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Episode 75—Chris Arvidson on "The Love of Baseball," Deadlines, Pacing, and Curiosity
125 Plays7 years ago
Chris Arvidson says, "There’s so much great real stuff happening that it seemed dumb to make up anything." What’s going on, CNFers? Before we get started I want to tease something. I have something I’d like to offer you loyal listeners and the thing is I could say it now, but I think I’m going to hold off until the very end of the show. Is that mean? That’s kinda mean isn’t it? Sorry about that…no I’m not… This week I welcome Chris Arvidson for Episode 75 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in narrative journalism, radio, essay, memoir, and documentary film and try to tease out their stories, habits and routines so you can improve your own creative practice. Chris co-edited along with Diana Nelson Jones The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans published by McFarland. It’s a beautiful book and we talk about its genesis, what makes for good baseball writing vs. horrible baseball writing, what’s the most important thing for Chris when developing a story, the organic nature of building a network, favorite books on writing, and much more. Chris also edited the anthologies Reflections on the New River and Mountain Memoirs. You can find more about her and her work at chrisarvidson.com. You feel good? You read to go? Let’s get to episode 75 with Chris Arvidson. Dig the show? Leave a nice review on iTunes. Thanks, CNFers!
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Transcript
Introduction and Tease
00:00:00
Speaker
What's going on CNFers? Before we get started, I want to tease something. I have something I'd like to offer you loyal listeners, and the thing is, I could say it now, but I think I'm going to hold off until the very end of the show. Isn't that mean? It's kind of mean, isn't it? Sorry about that. No, I'm not.
Meet Chris Arvinson
00:00:25
Speaker
This week, I welcome Chris Arvinson.
00:00:29
Speaker
for episode 75 of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world's best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in narrative journalism, radio, essay, memoir, and documentary film, and try to tease out their stories, habits, and routines so you can improve your own creative practice.
00:00:53
Speaker
Chris co-edited, along with Diana Nelson Jones, The Love of Baseball. Essays by Lifelong Fans, published by McFarland.
Inspiration and Collaboration
00:01:03
Speaker
It's a beautiful book, and we talk about its genesis, what makes for good baseball writing versus horrible baseball writing, what's the most important thing for Chris when developing a story, the organic nature of building a network, favorite books on writing, and much, much more.
00:01:22
Speaker
Chris also edited the Anthology's Reflections on the New River and Mountain Memoirs. You can find more about her work at chrisarvitson.com. You feel good? You ready to go? I'm done. Let's get to episode 75 with Chris Arvitson. I want to get started here. Sometimes I start with the origin of people's lives and I want to pivot off of that, maybe get to that later and actually get into
00:01:48
Speaker
Um, sort of the real reason that we're even talking, which is the love of baseball, this essays by lifelong fans and edited by you in a Diana Nelson Jones. And, uh, just let's talk about the origin of this. Like, how did you come to want to compile these types of essays, uh, for, for people who love baseball and, you know, talk a little bit about just how you, uh, how, where the idea came from and how it came together. It was.
00:02:18
Speaker
a really strange confluence of events. I worked on a book called About the New River for a publisher in my neighborhood, believe it or not. McFarland Publishing is like five miles from my house, which if you understand where I live, which is in the middle of nowhere, it's kind of astounding.
00:02:49
Speaker
So I had worked on this new river book and I really hit it off with everybody over there and discovered coincidentally that they publish more baseball books than just about anybody in the country. It's one of their niche things. So like how crazy is that? One of the editors actually saw my tiger flag on my house. And because I live right in the little town and they're like, wow,
00:03:18
Speaker
Who the heck is that? That has a tiger flag in Mountain Town, North Carolina.
Gathering Stories and Selecting Contributors
00:03:26
Speaker
So they talked to me about a baseball book as yet undetermined. And it occurred to me that I might follow up that river anthology with a baseball anthology. And I immediately thought of Diana Nelson Jones, who
00:03:46
Speaker
was an old baseball body of mine from when I lived in Pittsburgh. And she has written for the Post Gazette there for like 25 plus years. Wow. So she's avoided to date like any of those, any massive newspaper cuts that seemed to happen to a long tenured reporters. Exactly. So, you know, she's really written in just about everything for them. The way we met was I was living in Pittsburgh. She was writing sports and
00:04:16
Speaker
She wrote a column about Jason Kendall, the Pirates catcher, who was my favorite player there at the time. And I sent her a fan mail, a fan email about it, because I thought it was so great. And we ended up being baseball buddies. And that's been some time ago. I mean, we just have always stayed in touch with that baseball connection.
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's something to be said. I love catchers. I love catching. They breed unto themselves on the diamond. And there's something to be said for the slight scrappy catcher. That's not necessarily like pudge or Carlton Fisk.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah. You're talking about like Jason Kendall, like Craig Beggio before he moved over to second base, you know, these five foot eight, five foot nine guys who, who are leaders that have a undeniable cannon for an arm, but they, you would not, looking at, looking at a lineup of players, you would say like, Oh, they're definitely not a catcher. They're more like a middle infielder. And, uh, what was it about, uh, Jason Kendall that, that, you know, it was definitely that scrappy.
00:05:27
Speaker
that scrappy kind of throwback guy, meaning, you know, kind of grubby, you expect him to be dirty, you know, scrapper. It's the scrapper thing, definitely. So what was logistically, all right, so you've been greenlit to get this collection together. How did you go about starting to create a stable of writers and then start to feel out how you were going to fill the pages?
00:05:57
Speaker
Well, it was interesting how easy it was. It was easier for this than other anthologies I've done that were more geographically specific. Diana and I had a couple of days of skull sessions where we sat down and just started writing about topics that we'd like to see and people that we knew that had stories or connections to baseball.
00:06:26
Speaker
You know, we just, there was just a ton. There was a ton of them. And some of them were people who were, um, you know, very competent writers that we knew or, um, you know, colleagues, Diana had course had colleagues at the paper. But when we put that whole list together, it was a pretty damn big list.
00:06:47
Speaker
And so we said, all right, we're gonna ask everybody on our wish list first and see how it shakes out, see where we need to go from there. We had one person who felt like they couldn't just, they didn't have the time to fit it in. One, out of all the people that we asked. And then we started looking at what, you know, some people we asked specifically because we knew they had a point of view or a story.
Overcoming Writing Challenges
00:07:17
Speaker
And some people, we asked them to pitch us what they'd like to do, knowing that they had several things that could pop up. And then we looked at where we saw there might be holes. And that's where the second phase kicked in. And that was me putting out a call to other Goucher golfers.
00:07:46
Speaker
And that was super successful. There are seven Goucher folks in the book, and they all, including you, have very unique stories to tell. So that was like a big bonus, big bonus. Yeah, we came out of the bullpen.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah, it was fabulous because the range of stories was just so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And so what was the experience like as you were starting to read through these stories then? What was that to get a perspective of these? I don't know how many people are in here. Let's say there's roughly 25 to 30. Yeah.
00:08:35
Speaker
30 of you are Diana and myself. Yeah, so 30 essays, 30 points of view, all under the umbrella of baseball. So what was that like, reading this stuff and seeing all this stuff come in? What was that experience like for you? We read them first individually. Diana read a group of them, and I read a group of them.
00:09:02
Speaker
Honestly, I was really blown away. There wasn't anything that we had to say, oh, this is just not good enough, or this is not interesting enough, or it's just not going to fit. We did not have that experience. We had a few people, and they were among the less experienced writers, for the most part, who we had to kind of drag across the finish line.
00:09:28
Speaker
Because they had really good stories to tell, but they were having trouble getting their butt in the seat, as it were. I had one really good friend who is an experienced writer whose story, and I'll just tell you which one it was because she won't care. It was the Julie Townsend story about the minor league ball player who lives in my area, who's from where I live.
00:09:55
Speaker
And you know, and it was such a great story. I didn't, you know, we didn't want it to not be in
Themes and Perspectives in Baseball Essays
00:10:01
Speaker
there. It was the only one like it. And I just said, okay, just come over to my house tomorrow and bring all your notes and we're just going to do it. So that did, we just, we just sat down and I took all our notes and got out my computer and wrote the damn thing, put it all together.
00:10:22
Speaker
You know, cause she had some great interview notes and you know, of course the, the title of that one, the title of that one was hilarious and it was a great quote right from the story about get a shower before somebody gets hurt.
00:10:39
Speaker
And talking with Glenn Stout, who he edits the Best American Sports Writing Series, and he considers himself, you know, he's a brilliant editor, and he considers himself like a really good RBI guy, which is to say, like, he knows that is, you know, a lot of the writers he works, has worked with and works with, you know, they're really good at getting a third base, and he's like, you know, I'm the guy, I can get them home.
00:11:03
Speaker
You know, they go from third to home. And it looks like you were the RBI guy to get Julie's piece across. Julie, yeah, she said, I think you should put your name on this, too. And I'm like, no, this is, you know, this is, it was a great, you know, it was a great little piece. And Martin Little, the guy that she wrote about and interviewed is a really
00:11:28
Speaker
great guy who I knew and I didn't know until she proposed writing this story that he had played minor league baseball and I see the guy like five times a week. So you know it turned out and of course and the other thing that was fun about that story is that Julie knows nothing about baseball. You know there was a little bit of translation and explanation that had to go with her on how to put it all together because
00:11:56
Speaker
She didn't have all the names right or know who they were or stuff like that. So it made it kind of interesting. So what do a lot of these essays have in common with each other? Besides the obvious, but what did you notice across all of them? How are they similar and how do they differ in a lot of ways?
00:12:21
Speaker
Almost everybody started to form a connection to baseball as a very young person and not necessarily playing because there's a lot of women in this book, which I think, you know, and I've had people comment to me that that's unexpected to them, that people would find such a connection or be passionate about.
00:12:48
Speaker
a sport like baseball that they didn't really play much themselves. So it seems to have started young for everyone that's in the book. And it's a progression too. It's the people's relationship with the game change over their life.
00:13:13
Speaker
That's a big thing I've noticed just with my evolution with it, because I can definitely say there was a big period of time when I did not love baseball at all. It was not fun for me anymore. And so I come from kind of at a different angle than some people.
00:13:33
Speaker
I burned out on it big time. So there was a big chunk of my life where it was just, I probably loved it up until I was about 16 and then went from like 16 to 21 in my prime athletic years, really not liking it. And it took me another like 10 years to kind of come around to it and be able to go to games and watch games with a degree of fun that I severely lacked since I was like a little kid really.
00:14:02
Speaker
Right, right. Well, there is that, you know, that connection back to being a little kid is pretty obvious for everyone too, even if that's a melancholy kind of looking back. Right. What surprised you most? I mean, you said there were a lot of women had a strong connection to it who didn't necessarily play baseball itself. What else surprised you when you were getting these pieces?
00:14:27
Speaker
It's not just, you know, you expect that people will talk about listening to or going to games with their dad and it's not all dads. There's some moms in there too. They do tend to be kind of my age, which is early sixties. The moms, my age moms frequently got people into baseball, not the dads.
00:14:54
Speaker
And of course, obviously the women who do talk about playing or wanting to play and not being able to play, um, are, you know, another younger generation than myself, because that was never even a question. I mean, there was no little league or tee ball or anything. There was no title nine when I was that age. So we had dick basically. Um, but that doesn't, you know, that didn't stop anybody from
00:15:23
Speaker
that didn't stop women from wanting to play or learning to love the game.
00:15:29
Speaker
Baseball writing can sometimes devolve into, you know, too saccharine and heavily weighted in nostalgia and in a bad way. The bad baseball writing can turn into that, kind of like that field of dreamy W.P. Kinsella way. What about baseball writing when it's really singing and cracking really resonates with you? Right.
00:15:58
Speaker
You know, yeah, I don't need to hear another story about how you went to the baseball game
Importance of Personal Connections in Baseball Writing
00:16:02
Speaker
with your dad. It's like, you know, we had to be really, we had to be pretty careful with that part of it. And, and that's why we were really wanting to understand what people were going to set about writing at the beginning when we first talked to them about being in the book. Cause I didn't want to get 30 pieces about going to the ball game when you were eight with your dad. Cause you know, blah.
00:16:27
Speaker
But we both really wanted to have that feeling of experience of how people experience baseball over their lifetime and what it feels like. So when I was trying to communicate that to other writers, I would frequently refer them to the passage in Diana's book about making that sign for
00:16:54
Speaker
Roberto Clemente's birthday when she was a kid and taking it to the ballpark and about how he tipped his hat to her and she thought she was going to just fly off the stands. That was just like, wow, right? So tell me your story that's like that. That's about that. That it's about what is your connection to that experience.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah. And who are some baseball writers that you still, you turn to frequently because they just, they know how to get the right, the right tone, right between that experience. And they tow that nostalgia line, you know, without going over it. Well, you know, Boswell, I love Boswell. He's the guy that tells the story about his dad worked for the library of Congress.
00:17:52
Speaker
And he tells the story about his dad taking him to work with him, because he's actually a DC person. His dad takes him to the Library of Congress, and he takes him into the stacks, and he takes him to this section. And he says, OK, kid, here's every book that's ever been written about baseball. Don't go blind.
00:18:22
Speaker
So, I mean, how can you not be great after that? I like George Will's baseball writing, too. You know, I don't have really much use for him otherwise, frankly, but I really like his baseball writing. Those would be the two that I think I like the most. Yeah, I'd throw Roger Angel into that list, too. Yeah. Well, what do you think of him? Does he not resonate with you quite as much?
00:18:48
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know what it is about. Maybe it's because maybe it's the DC thing with Boswell and Will that gets my attention.
Chris's Writing Journey and Influences
00:19:00
Speaker
Because when I lived there, I was really involved in thinking about baseball on a day-to-day basis. And it might be that connection. Yeah. Yeah, because you were, for a time in the early 80s, you were a season ticket holder with a bunch of people for the Orioles. Yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
Cause we didn't have anything DC. Right. Cal Ripken was my favorite player growing up. Right. How could you not, how could he not be? Yeah. Yeah. He was the iron man. I wore number eight throughout my whole career because of him. We, yeah, there's some great, you know, my, um, friend, Glen Marcus, who's got a story in here about the, that's a lot about the Orioles. Um, he doesn't say so specifically in his story, but
00:19:48
Speaker
His connection was his dad, but it was unique. His dad was the marketing guy from National Premium Beer, which is like the beer of kind of like Stroz used to be for the Tigers. So his dad, he could take him to games. Glenn could go down in the field and play catch with the players and stuff. I mean, it's kind of crazy.
00:20:15
Speaker
So what about, you know, you had that unique editing experience being the, you know, getting Julie's piece across the finish line, so to speak, and writing your own pieces, your own piece in here in general. What part of the writing process appeals most to you, like editing or the writing?
00:20:38
Speaker
It was interesting because I didn't write my piece until everybody else's was done because I thought, if there's a hole, then I can fill it. And you know, sometimes doing a piece like this is, it's hard to think about what to do because you have so many stories you could tell. So, you know, I really went after the kind of the trying to feel like being there.
00:21:06
Speaker
angle of it. And I really, so honestly, I enjoyed writing my piece as much as I enjoyed writing really anything I've done. I'm really proud of it. I think it turned out terrific. But that's partly because I'd read everybody else's really great stuff before. I learned some things about my own writing by reading all those other ones first. It's almost like an unfair advantage.
00:21:35
Speaker
So what about reading all the others? What was the big takeaway that you got from the other pieces that you were able to deploy into your own? I think a lot of it was pace. It was in 2,000 to 3,000 words, how do you put together a context so that you can really buy into the story when you're reading it? So how do you set up your story? And then how do you make it move?
00:22:06
Speaker
move along. Those were the main things. And what about writing and writing true stories appeal to you at a younger age that made you want to pick up the pen as sort of a vocation? Well, you know, it never occurred to me, honestly, to do anything else, because it just seemed so much more interesting to me to
00:22:40
Speaker
It seemed kind of dumb to make up anything. I really didn't. Now, later, and I finished up my Goucher program in 2005. So, you know, it's been a while. And I will confess that I have actually dabbled in fiction and poetry since then.
00:23:10
Speaker
That's not, it's never going to be my main thing to not. When you dabble with the fiction, does it, this sounds really stupid, but this is how I feel when I just noodle around with it. Does it feel too fake to you? Well, yeah, it feels kind of contrived, you know, and it feels like it, yeah, I mean, and I have a novel in progress. I've written like 80,000 words that I started five years ago.
00:23:39
Speaker
with the National Novel Writing Month. And I have a small writing group, and it's two other people who primarily have written nonfiction as well, and they are attempting this novel thing. So that really functions as a thing that gets my butt in the seat, but I don't end up always doing fiction. There's another
00:24:07
Speaker
Goucher person who has put together an anthology That's going to be coming out sometime in the next month or two Kat Plesska. Oh, yeah, I know cat. Yeah, and and I actually wrote a poem for that that's going to be in this Anthology with the theme of unity so That'll be a that'll be a real trip I would have a published
00:24:36
Speaker
poem is pretty crazy. Yeah. And what has to be in place for you to really sink your teeth into an essay or a piece, a reported piece that gets you excited to want to keep going through the research? A deadline. Even if it's self-imposed, I have to have one. I really do. Now, I'm thinking about
00:25:06
Speaker
And my baseball book publisher is interested in me doing this. So that's kind of a deadline of its own. I mean, if you actually have somebody that's interested in publishing something you haven't written yet, I think you need to pay attention, right? That I'm going to like really go off the farm and publish a book of essays about being in Jerusalem.
00:25:33
Speaker
because I've been going there on an archaeological dig project for three summers, and I'm going to be going again this summer. And it's a pretty fascinating topic. And I'm trying to think about how to get my head around that right now. But that's kind of a deadline. I mean, I'm going this summer. They're interested in it now. So that gets me pretty jazzed.
00:25:58
Speaker
And if you were offering some advice to somebody who might be mid-career or even before mid-career writer, who's just trying to get a toe holder traction into some form of freelancing or anything, how would you advise that person to maybe, if they want to start writing for magazines, regional or national, how would you go about saying, oh, these are some sequential logical steps
00:26:28
Speaker
at least get you into the game. You know, that old button C thing is just you have to ask somebody every day and have an idea every day about something that you want to write. You know, I'm teaching right now, and it's astounding to me how that idea of having an idea about something that you want to write about seems
Teaching Writing: Challenges and Techniques
00:26:57
Speaker
to be so elusive to college students. It's like, I don't know. I don't know what I wanna, I don't know, I don't think anything. I don't have any questions. I'm not interested in anything basically is what some of them tell me. And I'm like, wow. Surely there's something that you're interested in. But you have to write, I think you have to write every day and you have to ask every day.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. It's a matter of defining what rigor is and having some of that rigor, putting your butt in the chair, doing some writing even if it is just journaling or something and asking some questions. Just try to find out where your curiosity lies and then just start doing some stuff.
00:27:50
Speaker
How have you been able to address the student that says, oh, I don't have any questions? How do you connect to that person and say, find an interest and then get them asking questions? Because if you're going to be in any kind of true storytelling, you can't just be navel-gazing. You do have to go out and talk to people and ask questions. So how do you connect to that person? That's interesting because the thing that they're really the worst at is navel-gazing. I want you to tell them,
00:28:21
Speaker
a question and then they'll just go out and find out what the answer is. They don't want to have to think about it. They think they can just go look it up. But they usually are interested in something. They just don't think it's a they somehow don't think it's an appropriate topic for college maybe or the particular class that they're in. And usually if I if I have a long enough conversation with them like 15 or 20 minutes I can help them find something.
00:28:48
Speaker
But they're kind of bad at navel gazing. I just recently had spent the entire class talking about the difference between writing a college essay and writing something that's reflective. And some of them just like
00:29:11
Speaker
can't get that. So what kind of writing or reading do you assign them to show them like okay this is this is how it's done like these are some models for you. Here's my really big hint of the day and then go look at the stuff that other gophers are writing because
00:29:36
Speaker
I can make a personal connection between a book that Meredith May has just done in my class. So Meredith May did the I Who Did Not Die book just a few months ago. In fact, it was hard to get it on the bookstore. So I put her book on as a book that we had to read in my class. And then my class got to ask her questions about
00:30:06
Speaker
you know, about writing this book with these two guys that she wrote it about, you know, they had a lot of really good questions because they were thinking about that personally because they had read this book and then they got to ask the person who wrote it questions about how they did it. So that was big.
Building a Writers' Network
00:30:30
Speaker
That was really big. That kind of
00:30:34
Speaker
cut through the crap, as it were. Yeah, because it puts a face to the work, and it makes it a little more accessible, in a sense. Yeah. Well, and it's a brand new book, too. That's the other thing. And I had the luxury of really picking super contemporary stuff. So I'm not in the position of having to teach a class like my husband's teaching right now, which is British Renaissance literature. Whoa, that is esoteric.
00:31:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I will, I'll definitely do that again. I've got, I'm teaching a creative writing class next semester. And I'm thinking about, you know, I haven't seen the unity anthology that cats put together yet. But, you know, I might do that. I might use that book in the, in the class. And then my students come back and talk to cat about it.
00:31:31
Speaker
And I think kind of what you're saying here underscores a really important point about building a network, but organically building it and having patience for it to sort of grow over time. You know, you've got, you know, having the, probably the, like the big thing coming out of any MFA program is if you do it right, you have, you make a lot of friends. And that's probably the takeaway, ultimate takeaway in a lot of ways.
00:31:59
Speaker
And yeah, it's a huge resource. It's a huge resource. And that's like if you're freelancing or teaching or anything, you know, it's a way to get at not feeling jealous about somebody else's success because you like you bring everybody you bring as many people as you can with you.
00:32:19
Speaker
How have you been able to cultivate that feeling? Of writers, it's just kind of natural, I think, among all artists to look over your shoulder and see how so-and-so is doing and maybe look behind you and say like, wow, there's someone who's 20 years younger than me who's, and my estimation is farther up the ladder than I am, and what am I doing wrong? How have you been able to cultivate that over your career?
00:32:47
Speaker
Well, I think a lot of it is that the teachers that we had at Goucher were extraordinarily generous with their own process and work. And I think that goes out into the world with all the students. And there are several people that I've kept in really close touch with, even though I've been gone since 2005.
00:33:14
Speaker
always thinking about people when I'm doing an anthology. So all my anthologies have had some gopher in there somewhere. And I'm really involved with a literary festival. We actually have a literary festival in my little town, little county. And wherever I can, I try to get
00:33:39
Speaker
Goucher people involved in that. Like Phil Girard's been a couple times to our festival now. And people like that. So it's a community that can be excited for one another that way. So, you know, man, I'm happy to have people along. There's a couple Goucher people in the baseball book who've not been published before.
00:34:07
Speaker
Oh, wow. That's big for them. Right. So it's huge for them. It's huge. And I think, you know, they're going to remember, they're going to remember that the next time they're working on something that they need, they need somebody else in or some other help with.
Influential Books and Editing Techniques
00:34:23
Speaker
Cat Pleska has done that several times as well. And the other thing is with my, the publisher that I have since they're so close and they like me mostly because
00:34:35
Speaker
I try to get out there and sell them books, which everybody doesn't do, apparently. So what are maybe three to five books that you've returned to over and over again as kind of a guiding compass that reminds you how it's done and kind of inspires your own work? You know, I find that changes all the time. Maybe it's because I'm a freak and I read
00:35:05
Speaker
a lot of stuff. And I read a lot of really, I mean, I read all kinds of things, like I read a lot of crime fiction. And that's partly the fault of some of my Goucher friends that I was in school with that were pointing me towards people but that they thought were really fine writers, even though they might have been considered
00:35:32
Speaker
or less than literary in their subject matter, like a James Lee Burke. But I really, really like to read new things. And then I don't end up going back to them for like 10 years. There's a book right now that I've read like three times already. And it's not that old. It's just a few years old. It's called A Leaf, The Unseen.
00:36:02
Speaker
And it's by this woman named Willow Wilson, who was actually a comic book writer. But this is a novel that she wrote like three, four years ago. And it's this great combination of post-apocryphal, but not really sci-fi, computer, religion, and genies. So somehow she talks about all of those things.
00:36:32
Speaker
On the other hand, my bird by bird book is like just beat the crap. Yeah, that bird by bird is a great example. What books on writing have you really connected to over the years? I like Philip Girard's book about writing nonfiction that matters. I find that one to be very helpful.
00:36:56
Speaker
The new McPhee book is really good, and I can see that that's going to be hanging around for a while. Yeah. Well, I think those are the hardcores right now. I did just order a new copy of the Chicago Manual of Style. I find that I'm grossly out of date with my edition. I think the newest one is like 17 or 18, and I had like 13.
00:37:25
Speaker
which has been very helpful with editing anymore because those things, especially with all the electronic citation rules and stuff, change so quickly.
00:37:36
Speaker
With the McPhee book, a big takeaway that I took away from that was sort of eschewing a thesaurus for just a dictionary for finding another word, like looking up the word that I'm trying to replace, looking up its definition and then
00:37:56
Speaker
Using a word in the definition as a replacement and which I thought was just a really cool a cool way to just be more connected to an actual dictionary Yeah, and are there any other look are there little things like that that you employ in your writing routine or editing routine that uh That you've you know, just you just have it in your tool belt My
00:38:24
Speaker
When I was getting my MA, I had this thing happen to me where I won a prize for a paper. And the program director, she called me up and she said, I have good news and bad news. And I said, really? She said, well, you won the prize. And I'm like, that's the good news, right? And she said, yeah. And I said, well, what's the bad news? And she said, I'm going to edit it. And she actually made a key with different color highlighters.
00:38:54
Speaker
to edit that paper. So I and I hopefully have improved since then and don't need as many colors as she did use. But I do do that. And I'll go through a piece that I have and I'll highlight every passive voice use in one color or an indirect pronoun reference in another color or even just in the baseball book.
00:39:23
Speaker
How many times did you use the word baseball? Or, you know, depending on what the subject matter is, I might have to go through and do that.
Writing Routine and Habits
00:39:37
Speaker
And I'll sometimes I'll go through and use a color for all the adverbs and see if they really need to be there at all.
00:39:46
Speaker
That's a good tip. What did that do to your confidence? You wrote this piece that you're like, yeah, this is great. And you won even better. And then all of a sudden, you just see it like torn to shreds. It was kind of sad. But I won some money for that. So I felt a lot better. And it did actually get published.
00:40:11
Speaker
You know I felt bad when I was editing it with her but after it got published I thought well this is really cool because now it's not a POS anymore. I mean I don't have to worry about somebody else doing that to it in print you know. So it was a big failure. I do still have that paper and you know all the corrections and the keys and everything. It's like sitting out in a folder easily accessible.
00:40:41
Speaker
So if I'm feeling like this isn't, if there's a reason that I feel like something's not coming together, I can go back and look at that. And remember, I'm probably doing one of those things she pointed out. All those, you know, 20 some years ago. It's usually true too. I mean, I can go, oh yeah, that's what I'm doing again. That's messing this piece up.
00:41:09
Speaker
So how do you start your day so you feel like you're gonna be productive, get a lot of words on the page or have a good teaching day? Like what's your morning routine, your first hour to two hours of the day to like really warm up? I'm in the car on teaching days for a couple hours with my husband and you know sometimes we talk but sometimes we listen to a book on tape and so I'm really big on books on tape and they're almost always like
00:41:37
Speaker
They're always nonfiction, they're always usually history or something. I'm listening right now to the new, the Gordon S. Wood book about Adams and Jefferson that just came out. So I got words going in my head right away, one way or another. On the days that I'm not in the car first thing, I spend the first couple hours in my office, in my house.
00:42:07
Speaker
And it may not be writing on a particular piece or working on the novel, but I'm writing something. And do you have an evening routine too? I don't. And, you know, and that started really when I was doing graduate school stuff, because the first time I went to graduate school, I had two teenagers in the house and a full time job. Right. So when do you do that? Right.
00:42:36
Speaker
You get up at four or five in the morning and do it before there's anybody awake asking you for shit. Right. And then you go to work. And that's what I did at Goucher too. I would get up early in the morning and didn't have kids in the house anymore, but I had a full time job. So I'd get up at four or five and spend two or three hours on whatever I needed to be doing. And then I went to work at eight or nine.
00:43:04
Speaker
And when I came home from work, I didn't do anything, I did no work on writing. And I would take one Saturday or one Sunday and work from like six in the morning to noon, six hours. And then the seventh day I didn't do anything at all. So you get like 15 or 20 hours a week in what you're doing without, you know,
00:43:34
Speaker
going insane. Yeah. What did hard work in terms of writing look like to you?
00:43:44
Speaker
It's kind of hard to define and knowledge working as the author Cal Newport might say. Sometimes if you're out there landscaping or something, it's easy to say when the grass is cut and when the bushes are pruned and you're sweating at the end of the day. Like, oh yeah, that felt like hard work. But in the arts, it can be sometimes hard to define. So I wonder how you define it. Yeah, it's hard because you get kind of forced into the word count.
00:44:14
Speaker
or the page count as a measure and you know it's not always that's not always good. I mean some days a lot comes out and some days not a lot comes out. So you kind of have to learn to look at bigger chunks of time I think. So if you can look back at over a month and what you've accomplished or what you've written and you can feel good about it I think that's probably a better way to look at it though you know.
00:44:42
Speaker
It's back to the old butt and the seat every day thing. How do you track that so that when you do look back on the month, you can actually kind of see like, oh yeah, I didn't just squirrel away time, even though I was, even though the butt is in the chair, you know, you, you can look back on the month and be like, Oh yes, I, I did get some construction done. You know, I think right now the biggest help I have with that is that small writing group that I have.
00:45:11
Speaker
Um, because we meet a couple of times a month and, and I just am loath as are my other two compatriots to not have something to bring to the group. So that's kind of like, uh, it's, it's, it's back to that kind of setting deadlines thing that really works for me. So I know I have to bring something because if I don't, I'm just, no, it's horrible.
Dealing with Rejection and First Publications
00:45:41
Speaker
Yeah. And how do you deal with rejections and that self-doubt that comes in with, that comes with the territory of this kind of work? Yeah. You know, the truth is, and this is, this kind of advice is easier to give when you're 61 years old, because I give less of a crap than I used. That's the truth. And, you know, and having something in print is a huge, you know,
00:46:11
Speaker
You know boost to your confidence so it's you know getting older and saying yeah, yes, so what and You know actually having something that you can look at that's in print that's got your name on it. It's big Yeah, that's why I'm really I'm really thrilled for the people that are in the baseball book As I was for the other couple that I did like this that this is their first time
00:46:40
Speaker
being in print. I think it's a big deal. It's a big deal. Yeah. Does it feel good for you? At this point, you've had several publishing credits and the anthologies. And at this point, does it feel good to be able to give somebody else that first publishing credit that puts gas in their tank? Oh, yeah. Big time. Big time. Yes. That's my favorite part of being an editor. And with this book, too, especially, I'm really proud of what I
00:47:10
Speaker
put in the book as well. So it's like double cool. Awesome. That's great. Yeah. Well, Chris, this was wonderful to finally get to talk to you about this. Actually, the first time we've ever been able to speak. So this was really nice. And thank you for
00:47:26
Speaker
Great. Yeah, and thanks for letting me be a part of the book. It's a wonderful collection. I love just kind of picking it up when I'm in the mood to just read a little something and be like, oh yeah, that's pretty fun. And so it's kind of a cool reference to, it's like flipping the channels through your books. You can just kind of, all right, I'm kind of in the mood for a little ball. All right, in 20 minutes I'm going to feel a bit more enriched.
00:47:51
Speaker
I really, yeah. So anyway, great work with the book and continued success with it. And thanks for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it.
Surprise Reveal and Conclusion
00:48:01
Speaker
Thanks, Brendan, for being a part of it. Appreciate it. You got it. Take care, Chris. That was great. Big thanks to Chris for coming on the show.
00:48:12
Speaker
Now I did tease something at the top of the show and I want to follow through on that. If you leave a review on iTunes for the podcast, I will give you an hour of editing on any piece of writing you're doing. This will entail a little bit of me getting to know you and your goals and I'll offer what I think can be done to strengthen your work. So how do you do this?
00:48:33
Speaker
One, write your review. Two, when it posts to the iTunes page of the podcast, take a screenshot or find a way to copy it and email it to me. I already know the ones that are already posted so if your game is to copy one of those and pawn it off as your own, I'll know and come on, don't be that guy.
00:48:56
Speaker
Three, I'll reply and get you in the queue as my thanks to you for taking the time to help sort of validate the podcast with your nice review. It's the currency of
00:49:11
Speaker
validation for the podcast, so if you can do that, I will offer some complimentary editing. Of course, you can always leave a review just because you're feeling nice. Subscribe if you haven't, leave a review, share with a friend, and yes, I even have a monthly newsletter over at BrendanOmero.com where I give out a list of book recommendations and what you might have missed from the podcast. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it.
00:49:37
Speaker
And lastly, trying, yet again, to get my wife to subscribe to the podcast, we got to do a shouting match. It seemed unfair and downright mean not to help me out, right? What could I do? Get a shower before somebody gets hurt. Okay, you probably want to get on with your day. Thanks so much for listening. Let's do it again next week right here. Have a CNF and good week. Brendan out.