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Episode 401: Jessica Camille Aguirre on Racking Up Rejections, Online Nothing Burgers, and The Atavist’s “Watch It Burn”
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Jessica Camille Aguirre (@jessicacaguirre) is a freelance journalist and wrote "Watch it Burn" for The Atavist Magazine.
In this episode we talk about racking up rejections, voice, and what makes climate stories drag.
For a couple weeks, visit combeyond.bu.edu, use the promo code NARRATIVE25 at checkout and get 25% your tuition for the two-day Power of Narrative Conference. And, no, I don’t get any dough.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Real excited about this CNF for his promotional support for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is provided by the Power of Narrative Conference out of Boston, Massachusetts. It's a craft conference focusing on a genre near and dear to my, dare I say, our hearts, narrative journalism, taking place March 22nd and 23rd at Boston University.
Conference Promotion and Keynote Speakers
00:00:25
Speaker
That's this month. That's three weeks away. I attended a few years ago and it's an awesome time.
00:00:31
Speaker
300 to 400 journalists from around the world will descend on BU, and you can be one of them. Visit combeyond.bu.edu, navigate to the Power of Narrative Conference page, and when you register, use the code narrative25, and you'll save 25%.
00:00:51
Speaker
This year's keynote speakers include former New York Times editor Dean Baquet, NPR White House correspondent Asma Khalid, The Washington Post's John Woodrow Cox, former WAPO editor Marty Baron, and the team behind the Boston Globe's Murder in Boston, the untold story of the Charles and Carol Stewart shooting.
00:01:12
Speaker
Not only that, but there will be 15 breakout sessions worth attending, including crafting climate change stories, writing a braided narrative, and the power of empathy in reporting. Again, learn more at combeyond.bu.edu and use that narrative 25 code to save 25%. Again, narrative 25 to save 25% at combeyond.bu.edu, repairing, restoring, reconnecting through true storytelling. I like the sound of that.
00:01:41
Speaker
I know how fucked we are. I don't need to be told again.
Podcast Overview and Audience Engagement
00:01:53
Speaker
AC and Evers is the creative non-fiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, please accept my condolences. It's that Adivision time of the month. So, you know, some spoilers are in order when I speak to Jonah Ogles and the writer at the heart of it, Jessica Camille Aguirre. Freelance journalist based out of Bolivia.
00:02:21
Speaker
Ugh, her out of his story, Watch It Burn, is about two scammers, a web of betrayal. In Europe's Fraud of the Century, it deals with carbon credits and how the scammers were able to skim these vats, which are essentially like tax rebate-y kind of things, into offshore accounts to make millions, nay, billions, perhaps. It sounds dry on the surface, but like any great out of his story, it's gripping.
00:02:48
Speaker
Climate change noir? I'm sorry, I'm the way I am. Be sure to go to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for my monthly rage. You can see algorithm newsletter. That's a toe-tapping, good read. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
00:03:05
Speaker
For now, keep the conversation going on Instagram and threads at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash cnfpod. Listen, I get it. Money's tight. And the joy you get from, say, spending $4 on a coffee is often far more gratifying than $4 on your favorite podcast. But if you can, check it out. And if you can't, I get it.
00:03:30
Speaker
I just noticed that there were a handful of reviews and ratings from other countries like Spain and Canada. And the one rating I got from Ireland was one star. Ireland. My name is Brendan Ryan O'Mara. The name alone should be two stars. Point being, if you have a comment or a moment to comment, pen a review on Apple Podcast to validate the show for the way we're seeing ever.
00:03:59
Speaker
All right, wouldn't it be nice if I were famous enough that I didn't have to do all this housekeeping bullshit until that day comes? You're hosed, man. You're hosed.
Discussion on Storytelling Structures and Techniques
00:04:12
Speaker
Okay, for starters, we're gonna hear from Jonah Ogles, the lead editor of this piece, as we talk about structure and writing a lot of bad words, man. All right? Ruth.
00:04:34
Speaker
I tend to maybe this is an example of both something I over overuse and something that I come back to a lot but I tend to really like chronological stories you know like I don't in terms of like an introduction or like the first section of a story I'm fairly agnostic you know I like some action there I also am kind of a sucker for like the
00:05:04
Speaker
the misdirection first section, you know, like say word story. However long ago that was a year and a half ago. Punching in just for a moment. That story was titled Fault Lines and it was the eighth story from 2022 by show friend and out of his editor in chief say word, Darby, Darby, Darby.
00:05:30
Speaker
where there's a first section about earthquakes and it really has nothing to do with the story, although it ties into it in a really artful, elegant way. But first section aside, I tend to think with nonfiction, it's rarely a bad call to start at the beginning and say what happened from there. I think it's easy for readers to follow and maybe it's just easiest for me to follow.
00:06:00
Speaker
But there are times when I read stories that appear in other publications where they don't do that.
00:06:10
Speaker
And, or where the story takes like a major shift in midway through. And, you know, anytime I find something like that, I'm like, how did they do that? You know, like what, I start looking for how they set it up, like what information leads them to that point, how the information that they've already revealed plays into what they're about to reveal and, and how the pieces sort of speak to each other that way.
00:06:38
Speaker
And that's a good challenge and exercise for myself. And Sayward and I will do, she'll drop a link into Slack and say like, oh, look at what they did here. And certainly it's something I talk about with friends who are writers. We'll kick stories like that around.
00:06:58
Speaker
You know, there's the other really common one, which I don't use as often at the atmos, but I used a lot at outside was sort of the, what I think of as like an ABAB structure, you know, where you're about, you sort of have like, maybe some action.
00:07:15
Speaker
that you're following in narrative A, and then you're giving background and context in narrative B, and the two will eventually sort of meet up. That's a good one, and outside in particular, because you're often doing stories about expeditions, and you need a way to inject information into this very TikTok type of
00:07:44
Speaker
you know, single event that's happening.
00:07:47
Speaker
I feel like your options for structure kind of increase the longer the piece is, you know, because when you're writing like a 3000 word, 4000 word story, you just don't, you can't, like you can do things that are interesting, but you have to tell the story, you know, and then you've got to present the information. And usually that's done pretty straightforwardly, but when you get to
00:08:15
Speaker
the stories that The Atomist publishes or the New Yorker's longer stories or certainly a book, then you can do other things with it. There are any number of models you can look to, be it feature films or good narrative podcasts, even just say like This American Life or something or in fiction.
00:08:38
Speaker
Are there areas where you look to, or even maybe movies that you've seen, you're like, I really like that structure. Maybe we can toy around with that with the right story that comes across our transom.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I do. I mean, I I don't have a ton of time to watch movies anymore. I watch I watch movies in like 20 minute clips. But fiction, I try to that's sort of become my like wind down thing in the evenings. And that I try to to steal stuff where I can. You know, like I went on this big McCarran kick.
00:09:19
Speaker
who writes the Slow Horse's spy novels. He does this thing where he'll be in a scene and you're moving along and then one of the characters will ask a question that the reader has been simmering away somewhere in the reader's mind. He'll ask the question and I really want to know the answer. That question is the end of his section.
00:09:49
Speaker
And then then he just jumps forward without giving you the answer into another scene where the answer will then be revealed at some point. And that maybe maybe anyone listening to this is like, well, duh, that's an obvious way to like.
00:10:06
Speaker
tease some tension into a story, but it really propels me as a reader. And I think in this story, we have some moments that are similar to that where we reach a point and where the section ends with kind of this half revelation.
00:10:25
Speaker
but you have to keep reading in order to find out the full picture.
Jessica Camille Aguirre's Story: Scammers and Carbon Credits
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah, so with Jessica's story, you know, what was it about this thing that struck you and lent itself to that degree of tension and release, tension and release?
00:10:41
Speaker
she has great material and she has a ton of it in the story. The initial draft was much longer but still just kind of fascinating to read because I hadn't followed this carbon scam thing when it
00:11:00
Speaker
first happened however long ago so that she had lots of good stuff to work with and she's also just a really great writer so there a lot of it was already there you know she had a good sense of how to how to set things up and and how to keep readers moving i mean the thing the thing that really developed for us in as this draft moved through the editing process was this betrayal
00:11:30
Speaker
between, you know, there's a ring of carbon scammers and they're all kind of working against each other in various ways, but that's not immediately clear to maybe any of them.
00:11:45
Speaker
So, including, I mean, there were things like late in the fact check process, like that were happening yesterday, that we were still sort of unpacking because people revealed new information. You know, so when you have something like that where one character knows this, but the other main character doesn't, and the other main character may know this other thing that the first one doesn't, and that opens the door to sort of
00:12:12
Speaker
those moments that I was talking about where you reveal something a little bit and then sort of draw the complete picture later in the piece.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's, um, well, lately I was thinking about this notion of, and it came to me by watching, you know, old Bob Ross painting, Joy of Painting episodes of this idea of like layering paints, you know, building, you know, you set that background up and then you're always just mixing colors, moving more and more and more through the foreground. And it's like,
00:12:46
Speaker
You know teasing out that various information because like, you know, Jessica knows certain things and you know these characters obviously know things in the story but it's up to her to like deftly lay it out and layer it in a sequential enough way where in Where the the reader doesn't know even though ever all the principles know so it's like that slow teasing out of that information is a really deft thing and skilled thing to do for a writer and and an editor to handle
00:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, and it takes some trial and error usually, and that's where I think gut comes into it. You just look at it and see, is this working? Should we reveal less? Should we reveal more? But in Jessica's story, there are a few shifts like that that happen where you sort of think,
00:13:37
Speaker
you know what the story is going to be about and then there's this twist where you think like oh maybe I was wrong and and George Saunders talks about that when he and you know his various writings about how to craft a short story you know sort of like setting reader expectations up and then contradicting them in an interesting way and how how that
00:14:06
Speaker
how that makes for a good reading experience for the reader. And I think Jessica was able to do that pretty artfully in quite a few places in the story.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yeah, and I think what struck me about her story as well was some of the electricity of her writing, too, which this story could very well have just been kind of a – like in The New Yorker, it would just be like a really well-written, well-informed piece throughout with, say, no exclamation points.
00:14:40
Speaker
stuff of that nature. Right in the third graph of the story, she's kind of sketching out Gustave Daphne's as a person. There's just this one passage where she's like, he would find the right people and negotiate the right conditions. He had to smoke. He loved to smoke. He loved it more than anything except for women. He loved women in smoking and art and shopping. And that's something you don't, that's a charge.
00:15:07
Speaker
You don't necessarily see in a in a in a feature of this nature. Yes, yes, I know. And I mean, Jessica is a writer that like I wanted I've been trying to work on a story with her.
00:15:20
Speaker
for, I don't know, eight, 10 years maybe. When I was at Outside and trying to break into editing features, she was one of the writers I reached out to because I thought she was so good and was like, hey, let's find something and we never did it outside.
00:15:39
Speaker
You know, a couple of years ago, we finally maybe even longer it might have been three years ago at the activist we finally found this story and I was just thrilled that it worked out because she is so good, you know, like that's
00:15:55
Speaker
There are editors in the world who are probably fully capable of getting a draft that maybe just doesn't have a lot of that muscle to it, the writing and injecting it in there. I'm not probably that person.
00:16:13
Speaker
I'm not that good of a writer. So to work with someone like Jessica, who just has it and has the talent for it and is so attentive to the words on the page. I mean, it's just it's such a luxury for me as an editor. And this kind of is a slight pivot, but what would you say is the most maybe fully formed piece that you've received at your time at the activist?
00:16:44
Speaker
Yeah, well, Bill Donahue's stories are the ones that immediately come to mind. He's so good and those drafts were just so clean when they came in and they really didn't require much. Bob Kolker's piece was another one that just came in and didn't
00:17:05
Speaker
didn't need a ton of work because he'd spent so much time either thinking about it or it just was one of those like flash of lightning moments for him where it just came out kind of the way it needed to be. So those ones come to mind. I mean, this story is not far off. You know, the
00:17:24
Speaker
I alluded to it earlier, but the big thing that happened in this story is that she turned in a draft that was mostly about Gustav Daphne and his escape from the justice system that was trying to lock him up for this carbon scam.
00:17:39
Speaker
But within that, there was this notion of betrayal that there'd been some double crossing going on with some of the guys that he worked with. And at the time, we didn't know if we could get to Gregory Zawe, the other main character in this piece.
00:18:01
Speaker
But we she reached out and he agreed to talk. And so she flew to France and met him. And and then all of a sudden, like the whole story shifted, you know, just because all of a sudden this avenue of reporting that she had tried before and he wasn't interested, but for whatever reason, she caught him at the right moment. And then it just opens up this this completely new narrative to explore. And it really
00:18:31
Speaker
I mean, that's exciting for me. I hope she was excited by it and not just like daunted at the fact that she had to rewrite the story. But for me, it was exciting because here's this new thing that hasn't been reported. Even though the carbon scam has been pretty thoroughly covered in Europe, there was this aspect to it that nobody had really gotten into. And we had this really meaty piece on our hands.
00:18:56
Speaker
When you talk about Bill Donohue, Bob Coker, and Jessica's piece here, I think what they, the reporters and the writers at the heart of these stories are, what they have in common is a lot of experience and millions of words written. And I don't think that's something that can be discounted in this work. It's just you kind of have to blubber your way through just a lot of features
Crafting Engaging Environmental Stories
00:19:23
Speaker
to get to that level of skill where it does somewhat feel like a Guitar virtuoso we can kind of just pick up anything and kind of like oh and it starts to sound Wonderful no matter what instrument they're using and I think that's just something to underscore I think it's just like it takes a long time to get good at these stories and
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And the music analogy is a good one. You don't get good at an instrument the first time you pick it up. You get good by playing a lot of wrong notes. And over time, you learn which ones are the right ones and the patterns that are there and how to
00:20:05
Speaker
when to play and how to play and it's the same deal in writing. You know, you're going to write a lot of bad words before you start recognizing what is good and what works and you're able to reach into the toolbox of your experience and draw out the right tool for that particular moment or piece of writing.
00:20:27
Speaker
And that kind of, to bring it full circle, kind of gets to the structure question. There are certain things that are in music somewhat formulaic, but within those boundaries you can make a really rich portrait, you know, be it, you know, verse, chorus, verse.
00:20:43
Speaker
bridge boy you know that whole thing is still like it's unique to it you know it when you hear it but how many hundreds of songs have you heard follow that same formula but they all sound unique to them in a lot in a lot of ways not every way but in a lot of ways so yeah
00:21:01
Speaker
Yep, yep, that's exactly right. And she, in this story, I mean, it is sort of, I guess it's not necessarily told chronologically, but, you know, in this case, it's more about the revelation of information, you know, it's when you're going to deploy that stuff. And so, you know, she did a nice job of
00:21:26
Speaker
of finding a way to like get you invested in these characters first of all and then to explain some stuff that honestly is like incredibly difficult to explain that fraud and carbon markets and you know some really wonky bureaucratic stuff um but but get just the right amount of that so that readers aren't lost and put it in the right place so that it doesn't disrupt the narrative so that we can
00:21:54
Speaker
keep going with these the sense of betrayal and and who knew what when and and how they were they were all manipulating each other well fantastic well jonah it's always great talking to you about uh you know your side of the table and these stories and uh you know this is this is really rich to get your your insight so thank you very much and we're gonna go kick it over to jessica now thank you always a pleasure
00:22:22
Speaker
That was cool, man. All right, Jessica. She's at Jessica Aguirre on Instagram and threads. That Aguirre part is A-G-U-I-R-R-E, dude. She's a writer and magazine journal whose work focuses on climate change and extremes.
00:22:42
Speaker
Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, N Plus One, and Hoppe's. She's working on a book about Biosphere 2, I don't know what that is, and how creating or recreating nature shaped our understanding of the planet. Will I edit out that verbal snafu? You bet I won't. Her website is JessicaKamilAguirre.com. It's so spare. I love it. I love it.
00:23:12
Speaker
We talk about voice here, access and trust, rejection, rejection, rejection, and online nothing burgers? I like the sound of that. Here's Jessica.
00:23:33
Speaker
Well, that's the hope. That would be great if I were the case. The internet still exists in five years. No, it's true. There might be some central hub that's found some dry land in, like, Iowa. And that's where all the internet servers will be. But none of the people. No. No, just be real. What are we going to save? Exactly. It'll just be some blight resistant corn and internet servers.
00:24:02
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, this is really happy we were able to do this and talk about your out of a story and everything. And I think that a good jumping off point might just be how you came across the story. Because after talking to Jonah, it's something that's been on your plate for quite a while.
00:24:20
Speaker
Yeah, I've been working on the story for a really long time, maybe longer than I've worked on any other single article. To be perfectly honest, I don't actually remember exactly how I first got wind of it. That long ago, it's like, oh my God, yeah. That long ago, yeah. But I will say that I generally write about environmental issues, but my goal is often to write stories that appeal to people who are not necessarily going to be drawn to an environmental story.
00:24:50
Speaker
And so I was kind of, I've always been kind of on the prowl for stories that are tangentially about the environment or climate change, but not necessarily like explicitly so. And this is such a wild story and, you know, so many superlatives could be used to describe it. The like central narrative is really compelling
00:25:20
Speaker
in itself. But at the same time, it is also about this kind of wonky set of policies and kind of market mechanisms that were used to try and draw down carbon emissions and save the planet. So, you know, put together a really great story with these kind of existential issues. And for me, that that's a really, you know, a really compelling starting point.
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, in a moment ago you said that it can be sometimes, or I'm inferring this, that environmental stories can be something of a tough selling to get people to buy in and read a long story that has environmental context to it. And you've been doing this for a while with that. So why do you think that it is a challenge to write a really good, cracking environmental story?
00:26:12
Speaker
I think that it's really easy for a lot of environmental stories to become a little luxury. And I think that readers anticipate that. So there's a sense of like, I know how fucked we are. I don't need to be told again. And in this kind of like, you know,
00:26:29
Speaker
pedantic kind of way as well. And so I think that, and there is, I mean, there's so much really incredible environmental journalism out there. So not to diminish the great work that's being done, but I do think that, you know, much of particularly like breaking news or day to day news falls into certain kinds of tropes about, you know, what we should be thinking or how we should be acting about the environment. And I think that what is interesting for me is like to try to fight.
00:26:57
Speaker
fight back against that so that we continue engaging intellectually with the way that we're all fucked. Well, yeah, I guess the Trojan horse of it all is like finding really good characters at the center of it because then you are hitched the story to the wagon of Gustav Daphne and his rival.
00:27:19
Speaker
Yeah, so the story is essentially about the rise of the biggest carbon trading heist in history, the people who conceived of and executed it, and their relationships to each other, and the various ways in which they kind of stabbed each other in the back.
Exploring Europe's Carbon Credit Scam
00:27:38
Speaker
the levels of duplicity and kind of mind games that went into what they were doing. And so it's kind of, you know, it's in some ways like a classic heist story or scam story, but it also follows very closely
00:27:55
Speaker
the two main characters who are at the center of the story who are very, very different people. And that's what I meant with the superlatives. When we were talking earlier, when you talk about the biggest carbon training scam in history, that in and of itself is an interesting thing to be unpacked, I would say. Just the amount of financial intrigue and the number of people who got sucked into it.
00:28:18
Speaker
It was a scam that took place on a nascent carbon credit market in Europe. So the market essentially launched, and a couple of months into it, the scam started taking place. And it really concentrated. The primary activity was concentrated over the course of, I would say, six months, during which
00:28:43
Speaker
depending on who you ask, between 5 and 10 billion euros was stolen. Inevitably, in a scam of that size and that magnitude, there are a huge number of people that were sucked into it, including bankers at some of the
00:29:01
Speaker
most established institutions in Europe who, you know, arguably knowingly were taking part as well as all of these different kind of established crime rings across Europe, primarily in France and the UK.
00:29:15
Speaker
and a couple of newcomers as well. And so that in and of itself is really interesting. It's interesting in the ways in which the market was influenced by this. I mean, there was a certain point at which authorities in Europe estimated that 90% of the carbon market was fraudulent. So it was an entire market that was operating on the premise of ripping off the system.
00:29:42
Speaker
So, you know, that is inevitably interesting. But I also got very lucky in the course of reporting and found these two characters who were, you know, had very, very different profiles, particularly in the media, one of whom was credited with being kind of the mastermind or the brain behind the operation and the other one who had this reputation as this, you know, kind of charismatic playboy and
00:30:11
Speaker
they hadn't really been connected in the media up until the point in which I started digging into their relationship. And then it turned out that they had quite a complicated one. And so that ended up becoming one of the backbones of the story. And describe for people the nature of this scam with the carbon credits and vats and all that stuff.
00:30:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of complicated and also very simple too. So essentially Europe has something called a value added tax. It's basically a sales tax and it's levied at every point of purchase. And then essentially the government reimburses what has been paid. If you are making a product and you buy something that you need to make your product and then you sell it on,
00:31:02
Speaker
you are going to be reimbursed whatever you paid for the material that you needed, and then you'll get money for what you sell. And I think the important thing to know about it is that at the end of the day, the government is expecting you to act as a tax collector and to give that money to the government, and that you're also getting reimbursed for a tax that you paid that you shouldn't pay according to the system.
00:31:31
Speaker
And so there are a lot of opportunities for collecting tax and then disappearing or creating these what authorities call carousels, where you create multiple entities that are paying this tax to each other. Well, it is quite complicated.
00:31:49
Speaker
There's also a cross board. If you import a cross board, then you don't have to pay the tax. But the way that it worked at the end of the day was that there were all of these companies in Europe that were able to mostly fake companies. They were able to apply for a reimbursement or to ask for a reimbursement from the government and then never pay the tax that they owed. And so they were able to pocket all this money that was essentially paid out of the coffers of European governments. And so what they were essentially
00:32:19
Speaker
Stealing was the money paid by taxpayers at the end of the day. So money that should have been going to...
00:32:27
Speaker
public institutions, schools, building roads, that kind of thing, were instead going, you know, being funneled into offshore accounts in Hong Kong and Cyprus and then disappearing into the pockets of the guys who set up these systems. What they experienced and what was so unique about the carbon market was that they had, these kinds of scams had existed before with these
00:32:54
Speaker
primarily cell phones because they're small and they're easy to move around. But what was unique about the carbon market is that the carbon credits were virtual. So they could be moved around with the click of a button. So one of the scammers told me, for example, that it was easier than sending an email. They essentially just sat at computers and moved
00:33:16
Speaker
their product or moved these carbon credits from one company to another and applied for reimbursement at every step. And so they were just raking in cash and all they had to do was kind of set up these accounts online.
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, that line struck me how, to them, it was easier than sending an email and you're like, holy shit, they're just raking it in, just sitting there, click of a mouse, and like, wow, this is almost too easy, too good to be true.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah, and it was for a while. You know, there was just an enormous amount of money made in a really short period of time. And that led to a lot of a lot of conflict among the people who were who were executing the fraud. So a lot of the different rings were loosely related or they were competitors, people who knew each other from other illegal operations. And so there was a lot of competition and a lot of it turned out to be
00:34:16
Speaker
uh, in the end, uh, quite violent as well. Not necessarily the involving the people who I had profiled, but, um, one of the other people who was convicted in a similar, um, in a similar case, uh, was also convicted of a kidnapping and convicted of, or suspected of carrying out two murders as well. So, um, you know, the nature of an enormous amount of money, uh, floating around and,
00:34:44
Speaker
therefore the taking, I think lends itself to duplicity and betrayal and suspicion. And as you're reporting out the piece and gathering information and trying to find people central to the story, you know, what did you find that were maybe some unique challenges to you as you were gathering your information to spin this yarn?
00:35:09
Speaker
The biggest challenge was getting access. So getting people to speak with me. And as I mentioned before, the two main kind of nodes of these scams were the UK and France. And when I first started reporting the story, I was very focused on the UK and trying to get people who had run the scam there to talk to me.
00:35:37
Speaker
And I was able to obtain a huge number of legal documents from a bunch of different cases across Europe. And I was in touch with the German prosecutor's office.
00:35:53
Speaker
and where a lot of the UK rings operated. And it was just a grind, trying to access people, trying to contact people who don't want to be talked to and who don't want to be accessed. And so I was putting in months of
00:36:09
Speaker
calling people who I knew were tangentially related or who, according to some business documents from two decades ago, had worked with one of the people at some point in the past and trying to get through to their new mechanic shop somewhere in England. I was reaching out to people who I knew were connected to some of the people I wanted to talk to on Facebook.
00:36:33
Speaker
So it was just like really casting the night incredibly wide and then I expanded my focus even further and after months and months and months and months I finally got through to one person who
00:36:49
Speaker
didn't end up being in the piece at all, but who had worked on this scam as one of the scammers and who lived in Tel Aviv and who could start pointing me in the right direction in terms of people I could be in touch with. And so that was a big breakthrough that happened. And it only happened, you know, months into the reporting process. So I was able to start gathering documents and talking to experts and that kind of thing quite early on, obviously,
00:37:19
Speaker
But the big breakthrough was finally getting someone to talk to me. And then, you know, months after that, I finally got the person who ended up being the main character in the piece, someone named
00:37:28
Speaker
well, his name is not Gustav Daphne, but I gave him the pseudonym of Gustav Daphne on his request. I ended up getting in touch with him months and months after that. And that was probably arguably the biggest break in the story, but it took quite a long time to get there. I should also just say that the reporting process was way late as well because of the pandemic. So he is living in Tel Aviv and still is in Tel Aviv, and Israel had quite
00:37:55
Speaker
restrictive travel measures in place during the pandemic. So that was kind of put on on pause for a couple of years. Yeah, it feels like you're like Jason Bourne or something like you're reporting on this story, like kind of hopping, hopping borders, going, going everywhere. There's almost a spy quality to it. Yeah, it was really tough to track everyone down and to unravel their stories. I think that
00:38:25
Speaker
Many of the people who operated in these drinks, particularly in France, ended up being profiled to one degree or another in the French media at some point. And they had varying degrees of openness with regard
Long-form Journalism and the Art of Patience
00:38:39
Speaker
to that. But to the extent that any of them agreed to being profiled or
00:38:45
Speaker
appearing in the media, it was kind of with the expectation that they would be in control of the narrative as well. And I think that one thing that was important for many of them was this was presenting like a sense of exceptionalism and the way that their role in the in the scam was really, you know, the fulcrum of everything. And when I went into the story and realized that there had been this this
00:39:13
Speaker
deep betrayal between two of the main characters. And when it became clear that that was going to be kind of the main nexus of the story, and that these two characters would then be kind of put in opposition with each other, I think that was very much a departure from the way in which the story had been presented previously, particularly in the French media.
00:39:36
Speaker
And something that underscores everything that you're talking about, how long the process took to even get access, let alone synthesizing all the information into a story, is how patient you had to be in the instance of this story, but the patience that it often takes to write narrative journalism in general, just because a lot of this stuff takes so much time and you might have to wait months or years to garner trust or access or get a certain document.
00:40:05
Speaker
You know, for you, how have you cultivated that sense of patience to be able to execute stories of this nature?
00:40:13
Speaker
Well, I think that there's, for me, especially with a story like this, where you have multiple levels of really complicated stuff, it's clear that you have to get a human narrative, or else you can't really tell the story in a way that's going to have any kind of impact. And getting that, in some ways, it's the simplest thing. But getting to that place where you can say, OK, I've got this quite simple human story at the center of all of these
00:40:41
Speaker
complicated financial systems. I guess I would just say on a practical level that this has been a story that I have been pursuing for a really long time, but not to the exclusion of other work. So in that sense, particularly during the pandemic, I knew that there were going to be long pauses in this reporting process. And so it's something that's kind of run in parallel to many other projects that I've pursued at the same time.
00:41:09
Speaker
And talking with Jonah too, he was, he suggested I talk to you about like wading through the bluster and the narcissism at the core of the, you know, your two central figures and how to almost decode what they were saying to get to the, you know, the crux of it, get to the truth. So what was that experience like navigating your conversations with them?
00:41:35
Speaker
One of the, there's this kind of classic in narrative journalism, long-form journalism called The Journalists and the Murderer by Janet Mockham. I'm sure you've heard of it if not read it. Yeah. And the whole, it appeared initially as a series in The New Yorker. And it was about this case of a man who'd been convicted of murdering his wife and children and the journalist who is given unprecedented access to him. Sidebar.
00:42:04
Speaker
The journalist at the center of that is Joe McGinnis, the late Joe McGinnis, author of Fatal Vision among many other books, one of which was The Big Horse, which was a comp title for me for my first two books, one of which was published. And I remember being a 28-year-old insecure writer. If you think I'm insecure now,
00:42:33
Speaker
15 years ago. Anyway, I was able to meet Joe at my friend and mentor's house in Amherst, Massachusetts, Madeline Blaze.
00:42:45
Speaker
And he offered to read some of my pages from my MFA manuscript. It was a horse racing thing. I was really desperate to get it published. Probably will never see the light of day, but that's a that's a good thing. But anyway, he had he had offered to read some pages. And at that point, you're always hoping that, you know, they're going to be smitten with your prose and stuff of that nature.
00:43:12
Speaker
I sent him physical copies of the self-addressed stamped envelope and apparently got lost in the mail. Tracked him down email-wise and he wrote back. He was like, you know, he apologized for that getting lost in the mail.
00:43:27
Speaker
Like, as I recall, what I said was that while the pages showed a laudable amount of tight focus reporting, and while the writing was at least not a detriment, there seemed an underlying absence of narrative storyline. I think I also said that I might have been hypersensitive to this because some reviewers said much the same about the big horse. In any event, I'm quite sure my bottom line was profiles are from magazines or newspapers. Books have to tell a story by the beginning, middle, and end.
00:43:57
Speaker
And I think I remember being so obsessed with him saying that the writing was, at the least, not a detriment. And that was like a dagger in my heart. Maybe I shouldn't be. I was overly sensitive then. I'm reading them now. I'm like, oh, yeah, it's not so bad. But at the time, woof, woof.
00:44:24
Speaker
to write his story with the kind of expectation that the journalist was going to write from the perspective and point of view of the person who was eventually convicted of this murder.
00:44:36
Speaker
Over the course of the case, the journalist ended up changing his mind and deciding, no, he actually believed that this person who was eventually convicted for murder did, in fact, murder his wife and children. And so he ended up writing this piece that to the subject of the piece felt like a deep betrayal because the subject had expected. So yeah, so the subject ended up feeling like he had been betrayed by this journalist because he had expected the journalist to present his side of the story.
00:45:05
Speaker
And it was a really extreme case. What Janet Malcolm got into in her articles about it were all of these letters that the journalists sent to the convicted murderer in prison kind of
00:45:22
Speaker
you know, talking about how close the relationship was and it gave very much the impression of camaraderie and of, you know, kinship between them in this way that felt, you know, incredibly duplicitous when you then read the work of the journalist. And at some point the journalist said, well, you know, there's no way that I could have gotten the story that I needed to get if I had been forthcoming about where I was coming from. And in particular in a, you know, in a previous
00:45:50
Speaker
book that he had written. He'd written this kind of insider view on the Nixon campaign and he said, well, if I had told them that I was a Democrat, they would never have let me in. And I think that it's this really strange thing to have to be in a journalist's shoes where you wish to form a relationship with your subject. You want to gain their trust.
00:46:16
Speaker
But I think the sense of what I think the murderer ended up describing as like soul murder, you know, this betrayal that had been, you know, undertaken by the journalist, I think that
00:46:32
Speaker
there has to be a way to avoid that as well. So I do try to go into these kinds of conversations, being really clear and upfront about what it is that I want to do. And then, of course, I'm still there as a journalist who wants to get the story.
00:46:50
Speaker
So I have to recognize the ways in which I'm engaging in the conversation in the way that I think will behoove me while at the same time I'm trying to be guided by this higher ethic of transparency and accountability in terms of never promising something that I'm not going to deliver.
00:47:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's crazy because if you if your reporting takes you in a direction of you know a factual direction but it might not be flattering to your central figures and you bring that up it's like oh is this going to be the thing that they totally withdraw altogether and then you lose it and all like all that work or do you like you know as like
00:47:38
Speaker
McGinnis does, you know, put it, you know, just kind of put on a mask and and then pull the rug out from under them when it's too late for them to have any agency. It's it's really hard. Yeah, absolutely. And there were a couple of times during the reporting process where it seemed as though everything was going to fall apart, that, you know, the people, particularly the two main characters, you know, there's just
00:48:07
Speaker
navigating those relationships is challenging. There were definitely a few crises. It's not easy. I think that especially when you're a journalist and you're out there, you're out in the field. In these cases, I travel to Tel Aviv and to Paris to talk to these guys.
00:48:28
Speaker
obviously a cognizant of the atavist and the resources being put into my being able to be there and the expectation that I can then deliver in the end. And so when something seems to be on the cusp of falling apart, it's very anxiety producing to say the least. Yeah.
00:48:49
Speaker
Yeah, and speaking of delivering on a pitch of that nature, I was helping someone who listens to the show and who wants to pitch the activist. And since I speak with Joan and Sayward so much, they shared their pitch with me. And I was just helping them through, just kind of coaching them, be like, these are kind of the things that they typically look for.
00:49:10
Speaker
And a moment in the pitch, it was like, I hope to be able to find these people. I'm like, hope is where queries go to die. You can't hope to get access to certain documents or certain people. You need to have concrete proof that you do. And so for you, how did you put a stake through the heart of hope and get your query across the door?
00:49:37
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that I did that with the documents. I did obtain documents that no one else had had at that point. And so in that sense, I was able to say confidently that I could deliver something that no one else could have done up until that point. I did not at the point that I pitched the story. I didn't have the two main characters lined up yet. Because as I said, when I started out, my intention was to focus on a different
00:50:04
Speaker
like a different set of crime rings. In general, I don't pitch until I have guaranteed access to whatever it is that I think is going to be like the central spine of the story.
00:50:22
Speaker
you know that access may come in different forms on a story like this of course it's ideal to be able to speak to the person but in some cases you know the person who committed a crime is not going to want to talk and so in that case you have to have other you know other avenues and other ways of
00:50:40
Speaker
getting the information being able to flesh out a complete story. I did at the point of pitch feel like I had the confidence to say that I could, you know, put forward information that no one else had and spin like a real yarn, which, you know, is
00:50:57
Speaker
kind of like the test for me of whether or not I have the story is whether I can tell a story that isn't going to be overwhelmed by the technical details of it. But, you know, I was fortunate enough to, and this is one of the great things I found of working with Atavists is there was an incredible amount of, you know, support and encouragement to
00:51:16
Speaker
to keep going. My inclination is to report something to death. And at a certain point, you have to sit down and write. But I also think that there are multiple points during this reporting process that benefited greatly from, say, a word and Jonah both being like, well, if you want to do this next thing, go ahead. And so that was incredibly helpful and allowed me then to be able to get a story that in the end, I think,
00:51:43
Speaker
you know, was much stronger than what I had pitched initially. Now, people like yourself who are seasoned at this do get, uh, understand the amount of legwork that even goes into a
Securing Assignments through Effective Pitching
00:51:57
Speaker
pitch. And I know mistakes I've made in the past. I mean, my batting average for landing pitches of this nature is, uh, is really low. And it's, and it's, I think, a lot owed a lot to not doing
00:52:12
Speaker
quite enough legwork ahead or underestimating the amount of legwork that goes into really being able to say this is more or less the trajectory of this and then being able to deliver on that. So for you, what is the nature of how much work goes into just selling the idea?
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah, this is a crucial question, especially for freelancers, because all of that work is work that you're performing without pay. It's speculative work. You have no idea where it's going to go. Will it land? Will it become anything? And it's hard to hype yourself up to do it, especially if it's tough. And you have to call people who don't want to be talked to or try to chase people down who don't want to be found. You have to have a wild amount
00:53:04
Speaker
delusion, I think, to do it. But I have also been in a situation where I sold like a big feature to a big print magazine and then had
00:53:23
Speaker
to retract that story. It was kind of like very different circumstances, but essentially what ended up happening was that the family, one of the main characters,
00:53:35
Speaker
implored me not to write about them and gave me, you know, some reasons why. And so out of respect to them, I decided to pull it. And that is an incredibly crummy situation to be in. Joe McGinnis would not have done that. No, I know. I know. But I mean, this goes back to like, what are the like, how do you perform this job ethically, this job that feels like there's so much
00:54:00
Speaker
I don't know like you present a different face to different, you know, all these different people there's so many different demands on you, and they're so different depending on what role you're playing in any given moment you know you're the reporter in one moment you're the writer in the next, and those holes feel almost like diametrically opposed sometimes. But yeah, I mean like you know obviously like.
00:54:22
Speaker
Perhaps naive as it is, one of the reasons I do this work is because I feel like it is ethical, or it can be ethical work. And so I try to do it in a way that seems to fall in line with some ethical framework.
00:54:35
Speaker
But back to your initial question of how much work do you put in, I think that had I done just a little bit more on that pitch, I would have known that I would have been putting myself into a situation that I didn't want to be in. And so in that sense, I think that you've got to report to the point at which you can say you have to be able to imagine you have the commission.
00:55:03
Speaker
that's where you have to be with your pitch is like, I could get this assigned by the biggest magazine ever today with this pitch and I could do it exactly the way I think it should be done. And until you're at that moment, it's not worth pitching. And it's sometimes really hard to get there. But I think that the trade-off is that if you are at that place with a pitch, the likelihood that you'll get that pitch landed somewhere is pretty good.
00:55:30
Speaker
Not that I'm saying it's easy out there, especially right now. And part of my hype project for this out of this piece was like, I'm going to post all of the rejections that I got on this story before I actually landed it.
00:55:48
Speaker
Every story that I go and pitch is going to get a couple of rejections before it lands. And I think that's just part of, you know, part of being a freelancer and that has to be also kind of, you know, brought into the calculus and it's just
Perseverance in Journalism: Handling Rejection
00:56:03
Speaker
part for the course. So, you know, if you're ready to, to, you know, be at a place where you could, you know, get the commission right now and, and like hit the ground running, um, and you're also ready to, to like be, you know, be the door to door salesperson on it.
00:56:17
Speaker
knocking every door until you found a spot for it. I think that, to me, is the combination of things that can achieve some degree of, I don't know, sustainability as a career path in this industry. But don't quote me on that.
00:56:35
Speaker
Yeah, and with respect to rejection in the pitch in industrial complex, how did you over time just kind of develop the muscle or even the scars to withstand the inevitable rejection until you get it to a place where it lands? And when it lands, you're like, wow, you know what? This isn't so bad. This might have been where it was supposed to be all along.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah. Oh God. I mean, your rejections used to just totally like crush me, you know, and I remember, and what's interesting is, is that I think that, you know, I worked as a, as a staff reporter for a long time before I went freelance and, um,
00:57:24
Speaker
Funnily enough, out of a story, it was one of the first big freelance features that I landed. That's how long ago it was. But, you know, I do remember way back, you know, pitching these little online nothing burgers, you know, and
00:57:43
Speaker
getting a pass or getting, I mean, if you're lucky, if you get a pass, you know, most of the time you get silence. That's the worst. That's the worst. So, you know, and the holding out hope and, you know, weeks and weeks go by and it's something timely and then it's not relevant anymore. It's just the worst.
00:58:04
Speaker
So, you know, once I started getting passes, that was a good thing. But I do remember that that, you know, I would just be just like put my heart and soul into something and and then not, you know, I wouldn't get it wouldn't get so that wouldn't get picked up. And and I think that that what really helped me were a couple of things.
00:58:22
Speaker
Just hearing these things, I didn't take them to heart. I should have. I didn't take them to heart. But seeing your freelance career as a business, if I saw my freelance career as a business, I'd be making very different choices and hopefully making more money.
00:58:37
Speaker
But it was helpful to hear that, to have that notion introduced to me and to say, OK, it's not like your soul and life. It's your work and a business. And so a degree of depersonalization is helpful.
00:58:58
Speaker
I also encountered this kind of like, I'm going to rack up this mini rejections type of approach, which is also kind of a nice way to think about it. What am I aiming for? Am I aiming to land pitches, or am I going to aim for rejections? And if rejections are your goal, it makes it much easier to go out and get them. I'm not saying that rejections should be the goal, but being able to say, I'm proud of myself for having put myself forward in this way to get the rejection rather than
00:59:27
Speaker
Because I think that the fear is that the worst case scenario is that the fear of rejection stops you from putting yourself out there and chasing the story. And that's the worst outcome, right? What's the worst outcome being rejected? No, it's not doing it to begin with.
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. A metaphor I've used in the past is like, can you imagine like a giant maple tree and like every year it's just like, I'm going to put out one seed and I'm going to see if this one is going to fly away and take root somewhere and grow to be another mighty maple tree. Well, the fact is they throw out thousands of seeds and maybe two of them take root. And then you hope a landscaper doesn't pick out the seedling.
01:00:08
Speaker
So it's like, with no kill fee. And so that's the idea of just blasting them out there. Not indiscriminately like a tree would, but it's that idea of, it is a numbers game, and the more you can get them out there, the better chance you have. And then the body of work grows, your authority grows, and then maybe you can be more targeted, because your reputation is now standing on a foundation of a body of work.
01:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And of course, once you start, I mean, at least for me, there were a couple of assignments that I got that ended up becoming really pivotal in terms of having a calling card to take to other editors and saying, look, I can deliver.
01:00:52
Speaker
Yeah, I love your idea of just the callous, not the callousness, but building up that rejection callous and playing that numbers game and the batting average of it. I think if more people knew what the batting average was, which might be like 10%, probably less, I think people might be more willing to pitch more. It's not like a 50-50 thing. It truly is like a low batting average, even for people who are well established.
01:01:21
Speaker
Yeah. And then also I think it changes your relationship to every story. I mean, I think that like the walnut seedling, like, you know, you don't, if you put out one and you, then you'd like encompasses all of your hopes and dreams and everything hinges on it. And, you know, it reflects like your self-worth in the world. Whereas if you put out like 10 or 15, then not so much.
01:01:45
Speaker
So I think that that's also a good reason to put out more. And I think that it also allows you to see, if you keep putting out pitches, you can also turn a more critical eye and turn an editor's eye to your own work more easily, which is also a really important component to landing pitches, I think.
01:02:09
Speaker
The pitches that fail often revolve around like they want to be reported, but they still revolve around like the reporter subjectivity in a way that's like not not described. You know, it's like this is so interesting, but it's just really interesting without describing like what is interesting. What is like what is the unique and and compelling factor about it?
01:02:30
Speaker
And so, you know, and that I think is a reflection of like the attachment that we personally feel to our story ideas. Whereas if you can kind of like hack away at that attachment and try to turn a critical eye to it, then you can see where those flaws are and then flush them out in a way that will make them more compelling pitches.
01:02:46
Speaker
Going back a few minutes ago in our conversation too about this idea of pitching, there's also the idea of you need to recruit people to be a part of your story, and you're selling them on the idea that maybe you can land the story.
01:03:03
Speaker
And sometimes that story never never lands anywhere. So you've like spoken to this person, maybe gotten their hopes up that they're going to have a profile written about them or they're going to be a central part. And then it then you're so you're selling them on the idea that you can land that story. And then oftentimes, and this happened to be several times.
01:03:20
Speaker
story just doesn't get picked up anywhere and then you're like these people are kind of left in the lurch and I know their life very much moves on but uh that's always kind of a tough conversation to have with people like I just can't land the stories no fault of your own sorry to have wasted your time but I can't drum up any interest for this is that something you've experienced of course yeah yeah tons of stories and then you you know you end up in
01:03:45
Speaker
having all these conversations with all these different people and it ends up, you know, not going anywhere. And yeah, it feels like a waste of their time. But I also think that, you know, on the other hand, there is, I know that like, we're all very busy and our time is very valuable. On the other hand, there is also something really
01:04:08
Speaker
really cool and special about like connecting with someone who's like deeply interested in your work. And so in that sense like I do try
01:04:19
Speaker
to work or life. So I try to be really well-versed in what it is that I'm going to approach someone about before approaching them so that I can have what can be also a meaningful conversation with them so that it becomes hopefully the case that the conversation in and of itself has value aside from its potential to go somewhere or potential to bloom into something bigger.
01:04:46
Speaker
And so that's like, that's what I tell myself. You know what I mean? Because like, we have to have justifications for like, we have to have those conversations and that's part of the work. And it is crummy. But I also think that like, there is, it is not
01:05:04
Speaker
I don't think that the relationship is purely transactional. It can't be purely transactional because there's no way that as a journalist, you're going to deliver exactly what a source wants you to. And in some cases, you're going to deliver something that they're not going to be happy with. And so seeing it approaching as a transactional relationship is just not going to work. And so I think that if anything, it provides an opportunity to already have that conversation from the very beginning where you say to someone, look, this may or may not go somewhere, but I'm really interested in
01:05:34
Speaker
in, you know, this aspect of your life or this part of your work or, you know, in some cases, if you're if you're talking to people who have gone through something really traumatic, it can also be a really, you know, useful way for them to talk through what they've experienced. And I and I don't think that that can be like the value of that alone can be discounted either. Right.
01:05:56
Speaker
Yeah, and also in the reading or the reading of your adivis piece like I can tell there there are some very voicey components to that I really appreciated and especially at the like the very start high up in the story with like Gustav you like you know he he loved women he loved smoking you know stuff like that it was like I thought was like a really fun injection of voicey components
The Role of Voice and Narrative Tension in Journalism
01:06:23
Speaker
and
01:06:23
Speaker
So for you, how did you arrive at something like that for you? And maybe what were those, maybe some voicey inspirations for you that are always kind of on your shoulder? Yeah, I do really...
01:06:47
Speaker
want and try to write pieces where the writing in itself is compelling. Aside from the story or the revelatory aspects of the reporting,
01:07:02
Speaker
that the writing in and of itself, just the prose, is also a pleasure to consume. Now, that's a really tall order oftentimes, especially with a story that has so many technical aspects. But I think that it's one of the only ways to get through really
01:07:23
Speaker
you know, dense material is also to present it in a way that feels fun to read. And it's certainly the case that the people I most admire, the writers I most admire came from that, you know, came from that place as well.
01:07:41
Speaker
Specifically, you know, I think about, well, I always think about Matthew Power and the work that he did. I think that he is, you know, one of the most talented, or was one of the most talented journalists working in kind of the contemporary space. And I think that, you know, Michael Paternity does this really well, Susan Orlean. But I would say that, you know, oftentimes what these writers do, you know,
01:08:12
Speaker
is, you know, come from a place of where they, you know, really recognize their own role in the story and their, like, their subjective
01:08:22
Speaker
outlook on what they're seeing. And so I think that that can be a place where writing can happen, is kind of this space between what the writer is taking in as they're doing their reporting and
01:08:45
Speaker
what they're observing and what they're thinking about it. So yeah, so I do think that having a voice is one of the great joys of being able to do journalism, being able to do magazine journalism specifically. And it's one of the things that makes magazine journalism so special.
01:09:05
Speaker
And a moment ago you mentioned kind of the revelatory nature of the information you're able to kind of dole out throughout this piece. And it's like as you get that information, sometimes it can be the tendency is you kind of write the story in the order you report it, which can be the case with day-to-day stuff. But things I guess when you have the time to synthesize it, you can be like, okay, we can –
01:09:28
Speaker
I have all this information, but at this point in the story, character A doesn't know this yet. And so you have to kind of really let it iron out and play out. So what was the challenge like for you as you look to just sort of withhold information long enough just to keep the tension going?
01:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that was the tricky thing and that was one of the kind of mind game aspects of reporting the story. These guys are exceptionally good at talking to people and they are very, very smart and they are, you know, and they have their agendas. And so it wasn't, I never just got the story from either one of them or any of the other people I talked to.
01:10:12
Speaker
It was also doled out in ways that were incredibly complicated. So to me, what was important in writing the story was identifying these kind of crucial plot points, like these turning points where something that in most likelihood the other main character did not know about suddenly became clear to them. And in some instances, there's some foreshadowing of
01:10:35
Speaker
um you know we understand what's happening before one of the characters does um and i think that's just kind of natural to to building narrative tension is like one person knows that something is happening and the other person is in the dark and and you're kind of reading with this like hope of like when are they going to find out about this so that was you know that was
01:10:56
Speaker
You know, one of the ways that to like build towards these different points, I would say that there were probably like three or four points like that during the story, these kind of like, you know, pivotal
01:11:09
Speaker
moments or conversations where the depth of the deception becomes clearer, like in these like dribs and drabs. And as a reader, you either understand that, or you have an inkling of it before it happens.
01:11:29
Speaker
Very nice. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Jessica. This piece was a ton of fun to read, and it was really great to kind of unpack it a lot with you. And as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation of any kind for the listeners, just like anything you could be excited about. And so I'd extend that to you if there's something that has bringing you joy in your life or something that you might want to share with people out there.
01:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, there's this new magazine that I've been reading a lot called The Dial that's being edited out of Paris and it has this like a very global outlook but draws in these incredible voices from all of these different corners of the globe and I would definitely, it's a magazine that I turn to often and
01:12:17
Speaker
and find myself reading things that I never would have expected and perspectives that that are, you know, totally new to me and new ideas. And so I would definitely give a shout out to them and the work that they're doing. Fantastic. The dial. I like it. Awesome. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for carving out some time to talk shop. And this this was wonderful. And so continued success. And I can't wait for people to celebrate this amazing story you've done with the activist. So thanks for the time and best of luck going forward.
01:12:45
Speaker
Right on. Well, thank you so much, Brett, and thanks for having me on.
01:12:53
Speaker
Oh, isn't that nice? Thanks to Jonah and Jessica, and also thanks to the Power of Narrative Conference for promotional support. That's really cool. Go to combeyond.bu.edu and use narrative25 at checkout for 25% off enrollment. That'll buy you a lot of burritos. What should we riff about here in the parting shot? I really don't have much to say. Nothing really, my attention has been
01:13:21
Speaker
All over the place. I've been struggling this to sleep. I can't seem to stop eating. I'm stuttering I'm waiting on book edits and you know, here's something
01:13:33
Speaker
That moment you hit send on an essay or a query is that real magical moment. It lasts about 30 seconds, so you really have to revel in it while it's there, not let it get away. In that moment, you've brought whatever you're working on to the best it'll be.
01:13:53
Speaker
There's even a moment when you entertain the idea that your editor will look at it and love it, will barely have anything bad to say. Well, let's just say constructive criticism. You imagine them reading it and being unable to stop. They say it'll take two to three weeks to read, and they're done in a week, and they're like, I don't have much to say. You have a winner here. The reality is they're pulling their hair out.
01:14:22
Speaker
because you're writing the same stupid thing all over again. You're trying too hard here. I don't know, I'm projecting. I remember when I submitted a book for review and I thought I was on the five-yard line. First and goal, let's punch this in. Tush, push, man.
01:14:40
Speaker
Turns out I was pinned up against my own five-yard line. 95 yards to go. Good luck, B.O. That was humbling. That was the reality. That is the reality. But man, those 30 seconds, when you hit send, few things are sweeter, dude. Few things are sweeter, man.
01:15:07
Speaker
So stay wild, see ya in efforts. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.
01:15:34
Speaker
you