Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 120—Eli Saslow, the Pulitzer Prize Winner on Empathy, Muscling Through Drafts, and His Book ‘Rising Out of Hatred’
170 Plays6 years ago
Eli Saslow is a Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist for The Washington Post and author of the book "Rising Out of Hatred." Thanks to our sponsors Goucher College's MFA for Nonfiction and Creative Nonfiction Magazine. Lots to love in the episode. I hope you dig it, and if you do, please share with a friend and even consider leaving an honest review over on Apple Podcasts.
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two year, low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on campus residencies allow you
00:00:17
Speaker
to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni. Which has published 140 books and counting, you'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
00:00:39
Speaker
visit goucher.edu forward slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for nonfiction. My, my, my, can you believe it?
Introducing Eli Saslow
00:01:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to the best artists about the art and craft of telling true stories, leaders from narrative journalism, doc film, memoir, essay, radio, and podcasting. Stop by to share their stories and how they go about the work.
00:01:22
Speaker
so you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work. I dig it to you. I'm Brendan O'Mara, and would you look at this guest for episode 120? Eli Sazlow, Pulitzer Prize winner and fellow Oregonian.
00:01:39
Speaker
He's also the author of Rising Out of Hatred, The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist. He's a staff writer for The Washington Post. And he joined me for a wonderful conversation about his work. I'm telling you, Eli is one of the good ones, folks. You can tell.
00:01:56
Speaker
Just by talking to him that he's one of those energy givers. You know what I mean? You talk to the guy and you want to go out and do your best work. He just gives you a lot of heft behind whoever you are. Fact is, his work alone makes you want to go out and do good work because it's top notch in Major League and inspiring in the way he goes about it. His latest book is a masterpiece. So you need to go out and buy a copy for you and a pal. It's published by Double Day.
00:02:25
Speaker
Eli is at EliSaslo on Twitter, and you can visit his website EliSaslo.com for links to his work. Of course, you can visit BrendanOmera.com for show notes and links to his work, and of course, other
Engaging with Eli Saslow's Work
00:02:40
Speaker
goodies. You're going to learn a lot of great writing and reporting tips from your time spent listening to this show. Be sure to subscribe.
00:02:49
Speaker
On Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Spotify, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts. If you're feeling froggy, leave a rating and a review. Also, follow the show and me on Twitter at cnfpod and at Brendan O'Mara. Head over to BrendanO'Mara.com to sign up for my monthly newsletter. Why not? I give out reading recommendations. Once a month, no spam. Can't beat that.
00:03:16
Speaker
Now it's time for the show. But first, another word from our promotional sponsor for this week's episode. Today's podcast is brought to you by Creative Nonfiction Magazine. For nearly 25 years, Creative Nonfiction has been fuel for nonfiction writers and storytellers, publishing a lively blend of exceptional long and short form nonfiction narratives and interviews as well as columns
00:03:43
Speaker
that examine the craft, style, trends, and ethics of writing true stories. In short, creative non-fiction is true stories well told. Okay.
Eli's Path to Journalism
00:03:57
Speaker
At long last, here is the incomparable Eli Sazlow.
00:04:09
Speaker
What was it about writing and maybe writing true stories that, that was, you found, that you found really attractive? I think for me, I mean, I always knew that, uh, that writing was something that I sort of gravitated to. My, my dad is a middle school English teacher. Um, you know, as I was always, I always liked writing and English and reading, uh, much more than I liked anything else, but, but I don't think that it was until
00:04:35
Speaker
I was in college and stumbled into the student newspaper at Syracuse University. I figured out that journalism for me would be the thing. It was mostly not because of the writing, but because the idea of getting to spend time in other people's lives, trying to make sense of people.
00:04:58
Speaker
trying to write about all these different experiences and perspectives with fairness, with honesty, and also when possible with empathy. It just felt like a huge personal privilege to me. I think still the part of the job that I value most is the reporting. These days where I get to disappear into somebody else's life and try to figure it out and see
00:05:27
Speaker
be allowed or frankly have any reason to see. And sometimes the real challenge for me is coming back and sort of translating those days onto the page in a way that it hopefully feels like readers can also sense that they're experiencing that in some small way too.
The Role of Empathy in Writing
00:05:44
Speaker
Yeah, that is such an acquired skill to be able to translate that effectively and to not hit the reader over the head too much. Over time you develop a sense of restraint, which is a skill that only really comes through repetition, I think.
00:06:07
Speaker
But that empathic way of folding yourself into people's lives and vice versa, where do you think that came from? Was that something you were always sort of attuned to at a younger age as well? Yeah, I think that that's always been pretty intuitive for me. I mean, just sort of empathy or trying to
00:06:37
Speaker
to think about other people and what they're dealing with and the challenges they're faced with. And also, it probably came largely from my parents and trying to make sure that I was always thinking about people who were a little bit unseen or whose challenges were flying a little bit more under the radar. And I think that that's been a great
00:07:01
Speaker
feeling sort of skill, I hope, in my journalism is that, you know, I think stories work out or a book works out for me, mostly because I genuinely care about what I'm writing about. Not in a way where I'm rooting for an outcome or I'm doing it as a piece of advocacy, but I'm really invested in the people and the issues at the core of what I'm writing. Because I think, you know,
00:07:30
Speaker
For me as a journalist, if I don't care, if I don't feel attached to it in some way, there's no chance that a reader who never has met these people is going to care or feel attached. So I think part of it for me is even just making sure I'm choosing subjects and stories where the interest and the enthusiasm on my end is genuine because I think that also translates into the reporting and the writing.
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, of course. There's a an electricity about the pros and and while the reporting that that energy really comes through like when you when the writer is is into the into the material it definitely you can just you just feel it off the page and certainly as a writer you feel like I'm just not feeling this other times and then that definitely translates to the reader.
00:08:20
Speaker
Have you had any experience of when you had to muscle through something you weren't very like energized about and it just, it fell flat for you? For sure.
Overcoming Writing Challenges
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I have that experience a lot. And frankly, I'd say I have that stage on many of the projects that I'm working on. And sometimes, you know, it happens in different ways. Sometimes I'll be writing about somebody and they're, you know, I'm tired of them or, or I really, I'm not,
00:08:47
Speaker
I'm not enjoying spending all this time with them. And I try to work really hard to find the parts of people or the aspects of them that I am really interested in and that I do care about and to focus my attention or energy there. And then, of course, in the writing process, there are many times, I would say for me, the bulk of the writing process is feeling like, man, this is not
00:09:14
Speaker
I have such clarity on this in my head, and that clarity is not coming out in the same way on the page.
00:09:24
Speaker
And for me, that's usually just a matter of realizing that that's the way it goes, having done this for long enough to sort of trust the fact that I'll find my way to it in the end and to sort of just deal with the messiness and kind of embrace it. Because I think for me, feeling uncertain about something working out is like a necessary part of having it work out.
00:09:48
Speaker
that gap that Ira Glass talks about that gap. It's more like a career arcing thing like where you have this vision of your taste has you here on day one and you need to have the requisite skills to get to the other end. But you know you can bridge that too and bring those poles closer together and you just have to do that work.
00:10:12
Speaker
to get to get there. So like on a micro level, too, you have this idea of what the story looks like. And, you know, where it wants to be in that wrestling, that tension in the middle of trying to get it there is sometimes you have to just unplug. Is there anything you do to kind of step away from it and come at it fresh? You know, I think the truth is what I often do is the opposite, where I essentially force myself to work on it. And I do that by
00:10:39
Speaker
I'm very lucky oftentimes in a book or in my job for the Washington Post where my deadlines are relatively of my own creation. I'm working on stuff that unfolds over a long timeframe, but what I do is I always just set a day for myself.
00:10:59
Speaker
this story is going to be done by this day. And then, you know, I sort of force myself to sit down and to write even when it feels like the writing is slow or it's painful or it's not quite coming. I mean, I think for me, usually the way I figure stuff out is through the act of the work. And, you know, of course, like
00:11:20
Speaker
sometimes going for a trail run or getting away from it or going for a walk and having a coffee or whatever, all of that helps. But the only way I've ever figured out how to get stories to the place where I want them is by sitting down and doing the writing and doing the revising and doing the work again and again. So I sort of just try to force myself to stick at it.
Evolution of Journalism Success
00:11:44
Speaker
What did a successful writer look like to you when you first started and maybe how did that evolve as you got maybe five to 10 years in your career?
00:11:55
Speaker
I think it evolved a lot sometimes in ways that are, yeah, I think, at first, I just wanted to be able to be a journalist and certainly in college. And, you know, I think this, like, this career is hard and the and the job opportunities are, are, you know, are a little bit difficult to imagine sometimes. So, you know, I remember a conversation with one of my close friends, Chico Harlan in college, now Chico's the
00:12:23
Speaker
Rome bureau chief for the Washington Post, but Chico and I in college had a moment where we were like applying for a newspaper internships.
00:12:31
Speaker
sent out 62 applications and been rejected so far, like 50 some places. I had just gotten accepted to be an intern at the Star Ledger in New York, and I was going to be in the sports department there. I met a guy there named Brad Parks, who at that point was in his mid-30s, and he was covering the New Jersey Nets. I remember Chico and I having a conversation just being like, man, how many breaks would have to go right? How great would you have to be
00:13:01
Speaker
in this business to be lucky enough to cover the New Jersey Nets for the Star Ledger in your mid 30s. And it was like a super like that's that that was what we wanted to do. You know, like it was, you know, that was the bar and the idea of being able to to just have a job where you were writing every day and where what you were writing mattered to people was was the hope. And then of course, like as you get into jobs and you see the reality of what they look like, the goalposts always change. But I think one part of that
00:13:31
Speaker
has stayed the same, which is always feeling like I hope that what I can do is write stories that matter, not just to me, but to people reading them. And even as the audience in my mind for those stories has changed, it's gone from an avowed group of sports fans
00:13:48
Speaker
for one team to hoping that people who pick up the paper will suddenly start reading a story and invest themselves in the person they're reading about. The hope is still that I can find a way to write things that impact the way people think about the world and people around them. That driving hope has remained consistent, even as the exact jobs that I aspire to have changed over the years.
00:14:17
Speaker
And as you were developing as a young writer and young reporter, did you have a particular mentor or mentors that told that in your, so your darker moments or would give you that pat on the back, that encouragement to say like Eli, yes, keep, you know, you've got it. Keep,
Peer Influence and Support
00:14:37
Speaker
keep going. It's hard, but just, just keep going. Keep leaning into this. You know, I didn't really, I mean, I had people that I would read, um, who, who were sort of like,
00:14:48
Speaker
the beacons of what I thought I wanted to do, and whether that was, you know, Gary Smith, or, or Tom Juneau, or, or people like that. But but I, I don't think I think the propelling force for me was more at a peer level, where I was really lucky in college to forge a group of friends who were all trying to do similar stuff. And basically, I think part of what we did is we scared the shit out of each other by by
00:15:17
Speaker
sort of reminding each other how hard it was to get jobs, how difficult this kind of work was. And we all pushed each other to get better at it in competitive ways, but also in really supportive ways. And I think that group of people is still a source of tons of support where we'll send each other stories that we're working on. And I think for me,
00:15:42
Speaker
sort of seeking out peers who are trying to do the same kinds of stories was always super, super helpful. Now, I'm incredibly lucky at the post to have an editor who very much is like a mentor and also just a really close friend who I feel like makes me better from story to story. But that was not the case for the first decade that I was doing this. And during that time, mostly it was turning to friends who's
00:16:09
Speaker
ambitions were the same and you were interested in doing the same kind of journalism and kind of trying to help each other figure out how to do it. Is that peer network still still together or have people fallen off the the journalism wagon and chosen other other maybe more steady more financially fulfilling? I mean I would say shockingly still together and also somewhat shockingly you know these are mostly
00:16:38
Speaker
because I came up writing about sports. These are mostly people who were who started as sports writers, but the core group of those friends, you know, also like I'd say have have either defied the odds or given me some faith in the fact that the journalism can work out because I I'm not sure all of them have taken like huge
00:17:00
Speaker
financial sacrifices. I mean, in college, the group of people that I was closest to were a guy, Greg Bishop, who now writes for Sports Illustrated, Jeff Passen, who is the main baseball writer for Yahoo, Adam Kilgore, who now is a sports writer at the Post, Chico, who's in Rome for the Post. It was a really
00:17:21
Speaker
I think it wasn't all coincidence because we all were pushing each other really hard. But I think for many of them, it's worked out. And at what point did you start gravitating towards feature writing and deeper reported stories instead of hit and run type narratives? Pretty quickly. So when I first came to the Post,
00:17:46
Speaker
My job there was, it was, I was writing sports, but I wasn't writing for the main paper. I was writing for like a particular neighborhood section. At that point, the post had like insert sections that would go to certain neighborhoods around the DC area. And I was covering high school sports for a place called Anne Arundel County in Maryland. And my job was
00:18:08
Speaker
not to do feature stories or anything with much depth. I mean, I was writing, I was covering a ton of high school volleyball games and high school football games and writing, you know, 300 word quick, quick stories about them.
Feature Writing at The Washington Post
00:18:22
Speaker
But I realized pretty quickly just for myself that that wasn't the kind of journalism that I, you know, it wasn't, those weren't the stories that I had, I wanted to become a journalist for. And almost for my own purpose of just
00:18:38
Speaker
like being enthusiastic about journalism and really feeling excited about what I was doing. I started on the side working on some longer features, not really even pitching them to the post because I thought that might be presumptuous, but just kind of on my own time working on stories that I knew were far enough off of the map that nobody else was going to be working on them at the post.
00:19:03
Speaker
When I would finish the stories and get them to a place I felt good about, I would tell my editors, hey, by the way, I also have been working on this thing. Would you take a look at it? I'm not sure if it's going to be useful or not. But some of those stories, when they were done, the post was like, oh, yeah, this is pretty good. We'll run this. And over time,
00:19:26
Speaker
as the quality of those stories started to improve, the post also began building a little bit more time into my job to report those kind of pieces. I think I gravitated to it pretty early, and honestly, mostly just because those were the stories that made me excited about being a journalist, and those were the stories. I sort of knew for myself that that was what was going to sustain me in this business when
00:19:50
Speaker
at a time when nobody was assigning these stories that I was really excited about, I sort of had to find a way to do some stories that I felt excited about.
00:20:08
Speaker
Not quite fully realized but pretty close you could then show that as an audition to your editors and then you did that on your own time and then you showed it to them they're like okay what we don't have to burn Eli on an assigned feature like he already did it on spec pretty much like that I love I love what you did there that's amazing. Thanks I mean I think like it you know I think in hope that a good number of people do it I think one of the issues with journalism right now is that and you know it's.
00:20:37
Speaker
Journalism is, the news cycle has become so fast. Stories that used to be for the next week or now for the next day, stories that were for the next day or now for like two minutes later, get it up online. And I think people who really care about doing this work mostly gravitated toward it because they wanted to do things that were meaningful and that were lasting and that were done really well. And so I think unfortunately, those are not the kind of stories
00:21:05
Speaker
that most young journalists get assigned in their career. You don't come out of school or wherever and show up at a paper and they start assigning you, like, hey, can you spend two weeks doing this great front page story?
Reporting Techniques and Storytelling
00:21:20
Speaker
I think the only way sometimes for reporters who really care about this work to stay in it is to find a way to do some of those stories that they really care about on the side.
00:21:31
Speaker
If you're in a job where it feels like you're doing things only for other people and never for yourself, that's a pretty quick way to feel discouraged or exhausted. Sometimes, I think it was really I was doing those stories because they were personally sustaining. It was like, this is why I wanted to be a journalist, to do stories like this or to try to do stories like this. I'm going to do them because otherwise, I'm not going to want to do this job for very long.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's so important that you did it basically to nourish yourself on some level. And that rigor and hustle you did when you were kind of off the clock ultimately became the work that you've now like truly made a name for yourself for. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, and a lot of that was practicing that kind of journalism and
00:22:24
Speaker
getting better at it. I mean, I think at first those stories were, they were serviceable, the post published them, but I'm sure they weren't good. And like anything, you know, I think there's no way to write great long form narrative stories if you haven't written a lot of long form narrative stories. And so I think now the great privilege of my job is that it enables me to really just do those kinds of stories. So, you know, that facilitates a lot of growth and improvement, I think.
00:22:53
Speaker
What do you think separated maybe some of your minor league longer stories from your, the major league ones? What were those major differences that elevated it, that leveled up from where you started to where you were starting to, you know, become very well known for this, Pulitzer prize winner for this, you know, how, what was that major difference? I think mostly it was reporting. I mean, learning over time that, um, you know, I think initially when I started out, I thought,
00:23:22
Speaker
Oh, to report a 2,000 word story, I'm going to need to do four times as much reporting as I would do for a 500 word story and figuring out over time that in fact that ratio is that I need to do 10 or 15 times more reporting to sustain a 2,000 word story because you're just asking a lot for a reader to stick around for that long.
00:23:44
Speaker
I became much more vigorous in my reporting in terms of just spending more and more time with the people that I was writing about and knowing that, you know, hopefully in these kinds of stories, you're acquiring a ton of information and you're only putting a fractional amount of it into the story because you're just looking for the best things. So you can almost tell how good one of these stories is by how good the material is that you're leaving in your notebook.
00:24:12
Speaker
I think the other thing is something that you mentioned earlier, which is restraint. Realizing that sometimes the most powerful moments in a story should be quiet and understanding how to structure stories around tension so that a story was not just a portrait of a moment, but a story felt like it had movement. It begins with a challenge or tension
00:24:37
Speaker
and hopefully through the story there's some sort of resolution. And I would say lastly like the other part for me in these kind of narrative stories was learning that on a
00:24:50
Speaker
I wanted the reading experience to become a direct interaction as much as possible between a reader and the people they were reading about. For me, that has meant structuring stories almost entirely around scene and dialogue so that my presence in the story isn't particularly felt.
00:25:09
Speaker
It's not like there are many quotes in the story that are told to me. And the quotes in these kind of stories and in this book are quotes that were two people talking to each other. So the reading experience, I hope, is almost like a little bit voyeuristic, like it feels like you're being allowed to watch something unfold in front of you. And therefore, when you reach the end of a story like that, it feels like you haven't been told something, but like you've seen something or witnessed something almost for yourself and you have
00:25:38
Speaker
You come to your own conclusions about that. And those conclusions, of course, stick with us much longer than things that it feels like we're just being told. That is something that struck me when I read your latest book, which is a titanic feat of reporting and storytelling.
Authenticity Through Existing Documents
00:25:56
Speaker
And it's so well done. And it was one of those books I had trouble putting down.
00:26:02
Speaker
You kind of know how it ends, but you don't know how it gets there. So it's like that experience as a reader was really gripping. And that did strike me that it did feel like I didn't feel the heavy hand of the writer. It did feel fluid, effortless, like you went through
00:26:27
Speaker
a lot of drafts just to try to remove your presence as much as possible to let the story do the talking. Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that. I mean, I think part of that, I was so fortunate in this book that all of the documents were there. First of all, the book is based on so many
00:26:54
Speaker
these conversations that existed on Stormfront, this message board, that Derek, the main character of the book, and his father, Don, they had a radio show every day where they were talking to each other for two hours. And I had all of those archives. And then also, part of this kind of reporting is not just interviewing people, but also asking them, building trust so that they share all of these original documents from their lives. So in this case, that meant having all these college students
00:27:24
Speaker
share with me all of their G chats or all of their text messages so that readers can see the conversations that are having in real time rather than me just recreating them. I think this book was a great gift for me in that way and that the original documents existed. I think part of that was writing a book that had just taken place in 2015 when everybody was documenting their lives relentlessly every day.
00:27:54
Speaker
It made me really appreciate how difficult it must be to write a historical book where Gchats and text messages and Facebook posts don't exist. Because then, of course, you're forced to recreate dialogue and do these different things. Whereas in this book, this blog was really all right there in front.
00:28:15
Speaker
That was something I had written down to ask you about how you were able to... At what point did you feel comfortable asking Allison or Derek or anybody else in their orbit? Like, hey, would you mind sharing your Facebook posts and what those conversations are like so they feel comfortable surrendering that to you for your discretion?
00:28:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. And the truth is, you know, building trust in these kind of reporting relationships is, I would say, often the most difficult and the most interesting and certainly the most rewarding part of the job for me.
Building Trust with Subjects
00:28:56
Speaker
I mean, you know, in this case, the trust built really slowly when I first reached out to Derek.
00:29:03
Speaker
trying to see if I could come with him and write this story. His answer unequivocally was no. He changed his name, he'd moved to a different part of the country. There was a physical risk to him because all of these neo-Nazis and skinheads considered him a traitor. And also I think he just wasn't ready to talk about it. So over a year, slowly with emails back and forth,
00:29:30
Speaker
We built up some trust to the point that he was willing to get on the phone. And then after that, to the point that he was willing to meet. But even the first time that I met him, we met in a random city because he didn't want me to know exactly where he lived. We spoke about his friends and code names. And it really just took trip after trip of showing up, proving that I cared and getting it right, and that I was going to do everything I could toward that end.
00:30:00
Speaker
to build trust. And I think as a reporter, I've never found a shortcut for doing that. I don't think there's a shortcut just in human relationships for building trust. Mostly it's spending time together. And then once you're in person and you're spending time together, trust builds pretty quickly. And so with Derek and Alison and many of the people in the book, I didn't ask for their G chats and all of this stuff until
00:30:28
Speaker
pretty late in the process. I would say two-thirds of the way through reporting. Because I knew that if I asked too early, that was going to be really scary for them. But I also knew that if I could frame it correctly, once they did trust me, that, hey, this is going to be, rather than me trying to explain what you thought, these are the things that will allow people to understand what you thought and to understand it directly. And I think that they realize the importance of that.
00:30:56
Speaker
I think the act of building trust, it's sometimes winning access to a story is not something that happens once. You're earning your way into access throughout the entire reporting process by being a good listener, being present in conversations, being genuine in caring about what you're doing. And I think all of that sort of wins your way deeper into a story as you go along.
00:31:22
Speaker
And as you're gathering all this information, whether it's from direct interviews or getting these forum G-chats and Facebook posts, how are you keeping all of this straight and chronological so then when you started to write the book that you had it easily at your fingertips to be able to start constructing this narrative?
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's a question that I thought a lot about and probably is an answer that's a little bit in the weeds of the writing process, but I think that maybe is useful. So what I did is I went through
00:32:01
Speaker
Every Gchat conversation I had or I got, every interview I did, all of these things were eventually documents on my computer that I numbered. In the same way you would source footnotes, the documents on my computer for the book were numbered 1 through 986 or whatever. Then when I finished reporting and I began to structure the book,
00:32:28
Speaker
I plotted out a timeline of Derek's transformation.
Organizing and Structuring a Book
00:32:33
Speaker
Then I went through all of these documents on my computer and one by one plotted out the important things from these documents across this timeline and then footnoted the timeline with this important conversation that happened between Derek and Allison is in document number 36. Then once I was writing the book, once I was going chapter to chapter,
00:32:56
Speaker
I, instead of going back through this huge amount of source material every time, I knew like, okay, I'm writing this chapter right now about Derek's first five months on campus.
00:33:06
Speaker
here is where all of the relevant information is, and it made it much more manageable. I know plenty of authors, particularly authors who do narrative nonfiction reported work who use computer programs and different tools to help them organize their notes. I think for me, this is just the way I've always done it, so I'm almost scared to do anything differently.
00:33:31
Speaker
I'm sure there were parts of it that were unnecessarily arduous, but it was also like, I knew it would work. I had faith in having done it before, so I just stuck with it.
00:33:42
Speaker
What were the conversations like early on with Allison? And she's in so many ways the soul of this book. And I don't think you have a book without her. And you were able to, of course, get her because she's kind of the conscience of this book. And what were those conversations like early on to get her on board with this project?
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so I initially wrote a Washington Post story that was like 6000 words about Derek. And in that story, at that time, Allison
00:34:19
Speaker
was not ready to be public. The same safety risks that applied to Derek, applied to her. I also think she feels conflicted in some ways about her role. She didn't know me well enough. She'd never talked to a journalist before. She was actually very helpful in the reporting of that story and that she gave me a few emails that Derek had sent to her and things like that, but she did not want to be in it.
00:34:48
Speaker
So, I knew that if I was going to keep on reporting and have it be a book, you're exactly right. She needed to be a big part of it. She sort of is the bridge between the old Derek and the new Derek. She still is the closest person to him in his life. She also debated the facts of his really messed up racist ideas with him.
00:35:16
Speaker
in addition to doing these really dramatic things like going undercover with him to white nationalist conferences. So I knew that I needed Allison. And really what I did is I just had a really candid upfront conversation with her explaining why I thought it was important to keep reporting and writing about this and do full justice to the story, explaining why I thought I couldn't do that. I couldn't do the story right and truthfully without her because she's too crucial to it.
00:35:46
Speaker
you know, and then left the decision to her, which the truth is, like, that's often the position that we're in as journalists or as writers doing reported work is, in the end, like, we try the best we can to explain to people why we want to write about
Transparency in Reporting
00:36:04
Speaker
them. And sometimes they say no. And that's okay. Like, that's their right. It should be their right. And in this case, I knew I couldn't do it without Alison. And if she had said,
00:36:15
Speaker
I don't see the value in this, I'm not going to do it, then I would have gone on to the next thing I was going to write about. But I think at that point Allison did know me, did trust me more, and over the course of a few weeks of conversations about why I thought it was important.
00:36:34
Speaker
was important, too, and then said that she felt comfortable. And similarly with Derek's father, Don Black, I knew that I really needed, I needed, I needed to be able to spend more time with him in order to write the book I wanted to write. And so I had those conversations up front, too. I think sometimes it's, for me, part of the reporting process is being really transparent on the front end, and explaining to people
00:37:00
Speaker
what it will be like to have me reporting on them and kind of laying out the ground rules or the process in a really transparent way on the front end because that just reduces some of the anxiety and the questions and the uncertainties on the back end.
00:37:19
Speaker
When I recently spoke with Earl Swift about his recent book Chesapeake Requiem, he was talking about how similarly he spent a lot of time with these Tangierman crabbers on a disappearing island in Chesapeake Bay.
00:37:38
Speaker
He said that to be a fly, I'm paraphrasing, but like the secret to being a fly on the wall was actually not being, was actually always having the notebook out. It was always being transparent. They always knew that he was there for a job. He was the reporter, he was the writer, and eventually,
00:38:03
Speaker
because the notebook was out this once intrusive thing from day one, he eventually did blend into the background over time. That's kind of what you're saying too is like you're upfront and transparent. And that kind of engendered trust instead of having these conversations and then like running off to a bathroom stall scribble some notes and then go back and keep talking. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think like it's, you know, I'm asking for so much from the people that I write about. I'm asking for like,
00:38:30
Speaker
honesty, like real candor and transparency about really difficult moments. The least I can do is repay that by being honest and transparent with them. And I do think that that is also helpful in the disappearing from moments.
Witnessing and Understanding Stories
00:38:51
Speaker
I also have a notebook out all the time. At first, that's sort of strange for people, but pretty quickly, if you're around enough,
00:39:00
Speaker
people stop thinking about the notebook. I mean, I would say the other key for me in sort of being able to disappear a little and observe more is trying to be there during moments in people's lives where they have something going on that's more important than you being there chronicling it. And you know, like if I'm writing about people and like their kid just got shot and they're trying to sort of find a way for that kid to recover,
00:39:28
Speaker
mostly when they're in a doctor appointment with that kid, the fact that I'm there is not going to be the main part of that doctor appointment. They're trying to fix their kid. There's something more pressing happening. I also think sometimes if you can find a way to be there when there are really intense moments happening, it makes it much more natural to disappear into them.
00:39:51
Speaker
That that's incredible. How do you get yourself into that moment? And so you can fold into the like, just disappear into the background? I think like it's, you know, so many people mostly want the same thing, which is to be seen, you know, and to, to feel like the experiences that they're going through, especially when they're really hard experiences and to feel like they matter and and
00:40:21
Speaker
that they're not going through them alone in a way that is totally unimportant, but that people are acknowledging what's happening. What I'm often telling people when I want to write about them is, I'm hoping to do just that. I'm hoping to write about people's lives
00:40:41
Speaker
in a way that just for a few minutes, maybe somebody in some different part of the country can experience in some fractional way what it's like to be going through that thing. And so in order to do that, I need to be there to see it all. And I think in the end, it's kind of framing it to people and explaining it in a way in which like me being there during hard moments,
00:41:06
Speaker
is not, it's in service of the story that eventually does them justice and does justice to what they've been through, what they're going through, what they will go through. It's not me asking for something for any reason other than it's in service of them being seen and being seen accurately. And I think usually that's compelling to people. They want to be seen in a truthful and accurate way.
00:41:34
Speaker
And so in that way, I think people start to feel comfortable having you there during otherwise really uncomfortable times because they also understand that's the whole point. The whole point is for me to be there to see things that other people wouldn't usually see because that's the only way that people can build connections with people that are reading that.
00:41:59
Speaker
Did it take you a long time to get comfortable asking people to allow you that kind of intimate access? Yeah, it did. But I think like for me, the turning point wasn't realizing that I was the one who was sort of afraid to ask for it. And and often it was me putting my own limitations on on access. And rather than, you know,
00:42:26
Speaker
The truth is, the most fair thing, and I think the best thing for the people we're writing about is to be there for as much as we can be there for. And so once I realized that actually I'm doing this person a favor by asking, they can say no. They can totally tell me, no, I don't want you to come to this. I don't want you to be there for this. But once I sort of changed my thinking and feeling like, wow, what I'm asking them is a huge imposition to instead thinking,
00:42:52
Speaker
you know, what I'm asking them is going to help me get the story right. And of course, me getting the story right is better for everybody involved. And then I just got less hesitant about saying like, Hey, I think it's really important that I'm there for this. You know, and I think once I was less hesitant, you know, I began to realize it was, I often wasn't seeing things, because I was afraid to ask to see them, rather than
00:43:17
Speaker
just asking and not being afraid to be told, no, I'm sorry. I'm not comfortable with that, which is totally fine. And that happens in my recording plenty. That's such a great point to make. And it gets to the point of limiting beliefs and limiting self-talk that oftentimes, once you learn that
00:43:41
Speaker
They were probably, let's just throw out a number like eight out of 10 are okay with you being there for everything. But as soon as you rephrased it in a way and rephrase the question about why you want to be there, all of a sudden it's empowering and allows you to make that deeper dive. And it was really you limiting yourself and your potential versus what you were thinking, your sources were thinking, if that makes any sense.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I think it is. Yeah, it's it's some sometimes it's it's us as journalists or as writers who who are who are the ones putting limitations on things. And, you know, I'm sure I still do that in plenty of ways. But I've tried to be cognizant, at least about the times where it's me that is that's tentative or afraid to ask for something.
00:44:36
Speaker
And getting back to Allison, in the book, there was a passage I highlighted because it spoke to something I wanted to ask you directly. And she, in a way, illustrates it. And I'm just going to read it real quick. It was a part you wrote where she watched documentaries about the Klan and read through hundreds of messages on Stormfront. It was also upsetting, so ugly and revolting that some days it made her nauseated at her desk.
Balancing Dark Themes with Hope
00:45:06
Speaker
And throughout all this book, because it's just such ugly, ignorant racism that the world of the white nationalists, that they're broadcasting. And you were so deeply immersed in this, listening to broadcasts, reading this stuff, talking to white nationalists.
00:45:27
Speaker
I wonder how you didn't get pulled down into the dark when you were so deeply immersed in such an ugly world. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think for me, part of it was the fact that I knew the story that I was telling.
00:45:51
Speaker
while it traveled through a huge amount of darkness. First of all, I think it's essential for America to understand that darkness because these problems, not just white nationalism, but our country's problematic racial history and our problematic racial presence is a huge
00:46:11
Speaker
problem that we need to confront. So my hope in traveling through the darkness and being able to hopefully explain it and bring it a little bit into the light is that it will make it more clear that we need to confront it. The other thing was I knew that there were other parts of the story that were ultimately redemptive. And people in the story who, you know, the book is at least in part the story of the incredible acts of courage
00:46:41
Speaker
from all of these other people, sometimes people who are the victims of Derek's prejudices, who find these different ways to engage, whether that's by protesting and shutting down the school to protest his ideas, which was really effective, or by reaching out to him and inviting him over to Shabbat dinners or debating the flawed science of white nationalism with him. There was real courage and real heart in the story too. So I think
00:47:11
Speaker
If I had just been writing something that just traveled into the dark hole of white nationalism and racism and America's screwed up racist history, it would have been probably ... First of all, it just wouldn't have been a good book because you're taking people into a place that's just really difficult to read about.
00:47:35
Speaker
it would have been so taxing for me. And I think the fact that I knew that there were these other parts of the story that allowed for hope, like real hope in ways, made it so that traveling through the darker parts was manageable. I mean, that said, I will say that for a year, every time I would go for a run, I would be listening to Derek and Don
00:47:59
Speaker
talk in these old radio shows about these really upsetting ideas. And one of the great gifts of being done reporting the book is that now I don't have to listen to that anymore. So certainly there's some relief in that. On those runs, did you have a little notebook with you in case they said something like, oh, that'll probably be good for the book, and you scribble something down?
00:48:23
Speaker
Yeah, or I would just do a little voice note into my phone about something to note for later. But also, part of it, frankly, was just as simple as knowing I needed to marinate in that world a little bit in order to understand it and write about it with nuance. So sometimes, listen to an hour and a half show and
00:48:48
Speaker
It wasn't that I was writing down anything or going to be quoted from anything, but it was just marinating in that, helped me begin to understand how they saw everything so that I could predict the white nationalist reaction to almost any news event.
00:49:03
Speaker
What struck me about your book, too, it reminded me of, in a way, Dave Eggers' Zaytun or Zaytun, how it illustrated the catastrophe around Hurricane Katrina without being judgmental. And there was definitely
00:49:22
Speaker
instances where you could or the author could have laid down judgment over what was going on instead he just let the story play out and similarly with your book with this material and especially for most people who don't agree with it you had every reason and probably a right at some point to be very judgmental about this and to
00:49:44
Speaker
and to shun it, but instead you just let the story speak for itself. So how did you get to that point where you were just going to let it play out and not imbue your worldview on the story? I think like, especially in this story, I realized pretty early on that the facts, when outlayed correctly and powerfully,
00:50:11
Speaker
are the greatest challenge to these really awful ideas.
Portraying Complex Characters
00:50:16
Speaker
Rather than writing a polemic where I'm telling readers racism is harmful and bad, it's more effective for me to show all the ways in which it's been hugely damaging in the world and the science of how discrimination impacts people's lives and people's health. That's much more powerful and it's also much more factual.
00:50:40
Speaker
And the other thing is realizing that I was trying to write about some of these people, particularly Derek's father, Don Black, who still is very much at the top of the white nationalist movement. I was trying to write about him when possible with the humanity that he so often had denied other people. And doing that not to forgive anything that he's done,
00:51:07
Speaker
but just because it's more true. I mean, I think sometimes we like to believe that people who are capable of doing real evil are like these cardboard villains. But I think what's much more scary and also just more real is that in many ways, these are people very much like us who are capable of doing really terrible things and coming to disastrous conclusions. And so, you know, for Don in particular, that made him a really complicated character in the book because
00:51:36
Speaker
He has caused huge amounts of real damage in the world and he asks for and deserves no forgiveness for any of it. There's no redemption for him in the book because he still believes all the terrible things that he's believed. But the other truth is he's also a dad who loved his kid more than anything in the world and sort of experienced
00:52:00
Speaker
Derek's transformation essentially like a death. And I think that that was really important for readers to understand, because otherwise, readers don't quite understand how difficult it was for Derek to ultimately change his mind about this and become public on the other side. So for that reason, I knew Don needed to be a really full character in the book. And I also knew the facts of Don's life. After Derek leaves this ideology,
00:52:30
Speaker
Don, there's a moment where it seems like maybe Don is going to see the light a little bit too, and instead he begins a mentoring relationship with Richard Spencer. And that action and explaining that, how that happens in the book, is much more powerful than me saying Don is still bad and believes bad things. The fact that he then reaches out to Richard Spencer to help plan these catastrophic events says that in a much more powerful and I think much more interesting way.
00:52:59
Speaker
Yeah, you get a sense of how it's kind of eerie and creepy in a way that where you get Chloe and Don who are like super sweet to Allison who they don't really have a feel on yet. You know, they send her like, you know, a gift card to like get a massage and then.
00:53:17
Speaker
When Derek renounces white nationalism, Don has his moments of like, maybe I was wrong. And then to have him totally – when Trump is elected, it gave permission to a lot of these ideas, and then for him to then take up –
00:53:37
Speaker
a mentoring relationship with Spencer it illustrates your point perfectly of how like maybe like seemingly decent people on the surface are harboring some really nasty bile underneath and it's kind of chilling in a way. Yeah for sure and I mean I think that's also I think more true to
00:53:57
Speaker
the real problem that the country is facing. I mean, the stat that often stands out to me from reporting this book is these polls that consistently show that 30% to 40% of white people in the country believe they experience more discrimination, more prejudice than people of color, which is wildly inaccurate by every factual measure that we have. But the fact that there is all of this
00:54:23
Speaker
you know, latent racism and this sense of grievance, false grievance in parts of white America is what empowers these ideas and makes it a real threat to our country. And it's what elects people into huge positions of power who are doing a lot of racist dog whistling. And so, yeah, I think, you know, I think the truth is that it's people are really complicated, you know, and writing about
00:54:51
Speaker
writing about people, but also problems with nuance and with the complexity that they deserve, I think is, first of all, it's just more rewarding to a reader and more interesting. It's also more true, like Don Black, he
00:55:07
Speaker
he is not a cardboard villain. He's much more complicated than that. And also, I think it's much more interesting to read about the complications and the contradictions within people than it is to read sort of a one-sided screed that comes from a really hard viewpoint.
00:55:26
Speaker
So in the process of writing the book and even a lot of your longer features, which let's face it is just about all your features, you know, take a lot of time reporting, organizing. How are you setting up your days? You know, what's your morning routine to kind of warm up to this stuff? And then how do you go about the work on a given day? I think it's, uh, it's usually a ton of reporting. I mean, so I have,
00:55:53
Speaker
I have three pretty little kids. I drop them off at school and then really start making calls.
Selecting Subjects in Nonfiction
00:56:02
Speaker
For me, a huge part of the reporting process is what I would almost call pre-reporting, where I have a notion of an idea and I'm spending a large amount of time figuring out
00:56:15
Speaker
you know, where is the best place to tell a story? Who who are the best potential characters? What is the best time to be with those people? And so so once I actually decide, all right, I'm going to write about, you know, this person going through this situation, I've had similar conversations with 10 other people and people who will never show up in the story. But all of those conversations inform my knowledge about the issue. And they also make me feel like
00:56:40
Speaker
Once I'm really starting the in-person reporting, I'm with the right person at the right time. A big part of the days is working through the process of trying to figure out who exactly, where exactly, and when exactly. That's a large part of the reporting time.
00:56:57
Speaker
It's an interesting point that some of this non-fiction and long-form storytelling, there is an element of choreography and casting, so to speak, that goes on with this.
00:57:15
Speaker
something that you don't necessarily associate with nonfiction that you would be selective of one subset of possible sources over another. How did you come with that and get comfortable with that? This particular family is gonna be better illustrating the overall story that I'm trying to get at.
00:57:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a great question because I do think that some people would consider it almost a contradiction. But the truth is, our job as journalists is we have to choose. There are an unlimited number of stories to tell, and it's our job to figure out which are the ones that are worth spending and investing our time in. I think part of the way I landed on this process is just
00:58:04
Speaker
the fact that I write these stories for the Washington Post, where something being a great story alone is not necessarily enough. And I don't think it's not enough for me either. What I want is a great story that is connected to the national moment and reveals something about it in a way that feels new and revelatory. So that means that I'm often
00:58:30
Speaker
first starting with ideas about what are the big issues or pressure points in the country and whether that's white nationalism or whether that's, you know, immigration and something that's happening on the border or whether it's heroin addiction. And I'm looking for like, what are the big pressure points? What are the things that are new happening in those pressure points? And what are the ways
00:58:51
Speaker
that I can go and write about them in a way that feels intimate and real and kind of illuminates these big problems in our country in a way that just stories about the data or the DC perspective on things never does. So that means that I'm often almost reporting my way through a funnel, like where I start with the big idea through reporting and first talking to issue experts, policy experts,
00:59:18
Speaker
I kind of hone the idea and figure out exactly what I'm looking for, and then begin calling and talking to people and trying to see who is experiencing this in a way right now that will feel immediate and personal to people reading the story. So that's often, I guess, the choreography that's involved is sort of casting about for the right story that will have tension
00:59:47
Speaker
and also that will reflect in an accurate and representative way some of these big issues in the country. And when you're getting down to the writing of a story, what is your stamina, so to speak? How long can you write in a day without getting tired? I think that I sort of write in short bursts.
01:00:14
Speaker
and then step away, but sometimes we'll write for long hours in a day. I might spend 14 hours in a day staring or thinking about a story a little bit, but during that time, I'm also stepping away to pick up kids or go for a run. I'm spacing it out that way. Usually, I try to think of it more in terms of, I want to write a section this day, or sometimes that's a certain number of words.
01:00:44
Speaker
I've got 1200 words to write today and some days that takes five hours of concentrated writing or three hours it comes really fast and I feel good about it and it's in good shape and other days it takes 15 hours and it's super painful and it's like, man, I've spent so many times rewriting the sentence. But I sort of just try to force myself to put in whatever amount of time it takes to sort of hit that goal for the day.
01:01:13
Speaker
And when you're in the throes of this process, how are you fighting off loneliness and self-doubt since I suspect you do a lot of your writing at home? Yeah, I mean, particularly with a book, it's hard because the writing process lasts for so long. In the case of this book, which I think in terms of a book was relatively fast, but it was still four solid months of
01:01:39
Speaker
go and write every day. And I think for me, I try to like, I definitely create a schedule for myself, but I build and breaks that schedule. So it's like, all right, this day, I'm just gonna like, totally take off or these two days, I'm just gonna try not to think about it.
Balancing Writing and Personal Life
01:01:56
Speaker
And I think I have tried to get better at setting a project down for a while and trusting that I'll be able to come back to it.
01:02:09
Speaker
For a long time, especially early on in my career, I think if I was writing a story that took three days to write, I would sort of be in like the cloud of that story entirely for those three days.
01:02:21
Speaker
which I almost felt like was necessary to the writing process. Like, well, I just need to be rolled up in this the entire time. And, you know, I think like it just wasn't the best way to live a life. I also don't think it was like necessarily in service to the stories. I've gotten much better, I think, through writing books because like you just, you know,
01:02:46
Speaker
person or friend that I wanted to be if for six months, I was just in the clouds of writing something. It forced me to get a lot better at saying, okay, I'm done for the day. I will think about this again in the morning. That has been a great gift to learn how to trust myself enough to know I can let this go and I'll be able to pick it back up.
01:03:10
Speaker
What would you identify as particular strengths that you have as a reporter and a writer and then maybe some, some weaknesses to that, uh, that, that kind of needle at the back of your brain? Sure. Um, the weaknesses, I think like my sentence to sentence writing, I always feel like could be much better. Um, they're just writers who I read who, uh, their sentences are so beautiful. Um, and, uh,
01:03:37
Speaker
I often think that my sentences are purposeful and hopefully effective, but not just really lyrical, beautiful sentences is something that I would like to be able to write. I think in terms of things that I feel pretty confident in, I think structure is such a huge key to narrative work. Thinking about pacing and intention and
01:04:05
Speaker
where to build tension, where to resolve it. And I think that that's something that I feel pretty confident in, in part just probably built up by the repetitive act of doing stories like this. I feel pretty confident in structure, and I think that that's really helpful. I also think that the act of connecting with the people that I write about and building up trust in those relationships
01:04:35
Speaker
It almost doesn't feel journalistic. It just feels like being a person and building up relationships and building up trust. That's something that I feel pretty confident in. In general, I would say I'm a much more confident reporter than I am a writer. I think reporting is the days when I'm out spending time with people feel very natural.
01:05:04
Speaker
And the days when I'm in the library, fighting sentences definitely sometimes feel a little bit more like work. You were talking about certain writers who have a very lyrical way of writing. And that's something you admire. Who are maybe some of those writers that you've got on your bookshelf, maybe books you reread from time to time. You're like, ah, that's how it's done. And if I'm really cracking, that's what I hope to get to.
01:05:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there are so there are so many. But I mean, I guess in terms of newspaper work, even like, you know, people who whose work I really admire, who who who have worked at the Post and Hall is is like an amazing lyricist sentence to sentence. Stephanie McCrummond, who I work with, I feel like writes really beautiful sentences, but also just in terms of
01:06:04
Speaker
novels and my own reading habits and the things that I really enjoy. I was just reading, like everybody else in the world, Little Fires Everywhere, the Celeste name book, which is just an amazing sentence to sentence writing feat, I feel like, in ways that are beyond me.
01:06:32
Speaker
You know, I think my own reading habits definitely skew a little bit more toward fiction, especially lately. And part of that is because I'm just trying to improve my sentence-to-sentence writing. And I think that that's a great way to learn how to do that.
Influence of Fiction on Writing Style
01:06:50
Speaker
You mentioned Celeste Ng's book.
01:06:55
Speaker
Are there any other books that you like to return to, again, just as a refresher of how, of what the language and sentence to sentence structure can be like? I think, I mean, recently, like, Jasmine Ward, like her, I feel like her sentences are sometimes stunning. And, you know, books that I like always go back to,
01:07:20
Speaker
that are a little bit more related to my own work and what I'm trying to do. The things they carried, so many of those stories are like,
01:07:30
Speaker
little masterpieces that I call back to sometimes when I'm thinking about how to write a section. There's one story in there about a soldier coming back home and driving around a lake on the 4th of July that I've read so many times as I try to figure out how to allow for movement in sections that otherwise don't have it and things like that.
01:07:58
Speaker
like crack hour into the wild is a book that I adore and feel like it's just a tight, really good story. And you mentioned Zaytun, but I think that's a good example too. I mean, it's one of the things for me in writing this book that was really interesting is the rules of nonfiction, particularly when it comes to dialogue are not really that clear, right? Like I had the great luxury in this book of I was only quoting things
01:08:27
Speaker
that I had evidence of them being quotes. People had said them to each other in g-chats or on the radio or whatever else. But I think one thing in writing this book that became in some ways more confusing and complicated to me is looking back at all of these books I really loved and admired.
01:08:45
Speaker
and realizing that the quotes were recreated necessarily so because there were no documents to pull from. But just like then thinking about recreating dialogue, of course we never know exactly what anybody said unless we were there to hear it or there's a record of them saying it. So sometimes like one of the complications early on in this for me was just realizing, wow, like all of these
01:09:14
Speaker
all of these books deal with this problem in these really different ways. And that was really interesting to me. Over the course of your career, how have you avoided or maybe if you haven't avoided it, coped with feelings of jealousy and competition among peers. It's definitely a real feeling and I love getting someone's impressions on how they deal with that if they deal with it at all.
01:09:44
Speaker
What a great question. I don't think I've ever been asked that before, and I'm really glad that you did.
Handling Envy and Industry Success
01:09:51
Speaker
In general, I'm pretty good at trying really hard to focus on the things that I can control. Anything else, of course, is a useless exercise and a waste of energy.
01:10:09
Speaker
But it's way easier said than done to just focus on the things that you can control and to not pay attention to other books that are doing great or stories that are doing really well. But I guess the other thing that is, to me, overrides, or I hope, at least in my best moments, overrides any feelings of envy or jealousy is first realizing I'm
01:10:35
Speaker
insanely privileged in my job and in the work that I get to do. And, you know, I'm in a position where if my stories have shortcomings, the only thing I can blame for them is myself, because I have like an incredible latitude to pursue the stories that I want to pursue. So that's one thing is just like, what right do I have to be jealous of anybody, really? Like I'm just in such a lucky position. And the other thing is, like there's
01:11:04
Speaker
I care super deeply about narrative, nonfiction, journalistic work that's really good. And the truth is, there's not an abundance of that. It's not like, so anytime something is really good, like that's a real and genuine part of me feels like, I'm so happy for that. That's really great. Like it's in part even just from my own
01:11:28
Speaker
like wanting to have an industry in this that I can continue to work in and wanting for this craft to continue to matter, particularly in newspapers, there's not a lot of stories built on dialogue and scenes. So when I see one, my reaction, I'm sure there's a little bit of jealousy or envy sometimes, but mostly it's like, yes, like I'm so glad that places are still doing this because maybe that means other people will see the value of it. And in this diffuse way, I will get to continue to do it for longer.
01:11:58
Speaker
And so I think I try to remind myself of that. Like it's also it's in our industry. It's there's there's not like a limited resource of great stories. Just because somebody else writes something great or gets like acknowledged for writing something great does not in any way impact my own ability to write something great or get acknowledged for doing something that was really worthwhile. And so I think.
01:12:24
Speaker
Those are all ways that I kind of try to push back at myself in that way. The last one that I would say is just, I think as journalists, we're so lucky, or as writers, we're so lucky to do a job that's public. And when we write something, other people see it, and we get told all the time, like, hey, I'm glad you wrote that. That was really good. That was nice. And most jobs are not so public facing. They don't work that way. My parents, who were both teachers, it's not like they were constantly getting notes
01:12:53
Speaker
from outside people saying, I'm so glad you're a teacher. Wow, this is really valuable work. So I feel like we are already spoiled by feedback. And to ask for more of it, it's just not fair. We're lucky to have people tell us, oh, I like listening to that. I like seeing that. And that happens to us. And to most people, that doesn't happen. So those are the ways I try to push back against my own
01:13:23
Speaker
feelings sometimes, which of course happen like that anybody else is seeing. Like, oh man, that story is going wild on Twitter. I wish I'd written.
01:13:31
Speaker
Because the work you invest in your stories is so extensive and intensive, what is your mindset and your approach to it and what kind of still excites you about it to get those slow gears rolling as you gear up for another big story? How do you get psyched up for that? Everyone can sort of feel a little bit like climbing
01:13:59
Speaker
a mountain. And I think like the challenge in my job sometimes or this kind of work is feeling like, you know, I'm always starting again from the very base of the mountain, like I finished something like this book or like a story. And then, you know, I'm not I'm not continuing to cover a beat in that subject area, I'm figuring out, okay, what's the next thing that I can begin from the very beginning and try to again, have it have it turn into something good. So there's
01:14:28
Speaker
that feeling of being in between can be a little bit fatiguing just because I understand that it's hard.
Fairness in Storytelling
01:14:35
Speaker
It's hard to get one of these projects to the point where it works out and it feels like it's worked out. But I think the thing that keeps me really interested and engaged is, first of all, the stories and the subjects are so different every time, which is engaging in and of itself, but also,
01:14:53
Speaker
the interpersonal challenges of reporting and building these relationships and existing in this space in people's life. That part only gets more complicated, I think, for me anyway, as time goes on. Just figuring out how to ethically do a job like this is really interesting and really engaging and really hard and never easy. I think things start to feel boring when they're easy and
01:15:22
Speaker
The truth is, building this kind of trust never feels easy. So that part always keeps me really interested. What are you better at today than you were maybe five years ago? I'm way more careful.
01:15:41
Speaker
in a way that I think is really good for stories. I think a lot more about accuracy and fairness. In some ways, that's the very basic, man, I don't want to have a mistake in the story, I'm going to read it six more times. In other ways, it's just thinking about the fairness even of things as subtle as where I end stories. For a lot of the people that I'm writing about,
01:16:09
Speaker
it's the one time they're going to be written about. And it's in this really public way. And I'm choosing, at least in the public space, where their story is going to end. And that's a big responsibility to have. You're deciding where you're going to leave people off in the public space. And so I think even in terms of stuff like that, I've realized the weight of these stories in people's lives more.
01:16:37
Speaker
And not in a way that makes me want to be more gentle and more favorable to them, but just in a way that makes me acknowledge how important it is for me to get it right. And I think I've sort of invested that back into the work and tried to be really rigorous with myself over these last five years about making sure that when a story is published, I feel good about every part of it.
01:17:08
Speaker
That's amazing, Eli. Out of respect for your time, of course, I feel like I could talk to you for another two hours. This is a ton of fun. Where can people find you online, Eli, and get more familiar with your work if they're not already familiar with it? I'm on Twitter, although I'm not very active, but it's EliSaslo. I do have a website that just has compiled most of my
01:17:31
Speaker
a lot of my stories and things like that, which is just EliSaslo.com. I'm so appreciative to you for your time and also for doing these podcasts. I think they're an incredible resource to me and also I know to others. Thank you for that. Also, you're close by.
01:17:50
Speaker
Next time you're up here, shoot me a note and we'll grab beers. Oh, fantastic. There's no shortage of great IPAs to enjoy up in this neck of the woods, so we'll have to do that sometime. Yeah, I would love it. Seriously, man, just let me know. It would be fun. Well, that was satisfying, don't you think?
Podcast Conclusion
01:18:08
Speaker
Thanks very much to the show's sponsors, Goucher College's MFA Program in Nonfiction and Creative Nonfiction Magazine, of course.
01:18:18
Speaker
Thanks to Eli Sazlo. How great was that? Be sure to check out all of Eli's work over at his website and buy a book, would you? Hard book. Kindle book. It doesn't matter. Buy books. Buy them. Give them away.
01:18:34
Speaker
Be an advocate for great reading and great writing while I've got your attention. I'd ask if you dig the show, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave an honest review over on Apple Podcasts. They're a big, big help. And I'm deeply appreciative of whatever you can do to help the show. Fact is, you're here. That's what matters. But if you can do a little extra and ice the cake, that'd be a big,
01:19:03
Speaker
Big help. Visit BrendanOmera.com to sign up for my monthly reading list newsletter. Great books and great podcasts. Once a month, no spam. Can't beat that. I'm at Brendan Omera on Twitter. You can always email me at the website. Just look that up. Super simple. Got any questions about writing or reading or whatever it is you like. I'm here to help. I think that's a wrap. Remember, if you can't do interview, see ya.