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Episode 33—Melissa Chadburn Shares All Her Secrets!
127 Plays8 years ago
Author Melissa Chadburn talks writing and her incredible piece of work "The Readiness Assessment."
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Transcript
Introduction and Housekeeping
00:00:00
Speaker
I'm gonna give you all my secrets right now. Oh, yes. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold the phone. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. That's Melissa Chadburn, but we'll get to her in a moment. First, some housekeeping while I have your undivided attention. This is not a paid advertisement.
00:00:25
Speaker
Some of you may or may not subscribe to the Lit Journal Creative Nonfiction. I know I do. I am proud to announce that I have an essay in the current winter issue, number 62, a themed issue on joy, unexpected brightness, and dark times. My essay is titled, get ready for it, the gentleman's guide to arousal-free slow dancing. That's right. We're going back to middle school for my eighth grade dinner dance.
00:00:55
Speaker
But it's not just mine you should be thrilled to read. There's Brian Doyle, Lee Gutkind, Angela Palm, Leah Kaminsky, Laura Hagen, and many, many more gracing this issue. So buy it up and read our shit. Okay, back to the show.
Episode Introduction: Melissa Chadburn and Foster Care
00:01:15
Speaker
It's episode 33 of Hashtag CNF. You know, I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara. Thank you for listening.
00:01:22
Speaker
My guest is Melissa Chadburn, at Melissa Chadburn on Twitter, an LA-based writer who was the second runner-up in Proximity Magazine's inaugural narrative journalism prize in the fall of 2016. The title of the piece is The Readiness Assessment, link in the show notes, and details the state of foster care in and around Los Angeles. Melissa lived through it herself, so the essay is wrought with authority.
00:01:50
Speaker
So without further ado, let's just get to it. Here's Melissa Chadburn. Thank you. Very nice.
Melissa's Ideal Workday
00:02:03
Speaker
So how do you define a successful day of work for you? Wow, that's a really good question. Because it's like, I don't
00:02:18
Speaker
I guess words on the page is nice, but you can have just like a bunch of crap words on the page. I think it's like this internal compass. I often have this idea of what a successful day would look like for me when I get up. And that includes some sort of way to get the blood moving, some running or walking. And then, and then
00:02:46
Speaker
uh, some listening or reading and then some writing. Um, and then for whatever reason, I might just like abandon myself and my plans and throw all those out the wayside. Like I couldn't possibly allow myself to do those things. So, um, but you know, every now and again, the image in my mind aligns with what I actually do. And, and that I think is a successful working day for me. So yesterday, for example, I've been struggling with this,
00:03:17
Speaker
scene that I'm working on and my novel, a good part of my novel takes place in Canada, in Portland, Canada. And, you know, living in Los Angeles, it's hard to capture that sort of swampy coldness. And I got in my car and I went up the, I drove like 20 minutes up the Angeles Crest Highway and I found myself in this diner.
00:03:46
Speaker
And there was all this snow there. And it was magical. And I might have just written like, actually, I probably just wrote like a thousand words, but it was a successful writing day for me just because I was able to capture what I wanted to on the page and pursue what I wanted to.
Morning Routine and Journaling
00:04:07
Speaker
Right. And I'm huge on morning routines and how people jumpstart their mind and kind of get that stuff going. And I wonder, how do you start your day? Like right from the moment you wake up and how do you sort of warm up, warm up the mind and even the body? Yeah. I, I have a,
00:04:30
Speaker
Hopefully if it works out like what I like to do and what I normally try to do is I get up and I with my coffee every morning I do a daily journal because most of my writing is observing and so every morning I list seven things I saw the day before
00:04:58
Speaker
seven things I did the day before I write one thing that I overheard somebody say and I draw something that I saw and that's like
00:05:07
Speaker
usually so and when you start doing it you realize like oh man I don't see anything I don't do anything like you can't like list seven television shows you watched or you know or you can but you feel kind of like lame about it and so I in a way it sort of encourages me to be observant and then I also I do try to notice you know some of the more minor things and
00:05:36
Speaker
And clocking them the following day actually really helps my memory. That's pretty cool because that gives you a great catalog of everything that's going on. I suspect that if you want to go back and maybe write about something or just want to know what you did on a certain day, it just really kind of brings that day to the forefront. You can really remember it vividly even after some time has passed. So that's a really cool exercise.
00:06:07
Speaker
Yeah, and then also sometimes you can string them together and realize, and that is its own piece. If I didn't take out the trash, I wouldn't have seen that dead bird.
00:06:23
Speaker
So how do you stay focused on your work?
Writing Discipline and Gender Equity
00:06:27
Speaker
It's easy as you know like as artists sometimes it can be easy to just go get distracted and You just find go into corners that you that aren't productive And I wonder how you choose to stay what practices you employ to kind of stay on track man well deadlines What it is I
00:06:52
Speaker
And also, I treat it, you know, it's my job, so I treat it as such. You know, if I want to eat, I have to write. But I also do, I do have to reconcile that I have a lot, I often have a lot of ideas. And I often, and it's, and especially when you're writing, when I'm writing nonfiction, or even doing a piece of investigative journalism,
00:07:21
Speaker
Or oftentimes, I genre jump or do something that's sort of like a blend of the two. So when you're doing research, it's really easy to fall down multiple rabbit holes. And it's a balance between also guarding my heart about being super excited about an assignment or a story.
00:07:47
Speaker
Because it's possible that I won't be able to pursue it and then also editing and paring back my ideas because sometimes I expect I want like one particular piece to tell all the stories or I try to switch, scrunch everything in one thing and I have to realize like, oh, this is the, you know, I will write again. I have to put it all in one piece.
00:08:13
Speaker
I'm really lucky I have a crew of community that I work with. Some friends started this organization called Women Who Submit, encouraging women to submit their work for publication. And we have submission parties where we come together and we set submission goals.
00:08:36
Speaker
and hit send together. And so that helps. And we try to just like make it fun and like every time somebody hits send, we clap and we encourage them. And it kind of makes me want to do that for everything that might be feel like a little bit of a drag, like have fill paying parties and you know, but so that helps me stay on track. I also share work with people to make sure that
00:09:04
Speaker
to get some feedback and get other eyes on it before I pitch it. Why is it important to submit work and ship it? Oh, yeah. That's most of the thing. I mean, it's funny. I often hear from, and the reason why you started Women Who Submit was to
00:09:32
Speaker
address the inequity in publishing amongst the gender inequity in publishing specifically. And I often hear from people, you know, hey, can you help me get my word to submit it? Or even as an editor, I often see work and
00:09:52
Speaker
And it's not so much that women aren't necessarily submitting the first time, but they're not resubmitting. So if an editor says, hey, we really like this, but it's not a perfect fit, but send something else, I don't always get people sending something else. Most often with women. And so, and people ask me for advice all the time on how to get their work published. And then when I suggest that they submit, they're like, oh,
00:10:21
Speaker
I can never do that. How is it going to get published? I'll never submit it. I do think that you need to balance your time between being a writer and being a spectator and being generative and submitting your work for publication, but I definitely think it should be at least 20% of my practice.
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Speaker
So when people come to you for advice, what do you tell them? Yeah, well, I mean, my own publishing story was born out of, I just remember very clearly, I worked for a long time in labor and I organized, I was working organizing, unorganized industries or working with representing the
Submission Strategies from Labor Movement
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Speaker
rights of
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Speaker
of workers in low-wage industries. At one point in time, I was staying at an extended stay in America in Santa Rosa, California. It was a really shady place. There were a lot of people that were living in the extended stay in America as their primary residence. Luckily, I got to be my dog with me, but I got dumped over the phone.
00:11:46
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I just decided.
00:11:49
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I'm no longer just a woman living in this potent town in an extended state of America. I am officially on a writer's retreat. And I decided to take everything I learned from organizing a work site and apply it to my submission protocol. So instead of doing a scatter shot approach, meaning sending one story here and one story there, I took one story and I submitted it to 100 different publications.
00:12:19
Speaker
that I knew that I was familiar with, you know, and then I end up, you know, getting published. So I just decided to take what I knew about organizing a workplace to how to get my work out there in the world. And then I learned that if I refer to an editor by name and if I refer to a specific
00:12:46
Speaker
piece that resonated with me that increased my response, my personal response by like a great deal. And so that's usually what I encourage people to do is to be strategic about their submission process.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's incredibly industrious, that approach you had. I think when people think that they, either they're submitting query letters or actual stories, they think they're submitting to a lot of places, but in reality, they are completely not. And like you said, you submitted a story to a hundred places instead of, say, like five. And the people who might submit to five wonder why a piece of work isn't landing, but the fact of the matter is,
00:13:33
Speaker
a tree makes a lot of seeds with only a couple taking root. So it's like you've got to spread the love in a lot of ways in order to see your work in print or online or something. So how did you figure that you needed to really be aggressive in terms of that? Well, I realized it's a numbers game. And what I was doing was I was sending one
00:14:02
Speaker
five different stories to maybe five different magazines or journals, as opposed to the same story across the board.
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Speaker
I also developed a submission chart. It's not for everybody, but I use the tiered system. I set goals for myself each year. I want to break into a different tier. I'm incredibly strategic now on how I submit work. How do you define a tier?
00:14:38
Speaker
What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, it's not as clean as it used to be because it used to be based on readership. And since online magazines are available, it's, you know, that changes. And I based the readership on the CLMP listing. But so but but basically, you know, there are your tier zero, which are like the game changers that change your career. And then there's tier one,
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Speaker
And it's not like a hard and fast, but I based it on former tier ratings and leadership, and sometimes it's those that end up getting prizes the most or, you know. So what does C-O-N-P mean? It's like, I don't remember what it stands for, but it's basically a registry of literary journals.
00:15:37
Speaker
So what is your, what has been your proudest, uh, proudest moment so far in your, in your publishing career?
Proud Achievements and Career Reflections
00:15:46
Speaker
Oh man. That is so tough. I mean, I've been, it's so tough, but it's a really good question to think of now in the beginning of the year, because it's like, um, I've been really fortunate and, um,
00:16:07
Speaker
And I also am always aware of where I'm falling short. Like that ego is there all the time. But, um, but, uh, I, I mean, I get to work today with somebody who I have always admired and, um, that has been really exciting. Like I, so,
00:16:34
Speaker
I had studied the work of Barbara Ehrenreich for a long time, and I was a real fan of her mind and her capacity to do the work she does. I mean, she used to... So basically, Barbara Ehrenreich used to have to write about hosiery and makeup for money, and then
00:16:58
Speaker
She got this assignment for Harbors on tipped workers, and that ended up becoming this book called Nickel Been Dined. And it was about the, she lived as a tipped worker for some time and wrote about it. And it was a really influential book. And so I, I pitched her because she started this project called the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which,
00:17:27
Speaker
was a non-profit journalism effort to pay writers, emerging journalists, to write about issues of economic hardship. And she was also finding that sometimes these journalists, they, you know, helicopter out these journalists to write about issues of whether it be
00:17:50
Speaker
workers' struggles or any other type of economic hardship, as opposed to the people that are experiencing it. So she approached me to write a piece, and I did, and it was about nonprofits pushing resilience upon poverty in impoverished neighborhoods and communities.
00:18:15
Speaker
And it did really well. And so they ended up giving me a fellowship and hiring me as their community editor. So now I get to work with her on a consistent basis. And so that's a really exciting thing. And then I found the other day I found something that I had written when I was a child. I don't have very many of the things that I wrote when I was a child because
00:18:43
Speaker
As my piece in proximity says, I grew up in foster care. When I was a kid, I used to write all these fake books. I would take paper and draw lines on them and write these books. I would draw a cover and a little copyright symbol. I found the bio of one of my books that I wrote.
00:19:13
Speaker
And they were like, of course, they're very complicated narratives about Alyssa Milano and I being best friends and me going to a Madonna concert. But I found the bio and it was like, I'm a young girl with divorced parents and I hope to be famous one day. That's what I had written.
00:19:40
Speaker
And I got to take that fake bio and send it to my fancy real agent this last year when they sold my book. And so that was really exciting. So every day is, I think, a dream come true. And I think in lots of respects,
00:20:05
Speaker
Like, I mean, for me, someone like me, you know, growing up for me, like, uh, I thought, I thought vacuum cleaners were like luxury items. You know, we, we always had to sweep the carpet. And so, um, you know, to be able to be a writer, like the people where I come from didn't, weren't, you know, authors, they weren't published writers. Um, so be able to do that for my,
00:20:34
Speaker
career, my job, and to be able to teach. It's like this twin feeling of one, you know, I'm incredibly lucky. And then this other feeling of like, well, it's actually not a luxury, you know, because these are my weapons of choice. And that's how I've survived for so long. And then there's also this thing of like, you know, I'm, I'm, because of the way I grew up, I'm prepared for struggle and strife, but it's, I was never prepared for like having my
00:21:02
Speaker
dreams come true. I mean, that is like the most awkward feeling in the world. When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Always. Always. I mean, I've always written, like I said, I used to write, like, I would write Ramona Quimby sequels or, you know, I would. And so I always did. And then I also had to, I was very precocious reader. And so when I was in school,
00:21:30
Speaker
we would have to do book reports and I was reading like Jackie Collins novels and I couldn't possibly do a book report on you know Hollywood wives or the bitch or something so I did fake I would write fake book reports about fake books that I made up like Susie wins the big race or something a little bit more appropriate and um so I always wanted to be a writer
00:21:57
Speaker
And how is your definition of what it means to be successful changed over the last 10 to 15 years?
Defining Success and Personal Growth
00:22:05
Speaker
I think, you know, I guess, yeah, because well, I know that I, I always change, like I said, I have a tiered submission process. So that is a very strategic way for me to look at success too, in terms of like, Oh, I broke into another tiered journal or something like that. So that's,
00:22:26
Speaker
one way for success to look. But you know, I'm also like incredibly ambitious. And so at one point, I think I told my friend, being a writer is like, you're always in the hallway. So you're always you know, there used to be like this, sometimes we have this saying like,
00:22:51
Speaker
Like when one door closes, another window opens, but being in the hallway sucks. But also like when you're a writer, you're always in the hallway except, you know, some of the hallways are nicer than others. Some of the doors are nicer than others. Like, you know, you can open a door and you're in a fancier hallway than you were before. But like that, I just need to like settle in and accept like my whole career. I'm going to be in one hallway or another, you know, um, I,
00:23:19
Speaker
had my first book deal, but perhaps I would have wanted to have a better advance. Now we have to figure out what the sales are gonna look like. And so if those sales on your first book aren't so hot, then you're gonna be worried about getting your second book deal or whatever. So there's always gonna be that one thing or another to strive for. You're always gonna be in one hallway or another.
00:23:49
Speaker
How do you manage the things that can be toxic to writers is often like comparing yourself to somebody else. And that can be someone got access to this publisher or had a better advance or has more readers. I mean, the list goes on and on. So I wonder how do you stay focused and run your own race? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm really lucky because my background
00:24:19
Speaker
is like I said, in organizing workers and working within the labor movement. And so I'm very conscious of this thing of like, my whole, the way I approach things is like, I'm not like, man, how the fuck did he get that thing? And I didn't get that thing. I'm like, Oh, if he could get that thing, then I could possibly get that thing. Like it opens up a possibility. And I am always sort of, I am competing against myself in the past, as opposed to other people.
00:24:50
Speaker
So I am, by running my own race, I guess, I mean, I am competing against myself. I mean, but sure, it's tempting though to like look to see what's going on on the other side of the street. And I also, I do, you know, I did have to learn how to negotiate too. I mean, in terms of pay and things like that, like I had to, I've had to tell people like, hey, you know,
00:25:19
Speaker
I understand if you don't have that much money, but don't let me find out that other people are getting paid more than I am. I've had to ask people if they could do better when they've given me job offers before. Again, I'm always trying to set goals for myself and compete against myself.
00:25:43
Speaker
So what other artistic media do you consume to help inform the writing you do? I'm a big fan of being a witness. So I don't think it's necessarily artistic media, but I consume a lot of data. So that sounds like the least sexy thing to look at.
00:26:10
Speaker
really interesting and there's a reason why people are so protective of data and there's a reason why why it's a lot of people's you know their main commodity I mean that's that's their their goal is the data so I look at a lot of data I mean I I mean for example right now I'm I'm working on the piece on child fatalities within Los Angeles of
00:26:40
Speaker
kids that have been interfaced with the child welfare system. So I'm looking at a lot of coroner's reports and stuff like that. How do you go about obtaining that kind of information? I have to file requests. Like freedom of information.
00:27:03
Speaker
Well, for L.A., it's local. So in California, there's a law called SB39, meaning if there was a fatality and it was by the hands of their primary caretaker and there was DCFS involvement, then I'm privy to that information. So I have to just know the law and quote it, basically. So what writers have influenced your style?
00:27:27
Speaker
Well, I'm a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates. I would say Joyce Carol Oates. I would say I've heard Sapphire. And then, so I think they've been big influences. Other people, like on the nonfiction side, I'm gonna mess up his name.
00:27:57
Speaker
I don't know if it's James Agee. I always say Aggie, but everybody. I think you're at Agee. It's Agee. Yeah, that's how I learned his name. Yeah. So at least we're on the same page. We'll say James Agee. So yeah, I would say James Agee. But man, I mean, I've been reading a lot lately.
Crafting 'The Readiness Assessment'
00:28:25
Speaker
I usually whatever, whoever I read last, like I've been reading a lot of our inductee boys work lately. So she's now influencing me while we talk.
00:28:37
Speaker
And I got to say the piece that you submitted and was a second runner up in the proximity contest, the readiness assessment, I was just so moved by the piece, the personal stuff and the other factual stuff, the data that you're alluding to that you're able to pull into it.
00:28:58
Speaker
Like a wonderful like heart-wrenching but just a very really moving story And I just want to like first just kind of like thank you for writing it in the first place so well done. Oh Thank you. I have to say that Maggie was such a cool editor to work with because You know a lot of people I've pitched that piece other places and a lot of people are like It's not one thing or another so they didn't know what to do with that
00:29:28
Speaker
you know, they're like, that's why it was so much fun. That whole contest was so much fun, because it was a genre bending contest. So it's like, I love being able to participate in something that was, you know, both factual and lyrical.
00:29:48
Speaker
And how did you come to that piece? How did you arrive at it and decide to write about it in the way you chose to? You're someone who writes fiction and nonfiction. So I think some people might choose to go in a different direction, but you choose to really take this one head on in the fact department. So I just want to know your thought process and how you arrived at the story the way you chose to write it.
00:30:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, with all nonfiction, you know, you kind of need something to hang your narrative on. And I do find I'm going to give you all my secrets right now. Oh, yes. But it's just because. But I do find documents a really interesting thing to hang your narrative on. Like, I think it's a really great way to hang your narrative on a great thing to hang your narrative on.
00:30:48
Speaker
And so, you know, like with the readiness assessment, I had this tool that I was interfacing with, like I said, data is my thing. And so I had this tool that I was looking at all the time and I thought, Oh, well, that that's an interesting thing. Like, cause also I find these tools to be pretty arbitrary. Usually whenever I come across a document of a survey or something like that, it's always like,
00:31:16
Speaker
a bullshit thing, quite frankly. And so I always like to try to turn it on myself and think of, well, how would I respond to these questions? And how would I have when I was in foster care? But I write it out in scene so that the reader can hopefully be engaged with it.
00:31:39
Speaker
And so let's kind of work through it a little bit, because I like breaking these kind of things down. And I wonder, how did you come to the structure of it? How you braided a few elements in it? And how did you work through it in your mind and then see it to fruition on the page? Yeah. Well, so the reader,
00:32:09
Speaker
Hey, have you ever read Ursula Le Guin's The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas? I have not. So Ursula Le Guin wrote a short story. It's really short. You can find it online in a PDF form. And it's called The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas. And she begins with this beautiful detail of this
00:32:36
Speaker
sort of utopia where everybody's happy and it's beautiful and they get to take non-addictive happiness drugs and play and listen to music. But the only way that this place, Omawas, can exist is that there is a child in the basement.
00:33:01
Speaker
And that is, people go down to the basement every now and again and taunt the child. And the child's so disformed and disfigured. And malnutrition, you can't tell if it's a boy or a girl or how old it is. And yet some people choose to walk away from Omelas. And so I learned, I first learned this story, Dorothy Allison taught me it actually. And I'll remember when she introduced it,
00:33:31
Speaker
She put on her headband and her glasses and she leered at us and she was like, yeah, I was a bunch of fucking romantics. You have to be a writer these days. But her point in the story, she had two points in the story that I, the way I interpret it is one, writers are the ones who walked away from Omelos. But also when it comes to nonfiction, you know, a lot of people, they want to
00:34:01
Speaker
that you've been to Omelas, but they want to see, you know, they want to see the grime and, like, the tough stuff, but they want to know that you've made it out of Omelas, too. So, oftentimes, I approach nonfiction in the retrospective voice, like, I'm okay, I'm clearly alive now, so I'm telling you what happened then.
00:34:28
Speaker
but I'm going to get into the nitty gritty, but I'll be able to like give you a touchstone that I'm okay now so that I've made it out of almost. Hmm. What was the most challenging part for you to write the readiness assessment? I mean, I think, uh, you know, like I said, I, I struggle with holding a lot of different ideas. And, um, what I hear a lot of times is,
00:34:54
Speaker
that what I'm writing is more than one essay. So, you know, like I said, a lot of the feedback I got was like, well, I'm having a hard time because this isn't like a reported piece, but this isn't just a lyrical essay. Like, what is this? You know, you're neither fish nor fowl. And I was just kind of like, it's its own thing. It's what it wants to be, you know. And I wouldn't be the first person that did this, though. I mean,
00:35:22
Speaker
Leslie Jamison in empathy exams did this and Eula Biss does this, you know, where you can use like a form and then go into a lyrical essay around the form. But, but that was probably the hardest thing is, is maybe like self-doubt entering in terms of like, maybe, maybe I am putting too many different ideas in that thing. But I will say that proximity did such a beautiful job of, of the way that they
00:35:51
Speaker
put actual portions of the assessment in there. I thought that that was so beautiful.
00:35:57
Speaker
Yeah, that was really neat at that layout, because it just stood out in such a way that it didn't let your eye get complacent. And it was cool to see some of these actual questions that are posed to the children and the kids that are unfortunately starting to age out of the foster care system. So that was really, really well done.
00:36:25
Speaker
What are some common misconceptions about the group homes and foster care and the kids living in them? For people who might not be as familiar with the subject as you are, for sure.
Reality of Foster Care and Personal Stories
00:36:39
Speaker
And I know reading your essay and your story was kind of like an introduction to it for me and eye-opening in a lot of ways. So I wonder what are some common misconceptions that you've encountered
00:36:51
Speaker
Well, the greatest misconception is that there's a big difference between being emancipated and aging out. I don't know what people think happened to foster kids when they emancipated. I mean, when I was in foster care, you would sometimes have a party and get $200 or a computer and a certificate, maybe some cake.
00:37:22
Speaker
But like, or, you know, and so like, these kids are graduating to poverty. And so I think that people saying like, oh, I was emancipated, like it's this huge thing. And really, for us, it was your birthday that got you emancipated. It wasn't like you went to you, you, you hit any like developmental markers or anything to get emancipated.
00:37:50
Speaker
And now that's more important than ever because they extended foster care to 21 and they're going to probably extend it to 25, which is two things. It's good and bad because like in LA County, if you are in extended foster care, that means that you are eligible to continue to receive some financial support. What that amounts to is $775 a month, which is like not enough to live off of.
00:38:19
Speaker
Los Angeles, there's no apartment I've ever heard of. So you have a lot of kids that are graduating again into poverty. Did you find that writing this story was harder or easier because it hits so close to the bone? I think easier. I like
00:38:47
Speaker
of being able to have access, emotional access to my stories. And lastly, where can people find you online? MelissaChadburn.com. They can find me and they can find me on Twitter and they can find me on Facebook. What's your Twitter handle? At MelissaChadburn.
00:39:10
Speaker
Very nice. Well, I'll let you get going. Thank you so much for carving out some time this afternoon, and really well done with the Readiness Assessment. It was such a great read, and I look forward to reading it again. And like I said, thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah, thank you. I'm sorry that I missed your earlier email. Oh, don't worry about it at all. It's not a problem. We got it done. Thank you. You're welcome. Continue success, and good luck.