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Episode No. 15: Eva Holland on the Nature of her Hustle, Being Super Analog, and liking Faramir
143 Plays9 years ago
Eva Holland is a freelance journalist who writes gripping narratives about the outdoors. Her piece "Unclimbable", written for SB Nation Longform, is getting a lot of attention and so too is she. Eva offers terrific insights into the life of a freelancer and how she got her start in this crazy biz.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Setup
00:00:00
Speaker
with it and so hopefully if this works well it could could lead to some it could lead to a better better quality product and you get to be the the test drive cool or yeah yeah and you sound like you're I think I'm coming in a little stronger than you so that probably just means I have to back up my microphone a little bit but in any case so um thanks um so what's happening like what's uh what's happening out out west
Returning to Whitehorse and Winter Solstice
00:00:25
Speaker
Well, I just got home after two months on the road, so I just got back to Whitehorse Saturday afternoon, and it's dark and cold here, but Solstice was yesterday, so it's getting lighter every day now. Yeah, that's always the promising part when winter hits. Now everything's starting to get longer as the long grind through the winter begins.
00:00:53
Speaker
Very nice. Well, the sound looks pretty good. So if you have no objections, you might as well get started. Yeah, sounds good. Cool. Well, thanks very much for coming on the podcast. This is kind of like a long time happening, a few weeks happening. And I appreciate your endurance with my peppering emails to reach out to you here.
Favorite Stories and Characters
00:01:13
Speaker
Well, thanks for having me.
00:01:15
Speaker
Very, very nice. So what I wanted to start out with was ask you kind of what your, actually in your Unclimbable piece, which is just an excellent, excellent story and it's getting a lot of attention right now, so I wanted to commend you on that. Thanks. And you had a Great Lord of the Rings reference up top, so I figured that would be a good chance to even ask you what your favorite Lord of the Rings character is.
00:01:45
Speaker
Okay, hmm, prob, uh, either Aragorn or Faramir, I'd say. Faramir. Yeah, I always liked him. I liked him better in the books than the movies, though, I think.
00:01:59
Speaker
Um, he's like kind of, you know, damaged and had daddy issues and I liked him.
Evolving Writing Styles
00:02:05
Speaker
It's, it's, it's, um, yeah, he's, he's solid. He doesn't get, uh, yeah, quite the credit in the, in the movies for sure. But, uh, but yeah, he's, he's much more complex. And, um, by how many times have you, have you read the trilogy? Oh gosh. I don't know. I was big. I was big into fantasy novels when I was a kid. So.
00:02:25
Speaker
I've probably read the trilogy four or five times, maybe, although I started skipping over some of those early chapters of the first book with all the singing. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That can get a bit bogged down, but, uh, yeah, yeah. Bombadil. A jerk. So, um, so, uh, you know, what, uh,
00:02:47
Speaker
You know, Ira Glass, you know, that I'm sure you've heard the talk with him, he talks about artists' tastes being there guiding light and so forth during tough times and everything. And I wonder how you would describe your taste and your approach to your work. Hmm. That's an interesting question. I feel like my taste has been evolving a lot the more I've been trying to do this type of work.
Balancing Complexity in Journalism
00:03:14
Speaker
I always read a lot of nonfiction when I was younger, but more like pure history or biography.
00:03:28
Speaker
ten years ago i would have said my favorite writer was george orwell uh... not so much for his fiction as for his his non-fiction uh... you know how much to catalonia and uh... uh... down out in paris and london that type of stuff uh... which i guess was sort of me being into narrative non-fiction without really realizing that that was a thing yet uh... but i think as i've gotten into this i think i was more impressed early on with
00:03:54
Speaker
the more experimental feature writing and the stuff that kind of pushed the limits aesthetically and creatively with language. And now I find myself more drawn to more spare writing, not necessarily full on minimalist, but just more stuff that is more simple in terms of how it presents the information, which is funny because it's not necessarily how I write. I think I'm a pretty descriptive writer, but I
00:04:21
Speaker
But I really admire people who just report the shit out of something and then present it very simply for readers.
From Academia to Freelance Writing
00:04:26
Speaker
Do you find that you struggle with trying to, not dumb it down, but to reach a level of simplicity? Like you have to, in your rewrites, that you have to like, okay, turn the volume down, let the facts and everything speak for themselves instead of like, you know, getting a little too, sort of too into the weeds language-wise?
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I come out of more of a creative writing background rather than a journalism background, and so my instinct is to go for the dramatic language flourish, you know? And I probably could tone that down and try to just let my story speak for themselves more. So tell me the story about how you took up narrative journalism.
00:05:09
Speaker
Okay, so I was in grad school about 10 years ago, and my plan was to be a historian. I was going to be an academic, but I always wanted to be a writer. I didn't know what kind of writer I wanted to be. I think when I was a kid, I sort of only knew about fiction, so I just assumed I would write fiction.
00:05:28
Speaker
And so the plan was to be an academic and have a cushy life as a professor and write my books in the summers or whatever. That was my ambitious 17-year-old's plan. And I kept writing through undergrad and grad school just on the side for the school paper. I wrote poetry, that sort of stuff. And then in grad school, I started doing some travel writing for my hometown paper, The Ottawa Citizen. While I was over there, I was going to grad school in England.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so I did some travel stories for the paper and kind of got hooked on that idea and got sort of disillusioned with academia at the same time and felt sort of restricted in terms of the types of stories I could tell as a academic historian. So I finished my master's and canceled my plans to do a PhD and came home to Canada and started trying to freelance. And initially it was strictly travel writing.
00:06:28
Speaker
Partly because I love to travel and I thought that was an interesting thing to write about, but partly sort of a strategic calculation in terms of back then, a lot of other stuff was still done by staff writers and travel writing was really an area where freelancers could get in there in a way that you couldn't at the time in arts and culture writing to the same extent that you can now, I think. 2006, 2007, people still had staff writing jobs. Imagine that.
00:06:55
Speaker
So I started out strictly in travel and then kind of gradually broadened into other areas. And it was basically in 2011, a bunch of my sort of steady travel blogging, travel writing gigs had fallen through and I was kind of starting from scratch again.
00:07:14
Speaker
And I figured out that what I really wanted to do was sort of general interest magazine style, like narrative feature writing.
Influential Mentors and Writers
00:07:21
Speaker
And that's when I started trying to work towards that. And it's been, it's, you know, still in progress. Was there a particular writer that you drew inspiration from, as you, excuse me, look to make that transition into more general interest magazine journalism?
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, there were a few. Matt Power was a big one for me. The first time I met him, I saw him, I'd do a reading and met him afterwards and then I went home and Googled him and looked at his list of publications and was like, I want to be just like this guy.
00:07:57
Speaker
so he would've been one early on. And then as I got more into things, and more knowledgeable, it was people like David Graham. And I'm trying to think who else back in, back when I was first kind of figuring this stuff out, and now I'm immersed in this long-form world all the time, and I have tons of names of people that I admire, but I'm trying to think who I actually knew about early on. There's people like Ian Fraser,
00:08:24
Speaker
and Matt and I use the best American collections a lot to figure out who I, you know, what to read and yeah.
00:08:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great resource for who to read, but also where to pitch to. Yeah, I was very, with the travel writing one early on, I used the notable selections list to figure out what publications were publishing the types of writing I wanted to do. And in terms of the more obscure stuff too, some of the literary journals and things, I wouldn't have heard of them otherwise probably. Now, when you met Matt Power, what was that interaction like?
00:09:02
Speaker
You know, I don't remember meeting him the first time I met him. I remember seeing him read. He read Mississippi Drift at Idlewild Books in New York. It was the Best American Travel Writing Launch Party, I think in 2009.
00:09:18
Speaker
And I remember seeing him read and thinking that he was like the coolest ever and being too freaked out to talk to him. That's the last thing I remember. And, but when we reconnected on social media a couple of years later, he remembered meeting me. So I must've like blacked out and introduced myself. Well, like terrified to meet him. So, which is sort of funny, um, cause he's not, he was, you know, not a terrifying person in any way. Um,
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, and then we kept in touch on social media and email and he helped me out with some stories and and we had drinks in New York a couple times and Yeah, he was a he was definitely like a mentor figure for me. That must have been Must have been nice to to meet someone in person and it sounds like he sort of lived up to your own billing of him Like you didn't come across as just a jerk when you met him. Oh, yeah. No, he was way Yeah, no, Matt was the best he was
00:10:14
Speaker
so generous and not the least bit threatened. The most amazing thing after he died for me was
00:10:28
Speaker
Not that I thought I was in some way special and he'd like singled me out, but it was amazing to see how many people had had the exact same experience with him that I had of him going out of his way to help us get our starts. And it was like, I mean, there was like maybe like a hundred of us. It was crazy. Just incredible generosity and just so open.
00:10:49
Speaker
I think he was competitive in terms of what he wanted his work to be, but he never seemed to feel like he needed to hide anything from anyone else or keep anything for himself.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, people like that are great examples because they truly illustrate that a rising tide floats all boats. They're not hoarding on stuff and they're willing to take people under their wing and then to kind of lead by example and realize that they're doing good work, but it just supports the whole culture to have as many possible people doing this kind of work.
00:11:28
Speaker
And having those kinds of relationships are just, and seeing it in action, and you don't have to be a jerk to get ahead, actually. It's nice guys and sometimes get the bad rap for finishing last, but it's nice to see examples that he set, and then that's clearly influenced you, and I imagine as your success keeps snowballing, you're gonna have that same sense of paying it forward. Yeah, definitely.
00:11:57
Speaker
I try my best to be supportive for the most part. When you get emails, sometimes you're like, oh, I'm tired. I don't want to deal with this. But then I try to remind myself that a lot of other people helped me out when I was in that position and I should take the time.
00:12:21
Speaker
Yeah.
Freelancing Challenges and Advice
00:12:22
Speaker
What sort of, are you getting like more increased attention from just from readers and random people just reaching out to speak to you? Like what's that experience been like as your profile as a writer has started to increase? Yeah, I don't get inundated by any means. I get occasional emails mostly from young writers often kind of college age looking
00:12:48
Speaker
looking to freelance or looking to do feature writing and sort of asking for my advice on how to get into that.
00:12:55
Speaker
Um, and I try my best to be helpful. It's hard sometimes. I think the hardest thing is that often people don't, they're not even deep enough in yet to have specific questions. And so it's hard to give someone just really general advice aside from, you know, like read a lot and write a lot. Um, but, uh, but yeah, it's, it's nice to hear from people and to, and then to sometimes see them, you know, maybe you put them in touch with an editor and then that results in them getting a piece published or something. It's cool.
00:13:22
Speaker
Yeah. Most commonly, what advice do you or in which ways do you find that you're helpful in guiding people looking at you as the example and maybe the way they're looking at you the way you once looked at Matt? Yeah. I feel like I don't give people a ton of creative advice.
00:13:45
Speaker
Maybe I have more to offer in terms of practical advice. If people are looking to freelance, maybe they're famous writing heroes who have staff jobs don't actually have a lot of practical advice in that arena, but that's something that I can offer.
00:14:02
Speaker
I had a bunch of friends with newspaper jobs here in Whitehorse who sort of one by one quit their local newspaper jobs to freelance. The first thing I told all of them was to have six months savings before they quit. It's hard for people to wrap their heads around just how long it takes.
00:14:21
Speaker
to get pitches turned into acceptances, turned into published work, turned into paychecks. That's something I always emphasize to people, not to discourage them, but to make sure they're prepared. I say it takes at least six months to a year to start making a living from freelancing, if you're starting from zero. That's optimistic even for some people.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And when you were getting your start, what were those early months like as you were crafting your queries and digging up stories, doing pre-reporting? That whole process, what was that like for you in the first few months?
00:15:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, I was mainly doing travel blogging at the time. So there wasn't a lot of, I had kind of established relationships and I was doing short, you know, two to three sentence or two to three paragraph hits, 10 bucks a piece, 25 bucks a piece, and just making those add up. And I was, I think I was
00:15:19
Speaker
When I quit my day job, I quit too soon. I quit about six months ahead of schedule because I felt that I was at the point where I would have to start turning down writing opportunities to keep the day job. I couldn't keep doing both. I was getting up at 5 a.m. and working until it was time to go to the office and then working all evening after the day in the office. It wasn't sustainable anymore. But I quit and I was only making about $800 a month from writing. So I ended up giving up my apartment.
00:15:50
Speaker
when I quit my job and just living out of a suitcase for a year and a half while I got my income ramped up to the level where I could sign a lease. It was pretty hectic. I was sitting on a bunk bed in a hostel in New Orleans writing 10 blog posts a day. It wasn't very glamorous at all.
00:16:12
Speaker
Uh, pretty stressful actually. I wouldn't actually recommend that people did it the way I, the way I did it. It was like, you know, eating spaghetti for every meal and, and paying, you know, down to my last running up credit card debt. And it was, it was like not awesome. So yeah. What was your day job?
00:16:32
Speaker
My day job was actually pretty cool. It was in my field. I was like a professional kind of historian for hire at this private consultancy. So a kind of mini industry in Canada is First Nations land claims. So there's a whole sort of decades worth of litigation over the old British treaties and the promises that were made to First Nations peoples that weren't kept.
00:16:58
Speaker
And now all of those things are getting hashed out in the courts in terms of compensation for broken treaties and that sort of thing. And so I worked for a firm of historians, trained researchers, who we would get hired by lawyers to do the historical research for these legal cases about 18th century treaties or 19th century treaties. So I worked in the archives every day in Ottawa, the National Archives.
00:17:28
Speaker
You know, dug up old documents.
Upbringing and Parental Support
00:17:29
Speaker
It was actually pretty cool, but travel writing was cooler, so. Absolutely, and backing up a little bit, where did you grow up? I grew up in Ottawa, so the capital of Canada. So, what did your parents do?
00:17:47
Speaker
My dad had, they split up when I was like six, and my dad had kind of a couple different careers. He worked in the co-op movement when I was really young, so he kind of did sort of research and analysis and sort of cooperative theory for a sort of umbrella organization for Canadian co-ops.
00:18:08
Speaker
I think his title was research directors. Basically, he was actually a communist, trying to figure out ways that co-ops could operate better. Housing co-ops, food co-ops, that sort of thing, how they could have better governance and that sort of stuff. Then he did various things after the early 90s.
00:18:30
Speaker
crushed the last remains of the hopeful 60s and 70s. And then he ended up going back to school and ended up actually working in the Canadian Foreign Service as a diplomat. He started that job when I was in high school. So that helped with the travel writing because my dad was living overseas when I was in college and grad school.
00:18:51
Speaker
And my mom did various jobs with mostly sort of nonprofits, women's groups did sort of administrative and communications jobs for them. And then her last job was, she was actually a grant writer for a national arts organization.
00:19:07
Speaker
So. So when you wanted to become a writer, what was the level of support from your parents? My mom was super, super supportive. She was always the like, follow your dreams. You can do anything type. And my dad is a lot more practical and, you know, kind of worried about how I was going to pay the bills.
00:19:35
Speaker
and kind of cautioning me that a lot of people want to be writers and not a lot of people make it. But he was actually the one who convinced me to quit my day job when the time came. That surprised you?
00:19:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I think maybe I wouldn't have listened to my mom being like, of course you can do it. But my dad was super practical. Basically, I got to this point where I'm like, should I quit my job and go off and live out of a suitcase? And he was like, OK, worst case scenario, you fail. You're stranded somewhere. You call us collect. We buy you a plane ticket home. You get a job. You pay us back. He said, that's your worst case scenario
Regional Knowledge and Story Ideas
00:20:15
Speaker
if you do this. That's the risk you're taking.
00:20:17
Speaker
Like, is that a risk you can live with? And I was like, well, yeah, that doesn't sound so bad. Yeah, that must have felt really, really validating to especially get that advice from the, you know, the quote unquote practical person to say like, listen, go out there and don't be afraid to fail. And if you do, you know, we've got your back where you're where you're supporting that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:20:42
Speaker
So when you're looking to like, how do you dig up, how do you dig up your stories? What is kind of like your pre query routine look like? Hmm. Probably don't have like a routine that follows from story to story. So much of what I do is, is regional. So a lot of it is based around the Yukon or Alaska and, and just kind of my own knowledge of the area, having been here for six years now. And so,
00:21:13
Speaker
I'm trying to think of different stories I've done and how I came up with them. So for instance, my first story for Espionage and Long Forum, No Sleep Till Fairbanks. That was my first one for them. And it was about the Yukon Quest sled dog race, but it wasn't so much about the race as it was about the support crews that follow the race.
00:21:33
Speaker
And I got that idea because the year before, I had actually worked for the race doing their social media. And I had been part of this kind of traveling circus of like veterinarians and volunteers and media and support crews, the handlers who follow the race in trucks and sleep in parking lots. And I just thought while I was doing it, I was like, this is crazy. This is a crazy sort of alternate race that's happening alongside this sled dog race. And so the next year,
00:22:02
Speaker
I pitched Glenn at Espination on the idea of this kind of traveling circus that follows this sled dog race across the country for a thousand miles. That must have really appealed to your live-out-of-a-suitcase sensibility, too. Yeah, I mean, when I was living out of a suitcase, it wasn't minus 50. So what do you feel like needs to be in place for you to pursue a story in full?
Narrative Journalism Techniques
00:22:35
Speaker
I guess that's the big question, right? That's still what I feel like I'm figuring out is what makes the stories that really work work and which ones are just ideas or topics. I think there needs to be some degree of conflict. The grade school definition of a story is protagonist meets obstacle. Protagonist with goal meets obstacle overcomes it or doesn't overcome it, right?
00:23:04
Speaker
And I think that gets lost sometimes, and I'm guilty of that too, in terms of you just, you hear about something interesting or an interesting person, but if you don't know what the goal and the obstacle are, then you don't really have a story necessarily. Yeah, so much of newspaper feature writing are, they aren't narratives, they're just reports.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah, and so there is that distinction you need there has to be it's like what John Franklin wrote in his his book. I believe it's called writing for story I could be a little bit wrong in the title, but like have you read that book?
00:23:44
Speaker
Haven't but I definitely have heard of writing for story. Yeah, and like basically up top you need to have You need to be able to essentially summarize the story in about three words an active sentence that lays out the complication and And then in the final act that complication they need to tie together with the resolution like, you know Boy meets girl At the end, you know, they're together. They have to tie together and
00:24:12
Speaker
And that's just the essence of narrative. But so much of the newspaper stuff is just like some exposition, some quote, exposition, quote, setup, quote. And that's not story, but that's kind of the muscle that you build in newspapers. So I think a lot of times it's...
00:24:31
Speaker
you have through a lot of research, you have what is essentially like a nice newspaper feature, but there isn't that engine that really moves you from scene to scene. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:24:45
Speaker
And like, I guess that's, that's the struggle. So like, do you feel like you come, it's like, you're always in constant search of that, of the, the cinematics of it. And through those cinematics, you might be able to, okay, there is something deeper, a complication or a conflict that's going to drive this to a greater resolution in the end, I guess.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I honestly, I feel like this is maybe the hardest part in some ways. I mean, I just even talking about it with you is like, yeah, I should be thinking in these terms every time. And I don't think I always do. But yeah, it's
00:25:29
Speaker
Because I think it's, like, have you, do you have sort of like a bounce rate for your own stories? Like you look at this, you're like, you want it to be interesting and then you're like, ah, just, it doesn't, I want it to be there but it's just not there and you just gotta move on. Yeah, and I probably don't do enough of that pre-vetting myself. I often let editors tell me it's not there after I've pitched it to them. Yeah. I should probably,
00:25:57
Speaker
I should probably, yeah, I get interested in places and people and I want to write about them. But yeah, what's the conflict? What's the engine, like you said?
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's a challenge, but it sounds like the fact that you've sort of like broken, you're having this sort of dialogue with these editors. Like what are those conversations like when you're just on the cusp of maybe that conflict? What are you going back and forth with to try to get these stories that you want written green lit? Hmm. I don't feel like I, I don't have a ton of
00:26:39
Speaker
I don't do a ton of back and forth. It's typically like a, like a firm yes or a firm no for me. And I guess there's been a few times when sort of the shape of the thing has evolved over the course of a conversation with the editor. More often that's after it's been assigned though, like unclimbable changed a lot over the course of working on it with Glenn. You might've seen that in his note in the, the best of thing that he posted today. He said that it, you know, it turned into a story that neither of us really expected.
00:27:10
Speaker
And we went back and forth on that story tons in terms of trying to shape what am I really saying and what is my relationship to these girls and what their experiences are teaching me and how that applies to my own experiences. So with that story, how did you come to the decision that you wanted to be somewhat of a part of it? Yeah.
Thematic Depth in Writing
00:27:41
Speaker
That was my concept from the beginning, that I would be in it and the idea would be about the different ways that we explore our limitations. And their limitations obviously being way more badass than mine. But this idea that we both were learning to walk away from something or to accept our limits. I kind of viewed it as sort of a sequel to another story I'd written for Glenn, why we play.
00:28:10
Speaker
Which was an essay from 2014 about a local athlete here in the Yukon. Oh, okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. I remember that. Yep. Yeah. And so that one was about kind of a consideration of why we take the risks we do in sports and whether or not it's worth it. And then this Unclimbable I saw as kind of a sequel in terms of being about what happens when we step back from risk.
00:28:40
Speaker
and choose not to take that risk in some ways, you know, make that decision to accept a limitation rather than challenge it. So much of, I feel like so much of outdoor adventure writing is about pushing your limits and breaking your limits and proving you can do more than you think you can. And this to me was about what happens when you say, no, that I've done enough, this is enough.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah, when read together, that's really interesting because I've read both of them in that sequence. And when you pair them together, you get a sense of the evolution of a person. It's like the spectrum of maturity starts to, the lever moves. Yeah.
00:29:24
Speaker
in that direction, which is really interesting. I think anytime I, going forward now, anytime I'll recommend those pieces, I'll be like, you can't read one without the other and read this one first and then see it as kind of like a daily double. Cool. I think that's a really good take and that's illuminating to see you make that distinction between the two of here's the ultimate of pushing your limits and the result of that can happen and then
00:29:53
Speaker
stepping back realizing that there's more than just this inherent risk. You want to be alive to do this more.
Financial Stability in Freelancing
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah. At what point did you feel like you were comfortable to support yourself fully on your freelancing?
00:30:16
Speaker
When were you able to sign that lease? Yeah, I signed the lease in, I guess like, I got an apartment again in November 2009 and I had left behind my previous apartment in June 2008. So, but since then there's been ups and downs as well.
00:30:37
Speaker
From spring 2009 until the end of 2010, I was still freelancing, but I was on contract as a full-time editor with a travel website called World Hum. And so I was making like, you know, something, you know, a real salary. It wasn't a salary, it was a contract, but it was like a salary and I was working full-time. And so that was when I felt able to start having an apartment again. And then
00:31:02
Speaker
That ended because the site lost its corporate funding at the end of 2010. And 2011 was like a disaster financially, total disaster. And then 2012, I had a staff job at a local magazine and kind of put the pieces back together a little bit financially.
00:31:21
Speaker
And then 2013 and even 2014, I was pretty on edge in terms of being certain that I would keep on making money. And it's really just this year, I'd say, in 2015 that I've been like, yeah, I'm established enough now that I know enough people that, you know, if one gig falls through, another one will come up or, you know,
00:31:42
Speaker
If everything fell through somehow, I have friends who would help me out and pitch some writing my way. It's really been a long process of feeling at all stable. Even now, I feel like I'm going to keep earning a living, but my definition of living is not everyone's definition of a living. I don't have kids or a mortgage or
Story Pitching Strategies
00:32:06
Speaker
anything. My definition of having a stable living would not cut it for a lot of people.
00:32:12
Speaker
So what is the, what is the nature of your hustle? Like how do you, what is your approach to, to getting the queries out there and just like when one is rejected, how often do you, like when does that go right back out? You know, so what is the nature of your hustle, I guess? Okay. I,
00:32:36
Speaker
I have a couple of sort of steady gigs. I have my column with Pacific Standard that's every two weeks. So I set that up for all of 2015. And I also have a contract with a local magazine up here, the people I was on staff with in 2012 to do a certain amount of short pieces for them every month. So I have those as a basic grounding and then I have sort of freelance features on top of that. And I typically have between sort of three and six on the go.
00:33:02
Speaker
whether that's meaning in the pitching phase or been accepted and I'm reporting them or they're being written or they're somewhere in edits or just waiting for them to be published. Like right now I have one that's about to be published
00:33:19
Speaker
two in edits and one that I'll do the reporting for in February, but it's already assigned. And then I have beyond that, a list of maybe three to five more ideas that I'm gonna start pitching after the holidays. I kind of, I took a bunch of time off from pitching this fall. So, because my mom died in the summer. Oh, sorry. Yeah, thanks. It was pretty horrible, but it was totally unexpected. Yeah, it's even worse.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of couldn't stop right away because I had, you know, things that had to get done or else there'd be holes in magazines. Just not an acceptable outcome, really.
00:33:59
Speaker
So I kind of kept working for the first sort of six, seven weeks after she died and then was like, okay, now it's time to slow down a little bit and take some time off. So I'm just getting back into pitching and after the holidays, I'll start pitching these, I'll do some pre-reporting and pitching for probably three or four feature ideas. And I have for each of them,
00:34:22
Speaker
Some of them might only fit with the first publication I'm gonna pitch and others might fit with some alterations in three or four publications that I would pitch. And so I'll go make my list and go down the list. And I don't cold pitch hardly at all anymore. I have a list of editors who I know who know me and who typically answer my emails, which is the first step. And so I very rarely bother to go outside that list anymore.
00:34:49
Speaker
and just cold pitch someone who I have no idea if they'll even acknowledge my existence. Because you just need, you know, how long do you wait? I don't know. So I'll go down my list of editors I know and pitch them these stories. And, you know, if three or four say no, then I typically abandon an idea unless I'm really attached to it for some reason. And yeah, hopefully line up some feature contracts for 2016.
00:35:19
Speaker
So what would you say your batting average is when you're pitching to these editors that you even have relationships with?
00:35:28
Speaker
Yeah, low. I'm pitching, you know, I'm swinging for the fences at this point. I'm pitching the big magazines and I'm super glad to have editors that are encouraging me and typically sending me sort of encouraging rejection notes at them. But it's hard to find the right idea in the right moment.
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, timing is often a big deal too. There are a lot of things that can be out of your control. You could have a really good idea but someone just published a story like that. Exactly. Or it's just like, eh, it's just maybe not the right season of the year or it's like the Olympics are coming and it's not a Winter Olympic year even though you have a Winter Olympic kind of story. So it's like it could be really, a certain thing just out of your control and it's like once you,
00:36:23
Speaker
That's got to be tough to contend with, I imagine. Yeah, it's interesting to be at this point where I feel like I could, you know, not to use too many sports analogies, but I feel like I'm kind of, you know, like a farm team player in the future writing world at this point with potential, you know. You get a September call up.
00:36:48
Speaker
Yeah, I'm trying to get the call up and there's people who are like, yeah, we want to call you up. You just need to get the right idea for us. That feels great. It feels like this could all happen really suddenly maybe. Maybe I'll just have a crazy year and bust out all over the place. Or I'll keep pitching these guys for another two or three years before I get the right idea.
Daily Routine and Workflow
00:37:09
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of it is, a lot of this game, certainly talent is undeniable. You need to have some kernel of talent, but a lot of it sometimes is just having the strength to endure.
00:37:26
Speaker
So how do you juggle, you know, you say you've got, you know, you might have some pieces in pre-reporting, some in reporting, and some in editing. So how do you juggle all that? Like what's your process to keep everything straight?
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'm super analog, so I have like handwritten notes all over my desk. I have my one main list sits on a piece of paper right above my computer on the wall and it's just a list of features that I've been assigned and their due dates and then notes about what stage they're in.
00:38:03
Speaker
So that's how I keep track of stuff I'm actually working on. And then the pitching I keep track of in a separate list and have notes about, you know, I have sort of like for a given pitch, I'll have an item in my to-do list where I write out, you know, uh, I'm making this up, but firefighting idea or whatever. And then it's like, make this call, you know, write up this pitch. And I just go down the list of things that need doing.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah, I have a spreadsheet for money stuff, but I don't have a spreadsheet. I used to have a spreadsheet for ideas, but now that I'm sort of only working on maybe three to five ideas at a time, I don't have a whole spreadsheet for them anymore. I just keep track of them in paper lists on my notepad next to my desk. So what does the, kind of like changing gears just a little bit, what does the first hour of your day look like?
00:38:57
Speaker
Okay. When do you wake up and then what is the first time you look like? I am not a morning person at all, which is frustrating because being on Pacific Time, I already feel way behind in the day by the time I get up. It's already like if I get up at 7 a.m. it's 10 a.m. in New York, if I get up at 8 a.m. which is what I would prefer rather than 7 a.m.
00:39:19
Speaker
It's 11 a.m. in New York already. People are already about to take their lunch break almost, you know? So I get up, I usually have a bunch of emails, wait, I go straight, I put the kettle on, I go straight to the computer and... Do you drink tea? I drink tea, yeah. What kind of tea? Chai. Chai. Every morning? Every morning. All right, so you've got your tea, the kettle's on, hop into your computer.
00:39:43
Speaker
Yeah. Go through whatever emails are waiting for me. Typically it's like notifications from Twitter and PR stuff and like see if there's anything of a substance, you know, from an editor or whatever. And then, um, and then I'd go on Twitter and spend way too much time there. And then, yeah, the first hour is pretty much like T email Twitter.
00:40:10
Speaker
you know, even though you're kind of like saying that Twitter might be a little bit of a waste of time, I think for you, it's the way you warm up, right? It's kind of like your calisthenics. Yeah, I would like to, you know, I imagine myself becoming a person who gets up and does yoga or something. I don't know if that will ever actually happen.
00:40:31
Speaker
But it would probably be healthier than immediately going straight to my laptop. Do you meditate at all? I don't. I got really into yoga a couple of years ago and my yoga teacher does meditation classes as well but the timing hasn't worked out to take one yet. It would probably be really good for me.
00:40:51
Speaker
So, okay. And then once you got through the T, email, Twitter, then when you get into the guts of the work that really matters, what does that look like?
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, it depends on the day. It might be that I have a whole morning of organizing invoices and contracts and paperwork sometimes.
Technology and Media Consumption
00:41:16
Speaker
That's one reason why I started doing fewer, smaller stories and more big stories is because there's an equal amount of administration involved to get a small story paid out as it is.
00:41:27
Speaker
Sometimes it feels like the work involved in getting paid 100 or 200 bucks is not even worth it. Sometimes it's paperwork. Sometimes it's placing phone calls for reporting. Sometimes I'm just reading stuff. It's funny how little time you spend actually writing, I find.
00:41:50
Speaker
My friends who aren't writers will be like, oh, did you write lots today? No. I don't write unless I have a deadline. Right. Do you journal at all? No, I don't. Unless I'm traveling, if I'm on a back country trip, I keep a journal if I'm away from the computer and stuff. And when you're out and about in your day, do you always keep a notebook on you just in case ideas strike?
00:42:19
Speaker
Typically, sometimes I rely on my phone for that these days. I used to always have a notebook on me and now more often I'm making a note in my phone about if a story idea comes to me. What are your go-to apps on the home screen of your phone? I do not use a ton of apps.
00:42:45
Speaker
partly because I'm just sort of stupid with technology, but I'm just looking at my phone now. Yeah, I mean, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram would be the big three. And then I have my, you know, my podcasts. And that's kind of it for my phone.
00:43:05
Speaker
And then my iPad, I have Netflix and well used to have the activist app before they phased that out and long form. So I use my iPad more for sort of recreational stuff and the phone mainly for, you know, texting and email and Facebook and Twitter. What types of podcasts are you attracted to?
00:43:24
Speaker
You know, the only one I listen to really regularly is the long-form podcast. And I also listen to like Gangry the podcast, which is the Matt Tullis's journalism podcast. I'm really bad at kind of retaining audio information without focusing. Like I can't do very much else at the same time that I listen to a podcast, so I'm gonna retain any information from it at all.
00:43:51
Speaker
So I don't just like have podcasts on all the time. I have to kind of say, okay, now it's time to listen to the podcast. I listen to podcasts on planes a lot when there's nothing to distract me. And also like I might, I like in the winter here, I take a lot of baths. So I might like take a bath and listen to the long form podcast or something. So what other types of artistic media do you draw inspiration from? You know, TV, movies, paintings?
00:44:19
Speaker
Documentaries. I watch a lot of movies, mostly pretty crappy ones. What was the last movie you saw?
00:44:31
Speaker
I did a Star Wars original trilogy rewatch this weekend in preparation for The Force Awakens. Awesome. Yeah. I've got to tell you, I loved the new movie. Yeah, I'm really excited. I'm going to see it tonight. Oh, good for you. If you're a Star Wars geek like I am, you're going to dig it.
00:44:51
Speaker
Yeah, I've never been like a hardcore Star Wars person, but I always liked them. So yeah, yeah Yeah, I'm not like I'm not one to dress up or anything. But uh, but it's it this movie Abe I think he did a did a really good job with it. And it's just a it's just a fun movie to watch, you know, so you're gonna dig and I'll stop I'll stop at that So like do you watch a lot of documentaries at all?
00:45:17
Speaker
I don't, you know, I sort of, I mostly divide my kind of, my like serious culture consumption comes from books and magazines and then my sort of veg out time comes from movies and TV. And I sort of divide things that way.
Reading Habits and Influences
00:45:39
Speaker
So what books are in your nightstand, like on your nightstand?
00:45:44
Speaker
What am I reading right now? I haven't started it yet, but I just bought Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which I'm looking forward to. And I'm reading The Big Year, which is a book about birding. It was made into a movie a few years ago with Steve Martin and Owen Wilson and Jack Black. It was actually filmed here in the Yukon, so that's how I heard about it.
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's about this massive birding competition. It's a non-fiction book that I'm enjoying. How do you compete in birding? A big year is when you try to spot the most bird species in a calendar year, I believe.
00:46:24
Speaker
And so these people will save up and plan for like years and then they'll take a year off from their job and spend the whole year traveling the world trying to spot exotic bird species and trying to rack up like hundreds of sightings. So this book follows three very different guys as they compete in a big year against each other to try to be the one who spots the most. How do they make sure that that's fair?
00:46:51
Speaker
You know, like, is it an honor system type deal? Birding? I'm on the honor system, yeah. Interesting. I mean, they take photos when they can. Right. But yeah, birding kind of operates on the honor system, which is sort of interesting. Birding is one of these subcultures that I'm...
00:47:09
Speaker
sort of interested in potentially to write about at some point. I find there's sports and other subcultures that I'm not necessarily interested in doing so much as writing about. Like climbing, I climb a little bit and would like to climb a little bit more than I do, but I'm never gonna be a crazy climber, but I think climbing's fascinating to write about. And birding, for some reason, seems similar to me. I sort of have a weird birding thing going on right now.
00:47:37
Speaker
I took an advanced ornithology class when I was at an undergrad. Cool. Whenever you're ready to do some birding stuff, I know my professor there, he wouldn't remember me, but at least I know a name and a point of contact for maybe you to start doing some research. His name's Bruce Byers and he's just a sort of a renowned ornithologist.
00:48:05
Speaker
and animal behavior person. So that could be a lead domino for you in case you're looking to start getting into some ornithological writing, if you will. So that's cool. So what is your favorite book and why? That is a hard question. That's a tough one for bookish people.
00:48:30
Speaker
Yeah, for a long time, I would have said homage to Catalonia, but well, that was a while ago, though I haven't read it in a long time. I'm not sure what I would think of it now.
00:48:40
Speaker
I really love David Grant's The Lost City of Z. That's a good one, yeah. A lot. The way he kind of combines history and contemporary reporting and first-person stuff is sort of like my ideal of what I'd like to do. And for some things, not everything needs to be on history, but that is, you know.
00:49:05
Speaker
I like, I really like anthologies and collections. So again, you know, like David Grant's The Devil in Sherlock Holmes sits sort of by my bed for when I need to look at it. Pulphead is also in that pile. Ian Fraser's gone to New York.
00:49:26
Speaker
I found really inspiring when I was starting out. I haven't reread it in a long time, but I remember it being really important to me. It's like a series of his New Yorker essays about sort of being a New Yorker.
00:49:37
Speaker
Are you in New York? Well, I was near New York. I just moved to Lawrenceville. I'm in New Jersey, which is kind of near Princeton. So I moved a little bit south. But I was in the greater New York area, but just moved about an hour south from there. So had sort of access to it.
00:49:58
Speaker
And when I was starting out, I was kind of obsessed with New York City and the idea that that's where writers go. So stuff like Ian Fraser's New York stuff was, you know, he had a one essay. I think it's called Gone to New York. I think it's the title essay about sort of how he ended up in New York as a young writer that was like,
00:50:16
Speaker
my spirit animal for a while. Yeah. Well, it's great looking at the skyline just elicits this romantic idea. You can go there and you're just going to carve out your own destiny and everything. It's like a Remy and Ratatouille overlooking the Paris skyline. Yeah. Well, I was thinking of another mouse rat. The streets are paved with cheese.
00:50:45
Speaker
You know, it's funny you referring to anthologies and stuff like that. They're those are so so good They're like how-to books without the instructions totally, right? Yeah, I agree completely and What are is there a particular book that you reread over and over again?
00:51:08
Speaker
Um, yeah, I reread, I typically read on writing well every couple of years, uh, Stephen Zinser and I reread Stephen King's on writing as well. That's yeah, both great. I especially love the Stephen King one. That's yeah. Um, what else do I reread? Uh, I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting about temporarily.
00:51:34
Speaker
Do you, let's see, what was the first book that you truly loved? Chronicles of Narnia. Nice. Yeah. And what was it about it that struck you? I don't know, I was like five the first time I read those. And I reread them, I don't know how many times when I was a kid, my parents eventually just bought me a box set so that I could reread them whenever I wanted to. Yeah.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, I've always liked adventure stories, I guess, you know, whether it's fantasy stories or shipwrecks or mountaineering or, you know, like, I think I like adventure stories.
00:52:14
Speaker
I think that comes across in your work, your non-fiction, I would describe it as simplistically as just taking you somewhere. And that is in essence what a lot of these fantasy books do. They take you, they transport you to a place that's exotic. And you can probably say, probably without even thinking about it, it's like having read The Chronicles so early in your life, it kind of informed
00:52:41
Speaker
your sensibility and your taste and the stuff that you're drawn to right now. And I think you're doing just a fantastic job of taking us places with your work. Well, thanks. Yeah, I feel like I'm just figuring this out even just as we're talking. So my area of expertise when I was in grad school was the British Empire.
00:53:02
Speaker
And that got me some weird looks. People were like, why are you studying imperialism? Are you into imperialism? And my answer was always no, it's just a great story. Something crazy is always happening in the history of the British Empire.
00:53:21
Speaker
battles and expeditions and obviously a lot of bad things happened. But I think I was drawn to that for the same reasons I was drawn to shipwreck books or to adventure stories now, you know.
00:53:34
Speaker
Absolutely. And I want to just, you know, I want to be respectful of your time here. So just like a couple more things. And I wonder as you're, you know, as you're sort of things are really starting to come together for you, I wonder where your optimism lies. You know, how there's so much
00:53:54
Speaker
There's like just a lot of crap going on out there. It's easy to just say like, why would you, why keep doing
Optimism and Belief in Writing
00:54:01
Speaker
this? And I wonder what fuels you and what keeps you going and it keeps you doing the work in the face of what just on the surface really doesn't make any sense at all.
00:54:13
Speaker
Yeah, two things. One is just, I don't know where I acquired this certainty, but somewhere along the line I became firmly convinced that my work is good. And this is something I think, writers, I feel like there's so much kind of like, oh, everything I do is shit. And I'm like, I don't know if I believe you that you think that. I don't know how you keep going if you don't think your work is good.
00:54:41
Speaker
in this environment. So I believe that I'm good at what I do and that other people will see that. And that sees me through the tough times when a story gets killed or falls apart or whatever. I'm like, it's going to be OK. I'm good at this. I don't know how people who don't feel that way manage. And it sounds so immodest. But you have to believe that you're good. I don't know. But there's that, and then there's encouragement from the outside.
00:55:10
Speaker
from editors and other writers that really, really helps to hear from.
00:55:18
Speaker
people that they think you're good. And I literally have motivational post-its above my desk with encouraging notes from editors written out on them to remind me when I'm doubting myself that if somebody who's in a position to know better than I do thinks I can do this, then I can do this. So it does help for you to remind yourself that
00:55:48
Speaker
that you're good from time to time. Like that helps. Absolutely. It's a tough business and it's like, you know, there's a lot of people saying no to you all the time. And so you have to believe that that's going to change in the future or that enough people are going to keep saying yes and yeah.
Finding Work Online and Conclusion
00:56:10
Speaker
Very nice. And I guess in closing here, where can people find you on the internet?
00:56:16
Speaker
Okay, my website is typically a few months out of date, but it's evaholland.com and I try to post my new stories there and I'll probably do like a year-end review there next week or something. And then where I'm most active is Twitter where I'm just at Eva Holland and I post my stories and the stuff I'm reading and
00:56:38
Speaker
dumb jokes and photos from the Yukon and that sort of thing. So that's like the easiest place to find me and interact with me. My email address is also on my website if somebody needs to reach me. Fantastic. Well, that's all great, great stuff. Well, Eva, I'm going to let you go. I want to be respectful of your time here. Thank you so much for carving out an hour here and for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
00:57:01
Speaker
Thanks so much, Brendan. You ask good questions. Oh, well, thanks very much. And just promise me you'll keep up the good work. I love every word you write, and I look forward to many, many more years of your good work. Oh, thanks. I'll try my best. Very nice. We'll have to have a part two sometime, hopefully. Yeah. Very nice. All right. Well, you take care, and we'll talk soon. Thanks. You too. All right. Bye. Bye.