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Episode 73—Patsy Sims on Book Research as Mini-education, Not Giving Up, and "The Stories We Tell"
132 Plays7 years ago
Patsy Sims says, "The novel I always wanted to write didn't have to be fiction." No it didn't. Hey, CNFers, it's The Creative Nonfiction Podcast the show where I speak with the world's best artists about creating works of nonfiction. I try and tease out the origins and tactics from leaders in narrative journalism (like Susan Orlean), personal essay (like Elizabeth Rush), memoir (like Andre Dubus III), radio (like Joe Donahue), and documentary film (like Penny Lane), so you can apply their tools of mastery to your own work. Pasty Sims is the author of The Klan, Can I get an Amen!: Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Rivivalists, and, most recently, she's the editor of The Stories We Tell: True Tales by America's Greatest Women Journalists (The Sager Group, 2017). Patsy has been such a champion of creative nonfiction that it's easy to forget that she was one of the pioneers in the 60s and 70s. She was the Dumbledorian headmaster of Goucher College's Creative Nonfiction MFA program and few people—myself included—ever asked her about her origins and her writing. But that's sort of the myopic nature of MFA students. Again, myself included. This is my way of atoning. That's neither here nor there. In this episode we talk about: Book projects as mini-educations. Paying attention to people who aren't paid attention to Building relationships Persistence Her fascinating approach to digesting notes and a lot, lot more As you know, it's about this time I kindly ask for reviews as they are the currency that validates this enterprise. It takes less than 60 seconds and it helps out a ton. There are 19 ratings and reviews and none of them are from family members. Scouts honor. Also, I have a pretty slick monthly newsletter where I share my monthly reading recommendations and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. I'd love for you to join this growing list. Once a month. No spam. Can't beat it. Dig the show? Share it with a fellow CNF-buddy.
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Transcript
Introduction to Patsy Sims and Her Work
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey CNFers, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world's best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in the world of narrative journalism, personal essay, memoir, radio, and documentary film, so you can apply their tools of mastery to your own work. I dig it. I hope you do too. Thank you for listening.
00:00:24
Speaker
Episode 73 comes at you with Patsy Sims. She's the author of The Clan. Can I get an amen? Inside the tents and tabernacles of American Revivalists. And most recently she's the editor of The Stories We Tell. True Tales by America's Greatest Women Journalists. Published by The Sager Group.
Patsy's Role in Creative Nonfiction
00:00:46
Speaker
Patsy has been such a champion of creative nonfiction that it's easy to forget that she was one of the pioneers in the 60s and 70s. She was the Dumbledoreian headmaster of Goucher College's creative nonfiction MFA program and few people, myself included, ever asked her about her origins in her own writing. But that's sort of the myopic nature of MFA students. Again, myself included. This is my way of atoning.
00:01:17
Speaker
That's neither here nor there. In this episode, we talk about book projects as mini-educations, paying attention to people who aren't paid attention to, building relationships, persistence, and her fascinating approach to digesting notes and a lot more.
00:01:35
Speaker
As you know, it's about this time I kindly ask for reviews as they are the currency that validates this whole enterprise. It takes less than 60 seconds and it helps out so much. There are already 19 ratings and reviews and none of them, quote, none of them are from family members. Scouts honor.
00:01:54
Speaker
Also, I have a pretty slick monthly newsletter where I share my monthly reading recommendations and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. I'd love for you to join the growing list. It's once a month, no spam, can't beat it. So, that's where we're at.
Journey from Fiction to Journalism
00:02:10
Speaker
In this episode, number 73, we start with me asking her what clicked in her as a young person to tell these kinds of stories.
00:02:24
Speaker
started when I was a child. I mean, I grew up in the South, and, you know, I'm sure you've heard some of this love storytellers. Storytelling. And, you know, perhaps that was the first thing. But, and then, as I went along, I, you know, I think one that we never grow out of, liking stories. But,
00:02:49
Speaker
I really love people. I'm fascinated by people. I love learning about things, and I think all of those things combined drew me into doing narrative nonfiction. When I went to college, I majored in journalism, but I think before college, I always thought, you know, I wanted to be a writer since I was a child, but I think I thought I was going to be a fiction writer.
00:03:19
Speaker
And I majored in journalism because I thought I have to have a way to support myself. So I thought I'll major in journalism and I can support myself in journalism. But then I got hooked on it and I loved the reporting. I loved the reporting almost as much or as much as the writing. So that's how I got started in non-fiction.
00:03:49
Speaker
And then in the late 60s when Capote published In Cold Blood, you know, I think that really showed me that I could do anything with non-fiction, because a fiction writer does, except I can't make it up. And, you know, I think that was all of what led me to where I am now.
Exploration of Subcultures in Writing
00:04:12
Speaker
What about the reporting process drew you so... What part about that process did you find so addicting? Because you were just saying that that information gathering phase was almost better than the writing. So what about that part really hooked you?
00:04:33
Speaker
You know, I'm curious. I love to learn about people. I love to learn about new things. And, you know, it's like each story, each book that I embark on, I'm able to have, you know, many education. And I love that discovery things and learning about things. In terms of people,
00:04:56
Speaker
I love to get at what makes people tick. I love to learn about them and find out about them and try to find out what compels them to do the things they do and what makes them the way they are. It's not a discovery. It is able to get a lot of education without having to earn master's degrees, I guess you'd say.
00:05:20
Speaker
And what about certain subcultures or certain people, or what subcultures are you most attracted to, to exercise that degree of creativity that draws you to the reporting? One, you know, I've had a real interest in race eruptions, and so that was really, I guess, a part of me wanting to do a book on the Ku Klux Klan.
00:05:50
Speaker
And I, you know, it's, I think it's those interest, I guess I also am interested in people who are everyday people, the kind of people who they make the news only with their birth and death and they have something, you know, I don't even know that that's happening anymore. So they're people that nobody,
00:06:16
Speaker
would pay attention to. And I, you know, I, with a plan and also with revival, I wanted to get into them to find out what, through them, what, you know, made a clean man, trans people have the feelings that they have and to feel so strongly about, you know, what made them tick. And
00:06:42
Speaker
in certain respects, I guess, the same kind of feelings about people in revival. So I think it's really, I guess, if you look at my work over time, it has been people who are low on the totem pole, who, you know, their lives are pretty drab, you know, and try to get into them and find out why they go in the directions they go.
00:07:10
Speaker
When I was doing the revival book, which was keen after doing the plan book, I noticed that there were a lot of similarities between the plan people and the revival people in terms of background, education, the lack of education, financial status. And I also was in some of the same locations.
00:07:37
Speaker
where I had done, I had gone to clan rallies and then in the same location, I would go to a revival with 3,000 people. And it encouraged me that, you know, they had to be related. They had to know one another. And why did one person go to the clan? And why did one go
Building Trust and Securing Interviews
00:07:56
Speaker
to the revival? So it's, I guess, you know, that I've sought these things out because I, you know, I'm eager at finding the answers to those kinds of questions.
00:08:07
Speaker
A big challenge with doing that kind of a deep dive into these kind of subcultures is a matter of access. And not just echoing what Lee Gookin told me was, it's not just getting access, it's finding people who actually want to be written about. It doesn't matter how much you want to write about them. If they don't want to be written about, then you're stuck.
00:08:34
Speaker
How have you over the years engendered that sense of trust that allowed you to get access to these subcultures and also to find the people who want to be written about and then get access to them to write about them? Wow. Okay. To back up, I think that initially it was important to me to build up contacts and forces.
00:09:04
Speaker
I think that they're, you know, they're common thread, Clementine, and a lot of things that I've done, and so I built up a Rolodex. And initially, like on the plan book, I would call my sources in the fast, the people who I had done various stories with, and get their suggestions on who I should go talk to. And initially, I thought that I really needed an entree.
00:09:29
Speaker
I needed these people who I knew to sort of vouch for me and introduce me to these people in order to get them to talk to me. But I found if I went along that I really didn't need that, that I could do it on my own. And I think that, to me, the way that you gain access, and sometimes the people who think they don't want to be interviewed, is to be really down to earth
00:09:58
Speaker
be very genuine and to really come across as someone who's interested in finding out about them and their stories. And I think being a good listener is really, you know, important. So, you know, I just, I guess on all of these, you know, I've called people, I've tried to be sincere over fun with them and I think
00:10:28
Speaker
I think a lot of people were surprised, for instance, when I did the plan and then I got the people to talk to me and they said some of the things they said to me into a tape recorder. And in that case, I think it was a matter, one, that I did try to be sincere and when they would say,
00:10:51
Speaker
you ask me my beliefs. I do believe in always being honest about where you stand. I don't think you need to broadcast it, but I would say I don't share your beliefs, but I want to hear you about why you believe what you do. And that seems too satisfying. So I think, in fact, you're developing them having confidence in you and an interest in you and you're willing to be fair to them.
00:11:19
Speaker
I really can't think of anybody, I'm sure there have been, but I can't think of standouts of people who absolutely refuse to talk to me. I also, in the long that run, believe in being persistent and keep trying until you can get them to talk to you.
Family Influence on Patsy’s Career
00:11:40
Speaker
And I think when I say that, I'm talking, I think about
00:11:44
Speaker
the evangelist, the television evangelist Ernest Angley, who I'm not sure if he was still around or still broadcasting. But when I was doing my revival book, I was trying to get him for an interview, and he kept turning me down, or his people kept turning me down. So I went around him, and I interviewed a lot of people who knew him or had crossed paths with him. And I was almost through with my book.
00:12:12
Speaker
And I gave it one last chance, or one last try, and I wrote him a letter and told him that, you know, I was complaining my book and that I was very sorry that he had chosen not to talk to me, that I had talked to people who knew him, et cetera, but that was not the same as talking to him. So, you know, he knew then that I was going to, he was going to be in the book, whether he talked to me or not.
00:12:43
Speaker
He did not know who I talked to or what they said. And I very quickly got a phone call saying he will talk to you. And so I got it. And so I guess the lesson there, too, is perseverance, not giving up, but it's so strategizing. Yeah, and it's also being confident enough to be patient and play the long game, right?
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, you have to be patient. You have to not give up, you know, in tracking people down. But in this kind of writing period, you know, you're talking about long range things that are going to take a long time. You know, if you want to show us another example of one who I just kept out. It happened down in Mississippi with the White Knights of Mississippi, which was the most violent, secretive,
00:13:41
Speaker
plan in the 60s and so much of the violence that we read about and heard about during the Civil Rights Movement was the work of the White Knights. And so when I went down to, when I got down, worked my way down to Mississippi to do interviews, I thought, you know, these people, they're going to be crawling out of the woodworks. I, you know, have no problem. And when I got there, I learned that it was very secretive. I could not get anybody to talk to me or to admit that they were in the plan.
00:14:11
Speaker
But I managed to have the number of a guy at her rate killing. And so I tried him, and I could tell on the phone, he would say, oh, I'd really like to talk to you, but I, you know, I can't. But I could tell that this guy was curious about me.
00:14:29
Speaker
And so I kept calling. And I, you know, I was finished with Mississippi, you know, went to Texas, you know, did everything. And then I was actually passed from Mississippi, was in Alabama on my way back to Pennsylvania, where I lived at the time. And I decided, okay, I'm going to try one more time to call Edgar Ray Killen.
00:14:52
Speaker
And I called Edgar Ray Kellen. And of course, he did not know. Of course, you know, there was no caller ID. He didn't know where I was. And I told him, you know, that I really still wanted to interview him. And so he said, I think I can do it tonight. Well, I got my little MG and headed back west and drove to Mississippi. You know, I had no place to interview him except my motel.
00:15:17
Speaker
And I won't let that spill enough story, but at any rate, you know, I got a four-hour entity with Andrew A. Killen, and he is now in prison. He was just convicted a few years back for the murders of the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia and Mississippi in 1964. But that, you know, is another example of, you know, to just keep trying will eventually pay off four times what I think you would think.
00:15:47
Speaker
Where did that tenacity come from for you? My mother. I come from this long line of, I guess you'd say, adventures. They kept moving west, and my mother was not afraid of the devil.
00:16:11
Speaker
was full test and vinegar, I guess you would say. And I think I inherited that from her. She did, she just went after it. She wasn't a writer or anything like that. I mean, her level of writing was recipes and records magazine. But I think I get that part of me from her.
00:16:34
Speaker
When you decided to pursue journalism and any conversations you might have had with your mom, was she outright offering you that kind of counsel of saying like, well Patsy, if you're gonna do this, make sure you really sink your teeth into this and really go at it with a sense of the rigor that you grew up with. Or does she offer you any of that kind of counsel? No, actually my mother didn't want me to be a writer.
00:17:07
Speaker
She wanted me to go to New York and dance. It was greatly disappointing when I did not go in that direction. The writing part came from my father. He was an avid reader, earliest memories of my father sitting in his comfortable chair, reading Saturday evening post. And he also, I'd say from most of his life, subscribed to Book from the Month Club.
00:17:35
Speaker
He read incredible books and he had an incredible library. So it was really by his example and you know ultimately he gave me a dictionary. He gave me my first typewriter and he encouraged me to write. What I didn't know really until I guess until after I decided I wanted to be a writer, that he had wanted to be a writer and was
00:18:05
Speaker
absolutely thrilled when I became one and loved, you know, sort of vicariously sharing my experiences. We ended up corresponding, I'd say, for 30 years, sometimes two or three letters a week. And a good deal of that, and going back to some of those now, really is about what I was doing, writing life and work. I said he was a great
00:18:31
Speaker
That's uh, what's incredible about that is that I think maybe for a long time you maybe harbored
00:18:38
Speaker
Harbored this like maybe hope that you would pursue that line of work but didn't shove it down his down in your throat like You know like a little league coach like a father coaching his kid in baseball or something like you will play ball you will try to Try to live out my dreams that failed But he just you know he just gave you a couple tools and let you make the choice so that was like a real a real great Jedi mind trick that he used and
00:19:08
Speaker
I mean, he loved riding and, you know, later he became such a supporter that, I mean, it was funny and sometimes I was embarrassed, but he became this
00:19:24
Speaker
In his later years, after he retired, he had worked for the Western Union. And after he retired, he became a great letter to the editor-writer. Actually, really good letters during the Vietnamese War and everything. Good letters. At that point, he was living in Houston.
00:19:40
Speaker
in the editor of the editorial department would sometimes call in and say, let's just tell them, would you be interested in writing us a letter about blah, blah, blah? How you feel about that? But till the letter writing then carried over to me and
00:20:00
Speaker
I read my editors about something I'd written. I did a 15-part series on sugarcane workers in south Louisiana that ran in the eating paper in New Orleans. It was a big series and each day it was this long, long piece. So one day the editor of the editor, the one that handled the letters to the editor, came over to my desk and said,
00:20:26
Speaker
He had this strange letter. I don't understand it. He answered this letter and it said, they're editors. That piece of writing on sugarcane workers is the best thing you've ever run. I may be prejudiced, sincerely, always does.
00:20:48
Speaker
That's my daddy. Another time, he really wanted me to work for the Washington Post. And at that point, I really didn't have any interest in working for the Washington Post.
Challenges and Growth in Women’s Sections
00:21:03
Speaker
I had a job in New Orleans I really liked. And at any rate, I came home one day and had an envelope for my father, opened it.
00:21:13
Speaker
application to the Washington Post and a letter from Ben Bradley. And so Bradley said, you know, dear Mr. Simms, thank you for your suggestion. We've already filled the position, uh, west by Sally Clam. This is in South New York. Sally Clam decided to get married. And, um, well, I guess Ms. Simms was applied here as an application. And so I called my father and I said, Daddy, what
00:21:42
Speaker
What did you say to Ben Bradley? He said, do you know Mr. Bradley? Um, you know, I understand Sally Quinn's left. Do you have an opening? Not only can Patsy Sims do anything that Sally Quinn can, she can do it a second little bit better. She tried it all. Anyway, so he went overboard sometimes, but that was my gung-ho's father. Um, ironically,
00:22:09
Speaker
a little bit around that time I got a job offer to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and that took the place of a woman who had been hired to take Sally Queen's place, so it was kind of a surprise.
00:22:23
Speaker
Clearly your father was in your corner. Who else at a young age gave you that permission to keep going and keep exercising your talent and your craft to keep growing in this form of journalism?
00:22:42
Speaker
You talked when you say young age with J.J., five, 10. I would say I started working on the New Orleans paper at the beginning of my, the fall of my junior year in college when I started majoring in journalism. And I was very fortunate that right about that time, there had been two afternoon papers in New Orleans that merged into what became the state title, which is
00:23:12
Speaker
what I worked for, spent all the years that I was in New Orleans. And they had an opening in my journalism professor, the head of the journalism school, called me in and said, would you be interested in working in paper? And, you know, God, I thought I had to pay anybody to, you know, give him the paper. Anyway, he, they had called and they needed somebody to work 20 hours a week. And so I did, and it was in,
00:23:41
Speaker
what, in those days, were called the old women's section, which are the predecessors to the feature sections today. But at any rate, the editor of that section, at that point, was a woman named Lorraine Barrow. Lorraine was a real big encourager also. She also taught me a lot, I think, that influenced the kind of writer I got to be. I mean, she was a real
00:24:10
Speaker
human-interest-people kind of person and wrote a column that were little, you know, sort of like vignettes and everything. And so, you know, I think I owe a lot to her. I mean, she's been dead a long time now. But I think that she encouraged me, she let me do things that, you know, I was really, gosh, I'm trying to think how old I would have been, very, you know, like 21, 20 months.
00:24:39
Speaker
maybe I guess maybe 21, I don't know, tell her about that age. But she let me do a lot, a lot of things. And she really, I think, was a great, I mean, she really encouraged me, and by her example, to focus on people in a way that was just not, you know, to get at them and what they were like and what they looked like and that kind of thing. The other thing she let me do is
00:25:08
Speaker
who are both of us believers that the women's section didn't have to be women's stories. I mean, we sometimes drove the editor of the paper crazy because he would come in there waving the newspaper saying, this is not a women's story. And, you know, I was writing about drug addiction was pretty insane, you know, all of these things in the women's section. But what I would do to get around him is I would find a woman.
00:25:36
Speaker
And, for instance, the story about the Kremlin scene, I found a woman, a female lawyer, who was very interested in the cause of the Kremlin scene and how they were treated at the state mental hospital. And so I used her as an excuse for writing this story. So I did those kinds of things. I wrote about drug addiction. At one point, I was guest of honor at a Christmas party given at Anne Carroll Prison in Louisiana.
00:26:06
Speaker
by their Narcotics Anonymous chapter because of stories that I've written in the women's section about drug addiction. So anyway, so I say, you know, Lorraine was certainly one of those who encouraged me. For people who might not know, how would you define what, when you were in your 20s, how would you define what a women's story was?
00:26:36
Speaker
at that time. Oh, at that time was recipes, fashion, raising babies, profile of a woman, you know, saw subjects. And we did some, obviously, but you know, when I look back on the stories that I did, and you know, I've already named some,
00:27:05
Speaker
You know, at one point, I did a series on the use of hypnosis in medicine and dentistry. And all this was in the women's section. Obviously, there are times that I did have to write about fashion and food. When I say that I had to write about food, I think about, in those days, some of the little taboos that
00:27:32
Speaker
we cannot use. I don't know about the new section, but you could use it in the women's section, right? Or you have a story, you have to write a headline on it about meatballs and spaghetti, and you could not say meatballs. You cannot use the word balls. Those are some of the things. But to give you a contrast,
00:27:58
Speaker
At one point, I got married right after I graduated. I married a guy who worked in the morning paper. And he did not believe that we should, in the paper, we shared, we were all on the same floor as the newspaper, the morning and the evening paper. He didn't believe that the two of us should work together on the newspaper. And of course, I was the one that needed to leave the newspaper. And this was before I became the liberator of the woman.
00:28:26
Speaker
And so I went to work for two miserable years with the state board of sales writing pamphlets about rabies and that kind of thing. And fortunately they ran out of money and had to let me go. And then he was, my former husband, was more than willing for me to go back to the newspaper because he wanted another paycheck in the family. But anyway, at that point I ended up working one year on the city desk.
00:28:54
Speaker
And what they gave women to do was pitiful. I mean, I spent that year, every two hours checking the temperature and giving it to the city editor. One time they had a bad hurricane or sometimes one that blew all those trees down and they had a planetary contest. And every day I had to come up with movies about a tree in the sun to replace the trees. And at the end of the year,
00:29:22
Speaker
They had an opening in the women's section, and Lorraine wanted me to come back into the women's section. And the city editor, or I guess by that time the managing editor, came over to me and said, you know, Lorraine wants you to back there, but you know, you don't have to go back to the women's section. You can stay at the city desk. And I said, oh, thank you, I think I'll go back to the hood of this section. Because I was like, they weren't letting me do the kinds of stories that I could do back
00:29:54
Speaker
That's amazing. That must have been a tough time. You were on such a short leash that you couldn't shake for a while there. There were these stories that you really wanted to get at and then you're writing leads for trees and checking the thermometer. Finally, you were able to get on
00:30:17
Speaker
get back to the women's desk where you could do these types of more hard reporting stories. What was that like when you were back on the women's desk with Lorraine and finally able to cut loose a bit?
00:30:33
Speaker
You know, in fact, we were winning awards of these stories. We were beating people from the city to hell with stories we were doing in the lung infection. A little bit after I got back, I don't remember the exact timing, Lorraine became very ill and essentially
00:30:51
Speaker
did not ever really return as women's editor. When she was able to, she was right at home. So I became women's editor, which then, you know, I was not only, I was able to hire people who, and of course, I would hire kindred spirits, and we would do these things. At one point, actually, early on, we wrote
00:31:16
Speaker
a long series, each of us doing some stories on abortion. This is like, I can't remember, late 69 or 70 or something like that. So, yeah, the way it was, I mean, it was just a sense of freedom, even though we had to be changing with our freedom and how we did it, you know.
00:31:39
Speaker
Yeah that must have been like how did you it's talk about a like an inflection point there just in terms of culture and also just probably like where you where you felt you stood in that culture like well how hard was it to navigate what you wanted to do versus what was expected of you to do? I think more than anything I had to be willing to
00:32:07
Speaker
to just let the editors go in one ear and out the other ear. I guess this is my mother's thing again, that I just did it. I found ways around it and he never fired me. I was glad that I was there and I could have other stories by other people, besides not just mine. At one point,
00:32:37
Speaker
when I applied for divorce. So around that time, I ended up out in San Francisco for years. And again, I found myself very early on becoming acting women's editor. And again, that kind of section. But I did the same thing. And there was the owner of the paper at that point.
00:33:07
Speaker
Everybody in the paper, including the managing editor, was scared of this guy. You know, they all just quaked in the boots. You know, Mr. Curie, it's gonna come get us. Mr. Curie, even when he was at his, I can't remember, he had a mountain home somewhere, but he had the paper thrown to him every morning. And if he didn't like something, he would call the managing editor.
00:33:31
Speaker
At any rate, you know, I did my usual thing, and I can remember my managing entry was just right. My guest was right not far from his door. And he called me, and I remember, I don't remember what the story was, but he called me and he said, I know this is good journalism, but I'm not going to take up with you with Mr. Terry on a constant way. But the idea of it was, Mr. Terry really
00:34:00
Speaker
respected me because I didn't back down from him. And he ended up wanting, when I left the paper, approaching me about coming back and being Assistant City Editor, which I didn't do. You know, it was an interesting period of time. And you know, women, I think, as bad as it was for women,
00:34:28
Speaker
I don't think, and I don't know where this comes from except my mother. I don't ever feel like I felt like there wasn't anything I could, there were things I couldn't do.
Narrative Journalism and Deep Dives
00:34:40
Speaker
Maybe it was just a determination that I was going to do. I was going to try, you know, I was going to go down fighting and everything, but I'm not sure completely where else to say that came from. I don't recall ever feeling
00:34:57
Speaker
Like either of my parents taught me that I was a girl, and there were certain things I had to do. You know, I don't recall them instilling that in me. How long after In Cold Blood comes out, do you start to turn around the idea in your head like, oh, I want to start doing stuff like that? Oh, I don't know. I think it was probably immediate. I mean, I have been a couple
00:35:27
Speaker
of your short stories, and really reluctantly read in Cold Blood because I liked the short stories of his little mom and rats. You know, I think about even, and I don't know where it came from, but, you know, I went to Tulane, and I did features, and I remember some of the stories that I did even then. I was playing with
00:35:55
Speaker
I don't know that I know what it was or thought about it, but I can remember one story that it was like homecoming, and I had to go around and write about the fraternity house as getting ready for a homecoming or something. And I just remember me trying to get at how the hammer sounded and all that kind of thing. So, you know, I'm not sure. I guess I was fooling around with it, but
00:36:24
Speaker
I think in terms of a podium that it made me think more about that I could do it in more serious journalism and that I could do it in book song. And that's an honor I always wanted to write. It didn't have to be fiction, that it could be non-fiction. So I guess the really first serious thing I did, that was 68, was
00:36:50
Speaker
When I came back to New Orleans from San Francisco, I worked out there two years ago, and the state that created a job for me called Special Assignment Writer, which was like freelancing and getting a paycheck at the end of every week. And I had a lot to say about what I did, and they didn't care how long it took, and they let me experiment. And so I came back, I remember, I guess in July or August,
00:37:20
Speaker
of the summer of 72. And one of the first things I did was a series on race relations, and that, I guess, is about 10 or 11-part series. And after that was when the sugarcane thing came up. And that, the sugarcane series was really
00:37:44
Speaker
And I was working with an editor who was not that much older than I, and he just gave me free reign to do what I wanted to do with that. And so in spite of that Capote, here's my chance to be Capote, and as I said, it was 15 parts.
00:38:06
Speaker
But we had characters that continued all the way through it. And instead of calling it first of a series or second of a series, we called it Chapter 1, Chapter 2. And I got more feedback from that, more response from that, than I think anything that I did in my entire newspaper career. I mean, the letters to the editor were incredible. Some of them were good, some of them were outraged because
00:38:35
Speaker
mission was so powerful. Yeah, I can't think that was really my first chance to really, I just really tried doing something like Cody did. Yeah, what does that say about the the power of of narrative? And we see with you know, these days, you know, Roy Peter Clark's done this, does this kind of work, you know, Tom, Tom friendship, and countless others. And this really tends to
00:39:03
Speaker
Really like just strike a chord with readers and real and taps into something that gets beyond the cerebral brain and more to the heart and And so what what do you think it is about this kind of work? That just I don't know it it starts it fires people up and moves people
00:39:22
Speaker
I mean, I think people can identify better, you know, when you're talking about people and you're taking the reader into the lives of the people that you're writing about. You know, not only because of Capone, but just because of my own reading habits.
00:39:40
Speaker
When I, they could have a newspaper or whatever, can have a wonderful series, and I was, wow, what a wonderful series. I'll read the first story. The next day, I read the lead and maybe a couple of characters. The next day, I read the lead. And the next day, maybe just a headline. And I really felt this was an important story. And I felt writing this in the traditional feature story, you know,
00:40:06
Speaker
method way of style was not going to hold readers in the way that I wanted them to hold them. So I thought, let's just see what narrative will do if this will hold them in. And it did. The paper ended up replaying the whole series. And I don't remember how many thousand, but they printed of that. But I think it just, as I said, it draws people
00:40:34
Speaker
into the lives of other people in a very intimate way. It takes them along on their story. And as I said earlier, you know, we all like stories. And so, you know, they were compelled to read, not just the week, but they had to read the whole story to get to the end, you know, to see how it ended. And then I'd say from then on, I really tried to do that.
00:41:03
Speaker
Another series on the lives of police officers and who attempted to do the same kind of thing, doing narratives and spending great periods of time with police officers and stuff. But I just think it's magic. I think to me the very power of narrative is that you can get people to read about stories, about subjects that they never in the world otherwise, but they never thought they were interested in
00:41:38
Speaker
How do you, with this type of long-form writing, how do you
00:41:45
Speaker
in the process of research and reporting, start reporting for narrative and start seeing maybe a lack of a term, like shaping your reporting for the longer arc. Is there a tactic you use to approach this knowing that you're going for this big sweeping arc? I don't. I can win. And I don't.
00:42:13
Speaker
I don't try to preconceive how it's going to end. I just, you know, I don't have, I don't, I'm not thinking of narrative art when I start because I think to have a preconceived idea, you can cut yourself off from some good material and a good story. You know, I start out, you know, I, one, you know, the tools that I use, I, you know, I interview, I use, I'm a big believer in tape recorders.
00:42:40
Speaker
not just for an interview, but to pick up scenes so that I have the noise and the quotes and everything that's going on so that I can recreate a scene. I take photographs and I take the photographs, you know, above or beside my computer so I can see the people as I write about them for description and everything. You know, I take notes.
00:43:07
Speaker
I can do other research, but I collect a lot of different material because I want what I need to recreate what I experience. I really am not completely sure how it's going to go together until I have everything together. I go through a period of where I'm transcribing my notes. Well, let me back up and so while I'm on the road, I do every night
00:43:36
Speaker
if I'm on the road, go back to my hotel motel. And in the early days, I was carrying a big IBM typewriter with me because I didn't have a portable. But whatever I had, a typewriter or a computer, I sort of debriefed myself. I typed over my written notes, and then I read about things that maybe I didn't write down. I think about what I smelled, what I heard, how I felt, how he looked,
00:44:07
Speaker
expressions and that kind of thing. I try to get as much down as I can in my notes and in my transcripts. As I'm transcribing, I'm doing more than transcribing what they say. I'm transcribing the total voice. I'm describing how perhaps he counted his fist on the desk. If he said, you know, that kind of thing. All of these things that are detailed that when I'm recreating a scene
00:44:35
Speaker
I have them there. I can relive what happened. So I get all of that together and then I go through this
00:44:46
Speaker
period of, oh my God, I wish the house would burn down. I have to tackle it into a story or a book. Am I going to be able to do this? Is this the time it's not going to work, you know? And so far, somehow God strikes me and something happens. But the other thing I'm a big believer in is
00:45:13
Speaker
Sometimes you pound yourself over the head because you're not coming up with an opening or a paragraph or phrase or passage that's not writing itself. And what I've learned is all of that is really part of the writing process. And even when things aren't working and you think you're not thinking about it, your subconscious is working. And so I try not to beat myself up when it does. I think come as quickly as I wish it would.
00:45:42
Speaker
And I'm also a great believer in the night at night before you go to bed, reading over the material, reading over what you have, reading over the passage, and thinking about that. Because I think there's a way that when you're sleeping, again, this is all going through your mind. And, you know, I found that sometimes when I do that, that I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea early in the morning.
Research and Writing Process
00:46:12
Speaker
So, I mean, that's sort of my approach to getting going, you know, riding-wise. And I love it when it first, you know, and it really starts moving when you wake up in paragraphs of riding themselves in your mind. I mean, sometimes when that really gets going, I will leave my computer, my office is at the opposite end of the bedroom. I will leave it on.
00:46:40
Speaker
and get up and come in and not turn the light on and sometimes keep my eyes closed and right, you know, it's going through my head. And I think when all of that starts happening and phrases start turning to me, it feels like I'm on the high wire, you know, and anyway, to me it's an
00:47:01
Speaker
Wow and I wanted to get back to a point you made about recorders and having you know being a fan of as both of us I'm sure are of like John McPhee and he just had a new book come out about the writing process and he's for years has been adamant about not using recorders because he thinks reporting is a selective process and recorders don't select they can they
00:47:27
Speaker
They're like a fishing net that just trolls everything and thinks they're intrusive and whatnot.
00:47:35
Speaker
Where, like, you clearly use it. At what point did you realize that, like, no, this is an incredible tool that collects, maybe collects more than I'll ever need, but at least it gives me the choice to be selective of what to leave out at the end and not have to rely on very messy handwriting and missing stuff because you're scribbling so much. Like, I don't know, he's so against it. And how did you come to a place where you were like, no, I am totally for it?
00:48:06
Speaker
You know, I started using a tape recorder when I was out in California, and so when I came back into that job where I did these long pieces in the world, that was when I really started using the tape recorder for everything, because I was doing these long kinds of things. I want to disagree with Nick G, in that I don't think, I think that it's the writer who has to be selective.
00:48:34
Speaker
And so, you know, I think that, sure, you have everything on the tape recorder, but that's the beauty of it. And it's up to me to be selective. Because I have a 20-page transcript doesn't mean I use 20 pages of what, you know, I might only use
00:48:54
Speaker
But I have it there because, you know, I don't know what I'm going to use until I get back and start, you know, riding with it. And I just think that, one, it's so much more accurate. But beyond that,
00:49:12
Speaker
It's so, you can really capture the way a person talks when you have a cake butter. I just think it's such a rich tool. And I also think, you know, a lot of people talk about the dread transcribing. But to me, transcribing is still another point of getting this in your head. Yeah, it's drudgery. You can do it. But still,
00:49:42
Speaker
It's part of the writing process. It's putting it in my head and planning it here a little bit more. And I'm sorry, I think maybe I've gotten off of not answering your point.
00:49:58
Speaker
no this is this is great like you're making a great the great case for for the report uh for the recorder and that's exactly what i well i hearing the way you've you you've advocated for and justified it in your own reporting and
00:50:14
Speaker
It helps me here, because sometimes I go, I love the recorder for that reason. I don't trust myself to catch everything. There are things I just straight up miss. I'm like, I don't remember having, like, I don't remember him saying that in the conversation. And the recorder caught it for me. And yeah, transcribing, yeah, it's a bummer to transcribe. But like you said, it's another chance to have those, have the conversations.
00:50:43
Speaker
go drilled back into your head and uh... at that point yes you at twenty pages or twenty thousand words maybe you use a hundred out of that but at least you you've given yourself every ample opportunity to to use it and not rely on that handwriting and have to throw stuff out to the can read your notes
00:51:13
Speaker
Take the tape recorder and stay at night, lay down, put the tape recorder in, turn the light off, turn the tape recorder on, close my eyes, and listen, because it puts me back where I was, even though I have only the voice. In my mind, I can picture us and what we were doing and what was happening. So I find it really helpful sometimes in deciding how I want to start or how I want to do something.
00:51:43
Speaker
You know, it just helps bring it back alive. And that's the other thing, too, is when you're writing a book, especially, you may not get to that part of the story for a year, depending on how long you're writing this thing. But with the tape recorder, it brings it all back to you like it happened an hour ago or the night before. It just makes it fresher, I think, in your mind.
00:52:12
Speaker
And I think the same thing with photographs. And actually, I guess I started doing, I can't remember when I did the Klan, like I wasn't really taking, I didn't take pictures. But what I did was pictures of magazines or whatever. We put them, as I said, behind the wall, behind my, at that point typewriter. I remember one time, I had to have something repaired. And I just remembered this.
00:52:41
Speaker
African-American repairman or somebody coming in, you know, with his eyes getting wide when he sees his pictures and he's burning boxes of these people so he'll go to my computer. But all of that really, for me, was putting me back there so that I could write with, try to write with more immediacy.
00:53:05
Speaker
But then, eventually, he started taking pictures. And I could think, you know, Walt Tarrinton is another believer in tape recorders and photographs. And he really encouraged me, I think, to do more with photographs.
Curating The Stories We Tell Anthology
00:53:21
Speaker
And I can't remember exactly. I remember him one scene in this murder story that he wrote for the post decades ago of The Detectives. And I remember him.
00:53:34
Speaker
following the detectives out to some kind of murder scene, and he took this photograph, and he did, it was until he got home and was, you know, looking at the photographs that, I can't remember if it was at home, but there was something significant that was on the ground.
00:53:52
Speaker
that he hadn't even noticed when he took the photograph, you know? So I just think, you know, I realize now, probably there are probably some people who are doing videos, you know, I don't know how that works, but anyway.
00:54:05
Speaker
The hearing you talk about all this stuff just makes you the perfect person to have edited this, curated this selection of work from these brilliant women journalists for the stories we tell. What was the process like for you to go through all these pieces and get them into this wonderful collection? What was that process like for you as you started digging into this kind of work?
00:54:36
Speaker
Now, I think that I've always kept folders of stories that I liked, that I admired, that I thought were well-written, but not for one reason or another. And I did another anthology in the early 2000s
00:54:54
Speaker
And it really, you know, again, it was sort of like my favorite pieces. In terms of this, you know, Mike and I talked and we really wanted a collection of women who had really, at the forefront of women's writing in long form. And so I started out really sort of writing down my favorites and favorite
00:55:22
Speaker
writers that I thought ought to be in it, stories that I thought ought to be in it. And then I started talking to editors, I know, primarily magazine editors, and asking for their suggestions. And then so they made suggestions again, both of writers and of particular pieces.
00:55:47
Speaker
And then also to writer friends, other writer friends and people who teach this to get there. And then Mike was putting in some of his people that he knew that I wasn't familiar with. And what we were looking for were two things. We wanted not just interesting story material, but also stories that were outstanding for their writing and their reporting.
00:56:19
Speaker
that demonstrated what really defined writing in this genre, what it ought to be like or what it can be like. So those are some of the things that we hope to include. And I think, too, the goal was two things. One, too many homage to these women for the work that they've done and are doing, but also to demonstrate
00:56:47
Speaker
I guess we particularly wanted to inspire younger women to see what you can do, but I don't think I would limit it just to other young women. I think there's a lot for male writers to learn from these women in these stories. So I think, you know, that was sort of my goal to come up with that kind of a collection.
00:57:08
Speaker
And I would say that we probably could have put out an encyclopedia. I mean, we really had, in the beginning days, a long, long list. And then, at some point, we decided, okay, we can't do all of this. We will do two volumes. I'm not gonna, if it turns out I'm not gonna do the second volume. But what we decided to do was to make this volume women who are 50 and older.
00:57:38
Speaker
and that the second volume would be people who are younger than 50. So that took some of the list off. And I don't know, there were just various reasons that we went through it. You know, it was really difficult to breathe some people off and we really felt like we should not, that we weren't going to do more than 20 because the book is already
00:58:04
Speaker
have you seen the print version of it? It's pretty sick. No, I have a PDF version, but it's, I think it's close to 400 pages. Yeah, I don't remember what the page count is, but it's pretty sick. Yeah. And so, you know, obviously you had to leave some out. I mean, that's one of the difficult things, I think, of doing an anthology. To me, it's harder to let
00:58:31
Speaker
stories go than it is to find good stories. So, you know, and I, you know, there are just a lot of reasons, you know, I guess I'm going to just personal taste or whatever, but, you know, the ones that were not included, it's no reflection on those stories or those writers. It was just a matter of practicality of not being able to have more
00:58:59
Speaker
Those tiebreakers had to have been hard for you to decide because anything easily could have been included. What did those tiebreakers look like to you on an individual taste basis? I think that there were times when maybe there was a story that was very similar in subject matter to something we had already decided on. Maybe it had to do with subject matter.
00:59:29
Speaker
And re-writing was not, to me, as wonderful as the one that we used. I don't know. You know, it just... They put water under the bridge. But, you know, I'm really pleased... I'm back up, too. I'm leaving this out in terms of where the stories came from.
00:59:51
Speaker
You know, there were some, as I said, that I really, I mean, I knew that I wanted to use Joan Gideon's triggers of the Golden Dream, for instance. To me, that's such a fabulous piece of writing and reporting. I mean, to me, it's just incredible.
01:00:08
Speaker
Joan Didion wasn't there for the trial. She didn't get there until after the trial and after, you know, like a year after the murder. And yet, that you would never know it by the writing of that story. So I knew I wanted to use that. And, you know, there are pieces like that. But then we also asked the women.
01:00:29
Speaker
that we were approaching to, do you have a particular favorite that you would like to see us use, or do you have some particular favorite? Because some of them would come back with two or three stories that they considered their favorites, and then I would read to those and choose a story. What I particularly liked or what I thought was good for the mix. The reminders were all
01:00:58
Speaker
fantastically cooperative and helpful in doing this. And I think there was a great deal of excitement among them. And this has to remind them that they really felt it was about time that eventology like this came out. When we got to the end and Mike was looking and thinking about who to ask to write a blurb for the book.
01:01:28
Speaker
We said, you know, how can you ask somebody else to write a blurb when we have the women we think are just the best in the book? And so we asked the women if they were interested or willing to write a blurb, and we ended up with a bunch of wonderful words from them about the anthology and
Discoveries and Reflections on Storytelling
01:01:54
Speaker
and they're relevant in that kind of thing. In choosing the stories, it was sometimes interesting that when somebody made a suggestion, I could think of a couple of times when I thought, just seeing what the subject matter is,
01:02:14
Speaker
I would say to myself, oh, God, this is going to be deadly. And then you start reading, but this is a magical narrative. It was just incredible. It was stunning. And I take a piece by Mimi Swartz, Mimi's here from Texas Monthly. And her story is Mother's Sister's Daughter's Wife, and it's about
01:02:42
Speaker
the Texas legislators get raging war on planning the parenthood. And I thought, oh my God, it is a fabulous story. And she does such a beautiful job of teaching the tone and the flavor of these sessions in the state legislature in Texas and these men. And anyway, it's just, you know, it's wonderful when you
01:03:09
Speaker
come up with something like that and it just blows you off your feet and you're totally not expecting it. And, you know, I think of, also, Suzanne was starting to talk about Park Avenue and, you know, she takes a street and writes about this cultural divide, how one half of it is, you know, ghetto and the other half is, you know, uphill.
01:03:46
Speaker
It sounds like it was a lot of fun for you to do this too and compile this list.
01:04:02
Speaker
And also beyond the stories, it was fun getting to know these women, either by phone or internet. And a lot of women that I have never met, getting to know them. So that was rewarding. And it was also fun working with Mike.
01:04:31
Speaker
I've enjoyed the project. Yeah, Patsy, I feel like I could talk to you for another two hours, but I need to be respectful of your time. This was really great to get to hear your story and also how you worked through the story, your reporting process, and then, of course, talking about how you went through and curated this wonderful collection of stories.
01:04:58
Speaker
It's what a great body of work you have and also what you've done with the Stories We Tell collection. So thanks for all the work you've done. We'll have to do a part two another time where we can dig into some other stuff, too. But I think this is wonderful getting to talk to you at length, at least in this early going. So thank you for the time. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. Talk to you later, Pat.
01:05:28
Speaker
Thanks to Patsy Sims for coming on episode 73 of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Brilliant insights. Hope you got a lot out of it. If you'd like to maybe have a part two,
01:05:39
Speaker
and a follow up with Patsy, just let me know, ping me on Twitter, at Brendan O'Mara. Also, go to BrendanO'Mara.com for past episodes of the podcast, as well as the sign up sheet for the monthly newsletter, where I give out my recommendations for reading for the month, and also what you might have missed from the podcast. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week. Thanks.