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Episode 336: Cassidy Randall
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Cassidy Randall (@cassidyjrandall) is a freelance writer based out of Montana and she is October's featured Atavist writer.
Social: @CNFPod
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Episode Introduction and Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers, you know it's that Atavistian time of the month, or maybe you don't know, but it is. So if you want to read the story we're going to talk about in this episode, head over to magazine.atavist.com. Consider subscribing. No kickbacksies. Otherwise, spoiler alerts, all right? Oh, and hey.
00:00:20
Speaker
Many of you know I like to crack open a beer on this pod. Sometimes it contains booze, other times it's a near beer, and I've been selected as a brand ambassador for athletic brewing, a brewery that makes my favorite non-alcoholic beer. Shout out to Freewave. Hazy IPA is awesome. And if you use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get 20% off your first order. Head to athleticbrewing.com, order yourself some of the best non-alcoholic beer I think you'll ever drink. I mean it.
00:00:49
Speaker
Also, I don't get money. I get points towards flair and beer, but no money. So check that out. And some of you may or may not know that I do editing and coaching for people looking to maybe level up their books or their book proposal, essays, or maybe a long-form journalistic enterprise, you name it. A good editor sees things that you, the writer, can no longer see. It's not your fault. You're just blinded.
00:01:14
Speaker
You're blinded by the work. I know what that's like. So if you're considering this kind of collaboration, because that's what it is, email me at Brendan at BrendanOmera.com and we'll start a dialogue.
Cassidy Randall's Story and Writing Techniques
00:01:25
Speaker
And we're like, who are the only people who would honeymoon with mosquitoes and blisters? But it was so important for us to go and do that, right?
00:01:38
Speaker
Oh yes, it's the creative non-fiction podcast. The show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? Today's guest is Cassidy Randall. She's a freelance journalist who sees herself more as a writer than a reporter. And boy, can I relate to that. Her latest story for The Adivus goes to the deep blue ocean.
00:02:02
Speaker
The Golden Globe, a circle the earth boat race. Susie Goodall is our foil for what this journey is. And Cassidy takes us there, man. She takes us right there, man. We talk about how Cassidy got access to Susie who had a fraught relationship with the media.
00:02:24
Speaker
while she was enduring this race, how Cassidy recreates scenes, attention to sentences, rejection, and also a book that Cassidy collaborated on that's coming out in 2023, not with Susie, but with somebody else. Just a little something, a little plug for that and how Cassidy was a co-writer on it and how she approached that without losing her own voice but being able to tell
00:02:55
Speaker
the story of her her main subject. Before we get to Cassidy though we'll speak with Jonah Ogles, the lead editor of this piece. One more item before we do that. Showing us that this episode and a billion others are apprented to mare.com. There you can also sign up to my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter is where it's at seeing an effort.
00:03:16
Speaker
I'm not one to hang out on social media. I hate scrolling. I don't do it. I mean, we're all guilty of it. But gosh, I feel like I need a shower after afterwards. There's only so many showers you can take in a day. But I am one to put a lot of effort into a kick ass newsletter that I think entertains, gives you value and sticks it to the algorithm. Been doing it for many, many years. First of the month. No spam. As far as I can tell, you can beat it.
00:03:42
Speaker
Alright, why wait? Let's see what Jonah Ogles, the lead editor on this piece, who has a knack for these boating pieces. He had one with Bill Donahue a few months ago and now he's got one with Cassidy Randall. Let's do this.
00:04:11
Speaker
What struck me first is like, if I had a harrowing boat journey story, should I turn to you to edit it?
00:04:22
Speaker
Well, thank you for saying that. I mean, I think maybe the answer is you should turn to Cassidy to write it. Because she just, I mean, man, she nailed this story. It was so much fun to work on. Because she just, I mean, she had a really good handle on her character and on her primary source. And, you know, clearly like knew what she was doing when it comes to adventure writing.
00:04:49
Speaker
And I mean, man, there's just, one of the things Cassidy and I talked about on the story is when you get a story this good, and like, yes, the writing is good, but I'm just talking about pure narrative, the arc of the story itself, Susie Goodall's experience. When you get something like this, you just let it do its job.
00:05:16
Speaker
you know like you just tell the story and you sort of get out of the way except for the parts where you absolutely need to be there or do something or help explain something to readers because otherwise it's just I mean it's just good you know it's just good.
00:05:30
Speaker
Now, when I spoke with Cassidy, she said in one of the earlier drafts too that there there's this moment of like a rogue wave, big, big wave. It's one of the more chilling aspects of the entire story of like you really feel like you're in the boat with Susie and you feel the presence and the power and the terror of this wave.
00:05:53
Speaker
But her initial drafts, I believe she did like a kind of a long sort of not a set piece But probably several paragraphs explaining rogue ways, which sounds fascinating But to your point it might have said it might have been a little hiccup and what were already very good story blocks So maybe you can speak to that this is a story where You know there were there were things in it that we cut not because they were bad
00:06:20
Speaker
but because Susie's story on its own was so good that we just didn't want to get in the way of it. And this rogue wave is exactly that example because, look, rogue waves are fascinating. What an interesting phenomenon, especially when it comes into play in this particular story because it very well may have
00:06:43
Speaker
have been a freak thing that, statistically speaking, shouldn't have occurred to her on her boat during this race.
00:06:55
Speaker
But it may have. And Cassidy had good, interesting information in there about rogue waves and other people that have reported to see one and whether or not they're sort of the scientific consensus is that they actually are a rogue wave or whether they're predictable in some way. There was all this really good and fascinating stuff. The problem is,
00:07:20
Speaker
it happened during this storm. When Susie's out there on her own, trying to do this really extraordinary thing, something that I think very few people on the planet could even think about doing, let alone actually accomplish. And on top of that, she's facing this really trying experience of this massive storm that threatens her very existence.
00:07:48
Speaker
And you just can't, well, I mean, I guess there are probably different feelings about this from an editor's standpoint, but my feeling is,
00:07:56
Speaker
As a reader, I'm already there and I'm invested. If you were watching a movie, it's like reaching the climax and then stepping away for a second and having some narrator speak to you about
00:08:21
Speaker
the context of the scene in which this climax is happening. It's like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. But we want to know, is the dude going to fire the gun or not? The perils of nonfiction in so many ways.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, so it was one of those things where, yes, it's good. And I think we may have even, I do this a lot when I'm cutting early in a piece, I'll say, there may be a place for this later. In this particular story, we didn't end up reinserting it, but there were other things that we did find a home for elsewhere. But in that moment, I just didn't,
00:09:03
Speaker
And this is maybe selfish because as a reader, I just didn't want to be away from Susie and her experience as this wave is hitting her. Oftentimes we talk about how a lot of these out of his stories are puzzles in nature. And it's like you and Sayward are working like, how do we make this thing? How do we coalesce and let the picture come together? So what were some of the challenges that were unique to this piece as you were bringing it to life?
00:09:34
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, one of them, and this was sort of less an editing challenge than a challenge for Cassidy, although she really pulled it off, is the fact that much of the story, I think the majority of the words,
00:09:51
Speaker
occur with Susie alone on a boat. I think it's called Alone, the Robert Redford movie where he's sailing alone on a boat and there's virtually no dialogue.
00:10:07
Speaker
Um, you know, it's, it was sort of that, that's a difficult thing to do, you know, how, and okay, there are storms and stuff. And so that sort of relieves some of the pressure, but how do you, how do you make readers feel close to and attached to this character when.
00:10:25
Speaker
when you don't really get to see her interact with anyone else. And so you have to be really deep inside Susie's head. And I give Cassidy just all the credit in the world because that's something she just totally nailed. But then, so some editing challenges on this one, one of them was, we sort of alluded to was just sort of getting rid of anything that got in the way of this very,
00:10:52
Speaker
good reading experience. I mean, it's, I think it's one of the more fun pieces to read that I've worked on just period in my career. It just, it just moves, you know, it's just a good piece. That's a fun piece to read. You know, so we were, we were trying to get rid of a lot of stuff. And then I think for me, the thing that I sort of wrestled with the Mo, well, I guess there were two things. One,
00:11:20
Speaker
One is that this is a long ocean journey, right? She's trying to sail around the world. So how do you write that experience? How do you write thousands of miles of solo sailing?
00:11:37
Speaker
which includes periods of time in which just nothing happens, you know, and one of the things Cassidy had tried originally is she sort of had these snippets, you know, the race started and here's 200 words about, you know, like maybe some animal or like some marine wildlife she saw and here's
00:11:56
Speaker
200 words about the lack of marine wildlife that she's seen. And here's 400 words about this piece of equipment malfunctioning. And all of it on its own has worth and value and lets you know Susie in different ways or see her having different experiences.
00:12:19
Speaker
But the issue I had as a reader was that it felt a little bit disjointed. It felt like you were dropping in. It felt like getting postcards from someone on a trip, like having fun, had a good dinner. We'll let you know at the next stop. It was hard to just sort of inhabit
00:12:42
Speaker
to feel like you were on the boat with her when we were doing that. And so we tried to just streamline it. Some of it we just cut.
00:12:53
Speaker
Some of it, it was as simple as just sort of combining and setting it up with like, over the next few months or next few weeks here, these are the types of things she experienced. Obviously we used more elegant language than that, but you can sort of summarize, you can cut. There were a variety of tricks that we tried to use to make it feel like more of a seamless experience.
00:13:21
Speaker
So that was a challenge. Another one for us was, you know, once she has this experience where like her family becomes very concerned for her, once she goes through the storm and her family is aware that she's having a difficult time, all of a sudden after, you know, something like basically 12,000 words next to Susie,
00:13:47
Speaker
all of a sudden we need to be away from Susie to experience what's happening outside of her own little bubble. That's a tough, I mean, this might be one of those things that like readers just, or even writers, whoever encounters the piece might just like fly right through it and not have any issue with it at all. But for me, like I have a hard time stepping away from the story
00:14:17
Speaker
that late in the game, you know, like once I'm sort of underway with somebody, I just want to like stay with that person until the end. And so and so we had to
00:14:30
Speaker
It was really just like a trial and error situation where like, okay, let's try dropping in with her family right here and let's try 400 words. Like, how does that feel? Oh, not quite right. Let's move it. Let's shorten it up. Let's move it. Let's lengthen it. And we just sort of did that until
00:14:50
Speaker
It felt okay to us and maybe it was just exhaustion you know maybe it's like working on a project all night and like the last sentence you write is the best one because you're like okay whatever like I'm done with it but I think I think we got it to a point where.
00:15:07
Speaker
where you're never away from Susie so long that you've sort of forgotten where you are in the narrative, but you're with the family long enough to sort of feel like there's some emotional resonance with them. You're with them long enough that you're not just hearing what they feel, you sort of feel it too.
00:15:27
Speaker
And a moment ago, you said this was one of the more fun stories as an editor that you've been able to work on. And what what makes a story fun for you as an editor to work on? Well, I think I mean, I'm a bit of a I'm still totally like an outside magazine guy at heart, you know, like I just like adventure stories and survival stories and
00:15:56
Speaker
you know, feats of human endurance. So, so it sort of checked that box for me naturally. I actually wasn't initially say we're going to run lead on this, but I'm really glad it worked out that I got to jump in. So that's part of it. Another part is that Cassidy was just like an absolute dream to work with, you know, like had had strong opinions about what she wanted the piece to do and be, but was also like,
00:16:26
Speaker
very happy to collaborate and listen to differences of opinion. It really felt like we were always pushing the story forward in a really good way. So I think those two played into it, but I think
00:16:45
Speaker
I don't know if this sounds cheesy or not, but I think part of it is just like Susie as a character. She's just a really interesting person.
00:17:01
Speaker
in ways that I guess I struggle to put into words, but she is not only doing this interesting thing, but she has this interesting perspective about it. And she and Cassidy, maybe this is another testament to Cassidy,
00:17:18
Speaker
you know, it seemed like they really had a good connection and that Cassidy had a pretty good sense of how to convey Susie's thoughts and experiences in the story. And there are some pieces where you just
00:17:35
Speaker
so many of the notes are about, can you get us closer to this character? Can you get us closer to this character? And that was never a note I had to give ever in this story. We were just close to her from the beginning. And that meant that everything else that we got to do was about delivering to readers sort of like maximum intimacy with Susie and her story. And that's
00:18:01
Speaker
When you're not really reaching for material, it's just like play. It's just sitting around and playing with something until it works the best way you can make it. Yeah, that's cool. You've just got all the blocks are out and you're like, all right, let's build something cool. Yeah, totally, exactly.
00:18:21
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Jonah, as always, a pleasure. And this was a really gripping, fun story out on the water, a harrowing journey. You got to do Bill Donahue's, the kayak thing across the Bering Strait. And now you've got this one, this circumnavigating the globe with Cassidy's central figure. So as always, Jonah, a pleasure to talk. And we're going to kick it over to Cassidy now. Great. Thanks for having me, Brendan.
00:18:56
Speaker
Hey, don't forget, if you want that monthly missive, my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter, head over to BrendanOmerit.com. Cool stuff that I think adds value to your writing life and your writing journey. Also consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a long way towards validating this enterprise to the way we're seeing effort. We can never have enough of those.
00:19:20
Speaker
So Cassidy Randall, she came here, she came to play ball. Let me get right into things, man. How she uses fiction to help her nonfiction, how she deals with rejection, and of course, the real reason we're here. Her latest adventure story for The activist magazine.
00:19:41
Speaker
I kind of wanted it to read more like fiction. So I'm glad to hear that, which keeps me going more. Even though I'm a nonfiction writer, I definitely am a fiction reader. Oh, for sure.
Cassidy's Influences and Nonfiction Approach
00:19:51
Speaker
Oh, yeah. That's always something I like talking about on this show, too. Doing the narrative journalism that we're drawn to, the best is when it's verifiably true, but it does have the propulsion of something that feels holy fiction.
00:20:06
Speaker
And that might be a great place to jump off given like what are some of the inspirations that you that you draw from so you can synthesize pieces of this nature. Oh gosh that is such a good question. Yeah you know in preparing for this piece I actually read some sailing books so I read
00:20:27
Speaker
you know, The Long Way by Bernard Mortesier about his journey on the Golden Globe where he is such an interesting guy. Basically, you know, is this sea mystic and where so many of the other competitors in that original Golden Globe were, you know, just having this horrific time with loneliness and leaking boats and the weather and just dealing with a lot of mental stuff. You know, he was just gazing at the aurora and watching dolphins frolic and all of that. And so in reading his writing of that,
00:20:57
Speaker
whole journey just to hear sort of the joy that he takes in the ocean I thought was really really interesting for me and kind of preparing for this and and then I think in terms of propulsion particularly also in preparation for this piece I read um a voyage from admin by Peter Nichols which also chronicles you know all of the the logs of those sailors in the original Golden Globe and I think
00:21:21
Speaker
is a pretty propulsive read. If you're a sailor, he uses a lot of sailing terminology that, you know, ocean people absolutely love. But if you're not a sailor, it might be kind of harder to get through that. But but yeah, so I think in terms of sailing those, but also, I mean, I do read a lot of fiction. And to me, I wish I could write fiction, honestly, but I have trouble personally getting through a lot of nonfiction books unless there's some sort of
00:21:49
Speaker
really compelling thread linking it. And so I think, you know, to ask kind of what influenced me in writing this, I would just list fiction book after fiction book, you know, it's like my entire upbringing of reading to figure out how to weave together several different arcs into a single sort of arc, I guess, lack of a better non-repetitive word. What novels or short stories do you return to again and again?
00:22:17
Speaker
Good question. I am rereading some Louise Erdrich. I just think that her books are just incredible. She came to speak in Missoula recently. What do I return to? Oh my gosh, I reread Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry recently. Holy moly, what a tour de force. That's an incredible one. I mean, there actually are some nonfiction books that I have gone to for inspiration and I just have forthcoming in
00:22:46
Speaker
February from Scribner, I worked with Oksana Masters to write her memoir. She's a 17 time Paralympian with this incredible, incredible, hard, vulnerable story. And I went back to reading Cheryl Strayed and how she dealt with trauma. You know, I have read Crazy for the Storm trying to figure out how he kind of used time to go back and forth between this really traumatic event and and
00:23:09
Speaker
you know, synthesizing his childhood with that traumatic event. So yeah, I guess to say that I don't read nonfiction is is not correct. And I love your this was this was great to see your Instagram bio just says writing stories on environment adventure and people exploring the bounds of human potential.
Susie Goodall's Golden Globe Race
00:23:26
Speaker
And I was like, well, that that just about sums up your out of a story here. It does, actually. Yeah, so true. Yeah. How did you arrive at it?
00:23:36
Speaker
Well, my family is a family of sailors. I personally have never been able to get into blue water sailing. I'm really, really active. I love the mountains. I love skiing, but my sister is an avid sailor. My dad taught us how to sail. My uncle's a sailor. We have friends who have their captain's licenses and sail all the time.
00:24:00
Speaker
I had a friend who had told me that the Golden Globe, there was a rerun of the Golden Globe, and she had been following Susie Goodall. She was particularly drawn to Susie.
00:24:11
Speaker
it kind of introduced the story to me, I pitched it around my time editor had really wanted a story on the race and we couldn't fit it in. And by the time Susie had pitch pulled, um, I ended up sort of reporting about that, about her pitch pull for adventure journal. And then I had written about Jean-Luc van and he'd win of it for men's journal. So I was really familiar with the race. And I never, you know, in reporting that story on Susie, I had noticed
00:24:38
Speaker
she never really talked to anybody about, you know, when she got back, there was nothing, there were no news outlets that had anything beyond her statement, which I thought was really interesting. And I kind of reached out last October, I actually maybe November, but I was thinking about writing a book on women and sailing. And so reached out to her, had no idea if she would check this email that goes through her website, you know, and just sent a note that was like, you know, I was really,
00:25:05
Speaker
compelled by your journey. She talked about it for the first time just on this podcast called 59 North. And I listened to that was the first time she talked about, you know, the what happened in the pitch bowl, told her that I thought that was really interesting. And I'd love to just talk to her and see where she was in life now. And we had a lot of conversations before, you know, she agreed to work on a story with me. And in the end, after she told me so much about what she had gone through and the whole journey to like her whole spirituality arc, everything that she was seeking,
00:25:36
Speaker
I said, you know, I really just want to write about you. Are you willing to do that? And it took a lot of trust. We built up a lot of trust together, I think, because she did have some, she had some bad experiences with the way that her story was told. And so it is it's a really interesting piece. When I talked to Jonah a lot about this, about how, you know, I am a reporter, although I consider myself a writer first, to be honest, and
00:26:02
Speaker
Adam is, it's a media outlet, right? And so how do we avoid these pitfalls and avoid it being too navel-gazy? So, I mean, that was definitely a challenge throughout, but I just, I had known about Susie and then in reaching out to her, I just was such a, such a privilege to get to know her, you know, and to get to hear her talk about this all on her own terms was just really powerful.
00:26:24
Speaker
And during the race, and as your story illustrates, Susie was really dangled out in front as this, you know, the lone woman in the race and just, it ended up being a study in gender and media and why, like,
00:26:40
Speaker
Why should this even matter when you're out there sailing? It truly is just a matter of skill, not gender. But she was dangled out there as this lightning rod to get attention for the race, of which she expressed her discontent throughout the story.
00:26:59
Speaker
When you were lobbying her to in getting that trust that you mentioned, like how did you gain her confidence to be able to tell her story in the way that kind of honored her place in the Golden Globe? Man, I don't I think that's almost something to ask Susie, but I actually did ask her that to towards the end. We spent so much time talking that I just asked her kind of what made her ready to tell her story. And she said it was really that
00:27:28
Speaker
She said she liked the sound of me, that I had some sort of pre-thought-out narrative in mind, and that I had wanted to hear everything that she had to say, essentially.
00:27:41
Speaker
And I think that that, you know, even as I was formulating some of these arcs, I would run things past her and be like, does this seem like what you were actually feeling? I don't want to mischaracterize the way that, you know, because so much of this story, it feels like you're in her head. Yeah. And that's a huge sort of responsibility. Right. And so I think the fact that I was really collaborative with her as I was thinking through how to tell it even after we'd had hours upon hours of conversations, I think that that
00:28:06
Speaker
made her feel more at ease too. So, I mean, I think that just spending the time is huge. And I think that I was really open. I wanted to hear what she had to say and I didn't want to, I never wanted to put words in her mouth. And I think that was a different experience for her than she'd had, not necessarily all the time at all. She's also very careful to say, there were so many journalists who did want to ask me about actually sailing, but there were also so many, she had some stories that were just kind of wild about journalists who clearly had no idea
00:28:36
Speaker
about anything about sailing or cared at all about the race and and really it was just the fact of her being a woman that made it the sexy thing, right? So yeah. Yeah. Now that's the the real challenge in third person nonfiction is to get in in the head of your principal figure.
Interviewing and Recreating Ocean Adventures
00:28:55
Speaker
So as as a reporter, what were you what were the questions you're asking? How did you go about interviewing her? So you were getting in between her ears.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to know I wanted to know so much about her background. I mean, we spent
00:29:13
Speaker
so much time talking about just the prep for a voyage like this before we even got into setting off. And I wanted to know about her love of sailing and how the ocean had obsessed her and why. And I think maybe that helped a bit with building trust too that I can speak to some sailing. I mean, I've done nothing like what she has done. I've only done one blue water crossing ever, but I could at least understand the pull of the ocean. And I think,
00:29:39
Speaker
So I asked her a lot about that. And then I asked her these questions. I always want to know how something feels in someone's body when they're scared or when they're thrilled, or I want to know how those emotions feel and where people feel them. I asked that. And I often just ask like, where, where did something come from in you? You know, like you have this thought, where did that come from? What, what bird that thought or, you know, and wanting to sort of, she, I can't remember what she first said about,
00:30:07
Speaker
I think it was something along the lines of being so enthralled with celestial navigation. And she had this beautiful way of talking about it, where she talked about how some sailors used to be so in tune with the ocean that it would speak to them, that before compasses, you know, Vikings would mark where on the horizon the sun rose and measure, you know, before they had any sort of like advanced measuring tools, even a sextant or, you know, how Polynesians knew which direction they were going just based on swells and currents.
00:30:37
Speaker
So that I just wanted to know where did that come from and that's then how we got into the fact that she had read all of these books and how the books were what really had influenced so much of you know why she wanted to sail solo and find this connection. So I think I just I really like to dig deep and maybe ask some
00:30:54
Speaker
Some kind of random questions at the time that kind of lead somewhere else in the other thing which I am actually doing right now But the other thing is that I just love to let a subject go on I don't like to interrupt and I often find that people will go in the best directions when they're just allowed to talk and
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, Robert Caro famously writes in his margins and his notebooks of, say, like, S-U-S-U as like, shut up, shut up. Like, anytime he was interviewing a source, be it for his Robert Moses biography from way back when, or any of the volumes of Lyndon Johnson, when he's talking and interviewing people, he's just like, just don't interject. Oftentimes, reporters and
00:31:38
Speaker
and people they want to interject to prove how smart they are prove how much they know but oftentimes the best interviewing tactic you can do is to just shut up yes yes yeah like silence can do a lot of the heavy lifting right oh my gosh absolutely and i think that what it can often do that i think sometimes we don't give it enough credit for is that
00:32:04
Speaker
sometimes thoughts take a while to process and for something else to come up. And I think that some people too, you know, a lot of people have never been interviewed. And if you, I mean, Susie obviously had quite a lot, but I don't know how much she had people just give her space to actually speak either. Because I think a lot of things were pretty timely too. And you know, timely reporting is so much different than when you have so much space to be able to lay something out. But I think that
00:32:33
Speaker
because a lot of people aren't used to being interviewed, or a lot of us in general aren't used to maybe being listened to a lot, that it takes so long for us to formulate a thought that we might cut something off that hasn't fully formed by asking the next question, right? You have no idea what could possibly come out when somebody like fully processed a question that you had asked. I think that's really fascinating.
00:32:53
Speaker
Now, this story is really a master class in recreating scenes, because it's not like you were in the boat with her as you were doing this, but it felt that way.
00:33:08
Speaker
how did you just get we talked about already getting into her headspace somewhat and how you did that but just how were you able to put you know yourself and by proxy us the reader in the boat with her and feeling our stomachs drop as she's on top of a 30-foot wave or taller like let's let's just talk about how you went about doing that degree of recreation
00:33:34
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. So I think that also comes from having enough time to speak to somebody that you can say, you know, walk me through what happened. And you're not you're not always lucky enough to have someone to be writing with somebody or about somebody who remembers so much, right? And honestly, if she hadn't written down what happened to her during the wave and after she wouldn't remember that either. But she did remember so much of the actual voyage and the prep, which is incredible.
00:34:03
Speaker
But that's why I really like to spend a lot of time saying, tell me what happens. Do you remember this? And if there's a detail that I want to hear about that maybe gets a little glossed over, I always make time to go back. I'm constantly writing these notes that say, go back to this one thing. What was this? Be sure to follow up on this. And so I think it's just a series of questions. But I also think that I am outside quite a lot
00:34:33
Speaker
too, you know, and I've been in a small sailboat. I have experienced sort of some things that are kind of similar to what Susie experienced in different mediums. And so I think it's really helpful when you can speak to how it feels to be so close to the elements and how it feels mentally and emotionally and
00:34:56
Speaker
And that idea of fear and that idea of flow state, which is when you're so ultimately present in a certain task that you're completely transcended your ego. You have completely transcended any sense of time. It's like this sort of crazy sense of meditation, which is often driven by fear. That's why we see so much of that in adrenaline sports.
00:35:17
Speaker
I think having some sort of grasp of that is helpful in me being able to portray that. I felt my stomach drop like that before. Not because I've seen an 80-foot wave or been involved in one, but I think it helps so much to be able to write from your own experience, but then be able to run that past somebody and say, does this translate? Does this sort of seem like what you were feeling?
00:35:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was a long-winded and maybe not very clear answer. Oh, it certainly was. And one particular scene really struck out as particularly haunting and chilling was when one of these, she's in the middle of a storm, then all of a sudden it goes really quiet.
00:35:59
Speaker
And then it's because there's a giant wave that is approaching that's blocking all the sound. So like it was this micro calm within this giant storm. Just in that moment, it's just like, how do you even begin to build a scene like that? And again, that's because she remembered it so well. And she remembered that, I think, before she read her journals. But that idea that
00:36:26
Speaker
And what I think was really interesting, and this is what I love about a story like this, is how do you, yeah, how do you build to that scene? So what comes first so that you can show the reader, you can get the reader to really feel her stomach drop because there's a storm scene that comes before that where she has this insane experience. And it's also a spiritual experience by the end of it. But this wild experiences with this
00:36:52
Speaker
these steeper, faster, bigger waves than anything she's ever seen that she's, nobody's ever going to believe that these even existed, you know, if she's in this storm. And so you already know that when she hears that this next storm is coming, what she must feel like, right? And so to have put that first, and then to be able to have this moment where
00:37:14
Speaker
the wind is just screaming. It's almost exactly how she described it to me in the lead up to that moment. She remembers exactly how that felt and what that was like. She thought that someone had turned the wind off and then thought, no, that wouldn't happen. And then she has this feeling of, no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:37:37
Speaker
I mean, can you imagine? It's just like, that's like gold for writers to get to have somebody who remembers that and you get to recreate that. I mean, that's like a privilege. It's almost like, you know, Jim Harrison talked about how legends of the fall, he wrote it in nine days and it was like taking dictation from the gods. If you're a nonfiction writer, when you have a source like this and somebody who's willing to talk about it like that, it is like taking dictation. It's incredible.
00:38:04
Speaker
Right. It gets to how you say that scene has so much power because of something that came before it. And there was something else too where you talk about how when she's approaching a wave or a wave is approaching her that she needs to be perpendicular to the wave to be able to really
00:38:26
Speaker
Survive it and and write it out and then when the big one is coming another big one is coming She's parallel to it and all of a sudden by virtue of that by virtue of what you had set up before You realize that she could be in some serious trouble and she you know, she was obviously she comes out of it But you feel the doom because she's not situated properly or what's interesting about this and this is where if
00:38:54
Speaker
she were willing I would love to work with her to develop this into a book because there's so much more you could talk about was that she actually did because she had her drogue out which is supposed to position the boat in a in the safest way so she actually was positioned well it was just that that wave was so enormous and this is something we actually ended up kind of cutting from the piece because it wasn't something necessarily that everybody needed to know I just found so fascinating which
00:39:20
Speaker
As an aside, I learned so much working with Jonah as the lead editor and say word on this piece about pacing and how much you meet in a story this size. But was this idea like her trying to figure out how big the wave must have been to a broken her drug like that. I mean, the shock load on those things are nuts. So it was this enormous force, this incredibly violent wave that even though she was in the right position and had done everything right,
00:39:47
Speaker
This thing was just so huge. It was a rogue wave, essentially. She thinks it was likely, you know, she's very careful to say, I'll never be sure because I didn't see it. I was below. But she had this whole thought process where she thought about,
00:40:00
Speaker
This moment, it must have taken for all three of these messy swell directions to meet up to create this one mighty wave that, you know, if her mast was 45 feet tall, and it silenced everything above that. I mean, this is just phenomenal force. It's incredible.
00:40:19
Speaker
Right, and in the course of this story, given that she seemed like such a really thoughtful person and someone who thinks deeply about what she does in her craft, she very well could have done maybe her own personal account of this and written it herself, or had
00:40:40
Speaker
somebody like you kind of like write it for co-writer ghost right I guess how did you you say lobby her you know we already talked about the access of getting to her but this seemed very much like it could have been something she wrote but she entrusted you to be able to carry the story so was there any conversation that you had about that night me just to kind of said lately there might be something more more to develop of what you might be able to help her with
00:41:06
Speaker
So in this case, you know, you wrote it, you know, third person for, you know, essentially profiling her in the race. But what are some of those conversations you might be you might have had either to help her develop it or you just take the reins yourself?
Exploring Themes of Long Journeys and Loneliness
00:41:22
Speaker
You know, we actually did talk about doing a full book together. I wanted to write. I wanted to write her story, you know, and I not ghost write her memoir, but I wanted to write it as third person, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. OK. That was kind of the first direction I went. And she was. Yeah, it was interesting. I had sent her. We'd had a lot of conversations and then I just wrote out what I thought would be the narrative arc of a book like that.
00:41:50
Speaker
And she took a while to get back to me. She is incredibly smart. She is very thoughtful. You are right. She weighs things. And what she wrote back to me was a lot of sort of actually something that I ended up putting in that story about how she was so wary of not wanting to be painted as this icon. And she used the word, hey, geography, which I actually had to look up to be honest, which is saint making.
00:42:19
Speaker
So ultimately we talked about how that would, if we were to write a book together, it would be an even more collaborative process than this would be. And that is something I was absolutely prepared to do. I just, because she's so smart and compelling and articulate, I would absolutely love to do that with her. But ultimately my agent who I work with,
00:42:40
Speaker
And she could be right. It is, sailing books tend to be, depending on the book, can sometimes be a little bit boring, particularly solo sailing books, because there are, and we write about this a little bit in this story, but a lot of solo sailing is not exciting. You don't see huge waves every day. You don't see beautiful sunrises every day. A lot of it is seeing the same exact view from the same sails, overlaying the same deck and the horizon. You know, it's just, it can be really,
00:43:10
Speaker
sort of an internal voyage, and without having other people to pull through a book long narrative like that, then it has to be quite worthy. And to me, I still believe, and we'll see what happens, but I still believe that because Susie is so open in the journey that she took, and a lot of her spirituality arc I think is so interesting, and so many people would relate to that.
00:43:36
Speaker
that I would still love to pursue something like that. But ultimately, Susie has said she does have so many journals and she's written a bit herself, but she ultimately said, I'm not really a writer. And so I think that that's probably what a lot of people run up against, which is why ghost writers exist.
00:43:55
Speaker
What do you think it is about long journeys, be it the Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, or circumnavigating the globe for, you know, deliverance or transference or whatever? You know, what do you think it is about these long journeys that draws us to them and we find so much meaning in them? Oh, man. I mean, I think that we
00:44:22
Speaker
evolved with the natural world. And I think that we have been so removed from it in such a geologically short time span that I think we mourn that in a lot of ways. And so I think that's often what people are seeking when we head out into the woods, onto the ocean, into the mountains is that connection where we feel more alive. I mean, I talk about that to so many different people is this feeling of like,
00:44:51
Speaker
of feeling this such close proximity to life. And what I think is really interesting about that is when you talk to a lot of people, particularly in adventure sports, what brings that is this sort of, there's this thin line between life and death, that proximity to the elements.
00:45:14
Speaker
without sort of external interference brings so much closer, right? And so we often don't feel so alive without that proximity to death that I think we've had for so long. I mean, I think that's sort of a morbid way to put it, but it's this sort of idea that we are part of something bigger and we aren't at the top of this bigger thing.
00:45:35
Speaker
So I think we could probably talk about this at length and it could be a whole other podcast. That would be my impression from my reporting and all my own experience. Well, there's an element of our modern lifestyle where so many of us are sedentary and it's easy. We fall into very simple grooves of our everyday routines, whether they're good or bad for us.
00:46:02
Speaker
And it's very hard to break out of that and to find comfort and discomfort. And I think that's really at our core to be able to push our physical limits. But there's just a lot pulling at us not to do that, be it social media, be it television. But it's hard to break those chains. And maybe you as an outdoor person, maybe you can speak to that.
00:46:29
Speaker
make a good partnership with discomfort so you don't fall into the grooves that can turn our hip flexors 90 degrees and we're hunched over by the time we're 75.
00:46:42
Speaker
It's such a good question because you think that just being a writer means that you get to go out and or report or any of these things, especially if you're an environment or an adventure writer that you're always out experiencing all these things and reporting in the field and you're not you're hunched over a computer so much of the time. But I, you know, have made it a priority to live somewhere where I have access to
00:47:08
Speaker
you know, less development and I live, there's a wilderness, wilderness, right? You know, what is it? It's like a mile up the road, you know, there's a wilderness area here. But of course, you know, these things are disappearing very quickly, too. So, but I mean, honestly, like, I think it's a conscious thing that we have to do, we have to make time to go out and turn off your cell phone, be far away from cell service, which also is harder and harder to do these days, there's cell service everywhere. But
00:47:37
Speaker
You have to make that conscious choice that it's something you want to do. And so I think an example of this is my husband and I, just for our honeymoon, most people would think this was horrible, but we walked across the Bob Marshall, the biggest wilderness in Montana for six days. And it meant for it to be seven, actually. And we're like, who are the only people who would, you know, honeymoon with mosquitoes and blisters? But it was so important for us to go and do that, right? And we sacrificed.
00:48:06
Speaker
you know, what could have been a European vacation or something in order to, to just reconnect, you know, to have that time with our thoughts and to have that time, you know, worrying that there were grizzlies around the corner and hanging your food and, and just being, you know, having to just take care of yourself in that moment, I think is such a powerful thing, but it takes intentionality for sure.
00:48:28
Speaker
In the story you wrote too, often what drives people to quit a race of this nature is often the almost crippling loneliness that being out there, being alone and specifically lonely, and you can't call anyone because that's against the rules of the race, so that really breaks people.
00:48:49
Speaker
Being a writer, too, is often an exercise in loneliness also, especially if you're a freelancer in somewhat remote locations, and you do a lot of your reporting by phone or just via internet. So maybe what is your relationship to loneliness, just given your craft, and especially after you wrote such a good meditation on it, essentially, with your Atavus piece?
00:49:16
Speaker
you know that's such a good question because i'm also i used to say that i was a raging extrovert but i'm now married to more of an introvert and i think he's made me realize i have more introverted tendencies than i thought but with loneliness i mean as an extrovert i am not good with loneliness uh that's a hard thing for sure and i have done again nothing like what suzi has undertaken and i just want to put in perspective that
00:49:46
Speaker
She spent 160 days alone. And you think about, you know, like the history channels hit show alone, where people are dropped in the wilderness to survive by themselves. I mean, the longest anybody has ever gone is 100 days, and she's been 160.
00:50:02
Speaker
I mean, that's just incredible. So, I mean, I think that, you know, give my experience being going out by myself for a backpack, you know, for a couple of nights is the extent of it. But I always did that when I had my dog. And even since not having her, I don't like being alone all by myself for long periods of time. And so that's a tough one. I mean, I think we all have different relationships to loneliness. And it's finding that sort of line between solitude
00:50:31
Speaker
and loneliness. And for me, I know that being around people and relationships feed me so, so much that I can't be alone for, you know, probably more than 24 hours. So it's a tough one. I mean, and you're right, there are different kinds of loneliness, right? There's this idea that it can be lonely being a freelance writer because you feel like you're the only one who's getting so much rejection with all your pitches or I don't know, it seems like everybody else is making it while you're not.
00:51:01
Speaker
And those are just all about, God, the mental game of having a thick skin and, you know, having a network of other people to talk to who might be experiencing that, but that takes intentionality too. So I think there's a lot, there's such a level of recognition and how you function and how, what makes you happy when it comes to loneliness that, I guess that's such a tough question.
00:51:22
Speaker
You know, I started this podcast roughly 10 years ago to really appease a lot of the loneliness I was feeling and also to reconcile the or to not make not make peace, but to maybe metabolize the toxic feelings of jealousy and competition I was feeling because it did feel like like you just said, everybody else was just killing it. And I was writing winners and losers from the Daytona 500 for Bleacher Report. I'm like,
00:51:49
Speaker
This isn't the long-form journalism that my heroes are doing, my peers are doing. And so it took a lot of coaching, of just like self-coaching through the show really to like maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe I need to try to celebrate other people's work and have these kind of nourishing conversations to realize that we're all kind of
00:52:12
Speaker
wrestling with these feelings. And we can look beyond the veneer and the blow dried version of social media and get to the, you know, the crux and the ugliness that we're all dealing with and be like, oh, okay, I'm not really alone in this endeavor. Oh, my God, I wish that we talked about that in freelancing and in writing in particular, so much more. I mean,
00:52:34
Speaker
I just such a, and maybe it's only because I think I'm the only one who struggles with it. I know I'm not though, because my husband is also a freelance writer and it just is this sort of pervasive.
00:52:47
Speaker
And maybe there are those writers who don't struggle with imposter syndrome or rejection or I don't know, don't have their pitches rejected all the time. Yeah, seems unlikely. But it is something that's so easy maybe when you're working for yourself or I actually think it's the combination of working for yourself so you have no other cheerleader other than you to get you through.
00:53:09
Speaker
and being creative so that we all, when you're a creative person, I think you never think that your work is good enough or that it's done or that it's worthy, right? Like we all struggle with that, but we don't talk about it enough, I don't think.
00:53:24
Speaker
Oh, no. And then when you're you're just seeing on Twitter or something, like everyone is just getting these great, prominent bylines and you're like, damn, like, why am I like, I'm struggling here to I'm spinning my tires in the mud and I can't do this. But there's also any number of writing gigs that people have that they're not tweeting about that actually subsidize some of those more prestige pieces. Oh, my God. Right. Like, and no one really talks about the writing we don't tweet about.
00:53:54
Speaker
That is such a good point or the other income. I, a friend of mine who is a great writer, she's an award winner. She has told me that she couldn't write without the income from her Airbnb, right? Or yeah, the people who were, you know, writing for some weird company on the side to make the
00:54:14
Speaker
the narrative reporting work or the person. I actually have had a lot of people tell me that they couldn't freelance right unless their partner was making good money. Yeah. That they would never be able to make that work. But yeah, I definitely get that all the time thinking, wait a second. How have you had three stories in the Atlantic and I can't even get one or oh my God, we all think that I think. Imagine to all of the people who don't try. There's so many people out there
00:54:44
Speaker
who aren't even entering the arena. What is that Brené Brown quote that she uses from Theodore Roosevelt about actually stepping into the arena? There's so many people out there who might have gotten one or two rejections and now are so scared to even head out there. There's such a range of
00:55:03
Speaker
what a writer looks like. You know, it could be somebody, it could be the night janitor whose novel he hasn't sent out because he's so terrified. It could be, you know, the person who's only writing notes on the back of a napkin. It could be the full-time New York Times journalist. There's so many different ways to be a writer. And I wish that we all talked about that so much more. So we didn't feel this sort of, I haven't made it yet, sort of pervasive feeling.
00:55:28
Speaker
How have you made peace and even embraced rejection?
Rejection and Narrative Craft Techniques
00:55:36
Speaker
Oh, God. I have not embraced rejection at all. That is so hard. I have to say that I pitched less, quite honestly. I have decided that I have to be really judicious about sort of what stories I actually want to pitch.
00:55:56
Speaker
Um, and I want to work on bigger projects like this out of it story because then you don't have to hustle so much and you don't have to face so much rejection when you're trying to, to get work. And I, in some senses for me, that's really heartbreaking because there's so many things I want to write that I would honestly just pitch. I mean, there was a time when I used to have to write down what I had out, you know, when to follow up because I had so much out there, so many stories I wanted to write. So.
00:56:22
Speaker
I guess in a sense it's sort of like killing a lot of your darlings before they have the chance to be killed, which is really sad. Yeah, I've come, maybe it's just because I deal with rejection so much in the form, often, of silence, which is the worst rejection of all. But I've come to see rejection as almost as a gift because
00:56:47
Speaker
mainly because and this is just my own my own Jedi mind trick on myself it's anytime it's rejected well let's say anytime it finally is accepted I'm like oh wow it is this is where I feel like it should be like
00:57:04
Speaker
this wasn't when I pitched this five other times it was definitely not as fully formed and fleshed out but now it seems good and like it had it been accepted five times ago wouldn't be nearly as good so thanks for those four other rejections because now it's actually
00:57:21
Speaker
It's stronger because of it. So I don't know. That's my own mind trick with it. And oftentimes I feel like, oh, I'm actually glad it got rejected. Once it's accepted, I'm like, I'm actually kind of glad it got rejected all those times because it just, it wasn't there yet. I jumped the gun, but now it's good.
00:57:36
Speaker
That is a far healthier mindset than the one I've had. I'm going to start adopting that. Something that struck me about your Adivis piece too, right off the bat, and I'm going to read just the first sentence here because I think this piggyback said a lot of things that we were talking about already. And you write, in the heaving seas of the southern ocean, a small red-hulled sailboat tossed and rolled at the mercy of the tail end of a tempest.
00:58:02
Speaker
And I wanted to talk about sentences and your attention to sentences because there is alliteration all over that sentence in the T's and the S's. And to me it seems like there was a lot of attention put into the word play and the word construction of that sentence. So what is your eye for detail when you're starting to construct sentences of that nature?
00:58:27
Speaker
Um, let's see, I actually try to avoid too much like outright alliteration. That could be kind of annoying, even though sometimes you find yourself thinking, Oh, no, the sentence actually works works if I said that savage
00:58:41
Speaker
storm sinking. Right. I don't know. There was a lot of a lot of those S sounds are like tucked into the middle of words, too. It's not like every word starts with the letter S, but I noticed that as I read it, I'm like, oh, it's hitting my ear in that way. And then, of course, like, you know, at the very end, you know, it's the tail end of a tempest, too. And that has a nice rhythm to it. That's one thing I definitely I love rhythm.
00:59:05
Speaker
in sentences. And in this piece, I actually talked a lot with Jonah about this too. And that when, as I was writing it, there were a lot more sort of long sentences throughout that then, you know, in the top edit, when say word came in, she cut a few of them up and sort of made them shorter. But
00:59:27
Speaker
one of the reasons I had chosen some of those longer sentences, and I think Sayward was right, not having long sentences all the way throughout the piece, but one of the reasons I had done that was it gives it a dreamier feel. And that was the feel I wanted for this piece. I wanted it to feel sort of dreamlike. And so that's why that sentence starts out long, right? So that you have this long time to be in this moment.
00:59:54
Speaker
And then I think, you know, you choose shorter sentences and sentence placement, right? And such a, such a big fan of being really sort of strategic about where you have a short sentence that stands all on its own in a bunch of white space. And then I try to avoid, I don't always make this work very well, but I try to avoid too many qualifiers. In a sentence, that one does have a lot of qualifiers. But
01:00:20
Speaker
Yeah. And then I have learned a little bit. So I don't have formal training necessarily in writing. I have a bachelor's in American literature. So I have a formal training and reading, which is fantastic. When I discovered that was a major that you could actually do, I was thrilled. And then I have a master's in environmental studies. And so I don't have formal writing training, but I've learned a lot.
01:00:43
Speaker
about the sounds of words and when you want words to convey an emotion or a feeling or how to use them to get that stomach to drop or if like the way that a word sounds it sounds like it's a really harsh thing that's happening. There were certain times when I was being really nitpicky that I'm sure the editors were like, are you serious?
01:01:03
Speaker
when I, you know, said, figured you was too casual a word to be using in this moment. We need to use a different word, you know? So sometimes it can be a little bit of a curse, I think, to be nitpicky and maybe not the best thing. You said in working with Jonah and Sayward that you learned a thing or two about pacing. And so maybe you can speak to that and how you, you know, parsed out the big, the big set piece is the big detail. So
01:01:30
Speaker
Even though this isn't a literal page turner, it's more of a page scroller. So we keep on swiping up as we want to keep reading this piece as you're going.
01:01:44
Speaker
told both of them that I wanted this to be a learning experience. I wanted to use this story editing process with them in the ad of us to learn how to elevate my craft. And they both were very open to that. And they actually have the time to do that and are very willing to do that, which I've thanked both of them. But it's rare to find editors who have time to do that these days. So that's it's a huge, amazing experience if you want to learn as a freelance writer.
01:02:10
Speaker
And so I actually, it's a, one of my first conversations with Joda, I was talking to him about pacing and originally there's the passage that she has this thought where this enormous wave is about to hit her and I'll go silent. And right before it hit her, I had a passage in there, not very, probably like 200 words, a passage in there on rogue waves and
01:02:35
Speaker
which I find absolutely fascinating. I want to know more about rogue waves and I want to know where they come from. And there is a dreamlike and weird mythology around them as well that nobody even knew, thought that they existed. They thought they were just fairy tales up until very recently because nobody survived them. So people who had, there was nobody who'd actually experienced one, seen one, you know, to live to tell about it, like the 1880s.
01:02:59
Speaker
And there was a scientist who experienced one. So anyways, I had about 200 words in there and then went back to the story. And, you know, he said in a, in a much, if we had more space, if you were, you know, had 60,000 words to tell this story, you might want to slow that down. Or if you had talked about.
01:03:18
Speaker
the wave, you know, this whole scene was 15,000 words, then you might want to slow that down. But because we don't have so much time and we're so with her, we want to know what happens to her right then. But I also think that's something, it's a hard thing when you're actually in the piece writing it sometimes to know where that is because you're so close to it, which is why having, you know, a first reader probably is so helpful or a great editor is super helpful. The other thing that I thought was really interesting that I learned that I had never known
01:03:49
Speaker
was that essentially, because I had had a few sort of shorter senses, the way that her journey, I had written her journey originally when she set off, which is basically all a part two, I'd written it more in like very short sort of vignettes.
01:04:07
Speaker
And I had done that because I wanted to convey that not much really happens when you're sailing, right? And when it does, it happens when you short burst. But Jonah had this great point that you can't really expect your readers to trust you at that point. They haven't seen that throughout the rest of the piece, right? And so it feels really off when you're suddenly dropped into just a bunch of short passages as opposed to these very long ones that really immerse you. And he said that,
01:04:34
Speaker
readers typically take, I think he said around 750 words, not all the time, right? It's not like a full blanket statement, but in general, take about 750 words to really drop into what the writer wants them to feel and what the writer wants to tell them. So that was huge for me to understand too, I think, in terms of pacing and passage construction.
01:04:55
Speaker
And, you know, as we kind of wind down here, I know you've got the the book coming out with with. Oh, shoot. There. Oxana, Oxana Masters coming out in the in the winter. But yeah, it looks like February 2023.
01:05:12
Speaker
So when you're, you know, helping someone else tell their story, we kind of talked about that with, you know, as you were reporting out Susie's, but like for a book length thing of this nature, when you're helping someone else tell their stories, what's that process like of co-writing or even ghostwriting something with someone like Oksana?
Co-writing Process and Book Recommendations
01:05:36
Speaker
Well, I hit the jackpot with Oksana because she is so humble and she is also quite articulate. And the reason she wanted to tell her story, we're so selfless. Like she almost didn't really, she had a lot of sort of nerves around telling that story publicly. I mean, there's a lot of trauma and it's really vulnerable. And so yeah, she,
01:06:05
Speaker
She just had such pure intentions around why she wanted to tell that story. And she had to be very clear on what they were for herself to be comfortable with telling it. And then she also is another one even more than Susie, but she remembers things.
01:06:21
Speaker
just like from when she was 13, 14 with such clarity. And she remembers what things felt like in her body was such specificity. But it's so amazing the way that she describes things. It's just really incredible. And you don't get to run up against somebody like that all the time. And I think the other thing that was I just, you know, I'm so grateful to Oksana for was that she gave me so much freedom to get into her head and said, you know, I just
01:06:48
Speaker
Like take this and write it, you know, and she wasn't. She, she really trusted me to do a good job with that, you know, and she didn't micromanage it really at all. And I think what we were able to do kind of actually surprised a lot of people in the end. I don't think anybody expected her to be so vulnerable, you know, or to be able to, for us to be able to pull the things out of her story that we did. So.
01:07:13
Speaker
All of that has to do with the fact that she was willing to be so open, but you don't always get that as a ghostwriter. I don't think, I mean, she's my first experience doing that as a, they call it a contributor now, which I think is so interesting, but she was my first experience doing that. But I mean, I don't, you know, I have read.
01:07:31
Speaker
a little bit about, you know, how Moranger and Agassi worked together on Open and it was nothing like that. Like he went line by line with Moranger on that in the end. And, you know, Opsana really let me create her world based on what she told me and the only reason I was able to do that is because she told me so much. So that was a really incredible and probably
01:07:52
Speaker
unique experience. And I think she probably ruined me for any other ghost writing or contributing or whatever you want to call it. What becomes the challenge for you to write in somebody else's voice if that ended up being the case with this? Hmm. I think with that one, it was wanting to interject my own style of writing, for sure, where I think, no, no, no, that's that's me. That's not her. And
01:08:22
Speaker
to be able to recognize that, I think, was really, really helpful. And she has such a strong voice, though, that it was fairly easy for me to figure that out now and then. I mean, I'll be totally honest. I mean, I think one of the hardest things for me about one of the biggest challenges about ghost writing is that
01:08:42
Speaker
you know you spend so much of your time and your energy and I told Oksana when I you know the first time I talked to her that I wanted this to be the best thing I had written to date that that was my mission for this story and her story because it's just so compelling and and she was sacrificing so much to tell it that that was what I wanted to do but so you spend
01:09:02
Speaker
months on something and you pour yourself into it, you know, just like your I did your heart and soul into it. And in the end, you know, it's Oksana story. It's not my book, right? And so I think that's a really interesting thing to kind of grapple with as a contributor. You know, my name's on the title page, which is incredible. And
01:09:22
Speaker
She gave me a beautiful acknowledgement, but it's her story. And that is a weird thing to sort of wrap your head around. But as we bring this down for a landing, Cassidy, I always like asking writers at the end of the show to offer recommendation of sorts to the listeners can be anything, you know, fun, helpful, entertaining, whatever, whatever it is. So I'd extend that to you.
01:09:41
Speaker
Yes. Well, since we were talking about fiction, I want to recommend to anybody who loves reading just joyous writing. Have you ever read any Brian Doyle? I have. I've read some of his essays. Oh, my gosh. So I just actually read Martin Martin twice. And again, my husband introduced me to this, to Brian Doyle in particular, because he loved his writing as well. But the way that Brian Doyle
01:10:06
Speaker
just spends pages upon pages creating this whole world before you even know why he's brought you into it. And you become so close to these characters. It's just incredible. And then I had read a couple of his Mink River and the Plover where I was so sad that they ended. I went back and reread the beginning before I knew why he had brought us into that world. I just think that's so incredible. And the other one I would love to recommend to anyone that
01:10:35
Speaker
Ben and my husband and I just read out loud to each other. One, reading a book out loud is such a different experience and it's so cool. But we just read out loud to each other, Tom, Robin, skinny legs and all. And my God, what a masterpiece. I just I don't understand how he even comes up with his metaphors. The research he put into that to weave together all these religious movements into this just like
01:11:00
Speaker
sort of almost like reverent at the same time it's irreverent storyline oh my god what this just incredible so those are my two that i would recommend fantastic well well cassidy this was a blast to get to unpack a lot of the things that you wrote about in uh in this profile and story you wrote for the atavist and a few other a few other items on craft too so this was a lot of fun so thank you so much for the time thank you i had a great time too
01:11:31
Speaker
Oh and so we've come to the end thanks again to Jonah Ogles and Cassidy and to you the listener link up to the show on social media at cnfpod or at creative nonfiction podcast on instagram if you do i give you mad digital props with a James Hetfield gif of my choice of my choosing
01:11:54
Speaker
So I was recently interviewed by a journalist writing a piece about social media and the insidious nature of algorithms for a newsletter or something. I'll link up to it in my Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. Coming up in a couple days. Actually, if you're listening to this on a Friday, it's coming up tomorrow, October 1st. This woman, Jana, or Jana, I don't know how to pronounce her name, I'm so sorry. I'm gonna say Jana.
01:12:22
Speaker
but it could be Gianna. Let's go with Gianna. She came across my newsletter when I was a guest on Alison K. Williams' Writers Bridge, where I talked about being a podcaster and how to be a good guest on a podcast.
01:12:35
Speaker
And one of my great beefs with people is when they overemphasize social media. It's like a lot of people put too much energy into getting good at a social media platform, whatever that means. And it's a titanic waste of time.
01:12:54
Speaker
And the thing is you might get good at it and then they change the rules and then you're screwed. So what can you do? Like we've largely been duped into thinking that we need this robust social media following to be attractive as authors seeking representation or publication. So what do you do? I mean you waste all your time, you could waste all your time on Twitter trying to get followers.
01:13:18
Speaker
trying to write some witty thread or dunking on someone and trying to win the internet for a day. But sooner or later you're gonna get gobbled up by the endless timeline of nonsense and bullshit. But what you should be doing, and it's harder to put into practice I think, it's easier to say than to put into practice. It's what I've been experimenting with and I'm putting together a talk or a presentation of sorts on this experiment.
01:13:48
Speaker
you should be writing a killer essay or just pitching and pitching and pitching to several prominent publications and then in your tagline of course you are linking back to your website where you hopefully collect emails be it for a newsletter or just an email list to keep people abreast of what you're up to.
01:14:06
Speaker
And these are people who are obviously if they're if they read something you wrote and then they're taking the effort to click Go back to your website. They're interested in what you have to say and what you have to offer then by extension Here's the thing. I think your social media is gonna grow without any without having to try to hack your way
01:14:28
Speaker
to social media growth, and you'll have stuff worth promoting. You'll have stuff worth saying. You'll be better at your craft. Frankly, the more widely you publish, the less you'll need social media, because people will just start seeking you out as an authority or a source of entertainment. And isn't that what you wanted in the first place, to be a writer whose work is read? That's what I thought. So stay wild, seeing efforts, and if you can't do, interview. See ya.
01:15:10
Speaker
you