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Episode 470: Megan Baxter is Into Rewilding Her Writing
56 Plays58 minutes ago
"I've also learned in this rewilding experiment that so much of our time as writers takes place off the page, as we're thinking about our concepts, as we're doing research, and when I actually do come to the page and have a chance to actually type out these ideas, I've done so much pre-writing over the course of the previous season that that draft comes really easily to me," says Megan Baxter, author of three books of nonfiction, including Farm Girl: A Memoir (Green Writers Press).
Megan has got it figured out, man. She has won numerous national awards, including a Pushcart Prize. Her essay collection Twenty Square Feet of Skin was longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Megan got on my radar when I was doing Prefontaine research and I was thumbing through my stack of True Stories, that chapbook Creative Nonfiction used to put out. I saw this essay titled “On Running” and I was like well shoot, I need to study this. Then I reached out to her and she sent me her essay collections and her memoir Farm Girl, so we dig into that.
Megan’s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Hotel Amerika, River Teeth, and others. She lives in New Hampshire where she runs her own small farm and teaches creative writing through online courses and lessons. You can learn more about her at meganbaxterwriting.com and follow her on Instagram megan-baxter
- We talk about:
- Rewilding her writing
- Rabbit holes
- Actually living the ream
- Hyperattention
- The real housewives edit
- And how Pinterest helps with her writing
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Call to Action
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, you CNFers, the frontrunner is officially out. I like to think I don't ask for much, but whatever. Now is the time to buy a copy or three. If you read it, you know the drill.
00:00:12
Speaker
Need ratings and reviews. I won't read them because I don't want to be driven insane, but that's the world we live in. Ratings and reviews. Your call to action to support the book.
00:00:22
Speaker
Me and ye olde CNF pod. We don't want the security camera footage of a person's life. We want the real housewives edit.
00:00:45
Speaker
Toysian Effort, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, the art and craft of telling true stories. Yeah. I'm your host, Brendan O'Meara. I hurt my wrists.
00:00:57
Speaker
Again, doing easy curls. It's that movement of yeah externally rotating my wrists, and I had 95 pounds on the bar, and I almost had to drop
Interview with Megan Baxter
00:01:06
Speaker
it. Megan Baxter is here.
00:01:08
Speaker
We recorded back in January. I swear, we're almost caught up with the pods I recorded a billion years ago. This was a pretty electric conversation, not gonna lie. Megan has it figured out, man.
00:01:21
Speaker
She's won numerous national awards, including a Pushcart Prize. Her essay collection, 20 square feet of skin, was long-listed for the 2024 Penn-Diamondstein-Spielvogel Award. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. but For the art of the essay, Megan got on my radar when I was doing Prefontaine research, and I was thumbing through a stack of that chapbook True Stories by Creative Nonfiction used to put out.
00:01:47
Speaker
I saw this essay titled On Running and I was like, well, shit, I need to study this. Then I reached out to her and she sent me her essay collections and her memoir, Farm Girl. So we dig into the Farm Girl.
00:01:59
Speaker
Show notes of this episode more. They're big, man. Oh, man. Huge. no Shoot. At brendanamara.com. Hey, since sunsetting the pod stack, I moved all that goodness over to the show notes.
00:02:13
Speaker
and my favorite quotes, a mostly accurate link to the transcript that you can download for free, the text to the parting shot, and links to the backlog, 400, 300, 200, and episodes ago there. You can also sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter.
00:02:28
Speaker
Been doing it forever, and people who dig it seem to dig it, just like this podcast. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it. And you can always consider Patreon if you think all this effort is worth a few bucks. Patreon.com slash cnfpod.
00:02:46
Speaker
Megan's work has appeared in the Three Penny Review, Hotel America, River Teeth, and others. She lives in New Hampshire, where she runs her own small farm and teaches creative writing through online courses and lessons.
00:02:59
Speaker
You can learn more about her at MeganBaxterWriting.com and follow her on Instagram at MeganLBaxter.com.
Writing Process and Creative Lifestyle
00:03:11
Speaker
We talk about her rewilding of her writing, ah rabbit hole internet, rabbit hole researching, actually living the dream, hyper attention, the real housewives edit, and how Pinterest helped her with her writing.
00:03:27
Speaker
Parting shot on the tactical and the practical. but But before that, there's a really great animating, energizing chat with Megan Baxter.
00:03:38
Speaker
Cue the montage riff.
00:03:48
Speaker
For me, it was like this record scratch moment. Oh man, I wrote that. I wrote that. But I'm also perpetually in fear of a moment when I don't have an idea. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:04:13
Speaker
With my cursory research, i I came across an essay you wrote about a year ago about wild creativity, and I really loved this idea of kind of rewilding your creative process. And I was hoping maybe you can ah elaborate on that a bit.
00:04:28
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm in an interesting, wonderful situation in my life that I actually have a pretty seasonal job, which is just rare in today's day and age. But um I teach remotely, as I've said.
00:04:45
Speaker
ah So I have I do have some regularity that draws me to the laptop. But the other part of my life is running a small farm. And I grow fruits and vegetables and cut flowers and do my own baked goods and go to farmers markets during the summer, which is wonderful. And I love it.
00:05:04
Speaker
It's a dream come true, but it takes up a lot of time. So during that growing season, i just don't I don't have the energy to be creative and I simply don't have the time.
00:05:16
Speaker
And as I was establishing my my farm and kind of putting together the schedule that I have today, i had a lot of guilt around the fact that I would not be in a creative space for months out of the year, sometimes 10, 11 months even.
00:05:34
Speaker
And that guilt made it really hard for me, even when I did have the time to sit down and and do something and be creative. And i started to really...
00:05:47
Speaker
dig into what it was that was making me feel so wrong about not being a writer every day or every month or every year, every season. And I think part of this concept of the write every day concept, which writers here all the time. It's one of those things you're always, you're told by every writing teacher.
00:06:10
Speaker
And I'm certain that there are people for whom that works really well. But for me, one, it just doesn't fit with my schedule. And you I don't want my writing to feel like a nine to five.
00:06:26
Speaker
i I want it to feel like what it is, which is a ah passion and to be able to come to it with that same sort of energy, not with the, you know, go get yourself a cup of coffee and slog to your desk and sit down and got to write today. Cause that's what I do every day. yeah this idea of Making time in unconventional ways, so for me that means being deeply creative for several months and then not as much for the rest of the year, has really transformed my process and also made me very productive. So for instance, this year between Thanksgiving and right now, I finished a novel 30,000 words into a new book draft.
00:07:15
Speaker
So I've also learned in this rewilding experiment that so much of our time as writers takes place off the page as we're thinking about our concepts, as we're doing research,
00:07:31
Speaker
And when I actually do come to the page and have a chance to actually type out these ideas, I've done so much prewriting over the course of the previous season that that draft comes really easily to me.
00:07:47
Speaker
What does prewriting look like for you? It looks like a couple things. And ah right now I will say, I know we're talking about creative nonfiction, but I am now only really writing fiction. So my process right now, the pre-writing tends to involve a lot of research that just because of the the topics that my my books include.
00:08:08
Speaker
So that's a lot of reading, a lot of those fun rabbit hole internet searches, listening to different audio books and podcasts. And creating outlines, lists. I love using Pinterest.
00:08:23
Speaker
That's been something that I've really embraced for these longer fiction drafts. There's just, there's many, many ways that I go about it, but I think the other part of the pre-writing for me has always been this sort of internal draft, um just thinking through character and narration voice in my head And of course, while I'm farming or running or being outside as I am most of the year, you have a lot of that open head space, that time to really do deep thinking.
00:08:56
Speaker
And that's been, i think, the best correlation between other parts of my life and and then actually sitting down to draft is having that head space and that open time to think about writing.
00:09:09
Speaker
How long did it take you to cultivate that sense of patience to allow that fallow period to regenerate some of that energy so you could come to the writing with you know real with a real sense of ah yeah urgency and energy? Yeah.
00:09:26
Speaker
I like the ah the word regenerate. i will say ah couple years. my My writing process has changed now. drastically depending on my employment and my living situation and many other things.
00:09:42
Speaker
For me, it's also just confidence and knowing that it's still there and knowing that you are a writer when you are not writing as well. um
Transition to Fiction and Writing Style
00:09:53
Speaker
So that's That's something I remind myself of. But you know the the confidence and the desire to push ahead with the draft, I think that's a that's a daily sketch challenge for creatives.
00:10:05
Speaker
But I've also learned on the other side that when I do force myself to come to my desk, when I haven't done that pre-writing, when I haven't had a chance to what I call fill the well,
00:10:18
Speaker
So what you're, you know, refreshing all of that creativity. My writing is really stagnant and it it's not worth it. It becomes just this exercise and putting words on the page.
00:10:32
Speaker
So knowing that it isn't, that there is no benefit to coming and forcing a draft when it when I haven't thought through it or when I'm not in the right mindset has also helped me have that confidence to wait and just bide my time for for when I have that opening in my schedule.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, and there's, i think a lot of people who who listen to the show and certainly a lot of, say, mid-career writers or even people trying to get their start, you know, they've they've got their day job that they have to thread things around. And sometimes there is yeah ah shame that comes with that because the writing isn't the thing supporting them. And and I think there's an idea, certainly a social media ethic,
00:11:16
Speaker
that makes it look like writers or even and people who publish just yeah haphazardly, it makes it seem like that like that is the the entire thing. And then it just makes you everyone feel kind of less than. And I love hearing what you're saying about like letting the well ah letting the well fill and then threading the writing around ah more holistic life. And it really does bring a better pulse of energy to to the writing when you're ready for it. and And that's okay. You just have to have that patience.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah, and i I think, I mean, i you you know many writers. I i know many writers. I don't and know maybe one person who is successful enough that truly writing is their only source of income.
00:12:00
Speaker
I think it's an unrealistic expectation, and it's certainly... something that I don't know if I I mean I say that now but ah I enjoy that there are multiple facets to my life and that I have different people that I interact with whether it's farming or teaching or spending time in the gym all of that comes to the page and I'm happy not to just be you know only bound to my laptop throughout the day I think that's something that maybe comes to us when you've kind of been in it for 15 or 20 years and you're like, you kind of surrender to it. You've got a little bit of a body, you got a body of work behind you and you killed yourself to do it.
00:12:44
Speaker
And then you hit a part where it's like that never ending hustle. It's just, it, it is burning the candle. It's a three wicked candle somehow. And it's burning from both ends and the middle.
00:12:56
Speaker
And through the middle. Like a wick just popped out through the middle and it that's burning too somehow. and And then finally you surrender to something. It's like, oh yeah, this is a this is ah a pace that is actually sustainable. And then you actually might have a more rewarding relationship to the work instead of like yeah being adversarial with it. And hopefully the work is also better because of that.
00:13:17
Speaker
um This transformation for me from writing creative nonfiction to writing fiction was was a big part of that confidence switch. All three of my books and my... national awards, et cetera, are all within one genre. And I think it's really tempting to say, all right, I'm a creative nonfiction writer.
00:13:35
Speaker
And I was at a point where I didn't have a lot more that I wanted to say in that space. Not that I will never write creative nonfiction again, but i had written three books and and gotten those out there within, don't know, six or seven years.
00:13:52
Speaker
And i had a lot of other ideas that I just couldn't get to within the structure of that genre. And it's been really freeing to jump into the world of fiction.
00:14:05
Speaker
and go after those things that have been kind hanging out in my writing journal, but I haven't been able to approach through sort of myself as the lens. And I think a lot of that comes with, don't know if I want to say mid-career, because that makes me feel maybe a little bit more established than I am. But it definitely comes with confidence to know that you can try a new thing and and hopefully find success within it.
00:14:31
Speaker
you know What I liked about your this rewilding essay also was the sense of, i think you know you're you're also wrestling with this idea that kind of like the dream came true.
00:14:43
Speaker
And i think for a lot of people, that that never-ending striving of reaching that dream kind of keeps you keeps you going, keeps the momentum going. and I don't know if a lot of people know what to do if they actually achieve it or what that feels like to kind of achieve it and reconcile with like, Oh, I kind of did it now. What?
00:15:02
Speaker
So like, how do you, how did you like reconcile the feeling of like, Oh, I, here I am, you know, around, you know, late thirties, 40, like, and it kind of happened. I, so, I mean, I,
00:15:15
Speaker
I have, think we all have those big dreams, which are almost too embarrassing to say out loud about our writing. and And I certainly have a lot of hunger still for that kind of that next level of of publishing success.
00:15:34
Speaker
The other dream that really came true for me is is my property. And having the chance as a you know, a woman who lives by herself and supports herself in my my late 30s to buy land, build a house, and structure a whole ah life around this this land, that is ah a dream that i i didn't i really did not know would come true in the way that it did. I've been very lucky with this property and what I'm able to do on it.
00:16:09
Speaker
and the design and the input that I have put onto my little homestead practice. And I guess I see it less as a dream come true as having a system finally in place that works.
00:16:23
Speaker
I know that's so practical, but having, have always worked outdoors and and I spend hours of my time even on a disgusting cold day like it is today in New Hampshire, outside walking with my dog, walking,
00:16:43
Speaker
have some brush clearing and logging work that I need to get done before spring and that all feeds into the into the well and I actually feel more like I'm more I'm just getting started like I've I've i've laid the groundwork for what I really need to move into a period of even deeper and more impactful creativity.
00:17:07
Speaker
In what ways does the physical, being like exercise, but getting outside, doing that kind of brush clearing and that degree of yard work and property management, how does that inform your creativity and the art you do?
Influences and Inspirations in Writing
00:17:24
Speaker
i think I think it's deeply connected. i I've always had a lot of physical energy. I was the kind of kid that was out honestly doing the same kind of stuff that I am now, clearing trails and setting up gardens and building forts. And I always have enjoyed moving and learning skills with my hands, physicality learning.
00:17:51
Speaker
whether that's on farm work or in the gym or on the running trail has always been a place where I'm able to do deep thinking and deep creativity I mean, some people talk about how it's a meditative state or you're zoning out. And and I actually think it's a different thing. I think you're actually just paying really close attention and,
00:18:19
Speaker
you're not able to do that, right? If I'm operating my chainsaw, I am most certainly paying a lot of attention to the world around me. And it's that hyper attention, whether it's figuring out where you're gonna put your feet on a trail run so you don't twist an ankle or where I'm gonna fell a tree.
00:18:37
Speaker
That is where I think I end up being the most creative only because I'm so present. The other thing that it informs is is my content.
00:18:49
Speaker
So I am someone who writes a lot about the body. And I also am a person in my fiction world who develops characters that are either involved in the same sort of professions that that I have been, or who are engaged in some kind of pursuit that is very physical and that the the body becomes a central point too.
00:19:13
Speaker
And I think it's very tempting for a lot of people in the contemporary world to feel distanced from their body and from the natural and physical space around them.
00:19:24
Speaker
And that's something in my work that I really want to bring people back to. Yeah. And speaking of, you know, running and trail running and stubbing your toe on a root or something, you know, what ah it I wrote a biography on ah on a runner that's coming out this year and I was thumbing through my stuff and I, you know, came across your true story on running essay. And I and ah and a it's ah it's an essay that, yeah, sure, there's sneakers on the cover and it's titled on running, but it is a
00:19:57
Speaker
it's not it's not the the meditation on running that i I would think that a lot of people might expect from it. there it's it's got a It's got a lot of quirky layers to it that I just didn't see coming. And i wonder just have a like if you remember much about it, like how was what was your kind of entree and entry into an essay of this nature?
00:20:18
Speaker
Well, that particular essay I think my goal with that originally was to fuse the literary with the sports or physical world of writing.
00:20:32
Speaker
That whole collection that to On Running eventually ended up being published with Anne is about writing about or around topics that didn't feel literary or didn't feel like they belonged in the realm of creative nonfiction.
00:20:51
Speaker
At the time that I com composed them, um I had a ah wonderful interview conversation with a nonfiction author named Joni Tevis, who I really admired and I realized while reading the back of her book that she lived in my my city um and she met me for but for coffee.
00:21:12
Speaker
And i was at the time working as a CrossFit coach and personal trainer really while working my way through my MFA. So I was supporting myself by teaching people how to do pull-ups and yelling at them and you turning up the techno music really, really loud.
00:21:29
Speaker
and i And in both realms, I felt like a fraud. um I felt like if I told my MFA friends that I spent my days, you know, like dialing in the Skrillex and the the hip hop music and screaming at people to do another rep, they would think I was less of in some way.
00:21:48
Speaker
And then if I was to tell my clients that, hey, you know, while I'm watching you, suffer through these workouts, I'm actually thinking about how I'm going to compose my next essay, that I would be less than of a coach.
00:22:01
Speaker
And Joni said to me, that's it. That's the tension. That's the place that you need to write from. um And so that collection came from the confusion I was having between the the two facets of my life at that time.
00:22:21
Speaker
um And i think with the On Running essay in particular, ah wanted to replicate the way my mind moves during long runs.
00:22:34
Speaker
ah where you think about if you are a runner or if you do any kind of mid to long distance endurance sport, your mind goes everywhere from yeah from the lyrics of the song you're listening to, to observations on the trail, to running back through your to-do list, and then eventually into this realm of really free association. Yeah.
00:23:00
Speaker
And that essay includes things like a reflection on ah Lewis and Clark and their journals. um It includes things about, I think Whitman is in that.
00:23:16
Speaker
And that that was really kind of a slice inside my brain to see, you know, where am I going when I run? um But I also really wanted to show that There is a correlation between running, between a practice that brings you around to the same simple things every single day, whether it's the same course or the same step and writing.
00:23:47
Speaker
What tripped me out about the essay too is these kind of these meditations on Meriwether Lewis and, and ah and how a it's kind of it's this connective tissue ah throughout, be it ah be it, be it, be it his death, which was most likely suicide and, and this, yeah all their kind of their, um their observations, be it, you know, as they're approaching the Missouri river waterfalls and all this, and just how that,
00:24:15
Speaker
comes to light, like the frantic writing that you you allude to there as they're like coming upon it and there's just like scribbling and he's thinking about deleting the whole thing, but he ends up leaving the whole thing there. And I'm just wondering, like, oh my God, like you stitched all this together in such a wonderful way, but they're like, there's so much going on here in 21 little pages in this little pamphlet.
00:24:35
Speaker
Well, I think the Lewis thing also came from the fact that I started training for my first marathon when I was living in Portland, Oregon. And i was running on an island where the Lewis and Clark expedition briefly stopped over.
00:24:54
Speaker
And i went, i this is a little bit of an easy association, but I was going to Lewis and Clark College at the time. Mm-hmm. yeah not because of my my love for the explorers, but i you know you're out there and there's the Lewis and Clark Trail and there are various um forts and places that you can visit. And I'm a history nerd.
00:25:15
Speaker
um I read more history texts than I do any other form of book. And I've always been fascinated by stories of explorers and people who have done long journeys somewhere.
00:25:33
Speaker
And for whatever reason, Lewis and Clark, I think the idea of seeing a landscape at that moment of transition has always been really poignant to me.
00:25:48
Speaker
and And I think I mentioned this in my my essay. It was also one of those moments where a teacher recognized me as a writer very early on.
00:25:59
Speaker
and So in sixth grade, we were assigned a you know, write a biography of a report of ah an explorer ah kind of assignment. And I was, you were given explorers and I was assigned Lewis and Clark.
00:26:13
Speaker
And I wrote my piece in flashbacks. from Meriwether Lewis's point of view before he killed himself in sixth grade.
00:26:24
Speaker
My teacher was definitely like, all right, you need to, parents, you need to spend, you need to invest some time in this kid. this is This is the weirdest history essay I've ever i've ever read. um But that, like again, while I'm running or working outside, I'm thinking about stuff like that because that's i'm I'm fascinated by history. And before I...
00:26:45
Speaker
decided to follow writing and in my college career. I was a history major. So it's always been ah focus of mine. Yeah. And given so much of the the writing you do is ah is personal and you said a moment ago, like kind of rooted in the body, you know, what was the the the impetus to want to take on, you know, this kind of writing? I know you've pivoted to fiction of late, but what was the the motivation to want to take on, you know memoir and and and these kinds of essays?
00:27:18
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Well, I think the the big transition for me um was leaving my farm job. um So I i had a not very long nonlinear path higher education. i um I went from a very competitive boarding school environment where I was majoring in creative writing as a high school student, essentially participating in
00:27:49
Speaker
what would look like graduate level or PhD level courses for five hours a day, just in creative writing. And then my gen ed stuff in the afternoon ah to ah being a history major at Lewis and Clark college to eventually deciding that I did not want to continue to be in an academic setting or go on to teach.
00:28:13
Speaker
And my, My second book, Farm Girl, details this transition where I decided to leave college and go back to my hometown and work full time on an organic farm.
00:28:27
Speaker
And I did finish my my college degree. My parents were aghast that I had made this decision. So I ended up going to low residency undergrad program where I majored in poetry, which was fantastic.
00:28:40
Speaker
But I was still working full time at this farm. And I continue to work. full season and dev develop just to completely devote myself to that landscape for another, um much how many years, maybe eight years. oh wow And I didn't write at all.
00:29:00
Speaker
um In the middle of that, I went to bread loaf on a poetry scholarship And had, I think, the opposite reaction that people are supposed to have at conferences like that, where I decided i do not want to write. don't want to be a writer. i want to just go back to being a farmer. I don't want to be around all these writing people.
00:29:22
Speaker
um i just want to be outside and do physical work. So I i was really focused on my career there. And Eventually, as I think happens in a lot of jobs, I climbed the ladder to a point where I was no longer doing the thing that I had started the job because I loved. I was a manager and hiring and you know I had 40 to 50 people working under me.
00:29:50
Speaker
And that is you know not that's not the romance that people look for you a farm job. And I eventually ended up making a big life change. i I quit the job. I moved way out of state down to South Carolina.
00:30:08
Speaker
and I then decided after that move that I wanted to go back and and pursue my MFA. So it was in that time period where I was not in my my landscape.
00:30:20
Speaker
South Carolina is very different from New Hampshire. And I was thinking back to the farm that I started to want to write nonfiction. And I made that switch from poetry to nonfiction because I wanted to tell my story as it connected to the land there.
00:30:39
Speaker
And a lot of people, if they have a personal story they want to tell, sometimes there's a rush to write it and they don't give it time to gestate the way it needs. You need distance.
00:30:52
Speaker
And ah how important was it or when did you know you were ready when you had the requisite distance to take on the what would become Farm Grow? Well, I think Farm Girl the book that taught me the most about writing.
00:31:10
Speaker
I rewrote that book eight or nine times entirely from it was a novel at one point. and It covered decades at other points. It went through a lot of revision.
00:31:24
Speaker
Did it drive you insane? A little bit. i i like where I ended, like where the draft is now, where it's published, because it's so focused.
00:31:37
Speaker
um I think one of the things I'm always telling my students about distance is that you need at least a few years, if not more, before you can really understand your story in the context of your life.
00:31:53
Speaker
And for me, Farm Girl was about that was about distance because not only was I no longer in that region, but I wasn't interacting with the with the farm and the landscape in the same way.
00:32:08
Speaker
So I made the decision way late in the drafting process to only focus on the year where I had decided to return to the farm. because I wanted that book to be about the love that I had for that place at that time, not all the stuff that came later.
00:32:26
Speaker
so it was really about reduction. And again, that's something I tell my students is, you know, if we we think so much about what is going to make it into our nonfiction, but just as important is the stuff that we are not going to include in it.
00:32:42
Speaker
And for me, that was the eight years that i continued to work at that farm after the book ended, which I had just lived. You know, I had just come away from this.
00:32:54
Speaker
So, yes, that book did drive me a little bit crazy, but it it did teach me a lot about storytelling. Well, that's just it about memoirs. ah There is a tendency for people to want to throw in so so much. And you said, you know, what this was was very, very focused. And yeah to quote something you said just a moment ago about a moment a moment of transition. And that that's what this book really is, is a big moment in transition, you know, braided around your experience with the farm and finally deciding to go back to it.
00:33:28
Speaker
And I think I also use the the example of the movie ah A Christmas Story. And, you know, you talk it's ah you know, that's a little that's a slice. That's a memoir. Memoir is a slice.
00:33:40
Speaker
And it can be really tough to like drill down and focus and just try to extract the meaning from like. I don't know, maybe just a couple months. But you if you do it right, you can blow it up to something like what you have with Farm Girl, which is that slice, but it is just richly told in a very narrow ah aperture.
00:33:59
Speaker
h
Choosing an Unconventional Path
00:34:00
Speaker
Yeah, those are hard. They're hard decisions to make in the in the moment, which is why I think the distance is important. I don't think I would have...
00:34:11
Speaker
been able to offer the same kind of perspective if that slice was coming from a time period that was really recent. and And another, you know i like your Christmas story ah example. my My example is a little less classy. I say that we don't want the security camera footage of a person's life. We want the real housewives edit. Yeah.
00:34:36
Speaker
where somebody throws a you know water in your face or a door slams. We want those moments where there's really heightened tension. And a lot of the time that does happen over a really particular slice of our story, like that one year of transition. And then many, many years afterwards, just sort of follow ah the same rhythm.
00:34:59
Speaker
In the acknowledgments of Farm Girl, you you cite something ah that Patrick Madden told you, where he he was reminding you the value of nonfiction is the truthiness of the thing, that I am the eye the girl who decided to move back and farm.
00:35:12
Speaker
And when you heard that, and you heard that counsel from ah from a mentor ah who had had enough influence to be included in the acknowledgments, to what extent did you hold that true as you were synthesizing what through multiple myriad drafts of what Oh, i well, I think I think that was more of a of a don't know it was a command, but a reaction. So I stopped Patrick. I saw him on the on the floor of the bookstore of the book fair at AWP and said, oh, hey, I I've decided I'm going to change my draft around and it's going to be a novel.
00:35:53
Speaker
And i had ah he hadn't really interacted with Farm Girl in the way that he had with the essays, ah but he's an advocate for creative nonfiction. And we talked a little bit more and and he reminded me of...
00:36:10
Speaker
you know the i was talking about you know the selling point of a novel is that it's fiction and fiction sells right that's what publishers want you want a first novel and he was reminding me that you know the value of non-fiction is that the eye is is the eyes you it's it's true it actually happened and when you remove that from a piece like farm girl you remove so much of the power of the story.
00:36:40
Speaker
um So that was a reminder to me to tell the story as nonfiction because that's where the power of the narrative lay.
00:36:53
Speaker
A moment in the book, too, when you finally decide to to to leave college and go back to the the farm. you you You cite this moment with with your with your ah with your mother and you're like, I don't remember our words, just her disappointment.
00:37:09
Speaker
And that that struck me like, a like right in the chest. i was like, oh, my God. was just like, so I don't know. Can you expound upon that that moment of, you know, that it's a big leap on your part, but you also know you're you're not only kind of uprooting your life and doing doing that, but you're also having to confront parental expectation.
00:37:29
Speaker
Yeah. but Yeah, oh I am. I'm the oldest in my family, and I'm certainly the most academic. And I think my parents had always expected that I would be the kid that had that straight shot through college into master's program into PhD like that. That's sort of where my trajectory was.
00:37:51
Speaker
And I won all these academic and scholastic awards as a high school student and and had kind of made a series of bad college decisions around boyfriends that had already kind of gotten some disappointing looks from them.
00:38:05
Speaker
um But at this point, i think really what my mom was reacting to was my desire to farm. So my mother, grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont in the Northeast Kingdom.
00:38:19
Speaker
And her memoir, if she was to write it, would be about escaping the farm and going towards art as a way to leave that world.
00:38:30
Speaker
So she's an accomplished flutist and went to New England Conservatory in Boston. and did almost everything she could to not be back in a rural existence.
00:38:43
Speaker
So I think for her, it was very much about the fact that my story seemed to be the complete opposite of hers. And that she had seen how challenging farming really is. And I will say, I i am not, dairy farming is a completely different structure and set up to one's life.
00:39:04
Speaker
But she had seen how much work that was and how financially challenging that was and how hard it was on the body. And I think she had hoped that I would have an easier life than than she had grown up around.
00:39:18
Speaker
Of course, there are many ways to make a life and she's very happy to help me now at the farmer's market. She's my my assistant during the summer. and and I would say that she's probably proud of me at this point.
00:39:32
Speaker
ah But back then, yeah, I think they both her and my father had had really hoped that I would kind of follow that academic career rather than do something physical. I think it's hard when you have that one kid who gets the grades and gets the big awards and to then say, nope, actually, that's not where I see my future.
00:39:53
Speaker
i actually just want to pull weeds and get sunburns for the rest of my life. Well, it's still that that that pressure of being the oldest and the one beholden to the most accomplishment. I just i really ah ah admire the courage it must have taken to try to really chart your own path and maybe know go down a route that was or a detour, as it were, that was not maybe expected of you. I imagine that that was a tremendously hard decision to make, or maybe not.
00:40:29
Speaker
i I wish I could say that it was. i think that would speak better to my character. um But I've always been very independent and very happy to strike off on my own. It's the kind of kid that ran away all the time, not because I had a hard life, but just because I wanted to live on my own in the woods at the age of four.
00:40:48
Speaker
And, you know, I think for me, the I've always, my my problem has been that i I've always followed my passion and sometimes that it doesn't make for the best career moves, but looking at that decision, choosing to leave Lewis and Clark and and work on the farm full time, i think the payout is where I am now. It's been a long path to get there.
00:41:21
Speaker
to have created this sort of nuanced life between farming and writing and teaching, but I've made it. It certainly wasn't the easy path that I think every parent hopes their, their kid ends up on though.
00:41:34
Speaker
I think that's important to underscore how, and you said this a little while ago about the non, a nonlinear path. And I always go back ACDCs. It's a long way to the top. If you want to rock and roll,
00:41:48
Speaker
It's so true. Like we want to think that it's just a very sequential thing. But I mean, it is it is so haphazard and a tangled knot of bullshit to get where you want to go.
00:41:59
Speaker
And yeah, when you get there and I it's a and you never quite fully arrive. And I think that's an illusion, too. It's just you almost have to ah embody the spirit of it. And then it's kind of like, OK, that's it's a bit woo woo. But there isn't like I mean, I really don you have to stay hungry. yeah And this this comes back. I know you you write a lot about athletes and sport. And I'm just finishing a book now about big wave surfing, which is a topic. i Oh, cool. never thought I'd get into.
00:42:28
Speaker
But I do think you always have to have that thing that whether it's, you know, wanting to do something bigger or more. i just I can't imagine ever feeling like and I have actually in my life, which is why I left the farm, that feeling of, OK, this is it. Now we're just going to hit the replay button for the next 60 years. And that's it. that's That's a life. So, you know, I think that part of that is a restlessness, part of that is an embarrassing amount of ambition.
00:43:00
Speaker
But I've learned that that like that that's okay to to ask for of the universe if you want to get really woo woo. Because if you don't, then you don't end up getting even close to something.
00:43:12
Speaker
So I tell my my kids to, you know shoot for the moon. And if you miss, then, you know, the the worst that can happen is that you you landed somewhere really high, just not on the moon.
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's fine with my own baseball career. I kind of likened like I ultimately wanted to play Major League Baseball and I was just good enough where that was not totally delusional.
00:43:36
Speaker
Like ah looking back, it was. But I mean, it got me to a point where I was. a very good player. And I guess I did shoot for the stars and ah in ah in a weird way I did land on the moon, but because my my vision was so set on the stars, landing on the moon still felt like a disappointment.
00:43:54
Speaker
yeah And i don't i I don't know how to be okay with shooting for the stars yet and being okay by landing on the moon, because it still feels short, even though that's probably monumentally farther away you would ever get had you not shot for the stars.
00:44:11
Speaker
I think it's all I mean, I feel the same way about my books. I know I have books. And that's, that's like a huge goal for so many people. And I feel bad even saying this, but I wish, you know, I wish more people read them. I wish they came out from bigger presses. you know, we always have that that thing that eats at us. And, um and I think that's okay.
00:44:33
Speaker
I, I just I can't imagine. Yeah, i had ah I had a teacher, Jack Driscoll, who's a fantastic fiction writer who passed away a couple of years ago, who said that he he would he he set for himself a goal that he would know he was a writer when he saw someone reading one of his books on a plane.
00:44:56
Speaker
And then he did. And he still
Joy and Motivation in Writing
00:44:59
Speaker
was like, i don't, this doesn't feel right. Yeah, it still feels like shit. How did that guy, I mean, this is some kind of fluke. Like he must've just gotten out of some bargain bin. I didn't talk to him. Why was he reading it? Maybe his mom came to one of my readings at this small bookstore. So we all, I think we're always going to be able to frame it in a way that shows that we so we still have work to do.
00:45:22
Speaker
Oh, totally. Yeah, exactly. It's like you see it. It's like the in a way like that was he sketched out what the dream looked like and then it was there at his feet. And it's like this is bullshit.
00:45:33
Speaker
yeah this Yeah. What was I hoping to get out of this? Right. Like seeing your name. Do you go and then say, hey, stop. I wrote that book. um Yeah, that was, you know, that I think we all have that thing we want that would we think would feel like we've arrived that stamp of approval or that award. And it's not if if you really have more to give and you want to keep doing this, there's always going to be that next thing.
00:46:04
Speaker
Right. the The reward is ah being able to continue doing it. And it's yeah and ah so much of that is internally driven because no one is cracking the whip at at my ass and yours saying like, we're keep on going. Like, we need the next one. It's like, ah no, there's so much out there that no, like, as sad as it is, like, no one's going to miss us when we're gone. So it's right like, We're not you know George R.R. Martin having people stalk him and ask to finish his last book.
00:46:34
Speaker
um Yeah, there's there a lot of it is comes from us. And you know the other thing I've learned, too, in the process is what the the process is the is the reward. And I know that that's, again, a little bit on the woo-woo side. Yeah.
00:46:50
Speaker
my most recent book, 20 Square Feet of Skin, i I got the chance to work with really amazing editors who advanced those drafts in a way that I never would have been able to do on my own.
00:47:01
Speaker
And so and knowing that yes the award is the book and the book comes out and you can post pictures of it online and and do podcasts but you also got a chance to work with people who made you better for free he they made you better for free which is fantastic so I'm always hoping for that you know that next thing comes with something else often whether that's a a connection to a person or ah you know craft tool or something.
00:47:31
Speaker
there There always tends to be that next skill that's unlocked as well. And how do you wrestle with the inherent self-doubt that comes with this work as you're sitting down to write?
00:47:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:49
Speaker
ah Blind confidence, some really good pump up music. ah Some of that CrossFit soundtrack. Well, ah so this is I know you you'd asked for me to come up with a recommendation. This is probably the nerdiest and most obscure recommendation.
00:48:07
Speaker
The motivation to get me to sit down and finish this novel that I've been writing and researching for over four years came for me this December from watching the second season of Arcane League of Legends on Netflix.
00:48:22
Speaker
um Right. Not what you were expecting to hear, probably. Nope. I love animation. I've always loved animation. And this, it's based on a video game, if you were unaware The story is so complex that at the beginning of the season, i i was almost going to stop watching. It's like, there's no way they can pull this off.
00:48:47
Speaker
And they did in the last episode. And I watched that last episode like four or five times in a row. was so impressed by their story, the storytelling that happened there.
00:48:58
Speaker
and that was the motivation for me. you know, i I think part of that is and people seeing or being exposed to craft that impresses them.
00:49:11
Speaker
and And some people get that from being in creative environments where they interact with competitors essentially on a daily basis. I think of my friends who work in university setting and you know are with other writers that push them forward.
00:49:26
Speaker
A lot of the time for me, it's seeing people just kill it in other realms. And want to be able to do that on my own, whether that's creating a really badass animated show I know, Beyonce dropping her album this summer. there's There's a lot of things where I'm like, whoa, like, you killed it.
00:49:50
Speaker
and And that gives me a lot of of motivation to sit down and try to like, get to that energy if I can. And I think it's a good practice, at least from certainly for me in the way I'm wired, to to look to other artistic media to get that and inspiration.
00:50:08
Speaker
Because if I look too close to what I do, I have a tendency to get like kind of jealous and I get a little angry. And so sometimes
World-Building in Writing
00:50:16
Speaker
like, oh, fuck you. you get a little bit like, okay, I'm just going to rehash this. Yeah. you i think that we have to be and Very aware of our influences and I'm the kind of writer where I if you said okay you like John McPhee great I could let me write you a essay in the style of John McPhee I i slip into that very very easily.
00:50:44
Speaker
And I won't say that I don't read in the genre that I'm writing at the time. I've i've learned to be able to do that. But I do seek actively to put other stuff into that. Well, besides, you know, I'm working on a novel. Great. It's just going to only be novels.
00:51:01
Speaker
I really want to put other things in there. i i create playlists for my projects. And those playlists can be incredibly varied, um As you can probably guess ah from yeah the CrossFit pump up music to to folk and classical music. My mother's a classical musician.
00:51:22
Speaker
ah Just a whole mix of things. ah That for me has been the key is this mix. i And there's ah there's a line from Farm Girl that I love that um yeah where where you said, like, as the weather changes over and the season's compass points towards stillness.
00:51:40
Speaker
And that kind of harkens back to the start of our conversation of leaving time for that fallow fallow regeneration, if you will. of And ah it but since you have vast periods of of stillness like that, and that way you can attack the writing when it's time,
00:51:58
Speaker
How do you, how are you curating or at least and maybe collating the ideas and everything that comes your way in that still time and keeping that straight? So when you are ready to, to write, you're like, it's here, it's ready. And I'm ready to just take off like a rocket ship.
00:52:18
Speaker
I have a lot of different journals. I think all writers are guilty of this. I have way too many journals. I have, several I have like a little pocket-sized moleskin that has a soft cover that can fit into just about any pocket.
00:52:35
Speaker
and And that comes with me wherever I go and contains really just notes. And then my process is to go from that into another larger hardcover journal where I collect the notes that I find important.
00:52:53
Speaker
And then... that might then go into a story or not. um But if it's a line in particular, ideas I'm pretty good on. um I have a, I have, unfortunately, this is another one of those bragging things. i i have an almost perfect memory.
00:53:10
Speaker
um and i can remember almost anything that I've ever said or anyone else has said to me or I've read So i don't often forget ideas But if it's a particular line, i will you know go and put that down because that might slip away.
00:53:27
Speaker
The novels have been very, as I mentioned at the beginning, very researched heavy. So I do spend time laying out timelines and investing things.
00:53:39
Speaker
mean books and and research trips and so on just to start to internalize all of that stuff for the writing um but it is like sloppy notes to less sloppy notes to maybe a draft maybe not and then just holding on to all of that stuff I don't ever get rid of a ah notebook it just goes into the closet and it's there if I ever did want to find it and and extract something from it Are there essays or books, novels or yeah just anything that you have on your bookcase or something you pull down and you kind of mainline it over and over again? You're like, i need to.
00:54:20
Speaker
How did howd they go about this? Go back to the game tape. And it's just like I need to be reminded of how how when it's done well, how it's done. Yeah, I know. I have I have quite a few of those.
00:54:31
Speaker
i Sometimes I think of those as like the most intimidating books. I'll stack them up and say, oh my gosh, why did I even collect these? and This is embarrassing. Yeah, right. like I've just brought all of the best novels of the last hundred years and put on my desk and been like, make a book like this.
00:54:51
Speaker
um I do. I'm thinking what mostly in novels right now, though, so I could give you what those titles are. Lolita. Lolita.
00:55:03
Speaker
by Nabokov in terms of a voice-driven novel. Absolutely outstanding. I accidentally bought three copies of it on Amazon.
00:55:13
Speaker
um So I have three copies of that book. um I also really love Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, although I can't read that book again.
00:55:27
Speaker
I feel like i only have like hot topic authors here on this list. ah But again, in terms of the way that McCarthy writes about the landscape and the language that he chooses to animate the natural world, that book was a game changer for me.
00:55:44
Speaker
I also love All the Light We Cannot See ah much more... contemporary novel um which i've been using as a an example for how to integrate historical stories in a way that doesn't feel like historical fiction um and yeah those those are the the big ones that come to mind i've been slowly rereading the lord of the rings to myself um Yeah, I saw that. I saw on Instagram that you were you're reading that. are you Are you teaching kind of like ah something something where that's pulling on?
00:56:19
Speaker
Yeah, I was writing a fantasy fiction course. And um this is this. The Lord of the Rings is book. I think for many people, kind of an entry point into, into books. And my father read me the Hobbit and and the Lord of the Rings out loud when I was a kid, as well as many, many other books. I was very sick when I was little. I had horrible asthma and was always hooked up to a nebulizer.
00:56:47
Speaker
had to like breathe through a hose. um And so my father would read to me during my, my treatments. And that was like, I, I,
00:56:59
Speaker
really became engaged in character and story from that book. And i wanted to get back into it and and to see what it was like to read as an adult.
00:57:10
Speaker
And also just to give myself a refresher before composing this class. Well, that's cool. And I think a great lesson for that fantasy teaches you that I that can really extrapolate to even nonfiction, which you which you do a farm girl is this idea of world building, you know, in be it fantasy, be it a memoir. Like you took me to a farm that, you know, and I've worked in.
00:57:33
Speaker
landscaping and other like grunt jobs but like you took me to the farm in a very specific way that felt very immersive and like yeah ah departure from my own experience that was just and illuminating and very enjoyable to be around and it's just like I think that's that's a key element to any nonfiction it's like yeah you're not making a world up from whole cloth but there are so many worlds nonfiction can inhabit and like So I think that's a really good lesson to pull on.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's yeah, I think we often forget that our world isn't the world everyone else lives in. um And we have to do that work as a memoirist or creative nonfiction writer in general to tell people what that looks like, whether that's because we have an interesting career or we live in a way, you know, i live in a pretty rural existence, which isn't truly extraordinary, but it's not the way that many people live.
00:58:35
Speaker
um We need to take the time to build those details on the page so that our readers will understand where we're coming from. Absolutely.
Conclusion and New Ventures
00:58:44
Speaker
Well, Megan, I want to be mindful of your time and you already hit the recommendation. So we don't even need to close out the conversation with that, which is usually my, uh, my, uh, my, uh, hammer at the end of these conversations. So, so, uh, but this is awesome. This is so great. I'm so glad we were able to have this conversation, uh, talk about, you know, just your work and how you're approaching it.
00:59:02
Speaker
And, um, yeah, I look forward to doing this again sometime down the road. So thank you so much for the time. Thank you. And thank you for your wonderful questions. It's been fantastic speaking with
00:59:17
Speaker
Just awesome. Thanks to Megan for coming on the show. I think she's got a figured out, man. I really do. I really like the seasonality approach to a writing life. A compass pointing towards stillness.
00:59:31
Speaker
like that. Not the incessant churn many of us get sucked into to be a working writer. You know what I mean. There's probably a riff in that sentiment somewhere, but not this day.
00:59:45
Speaker
When I offered my book proposal and slides and master spreadsheet template to people who attended my Power of Narrative talk, it hit me that if you really want to enroll people in the journey, you always, always, always have to be thinking what's in it for them.
01:00:00
Speaker
Unless you're George Saunders, nobody gives a shit about your day-to-day, by and large. know, if you're offering tactical and practical advice, actionable stuff that helps people get where they want to go, you're on to something.
01:00:13
Speaker
Then if you have a book come out, like the Front Runner, LOLs, people will hopefully buy your shit. And then maybe you get famous, and then people will actually care about your day-to-day. I don't know.
01:00:25
Speaker
I say all this because, as you know, I sunsetted the pod stack because it was cannibalizing the show notes and was asking too much of people to subscribe to this other thing.
01:00:36
Speaker
That said, I have a new experimental venture that's in the works. By the time you listen to this, I will already already have completed the first installment on Substack called Pitch Club.
01:00:49
Speaker
Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. Now, what the fuck is that, you ask? Well... I reach out to a long-form journalist who landed a cold pitch at a publication. They share their pitch with me, and I have them audio annotate their dissection of the pitch at various points.
01:01:07
Speaker
So you get to read their pitch, then click the button and hear them explain their reasoning at that moment, or the challenges in reporting out that scene, or why they chose to use that, or how they chose to introduce themselves, etc.,
01:01:22
Speaker
The first installment going to be with Nick Davidson and his atavis pitch for his ballooning story. It's a little over 1,500 words of a pitch. And I'm going to ask him some questions and get him talking.
01:01:36
Speaker
And i'm going to edit myself out so all you hear is Nick talking you through it. You get to read what a successful pitch looks like and and listen to the writer walk you through and analyze what they did.
01:01:48
Speaker
It's a master class that is not theoretical. These are winning pitches you can model. Of course, I'll link up to the story too, so maybe you can see the difference between the pitch and the story. It's a lot like Song Exploder.
01:02:01
Speaker
Now that's the idea, to explode a pitch into its components and help you get better at landing pitches so you can do work you're proud of for the publications you most want to write for. Now it might be once a month or it might be bi-weekly.
01:02:14
Speaker
I don't know yet. I'll probably start with once a month to get my legs under me. Who knows, it could just be whenever I feel like it. It could also be whenever I'm able to procure a pitch from someone. you People sometimes keep that stuff really close to the chest.
01:02:29
Speaker
I don't know. I often talk about the pitch, as you know, during especially during the Atavis pods. But to be able to see it in the text and then have the writer explain themselves will give you all the skills and insight you need to be better at this.
01:02:43
Speaker
Honestly, this is what I wish I had back in 2012 or so when I started to freelance in earnest. You know, when I was so fucking frustrated about how to do this kind of work.
01:02:55
Speaker
You know, how to write the right pitch, how to find people. You know, so anyway, at least this is going to be like a lesson that is kind of tight, tightly packaged from people who are doing the thing.
01:03:11
Speaker
Tactical, practical. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. I hope you'll yullla come along for the ride. The first rule of Pitch Club is we talk about Pitch Club. That's right.
01:03:24
Speaker
So stay wild, C&Evers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.