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Episode 211: What to Do When You Hate the Work with Rose Andersen
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"Great, so you're at the point in the writing process where you hate all your work. We all do that," says Rose Andersen, @roseandersen.
This episode is sponsored by Scrivener, by writers for writers and Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, @CNFPod. See you there for office hours!
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Message
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Scrivener! Scrivener was created by writers for writers. It brings all the tools you need to craft your first draft together in one handy app. Scrivener won't tell you how to write. It simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm using it for my Casualty of Words podcast, which I will eventually turn to an ebook and you can do it all with Scrivener. So whether you plot everything out first or plunge in, write and restructure later, Scrivener works your way. Great. So you're just at the point in the writing process where you hate all your work. Like we all do that.
00:00:54
Speaker
Well, well, well, what is up, CNF? Is this the creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I talk to badass writers and filmmakers? Sometimes we try about the art and craft of telling true stories.
Guest Introduction: Rose Anderson
00:01:08
Speaker
I'm Brendan O'Mara. Hey, welcome to the show. I've got Rose Anderson on the show today at Rose Anderson on Twitter. She's the author of the new memoir, The Hot and Other Monsters.
00:01:24
Speaker
I believe it's published by Bloomsbury. You should fact check these things, but I'm pretty confident. Pretty confident about that. We talk about a lot of stuff like creative inspirations, those mentors that put gas in your tank, some groove, man. And of course, addiction, which is a major thread of her book. Be sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:52
Speaker
and keep the conversation going on social media, at cnfpod, across the big three. It's lousy as hell for promotion, but great for connection. So let's connect. In any case, I'm bringing something back from the depths. A Kraken, if you will. Cthulhu!
00:02:13
Speaker
Anyway, if you leave a review on Apple Podcast for the show, I'll give you an hour of my editing coaching time to put a cap on it. Let's just say any essay or a work in progress or a chapter of 1500 to 2000 words. I'll give it a read and offer some coaching on that piece. Whatever I can muster in an hour's worth of time, keep it within reason.
00:02:37
Speaker
All you do is leave a review. Once it posts, it can take a day or two so, you know, patience. Screenshot it, email it to creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail.com and I'll
Podcast Promotion and Listener Engagement
00:02:49
Speaker
reach out. That's like a $50 value seeing effort. That's something.
00:02:55
Speaker
Anyway, this podcast is also sponsored by Casualty of Words, my daily writing podcast for people in a hurry. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. For shits, I'm going to add one to the end of this episode. After the outro, check out a little Casualty of Words and decide for yourself whether you want to jump in that fire with me. Speaking of those reviews, here's one from BAM Traffic.
00:03:25
Speaker
titled, enjoyable and educational. Quote, enjoyed every episode of this podcast offers invaluable insight into the writing process. Brendan asks great questions and digs deep to get inside each guest's approach. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to give their writing a boost. Nice. We dig that man.
00:03:50
Speaker
Well, as you know, I've been mildly obsessed over the years with growing this show to reach as many of us as I can, right? I mean, you're here to learn from the people in it, man. It's the people who have like made it, but also some of the people who are just mid-career, beginning career, just doing the thing.
The Value of Meaningful Connections in Podcasting
00:04:08
Speaker
That's why we do this dance every week. And I always kindly ask you to share it in the hopes that we together can expand the reach.
00:04:19
Speaker
But what if we stop all that and just say, you know what? Get off that hamster wheel. What if what we've got here between you and me is enough? Let's maybe quit this idea of grow and grow and grow and seek more and more meaning. What can I be doing to be of greater service to you? So that's kind of where I'm at. My wife would probably ring my neck to hear me say that because she's like, go, go, go, grow, grow, grow.
00:04:48
Speaker
I get it on one side of that coin. But yes, I'd love to grow this thing so we can touch more people, but I'm happy and grateful I've got you locked in and I'm going to keep trying to make this a more meaningful, valuable experience. So like, let's go a mile deep instead of a mile wide or something like that.
00:05:10
Speaker
It is hot in the office in the studio today. It's like 100 degrees outside. Oh boy. Anyway, excuse me. I'm getting flush. I also donated blood today so I can't really lose any more fluids or I might just
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, keel over and black out. It's no good Hey, if you want to work on your golf swing you hire a coach, right? If you want to work on your writing game consider working with me to get that essay or book into shape
00:05:46
Speaker
I'd be honored to help you get where you need to go. My editing coaching package includes Skype calls and detailed breakdown of your work, personal questionnaire too to kind of get you primed about how you see your writing going. So email me if you're ready to level up.
00:06:11
Speaker
I tell ya, Metallica did it to me again, friend. I entered a raffle for SNM2 merch for the opportunity to pay $300 for this limited edition box set. And I didn't even blink, man. I was like, well,
00:06:32
Speaker
probably not going to win anyway when but if I do well I have some birthday money all flop down for the metallic industrial complex this thing is
00:06:46
Speaker
S&M like 20 years ago was like a really important live album for me. I know everybody has their records that are like really important. Master of puppets of course, but this live concert was just so cool. You know, I rode countless miles on a stationary bike as I was rehabbing my knee and getting in better conditioning while at UMass while I was still at baseball dreams before I started drinking my goddamn life away in college and drinking away my baseball dreams.
00:07:16
Speaker
Instead of grinding in the cage like I did in high school, to get to that point, I was more interested in getting hammered. Anyway, SNM was there. It was the soundtrack of my freshman year of college and beyond, but mainly my freshman year, 99 to 2000. SNM2 comes out next month, so I'm like all in.
00:07:37
Speaker
In any case, like that's happening, but piggybacking on what I said earlier, Metallica, Bruce Springsteen, all these big acts, when they got started, they weren't thinking like filling 80,000-seat arenas. They just played for 20 people. And let's just keep playing for those 20 people, and they'll tell 20 people maybe, and you make meaning over growth. And guess what? When it's real and not a hack, you probably grow.
00:08:06
Speaker
I have to believe that anyway. So, anyway, I've got Rose Anderson here.
Exploring Rose Anderson's Memoir
00:08:12
Speaker
She's a pretty special person and writer. Her memoir is Raw and Visceral. It's one of the best books I've read this year, and I've read 30 of those fuckers already. It's a memoir that delves into true crime. It's fractured, splintered, and a full frontal reading experience, whatever the hell that means. So anyway, here's Rose. Let's do this. R R I F F A
00:08:38
Speaker
watching videos of Dave Lombardo, who used to be like slayers drummer and everything, kind of a drummer for hire. And he's uh, I was listening to this interview and he was the way he was talking about consuming other kind of art and putting fuel in his tank. It made me was like, Oh, that's, that's just a great place to jump off. I'm like, I'm gonna ask Rose about that. Like, so like, I would extend that to you. Like, what things are you consuming that helps inform your writing?
00:09:06
Speaker
I read a lot and I read widely over many genres, so I'm pretty indiscriminate when it comes to what I read. So I love horror. I love sci-fi. I read a lot of true crime. I read a lot of memoir.
00:09:22
Speaker
In preparation for this book, I read The Fact of a Body by Alex Marzano-Lesnovich. I read Mean by Miriam Gerba, Excavation by Wendy Ortiz. I read Jasmine Ward, Brian Evanson, Mary Morris. So across the spectrum, in terms of what I was consuming,
00:09:47
Speaker
bookwise. I listen to music a lot when I write. It's a variety of things. It's a lot of instrumental stuff, actually. Otherwise, the words kind of interrupt my writing process.
00:10:03
Speaker
But to be honest, some of the most important things I do is like what I do in my downtime. This was a is a heavy book. So, you know, I watched a lot of like Bob's Burgers and things like that to sort of like aftercare if I had written something especially upsetting that day. So I kind of think the
00:10:29
Speaker
I don't want to say it's like the things that don't inspire you are just as important, but the things that you do to take care of yourself post writing, I think are really important too. And sometimes that's, you know.
00:10:41
Speaker
cartoons and bad TV. Of course. I just listened to an interview with Roxane Gay and she is unapologetic about watching trashy reality TV at the end of a long day of thinking and writing so that makes total sense to me that you would want to find something that unplugs you and detaches you especially if the material gets very heavy.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so personal, so you sort of want the opposite of whatever it is that you're working on. Otherwise, I think it can just consume you a little much, and you have to emotionally take care of yourself when you're doing sort of heavy lifting in your work.
00:11:20
Speaker
of course and also piggybacking off of Lombardo and everything I got thinking of just like of groove and drumming is all about groove and staying in the pocket like that and it's just a great way to envision how you prime your own pump to get into a writing groove and get into a flow there. So how do you approach that? How do you get into whatever groove you need to get into so the skids feel greased and you're able to just kind of
00:11:48
Speaker
rock and roll there and get some work done. That's a good question. I think that
00:11:57
Speaker
I spend a lot of time avoiding writing. Sometimes I feel like I purposely put myself through this weird resistance to sitting down and doing the work. So if I really have to work and I have to do my writing, I set up my desk, I make myself coffee.
00:12:23
Speaker
I make sure my headphones are charged, and I have a writing playlist that I put on. And that's usually enough to get me into a headspace. And I have like an upbeat writing playlist. I have a purely instrumental writing playlist, and I have sort of a really depressing writing playlist if I have to go somewhere. Kind of sad. So I guess, yeah, music is really one of the things I use to tap into that.
00:12:52
Speaker
too many distractions I can't write so the music really lets me sort of like focus in on What's right in front of me? What are some of the songs on your playlist? I just did a large-hearted boy playlist actually, so you'll have a playlist out in the world um I listen to a lot of Instrumental soundtracks actually so which it sounds weird, but they
00:13:24
Speaker
they're very evocative and temperamental, and have no words. So that is something that I do quite a bit. I listened to this band called Slow Meadow. I don't know if you've heard of them. No. Yeah, they're excellent. They do a lot of instrumental work too.
00:13:53
Speaker
Let's see. Gosh, Family Crest, the Lumineers. If I'm going more upbeat, I'll do like Ozamotley or Jurassic Five. Yeah, those are just a few off the top of my head.
00:14:10
Speaker
Nice. And what else would you point to as maybe your approach to getting ready? You've got the playlist. The headphones are charged. The coffee's going. How do you go about, hold on. I need to let my dog out of the studio here. Of course. Just a moment. He's whining. I think my wife just got back from a bike ride. So just a moment. No problem. What's the problem, man? Ruined this recording.
00:14:46
Speaker
great. I have a dog too. Don't worry about it. Yeah, he's usually good. I should have known. He's hearing Melanie come back and I should have known that when she got back, he would be champing at the bit to try to get out of the studio. So, good job, Brendan.
00:15:05
Speaker
Well, in any case, the approach, you've got a few things, a few dominoes you knock down to get right into the mindset. How else are you just getting into the zone so maybe you can sit there for a couple hours or 20 minutes, however long, however long you have?
00:15:24
Speaker
I try to write for extended periods of time just because, like I said, I can be very resistant to sitting down and actually doing it. So I find if I actually get in the zone, I want to stay there for a while. I actually usually start by rereading something I've already written, like a
00:15:44
Speaker
previous draft or another chapter or something that is in the similar mood to what I'm about to do. I think it's because I hate starting. So if I read something I've already done, it feels like I've already done some of the work. I'm much better at editing or
00:16:05
Speaker
I'm working on something once it's already started. So I sort of have to trick myself into thinking I have already started. That's a great point. Yeah.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, I like that because there's such a resistance. There's such a creative inertia. You know, the bodies of motion want to stay in motion and bodies that are not in motion, they're resistant to it. So it's just a matter of getting that rock pushed a little bit. And then it just gets so much easier to keep the momentum going. Absolutely.
00:16:40
Speaker
So I have to trick myself, like a child. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny to your point earlier, you do these things sometimes to avoid the writing. I have this other little podcast called Casualty of Words. It's a writing podcast for people in a hurry. They're like two or three minutes long at the most. Oh, nice. And it's kind of like a companion to this other book I'm rewriting. And so it's kind of like how Steinbeck wrote a journal along with his novels of writing like East of Eden.
00:17:09
Speaker
So it's kind of like that, but it's kind of tactical for other people who want to write, and sometimes I find that I'm putting more of my focus into that thing than actually doing the work that matters. But in a way you are doing the work that matters, because the work that matters is whatever gets you back to doing work at all, I think.
00:17:31
Speaker
So let's back up a little bit. I know that there is a little bit of a literary sort of seed in your upbringing. You know, your father had published a sci-fi novel, albeit in France, but like he had a propensity for writing and I imagine reading. So where did you get the bug for words?
00:17:53
Speaker
Well, my mom, we were pretty poor growing up, but we always had books. So for like Easter, she would hide books in the house instead of eggs. And we would find books to read because getting a new book was always kind of a big deal. And she read out loud to me every night and eventually we would alternate. And then eventually it was just me reading to her.
00:18:20
Speaker
So I credit my mom for my love of reading. Um, it was my escape growing up and I just sort of read voraciously. Um, and that's something you had to do kind of in secret too with your, your stepfather, his insecurities with intelligence and whatnot. He didn't want you to feel like you were one upping him by becoming well read. Yeah, I would have to hide books from him or,
00:18:51
Speaker
I would get in trouble for reading too much, which sounds so silly, but yeah, he did not like that Sarah and I, my sister, were well read or intelligent. It really bothered him.
00:19:06
Speaker
So, he also wrote a book, a very poorly written book in my opinion, that he self-published about his time in prison after he broke the Reagan's crystal eagle and went to prison for a year.
00:19:25
Speaker
So yeah, it was a strange mix of, um, he would like want my approval even as a young person of his book, but he didn't like how much I read. It was an unusual combination, but yeah, I read a lot. Um, yeah, my dad writing certainly was somewhat of a inspiration, although I didn't read much of his writing until I was older. He didn't share it often.
00:19:55
Speaker
I wrote a lot about my dad's childhood when I first started writing, so I'm sure that there's something there that maybe I just haven't fully made the connection to. But I didn't really start writing until I went to Sarah Lawrence, my undergrad, and it has a really strong
00:20:14
Speaker
writing component. And I took my first creative nonfiction class with Mary Morris, who was writing I love, I had actually read her book, nothing to declare before I had gone to school there. So that's really where sort of the writer and me took root.
00:20:32
Speaker
And why do you suppose that is? Why do you think you were drawn to, you know, to creative writing and in particular maybe this creative nonfiction class you took, you know, what was it about that that allowed you to take group? Well, I had just had cancer and taken a year off before I even went to college to go through treatment for Hodgkin's. So by the time I showed up at school,
00:21:02
Speaker
And I had a lot I needed to work out. I was older than everyone else in my year. I still had my hair growing out from having been through chemo. So I think I was looking for a place
00:21:15
Speaker
just sort of have a voice in an environment that felt safe and structured. I had done a lot of acting growing up and I did do acting at Sarah Lawrence as well. But I think I realized I needed more than one creative outlet to sort of process what had just happened. So creative nonfiction seemed like the route to go down.
00:21:38
Speaker
And what about writing and writing in the nonfiction vein? When you were really locked in, how did you feel? Where did you feel really engaged in that process? Where it just felt like this is something you wanted to take up?
00:21:59
Speaker
I think because it felt like a release, at 19 I hadn't yet experienced therapy and so it sort of became a therapeutic process for me. So it was like that early emotional release is probably what got me hooked.
00:22:15
Speaker
And then I think that my love of language and words, the sentence, sort of the building blocks of writing, sort of the emotional release combined with a, like a great love for how words sound probably is what I would say.
00:22:35
Speaker
push me to keep going with that. I also had an excellent teacher who is really encouraging, which goes a long way when you're an early writer. I actually just found the very first piece of creative nonfiction I wrote and some of those sentences ended up in my book because it was a
00:22:56
Speaker
Sorry about that. Oh, that's all right. That was a cat. We're just having all kinds of animal problems. Yeah. An adventurous cat. Sorry. I found, yeah, the very first piece of creative nonfiction I wrote for that class with Mary Morris and some of those sentences ended up in the book in my chapter about cancer. So yeah, I think it just hooked me really early on as a way to
00:23:26
Speaker
process my life and come to some sort of better understanding over, you know, why had things happened? How had they happened? What was my part in it? And certainly after getting sober, it was a way for me to process a lot of my shame around the way I had behaved when I was an addict.
00:23:52
Speaker
So I, yeah, I guess the emotional component, the emotional therapy of it all. I mean, I have to say though, that writing the memoir about Sarah's death was not necessarily therapeutic. It was very hard and it was very painful. It more felt like a demon I had to exercise than, or excise than a, um, a therapeutic process.
00:24:19
Speaker
The catharsis there has come now with people reading it and other addicts reaching out and knowing that, you know, there are connections being made over this work. So I don't necessarily think that all writing is therapeutic. Sometimes it's necessary and hard. And the therapeutic part comes later.
00:24:39
Speaker
When you had your class with Mary Morris and the fact that some of the sentences that you wrote then, 15 years later, roughly, still make it into this book, so of course there's inherent talent there. As you were looking to kind of find that early voice and you're dealing with
00:25:06
Speaker
the insecurities that most young artists and all artists deal with on some level. What can you point to that maybe put a little gas in your tank that your teacher was just like, oh, this is something you're doing really well, Rose. You already have a grasp of this. Double down on this. Can you point to anything like that?
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Mary Morris and another teacher and writer who I love, Nellie Riefler, both sort of told me that I was a writer really early on. And I remember Nellie Riefler saying, you know, I don't wish this on many people, but you are a writer. And I was like, Oh, okay. And yeah, I think I, um, I always work well under mentorship. I like being a mentor and I like being menteed. So I tend to.
00:25:57
Speaker
really blossom under those kinds of partnerships, those kinds of that kind of guidance at Sarah Lawrence, things are set up a little differently. You meet individually with your professor every other week for 30 minutes, no matter what class you're in. So you have a lot of individual time with each teacher. So Mary worked very hard to foster my writing and to encourage me
00:26:27
Speaker
And in fact, I saw her, I want to say it's about five years ago now, maybe longer. It's when her book, The Jazz Palace came out. I was in the Bay area and I was able to go to a reading of hers and we met up for dinner. And she looked at me and she was like, why aren't you writing? What's going on? And after that conversation, I decided I was going to apply to grad school.
00:26:52
Speaker
and kind of get back to the work. So I don't know that that little bit of encouragement or that a lot of encouragement from a single person can go a long way, I think. Oh, for sure. I remember when I was wrapping up my MFA, you know, 12 years ago at this point, my last semester mentor, Richard Todd, who is the he was like Tracy Kidd at a long time editor and he helped Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and
00:27:22
Speaker
uh... darcy fry countless countless others is uh... great shepherd of amazing writers and you know he just in a short email he just you know he was just witnessing how many rejections i was getting for this manuscript that i was sending out that was
00:27:37
Speaker
you know, still as of yet and probably deservedly so unpublished. But he just, because of my sort of stick-to-it-iveness and stubbornness, he just wrote something like, you know, there's just something about you that, you know, writers, writers who make it, you know, you have something that, you have something that writers who make it make it. Like, it was something of that nature.
00:28:02
Speaker
I still haven't made it and it's been 12 years since and it never feels like I ever will. But it was one of those things that it did put just enough gas in my tank to keep me going, go to the next thing. So it's so important to have those relationships.
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's critical. I mean, it's so easy to be discouraged in the writing world. I mean, I have countless rejections under my belt. My path to having a book published wasn't a straight line by any means. My husband is also a writer and we joke we're going to decoupage our coffee table with all our rejection letters because there's that many.
00:28:42
Speaker
But yeah, if you have that person that kind of consistently says, no, keep doing this, it means a great deal. Bryan Evanson was my mentor at CalArts, or my advisor, they call them mentors there.
Mentorship in Writing: Influences and Insights
00:28:54
Speaker
And not only am I a big fan of his work, he was incredibly encouraging throughout writing this book. And since, because I got really stuck partway through writing this book, it was,
00:29:08
Speaker
emotionally draining. I had never written a book before. I tend to write very short things. And I just felt like I wasn't a real writer. I avoided Brian for almost a whole semester. I was sure he was going to tell me how terrible my book was. Finally, he cornered me one day and he was like,
00:29:29
Speaker
let's just sit down and talk. And I told him how I was feeling and he was like, great. So you're just at the point in the writing process where you hate all your work. Like we all do that. I was like, really? And he was like, yeah, it's just totally normal. Just keep going. It's great. And I was like, okay. And just having someone else sort of
00:29:50
Speaker
give me permission to feel badly about the work and to know that a writer I so love feels badly about the work sometimes was incredibly freeing. So it's like those small moments. I mean, for all I know, Brian doesn't even remember that conversation, but you know, can mean a great deal to whoever you're mentoring.
00:30:10
Speaker
It's so important because when we see a book of let's just say Heart and Other Monsters and it shows up in our like in our laps and we're reading this and it just feels like it came out like this and it was always fully polished and it was always in this in this form and it was like wow it just appeared like this.
00:30:32
Speaker
Oh God, no. Exactly, exactly. And it just feels that way. And maybe someone who is not quite in that position or wants to get there, they don't see the ugly, they don't see that struggle. So to hear you say and have those words come at you that, yeah, you're at that point where you hate your own writing, you can't stand to be with it any longer. And to say that that's normal is very liberating for a lot of people to hear.
00:30:59
Speaker
Incredibly, I almost think it's a part of the process.
00:31:04
Speaker
it's just, you know, it allowed me to sort of set things down for a little bit. I find now if I'm in that state of hating everything I'm writing, I go read for a few days. And that really helps. Because generally, I get so excited by what someone else is doing, it makes me want to work on my own stuff. But yeah, once it was like, once he said that, I really let go of a lot of the shame around feeling that way. And just realize that for a great many writers, this is just part of how it is.
00:31:35
Speaker
Yeah, and how would you describe the rigor and tenacity that you have around your work, whether it's an essay or something book-length, or essays that will turn into book-length? What does hard work and rigor look like to you so you can push through these moments of incredible and crippling self-doubt when you are just hating what's coming out of your head?
00:32:00
Speaker
I tend to work in intense, like I won't write for two months and then I'll sit down and I'll write, you know, 30 pages in a week or something like that. So I wish
00:32:16
Speaker
I had a better daily writing practice because I think it's probably a healthier approach to the work. But I almost feel like I have to like put myself through the anxiety of like anticipating writing, not wanting to do it, worried it's not going to be as good as other things I have written. And then finally sitting down and just like spending a week on something or eight hours or whatever it is. So I sort of work in these odd spurts.
00:32:46
Speaker
But I work really well with structure. I work really well with deadlines. It's part of why I went to school, to write the book. Because it's just, it's so easy to put everything else before your work.
00:33:01
Speaker
especially when you haven't sold anything or you haven't published yet, because it feels like it's not real, even though it is, because every writer at one point started off with their work not being, quote, real or published, right? That's where we all begin.
00:33:19
Speaker
So yeah, I, I, I work well with structure. I ask for deadlines. If I'm working with an editor, I need sort of that outside push to get things done. And in terms of, and I, I generally do dumb things like, like there are four versions of the way Sarah died in the book and a smarter person would have probably taken some time.
00:33:48
Speaker
for their emotional well-being and spread those out over several months. I sat down and wrote those all in pretty much a day. I think because I just wanted to.
00:33:58
Speaker
get through some of the hardest, emotionally hardest writing. So I'll do sort of things I probably wouldn't advise other people to do. And my lovely spouse would come in and take care of me as I was sort of pushing myself to write these really emotionally intense scenes.
00:34:21
Speaker
So yeah, I'll kind of sit down and do them all in one sitting. Obviously, a lot of editing comes later, but in terms of like the initial output. Oh.
00:34:30
Speaker
or sort of go on these like binges of writing. And you said that the story of this book was, you know, not a straight line. So what was the early genesis of this book? And maybe what are some of those steps along the way that, you know, the story of how this came together? So what were some of those steps? So after my sister passed away, I didn't write for
00:35:00
Speaker
at least a year. And I had sort of a blog-ish type thing as one does. And this was probably 2013, early 2014? Yeah, yeah. I had some blog that nobody but like four friends read. So a year or so after her death, I finally sort of had to write. And so I wrote just a few things on grief that are actually versions of are now in the book.
00:35:31
Speaker
But it became clear to me that if I was going to be a writer, that this would be the first thing I'd have to write, that there was no way I could write any other book or any other story that was in my head until the story of my sister's life and death was put down.
00:35:49
Speaker
A few things happened. I had a meal with Mary Morris where she was like, what are you doing? You need to go be a writer. I went and saw Andrea Gibson, who's this amazing spoken word poet, perform. I have just a couple moments where I interacted with writers in a really special way that made me feel like, why aren't I giving myself the opportunity to do this?
00:36:17
Speaker
And so I started applying to grad schools knowing that I needed the structure of an institution if I wanted to write this book. And I took those few blog entries and I worked on them and turned them into a submission piece for my MFA admission. So it's what I got into school with.
00:36:44
Speaker
And pretty much from my first workshop, I was writing things that would end up in the book in some capacity. And they look very, very different than how they look now. And I just consistently worked on it my two years at CalArts with Brian as my mentor. And as you can tell in the book, I do quite a bit of research around
00:37:09
Speaker
these other crimes that are potentially connected to my sister's death. And I needed the institutional support there because it's really expensive to order court documents, trial transcripts, things like that. So I was lucky that I got a partial grant to support the researching part of the book. Yeah, because they're like thousands of dollars.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's very, very expensive. I know I have a hard time partying with them. They're like 25 pounds of trial transcripts in my closet right now. But I'm like, this is thousands of dollars. But I don't know what I would do with it again. So by the time I graduated, so this was my thesis. This book was my thesis. I had a full draft of the book by the time I graduated. So it was really just my focus for two years.
00:38:02
Speaker
Consistently and I feel like a lot of people going into school don't necessarily know what their thesis is gonna be Which is great because I think a lot of people discover in their first couple semesters What they want it to be and I was actually a little envious of people who kind of got to go with the flow in the regard But you know I came in with a really
00:38:22
Speaker
with intent, and I tried to utilize every class I was in to work towards that. So I was lucky that I left with a full manuscript that I was able to, you know, become agented and submit.
00:38:40
Speaker
And what was that process like for you in the journey of finding the right agent, the rejections and dealing with that, trying to find a home for this, a representation for it before a home. So what was that like? I think a lot of people would love to hear about that process. So I feel slightly strange talking about this because it's very different. I just want to say outright, this is a very unusual
00:39:09
Speaker
way slash timeline to get an agent. And that is a writer referred me to their agent, the amazing Matt McGowan at Francis Golden.
00:39:22
Speaker
and Matt read my manuscript and signed me. So that's not the typical route to getting an agent. There's normally a lot of querying involved. I had the privilege of skipping the pile because I had a referral to Matt. That's great. Well, you did the work that enabled that referral to actually carry some weight.
00:39:51
Speaker
That's a lovely way of looking at it. Thank you. Yes, I suppose so. But I was lucky in that Matt is the right agent for me.
00:40:04
Speaker
you know, is a great champion of sort of strange nonfiction. He, Francis Golden agency, you know, is a socially minded small agency. I really love their politics and the way that sort of like the way they ethically agent. So I was lucky that that the agent I was referred to happen to also be the right agent, which I don't think is always the case for everyone.
00:40:31
Speaker
It's so incredibly subjective. To this day, I've never had an agent despite my efforts. It's amazing. Some will like one aspect of the book and not the other. Then you submit to someone else and they like the other, but not the initial thing.
00:40:49
Speaker
Just the rigmarole to try to find someone who likes the whole thing and sometimes that comes early sometimes it comes late But it is it's just a matter of just sticking with it It's like there's someone out there who's gonna be your champion, but you it's it is a bit of a needle in a haystack thing sometimes
00:41:06
Speaker
Right. And they're getting so many manuscripts. So, you know, it's also like, is, is the, is it the agent that's even looking at your work? You don't always know if it's them or their assistant initially, depending on what part of the process you're in. Um, I, I do work helping people query agents now and it, yeah, it's just, you only need one yes if it's the right yes.
00:41:37
Speaker
And hopefully you'll find the right yes. And I, because I was referred to Matt, I'm sure that that allowed a little leeway with my work. In other words, like I'm pretty sure he was going to read a good portion of it because I was referred to him. Whereas I think most people it's like.
00:41:59
Speaker
the first 10 pages have to be perfect to get the agent to read everything. So I think, you know, there was definitely an amount of privilege there in that, you know, Matt stuck with the manuscript, especially the draft that I sent him, there was sort of a clunky chapter in the beginning that I ended up
00:42:23
Speaker
messing it with and moving around that he sort of read through and I'm not sure if he would if I hadn't been referred to him. And this book is, it's so raw and visceral and definitely emotionally fraught with just, and it's, I wonder how you got comfortable being uncomfortable while writing this book. I think a lot of that comes from being
00:42:53
Speaker
You know, having gone through the 12 step program and having gone through AA and being in circles where you talk about the most private part and the most shameful part of your life really openly and in a room that sort of exists without judgment is very freeing. So it was pretty, came naturally because I had been sober for so long by the time I started really writing this book.
00:43:24
Speaker
to sort of be that frank and that honest because I had sort of learned it by getting sober and having to take sort of an inventory of my life. A lot of the emotional reckoning had come much earlier so that when I finally sat down to write about it, it wasn't as fraught.
00:43:47
Speaker
You know, and I had done therapy for, for many, many years, which I highly recommend to any writer. Um, it makes it all much easier when you sit down to do the work. And it should be said, like you, you went through your 12 step program and was, or became sober when you were 24, right? Yes. Yeah. So I was young. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, I already had.
00:44:13
Speaker
eight or nine years of sobriety by the time I went to grad school. Why do you suppose sobriety maybe it stuck for you and was so hard for Sarah?
Sobriety and Family Dynamics
00:44:28
Speaker
I think it's two main things. I was never physically addicted to anything, so I was addicted to cocaine and alcohol, but I never had to go through withdrawals of any kind, which is a different ballgame when it comes to addiction.
00:44:46
Speaker
Um, so I think that was a big part of it. I, you know, I talk about in the book that I'm, I'm, I say it's an allergy, but I can't really take opiates of any kind. Even if I have a surgery, I throw up a lot. And it's like that one weird genetic physical component is really all that separated Sarah and I in terms of our addictions. I'm sure if I could have taken opiates without getting sick, I would have. And, you know, it may have been a very different story.
00:45:17
Speaker
So I think that that was a big difference between us. The other thing was I didn't really start drinking until I was
00:45:26
Speaker
19 or 20 sort of after I had had cancer. So I had already learned quite a bit of life skills because I had gone through cancer treatment and lived on my own for a while. I had sort of a system to go back to when I got sober four years later. Sarah was only 15 when she started using so she didn't
00:45:53
Speaker
have any of those skills to return to in the year that she did get sober in her early 20s. Things were really hard for her. Like it was really hard for her to get a job. It was hard for her to cook. It was, it was like she was learning how to be an adult and getting sober at the same time. And I think that that ultimately
00:46:18
Speaker
From what she expressed me at the time, it made her feel like a failure, which that feeling is one of the easiest ways to get back into using and drinking again. Oh, and then having your own father say that she was such a disappointment to him too. Absolutely. That's an insidious idea that just stuck with her. Absolutely. Yeah, she was never really able to shake that.
00:46:44
Speaker
And the other big difference is that I had therapy post cancer, and Sarah had never really engaged with the therapeutic process much. So it was like I had multiple, what's the word I'm looking for? I had multiple systems in place to help me when I got sober. So it was like I had AA and therapy and life skills. And
00:47:14
Speaker
Sarah didn't have all that. When you come across a statistic like addiction treatment is a $35 billion industry in the United States, what goes through your mind when you read a stat like that?
00:47:30
Speaker
Oh, it makes me really angry. Yeah, it's like we failed institutionally in this country and in a lot of other countries to provide safe and regulated treatment centers for addicts. It's incredibly expensive to get clean and even expensive treatment centers aren't necessarily
00:47:59
Speaker
No, they're not. There is no standard of care for a rehab center. A lot of times where they fall short is providing mental health treatment alongside drug rehabilitation.
00:48:21
Speaker
It makes me enraged actually because I feel like, you know, Sarah went to two rehabs in her life. Um, I talk about it in the book one, I think cross my mom on a little under $10,000 and there was very little.
00:48:46
Speaker
She was able to get away with a lot there. She snuck in a phone, she snuck in drugs. There was not a lot of structure in place to sort of provide safe and healthy boundaries for that people there. And she used the day she got out. And then the second place she was in, which was considerably cheaper,
00:49:10
Speaker
Ended up kicking her out because she showered with another girl There so she didn't last very long there But you know the places that I looked at that I thought oh this could help Sarah were $40,000 for 30 days and it's
00:49:32
Speaker
incredible to me that anyone can justify charging someone trying to get sober that much. Um, there are people making a great deal of money off of other people suffering. Yeah. Yeah. There there's that whole
The Privilege of Sobriety and Treatment Costs
00:49:50
Speaker
component. And then there's just like, well, it's almost turning sobriety and trying to get healthy and health care into a privilege instead of a right, which is just disgusting.
00:50:01
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, there's like really interesting articles that have been written about
00:50:11
Speaker
Essentially there's a complicated connection between certain rehab facilities and halfway houses and sober living homes and urine tests. And sort of like the value of urine is shocking. There's a great, I think if you Google like Florida, of course.
00:50:35
Speaker
Florida rehab urine you'll read some great articles that go into more detail about it But it's very clear that the priority isn't actually health and sobriety like they make more money if you relapse Because you come back
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's so it's so gross. Just it's like almost so American that, you know, there's a way to make a buck off of people's addictions. And you know what, you know, fingers crossed behind their back. Hopefully they'll be back. And it's right. It's so it's just so gross. It's so gross.
00:51:12
Speaker
Well, you know, when we talk about defunding the police, which isn't, you know, getting rid of police, but I think it's because so many resources are going towards a police force that could go towards things like, you know, regulated mental health and rehab facilities, which would actually deal with a lot of the issues that police are being called out for.
00:51:38
Speaker
if they actually had a place to go and get better and get help, we wouldn't be so reliant on this police force. Yeah, and here in Oregon, and specifically in Lane County, where I am in Eugene, recently there was another tax levy to help subsidize the community college, which is a great college, but it's like a $121 million levy over a dozen years or whatever.
00:52:07
Speaker
And it's a monstrous thing, and people love the college, and it's great. It's great for continuing ed. It's great for people to get two-year associates and transfer, et cetera. It's great. But such a problem in Oregon is basically K through third grade. And it's like, what would that money do to that age group if you could funnel money there?
00:52:29
Speaker
then the graduation rates will be I have to assume exponentially higher we can actually get these kids up to a third to fifth grade reading level and then they can feed into the higher education ranks with greater efficacy instead of you know hoping that you top load it but actually it really starts when they're really little kids and that's where you know you just want to reallocate some of these things but
00:52:55
Speaker
I agree with you. I mean, K through third, you're learning so many foundational skills that can carry you through your later education. If you don't have them, if you don't have, you know, basic reading, writing, and math skills, it becomes so much harder later in life to pick those up. And it becomes much harder to even get through high school if you don't have a good K through third.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's like it's crazy stack the deck against them and then it's like constantly playing catch up and then hopefully you get caught up and then it tends to and it's just the way it is that the more more privileged people are able to afford to keep pace and then they Displace everyone that couldn't and it's just right that's and then we see the cycle continue. It's just yeah, it's maddening Yeah, it's very frustrating
00:53:49
Speaker
You know, there's a part in the book, too, to bring it back to your book. I mean, I think, in a way, this is kind of thematically tied to your book. But there's this great moment where your mother said, she goes, what I'm trying to say is that you don't have to write the story of her death, meaning your sister's death. Her story isn't your story. You don't have to make it yours. You can live your life. Her death doesn't have to take over everything. When she said that, how did you process that?
00:54:22
Speaker
It was surprising to hear my mom say that, mainly because it's really hard for her to talk about Sarah, so anytime she brings it up on her own, I'm always surprised.
00:54:40
Speaker
But it was very insightful at that time when she said that I was in Humboldt County where we're from, and I was mainly tutoring, doing a little teaching at a charter school. And I was really stuck. I had sort of let the grief of losing Sarah inhabit me so fully that I wasn't really moving forward with my life.
00:55:07
Speaker
So I mean the irony being, of course, that I left to write the story of Sarah's death, which is what allowed me to move forward. But it was a good wake up call to remember that I am still here and I am still alive. And just because Sarah isn't
00:55:29
Speaker
doesn't mean that I shouldn't try to have a good life. So yeah, it was an important conversation for me. Again, you like don't know if the other person even really remembers it, right? Like they say things you never know what are going to be what's going to be important to somebody else. But yeah, for me, it was
00:55:52
Speaker
a really good, loving reminder to not let Sarah's death ruin my life.
00:56:02
Speaker
And when you were writing the book too, it's, you know, as we've touched upon, it's very, you know, um, you know, raw and visceral. There's a lot of, uh, just a lot of, a lot of stuff that, that you went through personally, that you're very honest and forthright about in the book too. How did you learn to be, to be fearless and to just let this story rip and not hold back?
00:56:30
Speaker
Well, some of it was, if I was willing to talk about Sarah's drug addiction and Sarah's sex life and Sarah's anger issues, I had to be willing to talk about mine. Like, it's not fair to just show, you know, her
00:56:50
Speaker
interactions with all those things like I needed to be it felt really dishonest to not sort of show my own hand as well and it felt really unethical to sort of paint her as you know the person who dealt with all these issues and not
00:57:06
Speaker
show my own. And again, like, you know, I had, I had processed a lot of this stuff in AA. So it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to sort of talk about past stuff, because I have tried to make amends and
00:57:22
Speaker
And I think relatively a better person than I once when I was using So so much of it had happened so long ago That it felt okay to write about it. I mean, I certainly didn't write about everything right like a memoir is still a story We still make choices as to what we show and what we don't show So it was still the stuff I was comfortable sharing and I
00:57:49
Speaker
In terms of what I showed of Sarah's life, in her one year of being sober, she did return to her high school and give a talk on her addiction that she allowed to be recorded and shared. And so I sort of used that as a guideline for what she would be comfortable with me revealing about her life because she was very open and forthright about sort of what she had been through with her addiction.
00:58:18
Speaker
So I think within that raw honesty, there's still quite a bit of curating happening for Sarah's privacy and for the sake of the story.
00:58:30
Speaker
And how did you arrive at the way you structured the book and its fragmented nature and how it deals with chronology and how it's, you know, this memoir part, kind of a mystery-ish, true crime-ish thing, as you're trying to piece things together. You know, how did you arrive at that?
00:58:51
Speaker
Oh my, so many, so many drafts. I took a trick from Mary Morris and slightly modified it. And essentially what I did is I had different, this is like a very practical explanation. So I don't know if this is at all helpful, but I took sort of different timelines. And then I had these things I called interrupters, which in the book are like,
00:59:17
Speaker
the death scenes and these newspaper articles, the sort of things that existed outside of certain timelines I was working in.
Memoir Structuring and Editorial Collaboration
00:59:26
Speaker
And I had different colors for everything. And I wrote chapter names, and all of these things. And I put it on a cork board. So I was able to like really visualize the pacing of the book. And then from there, it was a lot of rearranging many times over.
00:59:45
Speaker
when I finally, so that was even before it made its way to an editor. By the time it got to Kelly Garnett, my amazing editor at Bloomsbury, we did a lot of restructuring together as well, which culminated in her reading the entire book out loud to me over the phone over the course of three days, where we really like, you could hear when something was out of place, which I know may sound strange, but it was like,
01:00:14
Speaker
somehow that those magical three days of hearing my entire book read out loud, we were able to sort of make those those final little structural changes that needed to be made. And and you know, it's still now like I look at the book and I'm like,
01:00:29
Speaker
I could move that chapter around. Um, so because it isn't a traditionally structured book, I think, you know, there are infinite number of ways I could have put it together, but I'm, I'm happy with how it, how it ended up. But the answer is it was a lot of moving stuff around again and again and again to try to find the right balance. And, you know, I, I suspect that someone like a Leslie Jamison who wrote, you know, her, I suspect you've probably read the recovering, right?
01:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I suspect that a book of that nature really helps people who are struggling with addiction. And you said that the cathartic moment wasn't the writing of this book, but starting to hear the reaction of people who might be in recovery or hoping to consider recovery and get sober. So what has that experience been like, having this book being kind of a vessel and maybe a lead domino for people to get the help that they want?
01:01:31
Speaker
I mean, that part's amazing. It's been interesting because it's not just people who are addicts, which obviously is one of the audiences I was writing for, but also family members of addicts. I've had a couple people reach out to talk about, to tell me that it helped them reframe their thinking around addiction and have reached out to family members who either are or were addicts.
01:02:00
Speaker
which of course should always be done safely and with boundaries. So that part has been really lovely too. I think that addiction is so stigmatized in this country. My sister was referred to as a junkie, which she was, but she was also a human being outside of her drug addiction. So it's been really lovely and
01:02:28
Speaker
as cheesy as it is heartwarming to see that other people are perhaps changing their perception of how they view people who are struggling with drug addiction.
01:02:37
Speaker
yes i think it is we have such a massive homeless problem here in lane county in the ugene area and it's a lot of it is a mental health and drug addiction and you know so many of these people that they don't want to be addicts but you get to a point where it's just it's what consumes it's just what consumes them and then it's hard to it's just hard to pull your nose up from that so it's yeah your your books an incredible service to that because it's
01:03:06
Speaker
Addicts don't want to be addicts. I have to assume that. Not knowing any, but I have to assume that that's the case. It just gets overwhelming and they get taken over. No, I don't know a single addict who's like, great, I could do this forever. Yeah, this is awesome. It's a coping mechanism. It's a terrible, terrible coping mechanism that can kill you.
01:03:31
Speaker
Unfortunately, it's also a coping mechanism that has no resources really available other than AA, which is I think a great resource, but also not for everyone to get help with. And yeah, I mean, just going back to our earlier conversation, if we had more mental health and more drug rehabilitation centers, addicts would use them. They would not be empty.
01:04:02
Speaker
Yeah, and what we find around around here is it there is the opioid addictions and then the slot like the what that does the lethargy of that and then a lot of people are taking meth to get the upper yeah come up from the opioid and then it's just this terrible cycle like we had a you know an epidemiologist in for the editorial board at a newspaper I work at before the board was
01:04:28
Speaker
subsequently dissolved but it was just like that's the cycle you know it's lethargy from this but then meth to keep back up because being on the streets is so stressful it's like you need to be alert but you also want this high but you need this to overcome that and it's just this nasty cycle and it's really hard to get out of on your own I mean physical withdrawal for those that haven't been through it and I haven't been through it I've watched my sister go through it it looks it's very painful it is physically
01:05:00
Speaker
Terrible to go through and I think most people who aren't addicts or haven't experienced that kind of thing Can be dismissive of the great amount of physical and mental strength that takes to even take those first few steps of detoxing Yeah, there's such an ethos in this country of like well if you you know if you want to get better Just just shut up and bite your you know just do yeah, just do it Yeah
01:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, like it's like it's it's as easy as flipping a switch like it's a choice like it's it's not quite that black and white It's not that black and white at all. I mean, I think if I can't tell you how many times Sarah told me
01:05:45
Speaker
I wish I could just be sober. Like I just wish I could wake up one day and that's how it would be. But it's so much more complicated than that, especially because it is, you know, look, the reason why people start using drugs other than to have fun is because they're generally trying to cope with something or to forget something or to numb a feeling. And
01:06:09
Speaker
The problem is is the more drugs you use The more typically like the more shame you feel the more trauma you experience The more feelings you want to numb so it's like this awful cycle of you know, you take something to not feel shame or pain or fear and then You experience more shame and pain and fear so you have to take more drugs and that's really really hard to
01:06:38
Speaker
move away from, especially given how few resources there are. I think it's honestly like a miracle anyone gets sober. Anytime I meet someone, I just think it's one of the hardest things anyone can do.
01:06:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well, your book is great. It's an amazing piece of storytelling. And I imagine just a great service to the people that we were just kind of people who want to be sober and might be struggling with addiction and then addiction adjacent people who are in those circles. So it's a wonderful book and a wonderful service. And I just need to commend you for a job well done and thank you for the work. Thank you so much.
01:07:26
Speaker
And where can people get more familiar with you and your work? And of course, you know, buy this book.
01:07:34
Speaker
You can go to my website, Rose Anderson writes, and I'm Danish, so my last name is spelled A-N-D-R-S-E-N, which confuses many people. And you can find all my writing there, and you can find a link to buy the book. But I highly recommend using Bookshop, which supports indie booksellers, or going directly to your independent bookstore if you so happen to want to order the book. Perfect. And what's your, like, where you like to hang out, social media wise?
01:08:04
Speaker
I'm generally on Twitter, so just at Rose Anderson you can find me. I'm mostly talking about other writers I like, and I also have an Instagram where my adorable Boston Terrier and my cat show up. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for carving out the time, Rose. This was wonderful, and best of luck with the book, and I look forward to having conversations like this down the road with you as more of your work comes out. Anytime. Thank you so much for having me.
01:08:35
Speaker
it was that. I got a little fired up there at the end. I can't help that sometimes, but what are you going to do? Thanks to Rose and thanks to Scrivener for the support. That's great. Keep the conversation going on social media and head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly newsletter.
01:08:54
Speaker
raffle off books, give reading recommendations, and share articles and news from what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. First of the month, no spam, can't beat it. And also make sure to stay tuned for an episode of Casualty of Words coming up in like five seconds. But in the meantime, a little birdie once told me that if you can do interview, see ya!
01:09:26
Speaker
Hey, can I just do your words? I'm coming at you hot. This is a writing podcast for people in a hurry and this one is titled Riff Tapes. During the making of several Metallica records, James Hetfield, lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, founding member of the band, puts riffs on tapes he might use for a new album. He also might not use them.
01:09:51
Speaker
Maybe a piece from one riff makes it to one song, or maybe the entire thing makes it into one song. The fact is he's collecting string. And what's kind of cool is some of the box sets they have for some of their older records, they throw in these riff tapes so you can kind of hear the seeds of other songs that would become songs. It's pretty neat.
01:10:09
Speaker
What might that look like for you? What riff tapes can you make? Is there a cool word you want to thread into a piece? Is there a theme you're looking to explore? Did you turn a wicked good phrase but you don't know how to use it yet?
01:10:26
Speaker
put it on a riff tape then start knocking it around collecting enough riffs you know if you collect enough riffs you might have a new essay on your hands and if you get enough essays you might have what I like to call a new album all right that's it thank you subscribe give it a rating share with your friends I will come back at you maybe tomorrow maybe Monday have a great day