understanding femicide as an idea becomes so much more nuanced, um you know, categories get added to her spreadsheet you know, cross-referencing can happen. um And on the one hand, that sounds like still sort of academic, but there's something I think also very like personal going on for her. um And i think that, you know, her finding the case in North Carolina that upset her so much for very obvious reasons, it's really horrific crime. um
00:15:37
Speaker
And then, you know, Krista being the catalyst in this case for saying, well, why don't we talk to someone who was immediately affected by it? Because I think, you know, there's a lot of Dawn's work, almost all of Dawn's work is done at a remove, right? And it's like, well, what if we engaged? What if we, what would that look like? What would it feel like to to really, you know, speak to someone who who knows a victim?
00:16:01
Speaker
And so this is all to say, like, we, Structuring it was a matter of figuring out how we wanted to articulate the evolution of the project. And I, i in particular, i have no idea if k Krista was as interested in this as I was, but um I was really interested in this tension between getting the most thorough data possible So, you know, what could you do to make sure that you come through newspapers.com and, you know, every available, you know, open public law enforcement database and, you know, whatever, like combing absolutely everything to get as many murders as you possibly can to create like the most robust data set possible versus,
00:16:49
Speaker
the sort of ritual aspect of it, um where Dawn wants to do this herself, like wants to sit down and find these cases and find these details. And she calls it sacred work. um And I was just really interested in that tension um because, and maybe I'm just,
00:17:08
Speaker
I don't know, I'm not as good of a person as Don or something. But you know to me, I was like, well, if I could get the most thorough data possible, why would I not go that route? Why would I not have someone design every like algorithm possible to get me that?
00:17:21
Speaker
and ah And it's interesting to hear these, not not just Don, but the other like femicide trackers and and researchers in the story talk about what a sort of limited way of thinking about data collection that is.
00:17:37
Speaker
I think a more sort of brainy, like intellectual story,
Data Collection vs. Personal Narrative
00:17:43
Speaker
because it's about concepts in a lot of ways and how we conceptualize of something.
00:17:50
Speaker
But I think that there was just something really cool narratively in the sort of unspooling of that. Because, you know, you we didn't we didn't want it to just be here's this woman, and she is counting, right? Like we wanted it to be,
00:18:06
Speaker
how did she come to do this, but then also how has her understanding of what she's doing changed and to what effect? um I will also say, i'm rambling in response to your question, but um ah I will also say that um she, ah one of the sort of interesting pieces of this was um meeting other people who are doing it and kind of finding a way to really illustrate the grassroots community that Dawn has found herself in that, you know, is the only force um doing this work. And so again, kind of showing at what point in her journey she connected with that community and what that's meant for her and what that's meant for the community, I should say too, because she's the only person in the United States doing this at scale.
00:18:53
Speaker
So yeah, so making sure that that fell in the narrative. in a way that felt really impactful was important. And speaking in a granular sense, in terms of the the editing and the rewriting and the shaping, is what did that look like you know from your perspective on your side of the table?
00:19:14
Speaker
I think that this, so Krista's a really nice writer. And so initially it was kind of taking a draft and saying, there's a lot of good stuff here.
00:19:27
Speaker
but we want to move it around narratively speaking. Jonah took us did a first read and did like a first memo for revisions.
00:19:39
Speaker
And then I can't, you know, I was i was back um and and I took it over um because he was working on on the previous story in the lineup. I had a long phone conversation with Krista um and we kind of talked about, you know,
00:19:55
Speaker
again, like the evolution, like what I had a bunch of questions about like, you know, when did she first do this? When did she first do this? Can we find out when she first did this? You know, those kinds of things, you know, did she talk about what this particular thing meant to her? And we just had a long conversation kind of about Dawn's experience and what Krista knew, what Krista thought she could learn if she, you know, in speaking to Dawn further. And then I put together a suggested outline basically um and said, let's, let's give this a shot.
00:20:25
Speaker
Um, and Krista revised, according to that, I'm never doctrinaire about this stuff. Like it's just a guideline. And, you know, if I give you an outline and as you're actually working on something, maybe my outline turns out to be garbage at some point and you need to, you know, do what feels right for the story. So I'm sure Krista did that. Um, and then at that point, when she turned it in, you know, we were ready to kind of dig it to, to more of a line edit. I do think one thing in the revision process that she and I both work well a couple of things was one, how to not make it sound too in the weeds. um You know, you don't want it to sound too academic. You don't want it to sound like a UN report, which is no knock against academia or UN n reports, except to say that's not what we publish. And so, you know, figuring out how to really distill some, you know, brainier sort of concepts and sort of research ideas into a form that was digestible and understandable to readers and could, you know, kind of keep the narrative going. um And then the other piece of it was figuring out how to position Krista because she's very quietly in the story, right? There's a teeny tiny bit of first person, but it's not, she's not a character in the story.
00:21:36
Speaker
But I think that one thing that's important to note is like Krista, this is a bit of her beat, right? Like she covers violence against women. She covers women's rights. And she kind of came to this story because she was working on other related stories. And so I thought it was important And I think this happens in the second section where you kind of see how she even came to know about Dawn. And it has to do with her expertise and, you know, that she knew someone who knew Dawn and said, you got to talk to Dawn.
00:22:06
Speaker
And then later, the role she plays in connecting Dawn to Quinetta's Tanette, the sister of one of the victims in... um in Dawn's dataset. And so Kristin, I talked about, and then in the revision process, you know, figuring out what's the right degree of first person, because we felt like she, her expertise and then the actions she took as a reporter were important to include, but obviously we didn't want to make it.
00:22:34
Speaker
Here's my first person experience getting to know. um so so, yeah, um, And again, Chris is a really nice writer. um And so, you know, editing was not, oh, God, I have to rewrite um somebody's somebody's sentences. So, yeah, so it was a fairly fairly smooth process. And it was really just just figuring out, yeah, how to how to keep things flowing.
00:22:58
Speaker
while also giving very intense subjects their due. also, you know, figuring out, I will say, and I probably should have said this earlier, figuring out, you know, how many descriptions of horrific murder do you include? And I think there were some moments for sure where it was like, we're going cut this one. um And not because it's not important, not because, but because it was like,
00:23:21
Speaker
you could kind of just feel the water level rising and you were like, okay, we got to kind of dial back for a minute and, you know, talk a little bit more about Dawn and the work she's doing as opposed to, you know, the specifics of, again, as the title of the story says, you know, she has 14,445 murders and counting. That's a lot of murders that we could describe if it came down to it. And yeah, so trying to make sure we were really showing how horrific this work is so that people, you know, kind of understood what Dawn is doing and what she's up against. But then at the same time, you know, not making it feel like, okay, well now you're just describing violence for the, I don't know, sake of describing violence. And I was speaking to a writer of the other day who will eventually be on your podcast because we assigned a story for her. And she said something quite interesting. She was like, I'm i'm really against using violence as a narrative engine.
00:24:16
Speaker
I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what she said. And I was like, that's so interesting. um Because I think sometimes, you know, in a story, violence can be like, narratively important. It's something that, you know, moves things forward because of how it changes things.
00:24:32
Speaker
And I think this is an interesting case where there are moments where the violence is narratively important because it's spurred Dawn to, you know, start her work or think differently about her work or whatever.
Violence in Storytelling
00:24:49
Speaker
um But then there's a lot of violence that is not narratively important. um And so figuring out what of that violence to include, because it's illuminating in some way, perhaps of something we're trying to explain.
00:25:02
Speaker
But again, like, I don't know, just not dwelling on violence for the sake of dwelling on violence.
00:25:19
Speaker
Nice. Okay, so now we get to hear a bunch from Krista Hilstrom. She's a freelance journalist based in the Pacific Northwest, but hails from Minnesota originally and even attended Northwestern's graduate program in journalism.
00:25:34
Speaker
Whoa, doesn't get better than that. She's an award-winning writer and reporter, editor, multimedia producer in human rights, global health, gender-based violence and trauma and resilience.
00:25:46
Speaker
In this conversation, we talk about the little treasures in research, the cost of doing this kind of reporting, outlining task initiation, how she wrote herself into the story, and taking pride in rejections.
00:26:01
Speaker
Check out her story at magazine.atavist.com and check out this conversation right now. Riff.
00:26:18
Speaker
Something that I think a lot of people struggle with, certainly myself, and in this digital age when we're trying to get creative work done, certainly deep reporting and stuff of that nature. like How do you get your head around your your attention and you know keep your attention so you can actually like get something productive done on a given day?
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I have two kids, elementary age. Oh boy. sounds like But I mean, it depends on what I'm working on. This particular story, i actually have, I can't remember when i started. I think it was around 2017 I first came across it. So it was one of those kind of long slog things where it felt like there was something I found really interesting. And I just really connected with the people involved in it. So we kind of kept in touch. And I think that really um kept my attention because i I communicated a lot about what was happening with them, how the work was affecting them. So that's, I guess, specific to this story. But yeah, I just i also just love the research. So I feel like I'm kind of naturally inclined toward that. to I'm very curious about
00:27:30
Speaker
why stuff like this is happening. i think that part comes a lot easier to me than the sit down and write it. um So yeah, I think just like the curiosity and the connection with the the people in the story. So when you're thinking about getting into this kind of work and this kind of journalism, What were some inspirational you know pieces that you've read in the past that made you want to do this kind of work? Maybe even pieces you revisit and get into the bones of them to be like, all right, this is this the thing I want to try to do.
00:28:04
Speaker
Some of the journalists who come to mind are like, I love Rachel Aviv's work. I love the topics that she covers as well as how she gets into characters' psychology I'm really inspired by like really longer form stuff as well.
00:28:23
Speaker
And so I think of like the book, Invisible Child or Yellow Bird are two that come to mind. um This isn't really topically similar, but Hidden Valley Road, the Robert Coker book.
00:28:38
Speaker
I feel like really energized reading stuff where people get deep into the psychology of the characters and and ask complicated questions about You know, a lot of these things aren't like easy issues to just wrap up. And like, i i feel i I feel like I sort of am drawn to stories where like you kind of gather around a question at the center of it um where,
00:29:03
Speaker
that is the takeaway is like you walk away as a reader with a question of, you know, what does this mean or what what to make of this? um As a journalist, how do you get to that degree of psychological depth with your sources?
Building Trust with Sources
00:29:22
Speaker
I like to spend a a lot of time with people. um i think also because, of the nature of a lot of the topics that I cover, it it takes a while to get people to feel comfortable talking about stuff. Excuse me.
00:29:37
Speaker
I mean, I always try to do like out at least one reporting trip where it's just like you're spending several days um with somebody. And I try to talk about a lot of aspects of their lives without just jumping right in. I mean, obviously jumping right into some of the more difficult material.
00:29:58
Speaker
getting to a place where they're open to the kinds of questions you have to ask to get at some of the more difficult stuff. Well, it you know, that I think this story, it took a tremendous amount of, well, you needed to get a a whole lot of trust. So how do you and engender trust to get the access you need yeah to to reach those psychological depths that, you know, really, you know, motivate and animate, you know your taste and the kind of stories you're drawn to and particularly this one.
00:30:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think like I tend to follow one story to another because like as you're getting really deep into one story, you learn other things that are sort of adjacent to it um that pique your curiosity. You meet people where you're like, well, what is that story? And what's that angle?
00:30:46
Speaker
Because there's a sort of like a connection between a lot of the stuff that I cover, i can kind of show people like, well, this is the work I've done before. This is kind of how I approach storytelling. And you can kind of read this stuff and see if you feel comfortable with the way that people are portrayed, the the way that they're able to have a voice in their story.
00:31:09
Speaker
And then also just personal connections that I have made through reporting. So in the case of this story, first came across this story while reporting a different story for Marie Claire about a missing Native American woman in Montana. And that's how I met the first data tracker that is mentioned in the story. His name is Anita Lucchesey.
00:31:30
Speaker
And it was sort of through her work that I came into this whole world of like, wait, there are just a bunch of people around the world who are sitting down and spending their free time on a spreadsheet tracking murders.
00:31:42
Speaker
And then I kind of watched as she, you know, at at the time that I met her, like she was kind of in the beginning of creating this database. And then I kind of watched over the years as um it became more prominent, it became sort of a tool that people used in activism and lobbying for legislation around missing and murdered indigenous women in the US.
00:32:04
Speaker
And so, you know, by the time I met some of the other trackers, I had already kind of had an introduction through her. So I think, yeah, meeting people. um And I will say, actually, to your previous question, when i first started reporting that story back in I think it was 2017.
00:32:23
Speaker
you know to To write the pitch for that, I happened to be driving from Washington to Minnesota for a trip. And so I kind of made that stopover in Montana happen been on my own time. And I had a baby actually, and I had to bring my mom with me so she could like stay in this casino hotel on the Blackfeet reservation with my baby while I kind of went out and tried to make some contacts so I could put together, like, here's what the story is, and here's the environment for that pitch. So in that sense, it's kind of also like piecing together what fits into your life that you can make happen, even if you don't have the the funding or support to to make some of that in-person stuff happen. And i you know you said you started ah the research for this and maybe got turned around to a story in 2017. And here we are you know nearly, so however many years later, eight years eight plus years later. It's just how did you know or when did you know that there was a kind of Atavistian story here?
00:33:29
Speaker
Well, I think that I did not think of the atavist until this year. so it was pretty late in the game. The sort
Evolving the Story Concept
00:33:36
Speaker
ideology the story is, so it was originally assigned at a ah different magazine, maybe three years ago. So that's why you see um in the piece itself, some of the in-person reporting is happening like in 2022. That was because it was originally assigned that year by a different magazine that you know sent me on the reporting trips.
00:33:59
Speaker
So at that time, it was a pretty different focus of the story. It was much more traditional magazine looking at the issue of femicide and data trackers as a sort of solutions trend or a kind of like movement story.
00:34:18
Speaker
And then also getting more into the sort of the nature of like, what's what's a feminist lens on data science? What does that mean? What is the, like, how is the data different than typical data science? So there was a lot more on the issue, i would say.
00:34:33
Speaker
um Dawn was still the main character and Part of the reason I was drawn to her was there was this kind of whole world of data activists working on femicide, especially in Latin America, but there was almost nothing in the US. And so I was kind of struck by like, here's this tiny handful of, I mean, I think there were three people in the US she was trying to do the entire population.
00:34:57
Speaker
um So I was attracted to her as like the centerpiece of the story, but it was very much more issue-based at the time. So, you know, getting into the, realities of the industry, that story got killed along with like a kind of a big shakeup at the publication and, you know, people who are laid off and stuff. um So it was one of those things where they dropped a lot of stories and mine was one of them.
00:35:24
Speaker
I didn't really know where to pitch it because it it was a good fit there, but it's kind of a weird story in that it's, you know, I i pitched it to a few other publications. It didn't quite fit in the sort of women's magazine space.
00:35:41
Speaker
I pitched it to a couple of other magazines where they were like, well, we're interested, but like, what's the impact? And i was like, unclear. like It's unclear like whether this is going to have an impact at all. It's it's it's a weird story in that way.
00:35:57
Speaker
and so i I didn't really know what to do with it. And I am a longtime reader of the atavists. I love their stories. And I thought, there any way in which this is an atavist story? And it felt like a long shot, but gave it a try.
00:36:11
Speaker
And yeah, i loved having conversations with the editors there about how it could be different to fit with the atavist, which meant like a really different way of thinking about the story. So that took some process, I think, ah very interactive with both the editors there. Yeah. So I think I really had to think about the story in a different way than I was more accustomed to from like traditional magazine writing. So how did the thinking change and the shape of it change?
00:36:43
Speaker
I guess the biggest thing is like, you know, their stories are very narrative-based versus issue-based. And not only narrative-based, but not like um profile ah profile either. So I kind of had to figure out with them what the story was. And I i mean, I did like, I can't remember how many drafts I did. Both for the first the first publication and for The Autopist. I think there's probably 10 versions of this story out there um in my, you know, drive file. But ah yeah, so...
00:37:20
Speaker
i I mean, even the first the first ah draft that I turned in, I turned it in and I was, I think I said when I turned it in, I was like, this doesn't work.
00:37:31
Speaker
And Jonah replied, she's like, yeah, it doesn't really work. And so we like we had a lot of, I don't know, it felt like a few phone calls at least, both with him and with Sayward about how to find the atavis story in particular in it. And so it became much more like a lot of the contextual stuff about femicide and data and stuff ended up getting cut out. I mean, I think, I think even from the final draft alone, it was like,
00:38:02
Speaker
no joke, like 14,000 words or something. And you know obviously much of that was cut. It really focused a lot more on Dawn.
00:38:13
Speaker
I mean,
Focusing on Dawn Wilcox's Journey
00:38:14
Speaker
she was already like threaded through the whole thing, but um it was focused on her even more with that other stuff out. And i think, I mean, for me, that was like a little little bit hard to like wrap my head around at first because I had been, you know, years deep into research on the issue. So to me, it felt like...
00:38:37
Speaker
all of this context was gone, but of course, like you need editors to see, you know, cause you get too deep into it. And so you need the editors to like help you see your way forward.
00:38:48
Speaker
And so, yeah, I think getting out of the original mindset of like how much I had come to know about the issue and being able to set that aside and focus on Dawn.
00:38:59
Speaker
um And then even after focusing more on Dawn, another difference I think with the atavist was um i kind of, you know, from my magazine report reporting experience was ah inclined to, I mean, I think my original draft kind of set it in the moment, like when I was with Dawn in person, then sort of, you know, like an opening scene, a little bit of origin story, and then sort of backtrack to some of her history, came back to the present moment,
00:39:32
Speaker
backtracked more and they were kind of like, you know, we, we need this to be like a more straightforward timeline, which to me felt unusual because I was kind of like, well, you know, then my in-person reporting all kind of appears at the end because most of the story takes place before I'm with her. So that was really different for me, but, um and then, and and then inserting myself into the story more explicitly was also different.
00:40:01
Speaker
Nice. And that's a thread I want to pull on to in a little while. But I want to circle back to the some of the dialogue you were having with with Jonah early on. And it was like, oh, yeah, this isn't working. That can rattle a lot self-confidence. I know for me, I'm pretty, i'm i'm not thin-skinned, but I definitely am not the most confident person. So just when you're having those dialogues, how do you just maintain your confidence and or wrestle with the doubt inherent in having those conversations with an editor, like, yeah, like, when when when the landing isn't stuck yet.
00:40:36
Speaker
Sure, sure. In this case, it it was like, I knew when I turned it in, it didn't work. So it wasn't like I turned in something that I felt great about and that he came back and said no, no.
00:40:48
Speaker
But um he I mean, he is like a very generous and kind person. So he is also like, very affirming and in the feedback. But yeah, I think for For me, like i my my hope is always to have like an editor who is like smarter than me or better at something. Because you you want someone to sort of come in and be able to see it in a way that works for what the goal is. And the goal changed in my in the case of my report it in my story. And so like I had to really shift. And it it was hard to see straight with that. And so when the first draft I turned in was sort of halfway still in the old draft.
00:41:29
Speaker
version of it and halfway trying to make the out of this one work and it didn't really work I kind of came at it being like it doesn't feel great you know not knowing exactly how to make this work but i also see this particular experience and like working with the out of this as a great opportunity to learn and I'm actually working on a book right now and so it it actually It did help me kind of think about that work in a different way as well.
00:42:00
Speaker
And so I kind of took it as like, well, I don't know exactly what I'm doing, but it's like very helpful to get this feedback and and try it this way. m And it just kind of piggybacking on that a the self-confidence and the doubt inherent in this work and just being a writer, you know what what are some things that you identify that that you're really good at, things that are kind of like your superpower?
00:42:28
Speaker
Um, well, I don't know if I would think of it as this superpower. i think that I am good at finding the people and like the angles to their stories that are really compelling and, and building relationships with people.
00:42:51
Speaker
i don't know if I would say I'm like good at it compared to anyone else, but I really enjoy the, um, like the deep research aspects of the work. So, i mean, I love the moments where you like find something that,
00:43:06
Speaker
because you dug and dug and dug for it. And um I think of this time when I was working on that Marie Claire story about the woman in Montana, you know i spent all this time with her family. And when I was at her house, they were like, then this was a a young woman who disappeared and she's never been found. And so the story was about her family and how the sort of aftermath of dealing with her disappearance.
00:43:32
Speaker
And they lived you know in this pretty remote area of Montana big empty plains around them um near Glacier Park. And i you know in digging through all her stuff, i i mean, they were like, hey, take a look at this box of stuff of hers. No one's really looked through these pictures, through these papers. And I i read like ah um some of her schoolwork and found this annotated poem. It was from Adrienne Rich's book, An Atlas of the Difficult World.
00:44:02
Speaker
And she had circled, you know as an assignment, she had circled this um this phrase in the poem about read it like you, the reader, are reading this poem with the vast open plains or enormous space around you in the faint flakes of snow, something like that.
00:44:20
Speaker
And Ashley had circled it and said, like I like this passage because it reminds me of myself as I disappear like a flake in the snow. And I was just really struck by how she thought about that in this sort of like window into her at the time.
00:44:38
Speaker
i like that being able to like find like little treasures like that when you just kind of look in in these spaces and just keep digging and things that might not even seem that interesting.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah. And ah yeah, it's when you come across those, especially so since we're so digitally interfaced, when you come across a physical artifact like that, you know, from the pen of a central figure or someone who's yeah deceased and and you know that this was a direct pipeline from their brain to that piece of paper or something like that. you hold that and you're like, Oh my God, like you can almost, you can feel the yeah sort of the energy really levitating. mean, it's kind of woo, but it's, it's true. You like, you can feel the pulse of that.
00:45:22
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And sometimes it just means spending like a couple hours reading through like these old worksheets from high school. So yeah, I like that part of the work that kind of deep digging. Yeah.
00:45:36
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. And i you know i but I've talked to people of late, too, because of such digital archives and you know we can do a lot of research from home.
00:45:48
Speaker
ah But as a result of some of some of the more old school things like going into archives, going into libraries and looking at microfilm, Like that's laborious and a lot of friction and it's a lot of labor, but it's like, have you learned to be accustomed with that? Like kind of embrace that because that's the hard work and not everybody's going to do it. And it's not at, ah at immediately at our fingertips from our own home offices. But if you can be comfortable with that, you can find some really great things.
00:46:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I, I do, Yeah, I do kind of like that. It was um like I recently this year had to go through a lot of court record, like old court records from the 80s. They had to like pull up from I mean, like when you go to the courthouse, they're like, we don't have those digitized. And it was like a little intimidating at first to find what I needed to find. But once I did, yeah, I think that you're kind of like, wow, there's like all of this stuff in here that is
00:46:51
Speaker
Like I never would have found this if I just looked on the internet. So i yeah, I think we think of everything as being available online. at least I do usually often. Like I feel kind of like, you know, if you need background information like that, you should probably be able to find it somehow online or at least call and be like, can you pull this up online from your system?
00:47:12
Speaker
It's kind of exciting to realize like, no, there's this like, if this probably sounds really funny to journalists who worked, you know, one generation before us. Right. Yeah.
00:47:23
Speaker
Because that's, of course, what they did all the time. um But yeah, it's, it's, it's different. Oh, yeah. And even we're talking about doing reporting in person, if you can, and like a generation ago, like that was just table stakes. And, you know being able to meet face to face and you get that trust and it it helps, you Yeah, it helps foster that trust because we're so... you know where Maybe Zoom calls are the are the best thing to do digitally because we can actually see each other. um But yeah, nothing beats being in person. And then, yeah, doing doing the hard labor of of of getting into physical archives is like... it Really, I think, in this day and age, it's kind of like a way to really level up your game because not a lot of people even... No, I was telling a friend the other the other day, i was in that U of O library looking at microfilm, and ah an undergrad just kind of walked up behind me. He's like, what are you doing?
00:48:24
Speaker
He was like blown away. yeah and um And I'm not that old. and But this guy, i was clearly a good 20 or 25 years older than this young man. And he was just like, what is it? Like, what are you doing? I was like, this is microfilm. Like,
00:48:38
Speaker
This is like pre-Google shit right here. And you know when things aren't available online, you look at this stuff. And this is he was like blown away. He's like, holy shit. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, it sucks because you can't search. You have to like quite literally page through everything. It's slow, laborious, and you never know what you're going to find. But the fact is, if you're willing to kind of put in the time here, you can find some gems that people are just not going to look because it's too labor intensive.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a good connection to, to Don, the person in my story because, you know, she's primarily looking online and she's doing a lot of it. But she talks about, and I think this is in the piece as well in this final version. Sometimes I'm like, which version? things But she, you know, she tries to include a photo of every person that she includes in the database. And that's really, really important to her is she puts it as the first column in her data. So that that's what you see first.
00:49:33
Speaker
She said for people like over a certain age so who don't have like a social media presence um or just you know weren't,
00:49:45
Speaker
for some reason, like aren't on social media, it can be really hard to find photos of them. And you know there was one case she describes where she she spent months looking for this. She's like, I need to find this woman's picture. like I can't leave her in the database.
00:50:01
Speaker
faceless. um And she ended up finding like a very old, or she called it old. I don't know what year I was from, but she found an old self-published book and the photo was on the cover or on the ah dust jacket of the book.
00:50:15
Speaker
And she was like, there, like that there you are. And so it's, yeah, that kind of like, well, before a certain time, it's like you you can't find the information about the people that easily Yeah,
Balancing First-Person Narrative
00:50:26
Speaker
and in the story, you you enter the story, but you're not yeah like a main character in it. You're you're very kind of ah a bridge and a glue in in various elements. So how did you deploy first person in yourself in this story in a way that served the story?
00:50:42
Speaker
So when I originally started the story again, like in this in the other publication with the sort of more traditional magazine style, um i i did have first person in it as far as like, you know, like the, she told me or like when i first met her in this year, I did include the ending is, is actually almost the same as the very first draft that I ever wrote.
00:51:07
Speaker
And the ending has a lot of me in it because i felt that, so in the ending of the piece, if for anyone who hasn't read it, like there's a um challenge, I don't know if it was challenge, that Don asked, you know, said like, if you really want to understand this and like, see what I'm talking about, just Google like woman murdered in whatever town you live in, and then look at the nature of what you find. And so I found a bunch of stories that I already knew because they were sensational when they happened.
00:51:39
Speaker
But when i looked at them all together, In that way, it really like just lit up the whole point she was making. and I hadn't really looked at though. I mean, even as somebody who has spent many years studying gender-based violence, I hadn't really looked at them in my community in that way.
00:51:58
Speaker
And so that's why I included that at the end, because It really did. i mean, what she predicted what the effect would be was the effect. And so I included that from my perspective. And then as I kind of worked with the editors, they were like, you know, we can do that, but you need to be more in the piece at the beginning, which makes sense. I think also, again, the story was a little maybe different than some of their other stories in the out of this, because It doesn't have like a dramatic plot line. Like a lot of their stories are like, yeah you know, this like crazy thing that happened or like, you know, it's a lot of it is like very interior to Don.
00:52:40
Speaker
A lot of what she's doing is solo, like she's just solitary work. um There was this time when she like connected with one of the families and I did try writing a version which was like sort of threaded you know, parallel stories of like this family and the woman, Wendy, who died and on.
00:52:59
Speaker
And it didn't quite work because when they did connect, it wasn't like a... this explosive thing. It was, it was really quiet. And so it felt a little bit underwhelming to set it up that way. And then they finally meet and it's not like dramatic. It's kind of like they each got something from it, but it was very quiet, kind of like a, you know, I feel a little better. I can tolerate this a little more.
00:53:27
Speaker
And so that was one of the reasons we had so many versions is like trying to figure out what the structure was and what the plot was like, um what are the sort of like little, cliffhangers at the end of each section, they brought me in, they they asked me to kind of put myself in from the very beginning, in a kind of behind the scenes way of like, how did you find the story, like almost at as a character, ah to sort of make the
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah, so as you said, like, kind of like a glue or like an underlying structure like this is like the whole story is me learning about this in a sense. And that helps kind of offer some structure and then kind of justify having more of myself at the end.
00:54:16
Speaker
Yeah. And you brought up structure and this is broken up into six chapters, essentially. But yeah when it came to this piece and pieces in general, you know, how are you thinking about structure from the outset?
00:54:32
Speaker
It sort of depends on like, what's the goal of the story? Who's the audience? and And so, yeah, when I first sat down to do it, it was kind of like,
00:54:46
Speaker
Here's a little opening. Like I started originally in the original thing that I wrote. um It started as a kind of like live in person, like in the moment.
00:54:57
Speaker
Here's this person coming home from their very everyday job of being a school nurse in Dallas and sitting sitting down in their suburban home with their laptop and starting to log murders. And so this juxtaposition of very everyday familiar thing with this kind of like unfamiliar, chaotic thing.
00:55:19
Speaker
And then from that going into like a typical nut graph section, you know, in and in that section, there was a lot of, the in the original draft, there was a lot of stuff about, um you know, where the concept of femicide came from and the sort of roots in Latin America as far as like thinking or like really pushing the sort of like recognition of the political nature of femicide or feminicide as they...
00:55:48
Speaker
called it and yeah And so a lot about like, what where do we as a society sort of lack the same momentum as far as activism in the US? What data is available? What does the UN say about it What do like these various experts say about it? So a lot of the sort of traditional nut section stuff.
00:56:07
Speaker
And then it sort of like backtracked into Dawn's background and sort of like gave a little bit more of a picture of how she came to do this work.
00:56:18
Speaker
And then how she was haunted by it and then sort of opened up into this other um story of Wendy, the person who really, as she said, most haunted her from the data.
00:56:32
Speaker
That's how I initially thought about it. um When it kind of came to telling just the story of Dawn, like I said, the structure changed a lot. And part of that was kind of like, well, I guess the structure became more tied to like, well, what is her character arc? So she's not in this out of this version. She's not um like representing ah an issue. She's, she is the story. And so In that sense, it had to be more explicit of like what happened to her, what changed, where did she end up in her character arc?
00:57:09
Speaker
And in that sense, it you know tried to bring in earlier on in the structure, like the way she kind of so for example, some of her backstory came a lot earlier.
00:57:21
Speaker
The origin story of the whole database became the lead, which was not the case in the first version. And in fact, the the the case that opens the whole story now was mentioned in a paragraph, I think, in the original draft.
00:57:37
Speaker
That became the whole lead because it was like her origin story as a data tracker. Yeah. And then trying to bring out early on some of the stuff that will show, like, you know, like early on feeling like, you know, there's a sense of chaos around this. There's like something that was hard to define for her.
00:57:57
Speaker
All of these, this violence felt all interconnected in a way that was hard to name. And so by the end, you know, you might not see like the big impact, like, oh, this change is happening. But you do see that she feels like a little bit more agency and in the chaos. And so that kind of became the structure, if that makes sense. and when When you're you know doing this kind of work and reporting you know on such a just a gnarly, tragic circumstance and issue, you know, 14,000 some odd murders and and counting as the story goes, you know, and here you are reporting on it. You know, just what is the the cost you know for you reporting on these issues?
00:58:46
Speaker
m Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, I mean, it's something I was kind of accustomed to already just from previous reporting. um But it definitely had a different kind of weight, I think, right.
00:59:05
Speaker
this particular kind of violence and and loss, like spending time with Wendy's family was really moving because, and and I went to this, so this is the family of the woman who died in Fayetteville.
00:59:20
Speaker
The haunting, the more ha haunting of the violence. Yeah. Yeah. And so when I found her family, um i I really wanted to to know from them, like, you know, how does it really feel? Because, you know, on the on the phone when they when they talk to Don, you know, they're very gracious and, um you know, in talking about Wendy, but it was hard to know, like like, does this really mean anything to you? Or what does it mean to have this random person... you know, want to know about her. And so i wanted to get more from them about how what that experience was like. And, um and their story was really hard. Like there, this is at the time that I went there, it was four years after the murder. And it was the year that the trial had happened. So the trial was just before that. and
01:00:15
Speaker
And that was really heavy trip because they, i mean, beautiful family and they're, you know, taking care of Wendy's kids, but they are like deep in grief still. And the Quinetta, the twin sister was kind of like, you know, it, it means something to have her be counted in this database. And like, you know, she told me like, you know, I still subscribe to the newspaper in that town. She lives in Baltimore and this is in North Carolina. just like, I still subscribe to the local paper to see if they're saying anything about her, but no, you know, the trial's over. the drama's gone, nobody's talking about her.
01:00:57
Speaker
And so she was kind of like, and I never thought like people would be talking about her again. And so that was meaningful. But I mean, I was definitely like, you know, really feeling for the sense of like, it doesn't like fix anything. and she lost, you know, Wendy was kind of like her life's companion, you And i mean, she's also married and has her own family and stuff, but like it's her twin sister, um, the manner in which she died and the stuff they found out, you know, the prosecutors had told them to not attend the full trial because it would be too difficult. And they did find out some stuff later from it. That was just like very difficult to, um, to hear.
01:01:44
Speaker
And I think one of the things that really struck me was Cornetta's like, I, I know that, um, I know that there aren't answers, but like he, the killer, like he's the only one who could tell me about it. Like, I ah kind of just want to talk to him and be like, why? And, you know, I asked her, like, do you think, do you think that would, um you know, answer anything? And she's like, you know, I guess I know it it won't, but like, who else can I ask?
01:02:12
Speaker
And yeah, so I think that it it did feel like heavier than a lot of Reporting, maybe not like the, I mean, it was bad.
01:02:27
Speaker
The story was hard. So I think for me, i think, I don't know. i i It is difficult, but I think compared to what the people I'm talking to are going through, it's not.
01:02:40
Speaker
you know, it's just, it's different. And, you know, Dawn is doing this every day for years. And um obviously, Quintetta's loss is just looms huge in her life. And so for me, that kind of like, the scale of it feels like, smaller than that. And that this is what I can offer or do is like, you know, report about it.
01:03:06
Speaker
And yeah, I just, I, I verbally process things with, with friends and a lot. Yeah.
01:03:14
Speaker
But specific friends, because it's not for everybody, this topic. It's not something everybody... Yeah, that makes sense. and And so when you're... Say you're setting down to to write, you've got your materials. ah you know How do you like to set up your days when you're in like drafting mode and you got that deadline starting to chirp at you?
01:03:35
Speaker
Well, that's a good question. i'm I'm really bad at task initiation. So I think that I can sometimes... task initiation. um So yeah, it's like, um, more specific than procrastination. I think one of my, um, ways of procrastinating is just doing more research. So, and that can feel very productive, right? can feel productive, productive procrastination. Yeah. Well, then it's a problem because you're way too deep in it and you're like, well, how do i pull all this together?
01:04:09
Speaker
And I, um, This is a probably an environmental pas, but I print out like articles and i I like to have physical printouts of everything. So otherwise it's hard for me to like...
01:04:25
Speaker
And I like to write on them and like highlight stuff. And otherwise it's hard for me to remember, know, like going back to the digital versus real yeah space. it's It's hard for me to remember all this stuff if I'm not seeing it physically. So I print out, have a, like a big, you know, file folder thing with like different, it'll be like, you know, femicide data activists or like stuff about Dawn's life in these different hanging folders.
01:04:52
Speaker
And then I, try to this is not efficient really but tried kind of review it and then um like I instead of being like okay and now I know I need to say this this and this I feel like i need to review everything so I don't it's not necessarily advice I would give anybody but that is what I do and then um yeah just kind of like I tend to like physically organize it based on like the sections of the piece so like all the stuff related to the net graph will be in this folder
01:05:24
Speaker
and like ah yeah And then i usually like to sit down and outline um because often I'll find like because of the over research, I'll find my outline of like.
01:05:40
Speaker
the nut graph section is like longer than my word count. and So um that helps me like just think about like, okay, this, I really can't get into like this whole topic at all.
01:05:53
Speaker
Are you doing like ah index cards or sticky notes when you outline? um I sometimes, I have a whiteboard. So I try to do that um initially. And then I use a, um like an artist sketch pad because Sometimes I get like, like even with lined notebook paper, I can feel like it's too constrained. um And again, with the task initiation thing, I want to make it like as free feeling as possible. So I just start with like a notepad and like um no lines on it, just like sketching it out either on a whiteboard or on paper.
01:06:29
Speaker
Nice. And when you're out ah reporting, um I always love like metaphorically speaking, like turning everyone's backpack inside out and like, you know, what are the things that you like to bring with you? You know, just the kind of notebooks you like, the writing utensils, recorders, if you use them, yeah all that stuff, snacks, you know, so like, yeah you know, what is it that, know, when you're, when you know you're going to be doing maybe some in-person reporting, you know, what, what's in your pack?
01:06:57
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, now I use my iPhone for a lot of it, you know, before iPhones, I probably would have had more things like recorders and cameras and stuff, but I will use my iPhone for like, I take a lot of photos and videos. Um, so that like when you get to fact checking and stuff and they're like, how do you know the house is blue or something?
01:07:20
Speaker
You know, you have the photos, yeah which really actually came in handy in this particular story as well. Um, And then i you know i did some videos of Dawn actually
Using iPhones for Interviews and Photos
01:07:34
Speaker
sort of going through the process of tagging stuff in the data so I could go back and like and watch her actually do the dropdown menus. So I could take pictures of it. i did write it down. i did record it, but I was also wanted like the video to go back and refer to.
01:07:51
Speaker
um Most interviews I now just do in like voice memos and and you know you can easily get quick transcriptions of those as well. And you know because of my overreporting, I used to like pay a lot for Temi transcriptions and then not end up using 75% of the interviews at all.
01:08:18
Speaker
So now it's yeah just easier to do on an iPhone and just do the transcriptions that way as like a first pass. And i I just use like a, don't know, what's this called? I use like these kind of notebooks.
01:08:34
Speaker
um Yeah, just like a straight up writing tablet for recording. you know my I record like a lot on voice memos. And then for writing, I try to like write down impressions in my head as people are talking, stuff I want to remember that I'm thinking, and of course, like, you know, physical, like, what's the scene like kind of stuff.
01:09:01
Speaker
Yeah. And, uh, you know, writing and reporting, it's, um, it can, it can feel kind of and certainly kind of lonely. And then as a result, you know, when you want advice or something, sometimes can be hard to come by and i don't know, maybe from ah a mentor or maybe just hard earned
Taking Pride in Rejections
01:09:19
Speaker
advice. So what is some advice that you kind of adhere by, you know, be it hard one or just something you remember from like, you know, a cherished editor or a cherished mentor. Yeah. Yeah.
01:09:31
Speaker
I don't know, two two things come to mind. One is from a teacher, one of my professors, I went to um grad school for journalism and had never written an article before in my life before doing that.
01:09:45
Speaker
And one of my teachers there, David Standish, who taught in the magazine writing program um at Northwestern, he was, i think, I don't remember exactly what he said, but he said like, um something like take pride in your rejections and that was really helpful because i mean as you know this is like a it's a tough industry for putting yourself out there because you're like constantly putting yourself out there you're like doing a ton of work up front not knowing if anyone will be interested yeah in it and um
01:10:22
Speaker
And it's like very easy. I mean, this story is a good example. It's like it first got killed at its friends first home. And then, you know, I talked to my I don't know how many magazines who are like, well, we're interested in hearing more. And then I talked to them about it. And for various reasons, they' like, it doesn't really work for us.
01:10:41
Speaker
And it's like very easy to feel deflated about it. um And so I do recall what he said because he's kind of like, your rejections are a reflection of like the way you're trying and putting yourself out there and like reaching for things that maybe aren't easy reaches. And I, like I said, had never thought of it. When I thought of pitching to the atavist, was like, i don't, I don't think that this would be, I don't think they'd want this, but maybe they would. Like you pre-rejecting yourself. yeah Exactly.
01:11:13
Speaker
But I was like, but it can't hurt. I've already like, talked to a bunch of publications that rejected it. So why not try? um And then the other thing is, this was a kind of unrelated to the field, but well, in a way, but I actually, that same teacher had encouraged me to later after I was out of school, had encouraged me to enter this um contest at narrative magazine.
01:11:41
Speaker
And So I was gonna, and i was I was actually down in Ashland, Oregon at this kind of like um retreat center for the for the semester.
01:11:52
Speaker
And my sister was teaching there. And um i was like, I thought about how to write this thing for like weeks. I would walk around and be like, talk to different writers and be like, what's, what do you what is your process? What do you think the ideal like setup is? Like, do you like to be in this kind of space or that kind of space? And what time of day? And like, do you walk and think? And basically talk to a bunch of people about how they made it work. And I couldn't do it like bring myself to do it. And finally I talked to my sister who
01:12:25
Speaker
is not you know a ah writer in the writing field at all. And i was like, i you know I don't know how to none of it's working. And she was like, have you tried just doing it? And I was like, no, have not tried that.
01:12:43
Speaker
And like, that was the way it worked. I was like, all right, I'm going to sit sit down right now and just try doing it It's like so silly, but like, I feel like a lot of writers can relate to that. ah Yeah, one I think so. That's really, yeah we can really tie ourselves in knots and like, with like, routine porn. It's just like, can I... ah You get all fascinated with everybody else's routine. and You try everything on for size and it's just like, yeah, this doesn't work. This is going to maybe this will be the thing that unlocks all of my dormant creativity. And it's going to break. It's going to totally crack the code. yeah And it's just like, no, just to your point, it just like, have you ever tried just doing it? And then you're like, oh
01:13:28
Speaker
think that wasn't so bad. And then the next day you're like, ah, that's not so bad. Yeah. It's like, it you just, you know, for sure it won't happen if you don't do it. So, um, it seems like pretty basic advice, but yeah, I mean, I can get very in my head about like why I don't feel like doing it. And like 95% of the time when I start doing it, it's like way easier than the worrying about doing it. So Yeah, well that's a great great point to underscore.
01:13:56
Speaker
Nice. well ah Well, Krista, as I bring these conversations out front landing, I also love to ask about ah the guest for a recommendation of some kind. And that's just like anything that you're ah kind of excited about that you want to share with the listeners. and it can it can't A lot of people recommend books, but it can be it doesn't have to be. so um And I often encourage non-books, too. So like what a you know whatever ah whatever's floating your boat, what would you like to recommend? Sure.
01:14:21
Speaker
I mean, let's see For books, I've been like so deep into kind of like heavy books for work and not for pleasure.
01:14:31
Speaker
But I will say, actually, this could be a recommendation. um i a couple years ago started... think this was like in the pandemic. um I started, had always been kind of interested in songwriting. I'm not like a big musician or a performer at all. And I never studied music theory.
01:14:55
Speaker
And I was like, I've always wanted to do this. And like, i so I, so I signed up for online classes at the Berkeley school of music. um And I was the only person in any of my classes who was not either a professional or aspiring professional musician wanting to like work on song craft or a student, a music student who was like going to Berkeley. Um, I was just this random journalist.
01:15:23
Speaker
Didn't know half, like in my first class, I didn't know half of what they were talking about. Um, And I, it was like such an empowering creative experience because there was really no pressure. And it was so nice to get, like have a creative experience outside of work. um I was like, well, no one expects anything of me. I can just be afraid to explore this. And, and that has been like very joyful in my life since then.
Songwriting as a Creative Outlet
01:15:52
Speaker
And I love how it's such a difference in like
01:15:56
Speaker
in a song you have like this very small contained space with like, depending on how you're doing it can have certain rules about the mechanics of it. And so it's like a really contained way to like say something like sometimes in a, maybe in a reported story, you have like lots of personal feelings or vignettes or observations or whatever that don't fit in the story. Like,
01:16:21
Speaker
you can make a whole like song out of one impression. And so it feels like a really good place to put some of that stuff. um So I guess my recommendation was being able to lean into um hobbies or ways to spend time where it's, you have that kind of freedom without the sort of pressure of like feeling like you should be good at it.
01:16:42
Speaker
Yeah. Like make money from it or something. we Make money from it. Yeah. And I would probably hate songwriting if I thought I was going to try to make movie from it. Fantastic. Well, Krista, your piece for The Atavis was ah amazing. and It brings up a bleak but a very important topic in these gender-motivated murders and homicides and everything. so and in any It's a wonderful piece of work in journalism and writing. So i just said thank you for the work and thanks for coming on to talk shop about it. Yeah, thank you for your interest. i
01:17:13
Speaker
I appreciate
01:17:18
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. Did you get your holiday gift guide in the December issue of Rage Against the Algorithm? I tried telling you. You can still go see it at rageagainstthealgorithm.beehive.com and check it out.
01:17:34
Speaker
You also subscribe to it. Both of my little newsletters are first of the month. Be sure you're subbed up at The Rager as well as Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. Platform is currency. They'll always be free.
01:17:47
Speaker
I can leverage email lists into book contracts. That's the strategy. Thanks to Krista and to Sayward. Again, check out the story at magazine.atavist.com.
01:17:58
Speaker
We're out time. We're out time today. So stay wild, C&Fers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.