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Episode 122—Tracy Kidder on Writing Badly and Looking for People Over Subjects
162 Plays6 years ago
"The possibilities of doing something similar [to fiction] in nonfiction really did appeal to me," says Tracy Kidder, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Are you riffin’ kiddin’ me!? By virtue of today’s guest I’m assuming there might be a new CNFer or two to our little marauding gang of turbulent souls in this corner of the Internet. Welcome. We play heavy metal music, we kick maximum ass, and we will, we will rock you. This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to bad ass tellers of true stories about where they came from, what and who inspires them, and how they approach the work, so that you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work. I’m your mutha-riffin’ host Brendan O’Meara, hey, hey. Today’s guest is none other than Pulitzer Prize—winning author Tracy Kidder, author of take a deep breath Brendan… Soul of a New Machine, Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends, Home Town, My Detachment, Good Prose, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Strength in What Remains, A Truck Full of Money, and House. That, CNFers, is a body of work. And who tells them better than Tracy Kidder, friends? He’s been a literary hero of mine every since I got into this mess. If you’re as big a headcase as I am, I’d go ahead and read Good Prose, the book he wrote with his long time editor and former mentor of mine Dick Todd. It lets you know that you’re not alone and these increasingly digital times, it’s easier and easier to feel, what’s the word??? Shitty... Tracy’s an apex CNFer in a long line of them that have appeared on this show. Please enjoy this conversation with the one, the only, Tracy Kidder. Cross that one off the Bucket List...How’d you like it? I hope you dug it. I tried my bestest for y’all. Thanks very much to this show’s sponsors Goucher College’s MFA program in nonfiction and Creative Nonfiction Magazine. You can visit Tracy Kidder.com for more information about Tracy and his work and events and the like. I believe he has an author Facebook page. While I’ve got your attention, I’d ask that if you dig the show, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave an honest review over on Apple Podcasts. They’re a big, big help and I’m deeply appreciative of whatever you can do to help out the show. Visit brendanomeara.com to sign up for my monthly reading list newsletter. Great books and great podcasts. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat that. I think that’s a wrap. Remember, if you can’t do interview! See ya! Thanks to Goucher College's MFA in Creative Nonfiction and Creative Nonfiction Magazine for sponsoring this podcast.
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two year, low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on campus residencies allow you
00:00:17
Speaker
to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni. Which has published 140 books and counting, you'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
00:00:39
Speaker
Visit goucher.edu forward slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for nonfiction. Are you riffing kidding me?
00:01:00
Speaker
You know what I'm talking about. By virtue of today's guest, I'm assuming there might be a new CNF or two to our little maraudering gang of turbulent souls in this corner of the internet. Welcome. We play heavy metal music. We kick maximum ass. And we will. We will rock you.
Conversations with Storytellers
00:01:22
Speaker
This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass tellers of true stories, and where they came from, what and who inspires them, and how they approach the work, so that you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work.
Tracy Kidder: Inspirations and Techniques
00:01:40
Speaker
I'm your mother riffing host Brendan O'Mara.
00:01:43
Speaker
Today's guest is none other than Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Tracy Kidder, author of Take a Breath, Brendan. Soul of a new machine among schoolchildren, old friends, hometown, my detachment, good prose, Mountains Beyond Mountains, strengthen what remains a truck full of money and house.
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Speaker
That, CNFers, is a body of work.
Creative Nonfiction Magazine Overview
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Speaker
Speaking of a body of work, today's podcast is also brought to you by Creative Nonfiction Magazine. For nearly 25 years, Creative Nonfiction has been fuel for nonfiction writers and storytellers, publishing a lively blend of exceptional, long and short-form nonfiction narratives and interviews, as well as columns that examine the craft, style, trends, and ethics of writing true stories.
00:02:36
Speaker
In short, creative non-fiction is true stories, well told. And who tells them better than Tracy Kidder, friends? He's been a literary hero of mine ever since I got into this freaking mess. If you're as big a headcase as I am, I'd go ahead and read Good Pros. The book he wrote with his longtime editor and former mentor of mine, Dick Todd,
00:03:01
Speaker
It lets you know that you're not alone in these increasingly digital times and it's easier to feel, what's the word, shitty. Tracy's an apex CNF-er in a long line that have appeared on this show. Please enjoy this conversation with the one, the only, Tracy Kidder.
00:03:31
Speaker
So when when you were when you were a younger writer coming up, what did a successful writer look like to you in your 20s and 30s? Well, really, really on to anyone who had been published, you know, it was at first, at least that that was. It seemed like enough, you know, just to be able to get something published in a particularly
00:04:02
Speaker
But then, of course, the issue of making a living arose. And I mean, you don't mean whom did I admire, or I took it, or is that what you... Oh, we could definitely... You could also... You know, what did it look like to you? And then, of course, maybe who were some of those writers that were your gold standard, too, at the time? Well, I mean, I thought... I guess...
00:04:31
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When I first started, I fancied myself a novelist, but that didn't seem to be working out. And I mean, at some point, I went from, you know, thinking from sort of grand ambitions of writing something as my best teacher said of something classic to writing something publishable. And I guess it stayed that way for,
00:05:00
Speaker
a while, I mean, there was a big difference between imagining myself among the right, you know, really, I think that's the best answer. That's the truest answer. But I just saw it as a, I just wanted to get published, you know, it's the best I can remember. And then, then, of course, other things arise. But then I had my heroes, my enthusiasm, you know, they range from
00:05:31
Speaker
pretty early on from John McPhee. I liked Tom Wolfe quite a lot. You know, at certain times, these enthusiasm was wax and wane, although I mean, I still like lots of things about both of those writers. I also had some, George Orwell was a big deal, seemed like a big deal to me, a member of the movies, taken by his
00:05:59
Speaker
This book, I don't think I liked, um, Down and Out in Paris on London when I first started to read it in high school, but I really came to like it later, you know? Yeah. Uh, I don't know what else to, to say, you know, the, the, the idea of becoming, of making a living as a writer seemed daunting enough to me at a certain point, you know? And I, I, I kind of glommed, I was, um,
00:06:29
Speaker
I had a friend named, whom I met. He taught briefly at Iowa named Dan Wakefield, who was a pretty distinguished journalist. He started writing novels. I mean, a pretty well-known journalist. I think he was a distinguished journalist. And he helped me get my foot in the door of the Atlantic Monthly. And he also had the great good sense to say that
00:06:58
Speaker
No, I should try to work with this guy, Dick Todd. So, and that was probably the best advice I ever got. Pretty quickly, you know, I stopped having quite such highfalutin fantasies. I just tried to figure out how to be a useful enough writer for a magazine without, you know, they would keep publishing me and I might be able to make a little money, but it was pretty
00:07:29
Speaker
It was, you know, I'm mindful. There's a great line in the Updike essay about Ted Williams, which is just a sort of, not a throwaway line, but it's a, you know, not a big deal on the, but it stuck with me, which he was talking about Ted Williams being used of not being a clutch hitter. And he was poo-pooing that, but then he also said, but to the extent that it's true,
00:07:57
Speaker
a clutch hitter, I'm paraphrasing, but it's a clutch hitter's a vulgarity, like a writer who writes only for money. So, that's a nice line, because of course you have to write for money if you're trying to make a living, but if you wrote only for money, you know, that would be a different sort of thing. Anyway, you know what I mean? Yeah, I love that line. You know, so that's pretty much the way it was.
00:08:27
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have enormous expectations for myself after I got, you know, after I was really involved in trying to, you know, it's hard enough, you know, to go out and do research and so on and just hope to make a little money. I hope I never really felt sorry for myself
00:08:52
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And, you know, earnestly did because no one asked you to be a writer. But it was the way we had difficulties, you know.
00:09:02
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What would you say when you were, when you made that pivot, that conscious pivot to writing magazine articles at the time and going to that nonfiction pivot versus trying to be the novelist and when you're coming out of the Iowa Writers Workshop to, what were you struggling with at the time during that pivot? Well, I ran out of somehow rather the well that I was
00:09:32
Speaker
had drawn on for some years for writing fiction. We just seem to be drawing up a really terrible novel, which I've made abundant fun of in a book of mine called My Detachment. It was, you know, I was also the fact that at Iowa, there were wonderful, I mean, there were some wonderfully accomplished writers that, you know, already among the students among like my friend,
00:10:03
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my really great friend Stuart Diebeck, but others as well. In fact, it was really quite a lot of fast company. And I just felt, my God, you know, I wanted to try my hand at something else that no one else was doing right around there. Because it suddenly occurred to me. And there was a guy proselytizing to this too. But I think I had by then read the electric kool-aid acid test, for instance.
00:10:32
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I'm pretty sure I had. The possibilities of doing something similar in non-fiction really did appeal to me. I can't remember exactly all my motives and so on. Part of it, I think, was not to feel this very intimidating competition from my peers there, but I think it was also that I must have sensed that this would be good for me to get out into the world
00:11:03
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little further and so on. I don't know, I was still pretty confused. I was just back from Vietnam, just married, but kind of strictly from my younger. So, you know, it's hard to remember all of it.
00:11:22
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I think, yeah, sort of to your point too about maybe the non-fiction writing being something that few of your peer group was doing and also getting you, I think, relieving
00:11:39
Speaker
Relieving some stress from the pressures of fiction is this great quote that you cited from McPhee in Good Pros, which says that things that are cheap and tawdry in fiction work beautifully in nonfiction because they're true. And he goes on a little bit, but that is...
00:11:57
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To that point, it kind of frees you from having to use imagination to come up with something that is not cliche, but if it is, in fact, reportedly true, then you can lean into it, and there's beauty in that. So I think there's that going on. I think that's a complicated thought. I appreciate that thought from him. Of course, nowadays, we're
00:12:19
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in the midst of the idiotic arguments about fact, you know. But, you know, there are some things that are true. They're factual. And I think he's absolutely right. On the other hand, imagination, you still need it. And the reason you need it is that it's not enough
00:12:50
Speaker
simply to say, this is true. I mean, this is demonstrably true. You have to make the leader believe that. And, you know, and also there's, ah, God, there's so many things involved. And I think he said that too, that there's lots of artistry involved. There's, you know, the issues of tone that become enormous, even when you're dealing with something you know happened. How do you present this?
00:13:19
Speaker
And, you know, how do you make this part of the fabric of what you're writing, and how do you make it convincing? You know, I think, I said this somewhere long ago, that part of your job is to make what's true, what's, you know, you have justifiable belief in believable to your readers. Because, you know, sometimes it's just something hard believable that actually have happened. You've got to find a way to do it.
00:13:52
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Anyway, it was something that always struck me about your work too. It's something I call backyard narratives. Early in your career, especially, so much of what you did in a lot of your books, whether it was House or Among School Children or Old Friends, a lot of the stuff was in your backyard. What did that teach you about the power of story and the power of narrative that you never had to go very far to find a great story?
00:14:15
Speaker
And there's a ton more involved, too, I guess.
00:14:22
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think that I felt it was convenient, too. You know, I had a young family. Yeah. But and I, it's weird, though, the situation is really strange, because I'll get to that. I, you know, that's an old kind of an old adage, right? I mean, there's people would talk about Faulkner and Yakna Pataw, Fall County, or what's the range, the geographic range of Flannery O'Connor's writing? You know,
00:14:50
Speaker
It seemed obvious to me that if I could find interesting people nearby, and I knew I could, why not? Why not stay here? I liked the region, and I began to feel I understood it. But then, and that worked pretty well for me. Although the Soul of the New Machine was in Massachusetts and New England, but it was a certain distance away and a lot closer to the city. But anyway,
00:15:19
Speaker
At some point, though, later, I mean, I guess it was around 2000. Before that, the 90s, I started to, just when I was getting too old to travel comfortably, it's more addicted to my comfort and stuff, I started doing it. I think it was first to Haiti and then somewhat later,
00:15:46
Speaker
six years later, Paul Farmer. And then I was off into, you know, all over the place with him. And then I was in Africa with Dale and this just continued on to some degree, lots of traveling. Yeah. Anyway, certainly, you know, then Boston, which feels very different from my backyard, you know, Boston with a lot of travel with the people who were headquartered there.
00:16:14
Speaker
So I find this kind of odd and I'm sort of sad about it because I don't enjoy travel very much anymore. I was just in the Netherlands for research and God, I just came back exhausted. I was exhausted the whole time I was there. I don't know. Anyway, I should have done it the other way around.
00:16:39
Speaker
I always thought of that. It did seem kind of in reverse. You find a lot of young writers are very ambitious in terms of their travel, will go to every corner of the earth to get it. And then maybe later in life, they can tone it down and be a bit more rural. But as I think about it, probably the best thing I did for the Atlantic Monthly really was a traveling piece. I did two pieces out of it.
00:17:09
Speaker
find out about Vietnam combat veterans. This is in 1978, I guess, I did it. And I traveled all over the country by train. So I also wanted to write a little bit. So a little thing about trains, but I wrote a big long cover story about the Vietnam combat veterans, which they called, it wasn't my title, but Todd named it, I guess, called it Soldiers of Misfortune. It was, and it was pretty, that was a good article.
00:17:40
Speaker
So I did that, and that was a lot of travel. Some of it wonderful, frankly. Yeah, seeing him in the country by train must have been pretty cool. It's pretty cool, yeah. There were probably some flights in there, but I was in a fair amount of time in Alabama, which was really interesting to me.
00:18:07
Speaker
Let's go on. I'm sorry. Oh, no, I love hearing all about it. But yeah, speaking of a younger point in your career when you're trying to get that toehold in magazine publishing, and of course, what would eventually be book publishing, in good prose too, there were moments there, the fleck through like where, you know, I think your father left like a law school application.
00:18:33
Speaker
You know, in your direction. And I think a lot of writers, especially, uh, as you're getting into your thirties and get kind of mid-career and certain things just aren't quite happening. And, um, and they have that fork in the road, that law school fork in the road. Uh, what gave you this, the strength or the, uh, the confidence to keep pursuing your narrative craft and not take that other road?
00:19:02
Speaker
Well, I started to have a little success. I had written a pretty bad book about a murder case. It got published and then sort of vanished without a trace. It was pretty bad though. So in retrospect, I'm glad it did. But then I started doing stuff for the Atlantic and I was getting published routinely. I wasn't making enough money really to live on. If my wife had some income, we would have
00:19:32
Speaker
been on food stamps, I think, but, you know, we were never in terrible jeopardy. And I always had that sense. I could do something else. I, you know, I had pretty good education. And, uh, anyway, I, I, uh, I dunno, I just, it seemed like momentum. You know, I remember at a certain point though, this, I remember Todd reminded me of this month, a long time ago, actually he had come up, he was over at dinner and, um,
00:20:01
Speaker
I had been offered a job, I had applied to a lot of newspapers to get a job, you know, just to get a regular sort of steady income. And I hadn't gotten any response at all, even though I've written a fair amount of stuff for the Atlantic, some of it, you know, it's creditable anyway. And I got a job offer from the Detroit Free Press. Interesting paper, you know, I think town and I remember,
00:20:27
Speaker
sitting at dinner with Todd and arguing that I should take this. And Todd was saying, you're doing fine. Just, you know, I was talking about, I think at the time I'd been, I'd had a complete failure of a project for, as told to book, cause I, you know, that I just wanted to, I was trying to do to make some money. But Todd said, you're doing fine. Just don't, you know, don't do this. Just keep doing what you're doing. And I, and I said at some point,
00:20:53
Speaker
I said, well, look, if I go there and I really work hard and I get lucky, I could win the Pulitzer. And he said, just keep doing what you're doing. And then when I, I remember the night I heard that I was getting a Pulitzer, I told him, and he reminded me of this, which is, I thought, okay, you were right again, as usual. Yeah. Almost always has been in my experience. Um, but the, so it wasn't so tempting to me, uh,
00:21:25
Speaker
once I started getting published. It just seemed, you know, I could feel desperate from time to time, but the one, the other, the real, the only real force that beckoned to me was to actually get a job in the newspaper. I'm pretty glad I didn't do that, but it wouldn't have been, wouldn't have been harmful. But I knew that that was an avenue that some writers had taken. And so I thought, well, this might work, you know. But it was, you know, it was the era when newspaper jobs were kind of dwindling already. And
00:21:56
Speaker
particularly for white guys. Yeah. Oh, maybe it wasn't. I don't know. I can't be sure, but newspapers weren't... I mean, there were still jobs. Don't get me wrong, but there weren't that many. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they were starting to lose their luster a bit, but there was still plenty of magazine. There were inches in magazines to write for. Oh, yeah, yeah. And there were plenty of newspapers, too.
00:22:23
Speaker
It was later that everything started to get shredded. Anyway. Yeah, Dick Todd always had a way of just telling you, like, it's fine, keep going or something. That always seemed to be like the best note he could ever give you. Well, no, I mean, it's the best at a certain time. I mean, that's very useful for me.
00:22:53
Speaker
But, you know, once that was usually for a rough draft, almost always for a rough draft. And then when I was done, then I'd wonder, and we'd start again. And then, you know, it was apparent that there wasn't that much that he really thought was fine. But that was, I found that, but I always managed to believe him. Yeah.
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah, talk about having like that great advocacy in your corner, like in those moments of self, self doubt and loneliness and distrust in your story sometimes to have that voice saying no, it's good, you know, just keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, I never thought he was bullshitting me, but
00:23:39
Speaker
Anyway, right. What do you think, especially in those early days when things might have felt overwritten and maybe you're still trying to find that voice, a confident voice on the page, what do you think he was seeing in you that maybe at the time you had yet to see in yourself? Oh, I don't. You probably have to ask him.
00:24:07
Speaker
I think what he thought was, well, this guy will work hard. And his wife once told me that he's always been as willing to work as hard as the writer is, but not necessarily harder. And I think I was a willing pupil. And I quite deliberately tried to make myself useful. One of the things that occurred to me early on, I think this was
00:24:36
Speaker
One of the few wise things I attempted anyway, was that I could, getting close to people at the magazine, the magazine at the Atlantic, I realized that editors have their problems too, you know, and what a writer and ambitious young writer who wants, what should be trying to do most of all is to be of use to these editors to help solve one of their, some of their problems, not to add to them, because inevitably going to add to them, particularly
00:25:06
Speaker
if you behave as I did in those days. But I wanted, you know, and so I really tried hard to come up with, to do useful work for him. So, you know, and I think to some degree I did do that. So it's often difficult. How did you behave in those days?
00:25:35
Speaker
Oh, I drank a lot. And I would, I don't know, he likes to, a little exaggerated, but he certainly did. I drank too much, I'm sure, most of the time, quite a while. I don't know why, but I did. Oh, I don't know, and I could be,
00:26:02
Speaker
sort of explosive, we have very different personalities. He's much more measured. I think I said in good prose that he seemed to have been born old. Anyway, I could not make the same claim.
00:26:23
Speaker
It's hard for me to picture you as a big, I know you're a very tall and imposing physical person, very athletic looking, but it's hard for me to picture you as a booming, aggressive presence, having heard countless interviews with you, again, met you in person, and speaking to you now, and you're very soft-spoken. It's hard for me to have that image of you.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah, well, things are, you know, different people in different situations, all of us, I think. Anyway, and it's, I don't, I don't do that sort of thing anymore. It was the time when I was really kind of half out of control. You know, I was, I was scared a lot of the time too. How was I going to make a living? That really was a, and somehow,
00:27:21
Speaker
Coming from a middle-class family, it just seemed so, I felt so humiliated by the idea of not being able to make a living with the whole thing.
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, and having gone to Harvard too, there's that extra pressure if you're not making a living when you've got that diploma on your wall. I'm sure that adds a lot of pressure too. I don't know. Maybe.
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, probably, but that wasn't the major thing. I think Todd wrote in that one of your great strengths was that you were not afraid to write badly. Yeah, and I think that's true. I mean, when I first heard it, I was a little, what? He thinks I write badly, but what he meant was, I know exactly what he meant, and it's what I tried to
00:28:25
Speaker
I have a few people I've helped, including one wonderfully gifted young African writer. But it's something I try to explain is that don't overthink or overwrite your rough drafts. Just get it down. And don't worry about it whether it's any good or not. You've got the great luxury of being able to rewrite. Of course, you know,
00:28:55
Speaker
You don't want to impose your own kind of neurotic ways of doing things on someone else. But it is one way to get things done. And for me, the first draft of things is always the hardest. And I suspect it's true for a lot of people. And I do know, because I've done it, I used to do it a lot, how
00:29:24
Speaker
One is always tempted to take something one has already written, whether it's any good or not, and work on it rather than plunge ahead into the unknown. It just feels so much safer. So I have tried to cultivate over the years the willingness to write badly. I probably shouldn't have been showing him some of that stuff, and I think I do less often now.
00:29:51
Speaker
And maybe I write more carefully, but I try not to go back over and over and over. And I think that's really important, has been very important for me.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, that writing quickly so you can't really even think about what you've written is a great way to at least get down a big chunk of work that you can then start chipping into and using your taste and your own experience to shape the story. But I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with the bad work to get to the good work. Yeah. But it's also a way of
00:30:33
Speaker
cultivating the possibility, creating the possibility of having just something come to you that you hardly even noticed that it really is good. And it's wonderful to have another set of eyes, Todd, that you'd really trust to point out to you that there's something there really is good. Anyway. When you were vetting out stories,
00:31:01
Speaker
What stuck in your brain is like, oh, this is something worth pursuing and taking a deeper dive on. What kind of resonates with you when you're starting to vet out a story? Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't have an effective
00:31:30
Speaker
procedure for this. I've made mistakes. Usually, I have backed out of some things when they didn't seem to blossom for me. I don't know. I really don't have an answer to that because the preliminary curiosity you might feel for a subject,
00:32:00
Speaker
can easily wither if you don't get yourself. And besides, I don't really look at subjects. I typically look for people, first of all. And that hasn't always been the case. But generally, it's true. You meet someone who interests me, and then I get interested in what interests me. That person, I don't know.
00:32:29
Speaker
You know, it's been so long since I was writing articles that I sort of forgotten all that, but that was a much more idea-driven endeavor, you know, subject-driven, writing articles about passenger trains or solar energy or things like that that I did do. The Vietnam veteran one, it was something that really interested me.
00:32:59
Speaker
It happened, and this was, I mean, it's a little complicated, but it had to do with my own relation to that war, the kind of experience that I had not had there. And then I'd written, I mean, that's what that bad novel of mine was about, all about experiences I didn't have over there. But I wondered, you know, really, what had happened to the people who had actually been in combat?
00:33:28
Speaker
a very small percentage. I think I realized that even then. And when I started out, man, it's just it was amazing. It was one of the few stories that were the worst that you know, you open come with these preconceived notions about something. And that's not a bad thing, as long as you're willing to let them be shattered, and actually to enjoy their shattering. But in this case, it was worse than I had even imagined, you know, and
00:33:56
Speaker
which is sort of delicious sometimes, frankly, for, I mean, one shouldn't be rejoicing in the fact that these guys have been so shafted, but it did make the writing a little easier. There weren't too many, you know, insert too many caveats that had just been horrible treated. So, you know, in every conceivable way, as I could tell.
00:34:22
Speaker
But I don't know how I, you know, I sort of do in that case, but other ones, you know, sometimes it came almost as an assignment. Sometimes ideas, I was turned away from ideas, the Atlantic saying, well, we're not going to.
00:34:39
Speaker
when I can support you on this one and things like that. But I really don't have an answer. I'm sorry. Oh, that's fine. You said that sometimes that you made mistakes or that some didn't blossom and you had to abandon them. How much time do you sometimes give yourself before you abandon a story and invest too much of your time and resources in something?
00:35:08
Speaker
I don't know. I sometimes give myself a pretty long time. I months, months sometimes, but a part of the year. I mean, I do remember spending, I think I may have written about this a lot of time after I had written the soul of a new machine looking for the next thing to do. Cause I had, I saw I had a chance to do this for a living and I really wanted
00:35:36
Speaker
the perfect subject, which, of course, doesn't exist ever. And I turned away from the one that I ended up with for a good long time, maybe it was almost a year or two, trying other things out. But I did abandon those fairly, I don't know, I did a fair amount of research about wilderness and then I remember a long plane ride, a small plane over in the winter over the
00:36:06
Speaker
Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. Interesting in itself. But I threw that away and other ideas that I'd had, you know, and came back to the one about a house building, which nobody wanted me to do. Until I told Todd, I said, well, I'd really like to try that. And it was as though, you know, he sort of said, he was saying to me, why didn't you tell me that before, you know? And so I
00:36:34
Speaker
But other times, it was his wife's suggestion to have me write about a school teacher. It was, I can't even remember, it was running into Paul Farmer completely by accident that led me to that story eventually. And it was going to visit Paul Farmer at Harvard that got me
00:37:02
Speaker
that was through doing that, that I met Deo Gracias, the guy I wrote about strength. And I guess, actually, it was my connection to Partners in Health through Farmer and Deo that it was through that that I met this guy Paul English, whom I wrote about most recently. And what I'm working on now, I got, like,
00:37:26
Speaker
happened onto because of that other project. One thing usually leads to another that's not always that way. But anyway. When I was talking to Eli Sazlow, he takes an approach of, let's say, the border wall. And then he's like, all right, now I need to find the best set of characters
00:37:53
Speaker
to illustrate what's going on down there and often he kind of basically like auditions a lot and then just based on taste be like no that one is the better of the illustrations that will tell the better story and and kind of what you were saying was kind of the opposite where you find someone that you're deeply interested in and then you want to
00:38:10
Speaker
Find out and learn what interests them so when did you settle on that as your key indicator of to lean into a particular subject and and story I'm from the very beginning. Yeah, I think Although that wasn't so that wasn't true with the magazine stuff at the Atlantic, but when I Came to writing books it was meeting
00:38:40
Speaker
Well, I mean, Todd had said, look into computers. But I said, well, how do you want me to look into it? And he knew this guy. So I went to see the guy. The guy interested me. I mean, his connect. It's always been that way. I mean, the one time that I did set out to find a person in a category, you know, a category of person, a school teacher, an elementary school teacher, I thought should be a woman, which should be in a troubled city.
00:39:10
Speaker
Once I found her, I wasn't so much interested anymore. Then my first interest was to her and the children in the classroom, not to the general subject. Even in that case, I felt as though, well, if this is going to say something about the problems of public education in America, it's going to do it obliquely, because that's just not the kind of book I want to write.
00:39:39
Speaker
I didn't want to write a book about AIDS and tuberculosis. I wanted to figure out who this freaking guy was. And then, of course, you've got to become fascinated by the things that preoccupy them. Of course. Yeah, you're right. It's the opposite approach. I don't know that it makes much difference.
00:40:07
Speaker
Well, the only thing that really matters is what comes out the other end, right? Of course. What appeals to you more, the reporting research phase or the writing and rewriting phase? I used to like them equally and I maybe like the reporting a little more. And now I emphatically prefer the writing and rewriting
00:40:36
Speaker
And that's partly just age. And, and also for just at this very moment, I'm really tired. I really love the research I've been doing, and I'd like to keep doing it, but it requires me to drive on the Massachusetts turnpike too often. And I'm, I'm just tired, you know, I, I get tired more easily, I don't, and you know, logistics start to
00:41:04
Speaker
get in my way. It's not that I don't, I mean, I've found current research to be really quite wonderfully interesting and even sort of rewarding, but I'd rather be writing in. I mean, what I'd like, what I wish was true, was that I liked them both in their, when I'm doing them best, you know? But I don't think it is quite true anymore. What I really do,
00:41:34
Speaker
look forward to just writing. Although that always has its downsides too, but that's what I look forward to now. And just knowing your relative energy levels and knowing that fatigue might set in earlier than it used to during whatever process of the
00:41:56
Speaker
of a project you're in, how do you typically set up your days, morning routines, daily rituals, so you can attack your work with a rigor and tenacity? Well, research is completely different because I end up keeping someone else's hours. So I don't set up the day, it gets set up for me in a way. There are obviously exceptions to that when you're trying to stack up a bunch of
00:42:23
Speaker
interviews, but that's the least important part of research for me. The most important part is getting, you know, getting to be able to walk alongside the people who are doing something that you're interested in. But when it comes to writing, I do have a sort of routine which is, which I think started a long time ago, probably when I first had a child. I used to work, I used to try to write late at night, but
00:42:51
Speaker
that I gave that up for the early morning. And I really, it's not quite as early now as it used to be. Because now I like to read the paper. But before, for years and years and years, I get up really early and I went right to work. Because that was when my mind was freshest. Yeah. And I still like to, morning is time for me to work. Sometimes you have to do, but it's,
00:43:20
Speaker
It's not very complicated. How long can you write in a given sitting without getting tired? I like 30 minute to 45 minute bursts and then taking a little breather out. How do you operate like that? I don't know. I mean, I try to make sure that I get up and walk around a little bit or something. But I mean, I just do that.
00:43:47
Speaker
But I'm not really self-conscious. I'm not really conscious of what I'm doing while I'm there. But I do know there was a time when I guess typically I can't spend too many hours writing rough drafts before I look for other excuses not to be doing it. But when I'm starting to rewrite, if things start to move, you know, if things start to emerge from the chaos,
00:44:15
Speaker
I get, I used to, I can remember days I worked 13 hours, pretty much straight, you know, I mean, obviously get up and walk around. In those days, I used to smoke, so go and smoke a cigarette, which is my friend, my evil little friend. But I still get up in pace and walk around and, you know, maybe go get the mail or something just for a break. But so there isn't any, you know, it really has to do with
00:44:47
Speaker
Leaving aside all the other things that you end up having to do in your life, it has to do with how well things are going, you know, how difficult it is. So I usually, I can spend, you know, better, but I can spend an eight-hour day writing without too much trouble if things are going well, particularly if I'm rewriting.
00:45:26
Speaker
It a great thing that that uh, you know dick Todd's wife had told you is that he know he was willing to work as hard as the writer and I always love asking a writer, you know how they define
00:45:34
Speaker
I don't think I'm going to do any more of those 13, 14 hour days.
00:45:41
Speaker
hard work and rigor and tenacity in this line of work, whether that's word count or hours in the chair or what that looks like. You know, a baseball player can go in and hit 500 balls off a tee and his hands are bleeding. It's like, yeah, that was good hard work. And so, but in writing and reporting, it's a little different. So like, how does that look to you? Well, first of all, you know, it means that you do it every work. It's that you, it means you don't spend
00:46:11
Speaker
spend a great deal of time and energy figuring out ways not to write. I mean, for me, it means writing every day, you know, obviously some days when you can't for external reasons when you're really sick or something. But it means writing every day. And it means part of what it means to me is willingness to rewrite in a
00:46:41
Speaker
in a really thoroughgoing way where, I mean, again, you know, I've had this wonderful privilege of having someone tell me that something isn't working. And then, you know, I've learned that for me, at least, really writing isn't just fixing words or sentence here or there or moving paragraphs around and stuff. It's sometimes just starting over.
00:47:08
Speaker
And realizing, of course, that you haven't really lost anything. Sometimes what you've done is you've identified the stuff that you're not going to, that you actually don't want to write about, you know, or that you've just taken a slightly wrong turn. But there was, but I think that's very hard work. And some, and I haven't talked very often, but I think it's the hardest thing, it's always been the hardest thing
00:47:39
Speaker
students I've had to learn how to do, to accept the fact that, look, you can't fix this by tinkering. You've got to start over. Right. And I do think that's crucial. Yeah. But working hard, I mean, working hard isn't necessarily a virtue. I mean, it always was in the
00:48:09
Speaker
It's part of the creed of my people, you know, the lost, my father, certainly. I mean, my father, if you got up, you know, by dawn in the summer, you don't have your moral battles of the day, we're over. It's working. And so I still have some of that. But really, it's what you've accomplished. And it certainly isn't the number of words you've written.
00:48:39
Speaker
for me. I know others do, but it really has everything to do with how good those words are. For one thing, it's so much harder for me to write something briefly than just to sort of, you know, slap it all down at whatever length. So writing 20 pages is a lot easier for me than writing two sometimes. So it's hard to measure, and I
00:49:07
Speaker
And I'm not sure I really care anymore, whether I feel like I've worked hard or not. I mean, who cares? If I could do this without working hard, that'd be fine. And I suppose it has everything to do with just how well things are going. What's really hard is when things are not going well to keep going after it.
00:49:32
Speaker
With the current work you're doing, I know some people don't like to disclose exactly what they're working on, but maybe we can talk around it in a sense. When I was talking to Susan Orlean last week, in her latest book, she wrote that she didn't think she would write a book again, and yet the library book, which just came out, stuck its teeth in her and she couldn't help but write it.
00:49:55
Speaker
And writing books is years of your life. And I wonder, you know, after Truck Full of Money came out, you know, what about this next one stuck in your craw? And you're like, this is a book. I got to write this. And, you know, what's bringing you back to it? Well, I remember the moment, actually, I was doing research on this guy. And I really don't want to sort of talk about the details of it, but I just threw the
00:50:25
Speaker
I remember thinking, I wish I was writing a book about you. And so I pursued that. I wasn't ready to end with that book. This one, well, I think I might, you know, there have been lots of times when I've said to myself or to others that this might be the last thing I'll write.
00:50:50
Speaker
And now I'm 72 now, and I do think this one I'm working on now might be the last thing. But it may take me another, God knows how many years, I'm just not going to hurry it. And I find it, you know, rich, but I want to go back to a feeling that I had with some other books, which I haven't had.
00:51:14
Speaker
with other, with more recent ones, well, I don't know, that isn't quite true, but what I really know, everything that is germane, that's impossible, of course, and it could be a recipe for utter disaster. You can pretty much research anything until you die. Right. But it's one of those deals. But Todd will tell me. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, you said Todd will tell you?
00:51:43
Speaker
I will tell me when to stop. He sort of has told me, you know, that I should get to writing now and, and, you know, I can always go back. And so I am going to do that. I'm going to spend about a week a month and research the rest of it. Right.
00:51:57
Speaker
Yeah, and do you find that with these stories, even at 72 years old, they just, you almost can't help yourself when it comes to telling a story. You know, you're a storyteller and a good story comes along. Is there a part of you that's just like, this is me, this is what I do, I gotta do it. I don't care how old I am. Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how I feel after I finish this. That wasn't quite what I felt. I just thought, you know, this is worth learning about.
00:52:26
Speaker
I mean, we're living in a very weird time, and I have been tempted to write about other things, particularly politics at one point. But I don't know, by the time I was thinking hard about it, it seemed like the ground was so heavily trodden. I didn't really particularly want to jump in there. I don't know. Although I still think it's worth doing.
00:52:54
Speaker
Anyway, I've got something I really want to do. So that's really, but I, but it's not like, you know, if you're not looking, I'm not sure. Maybe that's not true either. But I can't, I can't be sure that, I mean, I've run into some stories that I might've, I've heard of things or things where I've just said, I can't do that.
00:53:18
Speaker
For instance, the Ebola stuff. I might, in another time in my life, have gone to see and to write about it, but it just didn't feel like I could, you know? Not now.
00:53:36
Speaker
Right. Well, Tracy, this was wonderful to get to talk to you at length just to dig into your process a bit and talk about your body of work.
Acknowledgements and Closing Notes
00:53:47
Speaker
I hope when the next book comes out, maybe we can have another conversation and dig into some nuance with the latest book. But thank you so much for your time, and thanks for all your work, and we'll certainly be in touch.
00:54:04
Speaker
Thanks. You got it, Tracy. Take care. Okay. Bye. Bye. Cross that one off the bucket list. Mm-hmm. Okay. How'd you like it? I hope you dug it. I tried my bestest for y'all. Thanks very much to this show's sponsors, Goucher College's NFA Program in Nonfiction and Creative Nonfiction Magazine.
00:54:32
Speaker
You can visit TraceyKitter.com for more information about Tracey and his work and events and the like. I believe he has an author Facebook page too so plug in. Well I've got your attention. I'd ask that if you dig the show share it with a friend subscribe and leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. They're a big big help and I'm deeply appreciative of whatever you can do to help out the show.
00:55:00
Speaker
Your ratings are super quick, just tap of a thumb. Reviews, though more desired. Take a little more energy, but you can do that. Great. If not, no biggie. I'm just happy you're here. Visit BrendanOmera.com to sign up for my monthly newsletter, reading recommendations, and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast once a month. No spam. Can't beat that. I think we're done. Remember, if you can't do
00:55:29
Speaker
Interview. See ya. Next week on the Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:55:37
Speaker
Or like my, I was an only child, so like all my stuffed animals, I would like make little instruments for them and I'd put a record on it and I'd conduct them like they were in an orchestra. I think I just always wanted to surround myself with those kinds of people. But I don't have a, I don't remember not, I don't remember not doing that. And I don't remember not reading and I don't remember not writing. Which I think is a more common thing for writers, like kind of always figuring that out.