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Episode 259: Lilly Dancyger on Building Community and Finding Her Father in 'Negative Space'
163 Plays4 years ago
Lilly Dancyger (@lillydancyger) came by CNF Pod HQ to talk all things memoir and her new book Negative Space.
She talks about how:
- It took her 10 years to write it
- Sticking to her creative guns
- Community over networking
- And taking the slime off of branding
Patreon: patreon.com/cnfpod
Social media: @cnfpod and @BrendanOMeara
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
You ready? Here's to the rogues, all those weirdos out there, writing their true stories, letting it all hang out. You know what this podcast is. It's like where all the carnies hang out. Make no mistake, we live on the edge, and we're a stumble, we're a nudge from taking the plunge man to the murky depths of the dead marshes.
00:00:24
Speaker
falling and feeling the weightlessness of freefall. Yeah, man, that's us. And maybe during our turbulent descent, we'll hear the almighty Ruth pipe as we near the earth. What do you say, CNFers? Let's get after it.
Introducing Lily Danziger and Her Memoir
00:00:46
Speaker
What is this, a poetry slam? I don't know, that's right, I'm Brendan O'Mara, hey hey, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Today's guest is the Lily Danziger, whose new memoir, Negative Space, is out now. Great book, it's a detective story as she tries to uncover her late father and her late father's past.
00:01:15
Speaker
his struggles with addiction and the disturbing on the edge nature of the art he made a kind of code he lived by and I love codes but let me say this first creative non-fiction podcast is brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan College's low residency MFA in creative non-fiction who now in its 10th year
00:01:40
Speaker
We're in our ninth year, they're in their tenth, we're like practically the same age. This affordable program boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Recent CNF faculty include Randin Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and CNF POD alum Sarah Einstein.
00:01:59
Speaker
episode 11 or 12. I can never remember. Anyway, there's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty include Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend as well as Diana, Diana, Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple.
00:02:15
Speaker
No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan. Right. Get that, hear that pun right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit nfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
Engagement and Support
00:02:36
Speaker
And you know, keep the conversation going on social media at cnfpod.
00:02:40
Speaker
if you're feeling kindly for review on apple podcast those go a long way towards validating the enterprise or some social capital for the wayward cnf or who's just stumbling by the past may i had the major type of creative non-fiction into apples their search in there at this one will come up in a call while look at all those reviews and ratings i'm gonna give that guy shot i've never heard of that guy you talk to some cool people
00:03:07
Speaker
I'll give it a shot. And the more reviews there are, the better they'll land and the more likely they'll stay. Am I right? I don't know. Also, consider becoming a member on the Patreon page. I know I beat this drum to death, but I'm putting together the next issue of the audio mag. It's a crunch, let me tell you. It's gonna come down to the wire. Issue one was free. Isolation.
00:03:31
Speaker
and will remain in the podcast vena definitely but as you too and beyond are exclusive to the patreon community patrons get lots of cool goodies as well as the knowledge that they're supporting writers and the cnf and community in the production of this show you won't want to miss this one cnf or let me tell you summer and it's right on our heels baby
Excitement for Hippocamp 2021
00:03:55
Speaker
And from now until August, I plan on giving the loudest of shoutouts to Hippocam 2021. It's back. Back, baby. Don't call it a comeback. And Lancaster PA registration is open. It's a conference for creative nonfiction writers. Marion Winnick will be this year's keynote speaker. I'll be delivering a podcast theme talk. That's cool. I can't speak highly enough of this conference. August 13th through the 15th.
Writing Coach Services
00:04:23
Speaker
You dig?
00:04:26
Speaker
And you've heard me say it, that if you want to get into shape, you hire a personal trainer. Listen, you know the fundamentals, you got to eat right in the exercise, but you hire a trainer to hold you accountable, to put you through the paces and maybe to see things you can't see.
00:04:41
Speaker
So that's where I come in. I mean, not to like get you six pack abs and big ass arms, but if you're ready to level up your manuscript and your writing, I'd be honored to help and get you where you want to go with your book or your essay or maybe even your book proposal. Wherever it needs to go, I hope I can help you get you there. So email me and we'll start a dialogue and we'll take it from there.
00:05:03
Speaker
All right. That's a lot of housekeeping, but it's got to happen. It just has to happen. I'm sorry.
Lily Danziger on Storytelling and Networking
00:05:08
Speaker
That's what the skip button is for. If you know, I'm going to start riffing on housekeeping, but like I said, Lily Danziger is here. She's at Lily Danziger on Twitter. L I L L Y D A N C Y G E R.
00:05:26
Speaker
We get into some stuff, man. You're going to want to hear how working with Lydia Juknovich in a workshop in Portland helped her crack the code of the book. She wrote negative space, reframing network, networking, the icky feeling of networking as the more, I don't know. Kind of reframing the idea of networking and thinking about it as community instead. What's the word I'm looking for?
00:05:53
Speaker
I don't know. Community building. It's better. There you go. There's a word. And a new way to think about branding. It's all here. And one final sponsor. This show is brought to you by the word Blunger. Blunger is a noun. It's a large container with rotating arms for mechanical mixing. It's also one who blunges. Blunger. Thank you, Blunger. Here's Lily, you CNFing carnies.
00:06:32
Speaker
What are you reading these days? What are you putting in the, in the tank? Um, I'm currently reading White Magic, uh, Alyssa Washuta's new collection. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm only a couple essays in. Um, it's a pretty substantial book, so I feel like I'll be reading it for a while. I'm kind of trying to read one at a time and digest them, you know, rather than speeding through the whole thing, but it's really cool and smart and intense with moments of humor too. So yeah, I enjoy it.
00:07:03
Speaker
You alluded to how you've been going through a lot of the book promotion stuff. I feel like you've been at it for a while. You've been putting out a lot of articles that are heavily of the memoir and everything. You've built a really good machine around it. How did you develop the strategy of doing that and leaning into it like that?
00:07:32
Speaker
I know it's been a long time in the making. You know, I've been writing the book for over a decade and for the last like five years or so, I've kind of had in mind setting myself up for a good launch, you know, and just getting to know as many people as possible. So I can be invited on cool podcasts like this and be able to publish related essays and excerpts and read it reading theories and, you know,
00:08:01
Speaker
I think a lot about kind of reframing the idea of networking and thinking about it as community instead. And thinking about, yeah, because the networking is kind of like a dirty word, right? It sounds like fake and schmoozy and like, you're trying to use people, you know, and so I transact. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, and I, I focused instead on, you know, building genuine,
00:08:29
Speaker
community of building relationships with people and, you know, working as an editor and an instructor as well, I think is good, because then I'm not just taking as a writer who needs promotion for my work, you know, I'm also able to give other people a platform and, and help them with their work and invite people to read at my reading series. And, you know, it's more of a kind of give and take and supporting each other. And yeah, over the last
00:08:57
Speaker
I've known that I was going to have this book out eventually and that I was going to need to do a lot of work to get it out into the world. So I've been kind of getting ready for this period for a long time.
00:09:09
Speaker
Yeah, and given that, you know, that the arts and writing and the whole, you know, community around it can be sometimes, you know, virulently competitive and toxicly competitive and jealous. But you're saying and doing all the right things by, you know, reframing networking as community and anyone who follows any of your, you know, social channels. It's just, yeah, you're celebrating people's work and building that community.
00:09:35
Speaker
So how did you arrive at that as an ethos instead of taking it sometimes down that toxic sewer, if you will? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think it just grew out of like genuine excitement for my friend's success, you know, making friends with other writers and seeing them get
00:10:01
Speaker
the publications that are perfect for them and seeing, you know, celebrating their success. And of course I had pangs of jealousy along the way, you know, when I was trying to publish my book for so long and it wasn't happening and I kept seeing other people announce deals. Like, of course you're going to be a little covetous sometimes, right? Um, but I just was, you know, I was aware and I was paying attention to my reactions and realizing that it just was so much more fun and
00:10:29
Speaker
healthy and productive and enjoyable to just to be happy for people instead. And, you know, to kind of train myself out of that scarcity mindset and remember that somebody else getting a book deal is not taking anything away from me. You know, it's just putting more good work into the world and hopefully I would get to join them soon.
Editorial Experience and Influences
00:10:52
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was a conscious reframing.
00:10:56
Speaker
For sure, exactly. It's such a great way to put it because that's fuel that burns clean and it isn't by you even citing the getting away from the scarcity mindset. It's truly not a zero-sum game.
00:11:10
Speaker
Some people that I've had the privilege of speaking to, they see it as like, oh, if Patrick Radden Keefe is publishing this, it means, oh, that's great. That's work that I can aspire to. Then I can do that too, instead of like, oh, shit, he did that. Now I can't. And so it's that conscious reframing that it's actually abundant. There's really an opportunity there in seeing great work pave the road for you.
00:11:40
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. I just was having a conversation with somebody about this recently who has a book in the works and saw a book announced that was really similar to theirs and they were feeling weird about it and, you know, wondering, is this a bad thing? And I was like, no, you know, that's a good thing. And this is, you know, this is priming the world for your work. Now you have a comp title. You should go make friends with this person. Maybe they'll blurb you or do an event with you or whatever, you know.
00:12:07
Speaker
Identifying people who are doing work similar to yours as allies rather than competition I think makes this whole thing more enjoyable.
00:12:15
Speaker
And since you do a lot of editing too, how do you balance editing people's work and also managing their expectation that even though they're working with you, an incredibly skilled editor and writer, that you can't necessarily guarantee that their work will be published in their A or number one tier place. So how do you manage that and toggle while you're giving them the best
00:12:41
Speaker
coaching and guidance and counsel with the expectation that as good as this can be, it's still a subjective game. Yeah. I mean, I think most people get that, you know, but I do, I have a disclaimer on my website, just like, you know, just in case, you know, I'll give you my best feedback and advice, but yeah, it still is.
00:13:04
Speaker
kind of a crapshoot. It depends on what mood the editor is in the day they get your submission as much as it does on the quality of the work, you know. But I think, you know, or at least I hope that people can tell that I'm really, I'm giving them my best when I give them feedback, you know, and I'm being honest, I'm being direct, I'm being blunt and also encouraging and, you know, just helping them get their work as good as it can get. But then after that, it's up to the whims of the publishing gods.
00:13:32
Speaker
Yeah, no kidding. It's weird. It's one of those things that I've struggled with of late because if people are shelling out like, you know, a lot of money to have, you know, someone skilled to give them, you know, good guidance, good notes, good counsel and, you know, in a way like a micro NFA of having that experience, it's like,
00:13:53
Speaker
You want to be able to say like, I wish I could say that this thing will be published in McSweeney's or you will land a book agent or anything. And it's just those things are so out of your control. So it's sometimes hard to take on that money, do that work, but their ultimate goal is still, it's not guaranteed. And it's something that I struggle with that knowing that they can't, it's like, I wish I could guarantee that for you. So there's more of a payoff. Yeah.
00:14:22
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I wish that too. I wish I could guarantee book deals for all my friends who deserve them. But so much of it, you know, nothing is guaranteed in this business and so much of it is about taking that risk and doing a lot of work upfront and then just hoping, you know, so I think we're all kind of used to that, I guess.
00:14:40
Speaker
For sure, and to that point, as you're looking to crack the code of negative space, you invested in yourself when you came across Lydia Yuknovich's workshop in Portland, where you're like, okay, this is something, I'm gonna bank some money, I'm gonna book a trip, I'm gonna head out there and work with her in a cohort of other people to kind of crack that code. So maybe you can walk us through into that experience for you and how that helped you forge what would ultimately become negative space.
00:15:10
Speaker
Yeah, that was really formative and I just, I was so happy and I still, I feel so lucky to have discovered the community that she's created in Portland, you know, even though I'm across the country, I still feel really connected to that awesome space that Lydia's made. And, you know, I'm looking forward to going to another workshop as soon as they're in person again and travel is safe and all that.
00:15:35
Speaker
But yeah, I was far enough along in the process by that point when I read her book and then discovered that she led workshops also that I knew I was going to put everything I had into it. There was no question for me of whether it was worth it. When I took that workshop, I went to the Tin House Workshop, which I crowdfunded for because that was more expensive and a longer trip and all of that.
00:16:02
Speaker
scraping by freelancing and bartending. So, you know, of course it's hard and you have to balance just because something is worth the expense doesn't mean you can afford it. But I always kind of, you know, I have a hard time feeling guilty about spending money and time investing in my craft. You know, I buy too many books and I don't feel bad about it. I take workshops whenever I find one that looks exciting. I go to all the conferences, you know, that just feels like something that's really worth
00:16:32
Speaker
the time and money and effort to me. And you write about being in Lydia's workshop that she said that there are a handful of core metaphors in their life and their writing that can always return to for new meaning, symbols that reverberate deep within us as an endless well of inspiration and material. And maybe you can take us to that moment that seems like it was really a real crack of lightning for you. It was, yeah.
00:17:03
Speaker
I guess like so many moments in the process that ended up being revelatory it felt kind of distressing at first when she was saying that and I was trying to think about like okay what are my core metaphors and I was feeling like I don't have any and that I had just been working with my father's metaphors and I started I was having this little existential crisis sitting in the middle of this writing workshop like oh have I you know neglected to create my own
00:17:33
Speaker
creative identity because I've just been so focused on writing about my father's creative life and his work, realizing that those two things were not canceling each other out, but that in fact I had been forging my own creative identity through the process of writing about his work.
Using Detective Narrative in Memoir
00:17:51
Speaker
It kind of made a final piece of the puzzle kind of click together about what the project even was, you know, and helped connect the
00:18:00
Speaker
artist monograph research aspect with the memoir aspect in a more kind of holistic way than they had been connected before. And you also write over the course of the genesis of the book that you read one memoir after another. Which ones stand out to you that helped you the most in being a model for what you would write?
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, there were a few, and I kind of think about them, and they came to me at different parts of the process and helped me unlock different aspects of what I was trying to do. The first one, which was really, really formative for me, was The Night of the Gun by David Carr. And I read that pretty early in the process, and that was an early model for me of how to kind of include reporting in a journalistic approach in memoir, which I had kind of already been trying to do without really understanding what I was doing.
00:18:58
Speaker
So, seeing him do it in such a masterful way made me realize, like, okay, this really can be a book. And then later, when it started to shift and it kind of expands beyond that journalistic mode, even though that kind of still stayed at the core of it, then, obviously, Lyudinovich's Chronology of Water was big for the book itself and also for the fact that it led me to that workshop. Toward the end of the process, I read,
00:19:26
Speaker
T. Kieran Maddens, along with the Tribe of Fatherless Girls and Sophia Chalmay of Mother Winter. I read those both in the same summer when I was puzzling through structure and something about, you know, seeing the two of those next to each other and how they both handle a complicated story with unique structure and kind of invent their own style of storytelling and don't, you know, try and hem it into one
00:19:56
Speaker
Narrow idea of what a structure can be and kind of create their own structure that really shook something loose for me at the end of the process that allowed me to find the structure that negative space wanted to fit into.
00:20:09
Speaker
And what struck me about the book too was that repartorial detective sort of, you know, mode of information gathering that is sort of very much folded into it. And I really like that, how you were just really on the hunt for something. And that's kind of a theme that comes up too, of addiction too, of the hunter and the hunted and how those sort of are
00:20:36
Speaker
one in the same, especially in the especially in terms of addiction. And I just I love that element of it, too, of just you were just really on on the hunt in this in the story. And that came through nice. And it was a great sort of like journey to be on with you. Yeah, yeah, I think that I landed on that as a way to give stakes to the story for a reader. Right. Or like the the emotional stakes of figuring out my father
00:21:07
Speaker
And, you know, what made him tick and what he thought about and who he was, you know, those are inherent for me as his daughter. But I early on was coming up against, you know, how do I make a reader who never met this person care?
00:21:20
Speaker
but everybody loves the detective story. I was amazed at your capacity to probe and interview the people closest to you and the people closest to your father. I imagine it was very uncomfortable at times, but maybe you can just tell us what that experience was like interviewing those close to your father and even your mother. Yeah, it was uncomfortable at times.
00:21:49
Speaker
But it also kind of gave me a safe framework in which to have these conversations that I think would have been a lot more uncomfortable without that kind of excuse of an interview. If you just have these hard conversations just as two people talking to each other, there's so many ways you can go off the rails and become an argument or become driven by emotion. But the fact that I was
00:22:16
Speaker
Like you said, in search of something, you know, I was having these conversations with a purpose out there to get information, but that kind of allowed it to stay focused and contained in a way that I think was really useful. But yeah, there definitely were times when I was like, well, okay, what have I gotten myself into here, you know, waiting into choppy waters, talking about things that I don't really want to talk about and I don't really want to know about. Yeah.
00:22:45
Speaker
But I also, I guess, understood that the more uncomfortable I was in the conversation, the more likely it was that I was getting something really good and interesting for the story.
00:22:56
Speaker
You write about having to essentially navigate the mother-daughter context too and try to step out of that in order to gain or glean the information that you wanted. I imagine that must have just been really hard, especially as you're getting into really sensitive matters, whether it is drug use or sex.
00:23:20
Speaker
It's really uncomfortable for a child to talk to the parent about those things. It's awkward and it feels invasive and you just kind of want to put on the blinders, don't you? Yeah, yeah, definitely. And, you know, that line, of course, is blurred as much as I was approaching it as a journalist. It still is, you know, it obviously still is within the mother-daughter context, too. But I think that was one benefit of the fact that the project took so long, you know, is that we didn't dive right into the hardest stuff right away.
00:23:50
Speaker
we took our time and we had these conversations over a period of several years and so that allowed us to both kind of acclimate a little more along the way to having these very candid conversations.
00:24:03
Speaker
That's a really, really good point that you make, because it's like the scuba diving metaphor. If you come up too fast, you're going to get the bend. The fact that this was almost a 10-year project, it's like you could dive in and dive out or just take your time coming up to the surface or going below, whatever, choose your metaphor. But when you read the book and you read it over the course of three or four days, you're like, oh my god, how'd this happen? But to your point, it took 10 years, so you could
00:24:32
Speaker
you could tiptoe around things and then say like, okay, let's mentally prepare for a hard conversation. Exactly. And, you know, take breaks and, and take time away and take some time and in between to just be people would have been harder if I'd been, you know, on a tight deadline and I had to try and do this all in a year or something. I don't think it would have worked out in the same way.
00:24:54
Speaker
And so you started this book roughly 10 years ago, and that would have been roughly 10 years after your father passed away. And now it's 10 years later, 20 years removed from your dad passing away. So what have you noticed the difference between just with yourself from 10 years ago when you started this and 10 years later having finished this? I mean, just about everything. It was actually a little more than 10 years.
00:25:22
Speaker
right at the beginning of my 20s. I was just becoming an adult. I was still in college. I was, you know, I mean at this point I look back at that version of myself and I'm even more removed from that than I was from, you know, the angry teenage punk version of myself at the point where I first started the project, you know.
00:25:47
Speaker
And yeah, it's weird having so much time passed within the creation of a project because there are so many different perspectives embedded in it. And I had to kind of try to smooth them out so that it still felt like it was written by one person and not like some passages were written by a 20-year-old and some were written by a 30-year-old. So that took a lot of rewriting.
00:26:16
Speaker
But my, you know, my perspective on the story and on the characters and on myself and on what the project was and on memoir in general and myself as a writer, you know, all of that is completely different than it was when I started.
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point you're making too about trying to make it seem like it is of one writer. Even if it's the same person, you're a different writer than you were 10 years ago than you are today. And similarly, just I've been, you know, I'm in the throes of a 10 to an 11 year memoir as well. And over the course of the several rewrites, it's just like, okay, that was the 30 year old, you know, 29, 30 year old who wrote the early drafts and then the later drafts, which are competent.
00:27:03
Speaker
You know, it's by a 39 to 40 year old. It's like, there's a big gap there. I read a lot of things. I got into, I'm sorry to admit, the David Foster Wallace phase that I think every 30 year old male goes through. And I'm like, got to get that out of there. You just find that you can tell who you're imitating at a certain time at a various point in the drafting process. And you're like, oh, yeah, I got to smooth this out.
00:27:30
Speaker
For sure. Yeah, my early drafts. I mean, yeah, mentioning the cycles of the books that I read at different points. And early drafts were very much me trying to be like a 20-year-old girl version of David Carr. And then you can tell which draft I wrote right after reading Chronology of Water. But then you go back later and you're like, OK, that's me trying to try on somebody else's style. And you have to kind of synthesize and digest
00:27:59
Speaker
all the different things enough that those fingerprints aren't quite as visible, you know, and it all becomes integrated into your own style, which takes time. And I think finding, you know, we talk about voice, I think that's what that means, right, is finding the way to sound like yourself and not sound like yourself trying to sound like somebody else.
00:28:22
Speaker
For sure. At this point in your journey as a writer, do you feel like you've really settled on what is your particularly unique voice synthesized from all these influences? That's an interesting question. I mean, to an extent, yes. But I also continually try and push myself and try different things and try different styles.
00:28:50
Speaker
I think, you know, of course your voice is going to sound a little different doing different kinds of things. But I can tell at this point when I don't sound like myself, you know, which is good. I can, you know, I can go back and read a draft and I can tell that I was like trying too hard or putting something on or, you know, I don't know being overly influenced by whatever I just read. And I can catch that more quickly, I think, than I used to be able to, which I guess means
00:29:18
Speaker
five deductive reasoning that I have a clearer idea of what my actual authentic voice is. And I believe that, you know, early on people were advising you or maybe someone wanted to publish your book, but didn't want your, the imagery of your father's art in it. And that was very important for you to have that imagery as part of this book. And I think it really informs it and it packages so well together to have that.
00:29:44
Speaker
So maybe you can speak to that, the importance of having your father's art and his fingerprints in that sense all over this book from cover to cover. Yeah. I mean, that was just well-meaning advice, which I think was true. I probably could have published this a long time ago if I just made it a straightforward memoir, but that just was not the book I was interested in writing. The art was the original
00:30:14
Speaker
impetus for the project to begin with. That was where I started thinking about my father's story and the art was where I started asking questions and piecing things together and it really remained the core of the thing, you know, despite the many different iterations that the rest of the project took and the journalistic elements and then the memoir elements and finding the balance between those, you know, as much as I was going back and forth on that scale, the art was always
00:30:44
Speaker
the heart of it. And it was what the rest of the story was organized around. And so it just was never an option to me to not have it in there. And luckily, you know, stubborn enough that I was never even really tempted by that idea. It always was just it's going to be this book with the art or it's not going to be a book at all. Well, you definitely get that from your father. That's like kind of a core ethos of him. He's very stick to his guns kind of an artist.
00:31:14
Speaker
Yes, for sure.
Creative Integrity vs. Publishing Realities
00:31:16
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, I think that's part of it too, you know, the fact that I was, I always thought of this as not just my book, you know, it's my book and my father's book, it's the book of his art. So I very much had his voice in my head, you know, even more than I would normally, you know, I could see just so clearly how
00:31:35
Speaker
hurt and offended and disappointed he would be if I started this project with his art and then was like, never mind, I'm going to take the images out. What an insult. I couldn't do that. You write too. This is just the other side of that, the stubbornness that's worth unpacking is that I've tried to learn from his self-sabotage to balance the idea of writing that exists only for itself with the need to play by at least some of the rules if I wanted to build a career.
00:32:03
Speaker
So, there's that sort of other side of that coin of sticking to your guns and then playing by the rules of everybody else if you want to sustain yourself doing this. Yeah. I mean, that's something I think about a lot and it kind of, I guess, goes back to where we started this conversation with thinking about networking versus community. And, you know, I think there's so much kind of grossness attached to
00:32:28
Speaker
the buzzwords like platform and brand and all of that. And I don't like that. I am not a brand, but I do understand the value of becoming visible in the community and in the field in which you are working. And I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that consciously and thinking strategically about how to position yourself and your work and how to make
00:32:58
Speaker
the connections that will help you get your work out into the world with as much juice behind it as possible. And I think I've found a good balance and a good way for me to do that authentically, which goes back to that idea of building community rather than building a network.
00:33:18
Speaker
For sure and whenever I think of how gross brand is and I'm totally in agreement with that. It is gross in the whole platform thing. But there are ways where someone like the great Seth Godin rephrases items of that or topics of that nature where
00:33:39
Speaker
In terms of brand thinking, it's like Nike isn't in the business of hotels, but if Nike built a hotel, you would know it, and that's brand. And so you would see the swoosh and images of Steve Prefontaine and all the athletes. You'd be like, that's a Nike hotel. And so I think the body of work that you're putting together
00:34:00
Speaker
Like the body of work is the best brand there is, whether it's, you know, burn it down or, or this memoir is like, Oh, that's a, that is the Lily Danziger, you know, sort of stamp, you know, call it a call it a brand, but it's just your body of works, you know, vouching for you. Yeah, I like that way of thinking about it. And, and yeah, the, the body of work is, is the most important piece of it all. You know, I think that's something that definitely gets lost sometimes in
00:34:27
Speaker
the fixation on brand and platform and whatever is it becomes, you know, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, right? It becomes more, more of the buzz than the substance. And I think it can be easy to lose sight of why you're doing all of that to begin with, right? You're not doing all that just for the sake of retweets, right? It's, if you're trying, you're trying to become
00:34:53
Speaker
visible so that people will read your work and it's all in service of the work and therefore the work still has to come first and and yeah has to be authentic to you and I yeah I've thought a lot about you know how what I put out in the world reflects on me as a writer and that's why I stopped the kind of freelance hustle that I was in for a while of just trying to publish as much as possible and
00:35:20
Speaker
I'm trying to have my name out there constantly and get the bylines and trying to support myself by freelance writing, which means constant grind. But I realized that in doing that I was putting out a bunch of work that was not representative of me and how I want to be seen as a writer. And so I made a very conscious switch to focus on quality over quantity. You know, now I publish a lot less than I used to.
00:35:48
Speaker
but I feel really good about everything that I put out in the world.
00:35:53
Speaker
Yeah, like to that point, like you were able to take something like, you know, an essay about the Queen's Gambit and reflect it back on the toxic myth of the drug-addled artist or drug-subsidized genius. And what a toxic story that is and a toxic myth that
Themes of Resurrection and Identity
00:36:17
Speaker
is. And you were able to reflect it back on
00:36:19
Speaker
you know, on your father and your parents, how they were, you know, they were addicted and it did not serve, you know, did not serve their art and, you know, their place in the world. So it's like, there's a great example of, you know, you being able to put your stamp on something that you really believe in and reflects back on, you know, the book you wrote. Exactly. Yeah. And that, you know, it had been a while since I published a hot take about a TV show, you know, what I did.
00:36:48
Speaker
I waited until there was something that I actually had something to say, you know, not just like, oh, I should come up with an idea about whatever trending topic is at the top of the Google algorithm today.
00:37:02
Speaker
And I love the, there's a moment in the book too where, where you write that, you know, using art as a spell to raise the dead. And I love that moment too. I just, I love that turn of phrase and I love what that symbolizes and it hearkens back to the way your father would use, you know, roadkill or, you know, a dead bird and elements of feathers and skeletons to form his sculptures and all the kinds of statues or sculptures he would make.
00:37:30
Speaker
It was just a way of repurposing, a way of art to kind of reflect the passing of time and the passing of life. Was that something that was kind of always at the North Star for you in a sense over the course of this book? No, I don't think I knew, I don't think I really understood at the beginning what I was really doing in the scope of the project or
00:37:59
Speaker
or how much it was in conversation with his work. You know, that was one of the really cool and weird and kind of disorienting and exciting things to discover along the way through this process was realizing that I was not just writing about his work, but I was really in conversation with it and responding to it as an artist on my own, you know, on my own two feet, not just like reflecting back his. Yeah, that was something I didn't, I didn't really,
00:38:27
Speaker
make that connection until I was already, you know, I had already waited pretty far out into the project. But it was really, it was cool to realize and it felt like a bit of serendipity that made me feel like I was doing something right.
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah. And of course, you chronicle how you drop out of high school and you go through, you work your way through, you have a very textured teenage years where you're living with several roommates and you're a very intimate aunt, essentially, to your friend and her baby, Riley, at the time. And of course, you're working through all this and you eventually
00:39:12
Speaker
you know, get into college and then you write when you get into Columbia that you've been seduced by prestige. And I loved that notion of how you refer to the subversion of the dropping out of school and the getting into Columbia as acts of rebellion. Yeah. Because it wasn't expected of you. Exactly. Yeah. Both, you know, got to keep people on their toes.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, I, you know, looking back, you know, what might be expected was would be that you would think the dropping out of high school was the was the low point and getting into Ivy League grad school was the high point. But for me, it was the opposite when I look back, you know, I think dropping out of high school was a ballsy move that I'm like proud of myself for making. And that was authentic to what I felt and needed at the time in my life, you know, and
00:40:10
Speaker
who I was and being aware of what I needed at an age when not everybody does. And then through, you know, over the years, I kind of, I felt self-conscious about that, you know, and I felt like it was a mark against me. And I felt like I had to compensate for it. And so I went to Columbia to prove myself. And I only realized after the fact that I didn't need to prove myself to anybody. You know, I am who I am.
00:40:39
Speaker
It's fine. That ended up being a very expensive lesson. No, no, I'm in debt forever.
00:40:48
Speaker
We kind of referred to it already about the hunter and hunted, but you write that addiction is a hunter contained within the hunted, an enemy you can't run from because it lives inside you. It's, of course, something that your parents wrestled with. I think you were probably on the verge of that, especially as a teenager. Addiction can run down the DNA.
00:41:15
Speaker
How important was it for you to kind of talk about addiction in these kind of terms to maybe demystify it and maybe empathize with it? Yeah, you know, I mean, I kept coming up against societal notions of addiction, you know, and I actually had tried not to think too much about the stereotypes and the expected ideas, you know, and I tried to just find an authentic way to talk about
00:41:44
Speaker
my experience of growing up with addiction around me and, you know, my own, yeah, experience brushing up against it myself as a teenager. I kept whenever I thought too much about addiction as a topic, right, and as a social issue, I felt myself slipping into this false, cheesy voice, you know, and this advocate speak and this moralizing, which I really wanted to avoid, you know, I'm not trying to teach anybody a lesson, I'm not trying to
00:42:14
Speaker
change the conversation, you know, I just wanted to tell a true and complicated story.
Portraying Addiction Authentically
00:42:21
Speaker
Yeah, that comes across, you know, really, really, well, like, of course, it's not preacher anything, you just kind of like lay it out there that this is something that happens to people and doesn't mean people are weak, they're just, it happens and
00:42:37
Speaker
How do you live with it and dance with it and succumb to it and defeat it? It's all woven into this this thing that you've this sort of tapestry that you put together. It was like a real just great illustration of it without, you know, like you said, like moralizing the right and coming coming on from on high about the whole thing. Yeah, and you know, and again, back to the idea of needing to prove yourself, right? Like I didn't need to prove to anybody that
00:43:06
Speaker
You know, my parents had more to them than addiction. You know, I didn't need to compensate for that. I just wanted it to be a parent. Yeah. And you also write to that as, you know, the bittersweet part of this project was you probably got to know your father better as a result of this, you know, even if like, or if he were alive.
00:43:30
Speaker
you probably wouldn't know him as well as you got to know him through writing this book. And I thought that was just an interesting thing to note and how bittersweet that is. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. I've thought about that a lot, especially now that it's finally out. And it was recently in the Strand bookstore, which is a big deal for me. And I was thinking about
00:43:56
Speaker
my father a lot because he really loved that bookstore and thinking about how proud and excited he would be, except that, of course, you know, if he was here, I probably wouldn't have written this book. And I probably would be a completely different person in so many ways, but it's impossible to know, you know, and I think that's one of the, one of the most kind of complicated and hard things about grief, right, is understanding that as you
Connection to New York
00:44:25
Speaker
live with it, it becomes such a factor in the development of your identity that no matter how much you might wish for that person to still be here, it's also it's like going back in time and killing a butterfly, right? You have no idea what else about your life would change.
00:44:45
Speaker
And you've zipped across the country a bunch of times when you were growing up, but you're always a New Yorker at heart. And the book really bleeds that. And you're very proud of being a New Yorker. So I wonder how much of a city of the city is in your identity and how you are so inextricably tied to New York.
00:45:12
Speaker
Oh, so much. It's baked in, you know. And I wanted, you know, I really, I wanted it to be a very New York book, too. You know, and I questioned at certain points, you know, some places that I referenced, you know, I wondered, do I need to explain what this is? And I was like, no, you know, the people who know will know. You know, and that's, that's, I'm writing for myself. And so I'm writing for an audience who will get it.
00:45:41
Speaker
And if you don't know and you want to look up what Arlene's grocery is, you can. But yeah, it's very much a part of who I am. And I think having left and crucial parts of my childhood just made me love the city even more. It made me so aware of how much happier I am here than anywhere else. Yeah.
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah, speaking of like those, those touchstones or regional touchstones, I know what I'm writing too, it's just, you know, when I have grown up in southeastern Massachusetts and, you know, in New England in particular, in, or New England and southeastern mass in particular, it's like when I talk about, you know, ice skating on cranberry bogs or, or
00:46:31
Speaker
or had like everybody in their cupboard has like the faded 33 inning Pawtucket Red Sox game cup, like in their cupboard. Like it's just, that means nothing to a lot of people, but it means everything to the people who grew up in that area. And it's like one of those little things. It's like, Oh, okay. That is a very specific detail of the time in a place. Yeah. And I think that, you know, that makes it feel real and recognizable. And I, yeah, I wanted the people who were there.
00:47:00
Speaker
at the time to see those references and have it add that context for them and be a nod to the people who lived in the neighborhood.
Writing Tips and Online Presence
00:47:10
Speaker
As we kind of bring this to a close, I always like asking a guest for a recommendation of some kind. And I wonder what recommendation might you pull out of your hat for the listeners? I think something I've been thinking about a lot as everything becomes more and more digital is how much I value
00:47:30
Speaker
my paper notebooks. And so I think that's what I would recommend is just getting a big pack of a cheap notebook that you like, not the fancy leather bound one, but just like a stack of bound paper and trying to do some of your writing and thinking there and get away from the computer. That's the best way that I have found to not be distracted by social media is to do my first draft by hand. That's my recommendation.
00:47:57
Speaker
Fantastic. Paper notebooks, I love it. You're talking to the right guy. I have myriad paper notebooks, so. Awesome. Well, Lily, and also one more thing. Where can people find you online and get more familiar with your work so they can pick up the book and just see what you're up to? Yeah, you can find me at lilydansiger.com and also on Twitter. That's where I spend most of my time online. I'm just at Lily Dansiger.
Interview Conclusion and Reflections
00:48:27
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, the book's incredible. Congratulations on it. And thanks so much for coming on the show and talking shop and talking negative space. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me and for reading and asking good questions. Appreciate it.
00:48:52
Speaker
You ever get out of breath when you're reading a script and you're talking? I get out of breath all the time. I guess I don't know how to breathe from my diaphragm or whatever. My breath is probably stuck somewhere and it's not working. When I was at a Godsmack concert, one of the several times I've seen Godsmack and he's trying to get the crowd to sing voodoo with him, he would just be like,
00:49:15
Speaker
sing from your gut everybody fuck sing from your gut and he's and i'm just like all right i gotta sing from my gut and i'm not talking from my gut
00:49:28
Speaker
Where did this come from? I don't know. Probably because I'm wheezing somewhat over here. Hey, wasn't that a toe-tapping good time with Lindsay? Yeah, Lindsay, Jesus. With Lily. I mean, I dig it. Oh, you dig it too. Thank you, Lily, for the work, for the book, for being true to your work. Stick any of your guns.
00:49:49
Speaker
and thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan College's N.F.A.N Creative Writing and to Hippocam 2021 for the sport. And a shout out to Blunger. What a word. I'm going to keep beating that Patreon drum because that's what's going to take this show to the next level. We're on a decent level, but we're always looking for the next level. Having the show be listener supported gives you ownership. It gives you agency.
00:50:15
Speaker
helps pay writers, helps me make a better product, helps me celebrate more CNF-ers and build the community.
Brendan's Personal Reflections and Advice
00:50:23
Speaker
And it's not like you get nothing in exchange for a few bucks a month. There's all kinds of tears there. Go and window shop. Maybe come into the store and handle a few things in your hand. You might just walk away with something you really like. Patreon.com slash CNF Bob.
00:50:47
Speaker
I've been playing way too much online chess lately. Just chess.com. Real clever. I play against a beginner robot because I don't have the guts to play a human yet. It's really addicting, but it sure beats drinking myself in the blackout mode. I don't know what I'm doing. I know how the pieces move. I don't know how to do the king rook switch yet. I know that's a thing, but I don't do it. I don't know how to do it. That's it.
00:51:13
Speaker
I need to pay more attention because I can get all kinds of sloppy. And thanks to it being a beginner robot, he or she or it goes easy on me sometimes when it should take my Queen when it could. And speaking of chess, I'm sure many of you have watched the Queen's Gambit on Netflix. Great series.
00:51:32
Speaker
But I'd urge you to listen to the soundtrack on Spotify. The score by Carlos Rafael Rivera is brilliant. It's ethereal and emotive, sad and moving and intense. It just gets into my bones, man. I've been listening to it on almost a non-stop loop the past few days when I was writing this very script. I was listening to it.
00:51:56
Speaker
Helps me get into the mode. When the soundtrack comes on, it's like, alright, we're getting after it. Beautiful stuff. I reached out to Carlos's people, and he'll be on the show later in the summer. I want to talk to him about how music tells a story. And it's not non-fiction per se, but it's my show and I'll do what I want. See, I'm out of breath. God damn it. From ya gut. Solly. From ya gut.
00:52:29
Speaker
One other thing I wanted to add. So I emailed a popular producer from This American Life, not Ira, a long time ago to come on the show. I actually did email Ira's people too, but I haven't heard back. Anyway, this particular woman, she didn't want to come on the show because she's kind of private and doesn't want to do that kind of thing. And that's totally cool. I get it. But she's really nice about it.
00:52:51
Speaker
But I reached back out to her and asked a few weeks ago about some logistics about crafting narrative audio, because it's kind of what I'm doing for some other clients. And it's a little outside of my purview. I get how to do it for print, like structuring a story. And that's hard enough as is. But then you're dealing with tape. And it's kind of a different ballgame about how you curate your tape and edit your tape. I know how to massage it in print. It's very easy.
00:53:20
Speaker
in terms of putting it in the manuscript and, you know, the way you kind of massage quotes to make them read better. It's a little different with audio. And I'm self-taught. So she gave me some really great tips. And I decided to send her a Starbucks gift card, digital one, because basically we had a coffee date over email where she gave me some great pointers and took a lot of time out of her day, no doubt, to answer my questions.
00:53:46
Speaker
And I'm not saying this to my own horn. That's not what I'm getting at. But if you email someone you admire, someone who is prominent and skilled and is taking lots of their time to answer an email, give you advice, treat it like a coffee date. Throw them a $5 or $10 gift card, just what it would cost to have the coffee date. You don't have to break the bank. But freaking Hank, hold on.
00:54:24
Speaker
So my dog was freaking out because Melanie just got back from PT. Anyway, where was I? I've heard Jenny Gridders and Wu Dan Yan from the Writers Co-op podcast talk about this, and they've been guests on the show, and both of them are gonna come on soon because they have a new season of their podcast, so we're just gonna have a little shindig. And I've heard them talk about that. I think it shows an extra level, courtesy, for someone to share their time and expertise with you.
00:54:53
Speaker
I mean, give it a shot. It feels kind of good.
Final Thoughts and Farewell
00:54:55
Speaker
You know, and that's, that's gonna do it, CNFers. I'm very distracted since Hank started freaking out and, and now I'm a little off my game, but at least I'm at the end of my script and I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a bow on this sucker. So anyway, stay cool, CNFers. Stay cool forever. See ya.
00:55:41
Speaker
you