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Episode 102—Jane Friedman on The Business of Being a Writer
129 Plays7 years ago
"You have to decide how you want to live in this ecosystem that is morphing around you," says Jane Friedman Hey, CNFers, guess what? Promotional support is provided by Hippocampus Magazine. Its 2018 Remember in November Contest for Creative Nonfiction is open for submissions until July 15th! This annual contest has a grand prize of $1,000 and publication for all finalists. That’s awesome. Visit hippocampusmagazine.com for details. Hippocampus Magazine: Memorable Creative Nonfiction. It’s the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the best artists about telling true stories so you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work. For Episode 102 of CNF Pod, I welcome Jane Friedman, the titan (though not like Thanos) of the publishing industry, whose book The Business of Being a Writer, published by the University of Chicago Press, is the best and most frank book on earning a living with words. It debunks a lot of myths and, quite honestly, could save a bunch of people from getting into the biz on false delusions and might even save more people from pursuing an MFA, a degree, IMO, that leads to more debt than fulfillment, controversial as that may be. And I have one, earned on the false pretenses of career advancement, but that’s not why we’re here. Jane talks about her upbringing in a small mid-western town, I wish it was Pawnee, but it wasn’t. How a writing career is very much individualistic Dealing with shame Playing the long game Embracing Change instead of fighting it And getting beyond the idea that the book is the be all, end all Jane can be found on Twitter @janefriedman and you can find me @BrendanOMeara on Twitter and Instagram. The Podcast is @CNFPod on Twitter and @CNFPodcast on Facebook. If you have a minute or two, please consider leaving a review on iTunes/Apple Podcasts. That would mean the world to me and will help this podcast reach more people looking to tell their best true story. Head over to brendanomeara.com for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly reading list newsletter. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it.
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Transcript
Introduction and Shoutouts
00:00:01
Speaker
ACNFers, guess what? Promotional support is provided by Hippo Campus Magazine.
Creative Nonfiction Contest Details
00:00:08
Speaker
It's 2018. Remember, in November, Contest for Creative Nonfiction is open for submissions until July 15th.
00:00:16
Speaker
This annual contest has a grand prize of $1,000. That's a lot of clams. And publication for all finalists. That's awesome. Visit hippocampusmagazine.com for details. Hippocampus Magazine. Memorable, creative, non-fiction. Riff.
00:00:44
Speaker
All right. Okay, we're back in the saddle again. It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the best artists about telling true stories. So you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Hey, hey.
00:00:59
Speaker
For episode 102 of CNF Pod, I welcome Jane Friedman, the Titan, though not like Thanos, of the publishing industry whose book, The Business of Being a Writer, published by the University of Chicago
Jane Friedman's Writing Journey
00:01:14
Speaker
Press.
00:01:14
Speaker
is the best and most frank book on earning a living with words. Hard and damn near impossible as that is, this is the book you need to get. It debunks a lot of myths and, quite honestly, could save a bunch of people from getting into the biz on false delusions. It might even save more people from pursuing an MFA, a degree, IMO, that leads to more death and fulfillment, controversial as that may be.
00:01:42
Speaker
And I have one earned on the false pretenses of career advancement, but that's not why we're here. Jane.
Influences and Early Years
00:01:50
Speaker
Jane talks about her upbringing in a small Midwestern town. I was hoping it was Pawnee, Indiana, but of course it wasn't.
00:02:01
Speaker
Well, she talks about how a writing career is very much individualistic, dealing with shame, playing the long game, embracing change instead of fighting it, and getting beyond the idea that the book, capital B, is the be-all and end-all. So, I feel like that ought to be enough. Here is the great Jane 3 for episode 102.
00:02:36
Speaker
I think generally it's been well received. I think the most frequent comment is finally, there's a book that addresses all of it from beginning to end. Um, especially I think you can find stuff on just the book business or just the magazine business. But, you know, as you saw, this book tries to cram it all in. Um, I think the one disconnect has been with the self publishing crowd that I reach
00:03:03
Speaker
online, I think they were expecting more of a self-publishing book, which it is not. So that's been an interesting thing to navigate. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And as we kind of get going, I'd love to get a little sense of the type of person you were when you were kind of growing up and starting to sort of fall in love with language and writing and books and reading and so forth. And so where did you grow up, Jane?
00:03:31
Speaker
I grew up in Oakland City, Indiana, which is a cornfield. It's a very small town. There's not even a traffic light. And there wasn't much to do there aside from crews around a block, which was like this basically the this you could drive around the city in roughly three minutes in a car.
00:03:53
Speaker
That was called cruising. You could go cruising or you could go to the library. That was about it. Where I grew up, I knew Bedford was near Lakeville. Lakeville is kind of like Cranberry Boggs and all that stuff. But yeah, there was always cruising the Ave, a Cushnet Ave, and that's where everyone went to.
00:04:13
Speaker
Blow blow out their stereos and go down that route I was never among that crowd either, but it looks like you were either cruising or the library So I I'm assuming you chose the library over cruising most of the time. I Did and my mother happened to work there. So that was yeah They even hired me part-time for a while I was there already so yeah, that was nice and
00:04:38
Speaker
What were some early influential writers that landed in your lap that kind of made you think in terms of possibly pursuing writing as a vocation? Well, the truth is I don't know that I was exposed to anything that was particularly, let's say, literary. I grew up on
00:05:02
Speaker
the Sweet Valley High series and a lot of choose your own adventure stuff, Encyclopedia Brown, Judy Bloom, of course. And, you know, I remember specifically going through the library stacks in this really small library and looking for what in my mind was like classic literature.
00:05:26
Speaker
I didn't even know what that meant, but I was looking for something that was not Sweet Valley High. And I think I came out with like the Prince and the Popper, which I don't even know who wrote that, but it was, what's that twine? I think so. So that, you know, my exposure to, let's say more highbrow literature was limited until I got into high school. So that's where, um,
00:05:52
Speaker
I joined something called Academic Super Bowl and I was on the English squad and we read Dante's Inferno and Bocaccio's to Cameron and I got really, really nerdy into the
High School and Early Writing
00:06:04
Speaker
Renaissance literature even though I didn't understand a lot of what I was reading. Did you have an influential teacher who saw something in you and wanted to bring the best out of you?
00:06:17
Speaker
in middle school, an English teacher, Mrs. Langley, and then also Mrs. McKinney. Very different styles, but one basically told me, just keep writing. You'll do great. And the other one was like one of these slap your knuckles with a ruler grammar sorts of teachers, which I actually loved.
00:06:40
Speaker
I loved doing everything by the rule book like she would she made us get a steno pad and write all of the grammar rules as she recited them. We did the diagramming of the sentences. It was like the whole nine yards. So I probably got more out of her class, but on an emotional level, Mrs. Langley is her words are something I've always remembered because I had a tough time in middle school. And in what way did you have a tough time?
00:07:07
Speaker
Oh, I was just the nerdy aspects of of reading and being very shy, painfully shy. And it I don't it was just especially when it's such a small community. It was, I don't know, maybe only 70 people per graduating class. Yeah. You know, it's hard to not be popular in that kind of environment. And I didn't hide the fact that
00:07:37
Speaker
I was kind of a nerdy, smart kid, and said, nobody likes those kids, really, you know? At what point did you begin to feel more comfortable in your own skin then? It was actually when I left. I was in this small town for my freshman and sophomore years of high school, but then I left and went to a junior, senior high school, basically a boarding school in Indiana.
00:08:07
Speaker
that was about three hours away, four hours. And it was called the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and Humanities. It didn't cost me a dime because it was a public school, but you did have to apply to get in. And then you live there for most of the year, except, of course, the summer and some holiday breaks. So then I was finally among other people who were as socially unacceptable as I was.
00:08:32
Speaker
Um, and also kind of like all of us had a certain quirk or annoyance or arrogance that, you know, just the, but the friction was between everyone. So it didn't matter. And you just kind of found the people that most accepted you or most loved you for who you were and everything.
00:08:48
Speaker
Everything improved from that point on. Yeah, that must have been incredibly liberating to finally kind of find your tribe after being, like you said, kind of unpopular in a very small class. And then you were just among more people like yourself and you're able to probably just, I don't know, find the greater sense of voice and self there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think what was so interesting there is no one was afraid of conflict.
00:09:17
Speaker
or fighting or argument, either on an intellectual level or on a more emotional level. And it was just kind of accepted as part of figuring out who we were in this place we were in, which was strange to begin with. So, yeah, it was it was a lot of water under the bridge stuff, whereas like at the old town, old high school, like
00:09:36
Speaker
Any kind of conflict or tension could just stay there for years and fester. Yeah, there's no water under the bridge. It's just a murky puddle that just doesn't evaporate, just gets more and more grime. Yeah, yeah. So at what point did you think that you might pursue writing in a career in publishing? Probably starting around fourth or fifth grade.
00:10:05
Speaker
And it was partly because I was mimicking what I saw my mother doing, which she was trying to write a novel. At the time, I think she was considering it a children's work. Today, it would be considered in middle grade. And it's kind of a fantasy story. And she would just bring out this huge Smith Corona typewriter and set it on the dining room table. And it was so loud. It was this huge mechanical hum.
00:10:34
Speaker
And she was so she was writing this this novel over a period of many months. And so then I started I decided I was going to write my own novel. I got about six pages in. Well, that's called that's huge for a 10 year old. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And I had it was called Superdog. I had some illustrations. And so I remember reading that to classmates in in fifth grade. And then when I got into middle school, there was a
00:11:04
Speaker
a one sheet student newspaper that got produced every week. And I became editor in chief of that, although I had no idea what that meant. Like I didn't know what my role or job was, which it soon became clear that my only role or job according to the teacher was to write the weekly editorial. So I wrote about really weird things like Memiograph machines and other things that
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah. We're nerdy, of course. Yeah. Well, you got a real sense of what a deadline is at that point at a very young age too. Right.
00:11:44
Speaker
When you were sort of coming up through high school and you had this great little formative experience in the middle grades, what did a successful writer look like to you and how are you starting to embody that and maybe see that vision out? I should point out I was basically a terrible writer for most of my youth well into college.
Career Focus and Learning
00:12:09
Speaker
I mean, I guess that's true to some extent of every young writer. There's a certain amount of cliche and drama and just, I don't know, just terribleness. But I think I was especially bad. I mean, I was so bad that there were times when my mother would be writing my assignments for me, which I don't openly admit, but she often reminds me of those times. It just took so much effort to even think about it being
00:12:38
Speaker
something that was real in terms of making a living at. And so a lot of what my focus was on, in fact, was editing, was on the trappings around the writer because it came much more naturally to me to edit work rather than to write it myself. And it was a little bit of, I don't want to say it was a shadow career, which is something I touch on, I believe, in my book, The Business of Being a Writer, this idea that this thing that you're pursuing that is adjacent
00:13:08
Speaker
and you have a lot of success at it. And so then you start doing that instead of the thing you originally intended or set out to do. So that's still at work in my career to some extent. But yeah, I probably got away from the actual point of your question, which is when did I start to figure this all out? And I think I'm still figuring that out. I think that a lot of what I'm focused on is still on the editing and the bringing work to the public rather than the
00:13:39
Speaker
the creative process itself. Like you were saying before, everyone at some point or another really is a terrible writer, and there are different terribleness on the spectrum of awfulness.
00:13:54
Speaker
But then it really does come down to sort of stamina and discipline to sort of endure your own shortcomings and then to overcome them. So where did you find your confidence to endure what you saw as your own terrible writing to get to a level of competency and proficiency? There were a couple of classes that I took in college. I was a creative writing major and
00:14:19
Speaker
I learned, I don't know that I could have said it at the time, but looking back, I learned that there, it's so important which professors you end up with because the styles, there are certain styles that can bring out your best. And I think for so many years, I was never with the right person who would, I think basically impose the discipline that I enjoyed. So like the Mrs. McKinney grammar discipline was something I flourished under.
00:14:46
Speaker
And so in an echo of that, I ended up in a poetry class, really no intent to write poetry. It was just kind of part of the requirements that I get this out of the way. A professor who was a formalist and really felt that you shouldn't be writing poetry or really anything without a structure in place before you could really then go on to do something that was unique or creative outside of a structure. So he kind of took us through a gauntlet of all of the major forms
00:15:17
Speaker
And as the only as loose as we got was like blank verse. So, you know, he started us off on really hard stuff like sonnets, which are, you know, it's trying to write a good sonnet. You know, people spend their careers doing that. But having those restrictions helped me produce some of my best work and helped me see how I could I could become better. And ultimately, the stuff that I wrote in his class was ended up being some of my first publications. So
00:15:47
Speaker
I think that was just a really important moment to see that process and that outcome in actually a very short amount of time because of the structure that was placed on it.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, when I was speaking with Hattie Fletcher, who's the managing editor of creative nonfiction magazine, and she talked about that about about structure and that even adhering to some form of outline or yeah, some sort of wireframe, just because you're doing that doesn't make it any less artful. In fact, it probably will bring out the most art when you can kind of
00:16:21
Speaker
not worry so much about, about the that structure, you can lay down a map and then within those boundaries, like you're saying, then you can be the creativity can come through once you've got a nice, a nice sounding, well in tune guitar structure, if that makes any sense. Absolutely. Yeah, it's I think the analogy my professor used was
00:16:44
Speaker
You have to have a net to play tennis, and maybe that comes from a poet like Robert Frost or something, but it's what I always remember about why it felt so useful to me and so productive.
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's particularly good. And I think those structures are so – they're so important. It's just like what you write about in the business of being a writer too that thinking – it's what Jessica Abel echoes too about having a business plan. Just because you are thinking about business and having a structured
00:17:18
Speaker
entrepreneurial take on your work doesn't mean you're any less of an artist. It actually is going to probably lead to greater artistic fulfillment if you're able to set those blueprints down. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:17:31
Speaker
So how did you arrive at that sort of that intersection where it is truly important not to divorce the two but actually to kind of interweave them together to get a more fulfilling sort of career arc if you're going to embark on becoming a writer and someone who's supported by writing? I feel like my experience working at a publishing company and seeing kind of the parade of authors and other professionals coming through
00:18:00
Speaker
And seeing how a lot of them, the ones who were clearly, I don't want to say successful, but satisfied and who were clearly were productive in doing something that was meaningful to them. They had figured out the equation that satisfied them and every bit. It was never the same equation or same model for every person. But you could see that they had figured it out for themselves. And, you know, I worked
00:18:29
Speaker
for many years for Writers Digest, which tends to get stereotyped as here, here is the formula for writing a novel or here is the formula for becoming a successful ex. Even though you can learn something from those formulas, ultimately, you kind of have to you have to evaluate the 10 or the 20 or however, you know, there are I'm sure many more than 20 formulas and then you're basically cherry picking.
00:18:56
Speaker
to figure out what's going to compliment your strengths and weaknesses. So really it was just a long period of observing how there was not a particular solution for each writer or author I met. And yeah, cause it was just so individual, so based on personality and also like some of the things we talked about earlier, like the roots of, uh, of where you grew up and what you felt was important to express in your work. Like there's just so many variables there. And so,
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah, how could there be a formula for every single person? In your experience, what can a writer who maybe went to, say, journalism school or something, and then they got dumped into a journalistic field that's just been in total tumult since the mid-2000s, and then maybe they feel they want to be writing the profiles that typically get featured in the glossy magazines, but then they find yourself writing
00:19:54
Speaker
slideshows and stuff for $50 a crack. What would you tell this person so they don't get too bitter and resentful and so they can properly adapt and not feel bitter? Yeah, it's a tough one.
00:20:10
Speaker
I'll start by telling a story of how when I very early on in the business, when I was specifically working on the magazine side, I started subscribing to a newsletter called the Bo Sacks newsletter. It still exists to this day. It's been going since 2001. And I've even met Bo Sacks, a great guy who has a long history in the in magazines. And every day he sends out three
00:20:35
Speaker
stories that somehow touch on some aspect of the industry. And since he started it, he's been focused on how the industry is changing. And you start to see it as this living organism. If you're reading his newsletter every day and you see that change is always going to be here. This is we're going to get into maybe some Buddhist territory. Like you have to accept the change. You're not going to be able to control how it's changing. And like his his newsletter
00:21:05
Speaker
isn't trying to necessarily impress that upon you in some kind of philosophical or self-helpy way. But by the process of reading it day in and day out, year after year, you realize you have to decide how you want to respond or live in this ecosystem that's always going to be morphing around you or transforming in different ways. So I think there are people who successfully say, look, I am not going to do
00:21:35
Speaker
the slideshows or the videos or the whatever it is, that's not how my work is best expressed or that's not what I excel at and, or I would be selling my soul if I did it that way. And then they figure out how to do this other work in a way that either pays or is fulfilling or, or, you know, or they find the organization or the publication where the values are the same and you're going toward the same outcome. Or some people realize actually,
00:22:04
Speaker
This idea I have in my head that this isn't journalism that's been planted there by other people, by like, you know, the legacy journalists or by legacy companies who just don't like to see the model changing and have always done it a certain way. And so it's there's what we call the scarcity mindset where when things change or when something's taken away, it's bad. And you have to try and maintain what you've always enjoyed.
00:22:30
Speaker
So I think it's difficult, this is one of the most difficult tensions, I think, realizing when, are you just having a knee-jerk reaction to the changes? And you can actually get over it by being more flexible and adaptable and open-minded about what constitutes good journalism or good storytelling.
00:22:50
Speaker
Or is there something really integral here, something about the change that is really conflicting deeply with your values or with your strengths or whatever artisanal ideas you have about how journalism or writing gets produced? So yeah, that's, I think it's, that is a really significant challenge for anyone working right now for newspapers and magazines, where of course, staffing is getting decimated and
00:23:16
Speaker
I don't think anyone has the answers as to how that sustains itself, but you can see models out there on the market of people who are meeting that challenge in ways that I think are very positive. And I think there is also a significant amount of shame people feel too if they've gone into journalism or writing discipline and then they're no longer – they can't solely support themselves with the thing that they went to school for.
00:23:45
Speaker
Has that, like, have you experienced, like in your research and the people you've spoken to, have you come across that, that people just feel, I don't know, like, that the fact that the thing that they went to school for and sunk a lot of cost into is no longer sustaining them. And then, you know, there's that shame and low self confidence then associated when it no longer, no longer sustains
Financial Realities of Writing
00:24:10
Speaker
them. Yeah, absolutely. So there's,
00:24:13
Speaker
There's a bit of status anxiety that comes into play. And also the self-criticism and the shame. And there's this parallel thing that happens in novel writing and other forms of writing where you're not a real writer if you're not making all of your money from selling books.
00:24:34
Speaker
or something similar. I think it's the same mindset and it's ridiculous. That mythology or that idea has been placed there by the culture or by other people in your peer group and it means nothing. Or it only means as much as you want to put there. So I think there is so much work that has to be done on an individual level to assess, okay, why am I placing this
00:25:04
Speaker
pressure or this burden on myself to make my living in this particular way. I don't feel like any type of degree or experience means that you must then produce your living or make a living in this segment. Again, things are always changing, so you can't expect to remain static. Everyone's always developing in new ways. So self-awareness about
00:25:31
Speaker
where your neuroses are in this regard, being able to name them, being able to watch those thoughts go by where you're judging yourself, figuring out where is this judgment coming from, and then being able to set it aside and label it. I read some good advice lately where when you have those thoughts, you label it and hashtag it. Hashtag status anxiety, hashtag whatever.
00:25:56
Speaker
And then you move on because you'll just drive yourself nuts. You won't be focusing on the work anymore. Well, in a sense by hashtagging neuroses is actually sort of tangentially related to something you wrote early in the book about literary citizenship, which I think is like so important on a micro level and then from there can grow a bit bigger is that actually, you know,
00:26:21
Speaker
Go out and shake hands, have some sort of social hour with five to ten or a dozen people in your own little city and then be a part, like kind of a support group of some kind and be like, yeah, you know, maybe part of my writing subsidizes this and then I do some editing here and then I work 20 hours a week at a bookstore or something and that way there's a commiseration and be like, listen, it's okay.
00:26:45
Speaker
to feel like this and have your income partitioned in X amount of ways. So it would be great if you could speak to the literary citizenship part, because I think that community building is so important. Yeah, I feel like in the more literary circles, literary citizenship has almost arisen as a way to talk about marketing in a more friendly way, which I think I mentioned in the book.
00:27:12
Speaker
Because when as soon as we talk about marketing or career building or branding or anything that relates to networking or things of an extroverted nature, people kind of their heart rates go up and there's some anxiety that enters the picture. But literary citizenship feels like feels doable and it feels like, oh, by supporting other writers,
00:27:36
Speaker
I'm going to ultimately be supporting the community of writing and publishing that will then eventually benefit me in the end. Like you start to see this as an organism and as something that you're giving into and getting something back. There's so many ways that works. And often I think literary citizenship is referred to in terms of like going out to book signings or readings or events or
00:28:03
Speaker
somehow connecting in person, but I think, of course, the same activities can happen in online spaces, and it's most powerful when there's some overlap there, so that each is kind of pushing the other forward. Yeah, yeah, and just whatever that is, even like, you know, the digital communities that are out there, but I also think just it's valuable to, the way you phrase it is so great because it takes the networking
00:28:32
Speaker
thing out of it and just be like don't see it as networking just think it as like you're just you're a part of this this community that you know if we help each other then it will help it will selfishly help the other individual too so it's whether that is you know podcasting and building a community around that or actually doing it um doing the legwork and doing it within your own town is it's just so valuable and it's just really enriching and sort of um
00:28:57
Speaker
nourishing in a way because you can get so sort of blinded by your own computer screen that actually getting out and seeing a few people is very nourishing in a sense. It is and it's so fascinating when I do client work with novelists who aren't aware of this concept and I start bringing up things like tell me about other writers you know or that you read or that you follow, admire, love, review and they draw a blank.
00:29:27
Speaker
And I feel like, well, wow, like that's, that's an absence. This is some, this is something really integral that's missing from the equation because very often your very first important steps in your growth, both on a craft level and then on a more relationship network marketing level come from those influences and then from the relationships that ultimately develop when you're out meeting those people. So yeah, to be totally working in a vacuum away from any kind of writing community, that's,
00:29:55
Speaker
It's not good for anyone. So it just helps on so many levels, including in the development of one's actual art. And you write early in the book that it's always been difficult for writers to make a living from writing. And so I wonder why, why do you think so many people are often surprised that they can't make a living from it or they feel like a failure if they can't? Sometimes
Transparency and Patience in Publishing
00:30:26
Speaker
It boils down to the secrecy around how much this earns in the first place. People don't often talk about advances or royalties or sales because of the shame we touched on. There's shame that you're not making a living and therefore people don't disclose that. And so it just sets up this chain reaction of people not realizing, oh, these authors that I admire, who I think are doing great,
00:30:53
Speaker
Really, their money is coming from somewhere else, whether that's a trust fund, a spouse, a day job, whatever. And I think in the creative writing community specifically, like if I think about the MFA literary community, I do think it's more well known that a lot of writers, especially poets and essayists, short story writers, they're probably paying the bills because they have a teaching position.
00:31:22
Speaker
Um, so I think that's somewhat clear, but then of course the problem there is that I'm not sure that all MFA students or people in creative writing programs understand how difficult it's become to have a teaching position. Um, although again, all these things, I think all the era that we're living in right now in particular, I think all of these secrets are starting to come out and there are more like Facebook groups and communities that are being more Frank.
00:31:50
Speaker
And it feels like it's becoming more urgent and the time that we live in to tell the truth about what's earned and how. So I'm hoping that the taboo surrounding the subject starts to melt away, although there's still a long way to go.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, there's a part later in the book where you actually kind of break down percentage-wise through nine slices of your income pie. That is pulling back the curtain to an extent that lets people really see that, oh, it's not just writing or doing a ton of churn. It's a lot of different things that make up the whole. And that can change from year to year, and it's a capacity to be fluid and flexible.
00:32:34
Speaker
What was the how important was it for you to include that in the book? I feel like it's vital, a vital piece of disclosure to show that like I've struggled with this. This is how I do it and and to keep updating it. It does create a little bit of I think the question now raised for me is because I've achieved a certain amount of success.
00:33:02
Speaker
where if I start sharing actual dollar figures, it has the potential to look like bragging or to make people feel bad about that they're not earning as much as I am. And I don't want that to be the case, but I do want people to see how multifaceted it is. One thing that I saw that inspired some of that, this has been back in, I think, 2013, I interviewed a poet
00:33:30
Speaker
who works for a nonprofit that does some of the, I don't know if it's motion in poetry, but some of the videos that get done for poetry. And he had a breakdown like that, that he did for me as part of this interview, he was very open about sharing it, showing that I would say I think it was about 50% of his income was from working for this nonprofit, which was mainly grants.
00:33:52
Speaker
And then he had a whole bunch of other income that came from speaking or teaching kind of on the side, nothing formal, but just kind of gigs throughout the year, some money from applying for his own individual grants for his work. And then a little bit from just selling poetry, but it was just, it was both very satisfying and
00:34:16
Speaker
offered so much clarity about actually how poetry can pay if you're not just focused on selling the poem itself, but you're thinking about all of the different ways that the poetry might be manifested in the world.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah, and it should also be mentioned too that you personally have been in this world for over 20 years too. So like, yeah, you're playing the long game. Yeah. So you didn't just look, I think John McPhee has a great term about, you know, when people see his career, they're like, what, and how he was able to manifest it and so forth. He's like, well, people have been, they're looking
00:34:51
Speaker
they're looking through the telescope through the other end of the telescope, like they're looking at the wrong end, they're seeing it from the end and connecting the dots backwards. And it's just like, well, he's been doing it for 50 years. Right. So yeah, it's how were you able to cultivate a sense of patience early in your career, and then maybe instill some of that patience and other people who are just kind of waiting for it to happen? I was
00:35:17
Speaker
100 percent impatient in the first few years of my career. And I would I would start the clock there when I got my first full time job in publishing. I was so eager to leave that job almost as soon as I got it. And the only reason I stayed in it is because I had a partner who eventually became my husband that had to stay in the city to finish his degree. And he started off getting a master's and then
00:35:45
Speaker
decided to go for a PhD. So that kept me locked in for close to a decade. I could not leave if I wanted to stay in that relationship. And that that that really weird coincidence or serendipitous thing, it I feel like is has partly contributed to what I was able to accomplish. I just had to sit still despite wanting to go elsewhere, although I did within the company move three times.
00:36:15
Speaker
and was always looking over my shoulder at what someone else was doing, trying to figure out how to maneuver over there. So it's not necessarily a grass is always greener, but it's my options at this particular company were limited, but it's all I had to work with. And then I think that looking at what was within my control and what I did develop patience doing, I think I really learned the value from blogging.
00:36:44
Speaker
Again, looking back, I see that because I was approaching it with an intrinsic motivation or desire to do it because I thought it seemed like fun. That gave me the patience to go for as long as was required to see it pay off because I just enjoyed showing up every day to do it. No one was telling me to do it.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah, in a sense, your latest book too is almost a culmination of a lot of the work you've done over the last 20 years. So it didn't just pop into an idea maybe a year or two ago. It struck me as something like, this is something that you've, it's almost like the knowledge of the first, this first big chunk of your career is sort of culminated in this book in a sense. Is that how you viewed it?
00:37:32
Speaker
Yeah, precisely that. Yeah. And it's not something I even really set out or felt like set out to do or that I felt was missing, which sounds strange. But I feel like so much of my career, I have it's been a process of realizing that the book isn't everything. Because I saw so many hundreds of books published every year. And
00:37:56
Speaker
so many land without meaning anything. And this isn't to like devalue the book at all. It's just that there's a certain point where you get pretty jaded about, you know, publishing, I guess, and what and what books accomplish. And so it was just not important to me to deliver something like this. But I did reach this point where I realized, you know, I'm missing an opportunity to do a brain dump.
00:38:26
Speaker
in essence. I think the book is slightly more artful than a brain dump, but basically at its heart, that's what it is. The reaction has been interesting in that people really value the brain dump. They like having the artifact, and I use that word in the best sense possible. They like having this experience, something beginning to end, the talisman, just
Career Reflections and Realism
00:38:51
Speaker
rather than having to try and figure it out themselves or to follow a bunch of social media streams or, you know, no one's following me for 20 years noticing everything. So here I'm going to package it and hand it over.
00:39:05
Speaker
What I love about it too is that it's – you said the word Frank earlier, and this book is incredibly frank and honest to the point where like, listen, this is not easy work to do, and if you're going to do it, these are the realities, and the realities by and large kind of suck.
00:39:25
Speaker
It's all laid out there for you. It's probably going to dissuade some people from pursuing a career because better to find out from reading the book than maybe wasting 15 years trying. But it does give you a lot of just illumination into the business.
00:39:46
Speaker
it doesn't pull any punches and it doesn't paint everything rosy. It's a reality-based book. If you're gonna get into this line of work, this is what you can expect. So how did you approach that tone that you wanted to be like the grammarian slapping your knuckles back in grade school? Yeah, yeah. Very early on, someone,
00:40:15
Speaker
called me a dream crusher. This was around about 2007. And it was when I was very frankly, it was someone outside of the industry, not someone who wanted to be a writer, just kind of talking about, Oh, what do you do? And when I was describing it in very direct terms, that's that, you know, their face kind of like, they got a little bit wide eyed, and then they gave me that response.
00:40:40
Speaker
But I had never until that point felt like I was crushing dreams. I was just being real. And where that comes from, I can't really say, but maybe part of it is being so consistently exposed, like let's say over a 10 year period.
00:41:01
Speaker
Uh, to people often calling on the phone, like imagine, I know I'm working at a publishing house, you get lots of calls from people who want, who want to get published or who want, who, who are trying to pitch you something. And so just imagine just hundreds, if not thousands of those types of interactions and realizing that sometimes the wrong thing to do is to encourage someone because you know where it's going to lead and you need to help them not waste any more time.
00:41:30
Speaker
help them cut to the chase. And also through continued exposure to people at conferences and events and seeing over a very long period of time, like over a period of 10 or 15 years, seeing how people's careers either take off or don't, you start to see the seeds of what keeps people in the game, like who's going to have the patience or the endurance or the longevity to stick with it. And often it's the people who are willing to
00:41:57
Speaker
they're willing to accept criticism and not get immediately defensive. Or if they do get immediately defensive, they understand that after a week or two, they'll cool off and they'll be able to adapt whatever they are. They'll be able to take the feedback and adapt it and grow and improve. So and that's in addition to just having this inner desire to do the work for its own sake, rather than for some ego driven needs to get published or to make money or to accrue prestige.
00:42:27
Speaker
I think a lot of the people who when they express their goals in that way, like I want to sell a million copies, they're kind of missing the element that's actually going to get them to that point when you're too outcome focused. So because I've seen all of these different eventualities that and I and I am really sensitive to people being sold a bill of goods, I think that leads me to be very direct.
00:42:54
Speaker
Yeah, you hit upon like three, there were three keywords you talked about there that I actually wanted to ask you about and it was, you know, prestige, ego, and there was something else in there, but I forget at this point, I'm sorry. Yeah, but prestige, prestige and ego. Money. Yeah, money. It was outcome.
00:43:15
Speaker
People who are more outcome driven and not process driven though I in my experience the people who seem to be most satisfied in any artistic endeavor whether that's writing or doc film or anything it's when the reward is actually the work and then the outcome they divorce that from the outcome and what's been your experience in trying to maybe get people to pivot from that outcome things selling a million books to just be like dude just
00:43:42
Speaker
Love the work.
Personal Motivations and Freelancing
00:43:44
Speaker
And the real thing is, if you do that, odds are you'll be more likely to sell more books if you are more grounded in the work, like Steven Pressfield might say. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is where things start to get into therapy. And I say that without judgment. You have to start asking people, well,
00:44:06
Speaker
Why do you want to be on The New York Times bestseller list? What will that accomplish for you? How does that lead to whatever's next? Or why is it that you want the prestige associated with this journal publication? How does that help you get to the next thing you want to do? And once you start asking some of these questions about why, people will realize that what they're trying to feed is something that's deeper.
00:44:35
Speaker
They're trying to self-actualize in some way, and they've just, this is kind of some societal label or accomplishment that's been layered on top of it. So sometimes, you know, you can get people to see that their need is not associated with the outcome, but they may end up realizing they can achieve the same thing through different means.
00:45:05
Speaker
And we're getting into like really abstract territory here. I'm trying to think of a person or an author I could use as an example, but yeah, you just have to start asking really focused questions about the why. And there's a good book actually called, it's by Alan DeBots and I don't know if I mentioned it in my book or not. It's called literally status anxiety.
00:45:32
Speaker
And I think he actually, he does a phenomenal job of getting you to think through where that, where some of these ego focused goals come from and how you can flip them on their head and think about ways of seeing what it is you're truly after. Like were you the unpopular kid in school and now you're trying to be popular? Like what is it that's, is there some trauma? Is there, your parents didn't love you? Like we're getting into cliches there, but sometimes that's really what it's about.
00:46:04
Speaker
And even when you were transitioning to freelance work, you wrote in the book that a lot of people tried to maybe discourage you from that or second guessed yourself. And when you were looking to sort of more or less kind of hang up your own shingle, what were you hoping to accomplish? And how did you go from second guessing to yourself into then leaning into it more and subsequently thriving?
00:46:32
Speaker
I had the good fortune of right at the time I was kind of jumping off the cliff to attend a conference called the World Domination Summit, which I already knew about and I was going there to speak
00:46:51
Speaker
Um, on, on the book publishing industry, it's run by an author named Chris Guillebeau. He's done some great books that are actually wonderful for anyone thinking about building a business of their own. He's got a book called the hundred dollar startup. Uh, another one about your side hustle, which I feel like I, even though I didn't know it at the time, I was doing a side hustle while I was fully employed, traditionally employed. I was doing a side hustle.
00:47:18
Speaker
Um, because I liked it, not because I was necessarily trying to go freelance, but that's one of the reasons I was able to make the sleep and it was successful because I wasn't starting from zero. But at any event, so this guy does the world domination summit and I, and I went there and there's so many things about this event that don't really jive with my personality. It's like the sort of event where they'll ask you to stand up.
00:47:40
Speaker
and pretend you're a superhero or do some play acting with the person next to you. And for someone who's introverted and is not interested in socializing, I would always sit in the back away from everybody. So I would have to participate. Still though, there were elements of this event which really get you to think deeply about what it is you're trying to accomplish.
00:48:04
Speaker
at the same time as placing a business structure around something that's very heart-driven, which that's, of course, my bread and butter trying to find a way to marry the two. So that really got me to write down some really focused things about what I wanted to accomplish. And going from there, that first full year, I was able to quickly identify what was working and discard what wasn't.
00:48:32
Speaker
and just recalibrate. And I think, of course, that happens for every freelancer basically during every year. But I really feel like I was able to avoid some landmines by not sticking with things just because I felt like some weird sense of loyalty or I had to see it through or I didn't want to be flaky. Like I started dropping clients and projects after that conference within six months because I could just see this is not where I should be headed. And I think people have a hard time doing that because they feel like
00:49:03
Speaker
It reflects poorly or it looks like failure if you don't stick with something. What were some of those concrete examples of things that were working or not working as you were looking to evolve after that? There was a segment of my business that I thought was going to be big, which was helping people with the self-publishing process because it's very confusing to people. I understood it inside and out.
00:49:31
Speaker
And I also understood traditional publishing in a way that helps me. Helps put just a sheen of professionalism on everything, because I knew what a professional end result would look like. So I was basically acting as a manager or shepherd for these projects. And after the first one or two, I was just like, I can't do this for two reasons. One, I don't like working with people for that long, for as long as it takes.
00:49:58
Speaker
which, you know, is often six months, I get bored really easily and I just like really high churn in my business, which is typically seen as a bad thing to have high churn, but that actually suits my personality. And then the other piece of it was I'm not detail oriented. Meaning like by the third or fourth time I have to look at something like let's say a set of pages or a manuscript or a set of proofs. I just don't care enough to go through it at the level of attention it requires to avoid mistakes.
00:50:28
Speaker
So I just realized my personality was all wrong, even though people really wanted to hire me for this thing and I was getting lots of clients for it. It was, I just, I had to step away.
00:50:39
Speaker
So given that you don't like to get at that granular for a long period of time, with your own writing, how do you manifest a sense of endurance to get through those ugly middles and then all the rewrites? So how do you work with that, knowing that you don't have the, I don't want to say the attention span, that's the wrong word.
00:51:10
Speaker
Calibrate your endurance for it. Yeah, that's totally. I mean, yeah, you're right. It's maybe not exactly attention span, but I think it's just like I'm always looking for a new experience and a new challenge. And once I've written a draft of something, it's really hard for me to go back through it. But one thing that does help me a lot is having not seen it or gone through it for a couple months.
00:51:36
Speaker
So because then I have a little bit of freshness and reading it is like reading it a little bit more like a new thing. And then I'm more able to attack it in a way that helps produce a better result or better draft or whatever is required. So I was fortunate in that I was working with the university press, which is epically slow. And I had lots and lots of time in between editorial passes. I had, I don't know, four to six months before I got revision
00:52:07
Speaker
uh, uh, like a editorial letter and revision strategy for the manuscript. So that was more than enough time for me to be ready to go back in. And then it was the same for like the copy. I didn't improve freed. I had an even longer period of time there to go back through. So as long as I'm given these really long stretches, I can handle it. But if I, if I were adhering to a more traditional publishing schedule where I had to turn things around within
00:52:35
Speaker
like just a few weeks or a month, different drafts, I would have just phoned it in. I don't know that I could have really dug in the way that would be required. This reminds me of a other author who's successful, Ryan Holiday. I should really read some of his books, which I've skimmed, but I haven't really dug in. He did an epic blog post about his writing and revision process.
00:53:02
Speaker
about how he just meticulously goes through again and again and again, and he talks about how much work it is. But I feel like this is a weakness, like I could not do what he does, but I can see so clearly it produces phenomenal work.
00:53:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I always love diving into a writer's process and the way they go about rigor, tenacity, and discipline.
Balancing Work and Writing
00:53:27
Speaker
And so how do you set up your days so you feel like you get a sense of accomplishment at the end when you're sort of in the throes of a long project? Most of my days, let's say weekdays, are not particularly writing focused because I'm more
00:53:46
Speaker
on client work on a weekday. And is client work like mainly editing or how does that look like? It would be editing, consulting, so like appointments. So a mix of that where I'm generally working one on one with writers or professionals who are somehow their orbit has brought them into the publishing space. And so the morning I'd typically devote two hands on
00:54:15
Speaker
client work where I'm not actually talking with them, but I'm somehow working with their materials. So it's basically my, for lack of a better word, creative time. I don't consider it creative work, but on some level it is trying to improve something. Then in the afternoon, I generally reserve that for appointments. So where I'm actually talking to people one on one. And then at the very end of the day, whatever time happens to be left, it could be a half an hour. It could be two hours. That's where I go into email.
00:54:46
Speaker
which is by far my biggest administrative time sink. And then, and I try to keep it very, very limited to just that window. And I don't I don't go back. And then once I'm done for the day, I'm done, I don't get online, I don't go back into the email, I don't have calls with clients. The weekend is generally my own writing time. So if I'm
00:55:12
Speaker
doing a book or I'm working on an essay or I have a longer project that's really just for me, that's what the weekend's for. Because I find it so difficult to switch into that mode when I'm dealing with clients. Right. And what kind of writing excites you the most?
Finding New Writing Purpose
00:55:34
Speaker
It's a long pause because I feel like this is one of the things I'm struggling with right now.
00:55:43
Speaker
Having just finished this book, which has been, you know, a years long process, I'm now at the point where for the first time in many years, I'm without some like kind of all encompassing project that would, you know, I would be working on on a weekend or that would be, you know, taking up all of my creative processing power. And so I've actually been faced with this question of now that I am free for, you know, whatever this weekend time is, what is it?
00:56:14
Speaker
that I like to do when no one's telling me exactly what's going to define it. And I don't have a good answer to that because so much of my career has been focused on this kind of passive mode of allowing people to knock on the door and say, well, why don't you do X? And I'll be like, sure, I'd love to do X. So when I don't have someone asking, it's almost like I don't have a purpose anymore. And it's a really weird existential problem I have at this moment.
00:56:42
Speaker
And how are you processing that? Are you letting it sort of stew, or is it causing an intense amount of anxiety? I'm letting it stew, and I'm trying to be more aware of the things that signals from my own behavior. So my own behavior in terms of reading, what I'm consuming, the media that I enjoy, and what that might tell me about what I should be going after.
00:57:11
Speaker
You know, I have a morning ritual before I start work. I'm always reading usually the New Yorker. I'm reading long form journalism or essays of some kind. And I know that's the sort of work I want to be doing. But one of my issues is that I've become so super focused on this writing and publishing niche that if I'm going to allow space to do more long form writing that requires research,
00:57:38
Speaker
you know, I don't yet have 20 years devoted to a field that would I think give me the richness or the insights required. So there's this, there's this problem of topic. Um, what topic do I feel energetic enough about that's not writing and publishing that I want to dive into? And I have lots of like off the top of my head answers to that, but nothing where it's like a hell yeah answer.
00:58:06
Speaker
You know, I don't have that yet. And part of it is just I'm I can be endlessly curious about practically anything. So it's yeah.
00:58:16
Speaker
I end up in the same weird place. Yeah. It's like you were saying earlier in echoing what Steven Pressfield says about shadow careers. And do you feel like that doing long-form narrative nonfiction reported pieces is something that you've been wanting to do for a long time, but it's just you've been sort of sucked into the vortex of the publishing niche. And then you're like, oh no, I almost have to start over if I want to do the long-form reported pieces.
00:58:46
Speaker
Yeah, I do, in essence, have to start over. And I have to think about, well, 20 years from now, what is it that I want to be really deeply entrenched in? So it's hard.
Narrative Journalism and Conclusion
00:59:00
Speaker
And I don't I think one thing I do know about myself is that I'm not good if I'm interviewing or reporting or investigating something that would be really conflict ridden. I'm not good at confronting people.
00:59:16
Speaker
or making them feel uncomfortable. So I think that is a really, that's really important to recognize. And I'm not going to try and fight against that, I don't think. So I need to be thinking about what things can I explore that aren't requiring me to put people on the defensive.
00:59:33
Speaker
or that or there's lots of different kinds of journalism that I know I'm not a breaking news guy. If someone's house or just burned down, I'm not the guy who's going to knock on their door while the smoke is still coming off and saying so.
00:59:51
Speaker
How are you processing this? There are some people who can do that wonderfully, but reading The New Yorker every day, you know that there are plenty of brilliant reporters who make their bones just talking, like Dana Goodyear talking about genetically engineered strawberries or something like, oh, that's kind of journalism I can do. And there's a value for that. Yeah, like I just finished this morning a profile that Adam Gopnik did about a wine grower in California.
01:00:20
Speaker
So yeah, I can talk about wine. Maybe that's, maybe booze is bourbon. Bourbon Jane, bourbon. So very nice. Well, we're coming up on our hour and I, um, and this is bad. I wish we could, I wish we could talk for three more hours because it's a lot of fun. Um, yeah. Uh, so Jane, where can, uh, people who aren't familiar with your work, few as they may be find you online.
01:00:49
Speaker
Best place to go is my hub, janefriedman.com, so you can find information about basically all the different facets of my business there.
01:00:58
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, the book that you just wrote is a great service to anyone looking to make a go of it, even if it's just a fraction of their income, or they want to be more ambitiously all in. It's probably the most illuminating book I've read on the topic, and I read a lot of these kind of books, so it's a great service that you've done. So thank you so much for writing it.
01:01:23
Speaker
Thank you. And it's been a pleasure to be on your show. Thank you for having me. Of course, Jane, we'll be in touch. Thanks so much. Thank you. You got it. Take care. Well, that was fun. Thanks to Jane and to our promotional sponsor, Hippocampus magazine.
01:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, I had fun. That was fun, right? Jane can be found on Twitter at Jane Friedman and you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Brendan O'Mara. The podcast is at CNF pod on Twitter and at CNF podcast on Facebook.
01:01:59
Speaker
If you have a minute or two, consider leaving a review on iTunes slash Apple Podcasts, whatever they feel like calling it these days. That would mean the world to me and will help this podcast reach more people looking to tell their best true story. It's our little corner of the internet and those reviews mean the world. Head over to BrendanOmera.com for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly reading list newsletter.
01:02:29
Speaker
Once a month, no spam. Can't beat it. Catch you right here next week for another episode of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm out.