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Episode 64—Matt Tullis on "Running with Ghosts," Aging Out of Jealousy, and Bringing a Reporter's Mind to Memoir
128 Plays7 years ago
"To be a great writer, you just have LOVE writing," says Matt Tullis, author of the new memoir "Running with Ghosts. "You have to be passionate about it, so you're going to do it a lot." It’s The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world’s best artists—journalists, documentary filmmakers, essayists, memoirists, and radio producers—about creating works of nonfiction, I’m your host, Brendan O’Meara. Thanks for listening. Have we got a good one for you today. Episode 64 with journalist Matt Tullis (@matttullis) on Twitter. His first book, “Running With Ghosts: A Memoir of Surviving Childhood Cancer” published by The Sager Group, tells the story of how Matt got slammed with a form of leukemia at age fifteen, and subsequently what he did what that survival as many of his friends, who had previously been in remission, started passing away as the cancer came back. A couple of Matt’s caretakers, people who spent hours, and weeks, and months ensuring his survival, also died of cancer leaving Matt to wonder why he was spared. There were several times in this book that burned your host’s eyes, not gonna lie, but Matt honors his life and his friends by turning his reporter’s eye inward, and outward, telling the story of his life and his friends. Matt is a professor at Fairfield Univeristy and host of Gangrey the Podcast. His work has appeared in SB Nation Longform among many other places. You’re gonna dig this episode as we talk about what it takes to be a great writer, letting events unfold in the face of preconceived expectations, competition, jealousy, and self promotion. It’s the first of the month. Did you know that I have a monthly newsletter that I send out at the beginning of the month sharing my reading list as well as what you may have missed the Creative Nonfiction Podcast realm? Well, I do. Head over to brendanomeara.com.
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Transcript
Introduction and HippoCamp 2017
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is brought to you by HippoCamp 2017, a conference for creative nonfiction writers. Set in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, HippoCamp enters its third year and goes from Friday, September 8th at 9 a.m. to Sunday, September 10th at 5 p.m.
00:00:23
Speaker
and for Hippocampus Magazine and Conference founder Donna Telerico. Her goal was to create a sense of nostalgia for summer camps of yesteryear.
00:00:36
Speaker
great feeling of camaraderie after you spend a lot of time with like-minded people. So I just thought we had a built-in name with Hippocamp. It's part of our magazine name. It also is a summer camp type feeling. So I just thought it was perfect.
Tobias Wolf and MFA Influence
00:00:53
Speaker
But we do have the subheading, A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers, because we want to add a little bit of clarity for people that aren't familiar with Hippocampus, if that makes sense.
00:01:04
Speaker
There are several breakout sessions still available for registration, as well as slots at the conference at large, but they're quickly running out. If nothing else, I mean, check out that headlining keynote with this guy named Tobias Wolf.
00:01:23
Speaker
and everything like that. But to find out that he was available was fantastic. Mary Carr was our headlining keynote in 2016, and she was a student of Tobias's. So I think that might have helped a little bit during my MFA program. That's when I first read This Boy's Life. And that really resonated with me. We have some similarities in our childhood upbringing. So just personally for me, I'm excited. But I am trying to think more on it
00:01:52
Speaker
The positive is for attendees, not just myself personally, if that makes sense. It's the third annual Hippocamp. Visit hippocampismagazine.com and click on conference in the toolbar for more information about the conference. Hippocamp 2017, create, share, live. Let's do the show.
Meet Matt Tullis: Memoir and Impact
00:02:15
Speaker
The riff, the riff, the riff is on fire.
00:02:22
Speaker
I hope that wasn't as painful to listen to as it was to say. My producer is shaking his head. Whatever. He walks on four bikes. Anyway!
00:02:33
Speaker
It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world's best artists, journalists, documentary filmmakers, essayists, memoirists, and radio producers about creating works of nonfiction and how you can tease out some of their habits and tricks and apply it to your own work. I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara. Thanks for listening.
00:02:56
Speaker
Have we got a good one for you today? Episode 64 with journalist and professor Matt Tullis. That's at Matt Tullis on Twitter, M-A-T-T. T-U-L-L-I-S. His first book, Running with Ghosts, a memoir of surviving childhood cancer published by the Sager Group.
00:03:20
Speaker
tells the story of how Matt got slammed with a form of leukemia at age 15 and subsequently what he did with that survival as many of his friends who had previously been in remission started passing away as the cancer came back. A couple of Matt's caretakers, people who spent hours and weeks and months ensuring his survival, also died of cancer, leaving Matt to wonder why he was spared
00:03:49
Speaker
There were several times in this book that burned your host's eyes up quite a bit, not gonna lie, but Matt honors his life and his friends by turning his reporter's eye inward and outward, telling the story of his life and his friends. Matt is a professor at Fairfield University and host of The Gangry, oh, let's just say, let's rephrase that. He's host of Gangry, the podcast, and
00:04:16
Speaker
His work has appeared in SB Nation long form among many other places.
The Surreal Nature of Meeting People
00:04:21
Speaker
You're gonna dig this episode as we talk about what it takes to be a great writer, letting events unfold in the face of preconceived expectations, competition, jealousy, and self-promotion. Hey, it's the first of the month. Did you know that I have a monthly newsletter that I send out at the beginning of the month sharing my reading list as well as what you may have missed in the world of the creative a nonfiction podcast? Well, I do.
00:04:48
Speaker
Head over to BrendanOmero.com, it's easy to subscribe, and you'll get the next one in your inbox on the first of the month. Okay, let's light a match and ignite this mother.
00:05:03
Speaker
You know, it's funny, when I was talking to Joe Ferraro a couple of episodes back, and he's someone I, like, quote-unquote, met on Twitter, and they, you know, listened to him with his podcasts, and I had been back and forth with him on Twitter and email and then heard his boys, heard his recordings.
00:05:23
Speaker
And it's like that the time I had him on the show was the one time I had actually had a physical conversation with him. And it felt like I kind of knew him still. And I kind of feel the same way with you. It's like I've been listening to Gangri for forever and heard your voice, read your work, and we have mutual friends in the biz. And it's kind of weird that this is actually the first time you and I are having a conversation. That it is. It's really funny. Have you ever been out to Mayborn?
00:05:53
Speaker
The Mayborn nonfiction conference heard Alice heard of it heard great things. I have not been yet It's the weirdest thing because I've gone two years in a row now, but like and so the last few years that I've gone It is so strange and then so you take out one step further and now you're meeting people Mm-hmm like in person who you've had Twitter conversations with You've read their work. You may have even spoken about
00:06:20
Speaker
You know, a lot of, for a lot of the people, it's people that I've done podcasts with, but I've never actually met them. Yeah. And then there they are in the, in the flesh and it's really kind of, it's kind of surreal. It's kind of cool. So.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, a few years ago, I was at Monmouth racetrack. I was doing a book signing for six weeks in Saratoga. And a lot of people I know in that horse racing world were coming up to me, but I had only known them through Twitter. So when I was actually shaking some of their hands, they would say like, Oh, my name's Norman. And but then he like gave his Twitter handle as he was like, Oh, yeah, that's you. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty cool, though. So
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's wild. So yeah, why don't we jump into a couple things.
Matt's Writing Journey
00:07:04
Speaker
I'd like to get into some background stuff before we jump into the book, which was, I gotta say, before we even get into that in detail, it was just an awesome, awesome memoir, just powerfully told, beautifully written. And I was deeply moved by it throughout the whole 200 plus pages of it. So just well done. I just wanna say that first.
00:07:28
Speaker
Appreciate I appreciate that so much because you know what the Like I've been writing about this for so long So long and I think that comes across in the book. I tried to make it come across in the book And you know the really the only thing I had ever published about that was the SB Nation piece Mm-hmm And so I had no idea I have no idea nobody nobody has really ever read this stuff except you know a select few people and I had no idea how I
00:07:56
Speaker
So it's nice to when I hear people who especially people I don't necessarily know personally who say that because you never know how it's going to help you react to it. So it makes me feel nice all warm and tingly. Thanks. So what you know at what point like when did words reading and language become important to you?
00:08:24
Speaker
You know I was just talking with my daughter about this this morning She she like asked me You because we've all been told we've been talking about the book non-stop at the house and and and she asked me like when like Like when did I like when did I know I wanted to be a writer and my daughter is ten? She's going she just started the fifth grade yesterday And I told her you know like I always loved reading
00:08:49
Speaker
But then I think it was in the sixth grade is when I really started writing. I loved to write these stupid little things. And I had a sixth grade language arts teacher who used to say, you know, if anybody in here is going to grow up and be a writer, it's going to be Matt. And so I kind of have carried that with me ever since. Like Mrs. Smith must have known what she was talking about. But, you know, really, I think in high school, after I was sick,
00:09:19
Speaker
I had a really hard time reading. I couldn't concentrate because of a lot of the drugs I was taking. So I didn't read much for a couple years. But I was really good at taking notes in high school classes and at least focusing on notes and stuff. I could do that, paying attention to words and that type of stuff. And then in college it kind of just clicked because I started writing for the student newspaper.
00:09:45
Speaker
And I found it all kind of just came easily for me in terms of writing stories for newspaper. And so I guess it kind of just all fit together with what Mrs. Smith said in the sixth grade.
00:10:01
Speaker
Do you think it was probably like when everyone's heads were down, you were probably one of the few kids who probably had a big smile on his face while he was writing. So maybe she just saw joy in your face. And like, you know, if someone's got that kind of love for this kind of exercise, then that's going to be the person that might
Community and Competitiveness in Writing
00:10:18
Speaker
glom on to it. I think so. And actually, you know what, I think in that class, they had us do way to turn in journals each week that we wrote in. And I wrote, like,
00:10:29
Speaker
I wrote like crazy stuff. I just wrote so much stuff that I think I was always just writing more like some kids would like just write like a sentence or something but I was like literally I think literally filling notebooks and handing them in and I don't think any of it was any good but you know I just I enjoyed doing it and and so I did it and you know and I loved reading especially like
00:10:53
Speaker
You know, like the fourth grade is when I really started reading like a crazy third, third or fourth grade. I really started reading all the time, partly because we didn't really have anything else to do back then. But I just read, read, read, read. And I'll tell you, my wife and I were talking, my wife's a fourth grade teacher and we were talking about this, like what books are kids reading? And I'm trying to get my daughter to read some books and stuff. And the book, The Island of the, of the Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott Odell.
00:11:22
Speaker
Um, is literally the book that I read and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like the greatest thing ever. Um, I wonder if I could do this someday. You know, and part of me too, I think it was like in the fourth grade. I think it was fourth grade. My elementary school started this thing called the reading games and where they gave us like 15 books and kids who wanted to read them could, uh, they're encouraged just to read them.
00:11:46
Speaker
But then that was going to come down to like a like a basically trivia within the fourth grade. But then we are going to go against the other schools in the district. And I've always been super, super competitive, like really ridiculously competitive when it comes to sports and when it comes to even like.
Journalistic Adaptability and Storytelling
00:12:04
Speaker
trying to prove my own intelligence over other people at least you know I did that when I was younger and so I read all 15 books and I just I I killed it in the reading game and I don't know if that like that had to have had something to do with it too that I was just like I really love doing this so and I that's I think that's when I read Island of the Blue Dolphins because I think it was one of the 15 books so that we could read so I
00:12:29
Speaker
How has that competitiveness helped you over the years in terms of your writing career? I don't know. That's a good question. I think it helps me because I want, when I write a story, I want it to get as big an audience as possible. And so if anything,
00:12:53
Speaker
I don't have any problem whatsoever with being a shameless self-promoter. And I know a lot of writers who don't like to do that. And so maybe it's not like from the writing standpoint that being competitive has helped, but from the selling standpoint, I have no problem loading my Facebook page up with links to stories that I've written. I have no problem with blasting out, you know, podcast links.
00:13:20
Speaker
You know, and promoting the book, um, you know, uh, I'm not gonna, uh, my, my poor, my friends on Facebook, I know at some point in time, they're going to get tired of seeing stuff. Um, but I don't care. They can buy the book and then they can keep buying the book. I don't know. Um, so I think it helps there. I def I definitely want that that's where the competitiveness has come in here. One thing I'm happy about though, cause I could see how it could get bad is
00:13:48
Speaker
I think some people who are super competitive can also tend to get jealous of other people who are more successful. And I don't feel that way at all. I love it when people who I like and respect and like to read, I love it when their stuff gets big and goes crazy. And it's not like, oh my gosh, how could a publisher publish that book and not my book? I love that. I love it when, you know,
00:14:17
Speaker
And I love to work with other writers. I'm not, uh, as a professor, I work with a lot of young writers, but I love, I love working with anybody who wants to just get better doing the same thing that I do. And I think sometimes when you're super competitive, you might be afraid of, Oh my God, they're going to take, they're going to take my paycheck. If I give them too many of the secrets and I've never felt that way, fortunately. So.
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah, you had taken my follow-up question to that right out of my mouth because sometimes that double-edged sword of being really competitive can lead to jealousy because you look at someone else and be like, oh my god, I've been doing this two or three times as long as that person. And I've been trying to get into that publication for 15 years, and they got there in three. And it's like, what did I do wrong? And you can really drive yourself mad when you play that game. Yeah, I think I might have been that way when I was a newspaper reporter, just starting out
00:15:08
Speaker
And like not winning awards and I'd be like, Oh, I'm totally better than that person. How, but I think the older you get, the more you realize just how subjective the awards process are. And, and I've really, you know, there are still some awards I would love to win.
00:15:25
Speaker
But but I also know that you know what I mean not winning them is not necessarily an indictment against the work that I've done and That I should just be happy for the people who do win them because they've all all done good work So I think I was I think I was that way I think I did have some jealous bones in my body when I was you know 23 24 25 but fortunately I've aged those out I think
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, I was kind of the same way. It probably took me a little bit longer to age out of some of that jealousy stuff, but it does nobody any good. You might as well... It's not like a zero-something. It's just a rising tide truly floats all boats, so why not celebrate people who got a great story in outside magazine or SB Nation long form.
00:16:16
Speaker
and made best american sports writing and all this like why not like celebrate that instead of just because that negative energy is just it's toxic to the work and then you're focusing on the wrong things and then you're you're not getting any better and you're not being a good participant in this community of writing yeah no i totally agree with that and and the community itself is amazing i think of non-fiction writers it's
Shift to Narrative Writing and Teaching
00:16:41
Speaker
crazy how many people are completely willing to take an hour out of their day to do a podcast. Of course, a lot of times they're hoping to promote their own work, or to take an hour out of their day to Skype in with a journalism class at a university. I don't think I've ever had anybody say no to helping out my students, which is really, really cool.
00:17:07
Speaker
And I don't think you get that in every industry. I think writers, creative nonfiction writers, magazine writers, I just think we love it when people think enough of us that they want us to talk to them.
00:17:25
Speaker
We want them to talk to another group and we're just like, oh my God, really? That's awesome. Yeah. And that subjective nature that you were talking about too is real important to consider, especially with anthologies or awards. And just think of it as best American sports writing. Say it gets to the point where it's going to be evaluated by that year's guest editor.
00:17:47
Speaker
And I'm thinking about, particularly, the year, say, Christopher McDougall was the editor, he's got a running sensibility. So it was no surprise that the 25 or so pieces, I think there might have been two or three running centric pieces.
00:18:03
Speaker
That's just based because it came through his taste, most likely. There are probably 100 pieces that could have made the final cut, but ultimately it comes down to the taste of that editor. So it's just another level of subjectivity. And you just have to, again, be just grounded and thankful that you can do the type of work that might get anthologized there. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. You've been doing this for 15, 20 years.
00:18:28
Speaker
What do you struggle with? What do you continually finding yourself like, all right, this is what I want to improve on. This is what I want to do to make the next one sing a little bit better than my last one. Oh, my my biggest and most glaring weakness is in finding stories that I want to write about. I'm really bad at that. I'm really, really bad. And like I've been so thankful that I've been working on the book for the last year and a half, well, 20 months now almost, because I haven't
00:18:55
Speaker
had to like find other stuff. I'm really lucky. And then I have a regular job as well, you know, as a professor. And so if I was a freelance writer, I would literally have starved to death about like five years ago. And so I'm so bad. I don't know. Maybe if I was a freelance writer, I'd be better at finding story ideas. But I really I don't I don't know. I don't know what it is. I'm just I have a really hard time finding things.
00:19:24
Speaker
that I want to sink a lot of time and effort into when it comes to telling stories. So I think that's my biggest weakness. And that's one thing that I actually, I work on with my students as much as I possibly can because I know how important that is, you know, to be able to find those stories that you want to tell.
00:19:46
Speaker
How much time do you say there's something like, you know, you wrote this great piece about these great, like, horseshoe players for SB Nation a few years ago. So, like, at what point, at some point, something hooked into you in that, and then, you know, you did pursue it with all your rigger. At what point, maybe along those roads or along those checkpoints, do you say, like, okay, now it's time for me to bail or now it's time for me to actually lean into this more?
00:20:16
Speaker
Oh, you know, I do that type of freelancing so not that often that I don't know if I've ever bailed. I have to think if I've ever bailed on something. You know, I think I realized early on that not early on, but maybe five, four or five years ago, I'm really bad at doing travel type stuff. I did have a story.
00:20:41
Speaker
at one point in time. I think it was for National Geographic. No, I can't remember who it was for, but it ended up getting killed because it was a horrible story, but it was a travel story and it was just horrible. I don't know what it is about doing travel stuff, but I'm just not good at it. And so I was, you know, I think I kind of bailed semi on that story because I knew it just wasn't going to be good no matter how hard I worked on it. But like with a horseshoe story,
00:21:11
Speaker
this is this is I mean this is how I am when I find when I do find something that I know I want to write about because I'm so bad at finding things that I know I want to write about that when I do find something I I'm typically tremendously obsessed with it and so I'm going to find a way to make a story out of it somehow obviously not making stuff up but in terms of taking what happens and
00:21:37
Speaker
Fashioning that into a compelling nonfiction piece the the horseshoe story that did not turn out at all how it was supposed to turn out I mean that story was supposed to be Brian Simmons who is the second best horseshoe pitcher in the world the man I profiled going again up against Alan Francis who's the best horseshoe pitcher in the world and I also wrote about when I was at the clums dispatch because he's from Ohio that whole story was set upon the premise that they would meet each other in the finals and
00:22:06
Speaker
And that Brian would be going to try to knock off the greatest of all time for the second year in a row. Uh, and Brian was horrible. That was his worst tournament that he ever had. Um, and I think he finished sixth place that year. And so I never like considered bailing on the story. I spent that whole tournament because it was pretty obvious early that he was not going to do well. I spent most of that tournament, like really working in my mind, trying to figure out, okay, what is, what is the story here?
00:22:36
Speaker
And I spent a lot of time talking to Brian in between matches and stuff and just talking about him and his life to where I finally came to what I thought was probably the story should have been about and what it would have been. It should have been about that, even if it had turned out really well, you know, if it had turned out where he went up against the first, the number one guy for the championship.
00:22:59
Speaker
So I'm just constantly thinking about things. And when I get into something, when I'm obsessed with it, I tend to find a way to make it work.
Surviving Cancer and Memoir Writing
00:23:09
Speaker
So what was that like, that sense of adaptability that you had to show when going into that it wasn't meeting your original expectations? So you did have to kind of report for maybe a different structure than you had originally envisioned. So how did you navigate that?
00:23:29
Speaker
Um, you know, one of the things I taught, I stayed in touch with Glenn Stout, who was the editor while that was going on. I mean, I was emailing him and this was really the first big piece I ever wrote in my entire life. It was the, I had never written anything that long before. And everything I had written up until that point had either been in newspapers or regional trade magazines, regional or a city magazine or, or a trade magazine. And so I was constantly in touch with Glenn.
00:23:59
Speaker
letting him know what was going on. And luckily he was, he was very cool headed and said, just keep following it. Just try to figure out what's going on. Um, just keep reporting. Um, a story will show up at some point in time. And it really did come about like, uh, just from talking with Brian, the main, the main, the main guy in that story, because we, we talked for about two hours, um, before the tournament officially began.
00:24:25
Speaker
So I didn't realize at this point that he was going to have a horrible tournament, but in that two-hour interview I realized exactly how many health problems he had had in his life and so I had that in the back of my mind as I'm watching him pitch these horseshoes and everything and so I was able to kind of Start reconciling the one thing I really decided I needed to do was show exactly how different he was from everybody else at this tournament because you think of a horseshoe pitching tournament and you think they're all gonna be like yokels out there and
00:24:55
Speaker
you know, just tossing the shoes and not doing anything. And they're all super professional, super professional. It was the craziest thing I ever saw. But Brian was still the one with like the baggiest t-shirt and you know, the shoddy issues and the one that you would think would be a horseshoe pitcher, I guess. And so I started focusing on that. And then that kind of also helped me kind of understand where he was coming from.
00:25:24
Speaker
Did reporting on that story give you a greater sense of confidence that if you hang around long enough and then just let something unfold the way it's unfolding that you could in fact like shape a story out of something that was unexpected from you going in? Oh, yeah, definitely. And I actually kind of I think I knew this going in and that's why I had planned to stay for the entire tournament. Anyway, I was down I was in Knoxville.
00:25:50
Speaker
for five days for that tournament. I was lucky I had a friend who lived down there and I stayed with him. I got to know Jim Scheler real well, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for feature writing for his story, Final Salute, which was turned into a book. And it was about a Marine sergeant who has to notify families when their loved ones are killed. And Jim literally kind of started doing those stories because he was a newspaper reporter, but he was covering funerals for soldiers
00:26:20
Speaker
He was at the Rocky Mountain News at the time. And when he was covering these funerals, he was always the last person to leave. To the point where, and then he would come away with these amazing stories, right? The last reporter to leave. To the point where Jim's talked about how the Denver Post and they were in the same building, they established a rule where the Denver Post reporters were not allowed to leave until Jim Scheler left. Because he would just hang out. He would stick around.
00:26:49
Speaker
He would watch what was going on. He would talk to more people than anybody else. And I think that's really and that's one thing I really tried to impart upon my students. And I think that had an impact on me when I was in Knoxville and with a lot of stuff I've done. If you hang around long enough, you're going to you're going to understand what the story is because it's going to come to you. And I think Ben Montgomery has said that to the Tampa Bay Times. He said he tries to never leave an interview until he knows exactly how the story
00:27:19
Speaker
that he's going to write is going to begin and how it's going to end. But it's a good mindset to have going in that you don't try to do it really fast. And unfortunately, I think we live in an age where we try to get stuff done as quickly as humanly possible.
00:27:37
Speaker
Because we have to move on to the next thing and we've got to rush through it. But I think doing this type of stuff, you have to really take it slow. Yeah, and that's where it gives new definition or new meaning to long form. Oftentimes, that's just maybe misattributed to just word count. But really, it's like depth and length and reporting because you can have a 2,000, 3,000 word piece
00:28:01
Speaker
That's that's long form. If you've put in the time in the reporting to make something that's just super lean and dense, if you've if you've done that kind of work, like it doesn't have to be eight or ten thousand words. You know, no, absolutely. I mean, yeah, long form should totally take into account how much time you spent reporting as well, because, you know, some of the best stuff out there is the super tight two thousand word pieces. You know, I had a I had a professor in my undergrad
00:28:28
Speaker
Uh, who used to say you've never make a story worse by making it shorter. Um, and he's not necessarily talking about like a quick hitting type of thing where you can actually leave out important information, but he's literally talking a big feature story, tightening it up and making it, making it more hyper focused than it was. Yeah.
00:28:49
Speaker
So when you were just getting out of college, starting the newspapers, probably reading some longer stuff, authors and reporters that you admired, what were your ambitions when you were getting into this
Life Post-Cancer: Health and Reflections
00:29:05
Speaker
line of work? Where did you see yourself going and what did you want to accomplish? That's really funny. So my first job was at the Daily Record in Worcester, Ohio, which at the time had a circulation of about 22,000.
00:29:16
Speaker
I don't think I, you know, I didn't read long form stuff. Uh, not that it wasn't called long form stuff back then, but even like feature type stuff, I was hardcore. I was going to be, you know, I was a city reporter. I was going to, I wanted to maybe be a columnist someday, an editor someday.
00:29:34
Speaker
Um, I just wanted to like move up. I didn't really think much about what I was actually doing other than I was writing a ton of stories every day covering, you know, as much different, as many different things as I could. And then, uh, you know, I did that for like four years at the same newspaper. Uh, I went from covering religion and health, which we like to joke. I wrote preacher features and disease of the week stories to, I then started covering, uh,
00:30:01
Speaker
city government in Worcester, Ohio, which is a small city of about 25,000, about an hour south of Cleveland. So I covered city government for a couple of years and kind of like got burned out to the point where I decided to go to grad school for an MFA in creative writing. So I did that, you know, I did more creative type stuff, but I was still freelancing for the star news in Wilmington while I was in grad school.
00:30:24
Speaker
I don't think I ever started reading really good narrative feature writing until I got to the Columbus Dispatch in 2006. I started there in April 2006 and I was lucky enough to sit beside another reporter there who was into this really good in-depth feature type stuff. And he told me that you need to check out this website called gangri.com. And I was like, okay, you know how to spell that.
00:30:53
Speaker
You know, I checked it out and I was right around the time that Kelly Benham French wrote Kennel Trash, which was the piece on the pit bulls, the 90 more than 90 some pit bulls who were rescued from a dog fighting place, but then all had to be euthanized. And that story, just reading that literally, I think changed my entire life. So now I'm like, oh, my God, you can do this in newspapers. And and so that's when I really started reading a lot of that, that type of stuff.
00:31:23
Speaker
Um, you know, and I became, you know, addicted to gangry.com and the conversations that happened there and, uh, you know, just talking about like doing this type of reporting and writing that doesn't necessarily look like the stuff that I had always been writing before
Evolving View of Writing Success
00:31:40
Speaker
in my life. And, and, you know, I'd always like slipped in these like narrative type elements into stories, but I didn't
00:31:47
Speaker
realized that I was doing anything that other people were doing. I didn't realize that community existed. I just thought I was being clever because one time I covered a city council meeting and I spent three paragraphs describing what these two city council women who at one point in time had been best friends, but then got super angry at each other over a redistricting. I spent like two paragraphs, just two or three paragraphs describing what they were wearing and how they were interacting with each other. And I just stuck it at the end of the story.
00:32:14
Speaker
And people thought it was hilarious, but I was like, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just doing what seemed natural to me. And so to realize then that there was this entire other community of people who did this type of stuff.
00:32:25
Speaker
was really, really cool. I love hearing writers talk about a piece of work that turned the world from black and white into color. It totally unlocked what they previously knew was possible with a type of genre of writing. And that's happened a lot with people I speak with.
00:32:49
Speaker
As after you graduated from reading Kelly Bonham French's piece, who after that started like who were the other writers you started to get turned on to? And you're like, oh, man, that's great. That's great. And then and then like, oh, this is what I want to start doing. Yeah. Well, I mean, I became obsessed with the Tampa Bay Times while it was the St. Petersburg Times back then. But, you know, just like all the work that was being done down there,
00:33:17
Speaker
You know what Lane de Gregory and
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:33:20
Speaker
Michael Cruz and Ben Montgomery And they were just writing all these amazing stories and they were stories and that was a thing that was really cool They weren't articles there were stories and I you know I convinced the clums dispatch to send me to a narrative a narrative seminar a pointer That was taught by Tom French who also has amazing stuff also done at the st. Petersburg Times Tampa Bay Times and
00:33:45
Speaker
And it was there, you know that I started getting to know some of these people and that's where I met Jim Sheila and I started reading final salute and I read his obituaries he wrote for the for the Rocky Mountain News and the Boulder daily camera when he was there and I was like, you know, these are just amazing things. They're they're not what they're not articles they're stories and so actually, you know after
00:34:12
Speaker
After I did that, one of the things I started doing at the Clumb's Dispatch was I kind of copied Jim Scheler and I started writing feature obits, feature obituaries on just ordinary people who passed away in central Ohio. And I think I did, I don't know, 12 or 15 of them. I wasn't doing them regularly. I was doing maybe one a month, maybe two a month before I ended up leaving to go start teaching. That was really, really helpful to learn how to start doing that type of writing.
00:34:39
Speaker
and expanding a little bit beyond the typical stuff that I'd been doing. I started reading Chris Jones once I started going to Gangry on a regular basis. He's, I think, one of the best celebrity profilers in the business. I know people don't necessarily like to do that type of stuff, but I remember reading his profile on Roger Ebert and just thinking it was one of the most amazing things I've ever read.
00:35:08
Speaker
I'm trying to think about when it's really hard to delineate when all these people come into my mind that I started reading. I think Tom Juneau, I started reading him pretty early once I started going to gangri.com and specifically his piece on Mr. Rogers, which I think is also amazing. And then you kind of fast forward as you start getting to write Thompson and some of the people who are really doing amazing stuff right now.
00:35:37
Speaker
It was just like the great thing about Gangry and it's kind of sad that people don't necessarily go there as often as they used to and there aren't the conversations that used to take place. It was such a smorgasbord of amazing writers, you know, and there was always something new being posted. And so it was it was just really, really fantastic.
00:35:57
Speaker
And in this game you've been the reporter, you've done a lot of long writing, and now you do a lot of teaching, but also a lot of writing as well. And I wonder how much can be learned in this line of work and how much of it is sort of innate.
00:36:17
Speaker
That's like the age-old question for MFA programs. Can you really go and learn how to be a creative writer? I think it's a little bit, I don't necessarily know if it's a learning type of thing. I think anybody can learn to be a competent writer. I think to be a great writer, you just literally have to love writing. You have to be passionate about it, and so you're gonna do it a lot. So I don't know. I mean, you can learn some techniques. I think you can learn, okay, well, how do I use dialogue?
00:36:45
Speaker
How do you can learn about? different story structures That you can utilize truthfully I think since I started doing gangry the podcast I've become a much much better writer myself So I I think you can learn but I think it has to be something that you are so ridiculously obsessive about
00:37:08
Speaker
You know, it's not just something like, oh, someone said I should learn how to write. I'm going to become the next Mark Twain. It's not going to happen that way. But but if you love it and you're passionate about it, then you certainly can learn learn techniques. But you have to be passionate about it because it's hard work. It doesn't always stay the best either. So you have to do it just because it's like.
00:37:32
Speaker
it's infused within your soul, you have to do it. Yeah, it's practice and repetitions and you hear the Gladwellian 10,000 hours, like I'd wager it's you're better off getting like, you're probably getting really good at like 50,000 to 100 hours of this. Well, and you know, and that's the thing about MFA programs that are great is that when you enter one, you have to write a lot and you have to read a lot.
00:38:01
Speaker
It's not just like you're going to show up and go to some graduate courses and come away with a terminal degree after writing a couple papers. There's a lot of writing involved and a lot of reading involved and just doing that makes you better.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah, I got my MFA and I finished it in 2008 from Goucher College in their creative non-fiction program. And over the years I've kind of struggled with the idea of having done that and kind of struggled with the idea of the utility of an MFA. Because a lot of these people that we admire
00:38:37
Speaker
All the greats in the genre of narrative nonfiction and even fiction, like none, almost none of them needed an MFA. They just went out there and did the work. So I've always been kind of like, should I have just kept doing it and eventually and then saved the time that it took to go to grad school. But in that time in a year I wrote a 360 page manuscript. I feel bad for Tom French, who was my third semester mentor.
00:39:06
Speaker
Like sorry about this, but it was it did it did embed that Like you're gonna I'm gonna write a ton of volume and I was committed to writing a book in a year And that's you know that's what happened so I guess in that sense it kind of it does crack a whip behind you if you do take it with a You know a certain measure of earnestness and rigor. Yeah, I think so um you know and the other thing you know with the MFA program is like this book running with ghosts is basically an evolution of my MFA thesis which
00:39:36
Speaker
I finished in 2005. So, you know, I wrote that thesis and it did, you know, I think I won like best nonfiction thesis that year, although I don't know how many of us actually graduated from the program that year. But then, you know, it didn't go anywhere because it wasn't, it really wasn't publishable. I think it was good, but it wasn't necessarily something that anybody would want to publish and certainly nobody did publish it.
00:40:04
Speaker
But then, you know, that's the great thing about these memoirs is you never know when the story actually is going to happen and you never know when you're actually going to understand exactly what it is. So.
00:40:17
Speaker
And speaking with Mary Heather Noble, an essayist and nature writer a few months ago, she always made a point of respecting the drawer. She's like, never kill a piece of writing. Maybe it's just not time for it yet. And she put it in the drawer and it turned out to be this great sort of award-winning essay that she did for Creative Nonfiction.
00:40:38
Speaker
And it sounds like you kind of maybe what you needed for running with ghosts was to let it gestate a little bit longer. You know, you needed 10 more years with it. Yeah, it really, you know, it really was like the biggest thing that I always struggled with with with the idea of this book of writing about when I was sick is like I never knew what the ending was. And I never knew what the ending was because I didn't really know what the book was about because you can't write a book that says I'm going to write a book about when I had cancer when I was 15.
00:41:08
Speaker
Nobody wants to read that because a there's no narrative engine because obviously if I'm writing the book I survived So the readers not gonna read it was like I wonder if he survived I have to turn the next page As you killed it you killed it already So then that creates this other you know this conundrum like what is what is the book about and what is the story arc? What is?
00:41:31
Speaker
If I have to describe this in one word, what's it about kind of thing, because it's not just about the page. Turner is not going to be, did he survive? It has to be something else. It can't necessarily just be, Oh, it's a, when I came of age from having after hat, you know, I grew up because I had cancer because that's, that's boring and trite and played out as well. So, you know, it really, it really did take at least 10 years before.
00:41:58
Speaker
Well, I finished in 2005 and I started running in 2013. So it took about nine years before I started actually thinking along the lines of that would actually get, get me to what ultimately ended up being running with ghosts.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yeah, what struck me about it was, you said, how could you elevate this to something that's not just, I had cancer and I survived. It really came down to, as a lot of your friends and even caretakers were dying of cancer around you, and you italicized this in the book too, it was like, how can I
00:42:37
Speaker
how can I justify my survival? And I think that really got to the heart of it. It was like, what are you gonna do with this life when others were falling around you? And how did you, how have you come to justify your survival and take the life that you fought for? Well, I work way too much. I don't know. And I don't necessarily know that that's a question that I'm ever gonna be able to answer 100% with certainty
00:43:07
Speaker
I think for me, one thing that I always struggled with was this idea of what you mentioned, like why did I survive and how do I justify that? And I kind of had to come to the conclusion that I couldn't just sit around and wait on some sign that was going to answer that question for me, which I think I did for a while. I had to kind of create my own meaning. I had to kind of come up with this idea on my own.
00:43:38
Speaker
I had to just tell myself that this is why you survive and live with it. And for me, and I really realized, I realized this after the ghost I run with was published on SB nation. Uh, that was on April, uh, April, 2015. Uh, I realized after that was published, like within hours of when that was published, that I had bits of information about.
00:44:06
Speaker
some of the people that I'm writing about, some of the ghosts that are kind of the focus of the book. I had information wrong about their lives. So my nurse Janet is a really good example, because this is the first one that came up. When the piece was originally published on SB Nation, I wrote that she died of breast cancer. And that's what I had longed for like the last 15, 20 years thought was actually the case. That's how I've lived
00:44:35
Speaker
When I went for 20 years, when I thought of Janet, I thought of my nurse who died of breast cancer. It turned out that wasn't actually that wasn't accurate. She had a cancer that started in her gallbladder, which I found out because our world is so small. It turned out, and I mentioned this in the book, one of my wife's friends from college lived on the same street or in the same neighborhood as Janet when she was growing up. And her best friend was Janet's daughter.
00:45:04
Speaker
And so she texted me like literally 30 minutes after the story went live and said, do you think it's the same Janet? Uh, and I was like, yeah. And so she put me in touch with Janet's daughter, which was great. But, uh, but you know, I was able to learn that, you know, here's this person I've been thinking about for 20 years, uh, 20, 21 years at that point in time. And I think about Janet and, and Dr. Kufis and the other patients that I write about Melissa and Todd and Tim. And I think about them.
00:45:34
Speaker
pretty much on a daily basis, I think. But I realized, you know, I've been thinking about these people just about every day for 20 years and I don't necessarily know anything about them other than my experience with them at that one point in time. And so I kind of came to the conclusion that like, so, you know, one reason that maybe I could have survived is because I can, I can, I can tell stories about them so other people will know about them.
00:46:00
Speaker
and know how much they meant to me, not only as a patient, but as an adult. But I also knew that if I was going to do that, I had to get the information correct because I'm a reporter and I don't like having mistakes in my stories. I don't like making factual errors. And so I think that's kind of what I came to. I feel good with justifying my own survival by
00:46:29
Speaker
telling the stories of those who didn't survive. How important was it for you to write this memoir as deeply personal as it is, but while simultaneously bringing that reporter's eye to it? It wasn't that difficult at all. I've been reporting on having been sick for a long time.
00:46:55
Speaker
When I was in grad school, I got a grant to go back to Ohio and get, I got about 50 or 60 pages of my medical records photocopied because I knew early on that it would be hard to write about a time when I was very, very sick. And when I was very near death, also as a 15 year old, I knew there's no way my memory was going to be right about that stuff. I knew that
00:47:24
Speaker
that memories can get cloudy, memories can be completely false at times. And so even in 2004, I went back and got records. And that was really, really cool because when I did that, I got enough records where I was able to actually build an actual timeline of exactly when just about everything happened while I was sick. And that was really liberating in many ways, because, you know, there was one instance where
00:47:54
Speaker
Like at one point in time, I thought one thing happened well before another thing. And then to find out that that wasn't the case, I don't know why, I just felt really like cool to know that. It was like, oh, that's so awesome that I could find out any of this information. It's all right here. And so it wasn't that weird to go back and report on my life. And so much of it was like,
00:48:19
Speaker
Basically reading my medical records doing the documents at least with regards to my own life. It was a little More difficult and like interviewing the families of of the people that I write about Actually interviewing them was not hard reaching out to them was hard because especially with with Todd and Tim who I write about a lot in the book because they
00:48:49
Speaker
They died 20, 22 years ago, and I knew that to have a reporter coming out of the blue to say, hey, can I talk about your son who died in 1997, would and could be very jarring.
00:49:08
Speaker
That was probably the most uncomfortable part for me was doing that outreach. I was lucky in that one of the patient's moms, Melissa's mom, actually reached out to me as did Janet's daughter because they read the piece. I didn't know Melissa's mom at all. I don't know if I'd ever talked with her before when I was a kid. But it just so happened that
00:49:36
Speaker
you know, the university I was at prior to here in my alma mater, Ashland University, they reran the ghost I run with in the alumni magazine. And it just so happened that Melissa's mom read the piece in the magazine. And she was like, I think that's my Melissa. And it's another example of something I got wrong. I had Melissa's cancer wrong as well.
00:49:57
Speaker
And so, uh, so she reached out to me and, and, and that, you know, that makes it so much easier than, you know, cause I'm the reporter now. Hey, thanks for giving me a call. I really appreciate this. Hey, by the way, I think I'm doing a book on this. Can I talk to you sometime? And she was really open to it. And I think most of the families were, were open to talking with me, but it's still hard to know that, that as a reporter, you're, you're kind of ripping off a 20 year old band aid. Um, and, uh, and
00:50:27
Speaker
kind of pushing them into having to think about that again. And I don't think they I don't think they ever regretted, you know, I haven't really talked with them about this. So I don't know. But I can't imagine they regretted talking about someone they loved. But I do know that that can be it can be it can be hard. So
00:50:48
Speaker
you read about this this well and i i just wanna maybe get you to articulate it too easy you write about the the awareness of your own mortality really one that hit you at fifteen years old and i was just like what was united in that sense that it's that experience like to be in that position in room four sixty two
00:51:10
Speaker
And at such a young age, having to confront that question that some people don't have to confront until they're, you know, at least till they're a fully formed adult. Yeah, you know, it was I just remember feeling so bad, just so bad. And this is the thing about cancer and leukemia and pretty much anything that has to be treated with chemotherapy is and fortunately,
00:51:38
Speaker
segue here I think we're moving away from the really heavy-duty chemotherapy that just destroys a body moving to more targeted therapies which is way better for a cancer patient but in 1991 it was still massive heavy doses of these horrible drugs and they just made me feel so bad that I you know I literally I I just remember laying in that bed and not really caring what happened
00:52:06
Speaker
Just wanting it to end in some way shape or form And that's kind of what I remember and you know and and a lot of the nursing notes. That's kind of that shows up sometimes but also I think sometimes like I I you know when I think about that time when I was sick. I'm it's always the the worst right I think about how horrible I felt that's really all I think about I
00:52:32
Speaker
But apparently, like, there are, you know, one of my nurses, Teresa, who I read about a little bit in the book, she said that she loved to be my nurse because she thought I was funny. And I was like, how was I even remotely funny at that time? But I really do just, you know, the clearest memory for me is just staring out the window that was beside the bed that I laid in and just not ever wanting to get up.
00:52:58
Speaker
It wasn't even frightening at the time. I think it's more frightening to look back on now as an adult and to realize it as a 15-year-old, I felt that way. But it was really just so, the drugs are just so bad. It really is an absolute, you know, a carpet bombing of the body. It's mutual destruction of good and bad in order to eliminate the cancer cells
00:53:28
Speaker
And I just remember thinking as a kid, as a 15-year-old, that I don't care. Whatever happens, happens. Just make it stop. And as you progressed in it, things you defeated, all the antibiotics knocked out an infection in your brain. And you start to go into remission. You talked about the Matt Tullis that entered the hospital on January 4, 1991.
00:53:57
Speaker
he died but from those sort of ashes if you will this turns into a resurrection story in a lot of ways like you left that behind and what was you know what was that like you know making that delineation for yourself and in the book and I just going going forward with that like you you would escape that that moment and you're able to sort of push push through that and maybe what would that Matt tell us like think of you right now
00:54:26
Speaker
Oh man, he'd be so disappointed that I'm not finishing my career with Chicago Cubs right now. Uh, you know, uh, I did realize, um, that, that, um, the old Matt Tullis was, was gone, but I didn't realize that until I didn't realize that for a long time. Or I didn't like, maybe I realized it, but I would have refused to, um, accept it.
00:54:53
Speaker
It took me a long really long time where I just wanted everything to be back to normal And I was just going to be the kid I was supposed to grow up to be Which was the starting second baseman for the Chicago Cubs who was going to replace Ryan Sandberg when he retired? That never have I should be having my farewell season right now, so yeah So you know I got out of hospital and and I really in many ways I
00:55:19
Speaker
did everything I could to try to be who I was before I went in. I doubled up on classes so I could graduate with my own high school class because I missed an entire half a year of school. I actually missed about it. When you talk about credit-wise, I missed basically the entire year. I had half a credit for my freshman year from typing class. So glad I could type fast. So I doubled up on classes. All I wanted to do was graduate with my friends.
00:55:46
Speaker
You know, I went back and I started playing baseball again and I went toilet papering people's houses with my friends and, uh, you know, really did everything I could to just like pretend like nothing had ever happened. And that, that continued into college really, really until I think some, some of the, uh, some of the people I knew started dying. And even then, I think I kind of refused to accept that, that my life path
00:56:15
Speaker
was irrevocably changed based on what had happened. And so I don't know if I even realized that until just when I started running and started thinking about these people who didn't survive. As they do more and more studies into the long-term effects of childhood cancer, especially survivors, you start to realize that the drugs that they save your lives with when you're that young
00:56:45
Speaker
themselves carcinogens. They will cause cancer again at some point in time. And so when I was younger, I pretended, I didn't know that. And so I could try to pretend to be this normal person again. And as you get older, you start to realize that that's not necessarily the case. One thing about long-term effects of cancer treatments, just yesterday, a really good friend
00:57:11
Speaker
are a really good acquaintance and a fellow writer. His name was William Bradley. He wrote the book Fractals. He also had Hodgkin's lymphoma when he was 21. We were the same age, so it was about 20 years ago. He just passed away yesterday based from a cancer that was caused by the radiation that saved his life when he was 21. And so for like the last
00:57:37
Speaker
12 hours since I read a Facebook post about his passing that's all I thought about is you know these long-term side effects and and and I think I'm fine and aside from some skin cancers on my head caused by the radiation therapy that I had but you know the old Matt Tullis is lucky or the new Matt Tullis is lucky to be dealing with these types of things now because he's been alive for a
00:58:01
Speaker
26 more years, but you also have that lurking in the background. You know, you don't ever know if you're completely done with it. Yeah. How does that affect and maybe inform your life now knowing that there is this sort of stealth ghost that could that could in fact like rear its ugly head again? I think the main thing for me is and I didn't start doing this until recently, but being super vigilant of like
00:58:30
Speaker
my health and seeing the right doctors, seeing the right specialists that I need to see. For a long time, I refused to go to doctors, especially after Dr. Kufis, my doctor, my pediatric oncologist died. I did everything I could to not go to doctors. Part of that was because we moved a lot. We moved from Worcester, Ohio to Wilmington, North Carolina, back to Worcester, Ohio, then to Columbus,
00:58:58
Speaker
We just moved around a lot for a variety of reasons, mostly job-related, but I never really set up a relationship with a doctor. But within the last year, especially since we moved to Connecticut, I've been really vigilant about making sure that I'm seeing the doctors I need to see. I'm doing the things that they say I need to do. For such a long time, I was so not healthy in terms of how I eat.
00:59:28
Speaker
As well as in the utter lack of exercise, like I was always considered myself a sporty person when I was younger. Um, but for whatever reason, as I got older and had kids, I just stopped doing anything athletic and I would literally sit on my butt all day and do nothing. And, uh, you know, in 2013 I started running and I lost like six, 40 pounds gained a few back, but, um, you know, I started running a lot.
00:59:54
Speaker
And so that helped a lot, at least in my mindset. It helped me feel a little bit better, but just seeing doctors on a regular basis and being cognizant and knowing what the medicines could do to my body. And I'm almost 27 years out now, and that's getting pretty far. And I feel like maybe I might be getting to this place where
01:00:20
Speaker
If all I have to deal with are basal cells, you know, basal cells, skin cancers on my head, which are literally just a pain, uh, cause they, they, they just have to cut them off. Um, but if that's all I have to deal with, then that's a, I think that's a pretty, pretty good bargain. And you know, I'm, I'm running again now that we've got settled in Connecticut. And so I'm, I'm, I'm grounding back into running shape and getting ready to run the Akron marathon for the third time this year in September. Uh, so.
01:00:50
Speaker
In training it's probably right. I'm actually Akron. I'm not doing for team and training I'm doing it on my own, but I am running the Philadelphia half marathon in November for team and training Which I'm really really excited to do. I have not done anything with the team since since I since the Akron Marathon in 2014 well, I did another race with them shortly after that but I
01:01:18
Speaker
It's been since 2014 since I've done anything with them, and I'm really excited to be doing that here in November. Cool. And I've just got a few more questions I'd love to ask you. Kind of rapid fiery, but they don't necessarily require rapid fire answers. Say, what are some books that you find yourself rereading time and again? It's funny. Tom, do you know, just put something like this on Facebook and I answered it. Now we'll see if I can remember what I answered. I read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried at Least Once a Year.
01:01:48
Speaker
It is without a doubt the most impactful book that I've ever read in my entire life. I'm looking, I'm scanning my bookshelf right now, trying to see if there's any, most of the books that I read more than once are all at my house and I'm in my office right now. I read Paul Auster a lot. I don't know, I just love his narrative structure for his novels. Nonfiction wise, I'm totally gonna come up empty on this.
01:02:16
Speaker
You know, I not necessarily any books, but anything that John Jeremiah Sullivan writes, I'll read because I think he's amazing. His book, Blood Horses is ridiculous. His book, Pulphead is even better. It's a collection of his pieces. I never read that a couple of times. Yeah, so I think really, though, the things they carried is probably the most.
01:02:39
Speaker
Prominent one and that's the easiest one for me to come up with just because I read it all the time I've got a lot I got out sentenced from it tattooed on my left forearm From the the story the lives of the dead at the end of the book The but this too is true stories can save us which I think is one of the greatest opening lines of any short story ever I
01:03:01
Speaker
What did a successful writer look like to you when you were say 20 and 30 and even then 40 and how does that how does that evolve? Oh man when I was 20 or you know 20 I was gonna win a Pulitzer Prize and I was gonna I don't know I have no idea I just wanted to like I think when I was 20 my idea you know this goes back to when I was in high school too and I think this has something to do with having been sick but I desperately wanted to
01:03:31
Speaker
to write a book even then that everybody would know, everybody would have to read. I remember thinking in an American literature course that I hope someday I'm gonna write a book that in 100 years, students are gonna have to read in American literature and they're gonna hate me. So when I was 20, I desperately, even in my first newspaper job, my goal was to win a Pulitzer Prize.
01:04:01
Speaker
Uh, but I also, even then I knew I wanted to write a book at some point in time. Um, and I had bigger aspirations for what that book would be. Um, when I was 30, you know, I was just, um, I'm trying to think I was, I was just finishing up the MFA program, uh, at UNCW. And so obviously I think I was more hyper focused on the memoir in the book. Um, maybe too much so, but again, I think then, uh, you know, success then was like a big, nice, big advance.
01:04:29
Speaker
from a publisher on the book and then maybe a second book at some point in time. Now, truthfully, I think it's a success just to have the book done and to know that some people will read it and will possibly be moved by it and will carry away thoughts of
01:04:57
Speaker
My doctor and my nurse and Melissa and and Tim and Todd They'll carry thoughts away with them in their brain somewhere And so, you know that for me that's a success right now as a writer Also, you know having another book at some point in time wouldn't hurt either But I think that's the biggest thing is just that it's done and and then the some people will read it and then for me that's success and
01:05:27
Speaker
Very nice. I think that's a great place to end our conversation on, Matt. Like I said, your book is wonderful. I wish you the best of success with it and I think it's going to affect a lot of people and move a lot of people too and maybe inspire people to live a more enriching life. The way you were able to honor your friends that have passed away and your caretakers and the way that you've
01:05:51
Speaker
chosen to live this life of intention and language and words and doing what you do. So I think you've mission accomplished with the book and I wish you the best of success with it. Thanks so much and thanks for having me on the podcast.
01:06:07
Speaker
Thanks again to Hit the Campus magazine and the 3rd annual Hippo Camp for sponsoring this week's episode. I can't wait to one day attend. Maybe record a bunch of pods on site. Sounds like a good time. Can't wait to do it. Anyway, he made it this far, friends. Let me ask you for reviews on iTunes. They help more than anything. Gives a little extra cred, helps with rankings, and that'll allow me to keep doing this kind of thing if you dig it.
01:06:37
Speaker
Wanna say hi? I'm at Brendan O'Mara on Twitter and Instagram where I often post pics of my storyboards and other fun show your work type stuff. Until next time, keep doing the work and let's keep encouraging each other. Thanks for listening. See ya.