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Episode 481: Nieman Storyboard’s Mark Armstrong Believes in the Beginners’ Mindset
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"Listening to podcasts, it's like, how do I start making them? That's been my approach, essentially try and take that beginner mindset into anything and try to teach myself new skills," says Mark Armstrong.
Who do we have today? It’s Mark Armstrong! He is a producer, a writer, a singer, working at the intersection of storytelling and digital media. Does that make him intersectional? Hell, yes.
Mark is the founder of Longreads, the hashtag phenomenon back when social media was cool. Now he’s the editor of the Nieman Storyboard, which is where all us narrative journalists go to get jealous of one another. He hosts the Nieman Storyboard podcast and he’s also the co-founder of Ursa Story Company that he created with Dawnie Walton and Deesha Philyaw. Intersectional, indeed.
So Mark is a pretty rad guy, great guy. He was one of the five people in the audience for event in Seattle. I tell you, five people in a room made for 100 is … upsetting, but he was so generous to come by. We got our picture taken together. See that in the show notes
In this episode we talk about:
- Beginner’s mindset
- Trying new things just to fuck around
- The importance of a host’s curation
- Why he started the Nieman Storyboard Podcast
- And the myriad ways we as journalists can try to make a buck
It’s some nice dialogue here. A real conversation. You can learn more about Mark at markarms.com and follow him on Instagram @markarms.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Listener Interaction
00:00:01
Speaker
It gets so hot in the studio. Oh, hey, happy August, CNFers. The frontrunner strides into the dog days of summer. Be getting some nice texts and emails. Turns out you could be turning some of those texts and emails into online reviews, please. I really appreciate that.
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm not going to read them because I don't want to be driven insane. I have yet to read a single review. So I'm feeling pretty good about that. So I don't know what's out there.
Event Announcements
00:00:33
Speaker
One little thing in August, a Zoom seminar on Saturday, August 16th from 6 to 8 p.m. Online, as they say.
00:00:44
Speaker
It's a night of nonfiction with Hippocampus Magazine. And your boy is the featured author. I think I'm reading a short thing from...
00:00:55
Speaker
The front runner, some Q&A, and there's some debut creative nonfiction author readings and discussions. And like I said, I'm the feature. Holy fucking shit.
00:01:07
Speaker
Go to hippocampusmagazine.com slash events to register for it. It's a free event, but they offer other ticketed events, and you can throw in a dollar amount that you deem fit.
00:01:23
Speaker
Or zero dollars. I you mean, just show up.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Intro
00:01:27
Speaker
It should be fun. It'd be great way to spend a Saturday. you know they don't Don't get all swept up in Saturday Night Fever.
00:01:36
Speaker
Get your ass to a night of nonfiction, okay? get You get these you know compliments from people say, keep going. and you're just kind of like struggling to to keep moving and slugging ahead.
00:01:57
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, dude.
00:02:11
Speaker
I threw my back out so bad last week. I was on the floor for about two days. Still kind of hobbling around. It's no good. I need a full body reset. Like, I'm thinking just mobility.
00:02:24
Speaker
Maybe some hot yoga. Who do we have today? It's Mark Armstrong. He's the producer, the writer, the singer. Working at the intersection of storytelling in digital media.
00:02:38
Speaker
Does that make him intersectional? Hell yes. Mark is the founder of Long Reads, the hashtag phenomenon.
00:02:48
Speaker
in 2009, back when social media was cool. Now he's the editor of the Neiman Storyboard, which is where all of us narrative journalists go to get jealous
Promotions and Support
00:02:57
Speaker
of one another. Nah, I kid.
00:03:00
Speaker
I kid. He hosts the Neiman Storyboard podcast, and he's also the co-founder of Ursa Story Company that he created with Donnie Walton Indisha Philia.
00:03:14
Speaker
Or Phil-yah. Maybe it's Phil-yah. I don't know. intersectional indeed. Show notes of this episode of more at BrendanAmero.com. Hey, there. You can peruse for hot blogs and sign up for the two very important newsletters, the flagship rager, Rage Against the Algorithm, and Pitch Club over at Substack.
00:03:34
Speaker
Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. They'll never cost a dime. All I ask is for your permission because platform is currency. Both are first of the month, no spam.
00:03:48
Speaker
As far as I can tell, you can't beat them. And you can also check out patreon.com slash cnfpod to throw some dollar bills into the cnfpod coffers. You can earn some face time with me if that's your thing, if you dare.
00:04:03
Speaker
Check it out, friend. Helps keep the lights on here at CNF Pod HQ. The lights are getting dim. They are getting super, super dim. So Mark is a pretty rad guy. Great guy, actually.
00:04:16
Speaker
He was one of the five people in the audience for my event in Seattle. I tell you, five people in a room made for 100 upsetting. upetting But he was so generous to come by, it's really hard to get people out of the house. It just is.
00:04:31
Speaker
And he came out of the house. And I got to meet him. We got our picture taken together.
Episode Overview and Social Media Evolution
00:04:36
Speaker
See that in the show notes, too. In this episode, we talk about beginner's mindset, trying new things just to fuck around, the importance of a host's curation, why he started the Neiman Storyboard podcast, and myriad ways we as journalists can try to make a buck.
00:04:54
Speaker
And sometimes the shame around day jobs and stuff of that nature. It's some nice dialogue here. A real conversation. You can learn more about Mark at MarkArms.com.
00:05:07
Speaker
And follow him on Instagram at MarkArms. Got a parting shot on the book panics coming back. But now, let's just get into it. Let's do it.
00:05:19
Speaker
With Mark Armstrong. Riff.
00:05:28
Speaker
People who do this for fame are foolish. That is, it's so true. I actually would not mind just growing people's flowers for them. Go get a gelato and chill out. And I was like, I can't.
00:05:39
Speaker
This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:53
Speaker
I love that um so much of your visibility online stemmed from yeah how you started Longreads back in 2009. And it's ah you know now we're 15, 16 years from that. But it's just like, what do you yeah when you cast your gaze back to the to those days of social media and the internet and what we were consuming and how we were consuming it, yeah just you know paint that picture for us, yeah for those of us who forgot.
00:06:22
Speaker
Well, first of all, I have to tell you, congrats on, what is it, 11 years now of this podcast? A dozen. Yeah, I started 2013. It's incredible. now yeah I'm just five episodes into the Neiman Storyboard podcast. so just to ah I've always appreciated your work, but even more so now. just Oh, thank you.
00:06:41
Speaker
going Going that long is is a true accomplishment, so congrats. 2009, everything has changed so dramatically on the internet since that time. so But I think that moment in particular,
00:06:55
Speaker
When I think back on that moment, it was kind of this confluence of different events, both in my own life and with what was happening with social media and technology. I started my career in journalism as a newspaper reporter, and I had been working in digital media in New York.
00:07:08
Speaker
But Long Reads kind of came out of this specific moment in which you know we had all just gotten our iPhones, ah Twitter was taking off, the idea of a hashtag but was this novelty.
00:07:21
Speaker
And so at the time, you know, it was basically my commuter story of starting Long Reads was essentially going to work. And a lot of my work in digital media was about blogging, keep it short, about getting people, you know, a lot of it about building audience at that time was about...
00:07:36
Speaker
getting people who were checking websites from their desk at work. And so this idea that you could now consume stuff on your phone was really interesting to me. Like people are just figuring out what the iPhone was capable of.
00:07:50
Speaker
And then you had Instapaper come out Pocket, later pocket. And so for me, you know commuting by subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan for work, being on a subway that didn't have phone service at the time.
00:08:04
Speaker
So I'd start saving articles on Instapaper to find stuff to read and realizing that they were all just these aggregated blog posts. And so um the idea of long reads kind of stem from that, which is like, I want to read some ah magazine features, longer pieces.
00:08:21
Speaker
How do I find them? I had the idea of just the phrase long reads, like, oh, it's a long read. I'm going to check that out. So I had this idea to launch it as a website, probably a year before I did anything with it.
00:08:34
Speaker
So I was talking to a web developer to set up a site. It didn't really pan out, couldn't really get get anything together. And so one day I just said, you know what, I'm just gonna try it on Twitter.
00:08:45
Speaker
We'll just like put it out on Twitter and have people, we'll try out a hashtag. And so I put it out there and it just kind of immediately took off. And it was this, I think, um hitting at a right ah ah right moment in which people were hungry for it, in which um i was doing it you know within this audience on Twitter, which early Twitter was very much journalists and media people. So it was like hitting something that a lot of journalists and media people loved as well.
00:09:13
Speaker
It just kind of took off from there. a lot of people sharing it. and getting excited about it. um A lot of work on my end to kind of just do outreach with folks. Once I saw it kind of taking off, chatting with other folks, other publishers to try and get them to use the hashtag and kind of build a community from it.
00:09:31
Speaker
And um there were ah you know key moments like David Carr and some others who were early supporters of it, which helped kind of push it to a bigger a bigger visibility.
00:09:43
Speaker
So yeah, as it gains a bit of traction there, know, what happens next?
Building and Sustaining Longreads
00:09:49
Speaker
The first, the first year it was just a Twitter account and During that time, it was kind of a slow building of community. And then other people also getting involved yeah with their own projects.
00:10:04
Speaker
you know So those early years, then you had Yadavist and Longform and Byliner, if anyone remembers that. And for Longreads, for what I was doing, you know it started as just my own project. And then once it had kind of reached this point where people were getting excited about it, um decided to...
00:10:24
Speaker
take it more seriously, get some friends involved, um developer, designer, another editor. And um so we we formed it into a company, built it into a site, and then essentially ran it on nights and weekends for the next five years.
00:10:39
Speaker
um It was never my full-time job during this. So it was a lot of like figuring out how to make it work within the constraints I had with time.
00:10:50
Speaker
And so, ah you know, the initial focus was curation, featuring stuff from across the web, a mix of essays, long form journalism, both from traditional publications, but also smaller independent publications from city magazines, alt weeklies, um internet publications like The All, The Rumpus, The Hairpin.
00:11:12
Speaker
And so it kind of built into this community. And it was really exciting to see that that take off as well. these These things can be very all-consuming. Certainly, yeah what you started with, Long Reads, and then long-running podcast, is you know it's a lot of a lot of this work that is ah kind of always gnaws at you, too. and Throughout the throughout those early years and even as it was, you know, taking off to what it would ultimately become.
00:11:41
Speaker
How did you ah just maintain the kind of love and the energy for it as a maybe it started to feel more like a job? Yeah, I think the thing that helped me sustain it during those early years was really keeping some boundaries. I mean, there were forced boundaries, like there was only so much time I had to work on it.
00:12:01
Speaker
And so keeping some very specific boundaries about like what I was going to do each day related to long reads. And so was essentially like a lot of reading and a lot of you know a lot of curation of different pieces to feature on the site or on the on the Twitter account.
00:12:17
Speaker
So I think it was kind of forced boundaries that helped me sustain it. And so not really getting too far ahead of myself in terms of what what I could sustain. Like I was able to do that essentially you know for five years before we were acquired.
00:12:32
Speaker
And so like when people ask me about that, you know other entrepreneurs or startup folks, and so I think a lot about like, you know what can you do with the time you have? and um putting that to work and really understanding that, you know again, you can probably speak to this as well. It's a marathon, not a sprint kind of stuff where you know it's not about going hard and burning out. like this is when you're When you're building something on the internet, you gotta be around for a while.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, speaking speaking to that, yeah how how did you cultivate a sense of of patience with with it and with any number of projects that you've started from zero Yeah, that's
Motivation and Accountability
00:13:12
Speaker
a great question. I think a lot of that is one, whether you enjoy the work.
00:13:19
Speaker
first. I mean, essentially, like I was really into social media. I was really into Twitter at the time. i was really into reading these stories. It was a part of my workday anyway. it was a part of my commute. I was just reading these stories.
00:13:31
Speaker
And I had a process where I'd read them on the subway and then I'd you know tweet them later. And then in between, I would do some outreach, meeting with different publishers and other editors to get make them aware of the community and how they could participate and share their features there.
00:13:46
Speaker
So a lot of it was just work that I liked doing anyway. And so I think that was sustaining. Additionally, this is such a niche thing. Like there are so many others like who may not have understood what I was doing with it, or especially folks who were not in media at all.
00:14:05
Speaker
um Yeah. and And maybe, you know, hadn't quite grasped, you know, where we were going with it. But it was, you know, a lot of a lot of support and encouragement from ah the right people at different times that kind of help sustain you a little bit.
00:14:20
Speaker
um But i think I think it's hard to count on that. Like you get you get these, you know, compliments from people say, keep going. And you're just kind of like struggling to to keep moving and slogging ahead.
00:14:36
Speaker
And um I think ultimately the thing that keeps you going is just your own enjoyment of the process and your own enjoyment of the work and trying to not let external forces impact you one way or the other.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah, when when you if you ever experienced or when you experienced a lot of any any of those dark nights of the soul, you know be it in any of your you your your particular writing or ah or with long reads or anything, like ah take us to those moments of how you endure in the face of some of that doubt, maybe when you want to quit, maybe when you feel like it's not worth it.
00:15:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've struggled with this a lot over the years. I've been thinking about it a lot, both you know within my work, within you know the other things I love doing, like music. And for me, the challenge that I've had for myself is...
00:15:30
Speaker
How am I accountable to myself and the things that I want to do in my own goals versus, you know, the things that I say I will do for other people or the ways that I'm accountable to other people, whether it's like a coworker or, you know, your job and in your family and things that, you you know, you want to be there for different people. Like, what are the ways that I'm going to be accountable to myself to do the things that i told myself I wanted to do?
00:15:54
Speaker
So that is the thing that I keep coming back to right now a lot, which is like, okay, what are the steps I'm doing to be accountable to myself? How can I be a, how can I be my own boss? Yeah.
00:16:06
Speaker
And a better employee for that boss. Yeah, exactly. I get it in some of the chronic reading I do of Seth Godin and everything like he, He says, you know, as freelancers, you know, we're often the worst boss we'll ever have.
00:16:20
Speaker
Yeah. it is yeah like If we if ah and a a boss from a different line of work treated us the way we treat ourselves or like we'd leave that job. But as freelancers, you're like, oh, shit, i ah can't do that.
00:16:33
Speaker
And ah you end up just flogging yourself and staying staying with this abusive boss that you just can't escape. And I want to get a sense, too, yeah having, you know, we're we're roughly the same age. And a lot of the people I talk to on the show are kind of in yeah have been kind of in this morass for 15 or 20 years. And things have changed so much underfoot. And i think a lot of us are kind of in a mid-career, mid-life, crisis not crisis, but maybe a mid-career evaluation or a reevaluation of our
00:17:06
Speaker
where we thought we were made ah wanted to go, say, 15 or 20 years ago, and just ah where we've gone and where we're ending up. And that trajectory and has changed a lot, I think, for so many of us.
Career Reflection and Learning
00:17:20
Speaker
So just like, you know, for you, how have you been reevaluating your your place in this ecosystem? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great question too. just you know And even more prevalent in in a place like journalism where there's just, there have been so many challenges to journalists, both this environment has been challenging for journalists on so many different levels.
00:17:46
Speaker
And I think that's a question that I've been wanting to pursue in this new role with Neiman Storyboard, which is how how folks are doing the work right now under the circumstances, the realities of both politically being targeted online and then also economic, you know, with layoffs and budget cuts and things like that.
00:18:06
Speaker
um For me personally, I have, I'm definitely in the same space. Like, I feel like you and I are probably, yeah, to your point, similar ages. Did you read the Gen X ah gen x article in the New York Times about? Yeah, by Stephen Kurtz, ah who was on the show ah few years ago to talk about a kind of a a really cool essay he did for a true story, ah this little chapbook thing that creative nonfiction used to put out. But I did, yeah, I did read Stephen's story there. And it yeah, really, it hit home. Yeah.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah, i you know my own approach has always been just you know really to just try and be a student, try to come in with some humility, try understanding you know i've I've always been interested in how things are changing and evolving and finding ways to take what I've learned and apply it in new directions.
00:19:00
Speaker
So you know with everything I've started, I've essentially come in as a student. you know When I started Longreads, Again, i was trained as a journalist and I had started my career as a journalist, but I came into Longreads as a reader.
00:19:13
Speaker
ah So i didn't know i didn't know the history of literary journalism. And that was something the community taught me over time. and so um And so it became this this really wonderful community where I could learn all about it and both learn about the history and then kind of you know question it in my own ways and come up with some um ideas around how it might be evolving with the internet and social media getting involved.
Exploring New Ventures
00:19:41
Speaker
And so similarly, i did the same thing. i i left. um So Longreads was acquired in 2014 by the parent company of WordPress, which now owns Longreads and The Atavist, featured a lot on the show too.
00:19:54
Speaker
I stayed there for the next six years and then left in 2020. And then a year later, i started a podcasting company called Ursa Story Company with two authors, Donnie Walton and Deesha Filia.
00:20:05
Speaker
Again, this was coming into podcasting. And in that case, you know we started with a specific focus on fiction short stories. um Coming into both, you know essentially as a student, like to learn, i was just starting to really understand podcast production, but just really into listening to podcasts. was like, how do I start making them?
00:20:26
Speaker
I'm going start teaching myself how to make them. And um and then similarly with short stories and fiction, you know an area that I hadn't read a lot of in the past, like you know the last...
00:20:39
Speaker
10 years before that was all ah deep in the world of narrative nonfiction and long form journalism and essays. ah That's been my approach is essentially try and take that beginner mindset into anything and try to teach myself new skills.
00:20:53
Speaker
You know, it's all the way to today and the last couple years, you know, my children introduced me to TikTok. for better or for worse, you know, understanding like all these new platforms, all these new methods of storytelling and learning about how I can put them to use or what I can, what I can take away from them Yeah. In reading about, about that in your introduction to techck talk and getting back into music, it got me thinking about this idea of and taking agency and even reinvention and to stay,
00:21:29
Speaker
Relevant's the wrong word, but just stay nimble and learn learn new skills. like And and like how have you taken that ethos of agency and ah really that beginner's mindset into these subsequent projects of yours?
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah. Sari Botten, who I worked with at Longreads, she had this great quote where she's just like, ah wherever I have followed my curiosity, I've been successful. And that resonates with me too, which is like, you know, wherever you kind of put your attention and your interest and your passion, like something good will come of that.
00:22:05
Speaker
So go explore it and go figure it out and just take it one, one moment, one step, one day at a time. there Yeah. I like the sound of that. I mean, I, I'm not an audio trained guy back in the day. I was listening to a few interview podcasts and i wanted to, i wanted to be having those conversations, but no one was knocking on my door ah to to talk to me. And I was kind of, I was doing the the freelance thing and not particularly well. And I was just very lonely and of bitter and jealous and resentful of a lot of people.
00:22:44
Speaker
And it was my chance to be like, all right, well, no one's going to invite me on their stage. So I'm just going to go get out the hammer and nails and some two by fours and build my own and then and then start showing up in that way and celebrating people's work instead of being bitter about opportunities other people were getting that I wasn't.
00:23:03
Speaker
in ah And then over the course of those years, I just kind of have gotten increasingly better at the The skill of doing this. And similarly, like I'm I'm not going to bring video to the podcast, but I'm getting into the idea of producing videos and making little movies that kind of just poke fun at just being a writer and stuff like that. And it it harkens back to when I was in high school, my buddies and I, we made these comedic detective movies.
00:23:29
Speaker
You know, in the late 90s. And they were really funny. and And we just did it because it was really fun. i think in in reading one in one of your essays, it made me think of those moments that ah that I had of going back to that, what what it was like to just be a to be a kid and to bring that very youthful...
00:23:50
Speaker
sophomoric energy at times add to something just because it's fun, not because it's good for a career or brand building, but just because it it's it's just fun to do.
Creativity and Joy in Work
00:24:00
Speaker
I think we are kindred spirits. That's so cool.
00:24:03
Speaker
About your movie making past. That's exactly what we were doing. You know, in my childhood and in high school, Lego movies and just like silly parodies. And that is that that is a lot of what I've been thinking about over the last few years, which is how do you kind of recapture that kind of unbridled creativity that works?
00:24:27
Speaker
wasn't consumed by anxiety about how people were going to take it or whatever. You were just making stuff for the joy of it. And so that has been on my mind a lot. Like, how do I continue to sort of tap into that?
00:24:40
Speaker
It's funny. I talked to a lot of journalists and I think there are many of us who are like repressed theater kids who like, like were, you know, kind of torn in different directions. Do it go into like journalism or did I go in the arts or something like that?
00:24:54
Speaker
So, um and why not both? Why not why not all of that um to to to find ways? but And I think that's driven a lot of my work over the years, which is like my interest in one, finding something fun to do, working with people you know in a collaborative, creative, mutually respectful environment, and just saying like, hey, let's...
00:25:15
Speaker
Let's put on a show. Let's start a band. Let's make a podcast. And you know seeing what what comes of that and what you can learn from that. That's definitely driven a lot of my work.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, because like when when you're younger and you're just... and When you're a kid and you're... Whether you're just drawing or making stupid movies or recording stupid shit with your friends, you like, you never... Like, you're not thinking of how it's gonna be judged or received. It never had to be perfect. You were just...
00:25:46
Speaker
The act of doing was the reward. Yes. and then you And then you might have something that's kind of goofy and fun to show your friends, but that was the extent of it. Then you go out and make another one. And we lose we lose so much of that. and We've lost so much of that, especially as creative people constantly being bombarded.
00:26:05
Speaker
by such polished stuff that we never start because the early stuff is never going to measure up to so many things we're bombarded with. So we just pre-quit before we even take the take a leap.
00:26:19
Speaker
Absolutely. ah Two things that stick out to me from that. One is like part of the thing about, you know, my children introducing me to TikTok, the thing I appreciate about them being on TikTok is it wasn't like how do I monetize this?
00:26:34
Speaker
Like, there just like, oh, this is a fun place. And so I think um it was kind of coming back to that too. It's like, okay, where are the places where you can, you know, find joy on social media?
00:26:45
Speaker
Like, you know, are there still pockets of that? yeah The shrinking ice flow of joy in social media. Exactly. And then the other thing that stuck out to me is your idea is like, well,
00:26:59
Speaker
I'm waiting around to be invited to something when I could be just making my own thing and doing it. Like, you know, i'm I'm sitting around in the waiting room or whatever, you know, that was, that was definitely driving a lot of long reads in those early days too. And, you know, anything else that I've started too, which is like an impatience.
00:27:17
Speaker
Like I didn't, you know, a lot of meetings with people who were chasing trends and, you know, maybe they got it or they didn't. And the tools were all there, like to build community and get started.
00:27:30
Speaker
And so the moment I just started doing something without asking permission, like that's when you start to kind of build community or movement or momentum.
Community Building and Creative Challenges
00:27:41
Speaker
um And so that has definitely been a guiding principle for me to do. Yeah, you see it all the time. Like, yeah as you might stumble upon someone who might be at this point, say, current slice of time, more established, and it it feels like they had been there all along, like your classic 15 or 20 year overnight success.
00:28:01
Speaker
You lose sight that at some point or another, they had the agency to take a leap and they leveraged obscurity to experiment to gain some early traction.
00:28:14
Speaker
And then eventually they they stick around long enough, other people quit and they become established. You kind of forget that. and yeah a lot of A lot of us start from zero. Some people start with a certain measure of celebrity that seems to put them on a rocket ship.
00:28:30
Speaker
But so often it's just like, yeah, it's it's people just like, i want to make this thing. And then you just kind of get better and better and better at it. And it grows very slowly. but But over time, it just feels like you suddenly arrive. But it it takes it takes forever. And few people have the patience for that. And I don't blame them. But it is an endurance game.
00:28:52
Speaker
Yeah. And there's so many external factors with, with doing that work too. Um, especially when it's not paying, not covering healthcare, you know? exactly Um, and so, you know, it can take some S you know, strategic approaches as well. Like what have you learned as a new podcast host?
00:29:13
Speaker
Like what, what have you learned from your own experience in, in hosting and doing these interviews? Well, for one, and just in terms of starting, ah like consistency was big. like so like the So the first four years of the show, i just kind of did it when I wanted.
00:29:31
Speaker
And so i would I would read a book and be like, oh, let me go reach out to that author and then have her on. And then I might go few months without doing it. And then over time, like I wonder why no one's listening to this. like I wonder why it's so, you're sporadically showing up that you can't you're not reliable.
00:29:49
Speaker
ah So then ah at ah at the start very start of, and well, end of 2016 into 2017, I decided just show up every single week, ah no matter how hard that might be, and do that. And then, oh lo and behold, you know it i never had a spike, but the audience just started to creep up and up and up.
00:30:09
Speaker
But then fundamentally, of how to conduct an interview and how to ask questions. I think this was, it kind of separated me in a way because I'm very cognizant of how long-winded a lot of interviewers are and how they they'll ask a question.
00:30:27
Speaker
They'll often answer that question for their guests, thus leading the witness, so to speak. Or they'll get so off track by answering their own question that by the time they get around to actually highlighting their guests, they're asking an entirely different question.
00:30:43
Speaker
And so I always have it in mind, and this is not a good example of it, but i of just having a good shot clock. like when i' When I'm on my game, ah my my questions are usually pretty lean, pretty open-ended, and take me about 15 to 20 seconds to get it out of my mouth and onto them.
00:31:06
Speaker
So I would say it's like that those those are key fundamentals of just yeah showing up, but also having a good shot clock of how to conduct an interview and get the other person talking and not not me.
00:31:21
Speaker
I like that idea of setting up a little pitch clock next to your computer. Yeah. It's a, you know, there's always these timers running. um it's It's like jockeys in horse racing.
00:31:35
Speaker
They have an internal clock of how fast they're going. There's no clock out there on the track, but they can tell you within 10th of a second, how fast they're going on a horse and a quarter mile.
00:31:46
Speaker
You know, they just have that baked into their muscle memory. Yeah. Similarly, I know when ah if I'm getting long-winded on a question, and then in post, I can sometimes cut myself down if I did get a little bit long.
00:31:58
Speaker
um But yeah, i'm always i just it drives me nuts when when interviewers just it's drone on and on and on. It's like... We're not here to hear you. we where we downloaded this and we we we want to we want to hear the guest.
00:32:13
Speaker
But I will say on the flip side, they are here to hear you because like you are the you are the consistent, you are the guide. you are the consistent voice. like i I mean, i I definitely have come to appreciate that um with all the shows I listen to and and and your show specifically I love as well. just ah you know how ah the uniqueness that you bring to it that only you can bring to it.
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah that's a that's a good point to yeah to underscore, too. It's like certain guests, like I love Marc Maron, like a lot of people, and I will, you know if fill in the blank is making the media tour and they're going on x Y, and Z podcasts, I want to hear how Marc has metabolized that person's career and filtered his interpretation of their life through his rubric.
00:33:13
Speaker
And so I want to hear how he conducts that interview. So yeah, like to your point too, it's yeah, you don't want to, you don't want to totally like neuter yourself as the host because people are, the yeah, part of the thing is they want to hear how, yeah, how I am in the in this instance.
Podcasting and Journalism Focus
00:33:30
Speaker
conducting the interview what are the things that stuck out to me in their work and what are the threads that we can pull on that get them to maybe talk about things they might not otherwise talk about on other shows so yeah yeah that's ah a good point to underscore yeah also guest selection like there's you know the curatorial aspect of like we're getting in there's I I learned this with long reads too is like the very The early years of Longreads, I was almost semi-anonymous.
00:33:55
Speaker
like I had set it up to be this you know Red L brand, and yes you I was hiding, essentially. like yeah I wasn't comfortable showing myself on social media or being a personal brand.
00:34:10
Speaker
And so I created this to be this kind of almost mysterious brand. thing, but I think like what I chose to feature on the site was still giving people an indication of my own personal tastes anyway. So like similar to, it's like, you know, when you're choosing your guests, you're showing your bookshelf and, know, or sharing your mixtapes and playlists, like you're giving people an indication of what like your personality through who you're choosing to have on.
00:34:40
Speaker
it with ah So how did how did the the the podcast for Neiman come to be? yeah i've listened to I listened to the first one. I listened to Kim because Kim's a good friend.
00:34:52
Speaker
did it come to pass? Yeah. come to pass Yeah, so Neiman Storyboard, I kind of have a long history with Neiman Storyboard. They were the very first site that ever wrote about long reads. Andrea Pitzer was editor back then in 2009. So I had followed them in the years since, and um many great editors who've been there over the years, Andrea Pitzer, Kari Howard, Paige Williams, Jackie Banaszczynski, they were looking for a new editor,
00:35:21
Speaker
and so i applied for the role. It felt like a good um opportunity to kind of mix all of my interests across all of the many projects I've worked on over the years from Longreads to URSA.
00:35:34
Speaker
And my pitch to them is essentially like I wanted to do a podcast um for Neiman Storyboard because I really thought it was important in this specific moment too, that, you know, that we hear from journalists in their own words with their own voices. um I'd be, I'd become a big fan of podcasts, big fan of your podcast.
00:35:53
Speaker
And, you know, I just think there's overall like a depth of connection and an intimacy that comes from these like in-depth conversations that, is unmatched. And so I wanted to you know do something like that, essentially. So yeah we're just a handful of episodes in, but it's just been a wonderful experience so far. Erica Hayasaki was our first guest, Kim Cross, who's amazing.
00:36:18
Speaker
And I think outside of like my Longreads experience, like so Longreads was a lot of ah introduction into narrative nonfiction and essays. And URSA has been a lot in the realm of short stories, short fiction.
00:36:33
Speaker
And so with Storyboard, i'm I'm kind of eager to explore storytelling in a lot of different forms and genres and formats, basically. So not just like... classic narrative nonfiction, but also podcasting, audio storytelling, and all the ways that that takes shape, social media, documentary, filmmaking, things like that. So right now I'm kind of just like looking for a broad mix of different um journalists and artists who tell stories in all of these different ways. the one There's one in particular with um Pulitzer Prize winner, Mary Schmeich. She was a former columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
00:37:11
Speaker
ah for 29 years. And she had just recently moved into podcasting and released a podcast with some former Chicago Tribune colleagues called Division Street Revisited, which was kind of a um looking at Studs Terkel's oral history book, Division Street America, and revisiting you know some of the the people's lives who were featured in that book.
00:37:32
Speaker
um But she was a really inspiring conversation because again, you know someone who has taken her work across a lot of different genres and forms. So not only was she a reporter and a columnist for the Tribune for many years, but she goes into podcasts. She also wrote the Brenda Starr comic strip for many years.
00:37:51
Speaker
And one of her columns was ah back in the late nineties was um a fake graduation speech that led with Wear Sunscreen, which became the worldwide ah hit that Baz Luhrmann had put music to. yeah So she's had this amazing career across like art and journalism. And so that was like, again, she was like a Metro columnist. So like, I don't know if her word count would have fallen on my radar back in the early Longreads days. You know, there was kind of like a very specific like boundary
00:38:24
Speaker
artificial boundary had been created just because I had called it long reads, which, which didn't allow me to explore storytelling in all of these different shapes and forms. So it's been a lot of fun to kind of just really look at all the different ways that these stories take shape.
00:38:40
Speaker
You know, when you're having someone just cause it's a recent episode with say Kim's coming on, like what does your preparation look like as you're getting ready for an interview like that? Yeah, I really want to focus like with storyboard. It is very much craft focus, like on the craft of, you know, ah reporting and writing. And so I um want to dig into their archive of work.
00:39:03
Speaker
And i also i also want to lead with the work. And, i and you know, least in the early days, I've been really focusing on, you know, finding one story that we can break down and get almost to like really nerd out at the sentence level.
00:39:18
Speaker
yeah about different stuff. So like Kim reads a passage from this, um, uh, really, amazing feature. She wrote for bicycling magazine called the alchemists, um, about the women who led a kind of a revolution in cycling in Afghanistan.
00:39:32
Speaker
And, um, so she reads a passage from it and we talked through how she actually reconstructed the opening scene in which this, um, cyclist Ray Hanna is kind of making her final ride before she evacuates before the Taliban take over.
00:39:46
Speaker
So, um, So that's kind of my approach right now. But I think, you know, depending on the guest, it will be, um it it may vary and we'll, you know, give each give ourselves permission to experiment a little bit too. But what about you? what How much are you reading and consuming before...
00:40:07
Speaker
Yeah, quite a bit. well If it's a book, you know i read i read every book cover to cover, ah no matter what. It's like kind of the table stakes I have for myself. like no matter Even if we only talk about it, end up talking about it for 10 or 15 minutes in the whole conversation.
00:40:23
Speaker
I always and read the whole thing. I mark the hell out of the book. Then I tend to type up notes and talking points on a Google Doc that I have like on my main monitor over here. basically what I'm doing is i also, I liken a lot of these conversations to a quarterback reading a defense and it's like, you know, what I snapped the ball and then I'm seeing what they do with it and wherever their direction they're going. So then I'm like, okay, and now I know, well, okay, we can go in this way. Cause there's a thread over here. They're going towards i'm like, okay, I've got some notes on that that I can pull on.
00:40:58
Speaker
And so it's kind of feeling the, the field like that. Um, So i try to I try to find a lot of other interviews that they've done, and they might have a really good anecdote that's like good to expand on.
00:41:11
Speaker
So I'll just paste everything into a document, and I'll just have a bunch of ah bunch of shit over here that I tend to tend to pull on. If it's journalist with yeah a good a good body of work, I'll just read maybe two or three of their most popular stories and and enough to get a sense of what they're attracted to.
00:41:32
Speaker
But yeah, so yeah, my lot of prep, will I'll just dump it into that that file and and know I'll read it read it through a few times. But my God, sometimes for all that preparation and some other stock questions that I like to ask about you know craft and organization and research.
00:41:50
Speaker
yeah I'm often at the mercy of what what they're talking about. And then I'm i'm just like, okay, they're going down this way. They said something cool. I always have a notebook down here. I'm like, okay, put a pin in that. Let's come back to that and maybe just dig that hole a little deeper.
00:42:06
Speaker
um But if we're getting too far in the weeds, you know I'll just jump to something else yeah so it doesn't totally derail. um So yeah, it's it's pretty fluid i like that. But I like to have enough banked research where...
00:42:20
Speaker
I'm honoring the the arc of their career to date with things they've done. and we can talk about that stuff. um And then it's just feeling feeling the the flow of the conversation.
00:42:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. One other thing that I'm thinking about a lot with Neiman Storyboard is not just how they're doing the work, but, you know, you know we talked about how difficult it is for journalists right now. So I think I want to approach it in a way of understanding their work in a way that is ah realistic in terms of what the industry allows right now, like how, how you make it work within the conditions that journalists have to work in.
00:43:04
Speaker
So yeah not just like assuming that, you know, everyone can be a full-time staffer with endless, money and resources and let's talk about the craft of how they did it, but like how to make journalism work if you are freelance, if it is not your day job.
00:43:22
Speaker
Like I think, I think those are important questions. Like at the end of it, I still want to focus on like the things that journalists control in their daily work, which is the craft, which is the reporting and writing.
00:43:34
Speaker
But I do want to help set some ah just present a realistic picture of what it's like to practice journalism.
00:43:44
Speaker
um yeah i had this conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago where they asked me a question about you know saying how I felt about being a journalist essentially. and I was kind of taken aback because I essentially said, I don't know if I consider myself a journalist right now so much as a person who practices journalism because i have I've worked inside and outside of journalism Multiple times at multiple points in my career.
00:44:14
Speaker
I've always worried about this idea of journalism or to be a journalist is kind of this priesthood that, yeah you know, people saying I've had to leave journalism. Like...
00:44:24
Speaker
You know, people, people don't say they had to leave marketing. Like, yeah, like, and the realistic, you know, the, the, the realistic kind of situation that journalists are facing is it may not be the full-time work. It may be ah side hustle. It may be a side project. And so like, I want to,
00:44:46
Speaker
I want to challenge the idea that you either have to be a journalist full time or not at all.
Identity and Challenges in Journalism
00:44:55
Speaker
Like, I think there's a lot of room for people like you are practicing journalism in your work, like you, and you've done it for many years. And so like, I, I'm really interested in that question, like how we define ourselves too.
00:45:07
Speaker
that That's really well put. And today's episode that ran with Maggie Messit, so episode 468 for whenever this eventually runs, ah ah we could just kind of talk about that because she's an instructor and any writing in long-form immersion journalism she does, the stuff that we wish we could actually do and make a living doing, it's like...
00:45:31
Speaker
It's in the cracks of everything else. And you you make time for it, you know, through be it caretaking and day job.
00:45:42
Speaker
And then, all right, but we, you know, we're deeply in love with narrative journalism. So we're going to. Find a way to make it work in the same way a short story writer and I've kind of equated it to being like a short story writer like no one like no one in their right minds like I'm gonna make a living writing short stories It's just like you do it because it's a craft and you love it and you You find a way to make it work among the other work that you're not tweeting about and Having that degree of transparency with other people like, yeah, I have all this mercenary work over here that helps subsidize the stuff that I actually do put on Instagram that makes it look like that's all I do.
00:46:20
Speaker
and And so having those conversations is really, really valuable. So like, oh, I don't feel so shitty that I have like this copywriting gig over here that actually pays pretty well. um But this 5,000 word feature I wrote over here, which took me two years to write and report,
00:46:35
Speaker
it compar can you know comparatively doesn't pay at all, but it nourishes the soul and is like the kind of work that you're really, really proud about. Yeah. of yeah i yeah you know um Yeah, I think there's a ah lot of guilt and shame for people who've worked in journalism and the industry cannot make it work for them in terms of yeah a living wage or a sustainable career or something that doesn't burn you out after after a certain period of time. So I think those are all important conversations to have for sure.
00:47:08
Speaker
Yeah, I love pulling on, and i yeah I love that you just brought up the word shame, too, because i brought up that with Maggie. it was just like there is this this shame involved that, like, oh, this thing I went to college for grad school for is why isn't this thing – like, you go to law school and – You become a lawyer and you make a decent salary perhaps and then you do the similar thing by going, ah you know, studying journalism at school and then it's this thing that can't sustain you. Like, but I invested all this education in this and then I have another day job over here.
00:47:41
Speaker
Maybe it's in retail. Maybe it's in a restaurant and it's like you feel, I'll never forget, I was stocking produce in 2016 at a Whole Foods in Princeton, New Jersey.
00:47:55
Speaker
And i ran into, so I'd already had a ah book come out in 2011. And I ran into someone who I knew who like, you know had bought the book and was ah was a friend and I hadn't seen him in years.
00:48:11
Speaker
And then I, yeah, I'm pushing this produce cart and stocking things. And I see this guy and I remember feeling so embarrassed. I was like, here I was, you know, published author, blah, blah. And here i hear I'm like stalking apples and just like feeling like so sheepish, like, oh my God, like what happened? I could see it in his eyes. Like what happened to you? Why are you in the state to be stalking produce at a Whole Foods when you're like supposed to be this author and this journalist? And point being, it's, I understand the shame and it's, I think, a ah service that we can provide to people
00:48:48
Speaker
help dispel some of that shame for a lot of people who have these other jobs that subsidize the work that we wish supported us, but made it but ultimately most likely doesn't.
00:48:59
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. I always go back to that story of um Philip Glass ah doing dishwasher repair, right? As his like best work was coming out. He's trying to go the Beatles house they like, you're Philip Glass? Yeah, yeah.
00:49:13
Speaker
Now where's the dishwasher? Show me your dishwasher. Yeah. Yeah. it's so yeah in it And ah so much of the the the shame just got ratcheted up to a whole new level with with social media and the way other people were publicly interfacing all this amazing work, but never talking about the stuff behind the scenes or yes the privilege they might benefit from, from like yeah a spouse with health insurance and a day job and All that stuff. And the more we talk about it, the more I think we can set people's minds at ease and then they can get back to work doing the things. Now it's like, OK, I understand that.
00:49:53
Speaker
Brendan has a breadwinning wife with health insurance that they can pretty much live off of. So, oh, now I understand why he has maybe a little more leash to go from project to project or to sustain a podcast um because yeah he's benefiting from some privilege that I don't have. And so the more I talk about that, I'm like, all right, hopefully you understand and that other people are benefiting from things that they might not be talking about.
00:50:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And that, i mean I mean, this is all community building and connection and like the thing that journalism does
Media Literacy and Book Proposals
00:50:27
Speaker
so well. So it's like the irony is that journalism is needed now more than ever. Journalists are needed now more than ever.
00:50:34
Speaker
So um something I've been talking about on my TikTok, actually, i just said that out loud, something I've been talking about, um is like, I think there is a real disconnect in that, like in the, like that TikTok world is like, do they do many people even know what journalists do, how it works?
00:50:55
Speaker
Like there's a lot of media literacy that I think like is worth tackling, um, across social media as well. So that's another area of interest for me going forward, both of the podcast and just my work generally.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah. And, i you know, we talked about the the shame idea and that's like ah a thread that through, your you know, your new podcast to be able to peel those layers back. You know, what are some other you know visions that you have for the podcast and conversations you're eager to have?
00:51:25
Speaker
Yeah, so we talked about Mary Kim Cross. Erica Hayasaki was the very first episode, and she she's fantastic. She's written a ton of long-form features for many publications, Wired, The Guardian, Atlantic.
00:51:40
Speaker
I liked her... approach to, we talked a lot about trauma informed reporting, essentially, like, I think she was, she's questioning a lot of things that I'm questioning about, like, you know, how journalism works, and how we interact with our subjects and how we build trust and how we give them agency. So there's a lot of stuff that I've learned from her from that episode around. Yeah,
00:52:05
Speaker
um to my point, trauma-informed reporting around, she calls it you know telling a story versus taking a story. Oh, that's really well put. Yeah. And um she was, at the time at the time of our conversation, it was you know after the fires in LA and she's based in Orange County. So like she was really kind of grappling with the the questions about you know, who should be going in there to tell those stories. Like, um you know, the questions about about parachuting into a place like that.
00:52:34
Speaker
We've also got some great conversations coming up. um I'm not the only one doing interviews for some of these two. So like the next one coming up, which may be out by the time this comes out, is Christina Tapper, an old colleague of mine.
00:52:47
Speaker
ah She interviews Akiba Solomon from The Marshall Project. who had put together this thing called the Language Project, which is about essentially how journalists write about incarceration and the language we use to talk about people who are incarcerated.
00:53:03
Speaker
So that's a great episode. And then I spoke with Franklin Leonard, founder of The Blacklist, about um about storytelling in Hollywood, journalists getting into Hollywood, the whole concept of based on a true story and like the power that holds.
00:53:20
Speaker
And kind of his his you know basic... Premise being like, you know, IP is not just Marvel movies. IP is real true stories as well from from these names. You know, Oppenheimer is IP, that kind of thing. So a really great conversation with him, too. So it kind of like hitting at a lot of different questions and angles across ah cross nonfiction storytelling.
00:53:45
Speaker
Oh, that's cool, Mark. Very nice. Well, I want to be mindful of your time. And as I think you know, like I love bringing these conversations down for a landing by just asking the guests, you in this case, for just a fun recommendation for the listeners, something that's bringing you joy that you want to share with them. So i had to extend that to you, Mark.
00:54:01
Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay. i'm going to think about this for a second. Now this recommendation but should be something not from something that we've produced, right? It could be any, it could be any, like something you're, you're proud of something you're happy about.
00:54:13
Speaker
ah i I sometimes preface people, like a lot of people recommend books naturally. lot of writers are just reading cool things. um But I always say like, Hey, if there's a brand of coffee, a brand of socks or like a cool fanny pack,
00:54:26
Speaker
you like or you know ah in the case of you like picking up the guitar again and going to open mics uh some people just recommend walks or going for hikes uh yeah it's so so it could be it could be anything of that regard it doesn't even it doesn't have to be writing related or reporting related it's just something that's like ah this is kind of kind of cool like a like a warm bath or something okay okay I love that okay so my recommendation for everyone is to Consider taking voice lessons.
00:54:58
Speaker
If you have never taken, if you never considered yourself a singer, i started taking voice lessons a couple, about a year and a half ago from this voice coach I found on TikTok, basically.
00:55:09
Speaker
And i I had, you know, started singing basically in college and it was, you know, my first band I was in was like a Led Zeppelin cover band. And then you know played in a bunch of loud hard rock bands in New York in my 20s. But you know essentially I was yelling.
00:55:26
Speaker
I was not really singing. And I had never really learned the actual technique and how to sing. So you know very belatedly, was like, I, as part of, you know, coming back into music, was like, I'm going to take voice lessons and really understand like how this instrument works. And it's just been ah really amazing experience. And, and I'm recommending it to everyone because I think like, even if you just want to get a little better at karaoke, I think, um I think you can learn a lot about yourself when you kind of like think
00:55:59
Speaker
one singing I think is therapeutic. And then two, I think you can learn a lot about yourself as you kind of explore like how your voice works and placement and breath, ah breath work. So that's going to be my recommendation.
00:56:14
Speaker
Maybe everybody go, go try one if you haven't done it before, just, just to see what it's like. Nice. Has it helped how you speak and speak on mic for stuff like this?
00:56:27
Speaker
I think it could. um
00:56:32
Speaker
I think the hard thing, what I'm learning is it seems like the hard thing with guys, guys are really deep in their chest voice, right? So like, um and so I think it's funny. There's like these Ariana Grande clips where she's talking in a higher register because she's like changing the placement of her voice.
00:56:51
Speaker
And people so people like joke about it on TikTok and stuff. and them and And now I'm like, oh, I get that. I get how it works now. Like why she was doing that. And um so I think theoretically it could be useful for your everyday speaking voice. It hasn't really applied to my speaking voice yet because I'm just, there's also undoing a lot of years of bad habits that for yeah back to our Gen X age.
00:57:16
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and awesome, Mark. Well, they thank you for carving out the time for doing this. I'm so glad we got to get on mic and do this. And I'd like to think that this is the first of several conversations we'll have, ah ah be it on mic or maybe just in person, since we're both in the Pacific Northwest these days.
00:57:32
Speaker
Absolutely. Thank you again for having me. This has been great. Yes.
00:57:41
Speaker
Pretty great, right? That was nice. Mark fucking Armstrong. Nice time to show up to my Seattle event. I mean, that says a lot. It says a lot if people leave their house and go to a bookstore and attend a sparsely attendanced event and ask questions and genuinely look like they had a good time, even though it's kind of embarrassing for for me and for the generous Maggie Mertens that we couldn't pack the joints.
00:58:12
Speaker
In any case, sign that stock there. So can't send that shit back. Man, for cool jams and all the news, be sure you're subscribed to the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter and Pitch Club.
00:58:22
Speaker
Those are two separate ones. And you can follow the show on Instagram at Creative Non-Fiction Podcast. Yeah, so the book panics, man.
00:58:33
Speaker
They're back. Yeah. Why? How? I'll tell you why and how. I'm in the throes of the next book proposal, which thankfully doesn't have to be nearly as robust as the frontrunner was.
00:58:46
Speaker
That said, can't skimp. Can't cut corners. Don't do that shit, man. i submitted a draft of a little more than 2,000 words to my agent.
00:58:58
Speaker
which was like mini proposals. I had had an overview. I had notes on sourcing. I had a few comp titles. It had made how I see the arc playing out.
00:59:09
Speaker
No sample chapters. I threw in some photos in there that I got from some sources. So it's ah it's a cool, tight little package. So the process is starting to feel a bit more real.
00:59:20
Speaker
Though not secured quite yet. No guarantee. I mean, I hope it'll be secured, you know? and want to keep I want to keep this momentum going. Good chance I won't hear back from my agent for a few weeks.
00:59:33
Speaker
That's just the nature of our relationship. But I learned from the last one, and the last time we went through this, that I mustn't wait for her feedback before I keep going.
00:59:43
Speaker
I've got to proceed
00:59:48
Speaker
Got to keep reporting as if it's a done deal. I just wanted to get something in her hands, you know, just to get some momentum and be like, okay, here's what we can start with. yeah I'm pretty well sourced up right now, all things considered.
01:00:02
Speaker
Last time, I wasted so much time, like weeks at a time, for the Prefontaine proposal between feedback and And more research in sourcing. Like I was, you know, I've said this before, but I think it cost me like six months, like six months that I mourn to this day for the Prefontaine book.
01:00:24
Speaker
So while I await the brutal feedback that will no doubt come my way for this mini proposal, I'm going to keep making calls, keep building out the sources. I'd like to speak with 10 more people by the time she gets back to me and back in touch with me about this.
01:00:39
Speaker
You know, they'll bring my catalog of sources and numbers into the 20s. and And I've barely gotten started. I could also split my time between getting some articles cataloged as well.
01:00:51
Speaker
Fact is, like, I would submit the, you know, a draft of the proposal and I would just wait. yeah I've talked about this before that i I wasted a lot of time just not wanting to do too much work when it wasn't a guarantee. you know It's that fine line of how much pre-reporting, how much effort do you put into query or a pitch knowing that someone might say no.
01:01:17
Speaker
in the very likely event that they'll say no. And you don't want to have wasted so much time on just unpaid labor. But the fact of the matter is, the more effort you put into a pitch or proposal, the more likely it'll sell. You just have to really believe in the story, and I believe in this one.
01:01:34
Speaker
truly his point being you just need to be this perpetual motion machine I see this next book having upwards of a thousand sources and by source I mean like yeah actual people sources now I'm not talking about the articles which will number in the thousands as well you know I or at least I just think it's going to get close to a thousand because of the scope of the subject and At some point, enough will be enough.
01:01:57
Speaker
But biography often is a numbers game. Quantity tends to lead to quality. And when you see interviews start, when they start to flag, you're like, okay, I probably have enough. But I don't have a major anniversary deadline to hit.
01:02:11
Speaker
That said, i don't I don't want to spend more than three to four years on a book. like After that much time, I think I'd run the risk of self-harm. In the waiting, you just got to stay in motion. You got to keep moving forward with the project.
01:02:26
Speaker
Building that book of sources is vital. If I can come back to my agent after the revisions and say I've got another 10 to 15 interviews done, that'll be huge. For someone like me who isn't a famous sports writer, who's not plugged into a major sport, proving my sourcing is key.
01:02:46
Speaker
Someone like me needs 10 times more sources than someone with a greater reputation and a greater body of work. It's just the nature of the beast. When you're not a name, it's like you got to do 10 times the work.
01:03:00
Speaker
It's math. It's science.
Effort and Anxiety in Projects
01:03:03
Speaker
This next book is a big jump in class too, so to speak. And I don't work for a major news outlet or a magazine. So I come in as kind of a jabroni.
01:03:12
Speaker
I come in like the mayor of Duncan talking about. There's a lot going on, you know. I mean, we all have a lot going on. You got a lot going on, too. Lots of big-ass books to read have been coming in for the podcast. And, like, so little bandwidth. Just looking over at the podcast shelf right now, Black AF History, Only God Can Judge Me, and American Kings.
01:03:35
Speaker
Those are three books. And they're all north of, they're all about 400 pages, which is a lot of reading. That's a lot.
01:03:46
Speaker
And I am like, so I'm a slow ass reader. And I know a lot of people say like, oh, I read kind of slow. I'm like, i am I am a slow reader. Podcast seems to somehow be taking me more time, which is fine.
01:03:57
Speaker
But it's like, it doesn't pay, right? Like imagine spending 20 hours a week on something that really doesn't pay out that time, you know? It's fine. i'm not I'm not complaining. And I have a gracious cohort over the Patreon crew that least, you know, restore some of the, get some dollars into the into the kitty.
01:04:15
Speaker
And I realize that as long as you remain a subscriber, yes, I'm talking to you, I can leverage a growing platform into book contracts or speaking, which grows the platform even more, which makes me more attractive to publishers.
01:04:28
Speaker
Dude, it's all about platforming. I don't just mean social media, that's a a wing of it, but because that'll drive you nuts if that's where you put all your energy. But if you're not cultivating your platform, you're dying.
01:04:40
Speaker
Sad, but true. Hard truth, especially in the nonfiction space. The best time to start building a platform was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.
01:04:51
Speaker
It's a lesser known Chinese proverb. So the book panics, like I see teased earlier, they start to come back in full force. like The last few nights, as I'm submitting this proposal, so the thing is starting to coalesce in a way. 1.30, 2.30 sure enough.
01:05:08
Speaker
waking up practically bolt upright i would bolt upright if my back wasn't so fucked up it's like can you find new material can you find the arc where's the narrative will the central figures run interference will you even be able to secure a contract again you know that that is very real like i i need a name from for my book panics So I can just say, hey, dipshit, leave me alone.
01:05:36
Speaker
Go back to sleep. Go go to your hidey hole. i need to go away. So dipshit could be one. Just call him dipshit. Or should it be the mind flayer? Vecna? Going Stranger your Things? Smeagol?
01:05:48
Speaker
Balrog? I don't know. Maybe I'll put up a poll on Spotify in the Spotify feed for this episode. or even the newsletter, if that's something I can do. We'll take a poll.
01:05:59
Speaker
What should I name the book panics? Because then I can just say, get the fuck out of here, Warren. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview.
01:06:11
Speaker
See ya, dipshit.