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Now in Paperback: Susan Orlean on Writing for an Audience and the Entrepreneurial Nature of a Writing Career
1.3k Plays1 year ago
This episode originally aired as Episode 61 on August 11, 2017.
Susan Orlean is the best selling author of The Library Book, The Orchid Thief, and Rin Tin Tin. She's a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker and you can find her on Threads @susanorlean.
In this episode, Susan talks about:
- always having an audience in mind
- having supreme focus
- and needing to see yourself as a business person if you plan on doing this type of work
Subscribe to the podcast wherever and check out the show notes and the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter at brendanomeara.com.
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Transcript
Podcast Promotion and Thanksgiving Stories
00:00:00
Speaker
AC and Everest before we get started for a limited time I'm bringing back the quid pro quo Written review for editing and coaching if you leave a written review on Apple podcasts I will edit and coach up a piece of your work of up to 2,000 words when your review Publishes and posts send a screenshot of it to creative nonfiction podcast at gmail.com And we'll start a dialogue. There's like a hundred dollar value. So if I were you I would totally do it
00:00:30
Speaker
Also, shout out to Athletic Brewing. It's my favorite non-alcoholic beer out there. If you visit athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get a nice little discount. I don't get any money, merely celebrating a great product. Skip the hangover, man. Skip it. I think it was the only thing that I ever really dreamed of doing was being a writer.
00:01:00
Speaker
Oh hey CNFers, it's CNFpod, the creative non-fiction podcast. A show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. It's Black Friday and this podcast is offered for free. What a deal. Hope you had a nice holiday and a satisfying meal.
00:01:18
Speaker
Me and the missus and the three dogs went to the Oregon coast with a bunch of vegan sammies and we parked in our usual spot overlooking the Pacific Ocean and watched the waves, man. We'll do something similar for Christmas. It's nice to know where people are.
Susan Orlean's Writing Journey
00:01:39
Speaker
And then you go in the opposite direction wouldn't you know it's another paperback podcast this one was Susan or lean the first of her three trips to date on The podcast this originally aired as episode 61 really great stuff here. She talks about from a young age always being aware of An audience when she's writing the business nature of being a writer
00:02:03
Speaker
and how she ended up at the New Yorker. Good stuff. She's the author of several New York Times bestselling books, including the library book, Rin Tin Tin, On Animals, and The Orchid Thief.
00:02:16
Speaker
She's been jamming on threads and she's at Susan Orlean there. I think she might've deleted her ex. A lot of people have. But I see her on threads a lot, so I think that's where you can find her, that Instagram. You know the deal. Head to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for the monthly rage against the algorithm newsletter. Subscribe to the podcast or not. It's up to you.
00:02:44
Speaker
Subscribe to that newsletter or don't it's up to you. No parting shot this week. So we're just gonna get right into it with Susan Orleans first rodeo on this podcast riff
00:03:08
Speaker
I think that from a very young age, I was aware of the power of stories. I think it's probably because I love to read and found books to be just magical. And I think if you love to read and you begin feeling how powerful stories are, if you have any inclination to the idea of writing,
00:03:38
Speaker
makes you feel like that is a very enticing path. When I was really young, I started writing little books and little, I would keep journals of my family's various trips and write them up in the form of a book. It's weird to me to say this, but I think even as a little kid,
00:04:05
Speaker
I was aware of the idea of having a reader. I wasn't writing these stories just for myself. I was writing them with the idea that someone else would read them. So I early on was thinking about publication. I say that partly jokingly, but in fact, I wrote up these stories of our trips as if they were little books and, you know, would
00:04:32
Speaker
staple them along the edge so that they look like literally like they had been bound and love the idea of them being actually, you know, read by someone else. So I, I think that it was something that I loved from a very young age. And I think it was the only thing that I ever really
Inspiration from Life Magazine and The New Yorker
00:04:58
Speaker
dreamed of doing was being a writer.
00:05:01
Speaker
When I was probably an early teenager or maybe younger than that, my family subscribed to Life magazine and Life really pioneered the sort of photo essay, the documentary kind of magazine piece. I remember reading one that was just the story of a small town doctor.
00:05:31
Speaker
And it followed him through a day that included, you know, treat, helping somebody who had cancer and delivering a baby and you know, this whole range of things. And I've never, I realized at the time that I had never seen a story like that. That was just about normal life and
00:06:00
Speaker
trying to convey what a normal life was like. And it really stuck in my mind. And I think that was the point where I thought, I want to be a writer and this is the kind of writer I want to be.
00:06:14
Speaker
That's incredible because so much of your work and when people speak highly of your work, it's always how Ted Conover or Ira Glass talking about it, fill in the blank, they're always so impressed and enamored that you've been able to take those little micro moments that seem so benign and almost boring, but then making that ordinary extraordinary. And it really stemmed from that, really that article in life that you read at a young age.
00:06:44
Speaker
Yeah, and then I think it was further kind of encouraged by the reading the New Yorker, which I began doing in college. And certainly they they're probably and they have been for approaching 100 years now. Celebrate the idea of the story that
00:07:13
Speaker
takes a life that isn't famous or prominent in the conventional sense of the words and examines that life for the sake of learning about what another life is like. And I just have, I love those stories when they're done well. I think they're,
00:07:41
Speaker
amazing and part of what's amazing is that the idea that you could find an ordinary life amazing almost makes it more interesting because it's such a great surprise. When you were coming up and deciding that you wanted to take on writing as a vocation and tell these true stories,
00:08:07
Speaker
Who might have been a mentor, professor, teacher, or just a good ear who put gas in the tank for you and said, yes, Susan, keep going to lean into this? I was always really encouraged by I had a series of wonderful English teachers when I was in high school who made me feel that I had
00:08:37
Speaker
the right touch and encouraged me, not necessarily in a professional sense, but encouraged me to think of myself as a writer and that I was somebody who was capable of making something readable. So it was really exciting because they were great teachers. When I got to college,
00:09:06
Speaker
Again, I had great teachers, but at that point I began wondering, I want to do this particular kind of writing, which was not newspaper writing. And I went to the University of Michigan, which had a really good student daily newspaper and had a giant staff of people who knew they wanted to work for newspapers. I knew that I didn't.
00:09:36
Speaker
So those years when I was in college, I kind of wondered how would I be able to do the kind of writing I wanted to do when the only professional track that I really felt I understood was newspapers, and that was something I didn't want to do. As I said, that was when I began reading The New Yorkers. So in my head, I thought, well, that's what I want to do, but there isn't
00:10:06
Speaker
a really obvious path to going from being a college student to writing for The New Yorker. And certainly I didn't know what that path was, but I was really passionate about it. I knew what I wanted to do. I just didn't know how to go about getting there.
Starting a Writing Career in Portland
00:10:27
Speaker
Right out of college, I moved to Portland, which was kind of a lucky thing. It was a move that I made without a lot of forethought. But it turned out that moving to what was then quite a small city under the radar is a really great place to move if you're trying to get started as a writer because it was very inexpensive to live there. There was, just coincidentally,
00:10:57
Speaker
a very good alternative news weekly. And when I got there, there was a small magazine just starting up that couldn't afford to hire people with more experience than me, which was zero. So I went to my interview and just said, this is what I want to do. I know I don't have any experience, but I really, truly
00:11:27
Speaker
want to do this, you have to let me. And I must have been dramatic enough in my statement that I succeeded and was hired. And my first editor there and my editors ever since and certainly in those years in Portland were tremendously influential and important to me. They really gave me
00:11:55
Speaker
the support to try doing the kinds of stories that I had in mind while also insisting that I learn the basics of reporting and the underpinning of nonfiction writing, but primarily they somehow had a feeling that I could do the kinds of things I was talking to them about.
00:12:21
Speaker
which are not necessarily the stories you assign to a young, inexperienced writer. But I guess I was so passionate about it that they figured it was worth the taking the chance.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, it sounds like they maybe didn't have the requisite skills of a reporter. You at least had the nose for narrative. And they're like, we can teach you these things. But you've got this other thing, like your teacher was saying, you had the right touch. So maybe they're like, you've got the right touch, but we'll teach you how to be a reporter. But you just keep using your taste, and that will help guide you. Exactly. And a sense of an instinct for a story, but
00:13:06
Speaker
also just a real I was really excited about the kinds of stories I wanted to tell and I think they knew that and appreciated it and felt that it wasn't that I was purposeful that I I really truly felt compelled to tell these stories and they encouraged me to do it. That's really important. It's also
00:13:36
Speaker
important for an editor to know who can take on those stories and who can't because they're not easy. In fact, there are very difficult stories. And there were times when I really had moments of thinking, these are really hard stories to do. And I don't know quite why I'm doing them, but I stuck with it. And the more experience I got, certainly the more comfortable I was taking on these
00:14:06
Speaker
These stories that are, I don't want to disparage them by saying they're non-stories. They're not non-stories, but they are stories that rely heavily on the conviction of the writer that there is a story to tell when it maybe isn't as obvious to other people.
00:14:30
Speaker
Have you run into situations where no matter how much time or how much reporting you put in, you're just like, I got a bail. I got a bail on this and move on to something else? Or do you just keep keep ramming and ramming ahead? I've certainly had stories that midway I began really worrying about and stories that I had to I had to recalibrate.
00:14:58
Speaker
once I was in the middle of the story and began seeing what was possible and what wasn't. There haven't been that many that I've just dropped out, right? Usually because I've spent a lot of time mulling them over before I dive in. So there are more stories that I've abandoned before I began. And because I just lost faith in the story,
00:15:29
Speaker
I've had many, many stories, if not all, the stories I've written that at some point changed and they weren't the story I thought they were. I actually consider that a good sign. If a story is just exactly what I expected it would be, I don't think of that as being all that interesting. I'd prefer a story that revealed itself to me in a surprising way as I was
00:15:58
Speaker
carrying on the reporting. It can sometimes mean, though, that you have to stop and think, whoa, hang on, this was not what I was expecting. Or a particular source I was imagining would be available is not, is refusing to talk to me. So now what? What does that mean? Sometimes I've been on the very brink of bailing and
00:16:25
Speaker
I've had an editor who said, no, don't give up, hang in there, keep going, see what's there and what you can make out of it. And that's been wonderful. That's when I've been really fortunate that I've had editors who've just encouraged me beyond that doubt that comes up inevitably.
00:16:51
Speaker
Is there an example of when that happened that you can recall? Sure. I had heard this story about a woman in New Jersey who was keeping 27 pet tigers at her home. And there was, of course, a bit of a legal backlash, and she was in the middle of
00:17:20
Speaker
some proceedings to get the tigers taken away. And it was, you know, obviously the kind of story that you think, Oh my God, I've got to write about this. I expected that she would talk to me. I assumed she would talk to me because I figured she'd want to plead her case in the, in the press. And it felt really important to me to talk to her and get her story of how or why she had these tigers.
00:17:51
Speaker
When I began the reporting and I met her, she just shut me down flat and said, nope, she wasn't, would not talk to me, wasn't interested in talking to me. My first thought was to give up on the story. I just didn't see how I could write the story without her. And this was a piece for The New Yorker. My editor said, well, hang on a minute. It's a great story.
00:18:21
Speaker
see if you can think of how to approach it if she's not going to talk to you. And I had been very discouraged. I basically felt like it was impossible to do, but he really encouraged me to stick with it. So I thought, all right, I have to be a little more resourceful and figure out how can I tell this story without her talking to me and also
00:18:48
Speaker
how can I take that as an asset rather than a liability? How can I look at her refusal to talk to me as relevant to the story? And of course it was. She felt really beleaguered. She felt the press was against her. She was quite paranoid. And frankly, it's not that I'm glad she didn't talk to me, but the fact that she didn't talk to me
00:19:18
Speaker
made sense the more I came to know about her. And I basically had to gather her story from court records, from people around her, from any other sources that I could. It ended up being, I think, a really successful story. And the fact that she never spoke to me, I wouldn't say it was a better outcome, but
00:19:48
Speaker
It was an outcome that felt actually logical given who she was and her state of mind. It was a great exercise in hanging and stopping and rethinking, what was I expecting? What can I do with the tools that I've been given as opposed to the tools I was expecting?
00:20:15
Speaker
That's a killer example. It's like if you want to write a profile about the sun, you're better off interviewing all the planets or orbiting it and not getting too close to that central figure. And you actually find that you probably was a lot more enlightening and surprised you in a lot of ways and turned out to be a better story in the end. I certainly think that it was a successful story. It would have been a different story if she had talked to me.
00:20:45
Speaker
So I feel like anytime someone doesn't talk to you and you have to work around it, you're using your ingenuity to create a story in spite of missing a certain puzzle piece. I was really happy with how it turned out. It would have certainly been interesting to talk to her. So I would say it,
00:21:14
Speaker
It turned out really well. And I don't feel you read it thinking, well, wait, how about let's hear from from her. There was a period of time where I saw a lot of stories published, which were all about the failure to talk to the central subject of the story. And that's not the way that I would approach it, where
00:21:43
Speaker
I mean, there was a famous story, I think it was a cover story in Esquire that was supposed to be a profile of John Lennon and he declined to talk to the reporter. So the story was all about trying to talk to John Lennon. And I think you can overdo that approach about your failure as a reporter. This story, luckily, it was not
00:22:12
Speaker
It wasn't a profile of her. It was a story about the situation that was certainly about her and about how she'd ended up having these tigers and why she had them and how it was that the state of New Jersey had failed to monitor this over the years. So it wasn't a profile. The absence of a one-to-one conversation with her was
00:22:43
Speaker
I could compensate in so many ways.
00:22:48
Speaker
So when you got to Portland and you're starting to develop your chops and you knew ultimately that you wanted to be writing for The New Yorker or writing the types of stories that typically are published in The New Yorker, that style of narrative, what were the strategies that you were putting in place knowing that you saw the lighthouse off in the distance? How were you saying, all right, what am I doing today that's ultimately feeding into that end goal?
Career Strategy and Entrepreneurial Approach
00:23:19
Speaker
Did you have a point when I was in Portland? I guess that was, you know, that being your first step towards at a college, going to Portland and starting to write those kinds of stories and you knew where you wanted to go. How are you starting to strategize ultimately getting to the New Yorker? This is a story almost told better backwards because some of the things I did
00:23:48
Speaker
leading to it were they weren't carefully thought out as much as they were kind of instinct and a sort of gut sense of how to advance myself rather than having a game plan. I think I knew all along that I needed to start having
00:24:16
Speaker
stories published elsewhere besides just in the Portland papers. And I knew that I needed to begin making connections with editors elsewhere that would, you know, give me assignments and assignments that could build my resume. So it was,
00:24:43
Speaker
nothing where I sat down and thought, all right, I've really got to start figuring out how to meet people as much as it felt like this natural sense of advancement. I look back and realize that I had a gut. Somehow I had the wisdom of an entrepreneur. Maybe I won't say wisdom because it's sort of
00:25:13
Speaker
It gives me too much credit, but I had the instincts of an entrepreneur. I sensed how it just, these were natural moves that you'd make if you were in a relatively small city writing stories, but picturing, advancing, and writing for magazines in New York. It meant,
00:25:41
Speaker
reaching out, introducing myself to people, thinking about stories that were taking place in Portland but might have a national audience. Then there were certain things that were just lucky breaks. In my second or third year in Portland, I got a phone call from someone who had grown up in Portland and had
00:26:11
Speaker
written a little bit for the paper I was working for at the time, who had he's an incredible writer, and he had moved on in his career and was a staff writer at Rolling Stone. He called me and said, I've been reading your stuff. And I think you should write for Rolling Stone. This was like a bolt out of the blue. And it was
00:26:36
Speaker
incredibly lucky and a bit of serendipity because had he not grown up in Portland, he certainly wouldn't have been looking at this local alternative news weekly, but it just so happened that he was. He liked my stuff and basically threw the door open for me. So out of the blue, I went from writing for a local
00:27:06
Speaker
Alternative News Weekly to publishing in Rolling Stone. And that was so valuable. That was so useful to me to begin having stories that were published in national magazines and making me feel like, okay, this is how you do it. You make a connection. You meet an editor. You think of stories that would work for
00:27:35
Speaker
a bigger audience. I introduced myself to the editor of The Village Voice, who happened to be in Portland for a conference. And she liked me. I said, could I write something for you? And at the time, The Village Voice was a very well-respected, well-read publication that had very much a national audience. Then it was a matter of thinking, what are the stories in Portland that
00:28:07
Speaker
the Village Voice might be interested in and I got lucky because there were a couple of stories unfolding in Portland that struck me as being interesting to a bigger audience and Village Voice assigned them to me and I was off and running.
00:28:27
Speaker
I really like what you're alluding to here because there's that entrepreneurial nature of what it takes to be a writer who wants her work visible and reach those upper levels where you can continue to do this stuff possibly and hopefully make a living.
00:28:44
Speaker
And there is a degree of tenacity and rigor that goes into the pie chart of how a writer divides up his or her time. And it's not just right and then hope to get lucky. There's all these elements of just meeting the right person, networking without being spammy or schmoozy in those off-putting ways.
00:29:10
Speaker
I was wondering maybe you can speak to that extra, what that tenacity and rigor looks like. That's every bit the component of becoming a writer of this kind of narrative journalism that everyone needs but maybe doesn't necessarily want to admit that they need. I think it's so important. First of all, in very practical terms, if you're going to be a
00:29:38
Speaker
a person doing long-form journalism, you will be running a small business. You may end up with a staff job somewhere, but my guess is percentage-wise, people doing narrative nonfiction generally work freelance.
00:30:00
Speaker
It's and that will be increasingly true, I'm sure. But it's certainly I'd be stunned if I were wrong on those numbers. Therefore, you have to, you know, look at it as as a business that you're running. And you also happen to be the raw material that the business is producing your you you can both be an artist, but you also have to be
00:30:30
Speaker
a good business person and that means thinking through how do I make myself useful to editors, to publications? How can I get to do the things I want to do? I've always thought I'm an entrepreneur in order to enable myself to do the most original work I can do. I've never felt that being good at business compromised
00:30:59
Speaker
my the art of my writing. It's kind of the opposite. It's that I want to be a really good business person so that I can get myself in a position to do exactly what I want to do with my writing. And that just means figuring it out. I'm not sure that I've got all the the
00:31:23
Speaker
tips of the trade, I do think that you've got to think, you know, if you think you're just going to sit and write your beautiful work and someone's going to discover you, I think you're probably wrong. It would be dreamy and wonderful, but it doesn't make sense. Also, I have to say, I think if you're not a little bit bold and a little bit enterprising,
00:31:51
Speaker
I would be surprised if you were that good of a reporter. It seems to me that being smart about the way you function as a business is very much the same kind of instincts that would make you good at reporting. How do you get things done? How do you approach people? How do you gain trust?
00:32:20
Speaker
remain kind of organized so that you figure out how to solve a puzzle. Well, that phrase, that set of phrases that I just said, could apply both to advancing your career or writing a story. They're the same thing. If you think about it, how do I find, how do I make contact with an editor at The New Yorker?
00:32:49
Speaker
Well, if you were writing a story about someone, how would you contact them? How would you introduce yourself? How would you gain their trust? It's really the same thing. So, you know, not everybody is as bold and outgoing and I'm reluctant to use the word aggressive because that sounds obnoxious, but
00:33:19
Speaker
There are people who report by being quieter and more subtle and low key, but they also figure it out. They figure out how to approach people. It may not be making the cold call and just showing up on a doorstep. It may be figuring out who they know, who knows someone, who knows someone who can make an introduction.
00:33:48
Speaker
I think that being a writer means the same things as approaching the business of being a writer. You use those same tools and that same sense of enterprise. Like, I really want to meet someone at The New Yorker. Yeah, some of it comes through luck, but all right, if it's not going to happen through luck, how can you make luck?
00:34:17
Speaker
How can you figure that out? And that to me is really important. It's a great skill for a writer and it's an essential skill if you want to make a living as a writer.
00:34:32
Speaker
it seems like if you had a three-circle venn diagram it would be like supreme focus ambition along with patients and if you're able to sort of get to that sweet spot you know you you might you should be able to to crack into where you want to crack into but you know some some people want it instantly others you know you might have to work your slowly work your way up a sort of chain
00:34:57
Speaker
of command but you do have to cultivate a sense of patience but also with that singular focus in mind. I agree and I think you need to know what it is that you want and you know I look at a lot of things that have happened to me professionally that have been incredibly fortunate.
Learning, Luck, and Navigating Journalism's Challenges
00:35:18
Speaker
I mean that call from Rolling Stone for instance and a few chance encounters that turned out to be
00:35:27
Speaker
really valuable. But then I think, well, let me think a second here. Is it truly like a meteorite fell on my head or is it that I got in a position to make lucky things possible?
00:35:48
Speaker
I would say that that's more true. I mean, I've had a lot of great fortune, but I positioned myself for the good fortune to happen. Also, I took advantage of it. And I mean, for instance, I was just recently in residence at a workshop for narrative nonfiction.
00:36:19
Speaker
there were eight writers there. I was there more as a, as a visitor. And people wrote really terrific pieces. Interestingly, only one of them approached me and said, asked me in a very polite and not obnoxious way, if there were any way that I could recommend for her to approach the New Yorker.
00:36:48
Speaker
Now, there are many people who not everybody there necessarily would have to have the New Yorkers their ultimate goal. Some people might have just thought, oh, that's really rude and I'm not going to do it. It wasn't, you know, this woman approached me. It wasn't rude at all. And it was sensible. She has a chance to say, listen, you've heard part of my piece. Would you be willing if this isn't an imposition to help me
00:37:18
Speaker
approach the New Yorker. And frankly, I thought good for her. I mean, this is an opportunity and she's taking advantage of it. And I could have said, no, sorry, I don't do that. Instead, I said, send me your piece and let me take a look at it. This is not by way of saying I want everyone in the world to send me their piece. It's a way of saying that
00:37:46
Speaker
I really respected her for taking the initiative and thinking, look, this is a chance and maybe I'll get shut down, but I should try it. And for all I know, I mean, she just sent the piece to me. I may not like it or I may say, Hey, this is terrific. Let me introduce you to my editor. So that's the way it works. That's the kind of business it is. It relies on personal connection and, and merit, I think,
00:38:16
Speaker
If the piece isn't good, it doesn't matter that she is enterprising. If the piece is good and she was enterprising and approached me, bingo.
00:38:29
Speaker
yeah you had said that something in uh... when in uh... creative non-fiction interview with lee gook and that you're astonished by a lack of ambition and and savvy about going about cultivating a writing career in that what that woman illustrated by coming up to you is a little bit of that i mean that what was the worst thing you could have said was like was no but at least she took that shot
00:38:54
Speaker
And that's some of that ambition and a little savvy. I mean, she was probably thinking, all right, I'm going to approach her with some tact. But if this goes well, wow, I might have a big foot in the door. Right. And you're right. The worst thing that could have happened is I could have said, that's really rude. No. But I can't imagine.
00:39:23
Speaker
to be honest, I can't imagine that anybody in my position would be offended or shocked or, you know, I mean, I was there, it was a writing workshop. It's not like she approached me while I was sitting and having a beer on vacation with my family and stuck her story under my nose. It was completely appropriate to the moment
00:39:53
Speaker
And the worst thing would have been for me to say, hey, look, I'm sorry. I don't feel comfortable funneling things to the magazine. So what's the harm in that? I mean, she was incredibly polite and it was absolutely appropriate to ask. And certainly if she worried that everyone there had come
00:40:22
Speaker
and done the same thing. Well, even so, I'm a grown up and if I was offended or annoyed by it, I would have been able to handle it. And I would have just said, hey, sorry, everybody's asked me and I just can't do it. So you have to, of course, be respectful and tactful and appreciative of not putting people on the spot, but
00:40:52
Speaker
Certainly, I mean, I'm not an editor. If someone is an editor, you should go on the assumption that they are always looking for good writers and that you're not that, you know, that's part of their job is to look for writers and good writing. So, I mean, with me, it's a little bit different because that's not really what I do, but it makes perfect sense.
00:41:22
Speaker
And, you know, if I see some work that I think is great, I'd love to pass it along to the magazine. When I was speaking with Bronwyn Dickey, who wrote the great book, Pitbull, Battle of American Icon, I told her I was going to be speaking with you. I was like, oh, what? Because she had brought you up when she was talking about, I was asking her about research and when she knew she was done because she did so much research, you know, something you're very familiar with. And she said, yeah.
00:41:51
Speaker
Yeah, she's like, I take the tact of what Susan Arlene says when I knew when I was done when I saw myself coming the other way. That's inspiring to hear that she had registered that notion from me because it's a weird thing and people ask it all the time because the fact is that
00:42:19
Speaker
in a way you're never done. I mean, there's no moment at which you've perfected every bit of reporting. So there has to be some way of thinking, I've got enough. Yeah. Yeah. And she wanted me to extend Stentee she loves. She said, I love hearing stories about things that did not go well. You know, stories killed, abandoned subjects, jerk sources, big mistakes, hard lessons.
00:42:48
Speaker
And I wonder I would extend that to you like what were some of those things and stories that you were reporting that didn't go well those stories killed abandoned subjects You know just dealing with jerks and the lessons that you've learned over the course of your reporting in your career It is just the nature of the beast that this is a very
00:43:14
Speaker
kind of ramshackle profession that is held together with spit and glue and band aids occasionally. There are always going to be moments where stories feel like they're on the brink of falling apart or people are difficult or they won't speak to you or you simply can't figure your way out of a problem with the piece
00:43:45
Speaker
It's balance. Those things are exactly what they are. They're unpleasant and disappointing and discouraging and they don't go away. They're just balanced by the mirror opposite. The person who you call with dread, assuming that they're not going to talk to you or be hostile and instead
00:44:15
Speaker
they're just happy to talk and are far more open than you imagined and funny and articulate stories that bloom because there's just so much more than you even imagined that you discover that the story is really multidimensional and complex and fascinating. You just have to
00:44:44
Speaker
keep rolling with it. And I haven't had that many people that I've interviewed who were jerks. I've had more of the experience later of people being critical of a piece that I'd done and having to just take a deep breath and figure, well, that's the nature of being a writer. Not everybody's gonna love everything.
00:45:15
Speaker
I have, as I said, I've, I've had a lot of story ideas that were half baked and then I just abandoned them, um, out of, uh, sort of feeling that they were not going to be quite what I had hoped. Usually that's something where it either happens in my head or I do the initial phone call and hang up and just think, uh, I,
00:45:42
Speaker
I can look down the road a month from now and feel like I'll be really unhappy doing this story. So get out now.
00:45:53
Speaker
I remember a few years ago, it was the Power of Narrative Conference in Boston at BU, and you gave a nice wonderful keynote or speech, and it was after a session where things got pretty grim and bleak. It was a lot of working reporters and writers out there just
00:46:18
Speaker
Grinding and everyone the the attitude and tone of the room was like it was like I said it was kind of grim and You are tasked I think then we broke for lunch or something and then you came back and I think you were tasked with Picking everybody up and I don't know if you recall that but all but if you recall that like what was it what was your mission when you came back to remind people why they were there and
00:46:46
Speaker
I don't remember exactly the exchange, but this was the conference, if I remember correctly, took place at a really dark moment in the journalism world where papers were closing left and right and magazines were shedding staff and it just felt like free fall. I always think about
00:47:13
Speaker
the most telling sign of that period was that there was a Twitter account called The Media is Dying. And every day just posted statistics on what newspaper had laid off, how many people. And it was awful. You know, I wasn't employed in a way where I would be laid off because I didn't, I don't have a job in those terms.
00:47:40
Speaker
But publishers were merging and book contracts were being canceled. It was terrible. And there's no way around it. There's been a contraction in the business of publishing that it's been at the same time easier than ever to get published, harder than ever to get paid for it. There are going to be a certain number of people who
00:48:11
Speaker
in a more robust moment in the journalism world might have a staff job somewhere or might have a successful freelance career that will no longer be doing it. They will have left to do something else, marketing or PR or go back to school and become an anesthesiologist, whatever.
00:48:41
Speaker
Um, that, you know, there, again, I don't have numbers for this, but my guess is that there are far fewer people who have staff jobs at newspapers, um, or magazines now. So it's a grim thing, but number one, if you've hung in there, I think it's important to take a deep breath.
00:49:12
Speaker
and turn your attention away a little bit from, I mean, first of all, I think we've seen that level out. I think the worst of it has passed and it's kind of been a big shake out. But if you're choosing to stay in this line of work and if you're lucky enough to be making a living at doing it, you really have to,
00:49:42
Speaker
I think you need to not dwell on that grimness. And I don't think it's, I'm not a Pollyanna. I don't think just writing a great story is enough and you'll be found, you know, a laser beam will seek you out and you'll be given lots of money. But books are still being published. Magazines are still being published. Newspapers are still being published. There is still
00:50:13
Speaker
a desire for stories and a willingness, maybe not as much as we'd like, but there is still a willingness to pay for those good stories. And it's maybe more than ever something that you're very fortunate to do if you do it for your living. It's a
00:50:41
Speaker
It's a kind of wonderful thing to be able to decide you want to learn about something and then write about it and see it published.
The Joy and Process of Writing
00:50:52
Speaker
I do not discount the fact that it is not easy to figure out how to make this work financially.
00:51:06
Speaker
I used to think, well, if you're good, it'll work. You'll, it'll just fall into place for you. I think it's a little harder now, but this is the world we live in. So you just have to kind of dive in and think, all right, I've got to make this work and figure it out. And because I love what I do and it's important to me to do it and I feel
00:51:32
Speaker
I feel like I should do this and I need to do it. When you're in writer mode, whether it's book or a long magazine story, what does your routine typically look like as you're approaching the work itself?
00:51:54
Speaker
It really depends on whether I'm in the reporting or the writing phase. It's like living two totally different lives. When I begin a new piece or a new book, I feel like a little bit like I've been blindfolded and dropped into a foreign territory with no map and I have to use my
00:52:21
Speaker
best Girl Scout skills to figure out, okay, where am I? Who knows? Who can I talk to who can tell me where I am? Where do I find the roadmap? What am I looking for? I mean, what is this? So my typical day can involve going to a library, making phone calls. It's sort of all over the place.
00:52:45
Speaker
just in the beginning. And then as I begin to know a little bit more, I tend to have tasks that I assign myself as I begin knowing what I'm trying to figure out. So the days can be a lot of time out, depending on where the material is that I'm looking for. When it comes to writing,
00:53:14
Speaker
It's a completely solitary undertaking. I take notes by hand, so there's a long stretch of time where I'm typing notes and then
00:53:31
Speaker
reviewing the type notes and correcting or rather highlighting the things that I begin to see as being important. So there's lots of paper shuffling and moving material around and looking at it and reading it again. And I do all my reporting before I do my writing. So it's the first time that I'll be sitting down and actually starting to
00:54:01
Speaker
put my fingers on my keyboard. What part of that process do you feel most alive and most engaged? Wow, that's a good question. It's so different because when I'm reporting, there are lots of times when I feel just totally lost. I don't know what I'm looking for. So there's a
00:54:29
Speaker
It's a strange feeling. It's almost like rummaging through a refrigerator when you're hungry, but you don't really know what you feel like eating. And it's like there's lots of stuff there, but you're just not really sure what you're even looking for. So it can be very stimulating and, you know, kind of like a survival game. It can also be,
00:54:57
Speaker
a little bit numbing. I mean, there are times where I wake up and think, I don't even really know what I should be doing today to try to advance this story. But it also can be incredibly fun when you find archives or you call people who are relevant to the story or I'm traveling to the place that I'm writing about. It's really thrilling.
00:55:26
Speaker
writing can have its thrilling moments too. If I'm in a groove and things are rolling easily off my tongue, I'm really excited. It's a fantastic feeling.
00:55:42
Speaker
And with regards to your work and where you are in your career, what still excites you and brings you back to the notebook and then back to the computer to then shape something from all that information gathering? What still resonates with you and what keeps you going and hungry?
00:56:06
Speaker
Each story to me is a whole new challenge. And the idea that having done lots of stories or written a number of books makes it less of a challenge is just not true. If I wrote about the same subject repeatedly, maybe that would be different. But each story starts me off from zero.
00:56:37
Speaker
And the process of sort of clawing my way from zero to something is it never stops being exciting. I think that the sheer experience of learning something new remains just as exciting to me now as it did the day I began.
00:57:04
Speaker
I'm no longer as, I don't have as many specific like professional goals. I'm not writing now thinking this'll be helpful for me to get a job at Place X. So these don't feel like resume builders.
00:57:35
Speaker
And I don't think I ever wrote anything as a resume builder, but I was certainly, uh, at earlier points in my career, it, it felt like I was aiming toward some acknowledgments that have mostly come like working at the New Yorker or having books that got good reviews or sold well, you know, the,
00:58:03
Speaker
those kind of goals while each new piece is its own challenge and you hope that people will care about it and like it and and frankly every book is its own challenge because you think well just because I sold lots of copies of my of this other book doesn't mean this one's gonna be successful so each book
00:58:31
Speaker
you're starting from zero for sure. And in fact, sometimes you're starting from less than zero because you have your own track record to be competing with. Do I have career ambitions specifically that I haven't achieved or that I think about? Not so much.
00:59:02
Speaker
Not that I can think of because I feel really, you know, I love writing for The New Yorker and there's no place that I'd rather write for. So I don't fantasize about, you know, being plucked by some other publication. It's just wanting each piece or each book to be as good as it can be. And that's a huge challenge.
00:59:33
Speaker
And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you this, and I'll let you get out of here since you've been so generous with your time, and I really deeply appreciate that. Oh, my pleasure. Great. So what was that moment like when you did get that first assignment from The New Yorker, sort of like a goal and a dream realized? And what changed, and maybe what didn't change, too?
01:00:02
Speaker
I would have to say it was probably the single most exciting moment of my work life ever. You know, even more than seeing, well, I would say seeing my first book was pretty thrilling, but getting that first assignment from The New Yorker, seeing it
01:00:25
Speaker
set in the New Yorker typeface and getting my galleys, I just couldn't believe it. It was really, it was just enormously exciting. I mean, I just couldn't believe it. It felt that astonishing to me. And frankly, it still is absolutely thrilling. I still feel a kind of pinch me moment
01:00:55
Speaker
Each time I have a story in the magazine, it doesn't, I mean, it'll, it'll never be the, I mean, I was literally like fainting with excitement when I had my first talk of the town piece. And when I had my first byline, because when I wrote talk of the town in the beginning, it was when there were no bylines on talk, but still it didn't matter. I didn't even care.
01:01:21
Speaker
It was just seeing something I had written in the magazine was astonishing. And I'm still amazed and excited about it. It hasn't changed. I still consider it just one of the most gratifying, absolutely
01:01:49
Speaker
marvelous things that I could ever have imagined for myself and for which I'm enormously grateful and feel like the thrill will never go away.
01:02:07
Speaker
Well, Susan, like I said, thank you so much for carving the time out to speak with me. This has been a thrill to get to have, a thrill and a privilege to be able to have this time with you and to talk shop. So thanks again for doing this. And like I said, it was a thrill. Thank you so much.
01:02:25
Speaker
Well, thank you. I really enjoyed it so much. I'm so glad we were able to do it. And I like Talking Shop. It's actually a real pleasure for me, and especially because we all work in these little
01:02:42
Speaker
individual silos and there's a good feeling of saying, you know, what's this like this crazy thing we're all doing? And do you have any tips that I can use and any tips I can give you that I've found useful? There's something very, it's my communitarian spirit, I guess. I just like feeling that this is a shared experience, even though it is very individual.
01:03:10
Speaker
I've had a smile on my face this entire hour we've been talking, and I suspect everyone else listening will feel similarly. So this has been wonderful, and your communitarian gift to everyone will be felt for sure.