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Episode 171: AC Shilton — Arrival Fallacy, ‘The Innocent Man,’ and Chickens
125 Plays5 years ago
"Somebody else's success doesn't limit your own," says AC Shilton, a freelance journalist and farmer.
Thanks to Bay Path University for the support and Riverteeth for the promotional support.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
I remember the day I came out and landed in my mailbox and thinking like, I have made it. And they're like, the sad thing is like, you have not made it. Hey, it's your CNF and buddy, Brendan O'Mara. Hey, and this is CNF, the creative nonfiction podcast. My guest today is AC Shelton, freelancer, farmer, lover of chickens. Let's do an ad read.
00:00:29
Speaker
created nonfiction podcasts, greatest podcast in the world. Discover your story, man, with Bay Path University's fully online MFA and creative nonfiction writing. Recent graduate Christine Brooks recalls her experience with Bay Path's MFA faculty as being, quote,
00:00:46
Speaker
filled with positive reinforcement and a commitment. They have true passion and love for their work. It shines through with every comment, every edit, and every reading assignment. The instructors are available to answer questions big and small.
00:01:02
Speaker
and it is obvious that their years of experience as writers and teachers have made a faculty that I doubt can be beat anywhere." Don't just take her word for it, man. Apply now at baypath.edu slash MSA. Classes begin January 21st, 1st, 1st.
Podcast Focus and Format
00:01:21
Speaker
Also want to give it a shout out to Riverteeth for the promotional support. They are a journal of non-fiction narrative. Go check them out, RiverteethJournal.com for submission guidelines and maybe even subscribe. Why not? Go ahead, do it. Okay, that's it. So here we are. I can only keep, I can only keep it in the cage for so long. It's rattling the cage, man. Breath.
00:01:57
Speaker
So maybe you're a legacy CNF or hey, maybe you're here for the first time. This is what we do. I talk to badass writers, filmmakers, and audio producers about the art and craft of telling true stories. I chart their journey and try and tease out what inspires them and how they go about the work in the face of existential dread.
00:02:21
Speaker
Maybe that's just me. And let me tell you, ain't a whole lot of work getting done around these parts. Did you check out the CNF snack episode? The three minute job? Get used to it, man. Another one coming Monday, Monday, Monday.
00:02:38
Speaker
Sometimes you need a little something that's not an hour of your time, am I right? Something you can listen to while you're brushing your teeth or putting on your deodorant. I don't know why I'm using bathroom activities, but three minutes, you should be brushing your teeth. You should be taking about two to three minutes.
00:02:58
Speaker
I'm not here to tell you how to brush your teeth. Just a suggestion.
00:03:21
Speaker
Once a month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't boot it.
AC Shelton's Journey and Farming Experience
00:03:25
Speaker
Like I said, AC Shelton is here. Work's been in New York Times, Outside Magazine, Outside Online. She is why I stay on Twitter. Actually, she's one of those people because I likely would never have found her if not for Twitter. People I follow follow her and she's always posting pictures of her chickens and linking up the great stuff and she engages on the platform and I was like,
00:03:51
Speaker
I dig you, I dig your work, here's an axe, let's thrash. So here we are, thrash metal, oh. How does a journalist come to own a farm?
00:04:10
Speaker
Right. So I thought about what can I do that is even less lucrative and more work than freelance journalism. And I decided owning a farm was the next best thing. So yeah, it's funny, my husband works the National Park Service. So we've kind of bounced around the country going from park to park. And we ended up here in rural Tennessee. He's at Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. And
00:04:36
Speaker
We end up here and I really just loved it from the moment we kind of pulled into our temporary housing when we first got moved here. I kind of felt like, oh, this is the right spot for me. And so I grew up in Washington, DC. So I'm kind of a city kid.
00:04:53
Speaker
through and through but growing up I always wanted to have a farm and it's funny I tell this story about like you know helping my dad with you know very basic lawn work you know as a kid and I would always turn it into an imaginary game that I was playing farm and I was feeding animals and things like that and so we
00:05:13
Speaker
started kind of looking around and the great thing about rural Tennessee I mean there's a lot of struggles here too of course but one of the great things is land is very affordable and so we started kind of looking around and we had originally wanted to just have enough room till I left to garden so you know have enough room to garden and I have I have a couple horses so just just you know we're looking for you know maybe five to ten acres in a house and well
00:05:39
Speaker
We spent a couple years looking for that and that never ended up, the right spot never ended up presenting itself. This place came online and it's 45 acres. It was not at all what we were shopping for. It has been run as a traditional cattle farm for several generations, meaning that they would start their cattle here and then finish them in feedlots, not here.
00:06:04
Speaker
And so it was set up already for that. But you know, it needed a lot of work. You know, the houses were there, there's multiple houses on it, the whole thing. I mean, it was like way more than we were like, ready to bite off and chew. But because I have a spoiled brat who like, there's a tantrum when she wants something that, you know, she can't have, we need to bite it.
00:06:25
Speaker
It's just like, it's the most beautiful place and it's got these rolling green hills full of mature pasture and some woods and an old barn on a hillside that's kind of falling down, but it looks like, you know, shabby chic rustic.
00:06:40
Speaker
It's great. So we put an offer on it and ended up purchasing it obviously. And then since that day, we have been completely overwhelmed with what it actually takes to farm. So yeah, here we are. And we still have so much work to do to get it up and running. But every few months we add something new and hopefully soon we'll be adding some sort of grass-fed beef or possibly meat goats. I'm kind of going between the two trying to figure out
00:07:09
Speaker
exactly what I want to do from a sustainability perspective. So, yeah, that's where we're at. I love it. It's a ton of work. I can't remember the last time I slept in past 5.30, even on a weekend. But, you know, I don't know. It's funny, I've noticed I don't want to travel anymore. I turned down pretty much any sort of story which requires travel because I don't want to leave my farm. I love it. But when I do end up traveling for something, I can't wait to get home. I just, you know, I love being here, so.
00:07:34
Speaker
That's amazing. So how do you start to balance the freelance journalism aspect that you've built your young professional career towards with essentially what is a full-time job of raising your animals and tending to your land?
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, so, well, the thing is that I am hardly alone on this so there's this interesting statistic I wish I had it in front of me to get the exact numbers but basically the USDA like keeps track of you know how farmers are doing and young farmers across the board.
00:08:10
Speaker
are having to work multiple jobs to keep their farms afloat. Because to get in, to get the land, to get the equipment is so cost intensive. Farming is just not lucrative, especially on a small scale. And so the farming that I'm doing or people like me are doing, it's a money loser. And so all of us have full-time jobs. So I'm really not alone in this, but yeah, we have
00:08:35
Speaker
We both have our two full-time jobs plus we have the farm work that we do and it just means being like incredibly Efficient about time management, and it means that I've had to let some things go You know both from a you know personal standpoint right like so at some point I realized you know I couldn't
00:08:54
Speaker
I used to race triathlons, and I can't do that at a competitive level and still manage my farm. So now I take advantage of an extra 40 minutes and go for a run, but that's that. I'm not able to maintain that level of fitness that I used to be able to maintain, and that's fine. So it's just kind of a matter of managing your priorities and figuring out, okay, this is where we are right now. The next five years are going to be really, really hard while we set this thing up.
00:09:20
Speaker
At some point, hopefully, it will start to run itself a little bit, although it will always take a lot of care and feeding. I'm also a little bit more cautious about the assignments I take, making sure that I've really cut back. I used to do a lot of $300 to $400 web assignments, which is a good way to make money, for sure, but you have to turn and burn. You've got to keep moving. I've been able to say,
00:09:47
Speaker
I want to spend my time more wisely attacking, you know, those bigger projects. And it's scary. I will be so affront with, you know, saying it's really scary to turn down the, you know, the little assignments that keep your groceries, you know, coming and, you know, keep your bank account full. But I, you know, have been trying to avoid the content mill because I just don't have time.
Path to Journalism
00:10:13
Speaker
And so as you grew up in DC and as a self-admitted kind of a weird kid who loved farming and weeding and dreaming of having a farm, so at what point do you start to kind of get that bug to be a writer and to be a journalist? When does that get into your blood?
00:10:34
Speaker
So I have a kind of a strange path into journalism, which is that I originally, so my degree is in sociology, and I thought I was going to go to PhD. And looking back on it, this all makes a lot of sense, because I'm fascinated by how interactions work and how people and power work.
00:10:55
Speaker
And that's really important to journalism, right? But I didn't think about that as a career opportunity at that time. My school didn't have a journalism program. So, you know, I thought, okay, well, you know, I'm going to go get a PhD. That's going to be that. I'll do research, which is, you know, one of the PhD, you know, in Tales.
00:11:12
Speaker
Um, and then at the time I was racing bikes. Um, I was on our collegiate cycling team and I was really into that and I thought, okay, I'm going to take a few years off between going back to graduate school and I'm going to work in the bicycle industry. So I got a job at a bicycling manufacturer.
00:11:28
Speaker
It was a marketing job, you know, and then I kind of got a series of marketing jobs one of which happened to be in a newspaper and so I worked in the marketing department of a newspaper and I realized pretty quickly in that job that I was in the wrong part of the newspaper and that you know, I didn't have any sort of Interest at all and you know something you say newspaper subscriptions or advertisements. I wanted to be sitting up in the newsroom and so we Like any newspaper there were a lot of
00:11:58
Speaker
It was, you know, it was 2000 and 2008, 2009. So, you know, newspapers were starting to really shed jobs. And so I was able to kind of start picking up a little bit of work here and there if they needed somebody to, you know, write, you know, blogs are really big. So I started writing a blog, you know, and so.
00:12:18
Speaker
I was able to kind of pick up work that way. And then from there, when the newspaper closed, I was able to get a very, very entry-level editing position at a local magazine. So it's kind of a, you know, a roundabout way to get into journalism. But looking back on it, it makes a lot of sense because, you know, I liked research, I liked writing, I liked thinking about people and structure and power. And so I feel really glad that I found my way here because it's, you know, it's what I love.
00:12:42
Speaker
What were the kind of stories that really started to stick in your craw as you cut your teeth in journalism? What do you mean by stick in my craw? Like, they just kind of bothered me that I felt like you were not be... Yeah, what do you mean by that? I just want to make sure I understand it. Oh, yeah. So just the stories that maybe you couldn't escape, that you had to tell in that sense, that appealed to your taste. Right. So...
00:13:11
Speaker
Gosh, I've kind of written about everything over the years. You know, as a freelancer, it kind of just, you know, it's useful to be able to be a generalist. But the stories that have always interested me or brought me back or like made me feel like, you know, okay, maybe I'm making $200 for the assignment for a little local newspaper, you know, which is what happened when I was just starting out.
00:13:34
Speaker
the story, but I'll kind of keep plugging away on it no matter what, even though I'm not making any money, is stories where, A, people are being taken advantage of or getting the run around. That always will get me, if you call me and say, hey, I've tried everything, you're my last resort, I'm being
00:13:54
Speaker
or whatever, I'm always going to sit and listen to you. Even if there's not a story that I end up pursuing, that just always captivates me, right? That's the best way to get my attention. Those stories, and then, you know, stories that have broader implications for, like, why we behave the way we do, like, those always are just really interesting to me. So there's a story I wrote years ago for Outside Online that went super viral.
00:14:19
Speaker
About the end of pbr beer and you know basically like it was so big with hipsters and then kind of sales started falling off and it ended up being like such an interesting story because I you know interviewed a bunch of researchers about like what makes things cool.
00:14:35
Speaker
which is like such a nebulous topic, right? But like it's like one of those things that just is so interesting to me because I just want to know why people feel the way they do or like why people are attracted to this thing, you know, and then they're suddenly not. So those are these stories that I'm always really interested in is that, you know, anybody who is struggling against the system or, you know, kind of an explainer on, you know, why we feel the way we feel about, you know, these things in society. So what does make things cool?
00:15:02
Speaker
day is a great question. No one knows. Yeah, I mean, that's like, what's so like, it's like this thing that, you know, people are always trying to put their pulse on. And it's really hard to figure out what makes things cool. Because the second like, something is cool. And so this is what happened with PBR was like, it was cool, because it wasn't cool. But then it hit this tipping point, where it became
00:15:22
Speaker
and that it was no longer cool, right? And so, yeah, you know, it's this, I don't know. I don't really know it's cool. And people always ask me, you know, what makes a story go viral? And to tell you the truth, I have no clue. Like, and nobody does, right? Like, it's really interesting that, like, nobody has any clue what makes something go viral and something very similar, not. And, you know, we've tried to replicate that success, I think, of that story or other stories like it.
00:15:51
Speaker
I can never tell you what's going to really just shatter the Internet and what's not. As you started to gain a little bit of traction with journalism, what was maybe some early validation that you might have felt from someone who might have took you on through their wing or mentored you a little bit and said that you were on the right path? Be like, keep doing this. This is something you're really good at.
00:16:15
Speaker
Really early on, I had an editor at the Naples Daily News. And this is this is a funny story. OK, so I moved. I was working as a Honolulu advertiser and then I worked at a Honolulu magazine. And and then my husband's job moved and we moved to Florida.
00:16:32
Speaker
And I had all this experience that I gathered in Honolulu, and I'd been an editor, so on and so forth. So we moved to Florida, and we moved to Naples, which has a small paper. And I thought, you know, it will be no trouble for me to get, you know, a job at this local paper. I've now worked in a newspaper and a magazine. And they have lots of jobs available. I ran into the stumbling block, which is that the Naples Daily News, at that time, I don't know if this is the case now, but only would hire journalists with journalism degrees.
00:17:01
Speaker
I spent the next three years getting passed over for jobs, even though I was writing freelance for them and winning a lot of their Florida press club awards. So every year they'd submit some of my stories to the Florida press club and every year I'd win something and I still couldn't get a job there. So it was really frustrating. And I had these three years of feeling like, wow, like maybe
00:17:24
Speaker
I'm not qualified to do this. And second, guessing myself, the good news was that I had an editor there, Jay Schlichter, who runs their little community papers that like, you know, they're like the like subset of the Naples Daily News. There's like this, you know, community paper called to call your citizen that goes to like one section of its readership in this one particular area. And so he oversaw that paper and he like, it's not prestigious work at all.
00:17:51
Speaker
You know the circulation is tiny. I think it's maybe even free It's community news and it's like very most you know like community news level I like I once wrote a story about an installation of a flagpole at a community center. I mean not glamorous but He was so encouraging and he you know would always you know if my story seemed more work He would never you know he would never hesitate to push back and say you know I think we need another interview or another voice or you know did you think about this?
00:18:21
Speaker
So he was a talented and helpful editor, but he was also incredibly encouraging. And if something was good, it would always take the time to tell me it was good. And so despite the fact that his corporate overlords were saying, you can't hire this woman, and it's funny because several editors personally asked for me to be hired, and I still couldn't be hired. So despite the fact that I was getting that really, really negative feedback that I was not qualified, I did not deserve to be in this field,
00:18:49
Speaker
Having a couple of editors who kept me going and kept saying, yes, you do. We're sorry we can't hire you, but we'll give you as much work as we can. That was a huge confidence booster and I think kept me in the field.
00:19:03
Speaker
So from that point on, how do you start to level up and to start crafting pitches that are going to start landing you at more prominent, more visible outlets?
00:19:19
Speaker
When
Persistence in Pitching and Career Success
00:19:20
Speaker
I talk to young journalists about this, I always suggest starting at your local paper, and it is not glamorous. You will write about a flagpole, but every one of those assignments paid me. I never worked for free. I always had some sort of income coming in.
00:19:39
Speaker
That gave me a little bit of leeway. I was working my ass off on $200 stories, so I had to write six or seven a week to stay afloat. But it meant that I could have a little bit of time on the side to write things just for me and level up and work on that.
00:19:58
Speaker
And so Runner's World was the first magazine I wanted to target, because I've been on Runner forever and ever. I think I pitched them six or seven times before I finally made it in. And so that's the other piece of advice to young journalists, is keep trying. You're not going to make it in your first pitch, or maybe you will, if you're more talented than me. But it took six or seven tries. And I think what eventually happened was I kept pitching the same editor.
00:20:26
Speaker
edited this one section of the magazine that like I had read in like media bistro was relatively easy to break into Right, so I kind of followed all the rules like I read about how to pitch it I like picked that editor and I specifically went out and looked for stories for her that like would fit that mold and Eventually cracked it and it but it did take a while and it was like a you know 200 word story and I think like I
00:20:51
Speaker
This next piece is like, okay, so I wrote this 200-word story for this national magazine. I remember the day it came out and landed in my mailbox and thinking, I have made it. And the sad thing is, you have not made it. One small story in a national print magazine does not actually elevate your profile. And this is why I really suggest not writing for free. Because if Renters World had asked me to write that for free, I think I would have been so tickled that I finally landed this national assignment that I would have done it.
00:21:21
Speaker
but like it literally meant nothing you know and so they paid me as they should have but I think you know at the end of the day like you need to get paid for your work because it is work and one you know one assignment is not going to change your resume so from there you know I just kind of kept pitching that editor I kept asking you know what they needed and then
00:21:42
Speaker
I just kind of, to be perfectly honest, I got very lucky. So I got a line on a pitch for outside magazine that was just like I knew the second I kind of got the buzz that it was going to be just a perfect story for them.
00:21:58
Speaker
So I used to work at a bicycle manufacturer, and they did this funny thing where they had a wind tunnel for aerodynamic testing, and they did a test to see if shaved legs versus non-shaved legs were faster. And it was just like one of those things where I happened to know, you know, from having worked there, I had some old colleagues who were there, so I was one of the first people to kind of see that they were doing this, and I was able to take it immediately to outside and say, you know, I know the players, I can get you this story.
00:22:25
Speaker
And it was such a slam dunk. I just got really, really lucky there. I think a lot of people do pitch over and over and never get that foot in. So to some degree, it was luck. I've been, I don't know, very lucky to be able to kind of.
00:22:38
Speaker
one at a time break into that next thing and that next thing and that next thing. But it does take usually, you know, like Runner's World took me, you know, a long time to break into and other places as well. There are still magazines I have not broken into, despite the fact that I've tried and tried and tried. So, you know, I don't want other runners to feel like I hit everyone on the first try like I did outside. That is not the case.
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah, how did you have the endurance and the courage to keep pitching, even keep pitching the same person who might have been turning you down every time and not feel like you were sort of annoying them? Like you had enough wherewithal to be like, you know, I think this is a good idea. I'm going to keep sending it to them despite the rejection. How did you break through there and just had the wherewithal to keep on going?
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, well I think one thing that really helped me was that like I got to work as an editor fairly early in my career and I was a really low level associate editor, but like we would get pitches and send them around the office.
00:23:42
Speaker
I think when you sit in that office and it very quickly becomes clear that it's not actually the pitch was bad, it's that we had something similar or the issue theme wasn't quite right.
00:23:59
Speaker
Or it's very rare that a pitch is truly bad. And most of the time, editors are excited to get pitches because they need ideas. And so having sat on the other side of the desk first, I think took away some of that needling of rejection and feeling like it's you, because it's really not you.
00:24:25
Speaker
What's going into the book that month or what just went into the book and you know a magazine's work six months in advance So like you might not realize it but there is between now and when the story is gonna publish there are two other things that are similar already, you know, so I think that really helps me with that confidence and to be clear I still you know struggle with feeling like all my ideas are stupid or like, you know, am I annoying editors or whatever yesterday I had to like
00:24:52
Speaker
you know, gird myself to send that follow up email, you know, where I know that it's, you know, probably a no, but I got to follow up just in case, you know, it still sucks. But I really quickly I want to give a caveat about that. Because yesterday, I guess it was Monday, I was debating whether or not to send a follow up email because sometimes it's just so shitty.
00:25:13
Speaker
You're like, if they haven't responded by now, they don't want my story. They wouldn't have responded if they wanted it. I sent a follow-up email on Monday just to be like, I'm just going to dot my I's and cross my T's. An editor at a very prestigious publication ended up coming back to me and saying, actually, yes, we do want this.
00:25:33
Speaker
And I'm so, so glad I did that because I almost took it to my next outlet that was going to be much lower paying. So this is a casual reminder to everybody to definitely follow up because sometimes your editors do want it and they've just forgotten. And the worst that happens is they don't response, right?
00:25:51
Speaker
I'm the I'm the same way too with in terms of follow-ups with big with big post sometimes I get like the nibble and Then a couple weeks will go by and then I'm like, you know what? I'm just I've gotten into that where I just don't follow up and then of course it dies on the vine So it's uh, it's really good advice that you're saying like even if you don't feel like it even if you feel like it's already been rejected like you really do just
00:26:14
Speaker
You do the editor's inboxes just get hammered with stuff so you really do just have to kind of get your thing to the top of it at a good time in the work week in the work day and then you're like oh yeah that's right I I've been meaning to reach out the AC but I've got all this immediate stuff I want to tell her to go go go go go do this piece so yeah it's like following up it's such it's really wise wise counsel.
00:26:37
Speaker
You know, it's it is hard because, like, yeah, I feel like, you know, once I'm always afraid I'll follow up and annoy them. Right. Because, like, I get so many P.R. follow ups and like, stop following up. You know, I'm like worried that I'll annoy them. But be like, you know, like that, like, it's like that thing, like you're saying there's still a chance.
00:26:58
Speaker
It's like once you get that rejection, there is no more chance. And you're closing that door by asking for that rejection. But yeah, this was a case where I'm so glad I did it instead of just moving on because I would have started working on it for this much less lower paying pub. And then maybe they would have gotten back to me and been like, hey, we want it. And I would be like, well, shit. So yeah, definitely a lesson learned. It is always worth following up.
00:27:26
Speaker
And I love digging into the way a freelancer goes about crafting pitches and the process by which you log them and submit them and everything. So when you were kind of backing up to when you were sending some out to Runner's World and getting six, seven, eight rejections,
00:27:45
Speaker
How have your pitches evolved and maybe gotten to a point where you've got a pretty good formula about if it's going to get accepted. This is how it typically looks like.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah, that has been such an evolving process for me because I didn't go to J school, although I've heard that they don't teach us at J school, so I guess it doesn't matter. No, they don't at all. I blitzed my journalism program at UMass Amherst. I was a double major. I had a journalism late.
00:28:19
Speaker
And even in the MFA program I went to in creative non-fiction, it's like they don't teach that as a skill, but ultimately that's the skill you need really.
00:28:32
Speaker
it's crucial. Okay, so I would say, you know, what I have changed and, you know, so two things, I actually don't pitch that much. And that although this year, I have been pitching more because I have really wanted to transition to the projects I want to do. But my advice for like,
00:28:53
Speaker
young starting out journalist is to avoid pitching in that you want to get repeat work from clients because that's the easiest way to make a living. If you're having to make your work by pitching constantly or if you're pitching 50 or 60 stories a year or whatever,
00:29:09
Speaker
I think you would be better served to pitch less and spend more time on the work you are assigned to get repeat assignments. I don't know maybe that's not popular advice but I think that like you know pitching is useful and especially when you want to level up right or or
00:29:24
Speaker
If you want to change your beat, then you do need to be able to pitch. I'll get to that piece of it in a second, but I always try and stress to journalists, young freelancers that the best, most lucrative way to make money is to have repeat clients and editors coming back to you and saying, can you do this other thing?
00:29:42
Speaker
Okay, so that piece of advice aside, right, when you want to level up or get a new client or change your beat, the thing I have learned the most this last year are really like, now I'm only pitching long form features. That's what I want to be doing. I had this moment where I was like, you know what, why am I pitching $200 service journalism? I mean, I love service journalism and if people assign me, I'll happily do it. But what I really want to be doing is features, so I should be pitching features, right?
00:30:12
Speaker
The thing I have learned is that you almost have to report the whole story, which is like, you know, it's hard to justify at first, but then you start actually selling stuff and realizing like, oh, wait a second, this does work. The thing that has changed probably the most about my pitching is that, you know, for example, this pitch I sold yesterday, I've actually been reporting this story for three to four months while I've been trying to figure out, you know, the right spot for it.
00:30:38
Speaker
So, you know, the pitch started out with an anecdote that, you know, was, you know, a scene. And then from the scene, you know, I've got, then we move on to kind of the nugget of the problem that I want to investigate. Other thing that I've really struggled with is narrowing down what is this story about? Because I tend to be like, oh, there's this cool thing. Oh, and this other cool thing?
00:31:02
Speaker
And oh my gosh, this cool thing, right? So I tend to want to stick it all in there because I find the whole world to be fascinating all the time. But it's so much better if you can say, this is what the story is about. And even though I had thought I had done that for this particular pitch that got back.
00:31:20
Speaker
yesterday, the editor and I had to hop on the phone and he still kind of wanted some clarification about like, you know, what is that struggle that's happening here that's going to like, what is the story still really, really about? That nugget is really important. And then, you know, showing that you have done at least enough research that the story is going to be more or less there and still sometimes things fall apart, right? And I think editors do understand that.
00:31:45
Speaker
But for this story in particular like I had several of my characters picked out and I had quotes from them so that like they knew that like these people are willing to more or less work with me and I'm not just saying these are the people I'm going to interview or they may or may not be up for it. Right. Like I know these people are already going to sit down with me.
00:32:01
Speaker
So those are kind of the basics, making sure you've got kind of a scene so people can understand what's going to happen, making sure you've got the nugget of the problem, and then introducing a couple of the characters. So that's kind of worked for me. My pitches are quite long at this point, and I know some editors don't like that, but I figure they can stop reading.
00:32:25
Speaker
But I just found that when I was sending short pitches, I was finding that editors kind of wrote back and were like, I need more info. And so I was like, well, I might as well just stick all this in. I don't know. Maybe that's bad advice. But it's worked for me. Does that help?
00:32:42
Speaker
It does help, and I wonder too what you're – okay, so if you're reporting doing a lot of pre – excuse me – a lot of pre-reporting and sometimes several months' worth, what are the conversations that you're having with –
Story Ideas and Documentary Involvement
00:32:58
Speaker
your sources when you don't have a publication lined up yet. You just kind of have your dream of like, alright, I want this to land here. But I'm still going to talk to you and ask you questions as if this thing is actually happening. So what are those conversations like when you're kind of lobbying your sources for a story that doesn't quite yet have a home yet?
00:33:23
Speaker
There are two things I try to do. I try to a be very clear about that and be like, you know, I'm a freelancer. And so I have to sell this story. And it may take me months to sell this story. And, you know, I also like I tell people I work extraordinarily slowly. People I think are always really shocked at the like a slow pace of my work.
00:33:45
Speaker
It's not that I'm bad at my job, maybe I am, but it's just that publishing is extraordinarily slow, especially in magazines. Newspapers are fast, but magazines are slow. I have to have all of my ducks in a row. I want to have every piece of paperwork, and if I have to go through the foyer process to get it, I will get it.
00:34:05
Speaker
So I'm very clear about A. I'm independent. I don't have a magazine backing me at this moment. But here's who I am. Here's some of the other work that I have done. And I usually send people to my website or whatever to see that I am legitimately a journalist.
00:34:21
Speaker
and not just taking their time. And then just, yeah, being really upfront about like, you're not going to hear from me for three or four months, you know, likely. And then I'm going to come back in your inbox and I'm going to be like, guess what? I saw the story. Let's do an interview tomorrow. That's just kind of how it works. And for the most part, if people are interested in telling their stories, I find that they are willing to work with me under those parameters, but I just try to just lay those out out front so everybody knows kind of, you know, I may never sell this story, but I'm interested in it. I think your story is important and I'm going to try.
00:34:51
Speaker
And I think a lot of freelancers, they're always interested in how everyone generates their ideas, where their ideas come from. So where do yours come from and how do you refill the well so you can, you know, when you feel like pitching, like you feel like you've got a stable of ideas.
00:35:14
Speaker
Good question. I wish I had a really clear answer on that because they kind of come from everywhere. I just feel like it just comes from being a really curious person and feeling like the whole world is full of
00:35:30
Speaker
full of curious things so often I'll read a book and I will like underline the like pieces of the book that like I feel like deserved more attention and I want to look into those so like for example I recently read Michael Pollan's new book on
00:35:47
Speaker
psychedelics, which is great by the way, but there's he talks a little bit about like the like Johnny Appleseed of psychedelic mushrooms who happens to like have resided in Kentucky and there's like two sentences on him and so I like underline it and I was like wait that would be such a good feature like I want to know about that guy you know so I haven't actually pitched that one please don't steal my idea but
00:36:13
Speaker
Actually, you can't. I'm really busy. Somebody else can take that. It's fine. I don't know. I just think things like that. I do get some people coming to me, which is great. Keeping good networks of sources and just making sure that
00:36:30
Speaker
you know, you are, you know, courteous and you help and, you know, polite to sources so that when they have something, they think, oh, you know, I know a journalist, I get a lot of, you know, stories that way. So, yeah, and honestly, like, the world is just so full of interesting things that I don't understand that I, you know, I'm constantly looking up, you know, and thinking, could this be a story?
00:36:54
Speaker
So how did you land with Netflix for the Innocent Man project? Right. So I was digging into the Denise Haraway case and got partnered up with this documentary that was working on John, doing a documentary about John Grisham's book, Innocent Man, which focuses on Ronald Williamson's case, the Deborah Sue Carter murder.
00:37:17
Speaker
Uh, but the Debra Sue Carter murder and the, uh, Denise Haraway case are kind of inextricably like, or not, well, they, no, sorry. They are both like totally intertwined. You kind of can't cover one without covering the other. And so I had been looking into the Denise Haraway case and really knew a lot about it. Um, and so kind of got, you know, uh, got into it that way. Um, and it was.
00:37:39
Speaker
It was such a fun way to approach a story because I think about my stories in a two-dimensional sense, living on a printed page. It was so cool to have the opportunity to understand how sound and music and visuals can
00:38:00
Speaker
really enhance your storytelling. And it's funny, it's been actually a little bit hard to transition back to print because it's so rich to work in documentary and feel like, oh, you know what we could do is we can shoot this, we can shoot it like this, you know? And then just have to kind of come back to print and be like, well, I guess I'm back to writing sentences. Not that I don't love print, but I feel like I lost some of my storytelling tools. But it also is forcing me to work harder to feel like,
00:38:28
Speaker
I can tell the story just as well in print. So, yeah. Yeah, and what's kind of cool is that you do this Netflix thing, and then you're able to parlay the arrival fallacy of it into this piece that you wrote for the New York Times. And I love this notion that you tackle in this piece.
00:38:52
Speaker
And it goes to a two-part thing I want to ask you, like how sort of just generating work generates work, so to speak. Like you wouldn't have this arrival fallacy thing had you not done the Netflix thing, which parlayed into this column in this little feature. So maybe you could speak to what arrival fallacy is, and we'll kind of unpack that a little bit.
Managing Expectations and Finding Meaning
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so arrival fallacy is this idea that you are going to be happy once you achieve X, right? So I will be happy once my documentary is up on Netflix, right? And I think I really believed that to be true, right? Like I thought that like I worked really hard for, you know, a year and a half on this thing and I felt like
00:39:41
Speaker
You know, we're going to get these innocent men out of prison. Like that's going to happen. I'm going to feel like my work is meaningful. And, you know, a thing that like people don't talk about that much, like, I don't know, like my work up until Innocent Man, some of it was very meaningful. And, you know, there was the like, you know, occasional feature that I sold that I felt like, yes, like I am doing good work.
00:40:04
Speaker
But then like a lot of it, and I think this is true for a lot of freelancers, but a lot of it then was like, you know, I don't know, 10 ways to get great apps for summer because that's what pays your bills, you know, and so like you have, well, at least I have to do some of that work to make my, you know, my bills and my mortgage and all of that.
00:40:24
Speaker
I really always struggled with like am I doing good enough work that actually makes a difference because like that's what matters to me like I don't care at all about being known or famous or winning prizes really what I want to do is I want to do to work that like matters beyond myself and so innocent men gave me that opportunity to really feel like look we are like casting a big big lens on you know the justice system and how fallible it is and
00:40:53
Speaker
you know, course, confession, confessions, which maybe a lot of people have never thought about. And so I felt like this was going to be it. And then, you know, it goes up online. And like, your life really just goes on, to be totally honest. And it's funny, I'm, I'm working on another little small documentary with somebody. And the subject of that documentary, like, has it very much in his mind that he is going to be famous. Like, this is it. I kind of want to sit down with him and be like, your life just kind of just goes on.
00:41:19
Speaker
That's fine. That's actually great. I like my life. I'm pretty happy with my life. But it feels surprisingly different than what you anticipated. And that's arrival fallacy. So you get there, and you're happy for a second when you see your work that you have worked so hard on, getting this moment of attention.
00:41:37
Speaker
And then yeah, like humans have kind of a set point of happiness that we tend to return to and they've documented this with you know lottery winners they've documented this with Yeah, the example I use in that New York Times piece is professors who got tenure right they got tenure They're no happy happier or like less happy than those who didn't get tenure a couple years later this very much happened to me and I had kind of a really shit summer where I just felt like I
00:42:04
Speaker
Wow, I've done the best thing I'm ever going to do in my career and that's that. And now I feel pretty depressed. And so, yeah, you know, I started thinking about what might be happening to me. And I think around the same time, Anthony Bourdain killed himself or died by suicide. And I don't know, I'm not a celebrity person. I'm not that interested in celebrities, but I did like Anthony Bourdain. And, you know, I kind of felt like
00:42:31
Speaker
Why do so many high achievers seem to struggle with things like this? And started doing some creative googling, which is how I came to be like, oh, there's this thing I've never heard of, and then pitched it to the New York Times. So I think it kind of comes back to just feeling like, wait, what's actually going on here? What does this say about society? And my training as a sociologist and a social scientist to think about, well, let's think critically about what could possibly be happening here.
00:43:00
Speaker
and then turning that into a story. And I think that's kind of like what I've kind of done for a lot of my career is like, wait, what's happening here? Why didn't I understand this? Let's see if I can turn it into a story. And it worked out very nicely in that instance.
00:43:13
Speaker
Yeah, and the whole idea of this ties into the hedonic treadmill. You reach a certain level, but then that becomes kind of the new normal, and then it just feels normal, and then you need another high, so to speak.
00:43:32
Speaker
Exactly. So I got this amazing assignment yesterday that I'm so excited about. And then I had to remind myself that I'm going to feel super awesome for the next six weeks as I dig into this. And I love doing the work. That's my favorite thing in the world. And then there's going to be a letdown.
00:43:49
Speaker
you know like it's gonna come out and then like I'm gonna be like oh god now what do I do you know or is that the best thing I've ever written which I think to myself all the time but I like cannot seem to stop thinking that like you know like I know it's not gonna be the case I know there will be other projects like this isn't it for me but I always like as soon as it's over a week or two after it's over I think is that the best thing I'm ever gonna have done so
00:44:13
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a great, you've probably seen it, and billions of people have, I feel like, Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk about essentially like, quote unquote, like going home, like she had to wrestle with Ypres Love being probably her greatest success. And so how do you go back to work when your best work might be behind you?
00:44:38
Speaker
And so she identified that, you know, just the mere fact of sitting down and generating fiction or whatever or nonfiction was like her going home. And if she can get to that place of generation and have that be the victory, then she can proceed with her art. So is that something you kind of, do you sort of relate to that?
00:44:59
Speaker
So mine is a little bit different. So the way I have found that I am able to get kind of through it is to think of my work as benefiting others. Like that's what I really want out of my work. And so like, even though like, obviously, you know, as any other writer, I have an ego that I like needs constant love and feeding.
00:45:23
Speaker
But I think what I tend to do to help myself through that, is that the biggest, best piece I'm ever going to write? Or are those the most beautiful prose I'm ever going to craft? Is to think, no, there are so many other people out there who need their stories told. And maybe I won't end up telling them in the New York Times. Maybe it will be for a small local paper. But there are still people who need help. I can continue to do that work. And it may not be glamorous.
00:45:51
Speaker
It may not get a lot of attention, but that work still matters. And so one of the things I did when I was kind of at the depths of the survival fallacy and feeling really like just, wow, I'm never going to do anything that I like really care about again, was that I started a writing program in our local federal prison because I was feeling like, you know, my work didn't matter, you know, I wasn't doing work that mattered, but that was one way I could make my work matter, right? So instead of,
00:46:19
Speaker
trying to, you know, I wasn't having a lot of luck pitching criminal justice stuff. And so instead, I just took my work to the prison and helped other folks tell their stories. So I think that like that is what I use to get through the idea of like, it's possible, I'll never do anything quite as cool as a Netflix documentary. But that's fine. I think as long as I keep pushing forward to try and use, you know, journalism to help other people.
00:46:48
Speaker
You alluded to it earlier, that you love the work. And
Writing Inspirations and Overcoming Challenges
00:46:53
Speaker
I wonder where you feel most engaged in the process. Well, that's a great question.
00:47:01
Speaker
I love interviewing people. I love listening to people's stories. I will sit and listen to people all day long. So that is really my favorite part of the process, almost to a point where it's a problem, where I will over-report stories. But that part of the process is probably my favorite.
00:47:24
Speaker
And yeah, I like going through documents. You know, I love having my receipts in order, right? So like, you know, fact checking, I think it's very validating to me and be like, yes, I have all of these things. And I'm ready, you know, to like, I don't mind the process of
00:47:43
Speaker
This is taking some getting used to, but I don't mind the process of calling the person who the story is, the unflattering story is about and saying these are the allegations that I have and this is the backup that I have to prove it. What do you want to say? I don't love that part of it, but it also kind of feels like I, you know, I like doing it because I like making sure that, you know, everything is, everything is above board. So I'm learning to love that process a little bit more.
00:48:09
Speaker
Yeah, the actual writing part is hard. That's probably my least favorite part of the process. If I could just interview people all day long, that would be my dream job.
00:48:19
Speaker
With respect to how you kind of draw inspiration and kind of fill the well in terms of just doing, reading other people's work, and that could be books or magazine pieces that, what are some of those that you've drawn inspiration from? Maybe books or magazine articles that you return to to remind yourself how it's done and be like, all right, they did it, so if I just dig in, I can do it too. Good question. Yeah.
00:48:50
Speaker
I mean, I'm a pretty religious New Yorker reader, but not saying that that is always like the best of all, you know, arbiters of journalism or anything like that. But I do try to read it and think critically about how are these stories constructed.
00:49:06
Speaker
And so to some degree, I feel like journalism has ruined my ability to sit and just read a story because I always am thinking about how did this get constructed or what was the reverse engineering of this reporting, how to get that detail. So I do try to sit down with a New Yorker every week, although like everybody else, they stack up and think about at least how those pieces came into being.
00:49:32
Speaker
And, you know, I have subscriptions, of course, the New York Times and the Washington Post and read those, although I don't do that much newspaper journalism at this moment. But, you know, I think that always has relevance in terms of figuring out how people are doing fact finding.
00:49:47
Speaker
This is not terrible, but I tend not to read nonfiction books twice. There's just so much out there. You know, there's so many. I love to read nonfiction books and I read lots of them, but I find it hard to return to them. And there are only a few that I returned to, but they're mostly books on writing that I returned to versus like the actual nonfiction books themselves. What are the books you return to the on writing?
00:50:10
Speaker
So my very, very favorite is actually Anne Patchett has a book called This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. And it's short stories, but it's kind of about her life as a writer. And she's a fiction writer, so it's a little bit different. But I just find her words and her advice to be very clear and frank. I think sometimes books on writing can over
00:50:38
Speaker
Oversell the writing life. I don't think she does that which is nice I didn't like understand that like even people at the very top are struggling a little bit It's nice and then you know the fun thing about having this Prison writing workshop is that I've gone back to some of the you know original books on writing that I read years and years ago like Anna Mott's bird by bird, right which is
00:51:01
Speaker
is so great and it's been fun to go through that with a bunch of guys who have never thought about writing in any other way than the five paragraph essay that was taught in their high school. And so I've been enjoying going through that again. So those are the two books that I think every writer should have on their shelf able to reference when they need it.
00:51:23
Speaker
And also like when you're kind of deconstructing a New Yorker piece and of course you're at a level of proficiency and competency and visibility where maybe this doesn't strike you as it does for other people. But sometimes I wonder how writers and journalists and freelancers process feelings of competition and jealousy among peers. Is this something that you wrestle with? Oh God, it's so bad.
00:51:52
Speaker
It's so awful. Yes, this is one part of my personality that I really, really wish that I could change. I'm horribly competitive. I've always been that way. Even as a kid, losing a board game was a full-on meltdown for me.
00:52:08
Speaker
And so yes, in fact, it's so much so that like, right, sometimes I like find it hard to read my peers, right? Because like, I just think about like, how much better they are at this than I am. And so I think that's very normal. But I try not to let it be crippling, right? Like, I should want to read great journalism, even though, like, deep down, I'm like,
00:52:31
Speaker
why not write this or why are they so much better than me, right? So, yeah, I think a part of it is just recognizing that you have this ugly trait inside of you and that it is this ugly trait and that somebody else's success does not really take away from your own. Yes, there are, to some degree, limited bylines, but I should be using their success to push myself to be better, right?
00:52:56
Speaker
That doesn't mean that I haven't silenced the occasional person on Twitter who is just winning at all things all the time and I just need a break. That is very real and very normal and I think if you're a writer and you're feeling that way, it's so normal. Just do it. Do what you have to do to get through. But if there is truly an exemplary piece of writing that everybody on the internet is talking about and you're avoiding it because you just can't stomach it,
00:53:20
Speaker
read it, just read it. It's probably useful and hopefully, you know, you can grab a little something from what they've done and someday they'll be envying you, maybe. Yeah. Maybe not. Nice. And as we kind of wind down here, I see, of course, coming down to the end and I like asking people for a recommendation to unplug from whatever it is they do and that can be anything. So
Final Thoughts and Social Media
00:53:43
Speaker
what is your recommendation for the listeners out there who might need a little distraction from there every day?
00:53:50
Speaker
Can I give you two? Please, more of the barrier. Okay. Well, the first one's, the first one, I mean, you're not going to be surprised by it, but if you possibly can get a couple of chickens. They're so, so enjoyable. They're so fun. I kind of cannot believe how much joy these like little baby T-Rexes have brought me. Um, so that's like the first one I honestly, every day at about 7 15, I go out and I sit in my chicken yard and like a couple of them hop on my lap and it's just like,
00:54:20
Speaker
a good way to like in the day and be like, okay, you know what? Like these chickens do not care about my byline. These chickens do not care whether I sold something or not, you know, like that's just anyways. I mean, any pet would do it, but chickens are supremely fun and they also provide breakfast. It's pretty great.
00:54:38
Speaker
The second one, which is like a little bit more serious, but it's something that I've been trying to do and I found it quite effective. And this is comes from a positive psychologist and Martin Seligman. He's kind of the father of positive psychology, but he has this exercise where.
00:54:55
Speaker
He asked people at the end of the day to journal about the three things that happened to them that day that were positive. I have found this exercise to be hugely, hugely effective in terms of making you reflect on your day in a positive light. So much of my work moves at a glacial pace. I'll file a FOIA and not hear anything.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yesterday, I think I sent out 10 interview requests and nobody got back to me. A lot of my work moves really, really slow and it's really easy for me to fixate on all the things that I didn't do or all the things that didn't go well during the day, but taking a few minutes at the end of the day to just end.
00:55:34
Speaker
some it's often really like simple things like i got to ride my mountain bike or you know i had time to sit with my chickens or you know my husband and i connected really well you know i had a great conversation um you know which sometimes when you've been making a lifetime you kind of forget to do you know so it can be simple stuff like that um and
00:55:53
Speaker
It's just, it's a really, really nice way to end your day and remember that like even the shittiest days have some positive moments in them. And I highly recommend that. Oh, that's amazing. All right, so where can people find you online AC and get more familiar with your work?
00:56:09
Speaker
Sure. So I'm most active on Twitter, where I am just at AC Shelton. I have an Instagram that's the same and on Facebook as well as AC Shelton. And again, my website is www.acshelton.com. So not super creative, but easy to find. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, this was great. Thank you so much for carving the time and talking shop and everything in between. So this was a lot of fun. And thank you so much for doing this. This was great.
00:56:39
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It was a blast. Tasteful. That was a tasteful CNF an episode, wasn't it? Thanks to Bay Path and Riverteeth for the support. And of course, AC Shelton, acshelton.com. Go check out her work. It's good stuff. Be sure to subscribe to the show. Consider leaving a nice review on Apple podcasts.
00:57:04
Speaker
I hope I've made something worth sharing, so if it means anything to you, pass it along to a friend. That's how this is gonna grow, by finding our people. The people who are into this genre, the creative non-fiction genre, who can benefit from it. If you dig and tell them true stories, you know someone else who does. Pass it along. Hand off the baton.
00:57:25
Speaker
Keep the conversation going, of course, on Twitter, at cnfpod, and Instagram, at cnfpod, Facebook, at cnfpodcast, or just searching Creative Nonfiction Podcast, it will pop up. I think that's a wrap, friend. I don't have much to say, except remember, if you can do interview, see ya!