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Episode 412: Leaving the Emotional Moments Unsaid with Lilly Dancyger
687 Plays5 months ago
Lilly Dancyger (@lillydancyger) is a writer and editor whose latest book is First Love: Essays on Friendship (Dial Press).
In this episode Lilly talks about her trepidation around writing a true-crime memoir, braided essays, book marketing, and when to let the emotion of the moment do the talking.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
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Transcript
Introduction and Patron Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey seeing efforts right at the top of the show I want to send out a thank you and a welcome to new patron Michael Gerber Welcome aboard. All right, but listen seeing efforts. I'm not one for many ads on the show. You know that
00:00:15
Speaker
show takes a lot of time. And part of what keeps the lights on is if you consider hiring me to edit some of your work, you know, a generous editor helps you see what you can't see.
Podcast Support and Purpose
00:00:26
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And my specialty, if I had one, I guess would be sports, narrative journalism, query letters, book proposals, even biography. So that's my little shingle. Email me and we can start a dialogue if that's a direction where you would like to go.
00:00:45
Speaker
Also, like Michael Gerber, you can consider patreon.com slash cnfbot and you know that what we do here is super cool and you can also get a kind of a cool discount because depending on your tier, I offer face-to-face time to talk things out. I recently gave away my six-figure earning book proposal to every tier so you could get a look at that.
00:01:11
Speaker
and see a little bit behind the curtain with this industry that is shrouded in secrecy. So you might just get some free stuff. Okay, how do I write about a murder without making it a murder story? Which was a big craft challenge, you know?
00:01:35
Speaker
OAC and Evers is the creative nonfiction podcast since 2013. Oh my gosh. This is the show where I speak to primarily writers about telling true stories. I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara. Good for me.
Guest Introduction: Lily Danziger's New Book
00:01:48
Speaker
Lily Danziger is back on the podcast. She has a new book out.
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that'll first love essays on friendship. For all you Oregonians or Southern tier Washingtonians, Lily will be at Powell's City of Books in Portland on May 21st, 2024 at 7 p.m. In conversation with Erica Berry, I'm never asked to do these things. Lily's new book doesn't feel like an essay collection to me. It feels like a
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Speaker
prismatic love story about Lily and her girl friends that has a through line of grief and joy. Try tying those two together. Show notes to this episode more at BrendanOmera.com. Hey, there you can also sign up for the monthly rage. You can see algorithm newsletter, a short riff, four book recommendations, seven other links, literally goes up to 11, writing prompt, happy hour, downgrade to free, first of the month, no spam, so far as I can tell you can't beat it.
Social Media and Editorial Roles
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Speaker
You may also follow along on Instagram, ugh, or thread, ugh, at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Ugh, yeah. A little more about Lily. She's the author of Negative Space. Go back to episode 259 for that jam. And the editor of Burn It Down, Women Writing About Anger.
00:03:13
Speaker
She's an acquiring editor at Barrel House Books, and has been a freelance developmental editor since 2016. She primarily works in memoir and personal essay. And every writer I know hangs their shingle out at some point or another as an editor or coach of some kind. And a big mistake I see is people being too general. So, you know, getting with her memoir, personal essay, stuff of that nature.
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Lily even has a login button on her website, so that's fancy. You can learn more about her at lilydansiger.com or follow her on Instagram, at lilydansiger. She's still on Twitter, at lilydansiger. And does she have a substack? You bet she does. lilydansiger.substack.com.
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Speaker
So this was a toe tap and good conversation about letting emotion do the talking or her long game of book marketing, which began back in January, 2024 for this book's May release.
Book Release and Marketing Strategies
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Her trepidation about writing a true crime memoir or a memoir with true, crimey elements.
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Hey, there's some good stuff in here. I think you're gonna dig it. I know I did. Parting shot on invisibility after the show, but for now, here's Lily Danziger.
00:04:43
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I mean, my little podcast fiefdom, I've just been getting bombarded with publicists of late. I'm not too privy to the whims of publishing editorial schedules, but this time of year, it seems like is a big push. Yeah, I think it always was, and I think it's especially so this year because people were trying to avoid putting the pub dates right around the election.
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So we're like extra stacked here in the first half of the year. Yeah. Oh, I can see. I can see that because no one's going to get that. Yeah. It's going to subsume the culture. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
00:05:24
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Yeah, just in terms of the marketing and thinking about that, that's one thing that I've noticed with your push over the last several weeks, several months even, how you've kind of sprinkled in essays here and there, and they're all in service of when you're pushing through the book. So how are you
00:05:50
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thinking of that as part of just the entire machine that goes into making sure your book is visible. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's about not just making sure the book is visible, but making sure that you're visible, right? And trying to set it up so that people are excited when the book comes out. They're excited to see something from you because they've been following you and they've been reading you and
00:06:20
Speaker
And, you know, building up anticipation over a longer period of time rather than I think the usual model of, okay, it's the week before pub and the week after pub, and you're just like bombarding people with one, you know, publicity hit after another and then you disappear.
Newsletter Value and Personal Promotion
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Right. I just, I've never really understood why the kind of traditional way to do it is so concentrated in such a short span of time.
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I guess, you know, it's this idea of like, you want to create this feeling of like, everybody's talking about this book, right? So you try and concentrate it in a, in a set window. Yeah, I don't know. I just, it makes more sense to me to, to spread it out. And I started thinking about, you know, I started placing things that I thought of as related to the book starting in January. So, you know, it's been like almost half a year. And that, I don't know, it just seems more organic.
00:07:17
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Right. Is that something that you're very conscious of and you work yourself backwards from your pub date and you're like, yeah, I'd like to maybe see maybe an essay that is either directly related, excerpt related, or tangentially related, maybe every month and kind of like titrating that out over time? Yeah, for sure. Exactly.
00:07:40
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And that, that goes for published essays. And then also, you know, I just launched a newsletter not that long ago. And I was kind of both aware that like, okay, yes, the newsletter is theoretically going to help with book publicity, but also it can't just be a newsletter about my book because nobody's going to want to read that. Um, you know, so thinking of it as its own thing with,
00:08:07
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craft essays or, you know, an essay about a movie I watched or whatever, things, posts about what I'm reading, and then sprinkling some book stuff in there along the way, right? But letting it be its own kind of standalone, I don't want to say product, entity.
00:08:30
Speaker
You know that's just it. I think a lot of people especially in the newsletter world sometimes What they might get wrong about it is that it can't just be about like here's what I'm here's what I'm up to I hope you'll buy or pre-order or something like there has to be an element of service to exactly like that Yeah, just like providing
00:08:52
Speaker
stuff that people want to read, you know? I mean, I subscribed to a bunch of newsletters when I decided I was going to take that plunge because I had been kind of ignoring that whole kind of subset of the ecosystem for a while because I was just like, I already get so much email. I can't handle this. But when I decided to give it a try, I was like, OK, let me see, you know, what is this like from the other side? Right. That's the best way, I think, to genuinely learn what works, right, is to be a reader and subscriber as well.
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And so I subscribed to a bunch and then it was pretty quick to see which ones I ended up unsubscribing from when it was just like, here's another post about something you can buy for me, right? Versus like people who actually were putting out interesting stuff. And I, I was excited to see what they had to say when I, each, when each new newsletter dropped. So that's what I've been aiming for.
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And what are, or who are some newsletter writers that you are really drawn to that do, you know, give you that value add when you see it in your inbox? Yeah, let's see. There are a couple. Um, I mean, I, I love, um, you know, my, my friend Gina Cadlux newsletter astrology for writers. I, I find really valuable and insightful and entertaining. Um, and then I also subscribe to a bunch of like,
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Speaker
kind of literary world, newsletters like Countercraft. Hold on, let me, I feel like I'm gonna switch up, I'm gonna like mix up the names of who's is who's, but yeah, okay, no, I was right about that one. Lincoln Michelle does Countercraft. I mean, Brandon Taylor's Sweater Weather, that's a really popular, good one. I think Esme Wajin Wang does a great job. And she has a good mix where like she has
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Speaker
classes and stuff that she's trying to sell, but it doesn't feel like she's just constantly pitching you, you know? That stuff is in there, but then there's also lots of brief little essays that are just interesting to read. And then you get to the end and you're like, oh yeah, news, uh, you know, oh yeah, workshop, right? But it's not just like advertising all the time. Also, yeah, Cassie men's Murray, the Pine State publicity newsletter.
00:11:05
Speaker
Which is interesting, right? Because that one is all about book publicity, so you would think it would be all selling. That's actually really informative and thoughtful, and she talks about kind of trends in the way people talk about books that I find really interesting.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, and you mentioned that maybe what some people typically get wrong is just constantly like, say, week before, week after, like, here's where I am, here's a graphic of all my events, and blah, blah, blah, and then gone, for the most part. What are some other things that you notice, be it on social media or newsletters, that you're like,
00:11:45
Speaker
You're trying, but you're not quite getting it. Without naming names, but there are certain fundamentals that you can be like, you know what? I'm going to try to at least avoid what they're doing because I don't think it's going to work. Yeah, interesting. I mean, I don't know. There are so many ways to do it. And I don't know. I think anybody who has a book out or has classes to sell or whatever has a level of self-consciousness about not wanting to post too much.
00:12:15
Speaker
And I definitely feel that too. Um, but I think there's also, there's a warped idea, right? Of like, uh, people are not seeing every single thing you post. So for the most part, I think it's okay to post a lot more than you might feel comfortable with. Right. Um, if you are somebody who feels nervous about, uh, you know, doing self promotion, but then on the other side of that, there are people who are just are like,
00:12:44
Speaker
It's the only thing they talk about is my book, my book, my book, you know? And that I think just doesn't work because I think the point of like being on social media or having a newsletter or whatever as an author, if you're thinking about the utility of those things for getting the word out for marketing purposes is to be a person.
00:13:08
Speaker
that people connect with, right? And become interested in and then they want to read what you're putting out and they want to follow your work and they get to feel like kind of along for the ride, which creates a feeling of investment in the work. But that doesn't happen if every post is just buy my book, buy my book.
00:13:30
Speaker
Yeah, I would say the people that probably – that make me bristle or annoy me the most are the ones that are just vampires. They're just totally trying to extract everything from the community instead of imparting some – instead of giving something back, a value add as we already mentioned in newsletters.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm supposed to put other people's books. Yeah, just like celebrate other people's work also. I don't know the say math that I use is that I like to adhere by. I don't know if I do it, but it's like I'm going to celebrate nine people for any time that I draw attention to say what I've done.
00:14:17
Speaker
And so I just like, I like that math for me because I feel like it is a bit more holistic that it's never going to be just about me, though I hope at some point some of that karma comes around. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that sounds right. You know, and then there's there's the window, right? Like I know like this week my book just came out. I'm posting a lot about about my events and my interviews coming out and whatever.
00:14:44
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you know, you kind of get to give yourself a pass for those intense periods of like, okay, this is the time. But then I'm really looking forward to going back to posting about what I'm reading and, you know, just other people's stuff. And that I think is something that people lose track of is that it actually is a lot more fun and often more rewarding in broader and deeper ways to
Balancing Writing, Teaching, and Editing
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get
00:15:15
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you know, to give to the community and give support to other writers than it is to always just be asking for things. And something I've admired about the arc of your career today is how you've really cultivated this more holistic writing career, that is, be it offering classes, writing essays, writing books, and
00:15:37
Speaker
Stuff of that nature that I think a lot of people, they say they want to be a writer, but maybe they have a very pigeon-holed idea of what that is. So how did you kind of, to date, figure it out for you, that vision and manifesting that vision?
00:15:57
Speaker
From the outside, right, you might think like, okay, yeah, I want to be an author. I'm going to just write books and then I'll live on my royalties and everything will be great. But you learn pretty quickly that that's not how it works for like 99.99% of us, right? You have to be doing something else also. And for the first several years that I was trying to build a writing career, I was also bartending.
00:16:23
Speaker
That was my job job, but it was not very conducive. I don't know, this didn't go well together in a lot of ways just because doing such a physically exhausting job, it made it really hard to then wake up in the morning and feel inspired to write. So I kind of slowly started shifting away from that and toward editing. I edited for
00:16:52
Speaker
magazines for like six years or so. And then that kind of developed into freelance editing. And that happened pretty organically just from writers who I had worked with narratively and catapult where I edited reaching out to me to be like, Hey, I'm working on a book, you know,
00:17:12
Speaker
that they had a good experience working with me for the magazine, so would I be interested in helping them with their book?" I was like, um, sure, I guess. And then I had to ask around, like, what's reasonable about to charge for that? How does that work? What do you do? But that, you know, that was several years ago at this point, and that, that has really grown into a big part of what I do. It's like freelance developmental editing, mostly for memoirists. And then also, yeah, teaching classes. And my classes are all like,
00:17:41
Speaker
they all grow out of things that I had a hard time with myself, you know? So they're all things that like, I already spent a lot of time thinking about and struggling with and asking other writers about and reading books to see how other authors had done it, you know? So I feel like I did a ton of legwork to kind of get to a sense of understanding of
00:18:05
Speaker
whatever, you know, X thing, whether it's a structural thing like, like breeding narratives or an ethics thing, like writing about other people. And so with all those, it's like, okay, well, I already, I did all the wrong turns. So now I can help people kind of find a shorter path to the right way to do that. So yeah, that, that all kind of grew organically. And I, it's satisfying to me.
00:18:32
Speaker
that now everything I do kind of feeds into everything else I do, right, as opposed to such a separate job like bartending. Although I know some people prefer that, right, to have like a job that they go to and they don't have to think about writing and they get a break and I totally get that. But for me, I feel like, oh, those things all feed each other, you know, I learn from teaching and I learn from editing and I, yeah, I bring what I learn in those things to my own work.
00:18:58
Speaker
And then my own work is where I learn things that I can share in teaching and editing. It's kind of cyclical in a satisfying way.
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I totally see that. And from working with other writers and the people that you help edit be developed mentally or whatever, what are some things that you notice that are common pitfalls that a lot of people make, especially at the start, and that maybe illuminated certain shortcomings in your own writing that you've been able to shore up?
Challenges in Memoir Writing
00:19:31
Speaker
For sure. Yeah, I think a big one.
00:19:36
Speaker
with memoirists specifically is kind of leaving the emotional significance of a story unsaid, right? Or wanting, hoping that it's implied, right? And so just like, okay, if I tell you what happened, you'll get that, you know, you'll be able to infer everything that I was feeling and thinking, you know? And I think a lot of that is, is that, you know, we've had it rolled into us for so long, show, don't tell, show, don't tell, you know, like just
00:20:05
Speaker
you make the scenes vivid and evocative enough then you don't ever have to say you know the meaning of it or what you are feeling. But I think that's we have to unlearn that with memoir because a lot of the point of the genre is to see people wrestling with and articulating these big complicated emotional experiences. So I think a lot of a very common note that I
00:20:30
Speaker
give us like, okay, but what are you thinking and feeling in this moment, right? What's the, you know, can you stay here and do some meaning making, right? Sit in this moment a little longer and give us kind of a feeling of arrival or culmination of like reflecting so that we can see why you just showed us this whole long scene. And that, but that also is something that I for sure I'm guilty of in my own work, but I've started to notice it.
00:20:58
Speaker
more after giving that note to so many other writers, you know? So now I'll be able to read a draft of my own and be like, oh, I'm doing that thing where I think all the emotions are implied. And I can kind of push myself to go back and make that change without somebody else having to read it and tell me that. So I mean, that's just one example. But yeah, there are lots of things like that where I, you know, I give a note often enough to other people that then I start to see that, you know, start to be able to see where I'm doing that myself as well.
00:21:28
Speaker
You know, no matter how, how, I always fall back on like a sport metaphor here, like no matter how talented an athlete is, you know, the best are always, they're not just talented, but they also study well. They're studying game tape.
00:21:45
Speaker
you know they're studying their own technique and form and that's what elevates good to great. I think maybe a lot of people in writing too they think like I just want to write so I'm just gonna write my way through it but there has to be an element of study and reading like a writer and I just wanted to get a sense of how you approach you know that quote-unquote film study of unpacking a thing you know really
00:22:07
Speaker
getting your hands into maybe just one page at a time, be like, all right, what is so and so doing here? What is this? How can I decode this best? So maybe I can improve when I start to ambitiously write essays or books. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the number one best and like most essential way to get better, you know, no amount of classes or
00:22:37
Speaker
feedback from somebody else will ever measure up to the improvement in craft that can come from just reading a lot and reading closely and reading thoughtfully. I guess I approach it less like I'm looking at one page and trying to figure out the specific moves that are being done and I tend to kind of go for like quantity, you know?
00:23:07
Speaker
When I started writing First Love, I was like, okay, I've been reading memoirs for years because I was writing a memoir. And, you know, I had read a few essay collections here and there, but then when I decided to write an essay collection, I switched and I was like, okay, I'm going to read every essay collection I can get my hands on, you know? And I think just through seeing the variety of ways that different writers have approached that form and making note of
00:23:35
Speaker
what I liked about some and what I didn't like so much about others, I started to be able to kind of form my own theory of an essay collection, you know? My own idea of what makes a good essay collection, but it was less, you know, modeling after one book in particular and more the aggregate, you know? I guess like a smaller example of that is I decided to, I wanted to learn how to write flash essays, which
00:24:04
Speaker
I had never done before, but I knew what the form was, but I had never paid attention to it in that way of studying it and trying to understand how it works. So I got the anthology, The Best of Brevity, which seemed like a good place to start, the best of this publication that's specifically devoted to that form. And I ran through the whole thing pretty quickly and just dog-eared the bottoms of the pages of essays that I liked.
00:24:33
Speaker
You know, and I didn't think too much about why did I like them? Why did I not like them? You know, I just went on like gut instinct of like, okay, yeah, that one worked or that one was kind of right.
Essay Collections and Structures
00:24:43
Speaker
Um, and then I went back through reading much more closely, just revisiting the ones that I had dog eared and started thinking, you know, much more specifically like, okay, what do these all have in common? Why did I like this one? Why do I feel like it worked? Can I kind of pinpoint that?
00:25:02
Speaker
you know, so it's this like multi-stage, like first, first just going for quantity. And then once I had kind of collected a bunch of data, right, then then I was analyzing it more intentionally. What was your taste telling you about those particular essays that you dogged? Well, I guess a few things, you know, there were some there were a few different factors, but I think the biggest common denominator of of the pieces that I liked were the ones where there was a really clear kind of
00:25:33
Speaker
turn, you know, to use the poetry phrase, right? A very clear and kind of satisfying culmination or shift in meaning, like a feeling that they arrived somewhere and they still accomplished some kind of like shift or transformation, even in a really small space. And there, you know, there were some that were like really beautifully written or, you know, a compelling moment, but they didn't quite have that.
00:26:02
Speaker
Um, it just kind of felt like a kid that came and went and those ones just didn't do it for me in the same way. So yeah, once I had determined that that, that really was a determining factor in which ones I liked or, or didn't like as much.
00:26:18
Speaker
then I had a clear goal for myself in trying to write them myself. And a moment ago, you were talking about how you're reading through various essay collections and getting that into your bloodstream. And for you, what are kind of similar to these flash essays that really resonated with you? What was it about certain essay collections that made you want to contribute in a similar manner?
00:26:47
Speaker
With essay collections, I mean, there, you know, there are a few, again, a few different things I took away, but I think one of the biggest was the ones that I love the most and the ones that I most wanted to kind of be in the company of were the ones that really struck a balance between a commonality between the pieces, right? We're like feeling like they were all kind of talking to each other, part of the same conversation, but also variety, variety in form, style, and
00:27:17
Speaker
you know, kind of subtopics of that big conversation. The ones that I really lost steam on the most were the ones that kind of felt repetitive, either like every essay kind of had the same form, so it started to feel a little like rote or predictable, or like they're all talking about the same thing to such a degree that it's like I didn't really understand why they needed to be separate essays instead of like
00:27:43
Speaker
these are all basically kind of telling the same story, why didn't you just write a memoir, you know? So I was like striking that balance, you know, of feeling very clearly connected to each other but also distinct and varied and surprising. So that's what I went for, which was actually why I decided I needed to learn how to write flash essays because the essays that I was writing were all pretty long when I was writing a lot of these like very
00:28:14
Speaker
big meaty braided essays, which I was really enjoying, but I was like, okay, this is going to be predictable if they all are like this. So I wanted, I was like, okay, what's the, what's the kind of biggest twist on that form I can do, right? How can I shake this up the most? And I came up with, you know, breaking up these multi thousand word pieces with some really short ones that were like under a thousand words, just little palette cleansers.
00:28:41
Speaker
Yeah, and speaking of braided essays, and going back to our earlier conversation about sprinkling in essays leading up the book launch, it was on January 30th, because I have it pulled up, where you had a braided essay on braided essays for brevity.
00:28:56
Speaker
And this is already, you're already folding in ideas of the book that would come out, you know, say four months, five months later. But also in here too, which is kind of an interesting commentary too, given that there was a total solar eclipse that I believe passed in your neck of the woods.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yeah, you folded that into this essay, too, which gave it an extra sort of scientific, ethereal feel that really drilled that point home. So I just wanted to maybe get a sense of how you think about the braided essay. It's one of the more popular things that people always talk about and riff on and enjoy. So it's nice to get your thoughts on it, too. Yeah. I mean, I really love that form. I love to read it. I love to write it.
00:29:44
Speaker
I think, you know, it's one of those where whenever anything gets too popular, there's going to be a range of equality, you know? So I think not every Brided Essay out there is like maybe necessarily a huge success. But I think when a Brided Essay is successful, it just does, it accesses something
00:30:14
Speaker
special and something that I just don't think other forms of personal essay can quite get to in terms of the depth it allows in the personal story while also allowing such an expansiveness and kind of just allowing the writer to really go beyond the personal as well. I love that form because it's appropriate for the most kind of tender or intimidating
00:30:44
Speaker
of personal stories, right? Where you need something else almost to dilute the personal, like something to give you and the reader breaks in, you know, in the telling of the personal story to like stop, switch gears, talk about something else for a minute, catch your breath, and then get back, you know? But then also on the other hand, it's equally applicable to personal stories that might not quite be enough on their own. And that, I don't know, something about the fact that it works for like,
00:31:14
Speaker
for the stories that are both too much and not enough, it's just exciting and satisfying to me. I like that kind of contradiction. Yeah, me too. I think it's a good place and a good exercise for people who might be too hung up on personal stories and having to totally like spill their guts to be like, you know what, you can, I think it's a really good way for you to balance, okay, your personal story, but to weave in some reporting and some research and some sort of cultural ballast
00:31:42
Speaker
that kind of gets you out of your own head, but then grounds your story in something that has a more of a world building thing to it. So it gives the personal story something much more, it gives it something to hold on to. Yeah, I agree. I think that's right. It's a good exercise for people who maybe are still figuring out that element of personal narrative, where you go beyond just recounting your own experience, right?
00:32:12
Speaker
that necessity to connect it to something larger and connecting the story to a literal external thing, right?
True Crime Memoir Challenges
00:32:20
Speaker
Whatever that might be is a good way to push yourself to do that for sure.
00:32:25
Speaker
Yeah, and with First Love, I think maybe a different place to jump off of specifically to it. It's kind of like at the very end of the book, I believe it's the final chapter, about your apprehension about true kind memoirs. And it's why you cited Rose Anderson's memoir. And she was on the show when that came out several years ago. It was one of my favorite books when that came out. And you leaned on that one a lot in this particular chapter. And so I just wanted to get a sense of,
00:32:55
Speaker
just maybe your apprehension of writing specifically about your cousin Sabina and how it tied into just that through line in this book. And it comes out in the very end. And I just wanted to get your sense of maybe the apprehension ahead of having maybe those true crime and true crime memoir things tethered to the story you were looking to tell. Yeah. You know, I just really didn't want
00:33:25
Speaker
to write a lurid story in any way. I didn't want to write a story about Sabina that would be compelling because of the horror of it. And I feel like that is so much of true crime, for better or for worse, right? It's like the more kind of obscene and terrible
00:33:54
Speaker
evil and gruesome it is, the more people are drawn to it and want to consume it. And I don't necessarily condemn that, right? I think that's human nature. I'm not taking a stand against people who consume true crime. I just didn't want to treat this story that way or to have readers consume it in that way, you know? And to have it just be one more
00:34:22
Speaker
one more gruesome murder story, you know, that just was not what I wanted to do. But on the other hand, you know, it's like, how do I, I still have to include the murder, you know, that still is a central part of the story I was trying to tell. So then I was left with this kind of couch 22, right, of like, okay, how do I write about a murder without making it a murder story, which was a big
00:34:51
Speaker
a big craft challenge, you know? And so similar to the way we were talking about earlier with essay collections or with flash essays or what have you, I just, I started reading a lot of True Crime, which I never really had before. I kind of have avoided True Crime, honestly, like since Sabina was killed, it just, I haven't been able to put out of my head whatever, consuming any story like that, that like, these are real people, you know?
00:35:21
Speaker
these real people have real families and they, you know, even in cases where the families are involved in the making of a true crime story, it's, I still just feel, I don't know, something gross about it. Again, personally, not casting aspersions on anybody else's tastes, but you know, so I started, I started reading true crime and I started with, I started at the beginning, you know, I read In Cold Blood, I read Halter Skelter and
00:35:51
Speaker
what's it called, the devil beside me, you know, some like older classics of the genre, to try to understand, okay, like, what actually is the genre? What are the mechanics of it? What are the appeals of it? And also what are the pitfalls, right? Like, I wanted to get more specific about not just like, it makes me feel gross, right? But why? What is it specifically that
00:36:19
Speaker
tips it over the edge for me. And if I can pinpoint that, then maybe I can avoid it. Or maybe I can engage with it and kind of inoculate it in a way, right? By putting those impossibilities front and center rather than just trying to skirt them. Because it started to feel like impossible to just do it in a kind of neat and tidy way. Getting around all of those kind of
00:36:48
Speaker
you know, complications. And so then I ended up, you know, a lot of that research had been kind of just background for me, right, to think, to think through the genre and to think through how I wanted to approach it. But then I ended up, you know, forming all of that into the essay itself, where like, instead of instead of figuring this all out off the page, and then doing it,
00:37:13
Speaker
in a clean, smooth way. What if I just bring all of this messiness and impossibility into it and just write about that?
00:37:23
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a question you posed to yourself also where you say, would writing about my grief over her death make Sabina's murder all about me? And you feel that too. It's like, OK, are you being exploitative of this event for your own for your own processing and then, you know, and so forth. So how did you ultimately, you know, come to a satisfactory answer to that question for yourself? I don't know that I did. I think I just.
00:37:54
Speaker
you know, I just did the best that I could and I just tried to be as mindful and intentional as possible, you know, and it was very clear with myself about like where I was not gonna go with the story, you know, and very intentional about what I was gonna focus on in writing about her, you know, the first essay that's about her, there's like, you don't learn about the murder until most of the way through because I wanted her to be
Personal Well-being and Relationships
00:38:24
Speaker
person on the page first you know and so choices like that I just I just I just did the best I could yeah and there's a yeah a moment to where I think you know you you right you know I did something that felt a little outrageous if necessary if necessary I prioritize my human self over my writer self yeah saying like not going to the trial Sabina's murder trial and I
00:38:52
Speaker
I thought that was particularly astute because especially people who like wanna constantly just like mind their lives for content and stuff like that. And it was really, I mean, I think you were 23 at the time and I think you look back on that and you're just like, that was I think really enlightening for you at that part to be like, you know what, this is, like you said, prioritizing Lily the person versus I might write about this someday.
00:39:21
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's wild to me to look back at that now and think, you know, I mean, that wasn't the only reason I felt like I should go, but it definitely was a piece of it, you know, like, Oh, well, this is, this is going to be a story you're going to want to write someday. You know, and now I'm just like, Oh, you know, Jesus, I'm glad I didn't put myself through that. Just for the sake of a story to tell, you know,
00:39:45
Speaker
Early in the book, I love how you write with romantic love. There's usually the expectation that you get one at a time. But sisterly love allows for multiplicity, overlapping and interlocking. The first love, the one that set the bar, continuing alongside all the other loves that follow. So if a first sisterly love is the template, does tragedy in that first formative love ripple out to all others like a web?
00:40:09
Speaker
For you, your first sisterly love is Sabina, your cousin. In what ways did that inform and then ripple out, like you said, a web to your other relationship? Yeah. That passage that you just read is in a way the crux of the whole collection. When Sabina died, it made me want to
00:40:38
Speaker
hold the women in my life close, you know, and not let them out of my sight and just, you know, make sure that there was nothing left unsaid between us. And so I think that that urge and that feeling is kind of the impetus for all the rest of these essays, you know, where I'm exploring these relationships and kind of giving them their due, you know, and writing about how much I love all these people and not waiting until
00:41:07
Speaker
they're gone, you know, to say those things. Yeah, and echoing back to where when you were talking about like different essay forms to, you know, shake it up and make sure the reading experience didn't feel stale. And so probably certainly the writing experience didn't feel stale for you as well. There's a there's a cool kind of photo essay where you reach out to a former friend who is a former photographer of yours where you're at the school paper. And
00:41:35
Speaker
That one struck out to me as well, because there is that visual component and you were expecting something from her that totally, well, subverted your expectations of what you were expecting. So talk a little bit about that essay and how that came together. Yeah, I love that one. That was like one of the weirdest.
00:41:53
Speaker
hardest, most fun ones to write. Yeah, it is weird. But like, it's just a weird essay. It's really cool. It's got like a transcript quality to it. And obviously, there's the staring into the camera element of it. Yeah, yeah, it's it just got weirder and weirder. Yeah, so I wanted to write I wanted to write an essay about my friend Courtney, who, yeah, I had modeled for
00:42:19
Speaker
for her photography at various points in our lives over the last decade and a half that we've known each other. And so when I was thinking about what to write about her, that was one of the ideas that came, was to write about the kind of artist muse, photographer model relationship. And I found that compelling because I was the artist writing about my friends in all the other essays.
00:42:49
Speaker
So I was like, okay, this could be an interesting kind of role reversal where I can now talk about being the subject, you know, the subject of someone else's art. And it'll maybe put me on the spot in an interesting way to think about what I'm doing to all my other friends. And so I asked Courtney if she would take a photo of me and she said yes, but also she was like becoming less interested in photography. And so she really wanted to do it if we could do this weird kind of experimental
00:43:18
Speaker
photo project where we held eye contact with each other for 10 minutes and a timer went off and took photos. And I was kind of like, okay, but that's not what I meant, really, because then, you know, we lose that kind of subjective, you know, that idea of like it being through your perspective, which is what I, you know, had originally been looking for. But then I realized like, wait, no, that actually is exactly
00:43:47
Speaker
right, because now she's proposed something that is genuinely born out of what's creatively interesting to her as an artist in this moment, rather than just like, you know, fulfilling an assignment that I had given her. So I decided to roll with it. And yeah, we did this, you know, we did this weird photo project, and then we had conversations about it that I recorded, and I asked her to write a little bit about it. So again, the end result is kind of like,
00:44:16
Speaker
It's an essay about the making of the essay, kind of, and about how this project evolved over time and, you know, the kind of dynamics in our relationship that it brought up. Yeah, it was really interesting and really cool to do in that collaborative way. But yeah, also very challenging to wrangle, you know, and to try to mold into something that made sense and would be compelling to a reader.
00:44:41
Speaker
Yeah, and throughout the course of the book, of course, you're largely centering your friends and you wrote a great essay for Writer's Digest about turning real people into characters, being an active translation. And that's always the, you know, it's kind of like your friends and your family didn't
00:45:05
Speaker
they didn't ask for you to become a writer and then suddenly they become a character in your essays or your stories or even in your fiction, a thinly veiled fiction, whatever it might be. So how do you wrestle with that, this active translation of these real people in your lives, then they become characters in your stories? I just, you know, I try to be fair and
00:45:34
Speaker
compassionate and you know to be clear on where the line is between the extent to which the people are characters in my story and then you know there's a line beyond that where like they have their own stories that are not my business you know and not mine to write about or to share with people and you know the thing about intimate relationships and you know close friendships is that yeah I have access to a lot of like
00:46:04
Speaker
personal, you know, internal stuff about these people, but I'm not going to put that on the page, like stuff that they've shared with me in confidence. Um, you know, I can write about our shared experiences and I can kind of describe them from a distance, right? As like a character on the page as a stranger would encounter them. But yeah, I just try to be mindful of like, of where's the line, you know? And, and what's mine to share and what's not. And, and also I just, I talked to them about it, you know?
00:46:33
Speaker
with most of the people in the book, I was like, hey, I'm writing about X, Y, and Z. Um, you know, is there anything that you don't want included? Right? Is there anything you you're uncomfortable with or, you know, I think you'd rather I not go into, and that doesn't always necessarily mean like people, not everybody gets full veto power, you know, but, but especially with like small details, like sometimes there are
00:47:03
Speaker
are small things that might not seem hugely significant to me and might not change the meaning of the story, but they're, um, you know, embarrassing or vulnerable to the other person for whatever reason. And I just, I feel like that's a pretty easy concession to make in most cases. So like, okay, no problem. I can take out that little detail, especially if, if that little change means that they're going to be comfortable with the rest of it, then I say, why not?
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, I made the mistake one time. This was a long time ago. But I put a guy who was in an essay I wrote, his full name. And five, six years later, he's a teacher somewhere. And his students googled his name. And he popped up in this essay of a thing that wasn't
00:47:54
Speaker
It's just very flattering. It was kind of embarrassing. And of course, it was speculation on my part. So it wasn't even true. He was like, hey, yeah. He was like, hey, BO. OK, yeah, I was kind of like, you know, macking it with that girl. But we didn't hook up in the porta-potties. Oh, no.
00:48:15
Speaker
I was like, all right. All right, so thankfully, it was a digital publication, very small, obscure literary journal. So very few people read it. Probably more of his students read it than anybody else. But I just asked him, can you just change his name, shorten his first name from that to this, and take his last name out? And they're like, yep, we'll do that. And I was like, OK, now he's in the clear. Yeah, protected.
00:48:43
Speaker
So that was a lesson of sorts that I learned there, the hard one. I'm like, ah, shit, he didn't ask to be written about in that way and made fun of and then called attention to in a way that it would embarrass him in front of his students and that can get to the parents. And he could potentially lose his job over a stupid thing and a very inconsequential personal essay. For sure. Yeah, I think it's easy to kind of lose sight of that, like real world
00:49:12
Speaker
impact, you know, when we're just sitting at our laptops writing stories. But there actually is, you know, there actually is a lot of power involved in being the one to create the record, you know. So I try to be mindful of that.
00:49:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you definitely do a brilliant job in this book. And like I told you, I just found it a really just wonderful and mesmerizingly good book. And I wish the best of luck with it. It deserves all the attention in the world. It's an outstanding book. Thank you.
00:49:53
Speaker
Yeah. And Lily, as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation for the listeners of some kind. And it just can be anything you're excited about. So I just extend that to you. What might you recommend for the listeners out there? Sure. I mean, I would say, you know, creative nonfiction fans should check out my friend Nina St. Pierre's new book, which also just came out on the same day as mine. It's called Love is a Burning Thing. And it's a really beautiful, incredible, brilliant
00:50:23
Speaker
memoir about mothers and daughters and mental illness and mystical realms and poverty and art and, you know, yeah, everybody should read it. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, Lilly, this is great. I'm so glad we got to have this conversation again. And yeah, continued success and best of luck with the book. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me back on.
00:50:53
Speaker
Oh, let me get a sip of water here. Alright, wasn't that a nice time? I... I had... I thought so. Maybe you didn't think so, and... whatever. If you didn't think so, you wouldn't be listening right now. Everyone, lots of people give up on the show by now, and you're still here, so you liked it. Don't even play. Again, Lily will be at Powell's in Portland, Oregon, May 21st, at 7pm, in conversation with Erika Berry.
00:51:22
Speaker
Now both of them are two times CNF podcasts. What a world.
00:51:28
Speaker
Now, I said I'd riff on this notion of invisibility, and that'd be okay, except in this line of work, you need to be somewhat out there, discoverable, wanted. Sure, I don't post anything on social media really besides audiograms, but you figure if you've been doing a podcast with some okay traction, people might seek you out for things.
00:51:53
Speaker
like all these in conversation things you see with other writers. I've never once been asked to do such a thing. There's also a new book coming out in June by the late Matt Tullis called Stories Can
Visibility in the Creative Industry
00:52:07
Speaker
Save Us. That is the greatest hits collection of sorts from guests that he had on Gangray the Podcast.
00:52:13
Speaker
Something that was out of character for me. I believe this is in 2018. I pitched myself as a guest on Matt's podcast Yeah, maybe in like I think I think it was 2018 I could fact-check that but I don't feel like it and I think out of pity or guilt because he had been on my show for his memoir running with ghosts He had me on and I eagerly you know page through the book Mike am I in here? Do they include me and I am not?
00:52:42
Speaker
A lot of other people who I'm friends with are people that have been on this show. They are. But not your humble podcast host here. I have never once been invited on someone else's podcast. Any podcast I've been on, I've had to say, hey, I can talk. I'm good. How is it this hard to be visible without coming off as desperate for attention?
00:53:10
Speaker
the deep seed of all this really stems from my own childhood. Like my mom and my sister, especially my mom, but a little bit of my sister too, they always told me, like, if you're good enough, people will notice. You shouldn't have to call attention to yourself. Your actions will, will merit all the attention you deserve. So I was like, okay. So I went through my entire life earning achievements here and there. And often, especially when it came to baseball, like objectively,
00:53:39
Speaker
exceeding others who ended up getting, let's say, far more accolades, certainly scholarship offers, awards, and I got none. What's someone to do with that information, especially if you're not that confident to begin with? Well, I must not be good enough.
00:53:59
Speaker
And you see the myriad ways that you're as good or even better than your peers. And like I said, they get scholarships. And then you have to then walk on to teams and then, as a result, incur tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that you might otherwise have avoided.
00:54:19
Speaker
had you had someone that could advocate for yourself a little more, especially when you're younger. When you're younger, you're supposed to have people advocating for you, but that just doesn't happen to all of us. If you're good enough, people will notice.
00:54:35
Speaker
Well, definitely not. Here I am at 43 and the answer seems to be patently obvious. You gotta advocate for yourself. You have to let people know you're available. Oh, another thing. My mom used to tell me that you shouldn't have to like let your friends know that you want to hang out with them. If they're your real friends, they'll want to call you. So when you're sitting there and you're waiting for them to call you and you're available,
00:55:03
Speaker
But you've been told and reared that your friends should just read your mind and know that you're available and your phone's not ringing and you're not gonna text or call them and be like, hey, you know I'm around if you're hanging out. Then you start growing bitter and mad that you're never included in anything.
00:55:24
Speaker
So when I'm not invited on podcasts or asked to do these in conversation things or name any other thing you want to be part of, because in this line of work you kind of want to be recognized for some stuff. You want to be thought of, front of mind. People aren't actively avoiding you probably. There's so much out there that unless you stick your head out from your cave then no, no one's going to think about you.
00:55:48
Speaker
You do have to put up a billboard of sorts. There are some people I see on social media that all they do is promote themselves and that's gross and you shouldn't do that. There's this one person so full of themselves that I hope I'm not the only one who is turned off by it, but maybe I am because I'm just a bitter asshole. But there has to be some middle ground between invisibility and outright myopia.
00:56:15
Speaker
I don't know what we solved here. Aside from on some level, you got to raise your hand. And as my good friend Damon Brown says, bring your worth. Let people know you're in the game. And you'd think in my example that doing this podcast for 11 years and
00:56:32
Speaker
writing some shit and essays here, book there. Yeah, that'd be enough to let people know you're in the game. But I guess not. It's tiresome. But that's all part of the struggle, and I just wish.
00:56:48
Speaker
this game wasn't so much struggle. Like, that's all it is, is one struggle or another. There's no relief from it, unless or until you quit. So stay wild seeing Evers, and if you can't do Interview, see ya!