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Episode 330: Kim H. Cross
317 Plays2 years ago
Kim H. Cross is a freelance writer, an instructor, a mountain bike head coach and author of The Stahl House.
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Is it the End of the Podcast?
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, CNFers. Booking has been a bit of a bear in 2022. What does that mean for a CNF pod? Is this the end? Are we done? Stick a fork in us?
What's the Origin of 'Groover'?
00:00:13
Speaker
Maybe if we can elevate the discourse, we can stop this podcast from ramming headlong into an iceberg. And they call it the Groover because in
00:00:23
Speaker
Back in the day, they used to use ammo cans, those metal ammo cans that you can buy at the, what do you call it, the Army surplus stores? And they called them groovers, because when you sat on them, they would groove your ass.
Building a Network of Guests
00:00:41
Speaker
When you get up to 330 of these sons of bitches, you build a bullpen of incredible people and friends you can tap on the shoulder with nary 24 hours notice and say friend. Can you come on for an emergency podcast? And then someone like Kim H. Cross, New York Times bestselling author of What Stands in a Storm, and the author of The Stahl House, Best American Sports Writing, and Year's Best Sports Writing, Anthology,
00:01:08
Speaker
If you follow me, she's anthologized in the anthology, making her an anthology. Replies to your electronic mail by saying, I'm slammed, but for you, I'd walk through fire. And my God, did my heart sing the mightiest riff.
Engagement and Financial Support
00:01:24
Speaker
Keep the conversation going at cnfpod on Twitter or at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram.
00:01:30
Speaker
or not consider heading over to our patreon page or not to help support this enterprise it's a big ask i get it i'm already asking you for time to spend with the show and on top of that i have the audacity to ask for two or four bucks a month or even ten dollars a month but those dollars man oh man do they mean a lot helps put money in the pockets of writers for the audio magazine i'm making headway on the hero issue i swear
Maintaining Podcast Success
00:02:16
Speaker
that if the wayward CNFer is passing by the podcast farmer's market and sees how many written reviews you've contributed, 122 to date, well, that's ratings and reviews, but it's over 70 or more than 70 written reviews. Unbelievable. They're more likely to give this podcast a chance, and that's all we can ask for. Get them in the door so we can serve up amazing riffs.
00:02:22
Speaker
What also means a lot are kind reviews on Apple Podcasts.
00:02:41
Speaker
Show notes to this episode and a billion others at BrendanOmera.com. There you may also sign up for the up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. This is where it's at, CNFers. I'm not one to hang out on social media, but I am one to put a lot of effort into my kick ass.
00:02:58
Speaker
newsletter that entertains, gives value I hope, and sticks it to the algorithm. Right up the algorithms, Keister. If that's your thing, sign up. Been doing it for a lot of years. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
00:03:13
Speaker
Well, Kim H. Cross, what can I say? She bailed my ass out this week after someone canceled on me a last minuto.
Conversation with Kim H. Cross
00:03:22
Speaker
And Kim and I talk about organizing systems, movie soundtracks we listen to while writing, Flow,
00:03:29
Speaker
originality, modeling, and more. I made a questionable edit in this episode about cutting out something I was talking about regarding originality. Basically, it was an essay I'm writing that is in the form of a screenplay. Okay, so there's the edit, but it took me like 90 seconds to talk about it. So I cut it out because who wants to hear me talk for 90 seconds? Oh, shoot.
00:03:54
Speaker
Wow. Okay, I think that's it. Let's get after it, CNFers. Your time is valuable.
00:04:10
Speaker
I think compartmentalizing is, as you put it, a really good word because I do have to kind of structure my day a little bit. And sometimes I'm able to do that with more success than others. But, you know, I try to structure my day so that I get up, I get my son off to school, and then I sit down immediately and start writing. And I try to not schedule any phone calls or meetings or other interruptions until after lunch.
00:04:38
Speaker
which is why we're talking after lunch. Inevitably, though, I have so much going on. I've got, you know, coaches and parents texting me about the race this weekend. And we have a little server discord where I'm constantly toggling over to answer questions and tell them what to pack and remind them to do this and that. So it doesn't always work out that way.
00:05:01
Speaker
So I try, and I try to prime people not to bother me during the morning, but yeah, it doesn't always work. I used to be able to get up really early in the morning when I had a regular day job. I would get up at 4.30 in the morning, and this is when my son was really young, and it was kind of the only time I had it myself. I'd go to the gym and take a spin class, and it would kind of rev my brain up for the day.
00:05:25
Speaker
And then I would go to work and I didn't start work until nine, but I would sit down at seven and I would write for a couple hours before my workday started. And that usually there was no one else in the office and that really helped me kind of prioritize the
00:05:42
Speaker
I call them the golden hours, but now that I'm a freelancer and I live at home, it's really kind of impossible to get up at 4.30 and I still don't sleep very well. And so yeah, you just, I try to make it the priority though. First thing in the morning, sit down and write.
00:05:59
Speaker
To me, and I've talked to my wife about this too, to me, the bar of success for me would just be to not have to have an alarm clock in the morning. Just kind of wake up when your body feels like it's been rested, and then you can start your day. I don't know how possible that is if it'll ever happen, but to me, if I can ever get to that point in life, that'll be success for me.
00:06:24
Speaker
Nice. Well, I have to admit that's actually what I do. I very rarely use an alarm. And I used to just be kind of a slave to the alarm and the schedule when I had to be at work and it was the only thing I could do and I often felt really tired. And now as I get older, I believe that sleep is medicine. And I noticed that if I'm, you know, as a coach, I'm the head coach of a high school mountain bike team. And so we do pretty, pretty intense two hour workouts.
00:06:52
Speaker
two or three days a week and so I found as an athlete and a writer if I push my body and I don't get enough sleep I get sick. I can do one or the other I can pull all nighters or most nighters or I can push my body but if I do both like clockwork I get sick and I've always been that way ever since I was younger so now I just try to prioritize sleep as well. But for the most part you know I'm I'm up and going by by eight or nine I'm starting to write.
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, and when you were talking earlier about having to juggle parents checking in about various things for your team, a lot of that stuff can really splinter your attention. And that is one of the things that is just so hard to harness, especially this day and age, given social media, email, you name it, all various responsibilities. Your attention is so finite and also so splintered most of the time.
00:07:47
Speaker
So and I and I just read I in my email James clears Email from the atomic habit stuff and he wrote something about like sometimes high performers their best They are high performers because when they get off track when their attention gets splintered They're able to get back on track so maybe for you How do you how have you managed to get back on track when you're successful getting back on track?
Regaining Focus and Writing Strategies
00:08:13
Speaker
That's a good question. And have we talked about atomic habits or did you just bring that up randomly? I just brought that up randomly. Yeah. Okay. Because I just read that book and I actually made my students on my team and my coaches, you know, I read the book because I thought it was so useful. I think there are different cues that help me get back in. And one of them is I have
00:08:35
Speaker
a really, really nice pair of noise canceling Bose headphones. And they're the really big ones that cover your ears. And just the act of putting them on, like when I feel them on my ears, I sort of get to tune the world out. And then I have a couple playlists that are writing playlists. And I find that when I do that, it really helps me focus and it
00:08:57
Speaker
often drowns out the little pings that are going off on your phone and the little noises in the rest of my house. And my mother's miniature Yorkies who are pretty much the enemy of my focus. Their barking is just my nemesis, my enemy. But the music that I tend to listen to, I either have kind of ambient music that has no words, or I have a playlist of, this sounds so cheesy, but I have a playlist of
00:09:27
Speaker
cinematic movie scores and they kind of evoke the emotion, the actual physiological feeling that I want to generate in the reader.
00:09:38
Speaker
And so when I put those on, it kind of puts me in that mind to make words that I hope will produce that emotion, if that makes sense. Oh, for sure. I'm a big fan of Michael Giacchino's soundtracks. Specifically, I've been listening to a lot lately from the Batman, which he did. And that's just a real, as you can imagine, a very brooding, very deeply emotive kind of thing, grim, kind of gritty.
00:10:05
Speaker
This might make music aficionados bristle, but I like a lot of Hans Zimmer soundtracks like Inception, the Dark Knight trilogy for sure. I won't pronounce his last name, but Ludwig something or other. He did like Black Panther soundtrack, but also Tenet.
00:10:27
Speaker
And so a lot of those instrumental things, too, I find, to your point, a very evocative of mood. And it kind of creates a sort of sonic cocoon where you can really just lean into the work and everything else just kind of melts away.
00:10:41
Speaker
So when I'm writing something playful, I really like the Amelie soundtrack, Jan Tiersen. And I have gone on sort of binges of discovering his other work. And right now I'm writing something said in Afghanistan. And so I'm listening to Peter Gabriel did an amazing soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ. And I've actually never seen that movie. And I refuse to see the movie because the soundtrack is so powerful to me. So
00:11:10
Speaker
That's what I'm listening to right now. That and the English patient soundtrack, which is really kind of moody and intense.
00:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, and speaking of a playful soundtrack to a Ratatouille, the Pixar movie, that one's really great. I love those Parisian sounds of accordions and all sorts of acoustic instruments like that. And also, if a woman is singing in French, I just love, I can't get enough of that. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and it just really puts you there. And that's kind of a joyful soundtrack to be creating to as well. It's really fun.
00:11:47
Speaker
Nice, nice. The other thing that's kind of cool about music too is that it can help you with pacing. So I think about narrative pacing a lot. And when I was writing What Stands in a Storm, I actually looked up the structure of a symphony, of different symphonies. And I, you know, looked at the different kind of movements. And I know nothing about music, so I'm probably even using the wrong terms. But I thought about how, you know, symphonies have different
00:12:11
Speaker
Um, parts of them where, you know, there's a really dramatic part and there's kind of a slow part in that it's not the same kind of tempo and pace and intensity the whole time. And so I really tried to think about that. I think when I was structuring a book, a book length story in a way that's kind of like.
00:12:27
Speaker
You know modeling in a way, you know a structure model eight by using different disciplines for for a chapter intro that I was working on I was really I was challenged to elevate the writing somewhat if I have a crutch sometimes not a crotch if I have a
00:12:46
Speaker
Oh let's see a weakness sometimes my writing could be a bit too conversational and maybe not evocative enough mainly because I don't want to overwrite anything and so sometimes as a result sometimes I almost don't describe anything and just like lay out very sparse details and let the reader piece together but I was challenged to be like Brendan you need to elevate the writing and so I was like all right how can I do this but not be too
00:13:10
Speaker
Oh, too cliche or whatever. So I was just kind of, as Glenn Stout would say, like, shotgunning leads. And I went through a bunch of John McPhee starters. And I landed on the start of the Pine Barrens, which is, you know, really descriptive of a particular landscape. And that was kind of what I was getting at. And so maybe for you in magazine pieces or books, you know, what are some models that you have leaned on to help you maybe crack the code of something you're looking to elevate?
00:13:39
Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. I think reading beginnings and endings is really important. I'm trying to think if there are any specifics I can give you. And I know there are, they're just not coming to mind. In the end of what stands in the storm, I was really thinking of the ending of a river runs through it and how it kind of gets really, you know,
00:13:59
Speaker
big and transcendental and abstract in a good way. And so I was trying to do that a little bit. But yeah, that's the only specific thing I can think of. But I know that, you know, I will often go and read something that I think is really good to kind of just internalize the rhythm of the language and the feeling it evokes. Like for me, a lot of it is how the words evoke emotion. And I read things aloud a lot to hear the cadence and flow.
00:14:29
Speaker
And that, you know, I think has an influence on emotion. So I don't know if that makes any sense. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it also underscores this thing that there's nothing really original anymore. Like you don't have to put that pressure on yourself to like make this thing something that's never been done before. Like odds are it's been done before in some capacity or some shape. And
00:14:57
Speaker
You can go back, you can go to those wells and using this modeling technique and really take the pressure off yourself and be like, okay, I can kind of not plagiarize, but I can sort of take the stencil of this and then use my own spray paint to paint over it. And it's just like, okay, I can color within these lines that so-and-so did, but I can do it with my own words and my own reporting. And I think that just takes the pressure off of having to be, you know, that pressure to be original.
00:15:25
Speaker
I mean, I agree. So much art is derivative, but I do think it is fun to kind of think like, hey, is there something you can do here that's never been done? And not every story needs to be that, but I think it's fun to believe that it still is out there, that it still exists. But not every story needs to be that.
00:15:47
Speaker
that the tools, you can turn to similar tools, and if you use them in new ways, then you can come up with something that is original. That's what I like to believe anyway. I do the story now. I can't forget that I'm talking to someone who wrote a palindromic bicycling feature, so I have to remember my audience here. Well, I always like to swing for the fences, and I think it's fun to try to see the world in a way that maybe
00:16:15
Speaker
probably someone has seen it, but you're not always deliberately going after the thing that
Interpreting Trails and Writing
00:16:20
Speaker
you've seen. I'm doing this, one of the stories I'm working on is about this mountain biker named Braden Breenhurst and he, what makes him such an interesting character is he will go to a trail
00:16:31
Speaker
that people who are really good writers, pros even, have written hundreds of times, and he will interpret in a way that they have never seen. He'll go, and I'm going to geek out on mountain biking terms, but he'll go to a bike park where there are little hills of dirt that can be jumped. If you jump two of them, it's called a double. He'll see a triple where no one else has seen a triple. I've interviewed a number of people and they just say, yeah, he just sees the world in such a different way that
00:17:00
Speaker
you know, this thing that's already been written a hundred times, he writes it a way that it's never been written before. And I love the idea that, you know, you can take this, you know, path or the story or the structure that has been done before, but, you know, with a fresh eye or a little inspiration, you can pull it off in a way that hasn't been done before, or maybe just a way that's uniquely yours.
00:17:23
Speaker
It gets you back to this whole idea of play and actually having fun with it because it can often be – sometimes we can just take ourselves a little too seriously. So it kind of breaks you out of that shell to have some fun with it. You know, absolutely. And it's funny because I was thinking the same thing. I've been working on some really, really serious and heavy stories. I'm working on a book about a really famous kidnapping and murder.
00:17:48
Speaker
you know, it's impossible not to kind of be pulled into the vortex of the darkness of it. And then I'm writing about this, you know, about the evacuation of women from Afghanistan. And man, you just can't avoid the gravity of those stories. And recently, I went on a river trip for kind of another future book project. And it was a writing retreat on the river, which was really cool, something I've never done
00:18:15
Speaker
And on the last night, they challenged everyone to do like a talent night. Like you would have on the last day of summer camp and to write something and perform it and, you know, read it and do a talent. And so I don't know why I did this. They have this thing on the river called a groover and it's the toilet. So when you go on an overnight river trip, especially in a wilderness area, you have to pack in a toilet and pack out your waste.
00:18:42
Speaker
And so the river guides have this thing called the groover, and it's basically a big box that has a toilet seat on it and it gets sealed up and goes back on the boat with you down the river. And they call it the groover because back in the day, they used to use ammo cans, those metal ammo cans that you can buy at the, what do you call it? The army surplus stores? And they call them groovers because when you sat on them, they would groove your ass. They would groove in your ass. So anyway,
00:19:12
Speaker
On every river trip, the guides have to explain, especially to people who are new to the river, these are the rules of the groover, and they set it off in a private place, and they lay a paddle across the trail, and that's the key. So if the paddle's laying across the trail in a certain way, you know that someone's in the groover.
00:19:31
Speaker
And then they have a whole like, you know, you pee in the river, but you poop in the groover, and then you've got to like, you know, put sanitizer in and all this stuff. So anyway, there's just like, the culture of the groover is unique to river trips. And so for my talent night performance, I wrote a song about the groover. And what's really fun to do is you take a song that you know, you know by heart, and then you take the melody and you overwrite the lyrics in the song.
00:19:58
Speaker
I picked was a really, you know, the very serious hallelujah, which made it even more absurd. So like, all that to say, I think there's a great value in being playful and just having fun and writing like, you know, writing something that's just a joy and fun and funny to write, writing something that makes you giggle, that, you know, may never see the light of day, but the act of it kind of
00:20:26
Speaker
balances out the gravity of the serious writing. And then, I don't know, it challenges a different part of your brain. And anyway, my Groover song made me very happy. It also made the River Guides happy, and they said that they wanted to sing it to future guests on future trips. So who knows? My Groover legacy may live on. I dig your Groover tunes, man. I dig your Groover tunes.
00:20:49
Speaker
Do you have any idiosyncrasies when you're looking to get into the flow of things? What has to be in place for you so you can feel comfortable to sit at the desk?
Visual Tools for Inspiration
00:21:04
Speaker
I'm really particular about the height of the desk and the chair. If it is not ergonomic and comfortable, it's pretty agonizing for me, but I also have
00:21:17
Speaker
chronic pain from starting my career with 17 hour days that in a non ergonomic setup. So I just say like, I always have a glass of water and usually my cup of coffee, my headphones and my music. You know, I like to have a pad of paper and a pen nearby because I sometimes like scratch things down or drop will draw a structure or something on the on the paper. Right now, I haven't done this in a while, but I have these
00:21:46
Speaker
What do you call them? They're, you know, foam boards with pictures of my characters on them and pictures of the setting. And what are they called? We had a word for them at Southern Living. We would take them to pitch meetings. I'll think of it in a minute. It's like an idea board, but there's a real name for it. And it has like, you know, a storyboard. But it's not a storyboard in the way that like it's piecing out the structure of the story. It's just kind of, you know,
00:22:16
Speaker
imagery and maps and inspiration and setting. And so I think, I don't know, I try to, I try to write really visually. And especially when there's a place that you haven't been before, I have to constantly be looking at pictures and different angles. And Google Earth plays a huge role in
00:22:37
Speaker
you know, my reporting when I have to write about a place that I've never been because I studied the heck out of it. So right now I'm writing about Afghanistan, this place called Bamiyan where the big Buddhist statues were. And so I've been Googling about the Buddhist statues and I've been, you know, sort of going in Google Earth and zooming in on the roads and trying to see, you know, get my bearings in this place.
00:22:59
Speaker
What's the elevation of this place? What's the geology of the place? What grows there? What does it look like? What do people eat there? This is kind of a different answer to the question that you asked, but if I don't have access to Google Earth, I do feel a little bit lost. I'm missing a tool. If you're plugged into the internet like you are, so you have access to Google Earth,
00:23:24
Speaker
How have you cultivated the discipline to not jump over to Twitter or check email?
00:23:32
Speaker
Well, I hate Twitter, so that's easy. That's an easy one, yeah. Just closing the tab, not having email open is a wonderful thing. If I just have, I usually have a timeline open. The other thing we were going to talk about is systems, and I have for every major story that has
00:23:54
Speaker
a lot going on, I create a timeline. And it's usually in a spreadsheet on Google Docs, so I can constantly be updating it. And it's color coded. And so I usually have that open. And I don't always write in straight chronology. In fact, I almost never write in straight chronology. So it's a really wonderful reference as I'm jumping around in time to remember where I was and where I'm going. And then the color coding helps me
00:24:24
Speaker
think thematically so I might color code things on the timeline by character or by location or by theme or by type of character so like in my I'm working on a story about a kidnapping and I have blue is for the law enforcement agents who are trying to to find this killer and yellow is for community members who are searching and then pink is for the family and then you know it helps me kind of
00:24:54
Speaker
right from a certain point of view and look at the timeline and all of the grain is one point of view and all of the blue is a different point of view.
Managing Distractions
00:25:04
Speaker
So it helps me kind of organize my thoughts and lots of data at once in a visual way. I think I'm pretty visual. So that's usually open. I think, again, just closing your email, like I'll try to look at it in the morning.
00:25:21
Speaker
If I had my perfect discipline, I wouldn't look at my email until like 10 or 11. I would just say, there's nothing that can't wait until 10 or 11 and at least in my world, not everyone has that. Like if you're an editor, you work at an office job, you don't have that luxury, but I do. So I wish I had more discipline to do that, but generally I'll try to check it and then I'll close it and just leave it closed until like lunchtime.
00:25:45
Speaker
Um, but the other thing that I have found is a really nice tool is I have an hourglass and a half hourglass and I will try to just, um, you know, flip one over and say, like, I'm not gonna do anything else, um, until I've.
00:25:59
Speaker
had my ass in the chair and I've written for this amount of time. And if I'm having a short attention span day, I'll use the half hour class. And if I'm having a good day, I'll use the hour class. And if I have to get up and go to the bathroom, I tip it on its side. So I give myself like a really honest hour. And I think that accountability is really lovely. And I find that often when I do that, I will look over and I have no idea how long the hourglass has been empty. I've actually exceeded the goal. So, you know, other people call it the Pomodoro method because
00:26:27
Speaker
some guy invented, you know, or he used a, a tomato shaped egg timer to do kind of half hour increments. And this works really well for me, doesn't work for everyone. But I think it's I think of it as like intervals, you know, you push really hard, and then you take a break.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, I was talking with Alexandra Litton Regalado last week and we got to talking about how to achieve flow in whatever you're doing. We likened it to running. If you're going to go for a run in the morning,
00:27:05
Speaker
You don't sit at the edge of your bed or in your house or in your garage. You're like, all right, come on, Flo. And now I'm going to run. It's like you run for a little bit. And then it's like, OK, after a while, it's going to you'll start to get into that groove. And I think artistically, a lot of people take the other stance like, I got to find that. I got to get that flow state and then I can start writing. And it's like, well, no, you got to kind of write your way into it. And then it'll hopefully it'll come. Maybe it won't.
00:27:32
Speaker
But for you, how do you muscle through that initial inertia to find some momentum in your writing? You know, it's funny because some days, just the act of opening the document takes so much energy to still look like you can open the word document. I know. So I tend to just leave it open.
00:28:00
Speaker
You know, I think sitting down and, you know, reading what you've written the day before and then, you know, fiddling with that and that, that's kind of a nice warmup. I don't know. Just, it's just putting one foot in front of the other, like running a marathon. You just, some days it, it feels effortless, but most days it feels like a lot of work and it's just, you know, the act of getting, sitting in your chair and
Subconscious and Creativity
00:28:23
Speaker
staring at it. And sometimes just staring at it, even though words aren't magically appearing on your screen, you, you're processing.
00:28:30
Speaker
And the other thing that I learned from my dad, who was my first editor when I was quite young, he said that even when you're not writing, you're still writing. And so if I get to a point where I'm just
00:28:44
Speaker
feeling burnt out and just like I feel like I'm literally banging my head against the keyboard and like gibberish is coming out. I'll go and do something manual with my hands like I'll weed and sometimes I'll listen to music, sometimes I'll listen to a podcast, but just the act of doing something kind of manual, folding laundry, weeding, and I don't enjoy either of those things. It sort of directs your conscious mind and lets your subconscious work on the problem.
00:29:11
Speaker
And sometimes I'll take a nap. Often I will go lie down and just kind of lie down with the intention of like, okay, subconscious, figure it out. All right, conscious mind, we're gonna take a nap. And often when I wake up, I have like a seed of an idea that leads me there. And every once in a while I'll wake up in the middle of the night and be like that, you know, here it is. I think
00:29:32
Speaker
Recently, I woke up at 3 a.m. and I went downstairs and I just got a pen out and I wrote down an outline for the story that I had been processing for some months. And then I got up in the next day and was like, oh, yeah, okay. I mean, it's not perfect, but that actually was really useful. So I think it's kind of trusting your subconscious that it's working even when your conscious mind is not working or is berating.
00:29:57
Speaker
your subconscious mind. Because we got to have two brains, right? And I think I learned this from sports in the inner game of tennis that you've got, you've got your conscious mind. And your conscious mind is constantly criticizing your subconscious, which is the part of your brain that knows how to do the thing, whether that's hitting a tennis ball, or, you know, riding a mountain bike, or, you know, sitting down and making sentences that make
00:30:20
Speaker
you know, that makes sense. Sometimes our conscious mind gets so distracted with pressure and fear and, you know, all the things you have to do that it, it really immobilizes, you know, the part of your mind in your brain that that really knows how to do the things you have to distract the conscious mind to the point where your subconscious can can do the work. And so I think, I think that's one of the reasons that, you know, working in a cafe or having music on is effective because it's just enough
00:30:50
Speaker
for your conscious mind to have something to deal with. It's almost like handing a toy to a toddler that you want to distract. I was going to say a chew toy to a dog, so that's great. Totally, yeah. Then you get that part of your brain calms down so that the part that really
00:31:09
Speaker
you know, once you've learned something, and it's so ingrained in what you do, it's not like you forget how to do it. But sometimes we sit down at the blank page and feel like we've forgotten how to do it. But I think, again, that's, that's your conscious mind, getting in the way of, you know, the rest of your brain that knows what to do. So yeah, I kind of remind you want to support psychology. So yeah, I think that's coming out.
00:31:34
Speaker
the image that you're saying of just kind of distracting the mind and letting the subconscious do its thing. It kind of reminded me of that. Like sometimes you do just have to try to not think so hard about it and just like let your instincts take over. And especially when you've worked really hard to develop a skill, like a skill is basically, you know, neural pathways that are so drilled in that they are muscle memory. That's what muscle memory is. And so once you've learned a skill and it is kind of drilled into your muscle memory,
00:32:02
Speaker
you just don't unlearn it, you just get in the way of it. And so, I don't know, I think there's a lot to be learned from sports and athletics and the physical world that can be translated to the mental world. And I'm just really fascinated with how our minds work and how much the more we develop them, they can get in the way. And I think that for that reason,
00:32:29
Speaker
writing has gotten in some ways harder for me. Like it used to be a lot more effortless. I used to just love the act of just putting words on the page and then I'd worry about editing them later. And now it's a lot harder because I think you
00:32:45
Speaker
your expectations are higher. And I think those expectations are kind of the enemy of the flow state and the, you know, you got to kick the editor out, the conscious editor who's criticizing and looking over your shoulder and you've got to give them a chew toy.
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah. I totally understand what you're getting at, and I feel that way too. The more skilled I've gotten, relative of course, but the more skilled I've gotten, the harder it seems to be. In that passage I was referring to earlier where I was looking for John McPhee as a model, I was writing what ended up only being, I think probably about 200 words. That took me
00:33:26
Speaker
a real solid like 30 to 45 minutes to really like chisel at that at those words and Usually things just from newspaper training things just kind of fly out. It's just like natural You just kind of you develop that skill and you go but for some reason as a as I was challenged to elevate things and hopefully it's not coming across too much is overwritten which I'm sure it is and
00:33:52
Speaker
But it's it's just like I was there was like real labor that I hadn't really experienced before I'm like this never used to be like this I'm like I'm this shouldn't be this hard. What what the hell's going on? What do you think it was
00:34:08
Speaker
I think it was just trying to be, trying to really set the scene and the tone and the landscape that is like forging, that will ultimately forge the central figure of this biography I'm writing. And so it was like trying to evoke the geography in like the geologic time, but also the landscape and how that has really, how landscape shaped my particular character.
Evoking Geography in Writing
00:34:37
Speaker
And so it's just like trying to paint a really nice evocative picture that is conveying information but it's also like semi-artistic, elevated to use the term of my agent. So I'm trying to do that without letting her down and subsequently possible editors who might want to nibble and possibly buy this book proposal. Do you write with an audience in mind when you're writing?
00:35:09
Speaker
My horse racing opinion columns, when I used to write those, I always had my buddy Pete in mind. We just kind of had a good wavelength like that. So with the horse racing stuff, I always had him in mind. I'm like, if I can make him laugh, I know I'm on to something good.
00:35:25
Speaker
here but with this particular with this particular book I'm kind of like trying to put on the David Moranis hat or even the Howard Bryant hat you know these great biographers and just trying to build the world of which that we're going to be living in and so I'm just like trying to so not particular audience but I am definitely trying to evoke something that I've read from biographers I greatly admire but no audience per se not yet
00:35:55
Speaker
And like sometimes it's easy if it really helps. It's hard when you don't have like, with some essays or, you know, when you're writing a proposal, you might not have a specific, you know, if you haven't sold a piece, for example, you don't have the advantage of having an audience of like, oh, I know the such and such reader, like the bicycling reader is different from the outside reader. And you can kind of, you know, I feel like that informs a lot of choices about what you include and what you don't.
00:36:23
Speaker
But sometimes I trick myself into having an audience by opening an email and writing to a friend, usually a writer friend who likes me and I feel comfortable that they're going to like what I have to say or something. And then I write and I tell them about the story and then little tidbits come out and then I copy and paste them into my draft. That's a little hack.
00:36:47
Speaker
That's a great little workaround because the stakes of writing an email are so low. But when we're like thinking about writing a long feature or a book, we're like, it's got to be up here, man. But but an email is just like, OK, I'm just going to bang this out because I'm super excited and I want to convey that excitement. And lo and behold, like that's what you should have been writing the whole time. Right. And I think so many of us, too, you know, in our little world of narrative writers is small and we know a lot of each other.
Writing for the Audience
00:37:15
Speaker
And so
00:37:15
Speaker
it's really easy to get your peers stuck in your head or your critics. And it's really bad to write with, especially a critic in your head or a peer that you think like, oh, I could never write as well as them. It's so much better to be like, oh, I'm writing to my friend who, or I'm writing to my mother who loves everything I write. Or my agent who obviously wouldn't be my agent if she didn't like my writing. And it's nice to do that because it relaxes you in a way that I think when you're,
00:37:45
Speaker
I don't know. When you're staring at the Word document, sometimes it can be very hard to relax. You make such a great point that we get in – I feel like – I don't know if we talked about this on the mics or maybe we just talked about it in other conversations we've had. It's like, well, who are you writing for? And so often, we get hung up on who the publisher is. Do we have an agent or not?
00:38:08
Speaker
It ends up being kind of a power play just among writer peers. Are you trying to impress your writer friends or make them bitter or jealous? Or do you actually want to serve and entertain the audience that your magazine feature or your book is for? And ultimately you want to connect with readers, but we get real hung up on a lot of the fellowships and the grants and the awards.
00:38:35
Speaker
an agent and a big five publisher. And we lose sight of actually, you know, what we really need to do here is like serve serve the readers because that's where your longevity is going to lie. I agree. And if you imagine one one person who might be helped by your story, I think it's really I don't know, it's liberating and it's encouraging and it puts wind in your sails. You think, you know, there might be someone out there who's going through through something. And by reading this story about maybe someone else is going through something hard,
00:39:04
Speaker
Um, it might, I don't know, might put one in their sales might make them feel a little bit better or less alone. And I remember when I was, you know, when I first discovered the power of writing in high school, it was because the stories made me feel less alone. And that was really, you know, that's tremendous, especially when you're, you know, 13 and you feel so alone.
00:39:25
Speaker
And the fact that you can do that, I think, is one of the greatest gifts that that writing provides. So remembering that and the act of just kind of imagining that one person out there who might benefit from your story. I think that's that's a nice place to go if you feel the, you know, the heaviness of writing with critics on your shoulders. Do you remember what stories you were reading when you were when you were 13, 14, that did make you feel less alone?
00:39:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's so funny, because my son is a freshman in high school. And he's reading, he was assigned a book, and I wrote to his teacher was like, Oh, my God, this is like one of the books that made me want to be a writer. And it was The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. And
00:40:12
Speaker
I think before I discovered him, I thought that good writing was like fancy writing. It had lots of big words and very complex sentences. His writing was so simple and so lovely and beautiful that it was the first time I realized that beautiful writing can be simple. Her simple writing can be beautiful. It was just so evocative. I think it was rich in imagery and low on the ladder of abstraction, and yet it conveyed some pretty big ideas and abstractions.
00:40:42
Speaker
But it did so through those concrete images. And so that was a book that made me feel, I don't know, less alone somehow. So I'm really excited he's reading it. And that actually has inspired a couple of pieces, including the one that I'm writing now. And then the other book that was a really big deal to me was Into Thin Air.
00:41:02
Speaker
And I remember when I read that, I thought, Oh my God, I feel like I'm on the mountain and this is a nonfiction book. Like I feel like I feel in a fiction book. And it was, um, I didn't even have the word. I didn't even know the word like narrative nonfiction, but I remember thinking like, I don't know what you call this. Like, I don't know what this is, but this is, I want to do this because I feel like I'm fair. And it was that, I don't know that experience of.
00:41:29
Speaker
being transported to a place that's not where you are and losing track of time and feeling like you're on the mountain and you're feeling the cold and you're completely immersed in this world. That was kind of one of my gold standards for a lot of years. And I'm looking at it, it's still on my shelf. I remember too, I think one of the only fan letters I ever wrote was to John Crocker right outside. I don't think I ever got a response. I think I was in high school, but yeah.
00:42:00
Speaker
You've touched upon how you color code some of the digital organizational things in Google Sheets. How wedded are you to paper habits? And when you have lots of paper stuff, how do you access and organize those so you're able to easily access them when you're ready to write?
Organizing Work Systems
00:42:20
Speaker
Oh, gosh. It depends on what kind of story and how much paper.
00:42:25
Speaker
You know, I go back and forth between digital and analog habits, and I like them both. I really, really am fond of note cards. And I like to put note cards and tape them on the door of my closet in my office to structure things or to organize things. Sometimes I'll spread them out over the floor. Sometimes I have color-coded note cards. And then I kind of rearrange them on the floor. And then when they're in the right order, I either stack them in that order and then sit down to write
00:42:55
Speaker
What's nice about that, it's, you know, you just have a note card in front of you, not like a whole bunch of them. And you can just look at that window card and write the thought that that note card is meant to provoke. But at some point, you know, you can get too much and you have to make it digital. And that's where I think the digital system that keeps evolving, I have a massive story organizing spreadsheet and it has different tabs. And the first tab right now, I'm going to open it and sort of
00:43:24
Speaker
describe it. Hang on. So this is for a book. And with every book, it's changed a little, it's refined a little bit, and sometimes I go back to analog. But okay, so I'm looking at kind of my master spreadsheet for the book project I have right now, which
00:43:40
Speaker
I've got like 12,000 pages of court transcripts that I've been reading. I think I've read through like 2000 and I have all of those digitized and then they are indexed. So like one tab on the spreadsheet is an index of trial transcripts. And that's useful because, you know, they're
00:43:59
Speaker
one, they're kind of chronologically coded. So I start with the year and then the month and then the date and then the name of the person who's testifying in the trial. And that name is useful because I can, you know, do a command F and search for a last name and then up pops all of the, they might've testified on several days and I can immediately go straight to there and be like, okay.
00:44:21
Speaker
And then starting with the year, month, day puts everything into chronological order, which I think is really, really important. And that's what I do with documents as well. When I scan documents and I load them into my Dropbox folder, the date, the naming convention that puts the date first automatically sorts them into chronological order. And I think that's really important. And then they go into this spreadsheet and this spreadsheet essentially becomes kind of
00:44:49
Speaker
an index, but also a very rudimentary database. So I think the challenge of a really big, complicated narrative, either a magazine feature or a book, is that at some point you accumulate so much reporting, so much information, so many documents, so many sources that you forget what you have. And the act of trying to remember what you have actually takes mental processing power that you don't
00:45:16
Speaker
That's wasted. You need to be using all of that mental processing power into writing. So it's almost like having, you know, your brain outside of your head on paper. And it's a big relief because you don't have to remember in what order things happen because you can go to your timeline. So my spreadsheet, I've got like the first tab is a to-do list. And when things are done, I just kind of like take it off the top and put it on the bottom so I can then look down to see what I, you know, oh, did I do that? Yes, I did.
00:45:44
Speaker
And then the next tab is a timeline and it's the first column is the actual time minute by minute. The next column is date. The next column is year and then event and then source. And the source is usually a link to either you can, you can create a URL for any.
00:46:01
Speaker
a document or thing that you upload into Dropbox, or it might be the URL of something in Evernote, or it might be the URL of a web page, or it might be like it's in this box in this folder. So I have this box of police files sitting on the ground of my office and I'll be like, it's in so-and-so's box in the folder named this. That way I know I can get back to the primary source quickly. I've got then like a tab for news clippings. So I've got like, oh my gosh.
00:46:30
Speaker
This was a really highly publicized case. I've got 170, and they're not even all in here right now, but I've logged 170 different articles, and they're all sorted into chronological order, and a lot of them are paperclips, and I have to remind myself, in what box is this? I'll type in keywords that helps me get quickly to those. I've got a characters tab, and I've got
00:46:59
Speaker
a list of FBI agents, and then I've got a list of law enforcement officers, and then I've got a list of family and friends. I'm scrolling down as I'm telling you, and then volunteers and community members, and then witnesses in the trial, and then agencies and experts,
00:47:14
Speaker
And, um, and those are kind of color coded in like green means I've talked to them. Yellow means, um, I really need to try to get this interview done. Red means they have died or they said no. And so that's kind of a good, like at a glance thing. And then I've got interviews and this is where I've got all my interviews filed and I'll interview.
00:47:34
Speaker
the same person, I don't know, in some case 20 times. And I've done, it looks like I've done like 200 interviews. And so this is where like a few keywords are really useful. And I used to use an app to transcribe these myself, but I have since found Otter, which is an artificial intelligence company.
00:47:56
Speaker
And you can upload your MP3 files, and they will transcribe them. And they're not perfect, but they're pretty good. And you can go through and click on any part of the transcription. It'll take you to that part of the recording. And that has really been like a life changer. I have to thank my friend, our common friend, Bronwyn Dickey, for sharing that with me. Yeah, I love Otter. Yeah. And I consider transcribing now when I go back and I listen.
Tools and Recommendations
00:48:25
Speaker
When I transcribe, actually podcast interviews, I usually do it at two times speed and clean things up. But for reporting, I'll do it at regular 1X speed. And as I consider transcribing now, just like cleaning that up and it lets me hear it all again, but also clean up that transcript. So yeah, it's an incredible tool that just takes away so much of the grind of transcribing.
00:48:48
Speaker
Right. That said, when I'm doing a phone interview, I almost always do a live transcription, like a quick and dirty, because, um, a couple of reasons. One, that I don't have to go back and clean up the transcription, but I have it as backup. And two, I feel like the act of, um, I don't know the act of the thought going from my brain to my fingers on the keyboard.
00:49:10
Speaker
puts it, cements it better in memory for me than if I just listen. So I do both, and also because in case the recorder fails. But yeah, those are kind of my hacks. But I will say with how much I travel right now for various things and the number of boxes that are in my office,
00:49:33
Speaker
Having things scanned and digitally organized and accessible just for my laptop has been really, really important because there was a day when I loved all of the boxes around. And now it's just so much easier. Plus, trial transcripts, now they have like four pages on one page.
00:49:51
Speaker
and my poor eyes are getting worse and so I can zoom in much easier when I open the document. And now it's really easy to make little highlights and notes when you're in the PDF instead of having to go back and make them on paper and then flip through and carry them around.
00:50:09
Speaker
Very nice. Well, Kim, you're super, super tired and overworked right now. And I need to be mindful of your time and your energy. So I'm just going to let you get out of here on one more thing. Something I always like to ask at the end of conversations is a recommendation for the listeners of some kind. And that can be anything from a brand of coffee to a pair of socks you really like or a cool kind of pencil. So I'd extend that to you, Kim. What might you recommend out there for the listeners?
00:50:37
Speaker
Oh my gosh, you know, and I thought about this all morning and I was like, Oh, here's the thing. And I'm trying to remember now my poor brain. Um, let me think, what is, what is the thing? Oh, I know my rice cooker. I was just recommending it to someone. Um, I don't know how anyone in the world cooks rice without a rice cooker and it is my most favorite appliance. And now these Japanese.
00:51:01
Speaker
rice cookers, like they have some with artificial intelligence, but they will, you can program them to go off like a coffee maker. You can cook like a million different kinds of rice in them and they come with like this little measuring cup that corresponds with the line in the bowl where you put the water. But they're magic because they can keep rice at the perfect eating temperature for like three days and it doesn't go bad. It just dries out. And I think for anyone who is really busy,
00:51:32
Speaker
This is a revelation. So my Zojirushi induction heater rice cooker is my recommendation. It's life-changing. Amazing. Well, Kim, thank you so much for sharing all your wonderful insights and coming on and talking shop and this kind of thing. It's always fun to get to hear you articulate how you go about doing the incredible work you do. So thanks for coming on and coming on again and doing this. I really, really appreciate it.
00:52:00
Speaker
Oh, always, Brendan. It's so, so always so lovely to talk with you. So it's my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.
00:52:13
Speaker
Oh, by the way, make sure you go subscribe to Kim's newsletter and go follow her on Twitter and then tell her thank you. Because without her, there would have been probably another rerun of some sort this week or nothing, which sucks. You know, we like to keep this thing going in this little podcast that good. So thanks, Kim. You rock.
Reflecting on the Joy of Writing
00:52:40
Speaker
David McCullough, the great historian who will never, alas, be on this podcast, recently passed away. I pulled a great quote out from his New York Times obituary. He said, the reward of the work has always been the work itself and more so the longer I have been at it. The days are never long enough and I've kept the most interesting company imaginable with people long gone.
00:53:07
Speaker
I know I always try to remind myself that when I'm in the thick of it, that the only victory, the only reward is being able to play the game again and again, being able to put this podcast out week after week, and knowing it helps people, I see an effort in some small way, but it also nourishes me in my myriad dark moments, and they are a myriad.
00:53:31
Speaker
We put a lot of stock in awards, fellowships, residencies, agents, publishers, and the status roles that come with it. Suddenly you might be a writer who can say, my agent, to start a sentence. And it's a not so subtle hat tip that you're the type of writer for whom that is important. I will say this. I'm working with an agent now at age 42. It's the first time in my life.
00:54:00
Speaker
Kim Kross is the one who put me in touch with said agent for the baseball memoir. She really hustled for me on that. We're working on, agent and I, working on a different book altogether, but I didn't necessarily earn this agent's attention via my own rigor and vetting and rising from the slush. But I guess you can say nearly 10 years of podcast work and freelancing and other crap
00:54:30
Speaker
has made me elevate through the slush in some way. My boots are kind of like stuck in mud, but at least they kind of get out before they suck back in. You know what I'm saying. But we must always come back to that little light inside all of us that drew us to this fucking mess in the first place. That maybe we can write one goddamn sentence with enough exit velocity to leave the ballpark, and that maybe we get to do it again.
00:54:58
Speaker
Maybe a little better next time and for no other reason than the sheer joy of it all. So stay wild. See you in Evers. And if you can't do interview, see ya.