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Episode 158: Naomi Gordon-Loebl—F*ck-Yeah! Essays
144 Plays6 years ago
"There's always gonna be people who are better than you and there's also people who're gonna be worse than you. That really can't be the reason you write or don't write," says Naomi Gordon-Loebl.
Naomi Gordon-Loebl, a journalist and essayist comes on the show to talk about her work.
Find her on Twitter @naomigordonloebl and visit her website at naomigordonloebl.com.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter by tagging the show @CNFPod and on Instagram @cnfpod.
Thanks to our sponsors Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction and Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two year, low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on campus residencies allow you
00:00:17
Speaker
to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni. Which has published 140 books and counting, you'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
00:00:39
Speaker
visit goucher.edu forward slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for nonfiction.
00:00:55
Speaker
CNF is also brought to you by Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Discover your story. Bay Path is the first and only university offer a no-residency, fully accredited MFA focusing exclusively on creative nonfiction. Attend full or part time? Port time? Part time. Part time.
00:01:17
Speaker
From anywhere in the world, in the Bay Path MFA you'll find small online classes and a dynamic and supportive community. You'll master the techniques of good writing from acclaimed authors and editors, learn about publishing and teaching through professional internships, and complete a master's thesis that will form the foundation for your memoir.
00:01:37
Speaker
or collection of personal essays. Special elective courses include contemporary women's stories, travel and food writing, family histories, spiritual writing, and an optional, week-long summer residency in Ireland, with guest writers including Andrea Debuse III, Anne Hood, Mia Gallagher, and others start dates in late
00:01:58
Speaker
August and January at this point. Find out more at baypath.edu slash MFA.
Introduction of Naomi Gordon-Lobel
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Speaker
Alright. Alright.
00:02:20
Speaker
Wow, wasn't that cool? That Aquaman came here and started the riff? You never know who's going to endorse the show. I have to use my pre-dawn voice since it is so early. The days are getting shorter. Life is fleeting. Hey CNFers, what's going on with you?
00:02:40
Speaker
This is CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I talk to badass writers, filmmakers, radio producers, and podcasters about the art and craft of telling true stories. Today's guest is Naomi Gordon-Lobel, but we'll get to her in a moment.
00:02:55
Speaker
You're gonna want to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, so you get this in your feed without having to dig around for it. You know what I mean? It'll be right there waiting for you like a loyal dog waiting for you to come home from work. This podcast tail wags when it sees you. It does. That's a fact.
00:03:14
Speaker
So you doing alright? Working on that thing, finish that thing, start something else. Getting overwhelmed by the sheer mass of crap you want to do but can't stay focused long enough to do it. I hear you man. Like I said before, Naomi Gordon-Lobel is here and she wrote this great essay a few months ago for the New York Times about getting the yips while playing baseball. And we talk about what the yips are if you don't know what the yips are.
00:03:40
Speaker
It ran in late March or so and came across my Twitter feed and it seemed really cool and reached out to her and I think we recorded this sometime in April. I'm running it now. I'm quickly burning through the interviews I got in the can over the last few months and now it's getting close to the time to hit the panic button. Also, you should know
00:04:03
Speaker
that we had some connection issues while recording this interview, so halfway through this the audio changes a bit. I'm sorry these things happen, but here we are. I'm going to read to you a bit of Naomi's bio from her website, nyomegordonlobal.com. You ready?
00:04:25
Speaker
Naomi Gordon-Lobel is a writer, educator, and fellow at Type Media Center. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Harper's The Nation, Complex, Hazlett, The Washington Spectator, The Toast, The Anthology, The Social Construction of
00:04:40
Speaker
deference or difference, difference in equality, and emerge, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from Lambda Literary Monson Arts in the Vermont
Naomi's Upbringing and Family Influence
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Studio Center. Before working in journalism, she spent five years as a teacher and youth development professional, helping people who had left school to complete their high school equivalency diplomas. She was born, raised, and still lives in Brooklyn.
00:05:08
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Pretty slick right follow her on Twitter at Naomi Gordon-Lobel and keep the conversation going man at CNF pod you can also tag me at Brendan O'Mara too and I will jump in the fire and Stay right where you are. This is episode 158. Well, let's kick it with Naomi Gordon-Lobel
00:05:42
Speaker
Oh yeah, sure. Well, so I grew up in Brooklyn. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I grew up in a pretty unconventional, I grew up in a communal house with my parents and my siblings and then a few adults who were not blood relatives, but my parents were like radical lefties who had been living in sort of a collective house in Brooklyn. And when they had kids, they decided to see how it would work to stick it out there.
00:06:11
Speaker
And we stayed there for 12 years. So I grew up in a house with a bunch of folks that were not just my parents, but also these other adults who were kind of like aunts and uncles to me. So I had like a real, a lot of people around me all the time, which was really, really a wonderful way to grow up. I grew up in downtown Brooklyn, like a couple blocks away from where Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Latham's novel takes place. It's actually like on the next block. And there's a lot of characters in that book who I,
00:06:40
Speaker
remember and recognize from the neighborhood. He's about maybe 20 years older than me or so. But yeah it was a pretty pretty special place to grow up I would say in Brooklyn. And as a kid what kind of a kid was I. First of all I was sort of I was obsessed with reading. I really even though I did learn to read pretty late actually I think it's funny like now I meet all my friends kids and they like
00:07:07
Speaker
They're like reading and they're three years old. And I remember being in first grade and sitting with my teacher and her, like, like literally struggling with the word the. So, so I learned to relate, but then once I started to read, I was very, very, very obsessed with reading. And I used to get in trouble for reading, um, in class, like at times when we weren't supposed to be reading, like I have this really specific memory of going to the bathroom with my book, like sneaking my book out of the classroom, like under my shirt.
00:07:34
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And then I'd look at my watch and be like, okay, how long can I stand in the bathroom stall and read before I like get in trouble and have to go back to class? I used to read under the table at dinner with my family. I was reading all the time. I really loved books and they were a real escape for me because, you know, I had a hard time in some ways as a kid, like I was both queer and really nerdy. And both of those things together is like, you know, now I can
00:08:02
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consider that those double blessings, but when I was a kid, they were definitely kind of double curses. And I was the kind of kid who like, I love to talk to teachers. I love to talk to adults in general. Um, I still love to talk to people all the time. And, um, but it was hard. Like I, I like during recess, I just wanted to talk to teachers and grownups and that doesn't make you very popular as a kid. So, so yeah, I, I had a conversation with my dad recently. I was, I was,
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asking him, I saw this guy with a toddler at a restaurant in Brooklyn and sitting down to a full meal, appetizer, entree, everything. And I was like, man, how do you have a full meal with a toddler? What do you even talk about? And I was asking my father about it. And he was like, Naomi, when you were a toddler, you wanted to carry on a two-hour conversation. So I think I've always been, I love to talk. I love words. I'm really verbal. I love having conversations. It's probably always been true of me.
00:09:01
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probably why I like to talk to people for my writing too. That's great. And so what did your parents do? My mom is a physical therapist. She works with kids now in the New York City school system. When I was a kid, she worked in a hospital. So she was like our in-house physical therapist, like for all of our soccer injuries and basketball injuries. My mom was always there.
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And my dad is an educator. When I was a kid, he was the teacher and director of an adult education program. So for adults who are learning to read and write. And it was like a really amazing community. My dad's students were really like at the center of his life in a lot of ways and were always around. And I spent a lot of time like visiting him there and seeing just like kind of how transformative
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learning can be and how the process of learning to read and write and thinking critically about our world is really such a tool of empowerment. It really
Literary Influences and Representation
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influenced me just in really significant ways. My dad's students were such powerful, strong people. They had so many stories and they were just really engaged in these beautiful processes of self-actualization.
00:10:21
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I could go on forever about education and I won't, but seeing my dad's work as a kid definitely had a big influence on me.
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So yeah, and then he eventually went on to work with people coming out of prison doing similar adult education work. Did you find, well let's see, I'll preface this by saying, I just watched the Fred Rogers documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor? Oh yeah. And it was just brilliant, of course. And it made me wonder, especially with his two sons, because Fred Rogers gave so much of himself to a lot of other children,
00:10:53
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Like the documentary doesn't quite answer and I'd love to ask the director this but I want to want to know if if maybe he he was just by the nature of his work he was giving the best of himself to these other kids and it made me wonder what he was able to ration off for his own kids.
00:11:12
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And similarly, when you were talking about your dad and how invested he is with all the adult students and that, I wonder, was he successfully able to ration his energy to give you what you needed at home so you still felt special? Oh yeah, definitely. I'm one of those people who's insanely blessed in terms of my family and my parents, and I sort of think that
00:11:41
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being born to the parents that I have is maybe one of the luckiest things that's ever happened to me. So, and I realized probably most people are not so lucky. So yeah, I know my dad really, I think he, he gave a lot of himself to us at home, but really like seeing his work in the world was such a, it was just such an, it set such a clear example for us and such a model. It was such a model for me in terms of like, you know, I, the way I wanted to be in the world, the way I wanted to be with my work.
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My dad is a person with a lot of integrity. I think he really, um, something that anybody would tell you about him is that he's really lives his life in line with his principles and his politics. And so, um, we really saw that like he, he was always like kind of, and not because he was trying to model for us, like, like he wasn't, it wasn't the sort of self-conscious, like I'm going to show you how to be in the world, but it's just like watching my dad be in the world taught me a lot about how I want it to be in the world. Uh, when I,
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This is a terrible story about me, but when I was a toddler, I think generally you asked what kind of kid I was, I was very, very, very headstrong, very stubborn, very opinionated, always wanted to do things myself. When I was little, my parents said that they had to leave extra time, a lot of extra time in the morning for me to leave the house because I wanted to tie my own shoes even though I didn't know how.
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Speaker
But I still insisted on doing it. So that's a little bit what I was like. So when I was like young enough to be in a car seat once we were in the car, me, my father and his student, who was a much older woman from the south, like a very kind of proper woman, elderly, for some reason in the backseat of the car, I just started saying penis, penis, like over and over again, like constantly just repeated, just shouting it.
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And you know, you can imagine this much of, must've been like incredibly humiliating for my father, um, who's a really respectful person, but you know, part of his principles as a parent was like, not about censoring us, not about shaming us, not about shaming us for using certain words or language, not about giving the idea that it's inappropriate to talk about sex or, or to talk about bodies. And so he's just quiet. They just didn't talk about it. Um, and I think that's a really good example of what I mean, like my dad.
00:14:04
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He wasn't going to act out of line with his principles in the moment in order to save himself some discomfort. He was really acting with integrity.
00:14:15
Speaker
I'm sure it was an uncomfortable moment for them and I don't remember it, thankfully, but. That's hilarious. So when you started to, when you started to learn to, when you learned to read, what were some of those books that were so arresting to you that, that you, like you said, you were able to just escape and really lean into? Oh man. When I was a kid, that's an interesting question. What did I read when I was a kid?
00:14:42
Speaker
I love the Hardy Boys. I read every single like Hardy Boys book that I could get my hands on. And of course, that's some gender crossing those happening or I shouldn't say that some gender crossing that that was I was expected I would have been expected I think by the sort of
00:15:00
Speaker
general culture to read Nancy Drew because Nancy Drew is the more the mysteries for girls. But I was totally uninterested in Nancy Drew or anything that was supposed to be for girls. I wanted everything that was supposed to be for boys. So I read the Hardy Boys. And you have to understand, like growing up in New York in the 90s, the Hardy Boys is like basically like fantasy or like sci-fi. It's like so far from my reality. But that's what I liked about it. I read a lot of Agatha Christie. I like adored her. Yeah, me too. I read a lot. I was growing up.
00:15:30
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Yeah, I actually still so my secret trick for long, long, long road trips is an Agatha Christie audiobook. It's like, I don't think anything it actually makes you excited to get back in the car because you're like, I have to find out what happens. They're, they're so fun to listen to in the car. I still do that. But yeah, so Agatha Christie, I read, you know, again, when I was younger, some of the books that really affected me, I think,
00:15:56
Speaker
I read a lot of those kind of classic books that are now kind of considered young adult, even though they maybe weren't written that way. So like sort of coming of Asian novels like Catcher in the Rye. And I also really, when I was a kid, yeah, I was really into all those books that took place in places that were very far away from Brooklyn. So like My Side of the Mountain and Where the Redfern Grows and all those kind of like
00:16:22
Speaker
like YA, like books that take place in the country with like mountain boys, which is really funny because I, none of that related to my life, but I guess that's why it was kind of escapist for me. Yeah. Kind of just got you out of your own geography. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess so. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially because the truth is there really wasn't at that point. And
College Experience and Cultural Challenges
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this is something that has really shaped me as a writer. When I was a kid growing up right, right up until like a young, you know, like,
00:16:51
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into high school, there really weren't books about, I didn't ever read any books about like 12 year olds like me or 13 year olds like me. There was also no TV about 12 year olds or 13 year olds like me. Like, I didn't see myself in any of the things that I read. So in a way, like, you know, The Hardy Boys was very far from my existence, but so was anything else that was out there too.
00:17:16
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I had this idea when I was growing up that something about me and my life was fundamentally weird because there were all these things about us. I was a girl, but I felt like a boy. I was a twin. I grew up in a collective house with a bunch of people who were not related to my family. My parents weren't married because they didn't believe in the institution of marriage. My family was vegetarian. There's all these things that
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just seemed to separate like just seemed different about us. And none of it. I never saw any of it like in the books that I read. I think that's really changing now. And that's really, really, really beautiful and cool to see. Like there's actually a ton of queer YA right out there right now. It's like really exciting. But when I was a kid, there was no like I was never going to read books that that had my that that like told stories that looked or sounded like my life. And yeah, I mean,
00:18:13
Speaker
It definitely affected me as a writer. So you're a twin. Do you have a twin brother or twin sister? I have a twin sister. We are fraternal. I think we look nothing alike, but every once in a while we'll meet someone who's like, are you identical? And we're like, do you know what identical means? It literally means you have the same genes. I mean, I don't think we look alike at all. But yeah, I have a twin sister. Yeah.
00:18:36
Speaker
Very nice. And so you went to University of Michigan for college. I got your bachelor's there. So what drew you to Michigan and what you study and what, you know, how did you start getting on the path that you're kind of on now in Ann Arbor? Oh yeah, that's a good question. So I have no idea how I ended up at University of Michigan. It's really funny. I really didn't
00:19:04
Speaker
know what I, what I wanted out of college. Um, I always think like, you know, why are 18 year olds, I mean, it makes sense that they're given the decision, but like you're 18, you've never been to college before. How are you supposed to know what you want in college? But I knew that university of Michigan had a great creative writing program. I didn't quite connect the dots that that's really mostly their master's program. Um, but.
00:19:30
Speaker
And I really wanted to, I knew I was a writer. I knew I wanted to study creative writing and you can major in creative writing as an undergrad there. And they also have one of the biggest LGBT archives or like academic LGBT archives in the country. And I was really interested in studying queer stuff too. So that's kind of how I ended up there. I knew I wanted to be somewhere very different from New York and I definitely got it. Moving to Michigan was an enormous culture shock.
00:19:58
Speaker
I had never been anywhere like that. I had never been anywhere. First of all, I did not grow up somewhere that was as white as Ann Arbor was. I had never been somewhere where fraternities and sororities were a real thing. To me, fraternities and sororities were something kind of mythical out of a TV show or a movie. I had never been somewhere that you would actually, like frat boy was sort of like a
00:20:27
Speaker
I don't know, like a character to me, frat boy was not like somebody you would meet. And then all of a sudden I was on a campus where there were a lot of frat boys. People are sort of shocked when I say that I didn't know Michigan was known for football, but I truly didn't know Michigan was known for football. And so when I showed up there and the first Saturday I was there, you couldn't find a single person on campus who wasn't wearing mays or blue. It was like,
00:20:56
Speaker
So overwhelming for me. So yeah, it was really a pretty intense experience And I was like pretty miserable there for a while I think But Did you just need time to kind of find your people and kind of get into a rhythm of your interests?
Development as a Writer
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, I guess so, you know, I
00:21:23
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It was just such a different place to live than New York. Nothing was open. In New York, there's always something open. Restaurants are open late. There's always a corner store that's open until print probably is open 24 hours. This just wasn't true in Ann Arbor. I had been really radically politically involved when I was in high school. I was really involved in Riot Girl, which is a feminist direct action.
00:21:53
Speaker
kind of network group. So I was really involved in like queer feminist organizing. And I was also really involved in anti war organizing in New York. So I came to Michigan with all these politics. And then I met people who had really different politics from me. I remember my freshman year, I got into this like enormous argument with my roommate about the police. And yeah, we were just on really different wavelengths. But I think what happened was
00:22:23
Speaker
to some extent, you know, the people around me, I found kind of folks that I connected with and people went through their own political processes. And also, I came to Michigan with a pretty big chip on my shoulder as kind of like New York, I had a real like New York snob thing going on, I think like a real like kind of East Coast chauvinism that was actually very problematic. And I think I like learned to appreciate the place that I was in. And I think it helped that I
00:22:51
Speaker
eventually realized that I wasn't going to be stuck there forever. And I could appreciate Ann Arbor and Michigan for all the really beautiful things about it. And there are many really, really, really beautiful things about it. Michigan in the summer is one of the most beautiful places I've been. And I could appreciate it and know that I didn't have to be the right place for me to live forever. So yeah, I think I eventually came around.
00:23:16
Speaker
But yeah, I studied creative writing there. I took some really wonderful workshops with people like Peter Ho Davies. I took really wonderful classes with John Whittier Ferguson, who teaches James Joyce there. Keith Taylor, who's an incredible, incredible mentor and poet, gave me a lot of guidance while I was there. And I met really wonderful other writers in the creative writing sub concentration there.
00:23:43
Speaker
And yeah, I wrote my thesis which was a collection of short stories and they were mostly about queer people in cities Which was who I became most interested in writing about And and yeah, that that's kind of how my time there ended up I think I really started to take myself seriously as a writer while I was Actually, you know what Brendan that's not really true. I took myself seriously as a writer in high school too, but
00:24:11
Speaker
But it was a significant and influential time there, time for me. And I had a lot of time to write. What did you find you were particularly skilled at in college, that your mentor was able to sort of nurture you and kind of say, oh, like Naomi, this is what you're particularly good at. Really lean into this and gave you that permission to keep going. You know, the main thing is before the sub concentration at Michigan, before I majored in creative writing at Michigan,
00:24:41
Speaker
I had spent most of my, I was lucky that I had a lot of great creative writing instruction in high school too. I had really wonderful creative writing workshops in high school and we read a lot, but a lot of what I had read up until that point was like books like Winesburg, Ohio. And basically like, if you read only those books, then you pretty much assume that everybody who gets written about in short stories is white and middle class and straight and lives in the Midwest in a small town.
00:25:09
Speaker
Uh, and it really affected me because I sort of, I had really internalized the belief, even though intellectually I knew this didn't make any sense that, um, that's kind of what I thought you had to write. Um, like that was kind of what I, that was the only model I had. And so I was writing stories about like middle-aged straight people, um, in small towns, which of course they were terrible. They were terrible, terrible stories because what do I know about? I mean, not to say that we can't write about what we don't know, but
00:25:40
Speaker
I really had no emotional connection to that work. I just thought it was like what I was supposed to write. It was what I had a model for. And it was definitely like at Michigan like Keith I think really encouraged me to write about what did move me and write about what I did care about and write about the people who I cared about and the people who I felt
00:26:01
Speaker
the stories that I wanted to tell. And it was when I started to do that, like stopped feeling pressure to write the Weinsburg, Ohio story and started feeling like it was okay to write the like queer Brooklyn story. I think that's when my writing was able to like move forward. And as you were developing your voice as a writer, what did you feel like were some maybe false starts or things that you were struggling with early on as you were looking to kind of forge your own voice on the page? Oh, man.
00:26:31
Speaker
Well, there's a lot of bad work in my archive, Brendan. There's a lot of bad work there. I mean, definitely stock characters for sure, right? And yeah, I think my work was probably laden with cliches. But yeah, again, I think still this same idea of feeling like I had to write for a particular audience or I had to write within specific bounds.
Transition to Journalism
00:26:55
Speaker
Like, oh, you can't write about this specific person with the specific identity without
00:27:01
Speaker
explaining it like you know having to assume that or assuming that I would have to like if I wanted to write about a genderqueer person then I would have to explain what genderqueer meant and of course that ruins your writing or it can um and and yeah I think I did a lot of that kind of feeling tentative about writing about um people who are not
00:27:23
Speaker
already very represented in the mainstream because I felt like they wouldn't be understood by an audience and they would require a lot of explanation. And the more I let go of that, the more I just felt like gave sort of felt permission to just write the stories about the people I wanted to write about and trust that the audience would catch up, that the reader will catch up or the reader will make a choice about whether or not they're interested.
00:27:50
Speaker
And that was sort of transformative and significant for me. So after you graduate from the University of Michigan, what's the next step for you? My lifelong dream was always to teach teenagers and be a writer at night. So that's pretty much what I did. I got a job teaching at an alternative program in the Bronx called CUNY Prep that
00:28:15
Speaker
teaches teenagers who've dropped out of school but it's a sort of a high school structure and a high school atmosphere. And I taught there for a couple of years and then I taught at another adult education program for a couple of years like my dad. And I was trying to write on the side and I was writing a little bit but it was very difficult.
00:28:36
Speaker
There's a certain kind of person who can have a full-time teaching job and also be a very prolific writer. I admire those people and I'm not one of them. I just like didn't have the capacity to do both at the level that I wanted to. And so eventually I left teaching and I ended up at the Nation magazine where I started as an intern and then I eventually became the research director there. So I was running their internship program and also running their
00:29:05
Speaker
fact checking department. Um, and that was really, really, really amazing place to be into kind of like learn so much about magazine journalism, about fact checking, um, about accuracy and truth in reporting. So many different, there's a lot, a lot, a lot that I learned there. Yeah. And then after that, um, I got a fellowship, uh, which I am now on a type media center, which is a independent, uh, media center, a journalism nonprofit.
00:29:35
Speaker
And I'm a fellow there and most of my, I do some creative nonfiction and memoir work. And then I also do some reporting about queer politics and queer community.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah, I recently read your story for The Nation up in Belfast, Maine about the 28-year-old female queer mayor up there. That was a great story. In a town of radical hippies, when you said radical hippies, I wrote that down because it reminded me of the story I just read that you wrote. I'm like, wow, there must have been a real connection there for you. Yeah, Belfast is an interesting place and that story,
00:30:14
Speaker
unsurprisingly has, has received some of the same heat that the mayor got or has been getting. Um, I guess people are, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot going on there. There's a lot of politics. There's a lot of friction and tension between kind of old guard and new guard and people are really upset with her. And, um, it definitely, I think, you know, I got some pretty, you know, real feedback from folks in the town who felt like I had
00:30:41
Speaker
parachuted in, which is a dreaded word you never want used to refer to you, parachuted into the town and gotten one side of the story. And I really share that critique. I think people should, I think people should not parachute into places. People should not sort of write blindly about places that they really have no context for. And the piece is really supposed to be sort of a,
00:31:09
Speaker
mini profile of her it's really just supposed to be sort of this is what it's like to sit down with this lefty mayor and kind of hear about her work and this is what the experience of you know talking politics with her is like it's really more of a vignette than it is a like reported piece on the town but um but yeah people were were pretty upset about it and that's okay you if you're doing any writing on the internet at all you just have to be prepared for i mean
00:31:36
Speaker
You're never going to escape without some of that. It's pretty much impossible. I feel like you type one letter on the internet and there's somebody who wants to tell you that you're an idiot and you've never had an intelligent thought in your life. So you just kind of have to contend with that. What did that experience as the fact checker teach you about the kind of rigor you need to do deeply reported pieces?
00:31:59
Speaker
Oh man. I mean, so I ran the fact checking department at the nation for four years. So I was overseeing all fact checking there and I was supervising six fact checkers. And it is a real, real education. I think every, every reporter probably could benefit from working as a fact checker because essentially this is obvious, but we think about facts in one way as readers and we maybe think about them slightly differently as reporters, but
00:32:29
Speaker
When you have to go through a story and take every single fact and independently sign off on saying, yes, I have independently verified that this is true, it's really a whole other level of understanding what it means to be accurate. I think in particular, you start to think about the individual meanings of words and how a tiny change in phrasing can really have a significant impact. The difference between one word and another is often the difference between something being
00:32:58
Speaker
true or not true right or wrong. So I think it's made me be a lot more concerned with accuracy in my own writing for sure. And it makes you realize how much fact checking is like a whole other step of the process. There's writing the piece and then there's also making sure that everything in it is really watertight. And that's a pretty exhaustive process. You know I think it all of our writing would probably be better for being fact checked. And of course it isn't always. But yeah.
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of one of the unfortunate casualties of the journalism contraction the last 15 years or so. I feel like fact-checking. I've only been fact-checked rigorously once in the Creative Nonfiction magazine. It wasn't that rigorous because it was more of an essay, but that's the only place I've really been fact-checked because every other place I've ever written doesn't have the capacity or the manpower to
00:33:55
Speaker
to go line by line and verify every single thing. So it's kind of amazing that at the nation that you had that kind of, I mean, it might probably felt like you were overwhelmed, but at least you had something in place.
Interview Techniques and Writing Process
00:34:08
Speaker
No, it's wonderful. And I think you also realize when you're a writer and you get fact checked, even if it's a pain, you also realize what a service it is, like what a service it is that you're getting that someone else is taking the time to go through your piece and make sure that everything in it is true. I mean,
00:34:24
Speaker
Fact checkers are protecting writers. They are the last line of defense for writers. They're really out there to protect a writer from getting seriously hurt. And it's an enormous service, even when it can be pretty exhausting to go through the process. But it's also being on the other end of the process also gives you, for me, having been on both sides of it gives me some sympathy. I also have sympathy for writers because I've been fact checked.
00:34:53
Speaker
And I know that sometimes it can feel really onerous and maybe a little bit over the top. When I wrote a piece for Harper's and the fact checker tried to correct me on my age, he asked me my birthday and then he was like, well, doesn't that make you 29 and three months or something like that? And I was like, okay, no, we're not making this change.
00:35:18
Speaker
Hey, what is the meaning of this? Well, I want to say that this episode is also brought to you by my monthly newsletter. Oh, yeah, that's right. On the first of the month, you can get a tasty bit of goodness sent right to your inbox. My reading recommendations for the month and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. Visit Brendan O'Mara dot com. Once a month. No spam. Can't beat it. Now back to the show.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's a little too far. But in general, fact checking really is. It's a service and usually the fact checker's name is not on the person's story. So this is someone who's taken maybe like 20 hours, 30 hours of their week to make sure that every word of your story is true and their name isn't even on it. It's a pretty amazing kind of work. It's pretty selfless and I have a huge amount of respect for fact checkers and I think
00:36:16
Speaker
Basically, we're lucky to get fact-checked. That's pretty much how I feel about it. Yeah. And so if you're – when I was having a conversation with Bronwyn Dickey a while ago, she said one of her – one of the favorite talks she attended was with Lawrence Wright. And basically, he like brought out his backpack.
00:36:38
Speaker
Unpacked everything and like basically this is all the stuff that he goes on a reporting trip with whether that's in his backyard or or elsewhere and so what are some things that Naomi needs and what's in your your mailbag or your Your shoulder bag or your backpack that with all your reporting tools like well, what does that look like for you? What can't can't you live without?
00:37:02
Speaker
Well, that's a good question. I'm pretty minimalist, Brendan. I'm pretty minimalist. I always carry a couple different sizes of notebooks. I've got a regular size notebook that I keep for writing, and then I also keep a tiny one in my back pocket, just in case I ever need to write something down right then and there in the moment. That one's pretty tattered, but I hold on to it. So a couple different notebooks, good pens. I kind of care about using a good pen. I don't know.
00:37:33
Speaker
makes me enjoy the process a little more. And yeah, my laptop, my phone, good set of headphones. I think that's about it. I'm not like a terribly particular, I don't have a lot of particularity when it comes to what I carry in my bag, I guess. Do you use a voice recorder at all for your interviewing?
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, I always record my interviews. First of all, I try to be really present and engaged in the conversation, and I find that I pretty much can't do that if I'm taking notes. Some people have that ability, kind of like playing drums, to do two things at once. I can't take notes and really be closely engaged with the person. So that's one reason I record, and the other reason that I record is that
00:38:19
Speaker
Ironically, I think, you know, people worry about interview subjects getting freaked out by a recorder, but I actually think people are more distracted by you taking notes. Taking notes is kind of a constant reminder that you're being interviewed and that somebody's writing down everything you're saying, whereas a recorder, it's on the table and then someone often usually forgets about it. So I find it less intrusive. So yeah, I always record my interviews. On the phone, I use tape a call, which
00:38:46
Speaker
is I think the best like $10 I ever spend or the best $10 I spend once a year is for typical. Yeah, I'm pretty simple about it.
00:38:56
Speaker
Nice. It's funny. I don't dig into it enough, and I think I'm going to start digging into it more, like the interviewing with the recorder versus the notes. Somebody used to talk about it a lot, and I've gotten away from it. I don't know why. I just have. But my hero in narrative journalism is John McPhee.
00:39:17
Speaker
Uh-huh, yeah. And he is a staunch sort of tape recorder denier, like just does not think, he actually thinks that's intrusive. And it actually, by virtue of it, being unselective by the stuff it
00:39:34
Speaker
pulls in that it doesn't allow you to be selective of the right details. I kind of disagree. I think it gives you the chance to be selective after the fact, but at least it's catching everything. So I like to hear people's approach to it, but it sounds like it's just, for you especially, it's a way to catch everything. It's a way to not be scrambling like crazy, taking notes for those quotes, and then you can get it right.
00:40:02
Speaker
That's the other thing is as a former research editor, I'm pretty serious about getting it right. And I don't necessarily think that notes are going to capture everything right down to every word. It leaves a little bit too much to guessing. But yeah, I couldn't possibly, I mean, you asked what kind of kid I was. It was the same way when I was in high school. Like I was much better at listening in class if I was just listening than if I was also trying to write everything down. And I think that's just, I'm a pretty, I have a pretty good memory. I listen,
00:40:32
Speaker
think I'm a pretty like attentive listener. And I like to do that with all of me when I'm talking to someone. If I'm trying to write things down while they're talking, I just think it in general, when I'm interviewing someone, I try to have a natural conversation as possible, right? Like I'm trying to have a conversation as two humans. And of course, there's certain things I want to make sure that I get to, but I'm really trying to
00:40:55
Speaker
have a natural and organic conversation. And I can't do that if I'm taking notes. So I think different people have different methods that work for them. But for me, it's recording really allows me to just be present.
00:41:09
Speaker
yet i found to that if you're cuz i i've tried to say a week or with that with this feature writing you know i'm gonna put the recorder away and try to do it old school and there's a part of the really likes that but i know if i'm really scrambling in scribbling notes and quotes down inevitably when i go to transcribe those notes and there's there are there are gaps in what they say because i can't write down every word you end up back filling that with words that maybe
00:41:37
Speaker
I use versus the exact words they use, right? Is that something you experience? Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, it just limits you in terms of what kind of quotes you can use. Absolutely. And I'm very, that's my worst name here. I never want to put words in somebody's mouth. So yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then again, if you're going to be fact checked, you're going to have to show those notes to a fact checker and that's not fun showing somebody. Yeah. Do you transcribe them on your own?
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, I pretty much always transcribe on my own. Occasionally, recently, I've become aware of the usefulness of automated transcribers, but you can't use them for an actual transcript. What they're good for is, say, I just had this three-hour interview. I'm not going to transcribe the whole thing. But if you put it through an AI transcriber, maybe
00:42:30
Speaker
that just sort of gives you a general outline of what you talked about. And that becomes very easy to search for the parts that you need. And then you can transcribe those on your own. But yeah, I transcribe my own interviews, even though I find it to be an absolutely miserable process. I hate transcription so much.
00:42:46
Speaker
It's the only way for me to do it for now. It's the worst. But what I do find with recording, I know when I was reporting on my 6 weeks in Saratoga, this book I wrote almost 10 years ago, like having an interview with this one horse trainer on the back stretch of Saratoga,
00:43:03
Speaker
he, you know, we're having a conversation. Then when I went back over the recording, you know, it was just one of those days where you could hear all the birds in the background. And that just added like so much color and some little nice accents to the scene, like a Blue Jays screeching. And it just gave you this more pastoral feel of what was going on. And that's something I might not have caught if I was just taking notes, because I'm trying to scribble down what Nick Zito is saying at every, every minute.
00:43:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's absolutely true. Yeah, I mean, I again, I'm a subscriber of the recording school for sure. And with respect to your research and everything, once you've got all these notes, you've got transcripts, how do you go about organizing those notes? And then you have access to them for when you're starting to sort of generate the piece you're looking to write? Oh, man, I'm so
00:43:55
Speaker
I'm very simplistic about this. This is just the process that works for me. I pretty much keep one story in one doc. And at the bottom part of the doc, I'll have transcription, notes, stuff I want to include. If there's particular quotes that I definitely want to make sure that I work into the piece, I'll highlight them in another color. And then I write the story in the top half of the doc. And it's what I find works for me, just to be able to easily go back and forth.
00:44:24
Speaker
command F like search kind of religiously. It's the easiest way to keep everything in one place. It's definitely not the most complex of systems kind of analog, but it's what works for me. And are you an advocate of outlines or cork boards index cards as sort of a way to blueprint the piece you're writing? Yeah, that's funny. You should ask. I'm really a pretty I'm
00:44:52
Speaker
I'm pretty bad about outlining. I'm not much of an outliner. I just kind of can't force myself to do it. Sometimes for more journalistic pieces, I will sort of chart out the path of a story for myself, like sort of jot down a very informal kind of rough sort of structure. Like these are, this is the path I'm planning to follow to go from this point to this point to this point. And then I just kind of keep that at the top of the dock. It helps kind of keep me on track.
00:45:18
Speaker
For longer, more kind of creative nonfiction, memoir type work, sometimes I've found it helpful to chart it out kind of like on a big board or a wall using post-it notes, kind of more as a constellation of the story than anything. So like for example, I was in Maine recently on a writing residency in Monson, Maine.
00:45:46
Speaker
working on this long essay about my uncle who died of AIDS when I was a kid and the essay is memoiristic and it's sort of about my relationship with him and the specter of him in my life and his generation of gay folks in mine. And so it has a lot of different scenes and a lot of different moving parts and a lot of different ideas and I ended up
00:46:10
Speaker
on the wall there in my studio in Maine where I was for a month, I kind of charted out all these different scenes on Post-its and just had them arranged in sort of an orbit around the central questions of the essay.
Overcoming Writing Challenges
00:46:23
Speaker
And eventually I actually pulled my chair right in front of that wall and would sit in front of it with my laptop on my lap so that if I felt tempted to get lost, I could just look up from my computer and have it right in front of me on the wall like, Naomi, this is what you're doing.
00:46:39
Speaker
This is how all these ideas kind of relate or connect to each other. So I find it helpful in sort of an abstract way, but I'm definitely not a formal outliner at all. It's just not the way that my writing brain works.
00:46:54
Speaker
You know, a lot of the writing process, of course, involves writing and looking through notes, but there's also a lot of value in just using quiet time, silence, long walks, and thinking about what you're writing as part of the process. And I wonder how you incorporate just quiet and thinking and sort of, lack of a better word, meditating on the work that is also very influential in what you end up
00:47:22
Speaker
sort of generating once you're ready to sit down at the computer? Yeah, I do find that the space, the space and time away from the work, um, helps. And the times that it helps the most is when I'm really like stuck on something and I'm like, I just don't know how to solve this problem. And then I sort of feel chained to my computer in those moments. Like I can't walk away from it right now. I have to figure this out. But then it's usually when I walk away and I take a shower or go for a walk or, um,
00:47:53
Speaker
that then it's sort of some of the smoke clears and it feels more like I sort of figure it out. I'm a runner and I'm one of those people who, you know, everybody says like, Oh, they like work out their writing problems while they're running. And like, um, that happens for me too. But I would say that 90% of the time I never, or not never 90% of the time I do not remember what I figured out when I get back from my run. So I'm like,
00:48:18
Speaker
out for a run and I'm like, oh, that's what I'm gonna do with that transition. Or like, oh, that's how I should start that piece. And then I get back and I have no idea what I figured out while I was out there. So maybe it works its way through some subconscious part of my brain. I also have the thing that happens where I'll be like falling asleep at night and I'll be like, oh, that's exactly how I'm gonna solve this problem in my writing. And I do usually try to write it down.
00:48:46
Speaker
But in the morning, very often I look at it and I'm like, this doesn't solve this problem at all. So it's not necessarily the most reliable part of my brain. But yeah, I think it's most useful when I've sort of been struggling with something and then I take some space from it. And that's when some answers emerge.
00:49:07
Speaker
Do you have any limiting beliefs or that sort of 3 a.m. voice that pops into your head that you have to sometimes wrestle with and fend off so you can confidently go back to the work? Oh, God, of course. Where do I start? Of course. Yeah, no, I'm constantly having to fight off that internal critic. What does that critic tell you?
00:49:38
Speaker
Oh, either, you know, some version of like, this is not original, or this is not interesting, or this doesn't track, or you're never going to be able to finish this. You can never publish this. I mean, it goes on and on. I think I'm really into Annie Dillard's book on writing. I think it's like kind of
00:50:07
Speaker
I know it's been an amazing companion for me and she has this thing in it where she says that any extreme thoughts about your writing either like the feeling that oh my god I'm writing the most brilliant thing ever and this is perfect and this is like my greatest work or the opposite like this is terrible this will never get published this is crap both of those thoughts are
00:50:33
Speaker
highly suspect and should basically be treated like a mosquito, just swatted away. And I think it's pretty wise. I think that's generally true. Anytime I've ever felt like, oh my God, Naomi, this is like the worst thing anyone's ever written. Or when I'm like, wow, this is really great. This is really perfect. It's usually not coming from a reliable place. And I try to just ignore it.
00:50:55
Speaker
I know I know exactly what you're saying and I just of late you know just the nature of the show I read a lot of brilliant writers and oftentimes I'm just like you know right now I'm reading some collections of Chuck Closterman essays and
00:51:10
Speaker
and I just got finished reading Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing and of course there's other people who it's just I read the stuff I'm like I'm just incapable of of having feeling like processing thoughts or having these kind of thoughts and then riffing on it in such a way that sometimes it can be kind of crippling when you start playing those kind of comparison Olympics and are there writers of that nature where you're reading them you're like man like I'm just
00:51:39
Speaker
I am just this little peon. How can I ever write something that pops like this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, sometimes you read someone, and I remember who I was talking to recently was saying this. Sometimes you read someone and you're like, well, I'll just hang up my hat. Like, why would I even bother crying? That's how you feel. Sometimes you read someone who's really brilliant and you're like, what's the point? Like, why am I even going to do this?
00:52:02
Speaker
But you know, like, I've spent a lot of I've been really lucky that one of the main things I've done as an adult is, is be a teacher trainer of some kind. And so I've
00:52:15
Speaker
And that's been such a privilege. And it's like, I have to tell myself the same thing that I've always told my students or folks I've mentored, which is like, there's always going to be people who are better than you. And there's also always going to be people who are worse than you. And that really can't be the reason that you write or don't write. It just really has nothing to do with it. Like there will always be somebody who's, and even more beyond that, like it's really not the point, right? I mean, we're not, we're not existing on a ladder where it's like, this person's better. This person's worse.
00:52:44
Speaker
I think that kind of thinking is super toxic. And it's more about kind of just your work on its own. It's really not, obviously our work doesn't exist in a vacuum, but we're also not producing it to be on a platform next to other people's work and to be compared. Because we're doing things, we're different writers, we're working on different projects. And when I admire somebody's work, I try to
00:53:08
Speaker
First of all, just appreciate it and then think about what I can learn from them. I think that's much more productive.
00:53:15
Speaker
Obviously easier said than done, just to be clear. Oh, for sure, for sure. There's this great Austin Kleon quote, or something, he quoted someone in his book, Show Your Work. I'm trying to pull it up real quick right now. Don't be jealous when the people you like do well. Celebrate their victory as if it's your own. And that's such a great way to channel sometimes the negative energy of those toxic feelings of jealousy and envy. That is a monster to be killed in this line of work.
00:53:44
Speaker
Yeah. And we need each other. Like, you know, my friends who are writers are, you know, those are such important relationships. Like those are the folks that, you know, we have a drink or a cup of coffee or we're hanging out by each other's desks and being like, Oh man, this edit is really killing me. Or like, Oh God, this lead is really killing me. You're like, Oh, revision. Oh, writing. Like, you know, those are such that's like,
00:54:10
Speaker
really beautiful. That kind of solidarity is so crucial to surviving it and to keeping going. And I think that's what's valuable. I'm not saying that jealousy isn't a really real thing to contend with, but it's not helpful. And it's really not the point.
00:54:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And with respect to your, with that great essay you wrote in the New York Times about getting the yips and working your way through that, which is of course the reason why we're in touch, I came across that essay somehow. I was at AWP here in Oregon, and I don't know, it just popped up in my feed and I was like, oh, this is awesome.
00:54:53
Speaker
And so, you know, Red of course reached out to you. So what was the genesis of this essay? And we'll talk about sort of your writing routine around it, but I'd love to start getting into this essay a little bit and how you came to it.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. Writing that essay was very cathartic for me. It was really because, honestly, I didn't think that there was anything that could make me feel better about having that experience of totally losing my ability to throw a ball. And, you know, I'm not sure the writing made me feel better about losing the ability to throw the ball, but at least I got something out of it.
00:55:33
Speaker
So, yeah, I think it was probably largely just a point of catharsis to start writing it. Just really like an attempt to grapple with and maybe to understand a little bit what had happened. And then, you know, it became its own project on its own, which is like a piece of writing that I cared about and was kind of interested in completing,
Influential Books and Aspirations
00:55:59
Speaker
so.
00:55:59
Speaker
Have you ever experienced a writing version of the Yips? That's a great question. Definitely. I think, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure it counts as the Yips, but certainly I think there's a psyching out that can happen on the page and particularly starting a piece, especially I find the more expectations I have of it or the more it matters to me or the more I sort of like
00:56:29
Speaker
deeply invested in where it's going to go or have a lot of ideas about what I want it to be, it can be really overwhelming to start. I mean, there's a reason that the whole blank page thing is a cliche. It's because it's really true. It's hard to face a blank page.
00:56:46
Speaker
I have a really terrible habit. I can't believe I'm going to admit this here, but I have a terrible habit of like starting the same piece like five times. And I mean, I literally have sort of, I'll write and rewrite the opening five different times and they're not that different, but I kind of can't force myself to move on, um, which is, I think that's sort of yipsy. Um, and then of course the thing you have to do is to just force yourself to move on and to remind yourself that you, you will come back to it. Um, but, uh,
00:57:16
Speaker
But yeah, I definitely can psych myself out for sure in writing, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And for people who might be unfamiliar with the yips, it's kind of an inability to... Chuck Knoblock is the best example that comes to mind of the former second baseman for the Yankees. On a 15-foot throw from second base to first base, he could not hit his target. He just could not do it anymore.
00:57:42
Speaker
How many times did Chuck Knoblock made a throw from second to first and suddenly he couldn't do it anymore? And this is, you know, similarly there are some golfers who can't putt. They'll get up to the putt and then they just, there's a block and they can't putt. They just can't pull the stroke anymore. So it's a great, the way you approach the essay is great and it's just your way of working through it.
00:58:09
Speaker
How did working through it on the page help with or not help with your own, at least the physical manifestation of the EPs? Well, I haven't tried yet, so I have to let you know. I haven't tried to face that problem again yet, and it'll be interesting to see.
00:58:30
Speaker
suggestions that they give to people or one of the main ways that people deal with the hips is by changing something about what they do. I mean, the most common example in baseball, people very often switch positions. Chuck Knoblock was eventually sent to left field. Um, that's usually the thing that that solves it for people. So I've been like, maybe I should start throwing left handed. Um, that's occurred to me.
00:58:52
Speaker
Because right now, I think I probably could throw better with my left hand than my right. But no, I have not tried to address it. And that's probably the most common question I've gotten since writing the piece. So I'll let you know when I do.
00:59:07
Speaker
And so with your writing process, I'm always fascinated with daily rituals and daily routines. And is there a routine by which you adhere to every day, whether you write 1,000 words or 5,000 or 100? Is there something that you build into every day so you have some regularity to your creative schedule?
00:59:34
Speaker
Yeah, my day, I mean, my day varies a little bit because I'm a freelancer and I'm working on such different sized projects. I have short pieces that are sort of journalistic quicker hits, and then I have much longer, more creative projects, and I have meetings, and sometimes I have a deadline that I have to hit, and sometimes I have a revision.
00:59:57
Speaker
In general, I try to go into my office most days. I'm really lucky that I have a desk at Type Media Center for my fellowship. And I think that makes a really big difference. I learned really early on in this process that I'm not someone who can work from home. I have no interest in working from home. It's just like not enough separation.
01:00:21
Speaker
I like being in a space where I'm like, I'm here to do work, I'm here to write. Physical space really affects me as a writer. I feel like I need to be in the right place. I'm really affected by auditory distraction. I can definitely not write in coffee shops like music, people talking, super easily distracted. So I go into my office at Type, which is right off Union Square. It's a really nice place to be. And I pretty much try to do
01:00:50
Speaker
as much writing as I can in the first half of the day and leave anything like revision or edits or administrative stuff for the later part of the day. I kind of think of my brain like a pool and overnight it drains and so when I wake up in the morning it's empty and it's kind of like the words that I need to write are written on the bottom of the pool. So in the earlier part of the day I can see them pretty clearly but
01:01:15
Speaker
as the day goes on, everything that happens in my day is kind of like water filling up the pool. And so by mid afternoon or late afternoon, it's like really hard to see through all that water or what's written on the floor. Um, so I try to kind of get as much writing done in the first part of the day as I can before the pool is filled up. And I'm kind of like, my brain's more muddled. Um, and then in the, in the second part of the day, you know, deal with email and revisions and,
01:01:43
Speaker
I find that it really varies. Like sometimes I, if I'm sort of in the right place and I'm really excited about what I'm working on, I might be able to write for a whole lot of hours and get a whole lot done. And then there are the days that we all have where I spend all day and you know, I have 250 words to show for it. And I think they're pretty crappy, 250 words too. And you know, who can say why that happens? Um, at the best thing to do is to just try again tomorrow. Um,
01:02:10
Speaker
I think, you know, a couple of the pieces of advice that have helped me and I think they're all pretty obvious and pretty common, but they work for me. Like one is as much as I can just try to keep coming back to it every day, whether or not it's good. I had a writing mentor once who said you have to write through the bad to get to the good. And I think that's really true. So it's a process. So even if I feel like what I'm producing in a particular day is bad,
01:02:39
Speaker
That's not an excuse to just leave it because I sometimes really need to write through those difficult and bad moments to get to the better work. The more that I can do it every day as a practice, the less overwhelming or intimidating it is when I come back to it the next day because it's just the same thing I did the day before and the day before that and it becomes something that I'm used to and familiar and it's not as overwhelming. Then the other thing and this is
01:03:09
Speaker
such a basic piece of advice. I think it probably came from Hemingway is just to like, actually, Brendan, don't let's, let's not attribute this Hemingway because I don't know if it comes from or not, and I don't want to give him credit for his link doesn't do. But the other piece of advice that I find really useful is
01:03:27
Speaker
I try to, when I stop for the day, I try to stop somewhere where I know what I'm going to do next. That is Hemingway. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's Hemingway. And I find that useful and it's going to be actually difficult advice to follow because if you know what's happening next, you want to keep going, right? Like you want to keep going until you're really stuck. But I think I find that useful because then the next day I really do, it's like that much easier to pick it up again.
01:03:53
Speaker
And what are some books you find yourself rereading to kind of remind yourself how it's done and to inspire you to kind of make the best of your own work? Yeah, I mean, On Writing by Annie Dillard is probably my favorite text on writing. I think she has so many kind of, it's just sort of a, it's really just the whole book is just sort of a meditation on being a writer and the writing process.
01:04:21
Speaker
on the rituals of it, on the weird rhythms of it, on the feeling of it, on the practices of it. I love how much she thinks about both the mundane, like sort of, you know, the view out the window and the coffee that you drink, and then also, you know, sort of the bigger ideas. Something that she writes about that I've spent a lot of time thinking about lately is,
01:04:49
Speaker
She talks about writing as an epistemological tool and so writing is kind of that we write to figure out what we don't already know. We write to learn about something and to actually explore our own ideas and thinking about something. And I think that's a really good charge and it's also difficult to do.
01:05:13
Speaker
I find that with my own writing, you know, the internet, publishing on the internet, the internet really has an appetite for pieces that are kind of articulating something that we already believe quite strongly. So, you know, everybody loves to read and to retweet an essay that's sort of like, here's this really strong feeling or belief I have about something. And I've written it really beautifully and really eloquently and really articulately.
01:05:40
Speaker
and the person gets to the end of the essay and they're kind of like, yeah, I really agree with that, you know? And they're kind of like, fuck yeah. Like, and they retweet it. Like, I kind of think it was like, the fuck yeah, essay. And that's great. Like those, and I think I've written some of those pieces. But when I think about myself as a reader, the pieces that really stay with me and that I really love are not the pieces that I finish. And I'm just like, yeah, I really agree with that. And probably I already agreed with the person before they wrote it too.
01:06:09
Speaker
or before I read it too. The pieces that I really love and value and appreciate the most are the pieces that kind of at the end of them, I'm like, huh, you know, and I'm kind of, it makes me think, right? And those are the pieces that I tend to still be thinking about days later. They're complicated. They don't have pat conclusions. They're not easy or simple. They don't necessarily, they're not summed up in a single sentence.
01:06:37
Speaker
But I think they're more rigorous and the thing is they're not just more challenging, intellectually challenging for the reader, they're also more challenging for the writer. So I'm trying to do more work like that these days. That's my challenge to myself is to reach less for the pieces that I already have figured out before I write them. It's tempting to want to write something where I already know how I feel about this.
01:07:06
Speaker
It's much more scary and intimidating and overwhelming to think about writing something where I actually, I'm not sure what I think about it and it's kind of complicated and it's difficult to figure out. And it's intimidating because it means I could get it wrong. And, you know, I could, I could publish something and then somebody could write to me and say, you know, I think you got this super, super wrong and not scary, but I think it's much more intellectually honest and, and more.
01:07:32
Speaker
rigorous. So I'm trying to do more of that. And to come back to Annie Dillard, I feel like she really encourages that she she has this beautiful quote in that book that I'm gonna mess up. But I had it on the wall of my studio in Monson when I was in my writing residency. And it says, she writes, the new place interests you because it is unfamiliar you attend. And it's
01:07:57
Speaker
It's all about this idea of, like, we go in our writing to places that we don't already have figured out, that we don't already know, and we kind of poke around in there and try to figure out what we can learn. She talks about, like, she has all these beautiful metaphors. She talks about the pen as, like, she gives this image of the writer sort of walking around a house and tapping very gently on the wall looking for studs.
01:08:21
Speaker
And that writing is kind of like that, like you're tapping around in the dark sort of figuring out, is this, you know, what do I think about this? Like, is this, where does this idea take me? If I follow this thought, where does it lead? And that's scary because it might lead you somewhere that you didn't expect. And, and, or what if you get lost in the house and you can't find your way out. But, um, again, I think that's like ultimately more.
01:08:45
Speaker
rewarding and for me as a writer I guess has more integrity than writing the piece where I already have the blueprint of the house in my mind and it's just a question of writing it down you know. So of course you you know you were a creative writing major and undergrad and you've kind of graduated more towards non-fiction and journalistic stuff with your fellowship with tight media so where do you where do you see your writing going in the next five to ten years? Oh boy.
01:09:15
Speaker
Big questions. Yeah, that's a good question. I think I'm really interested in this space of creative nonfiction that is both really highly concerned with craft, with good writing, with writing as an art, but that's also firmly sort of engaged with the world. And I think that's sort of like a difficult line to walk. But those are the writers who I tend to
01:09:42
Speaker
really admire the most. A lot of them are, it's interesting, a lot of them are fiction writers who have become nonfiction writers, which I think is interesting. So I think they kind of bring the kind of fiction sensibility in terms of storytelling, in terms of craft, but they're also writing work that's, you know, engaged with the world in some way that's grounded in the real world, which is not to say that fiction isn't also grounded in the real world in a different way.
01:10:09
Speaker
I think I should probably try to tackle longer and longer work. That's something that I sort of have on the horizon for me. But I have a YA novel that on the shelf sometimes gets taken down off the shelf. It's kind of the YA novel that I would have wanted to read when I was a queer teenager. That's always there in the background, sort of in progress.
01:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, you got to write that for sure. Yeah, like you're writing for that person or, you know, writing the thing that you wish you had when you were little is is a great creative kick in the
Conclusion and Connections
01:10:49
Speaker
ass. It really is. Yeah, yeah. And writing, you know, writing YA is a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun because teenagers are
01:10:57
Speaker
They're basically the most raw, essential versions of ourselves. They're just like us. They're just without all the filters and the baggage and the ego. And not to say they don't also have egos, but they're without all the crap that we've accumulated to kind of put between us and the world. And they feel feelings so deeply. And so yeah, writing about New York City in the early 2000s through the eyes of a queer teenager, it's a lot of fun.
01:11:24
Speaker
It's one of my more fun writing projects. Cool. Naomi, where can people find you online and get more familiar with your work? You can follow me on Twitter. It's N-A-O-M-I-G-L-O-E-B-L. Pretty much my name, Naomi G. Lobel. It's probably the best way to find me right now and I also have a page on Type Media's website too.
01:11:50
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Naomi, thank you so much for carving out the time to talk about your work and the yips and everything. This was a lot of fun getting to know you on the show here. And I deeply look forward to the time we can do this again down the road. Yeah, it was great to chat with you, Brendan. Thank you so much. It's fun to talk with you about writing and everything else.
01:12:15
Speaker
Still have to use my morning indoor voice as we record this outro. Alright. Good times had by alright. That was fun, wasn't it? But let me tell ya man. Tired. Fried. I can barely keep my eyes open. No complaining though. Got a soldier on. Can't complain. Can't be doing that.
01:12:40
Speaker
Thanks to Goucher's MFA, Nonfiction, and Baypass MFA, and Creative Nonfiction, for the support. It's always fun to have that support. The show is made possible by those patrons, and of course, you guys, for listening. Be sure to subscribe to the show and keep the conversation going on Twitter by tagging the show at cnfpod. You may also tag me at Brendan O'Mara. Digital fist bumps and devil horns abound. If you have a spare two to five minutes,
01:13:09
Speaker
Consider leaving a review of... ...on... Leaving a review of the show on Apple Podcasts and link up to the show on social media. Helps with the packaging of the show and just makes me feel damn good. I think that's it. My head is about to hit the keyboard. So remember, if you can't do... Indoor voice. Interview. See ya!
01:13:45
Speaker
you