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Episode 262: Passion + Desperation = Bob Welch
187 Plays3 years ago
"I. Will. Write. This. Book. There's no turning back," says Bob Welch, author of Saving My Enemy, and two dozen other books.
We dig into the writing process and the passion and desperation that drives him.
Support for The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is provided by:
West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing and HippoCamp21 (CNFPod21 to save $50!).
Social media: @CNFPod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Chance Encounter with Bob Welch
00:00:03
Speaker
A funny thing happened while hiking out on the Oregon coast several weeks ago at this point, getting my hike on, walking with Hank and the wife who doesn't listen to the podcast, and I come across a couple of dudes coming down as we're going up.
00:00:17
Speaker
And sure enough, when you're in this racket long enough, you start to recognize people. And I made eye contact with a guy who commented on my Red Sox hat. And I was like, no ma for life. And I said, you're Bob Welch, right? And he was like, yeah, how do you know?
00:00:35
Speaker
And I explained that we had been in touch a year before to be on this podcast when his book, The Wizard of Oz, came out about Dick Fosbury, the Fosbury flop fame, Oregonian. He had mailed me, well, Bob had mailed me a copy of this book, signed it and everything, but we never got around to doing the pod thing.
00:00:59
Speaker
But I knew he had a new book out because Twitter and because Bob Welch is prolific AF. And the book is called Saving My Enemy, how two World War II soldiers fought against each other and later forged a friendship that saved their lives. It's by Regneri History. It's the publisher, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, Regneri, Regneri.
Introduction to Creative Non-Fiction Podcast
00:01:24
Speaker
I don't know. So I said I'll send you an email, send me that book PDF, and we'll hook up the mics. And we did. I will write this book. There's no turning back. No, there isn't CNF-ers. Let's hit it.
00:01:46
Speaker
Now in year 9, year 9, 3rd grader. C&F bought as a 3rd grader, if you will. Creative Non-Fiction podcast, you know it's the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Bob Welch is an Oregon native, lives in Eugene, though we still record it remotely.
00:02:06
Speaker
It's a former columnist, award-winning columnist, revered columnist for the Register Guard newspaper in its glory days, and is the author of two dozen books or so? ABO, how many of you written? One. Oh, let me guess, you at least chose a subject of mass appeal, right? Sports racing. What year is this, 1930?
00:02:42
Speaker
Now in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student to faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Recent CNF faculty include Brandon Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones and CNF pod alum Sarah Einstein. There's also fiction and poetry tracks and recent faculty include Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinta Townsend as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple.
00:02:56
Speaker
You're funny, inner critic. You know where to find me.
00:03:08
Speaker
No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan, right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit mfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment. And keep the conversation going on social media, at CNF Pod, and at Brendan O'Mara. And if you're feeling kind, really consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Speaker
Goes a long way towards validating the enterprise for the wayward CNF-er. The IG page is still in the underage court of appeals. Don't know what it's about, I'm gonna appeal again. We'll see. So we're doing our promotion at Brendan O'Mara on Instagram and Twitter. Twitter's at CNFpod, it's okay, over there. By all means, hook up the show, link up to the show, and digital fist bumps for you.
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Speaker
Also consider becoming a member of the Patreon page as I'm putting together the last legs of the next issue of the audio magazine. Issue 1, free for all in the podcast feed, but issue 2 and beyond are exclusive to the Patreon community.
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Speaker
Lots of cool goodies, as well as the knowledge that you're supporting writers in the CNFing community. You won't want to miss this one, CNFers. It's coming out in less than two weeks. The theme is summer. I'm in a mild panic as I get the essays
Hiking and Writing: Parallels and Challenges
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Speaker
and poems in the can, tracked and packaged.
00:04:37
Speaker
That MP3 file will go out only to the Patreon game, so for $2 a month of support you get the magazine and a chance to ask questions of guests on the show. There are other tiers and other goodies as well, so give it a shot.
00:04:53
Speaker
And from now until August, I plan on giving the loudest of shout outs to Hippo Camp 2021. It's back in Lancaster, uh, Lancaster, Lancaster, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Registration is open. Conference for creative nonfiction writers. Marion Winnick will be this year's keynote speaker. I'll be delivering a podcast theme talked. I can't speak highly enough for this conference. There are four scholarships and six full awards open until June 15th, including writers of color and first time attendee scholarships.
00:05:23
Speaker
You know, there's also a debut CNF author panel featuring Lily Danziger. Remember her. Greg Mania, Carol Smith, and Janine Millett. August 13th to the 15th. You dig? Use the promo code CNFPOD21 to get $50 off your registration fee. You can buy me a beer with the savings or some books, but maybe a beer.
00:05:51
Speaker
And listen, you've heard me say that if you want to get in shape, you hire a personal trainer. Listen, you know the fundamentals of how to eat and exercise properly. You hire a trainer to hold you accountable, to put you through the paces and see what you can't see. That's where I come in. Well, regarding your writing, of course, I can't be held accountable for your physical condition, but your writing condition on the other hand, that's where I come in. So if you're ready to level up, I'd be honored and thrilled to help you
00:06:20
Speaker
Get yourself in your writing, in your book essay or book proposal, where it needs to go. Email me and we'll start a dialogue. Talk pricing. Aight? Lastly, this show is brought to you by the word a mesmeric adjective, produced by mesmerism, hypnotic, compelling, fascinating, mesmeric.
00:06:43
Speaker
Okay, here's my conversation with Bob Welch. Great stuff on writing. And did John Krakauer really steal Bob's girlfriend? Stay with us. Hoo!
00:07:07
Speaker
Heading up on the PCT in about two weeks time, right? Exactly. Yeah. A week from Monday, leave for 460 miles, a little bit longer than the state of Oregon, going from the San Gabriel Mountains, northeast of LA, up to the 14,500 foot level of Mount Whitney.
00:07:30
Speaker
tallest point, highest point in the lower 48. So that will get us within about 200 miles of finishing the whole PCT. Wow. And is this like, have you done the entire thing before or just sections? No, we've, we've, we've been working on it. This is our 10th summer. Uh, my, my book, uh, early on I decided to name the book seven summers cause I, you know, I liked the alliteration of course.
00:07:56
Speaker
And, uh, but then life gets in the way and death, death actually gets in the way. We had a brother-in-law die on the day we left, um, back home. Uh, one year COVID has cost us one year, uh, fires cost us one year and, uh, trail closures cost us another year. So we're on our 10th summer and hope, hoping to get it done 600 miles, a little more than 600 miles to go.
00:08:23
Speaker
Wow. And so what kind of training do you do to get in shape for such a thing? Well, kind of a combination of swimming and, uh, butte, butte, uh, uh, hiking. You, you saw me on near the top of Cape Perpetua a couple of months ago. Um, when I ride over in your hots, we have a cabin over there. So I spend a lot of time in yachts riding it. And then in the afternoons I zip up and do a Perpetua time or two and, uh,
00:08:51
Speaker
Um, and then I do Spencer Butte and Mount Pisgah and I swim at Amazon pool as much as I can. So, uh, a little bit of, uh, I mean, you could never really get in shape when you're hiking 18 to 20 miles a day, swimming in an hour at Amazon, isn't going to really cut it, but, but it does sort of take the, it does sort of take the pain away that
00:09:16
Speaker
first week. The first week can be pretty brutal. But these young kids that comprise most of the folks on the PCT, I always get the feel that they go to a party and say, hey, let's hike the PCT. Sounds cool. Let's leave in the morning. And they do it. And my brother-in-law
00:09:36
Speaker
who is an equally old fart like me, we really do try to train. Discipline is our only advantage over the young people. Discipline and a willingness to get up at 4 or 4.30 a.m. while they're all sleeping in. That really sounds like the writer's discipline too, doesn't it?
00:09:58
Speaker
Well, you know, I am a big, I'm a proponent. I think that writing is both art and science and sort of feel and discipline, I guess. And so, yeah, I've, in the past, you know, when I worked as a columnist at the Register Guard back in the early 2000s, I mean, I stumbled across this story about the first nurse to die after the landings at Normandy in World War II. And I was so
00:10:27
Speaker
passionate about telling the story, but, but I had a 50 hour a week job. And so, uh, I just taught myself to get up at four 30 in the morning and be a, an author until eight AM. And then I'd rush off and, uh, be a columnist during the day and come home and, and spend a little time with my wife and then in the evening, become an author again. And, and you just sort of figure out what you have to do to get it done. You divide up how much time you have.
00:10:56
Speaker
how many words you can write per day. And so I think I do tend to the discipline side and the setting goal side and the organized side, but I also love the, oh, I don't know. I just love the freedom to just go where the muse takes me. And so, you know, I think I have both sides of the brain there, you know, the discipline and the art side and the plan well ahead side and the spontaneous side.
00:11:27
Speaker
I've been talking to a lot of people about this idea of depth of commitment, and it stemmed from a blog post that I read from Steven Pressfield, the author of War of Art, and several novels and a few other sort of self-help-y inspirational books for writers and creatives. Yeah, I've heard of him.
00:11:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's really smart, really inspiring and kind of a testament to the depth of commitment but also playing the long game because he's definitely a late bloomer in terms of being a writer and a prominent writer. But it sounds like you like the fact that you would get up that early and do that kind of work before the day job and then do it afterwards. It's like you have a tremendous depth of commitment to the craft of writing. So how have you forged that over the years?
00:12:12
Speaker
What is it about writing that it has lent itself to such a depth of commitment for you? I think the equation, Brendan, is passion plus desperation, near as I can say. I mean, when I was in fifth grade,
00:12:29
Speaker
And it was career day in Corvallis. You could go hang out with a guy at the grocery store if you wanted to work at the grocery store, or go hang out at the school if you wanted to be a teacher. And I went and interviewed the Oregon State basketball coach. I wanted to be a reporter. I wanted to be a writer. So it's the only thing I've known how to do. And I'm just passionate. I have this insatiable curiosity. And when I get my mind around a story,
00:12:59
Speaker
I just want to find out I want to become an expert on the story. I had an old journalism professor who used to say that I was, I was more detective than writer.
00:13:09
Speaker
Sometimes I will so over-research a story. I'm working on a book now that I wrote 143,000 words for what's going to be probably a 90,000-word book. And it's just because I felt obligated to use information from over 100 books that I'd been through and nearly 50 interviews I'd done.
00:13:34
Speaker
So I think that that's the passion part of it. And the desperation part of it is, and I believe in desperation. I have this sort of, uh, uh, theory that when we're backs, when our backs are against the wall, when, when there's no possible way we can do something, that's when we can do something that's, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt said, you, you must do the thing you cannot do.
00:14:01
Speaker
It's something that Dick Fosbury, when I wrote about in The Wizard of Faws, the guy that invented the backwards over the high jump bar, high jump style. He was desperate to belong. He's a kid in Medford, Oregon in the early 60s. He's one of the worst high jumpers in the state of Oregon. And he's lost his brother. He's died tragically in a bike accident where Dick was with him.
00:14:28
Speaker
His parents have divorced. He's kind of an orphan and he's looking desperately for a place to belong. And the only place that really feels good to him is the track team, but he can only stay on the track team if he keeps jumping higher and higher. And he's not jumping very high. He's, he's barely clearing heights that a lot of junior high jumpers are jumping. And so I contend in the Wizard of Faws that he, out of desperation, he willed himself to think up this new style.
00:14:58
Speaker
and use it because again, it was the one thing that could keep him where he needed to be and that is part of that team, part of the tribe, part of this sense of belonging.
00:15:11
Speaker
And you, in an email to me, you said that of all the, you know, you've written two dozen books or whatever it is, and Wizard of Faws was the most fun you ever had writing. And that was one of your more recent books. So, you know, what was it about writing and reporting and researching that book in particular that really stands out in your, in the catalog of all the books you've written?
00:15:35
Speaker
That's a great question. I think it was a combination of time and time, place, and circumstances. The time, the 60s, it's just to me, you're a young person, so you don't remember the 60s. But for me, that was kind of my coming of age time. I graduated from high school in 72. So the time, what went on there, this wasn't a story just about Dick Fosbury. It was a story that almost was a product of the times.
Dick Fosbury's High Jump Innovations
00:16:04
Speaker
I sort of argued that this could only have happened in the 1960s, a guy who literally turned his back on the establishment. I mean, this could only happen in the 60s. It was Vietnam. He was close to being drafted because he had dropped out. His grades weren't high enough at Oregon State, and he was losing his deferment. It was Black rights. It was Tommy Smith and John Carlos holding their fists.
00:16:33
Speaker
love fists up at Mexico City to protest racism, racial discrimination, and all of these things culminated in in Fosbury's five-year climb to fame. Even after he won the gold medal in 68, he wound up on the Oregon State campus being one of the few white athletes
00:16:55
Speaker
who stood to defend a black football player who had been kicked off the Oregon State team for having the very slightest of mustaches. And the Black Student Union walked off campus, and I don't know, 100 some athletes signed a petition backing the football coach. And Fosbury dared to stand up for Fred Milton, the football player, and said, this is wrong.
00:17:20
Speaker
And so time and then the other thing was place. I grew up in Corvallis. I was 13 when I first saw Dick Fosbury jump two and a half mile bike ride from my house. We used to go over to Bell Field at Oregon State and jump on the same foam pit that he had jumped on the previous day on Sunday afternoons. We would climb the fence and high jump, sometimes bring in our own bamboo bars.
00:17:48
Speaker
So this was a play, I understood Corvallis and when he was talking about being in a pack eight meet in Eugene, I could see Hayward Field. And the other special place was Echo Summit, California, 7,500 feet up in the El Dorado National Forest in the High Sierra where Bill Bowerman, the former U of O track and field coach and head of the Olympic
00:18:18
Speaker
team at that time, he decided to put the Olympic trial track up in the woods to replicate the elevation of Mexico City. And so place was such a big part of all this, that I had a connection to Fosbury right there in Corvallis that I knew Eugene. And I was just fascinated by Echo Summit in 1980 when my wife and I were coming back from a vacation in California. Instead of coming up I-5, I insisted we come up
00:18:48
Speaker
the east side of the Sierra Nevada, because I had to go to Tahoe. I had to see where the Olympic trials had been because as a kid, I'd had these Sports Illustrated photos in my bedroom. My bedroom was literally wallpapered with color Sports Illustrated photos, one of which was a double truck of Jim Ryan running through the forest at Echo Summit. And I was just infatuated with this place. So the idea that
00:19:16
Speaker
50 years later, I got to stand at that spot with Dick Fosbury in that forest to see where he had actually jumped. It was amazing. So time, place, and then circumstance. The fact that here's a kid who just invented a better mouse trap. He turned the world on its ear. He basically
00:19:37
Speaker
For all of those teachers who were saying, you've got to do it this way, Dick Fosbury was basically politely spitting in their face and saying, no, you don't. You can color outside of the box. You can be Harold in the purple crayon. You can create your own reality. And the guy went on not only to win a gold medal, but to revolutionize the high jump event. So time, place, and circumstance, what he actually did, it all kind of
00:20:07
Speaker
It comes together and that's what made this story so fun.
00:20:12
Speaker
That's amazing. And as someone, like you said, you had Sports Illustrated images on your wall. You know, Dick Fosbury is practically in your backyard, you know, growing up and you see, you see this thing, you get to write about him. But also in the late eighties, you know, I think you wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated about Fosbury. So that must have been pretty special to be able to write a piece for this such an iconic magazine at the time. And, you know, given your relationship to that magazine, right?
00:20:39
Speaker
You hit it on the head, my friend. My dream in life was to be published in Sports Illustrated. I didn't care what I did. I knew I'd had no desire to move back to New York and work for Sports Illustrated, nor was I probably good enough to do that. But I did have a dream of being published in Sports Illustrated. I got a letter to the editor in the early 80s, but somehow I got the idea on the 20-year anniversary of
00:21:07
Speaker
Mexico City would be 1988 that'd be a great they used to have a thing called looking a section in the back of the magazine that was called looking back or yesterday I can't remember which it was but anyway it was a historic look and I said this is perfect you got a historic look you got 20 year anniversary and you've just got there's just a fascination with Fosbury because he was he was simply unique
00:21:30
Speaker
So I, I sent a query letter and I got a very positive response and, and they wanted me to do this story. And I was just stoked. I remember it was going to pay. I've been paid like $35 to, to write a, a, a story for skim about skimboarding in Oregon coast magazine, $35 right. Sports Illustrated was paying me $1,250 for this story. Plus I remember a $250 kill fee. Even if they didn't use it, they were going to pay me 250.
00:22:00
Speaker
But of course, the money was secondary. I just wanted to see my byline in Sports Illustrated. So I worked on this for months. I was working at the Journal of America newspaper up in Bellevue, Washington at the time, worked on it for months, had two or three editors go over it, reworked it, reworked it, sent it in, and two weeks later, sorry, a form letter, you know, doesn't meet our needs.
00:22:25
Speaker
And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. I was, I was literally crushed. I mean, I can remember my then perhaps, uh, seven or eight year old, older son, like patting me on the back of that. I was literally weeping because I, this was so important to me. I mean, this was, and so I got on the phone the next day and I, and I wound up talking to somebody who basically the first person said, Hey, you don't,
00:22:51
Speaker
You just, you know, if that's what the editor said, that's what she said. And that's, that's that, but I wound up talking to her and basically she said, you could try rewriting it, but I wouldn't get your hopes up. So I rewrote it. And what I did was this is strange. I kind of dumbed it down. I think I tried so hard to write like a sports illustrated writer.
00:23:11
Speaker
I think I tried to be cute and fancy and use these amazing metaphors and similes. Basically, I neutered the article and turned it into what sounded to me almost like an associated press wire story and they accepted it and they ran it.
00:23:29
Speaker
That's incredible. I've been guilty of sometimes trying to be over stylized with writing, much to the detriment of the story. And it wasn't until a very good editor that I work with on longer pieces, he's like,
00:23:46
Speaker
Brendan, don't get all writerly on me. And he's just like, just tell the story, let the story do the heavy lifting. And every time I think of it in terms of like, like that, like I can get the style out in the first draft, but I got to comb through it and just be like surrender to the story. And that's ultimately what elevates it. And I imagine that's what happened to this piece on press. I love that phrase and the alliteration surrender to the story. That's, that's well put. I've told, I, I,
00:24:14
Speaker
teach writers workshops and I often tell people, trust the story. Don't try too hard. Just let the story lead. I had an editor at the register guard, Kevin Miller, and he was the best I've ever worked with who could just find and keep you on track in terms of the essence of a story.
00:24:38
Speaker
He would sometimes refer to bric-a-brac, you know, that you would, he'd say something like, gosh, Welsh, I love this line that you wrote here, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, oh, thanks. He goes, now take it out. I said, what do you mean? He goes, yeah, it has nothing to do with your story. It's a beautiful line. It just doesn't belong. And I think that Kevin and a Pulitzer Prize winning writer named John Franklin, who was a
The Art and Trust in Storytelling
00:25:07
Speaker
former
00:25:07
Speaker
a journalism school professor at the U of O kind of revolutionized my writing in the early 90s and a host of us from the register guard who met with him a few times, who read his book, Writing for Story. And he made me understand what a story was really all about, that it had this conflict and it had this
00:25:33
Speaker
you know, developmental points, and then it had a resolution. And I mean, even whether I was writing a 800-word column or a 75,000-word book, I have used his template for telling a story, you know, for the last almost 30 years. And, you know, it taught me, for example, in column writing that you didn't, that it wasn't bad. In fact, it was good to,
00:25:59
Speaker
Add some suspense to your column. Don't give it away all at the front. When you're raised in the newspaper business, who, what, when, where, how, you're taught the inverted pyramid. The most important thing comes first and the least important stuff comes last. You forget that you don't have to give it all away at once.
00:26:24
Speaker
I think that's really important and I think it's hard for young writers to trust themselves, trust their stories, to allow that suspense, to do some foreshadowing and not feel like they have to tie up all the knots all at once at the start.
00:26:41
Speaker
That's amazing that Franklin taught at UO. I had no idea. I have writing for Story on my shelf. I've read it a few times, and he's the first Pulitzer winner to win it for feature writing, and I had no idea that he was at least in this area for a time. He was here in the 90s, and I don't know, I would estimate perhaps a decade, and he was so accessible.
00:27:08
Speaker
He would just come over to the register guard and we'd sit down in a conference room. I think we did this maybe two or three times. It was like God coming down from on high to meet with a bunch of hacks. I didn't even realize it until looking back how what an amazingly cool piece he put in my writing puzzle.
00:27:33
Speaker
My copy of Writing for Story is just so well-worn and so underlined. I tell people, read the first half twice, don't bother reading the second half. I didn't think that the second half was that important, but I thought where he actually takes two stories and he breaks them down and he kind of explains, here's why I did what I did throughout the whole thing.
00:27:58
Speaker
You don't see too many books like that. And it's really showing rather than telling. And it was, it's just left an impression on me that instrumental in my writing, even today.
00:28:08
Speaker
Yeah, I love hearing you say that and also also kind of in a cast and amber kind of way. It makes me it makes me so sad because back back in the day when there was that kind of that kind of writing was just openly cultivated in newspapers, whether it was the Tampa Bay Times and or the Saint Pete Times doing a lot of the serial narratives they did there. You would see this all over the country and even with the guard here in town. And then it's just, you know, it just everything's just been so decimated where you can't
00:28:37
Speaker
have that kind of latitude to tell a story and to maybe tell it in multiple parts and use those scenes and dialogue. It just, it sadly doesn't exist. How old are you, sir? I turned 41 in a couple weeks. Okay. So yeah, you're a punk. I'm 67.
00:28:55
Speaker
But you're right, and you caught the tail end of that wave, of newspaper wave, but there was such great journalism going on in the 80s and the 90s.
00:29:08
Speaker
And people today and kids growing up today have no idea. Well, you know, most kids today don't even know what a newspaper is. There was just such great reporting and great writing and so much space. I mean, you would have multi-part series that would go on and on. And it was almost the stuff of magazines that was going on in the newspaper. I mean, we did a piece, I think, I want to say maybe 2014, 15,
00:29:36
Speaker
I think we had 16 pages over four days. We just invited World War II veterans to come to the register guard over a two day period. And we just said, tell us your story. I believe it was for the, maybe the 70 year anniversary of Pearl Harbor. But we just kind of use that as a foot in the door to get into the story. And instead of, we had so many people show up that we extended it to five days and it was,
00:30:04
Speaker
It was incredible. We would, you know, somebody would be photographing these guys. It was my job to, you know, somebody else was upfront, was just kind of downloading their basic story. And then when they found, I was going to try to write, I believe 16 little snippets on, on 16 different people.
00:30:21
Speaker
So I might be interviewing one guy, but boy, we had, we had such latitude, such support from our, from our, uh, bosses and, and we had the space in a way that, uh, you know, and we had the staff. I mean, my goodness. I mean, I just, I feel for the people of the register guard. Now you're, you know, you've got a dozen people doing what, you know, 60, 70 people used to do back in the day.
00:30:45
Speaker
Yeah, and you just can't really reach a level of depth and spend a lot of time researching and fleshing something out. It's got to be turned around so quick that there's no way to really sink into a story anymore. Even if there is some enterprise being done, it's often very just superficial instead of getting into the bones of something.
00:31:08
Speaker
Right and plus you know the staffs are so young they don't they simply don't have it's not their own fault they simply don't have the institutional history they don't really know in many cases you know somebody could die in the community.
00:31:21
Speaker
And unless they get a phone call from somebody out there in the public who knew this person and who knew how important they were, I'm sure there's all sorts of important people who have died in the last few years and probably didn't get a mention in their register guard. So it's a sad time. And I think the large papers are still kicking out some pretty great journalism.
00:31:47
Speaker
I think that the weeklies, the smaller papers are still doing okay because people still read that in a small town and they still buy advertisement. I think it's the middle-sized paper like The Register Guard that are perhaps hurting the most. And as you were sort of coming up and developing as a young reporter and journalist, who were some of the writers that you deeply admired and you deeply wanted to model your own work after?
Influences on Bob Welch's Writing
00:32:14
Speaker
I tend to gravitate. For some reason, I think of the humorists that come to mind for some reason as a columnist. I think of the Dave Barries. I think Garrison Keeler is a guy who taught me just through his storytelling. He's just a master at telling a story. And he's one of the few people who's as good in print, I always felt, as he was in spoken word. Those two came to mind for nonfiction writing.
00:32:44
Speaker
A 1972 classmate of mine at Corvallis High, John Krakauer. His book, Into the Wild, I mean, everybody knows him for Into Thin Air about the trip up Everest where I believe eight or nine people died. But Into the Wild in some ways is the higher leap because he had to do such reporting on that. Why does a blue blood kid
00:33:13
Speaker
from Maryland wind up dying in a school bus in the wilds of Alaska. And what I didn't want to believe was what a great reporter John Krakauer is. And I didn't want to believe it because in 1972, he stole my girlfriend at Corvallis High School. And I've always kind of, and plus when we ran in middle school, we ran track, he always beat me in the 1320.
00:33:42
Speaker
uh, the, the, the three lap race. And so I've always kind of held it against him, but, but I have to admit. And I, and the other thing, the third thing is that I went the traditional route. I grew up in Corrales, but I went to journalism school at the university of Oregon. I worked on the junior high paper, the high school paper, the sports editor of the college newspaper and crack hour went off to Massachusetts and went to a private school where he got to plant his own curriculum.
00:34:11
Speaker
Stuff like this and yet and yet and I guess it goes to show and I'm not don't get me wrong I'm not comparing myself to crack hour. I'm not I'm I'm I'm near nowhere near that guy But I mean we both became I think pretty decent writers but we just took really different trails to get to get up the mountain and and he What makes into the wild so so wonderful and gripping is the deep research he did fine finding out
00:34:41
Speaker
following this kid's trail around the United States and then winding up in this school bus in Alaska. So those are some people that come to mind for me.
00:34:53
Speaker
that you make such a great point about the different paths to get to a similar place. And I talk about that a lot because we can get into a toxic comparison and jealousy and competition among peers. And what really boils down to is you just have to really have the assuredness to kind of run your own race because there are so many paths. But if you only look at the outcome,
00:35:19
Speaker
and you're comparing yourself and how crappy you feel on a daily basis to, to, to, to crack hours, uh, you know, apex mountain of, uh, you, you, you lose sight of his path was very different in his, the way he got into, into the wild and the way he made it sing was he almost, he was, he could really relate to McCandless and the fact that he almost died on a, you know,
00:35:44
Speaker
recklessly climbing up a devil's tooth or something. Exactly. That's always been kind of a controversial part of the book in that it was such a divergent, such a digression from the rest of the story. We talk about it a lot in our writer's workshops, and yet I always argue that it worked, that even though it was strange to be telling this third-person story about McCandless, and then suddenly, hey, let me tell you for an entire chapter,
00:36:14
Speaker
about the difficulties I had with my own father and how once I, I went up to climb the, whatever, the devil's thumb, is that it?
00:36:23
Speaker
I think so. Devil's thumb or devil's tooth or something. Anyway, in Alaska. It's a classic Brendan punch in right here. Bob is right, I am wrong. It is devil's thumb, not devil's tooth that Krakauer climbed and wrote into two chapters and into the wild. So just clearing that up. Okay, back to the conversation. But it absolutely worked.
00:36:48
Speaker
I think of this phrase going back to what you said earlier about how we all take these different paths. When I first decided, or I was thinking about hiking the Oregon portion of the PCT, my brother-in-law and I went up near the middle sister in 2010. We were on the PCT and we ran into a kid who had left from Mexico.
00:37:15
Speaker
One of the things that I think that I'm good at is I just love to ask people questions because I'm just a reporter. And so I just say, well, what's the best advice you could give us? We're thinking about doing the hike in Oregon next year. And he said these words. He said, hike your own hike. Hike your own hike. And I've just never forgotten that. And I think it's applicable not only to the hiking experience. What my brother-in-law and I do is different than what these 25-year-olds are doing. A lot of them are doing it in one summer.
00:37:45
Speaker
We're doing it in a decade, maybe. If we can, if we're still, if we make Canada this, this September, but again, it's not important how you get there. And it's not even that important that you get there. It's important. What does the experience mean to you along the way? And I think it's the same way with writing is that we all, I, that's what I love about writers workshops. We used to have like 50, 55 people over in yachts and.
00:38:14
Speaker
I was always just fascinated how one person could just be so on fire about an idea that like would make my eyes glaze over. And, and yet, you know, she would just like, I've dedicated to this as a story I've wanted to tell my whole life, and I'm going to tell it. And I always love to see that passion, even though our ideas were different, our methods were different, our styles were different. To me, that's, that's the fun of it all.
00:38:44
Speaker
is that we all approach it so differently. And yet in the end, there's just this amazing, you just make something out of nothing. You come up with this idea and then a year or two, maybe even more years later, you're holding this book in your hand. And it's kind of, I've always just thought that book writing is almost a miracle.
00:39:10
Speaker
You talked about your penchant for curiosity, which is just really the cornerstone of what it means to tell true stories and to be a nonfiction writer. Where in the process, whether it be research, writing, reporting, do you feel most alive and most engaged?
00:39:28
Speaker
Good question. I'm enjoying this immensely. I can't remember when people have asked me such scintillating questions about writing You know every every step of the way I love the I love you know jotting a note on a Wendy's napkin at in Chehalis, Washington in 2001 write book on World War two nurse and and and for the minute you come up with that idea and
00:39:59
Speaker
Um, that the curiosity just kicks in. And then you just basically what you, what you do for the next year or two or four or whatever is just ask yourselves questions about this person or this place or this event. And then, then try to find the answers. And what I learned in research in that book was that every time you came up with an answer, then that, that led to five more questions. Okay. So we learned that Francis Langer in Boston, we've got some, uh,
00:40:28
Speaker
some pay forms that show she worked at a woolen mill in Boston. So how would she get to work? And what were her hours? And what did that matter? I mean, what piece did that put in her life puzzle? Or did it put any piece at all? So it's almost the best thing and the worst thing is you get the question answered, but then it just means you have to answer more questions. But the entire process, to me,
00:40:58
Speaker
I love the research part of it. I can think of this, one of my beachside writers, and she said, Bob, I love to write, but I hate, I hate research. And man, I don't know. I just don't know if you can really, well, I know there are exceptions. I know that you can be a great writer. I mean, novelists.
00:41:17
Speaker
Novelists have to do research, but they don't have to do quite as much research as the nonfiction writer has to. But there are people who don't do much research, and Garrison Keillor can just sit down and imagine stories and write. But I do think that the investigation, tracking down the story, putting the puzzle together, and then when you
00:41:42
Speaker
When you start connecting the dots and you see what's happening, like Fosbury, I kind of always knew the, the, the basic outline. I mean, I'd written about him for Sports Illustrated, you know, 32 years ago or whatever, but I didn't, man, I didn't know the, then I'd heard this story about how his brother, uh, it was hit by a drunk driver and a hit and run and Dick was with him. And I mean, that, that had only shown up one time in one story of all the things I could find online about Fosbury.
00:42:12
Speaker
only one small mention of that, but then I had asked myself, so what did that mean to Dick Fosbury? And then you have to sort of put yourself, I think, I think, I think good writers have to have empathy. I think you have to be able to put yourself in the place of the people that you're writing about and, and ask yourself, well, what would that have felt like? I'm, I'm 16 years old. I, I was, I beat up my brother in the, on the front lawn and to, and then to make it up to him.
00:42:42
Speaker
I decided to take him for a bike ride. And on that bike ride, he gets killed. So imagine the guilt that Dick Fosbury had. This doesn't happen if he doesn't beat up his brother or if he doesn't take him on the bike ride. It's my fault. And then his parents' divorce, which, what does that say to a 16-year-old kid? It's all your fault. And so he's got all this guilt and this shame and this, again, this loneliness, this sense that he needs
00:43:13
Speaker
He did belong to a mom and dad and a brother, but now he doesn't. How can he belong? And so you put yourself in that person's point or you're Francis Langer and you're a World War II nurse. You're at Ellis Island in 1920 and you're detained because you have an eye infection.
00:43:33
Speaker
How are you feeling? What does that like? Where they're not allowing you, you've left one country and they're not allowing you in from, she came from Poland and you're not being allowed into the next country. You're placed in a cage. You must not feel a whole lot of worth. And so I think that that part of the process has always been interesting to me as well as trying to figure out, you know, why did my, why was my character or my person I'm writing about the way,
00:44:02
Speaker
What inspired her to be the giving person she was when so many people sort of took from her? Or in Fosbury's case, how did he become – how did he gain so much confidence that won a gold medal when he had no confidence at all when he was 16? And then I like – the process of actually writing is –
00:44:24
Speaker
is the best and worst of it all. I guess just the, uh, there's just, there's so many parts where it's just, you get up in the morning and you just can hardly wait to see what, where your little fingers are going to take you on the keyboard. And, and then there are times when it's just a slog and it's like doing a workout. I used to do cross country running where you just don't want to run. And, uh, but, but, uh, in the end, uh,
00:44:51
Speaker
It all comes together and hopefully you've told a story that enriches the world somehow. Yeah, I remember right before Michael Phelps was going to retire from swimming. He knew the moment he was done was when it was 6 a.m. and he could no longer jump in that cold pool.
00:45:11
Speaker
And I liken often the middle and the grind of writing to sort of jumping into that cold pool where it's just like, I know I need to do this, but I really don't want to. But then of course you start to warm up and the flow will come once you have the courage to sort of sit with the bad stuff long enough and you'll get there. So, you know, you're alluding to it, of course, but how do you
00:45:35
Speaker
push through those messy middles the times when you don't feel like strapping on those running shoes and getting out the door i think that i think the key is going back to crack or you know the key is just
00:45:49
Speaker
dedicating yourself in the beginning, setting a goal and saying, I will write this book. There's no turning back. It's the couple that gets married and simply says, we're never going to get divorced. We're going to fight through whatever it is, but we're going to fight for our relationship. And I think that like Krakauer talks about
00:46:09
Speaker
You never decide when you're on or near the top of Everest what time you're going to turn around and head back. You decide the day before when you're unemotional. To decide while you're on the climb is to let your emotions cloud your decisions. Oh, we're only 200 feet from the top. We can make it. But wait, there's a wall of clouds over there and it could be a storm coming in.
00:46:37
Speaker
So I think for writers, I think when you, when you, you get out your notebook and you say, by this date, I'm going to have this story done. When you dedicate yourself to that, when you're not in an emotional mood, you're just in that disciplined mood. I think that that's the key because then when it comes to jumping into that cold pool and you don't want to jump, you remember, but hey, I've got a pact with myself. I've, I've got a goal here. I'm going to get this done.
00:47:06
Speaker
And so you don't let your emotions, yeah, I don't want to get all cold. Um, you don't let your emotions get in the way. I'm, I'm, I'm going to step on a trail a week from Monday, the San Gabriel mountains you see from the Rose Bowl so beautifully. And then, and then head along the Mojave desert after we get through the San Gabriel, I'm going to be on the trail for 30 days. And I'm going to be going to scurrying a desert. It's going to be 100 to 110 degrees.
00:47:33
Speaker
I'm going to be hiking 18 miles a day, having to carry probably close to 40 pounds because of all the water. I'm going to be with my brother-in-law, who is the most amazing human being in the world, but not the greatest conversationalist. What I'm doing in the next 10 days is I'm just stealing my mind and saying,
00:47:57
Speaker
You can't quit you you're you've gotta be you know on on july 14th you've gotta be on top of mount whitney and that's just a given. So so when times get times get tough and when i'm gonna be hot i'm gonna be tired but but you you just think back wait a minute the plan is to do it and i'm gonna do it so.
00:48:18
Speaker
I guess I'd come back, I'm staring at a book that I wrote called Resolve, even as I speak here. And I think that that's the key word, resolve. You just need to resolve that you're going to push through the pain and go through whatever it takes to get this done.
00:48:35
Speaker
I love that notion of almost working backwards. By July 15th, you want to be on the summit of Mount Whitney or wherever the terminus is for you near Mount Whitney. And it's like, all right, but in order to get there, we have 30 days to do it. We got to do X amount of days. It's like if you're writing a 75,000 word book and that just seems so daunting, you just kind of break it down. If I do, let's just say 1,000 words a day, you're going to be there.
00:49:06
Speaker
750 days or whatever it is or 75, 750. So like if you just kind of break it down into those manageable chunks, suddenly it seems doable and then the momentum can build and then you have confidence and then you're just, the flywheel starts to spin. Yep. I like, I like that phrase, you know, manageable chunks. I like that manageable chunks. And I think that that's what it's all about. Like, like I get up every morning.
00:49:34
Speaker
And my brother-in-law and I, we always have a goal. Our first goal is to have a measurable pulse.
00:49:44
Speaker
at the end of the day. In other words, we don't want to die because there are some points on the PCT where you can get into some pretty scary stuff, whether it be a river crossing or you're on an exposed trail that's, you know, one wrong step and you're, you know, a thousand feet down. So we've always told ourselves our first goal is to have a measurable pulse. Our second goal is to get to where we plan to get on this day.
00:50:09
Speaker
And hopefully, it'll be on water so we can get water. But yeah, that's the thing. And then from that point, it's just like, I break the day into, OK, there's a saying on the PCT, 10 by 10. I asked these kids from Colorado, the very first time I was on the California-Oregon border, heading north, starting out, doing Oregon. And there were these Colorado kids, and I said,
00:50:39
Speaker
What's your advice for me?" And this one kid said, 10 by 10. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, we tried to do 10 miles by 10 a.m. And I looked at my brother-in-law and I said, how about we just be the two by fours? Because I mean, the idea that you could do 10 miles by 10 a.m. was just so far beyond what anything we ever dreamed of. But you know what? By the end of the summer, we were up near Mount Hood and we're making good time. And I said to my brother-in-law, I said, what time is it? And he goes, well, it's just a little bit before 10. And I said, and how many miles have we gone?
00:51:09
Speaker
I don't know, we've done 10 miles. I mean, we did it. But you get to that 10 miles by simply one, literally one step at a time. I think it's six million steps to get from Canada or Mexico to Canada. But you get there one step at a time.
00:51:25
Speaker
Wow, that's that's incredible. It's just really it's so symbolic and metaphoric for for the writing process as well. But in speaking, you know, in speaking of that and coming to your latest, your latest book, it's
00:51:43
Speaker
World War II, you've been in this pool for a while going back to the nurse, and World War II is always something you come back to. And with this one, it started with, what was it, easy companies? Easy companies, soldier, yeah. Yeah. And then that sort of, I don't know, it led to this book. So in what ways... Let me rephrase that.
00:52:11
Speaker
How were you able to make it kind of fresh and new and feel like you weren't, I don't know, repeating yourself, but when you came to this story?
Exploring 'Saving My Enemy'
00:52:20
Speaker
I, you know, I've been asked by people if, do you have a, do you just love writing about war? And I always say no. In fact, I hate war and the more I've written about it, the more I hate war. I like writing about
00:52:34
Speaker
interesting people, to be honest, it's just that the stage on which a lot of my stories seem to take place happens to be war. What made this one fresh and new, and I've turned down lots of projects for that very reason, because I think so many war stories have just been told, it's hard to have anything new. But this one truly is the rare war story with a happy ending. I mean, it's two soldiers, Don Malarkey, one of the famed band of brothers of the
00:53:03
Speaker
the Hank Spielberg HBO series back in 2001. It's Don Malarkey and it's a guy named Fritz Engelbert who fought within five miles of each other during the Battle of the Bulge. Sixty years later, wind up in that, in Bestonia, Belgium, the same place at this remembrance on the 60-year anniversary of the Bulge. Basically, over a couple of beers, get to know each other and
00:53:31
Speaker
forgive each other. And you don't think of grizzled World War II vets getting into any touchy-feely sort of thing. And it wasn't, according to Matthias, the son of Fritz, who did the interpreting, it wasn't tons of that. But it was enough where at one point, Don said to Fritz, who felt this
00:53:52
Speaker
tremendous guilt for having been a pawn of Adolf Hitler. He said, Fritz, you were in Hitler youth at age 10. You didn't have any choice. It's not your fault. You're a good man. You raised two great sons. Just forgive yourself. And no one in 60 years had ever said anything like that, much less
00:54:12
Speaker
A guy that he would have tried to kill back in 1944 and Fritz later in the conversation when Don breaks down because Don's an alcoholic and he's been living the war every day. He said, I would take a drink of my scotch and in the bottom of the glass, I'd see the face of every man I left in Bestonia.
00:54:31
Speaker
I still remember every single day the look on the 16-year-old German kid's face after I killed him. I mean, that never went away for him. And so Fritz turns to him and says, Don, the same thing for you. You didn't have any choice. Your country said, go to war. They put a rifle in your hand and you went. And so this started this amazing friendship. They met two other times. The entire Malarkey family came to Europe and met with the Inglebirds.
00:54:59
Speaker
And then Dawn's daughter invites Fritz's two sons to come to an easy company reunion in Portland, Oregon. And they're welcomed with open arms. And so Marian is now like the little sister that Mathias and Volker, the sons of Fritz, never had. And so this story just had all this freshness to it.
00:55:24
Speaker
That was exciting to write. Frankly, writing about the war part was the least interesting part because I've been there. I've done that. But writing about the difference between Don Malarkey growing up on the Nahalem River like Huckleberry Finn,
00:55:39
Speaker
And Fritz Engelbert growing up in Hitler Youth at the same time, that was fun. And, well, maybe fun's not the right word, but I mean, and their post-traumatic stress that they went through was intriguing because I think very few World War II books really help us understand what these men went through because we talk about PTS all the time now, but nobody knew about it in 1945 when these guys out, they were supposed to just, I mean,
00:56:07
Speaker
My son's a documentary maker and he did a documentary on war and PTSD. And the government just tried to tell these guys, hey, just don't tell anybody about it. It'll go away and you'll be better than new before you know it. Well, that was a lie. And these guys suffered and are still suffering in some cases horribly because of it. So that was an interesting part of the story.
00:56:35
Speaker
contrasting the two men, and then the end where they come together.
00:56:39
Speaker
Wow, what a privilege to be able to reconstruct this scene where they first meet. I mean, there's a scene the night before they hoist their beers to each other. There's a scene where, I'll just condense it, but a current day Sergeant in Iraq is the guy that organized this event. Let's bring some of the band of brothers to encourage my guys and my women who are stationed in Germany. So six band of brothers
00:57:06
Speaker
come over to Germany. And at the last minute, he goes, and hey, let's invite some German soldiers. And on the other end of the phone, one of the band of brothers, there's just silence, like who does that, right? But this sergeant had the courage to say, why don't we invite these Germans? And so Fritz Engelberg doesn't want to come. He's one who's been invited. But he has the courage to come, even though he doesn't want to. But immediately, one of the band of brothers
00:57:34
Speaker
Wild Bill Garnier says, you know, Fritzy, if I'd met you 60 years ago, I would have killed you. Whips his finger across his throat. And this is exactly what Fritz was worried about. So he gets up and gets ready to leave. And then Malarkey says, wait a minute, wait a minute. And he hoists his beer and says, a toast to my friend Fritz Engelbert, the newest member of the band of brothers.
00:57:55
Speaker
These little acts of courage, the sergeant in Iraq who has the courage to invite the Germans, the German who has the courage to show up, and Don Malarkey who has the courage to, when things were going south for Fritz and he could have just piled on and made some fun of him or something, he instead welcomed him to the band of brothers. What a privilege for a writer to be able to tell a story like this.
00:58:20
Speaker
For sure, and it gets to a different kind of courage, like a courage of character that really bounds them together. We don't need another story about a GI diving on a grenade. I mean, don't get me wrong.
00:58:35
Speaker
I appreciate that people have made sacrifices for our country's freedom, but you're right. There's all sorts of other ways that courage shows up. Sometimes it's thinking outside the box. What Bill Maloney, the sergeant in Iraq did was a minor league episode of Dick Fosbury. Well, who says we have to jump over the bar the old way? Why can't we go over back? Why can't we invite Germans?
00:59:02
Speaker
And look what happened. I've been on the radio for the last few weeks, and I try to tell people that we're fighting a war right now in America where a lot of people don't trust each other. And at the very least, we're going to need to learn to, like Fritz and Don, we're going to need to learn to sit down and
00:59:25
Speaker
talk to each other. We may not like each other. We may not agree with each other. But at some point, we've got to respect each other enough to have some sort of a conversation. And these guys sort of paved the way for how that could happen.
00:59:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's like what you wrote in that Wall Street Journal piece that you shared with me that you end on, that we're just hurting humans looking for hope. Looking to GIs in World War II, a former Nazi soldier in an easy company screaming eagle, here they were able to reconcile and forgive each other for the orders they were put under.
01:00:04
Speaker
Exactly. I'm a realist in the sense that I know that we're not going to solve America's problems by sitting down over a beer with somebody, but I'll tell you what, I'm enough of an idealist to think that, hey, that's a hell of a start.
01:00:20
Speaker
Yeah, I found Fritz to be a fascinating character given where he came from, the pressure he essentially put his parents under because they were by no means supporters of Hitler. And Fritz was the Hitler youth and indoctrinated very young. And so there's that tension of, is the kid going to turn the parents in? Yeah. As happened countless times during Hitler's rise to power.
01:00:45
Speaker
and then his conversion and what you write about is the moral injury that he shouldered for his entire life. Yeah, I mean, I learned so much about Germany in the 30s. All these shades of gray that I always saw in blacks and whites, I had no idea that these kids would want to be part of Hitler Youth. I always just kind of imagined
01:01:11
Speaker
This was the worst thing ever, but I mean, Fritz Engelbert, he was on fire to serve Hitler. He, maybe you talk about, there's quotes in the book about, I think that one guy talks about, you know, at this parade and he saw all these Hitler youth kids and he goes, he likened it to a stream and he goes, I wanted to jump in. I wanted to jump in and go with the others down this stream. And I don't think that we quite understand how willingly
01:01:39
Speaker
people went, particularly young people, uh, followed Hitler. And I mean, yeah, when, when, when your mom and dad are helping out the Jewish butcher and you feel guilty because you're not turning them into the authorities, to the Nazi authorities, you understand this, uh, this tension that was going on that, uh, you know, I, when I was growing up, my tension with my father was nothing of that sort.
01:02:08
Speaker
That's what stories do for us. They help us understand the world in a new way. And the past can help us change for our own futures. And I love that you can learn all this stuff from the people that you get to write about.
01:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, and my friend Christina Gaddy, a couple of years ago, she wrote a book called Flowers in the Gutter, and it was about the Edelweiss Pirates, who are this counter-culture youth that was basically the antagonist. Yeah, no, I read about them, yeah.
01:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, to the Hitler youth and they were basically like anarchists in a way. All these stories coming out of World War II are just so incredibly layered and fascinating. It's amazing to keep learning more and more about the nuance and the granularity of what kind of the culture and the hell it was, all this stuff coming to the fore, coming up on a
01:03:12
Speaker
you know, 80 years ago or 70s, 80 years, it's incredibly nuanced in texture. Yeah. And then of course, there's a post-war stuff that's, you know, where I was stunned to find how many people still, even after they heard of the Holocaust, they still believed in Adolf Hitler. He was dead.
01:03:37
Speaker
Uh, the facts were right there, you know, 11 million people dead, but they, you know, Fritz would get into arguments on Sunday afternoons with a family because people would stand up for Hitler and he, he refused to do so. And, uh, so yeah, our, our, our, our lives, our countries, our, our stores are so much more nuanced than we often, uh, believe. And this, this one certainly, uh, taught me a lot about the grays instead of just the blacks and whites.
01:04:08
Speaker
And as I usually sort of take this airliner down for a landing, if you will, I always like to ask guests at the end for some sort of a recommendation of any kind. It can be anything for the listeners out there. So I extend that to you, Bob. What might you recommend for the listeners here as we bring this conversation to a close? Well, I was going to mention a book earlier. That's what you're talking about? Like, I can recommend a book?
01:04:34
Speaker
It could be a book. I'm telling you, it could be a certain brand of coffee. It could be anything. I'm going to go with a book because the story on this is pretty interesting. So in the early 2000s here in Eugene, I'm working on America Nightingale. And I have this woman named Ferris Cassel, who lives here in Eugene, who takes me out to coffee. And she's telling me about this story about this Jewish couple in Germany who sends this letter. They want to come to America because they
01:05:04
Speaker
see the shadow and they know they need to leave. And the rest of the family is escaping and getting out, but they have it. And they send a letter to somebody in California. And anyway, this friend of mine, Ferris Cassell, who used to be the book review editor at the register guard, part-timer,
01:05:25
Speaker
She just wants to tell the story. And I can remember thinking at the time, wow, this is a real long shot. I mean, this is gonna, this all took place over in Europe. What are the chances that you could ever pull this off? She worked on this thing for nearly two decades and I'm holding it in my hand. It's called the unanswered letter. One Holocaust family desperately for help by Ferris Cassel. And I'm just so proud of her. I mean, she's, she worked on it for literally almost two decades.
01:05:55
Speaker
Wow. I think Laura Hildenbrand did seven years on Unbroken. And that's the most I've heard, but almost 20 years on this. And it's a beautiful book. It's a painful book, obviously, to read in some places, but extremely well done. And that would be my recommendation for anybody out there, particularly if you're an aspiring writer and you kind of
01:06:17
Speaker
You feel like the odds are against you. Like, can I ever pull this off? I would read the unanswered letter because, you know, here's somebody who just had that passion. And, and I think that it's fair to say she also had that desperation that I talked about early on and she, she, she pulled it off. And I don't know if she has plans to write another book or not, but she, she, she did what she hoped to do. And it almost took two decades. So my hats off to her. And I think she's an inspiration to us all.
01:06:46
Speaker
Well, fantastic. And I'd extend that to you, Bob. Your body of work and everything you've done in newspapers and with the books you've written and workshops that you do to cultivate the writing community is also an inspiration. Well, thanks, Freeman. What fun being on the show with you. Like I said, I'm not just blowing smoke when I said I just totally enjoyed your questions. And I could do this for another eight hours, but let's call it good for now.
01:07:13
Speaker
We'll call it good for now and we can pick it up another time and just keep talking shop because these things are always fun. So thanks so much, Bob. Take care.
01:07:32
Speaker
Wasn't that great? I love it when people like that come to play ball. I love it when you know they love to geek out about this kind of shit, but often don't get a platform onto which to geek out.
01:07:44
Speaker
Makes for a good chat. Sets the table for more chats down the road. I love having people back on the show. You know that, baby. He's at Bob underscore Welch 23 on Twitter. Bob Welch dot net is where you can learn more about him. Check out the new book, et cetera, saving my enemy. Great book. Thank you to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA creative writing at the Hippo Camp 2021 for the support.
01:08:09
Speaker
Drop that CNF pod 21 code for 50 clams off your registration fee. Tell them BO sent ya.
01:08:18
Speaker
And like I said, I'm going to keep beating the Patreon drum because that's what's going to take the show to the next level. The more we can get those patrons up, the more we get those monthly coffers built up, it'll allow us to produce a better product over and over again. Having the show be listener supported gives you ownership, gives you agency, helps pay writers, helps me make a better product, helps me celebrate more seeing efforts and build the community, you know?
01:08:43
Speaker
And it's not like you're getting nothing in exchange for a few bucks a month. So go window shop patreon.com slash CNF pot Had a great CNF and happy hour the other night Laurie and Suzanne showed up happy hour. Oh jeers and Damon Brown was our featured guest and we got into some stuff and
01:09:07
Speaker
Gotta be on the newsletter list. If you head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes, you can sign up for that list. Anyway, we were talking about this idea of shooting for the stars and landing on the moon. That whole quote of you gotta aim big, and even if you fall short, you're still kinda big.
01:09:27
Speaker
This is fine, but my problem with this is that if you're shooting for the stars, the moon fucking sucks. Now, your moon might be someone else's stars, and their moon might be Massapequa.
01:09:44
Speaker
As with all things, it comes back to my sad baseball career and how shooting for the major leagues made me a damn good high school player and one that ultimately made a Division I college roster, which is by lots of counts, the stars for a lot of people. But it didn't feel good. Landing on that moon felt like shit, and that's why, as you've heard me say a billion times, this is the perils of a results-driven mindset, and it'll burn you out faster than a match.
01:10:14
Speaker
came across a great quote from my Headspace app. Here it is. If we are only interested in results, we defeat the purpose. The process is the purpose. For the win.
01:10:32
Speaker
In any case, we control what we can control. We hike our own hike, as Bob said. And that has to be the reward. It has to be because we could be writing, writing, writing, or podcasting, podcasting, podcasting. And soon we're 80 years old and maybe that book we wrote didn't sell out its press run. Or your podcast didn't gain the traction you were hoping for. And you'll look back and think about what a loser you were.
01:11:02
Speaker
And you will. Only if you focus on the results and not the process, the practice, the relationships, the friendships you made along the way. The rest is mushroom gravy. Tell me about that. I have to tell myself this because otherwise I'll go into some dark ass places, man. Some dark ass places. So in the meantime, stay cool, CNFers. Stay cool forever. Be-osis. See ya.
01:11:50
Speaker
you