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Episode 455: Will McGrath’s Season on the Sidelines for The Believer
358 Plays7 days ago
Will McGrath often thinks he's a phony, a fake writer, a fake journalist. But he isn't. He's very much real, and his piece for The Believer, "American Boys," chronicles the season and the lives of a group of young basketball players. It harkens back to Darcy Frey's brilliant book The Last Shot.
Podcast Specific Substack: https://substack.com/@creativenonfictionpodcast
Promotional Sponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Promotions
00:00:07
Speaker
ACN Evers, the frontrunner, The Life of Steve Prefontaine is available for pre-order. Most authors are always begging for pre-orders. It's part of the game.
00:00:17
Speaker
So, you only have so much at your disposal, I'll just say please consider it. And promotional support, you're running out time. This is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28th and the 29th.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hundreds of journalists from around the world are descending on Boston University to hear from the likes of... Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, and Dan Zak. Not to mention Connie Chung as a closing keynote speaker.
00:00:49
Speaker
Listeners to this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. If you go to combeyond.bu.edu,
00:01:00
Speaker
use that code CNF15 for a little extra scratch
Creative Self-Doubt and Writing Challenges
00:01:06
Speaker
in your pocket. I'm a fake writer. you know like What am I doing? I don't know. and
00:01:22
Speaker
ah Hey, CNFers, I got this wicked series of knots under my left scapula. This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where i talk to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell.
00:01:34
Speaker
Get used to a few weeks of double features as I try and get through the backlog of interviews. Today's early drop... is Will McGrath, who wrote the amazing reported essay, American Boys, following a high school basketball team in Minnesota for a season.
00:01:50
Speaker
He wrote it for The Believer, so visit thebeliever.net to check it out. Maybe add it to your list of subscriptions. Up to you. I don't get kickbacks. It's a beautiful magazine, and it's definitely one of those feather-in-your-cap magazines to write for.
00:02:04
Speaker
Anyway, show notes of this episode more at brendanomare.com. Hey, hey, there. You can read blog posts, follow my anti-social media feed, and sign up for my flagship newsletter, Rage Against the Algorithm.
00:02:15
Speaker
Book recommendations, cool links, hot goss. It's all there. My latest issue, Anatomy of a Book Advance, was pretty popular with subscribers. I got a lot of emails back about it. ah Shed some light on the mechanics of mine for the Prefontaine book.
00:02:32
Speaker
Next one could be different. It could be less, could be more. My living situation might change. Stay tuned. Also, I can't believe I'm saying this.
00:02:44
Speaker
It's okay. It's all... It's okay. I'm experimenting with a substack specifically for the podcast.
00:02:55
Speaker
CreativeNonFictionPodcast.substack.com That will come out as a companion for each interview. Full transcripts, nearly accurate. They don't get 100% there, but even after I comb through them, they're pretty good.
00:03:08
Speaker
But not not wholly there. and a bit more sauce for free each episode. It'll be like show notes on the juice. so I might scrap it after a few months, but I like the idea of each podcast having its own newsletter.
00:03:19
Speaker
My big mistake a few months ago was taking my existing rager audience, doing that once a week for a bit to coincide with the pod, and I lost more than 5% of my list in a month's time.
00:03:35
Speaker
And I'm only now fully starting to reclaim that. So... Starting this new list and maybe that'll appeal to you if you want transcripts, the parting shot and other podcast ephemera.
00:03:48
Speaker
That's where we're at. Will McGrath.
Will McGrath's Career and Inspirations
00:03:51
Speaker
has worked as a reporter, homeless shelter caseworker, UPS truckloader, public radio producer, Burger King chicken sandwich mayo applicator, ghostwriter, ghost editor, in slightly different order.
00:04:04
Speaker
He's the author of the books Everything Lost is Found Again, Four Seasons in Lasatho. And farewell transmission notes from Hidden Spaces. This piece for the believer ran over the fall of 2024. We recorded this in November.
00:04:21
Speaker
So yeah, working our way through, man. Great conversation. I'm sure you'll love it. Parting shot on staying the course. But for now, here's me and Will Riff. Music.
00:04:41
Speaker
At what point do you kind of get the but journalism bug or at least this ah this idea of really loving you know true stories and narrative narrative nonfiction?
00:04:52
Speaker
I mean, I've been interested in writing in general for ah a long time, you know, since I was little. But i but I spent some of my first couple of jobs post-college.
00:05:08
Speaker
I worked at a homeless shelter in Arizona, was this first kind of big job. And it was, it was an amazing job. And,
00:05:19
Speaker
It was a world that I you know was not previously exposed to, ah living a very kind of like privileged, sheltered upbringing. There were just so many interesting people I would talk to on a daily basis and people that I became close with.
00:05:36
Speaker
One of the first things that wrote that was kind of in that world was about a person that like he he was an old man who i you know knew well and was like a lovely person and was murdered one night just like overnight out in the street and it like it really affected everyone in the community and i i wrote like an obituary for him and kind of like this
00:06:11
Speaker
essayistic obituary for this guy ah just because, I mean, he had no family connections that anyone knew of. there was just some instinct to kind of memorialize this person that I knew. And I'm, know, I'm sure it was as much, as much for me as it was for, you know, any kind of outward purpose. But that was kind of one of the first times I can remember doing something that was just straight nonfiction.
00:06:42
Speaker
it felt, it felt important to me in some way. So I think that kind of, got things rolling. What was the response to that? It was just published in the kind of little local homeless community newspaper.
00:06:58
Speaker
And, you know, it was people appreciated it and just feeling like here was someone being seen and acknowledged and and celebrated who probably most of the people in the, you know, the city of Phoenix, Arizona, he was entirely invisible to So I think.
00:07:20
Speaker
People in in that community, at least, really appreciated ah being recognized and and made visible. And then I later on, um I did another job that was I was working at a shelter in Ann Arbor, Michigan for a while and spent a lot of time in that role. And then ultimately, some of those stories made it into um into my second book of so, you know, I think it got started at at this Arizona job and then
00:07:56
Speaker
It just became a thing. it was like, you know, a way that I moved through those communities of feeling like there were so many fascinating, important stories here that were invisible to the kind of, you know, normal world that it, you know, it became an instinct to want to celebrate, celebrate these, these lives that were kind of on the fringes of things.
00:08:23
Speaker
ah Well, you've got a story idea and you're starting to think of how to pitch it. When do you know or when do you feel ready that you're like, okay, there's enough meat on the bone here. Now I can i feel like I can go out and try to try to sell this thing.
00:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, that is – that's a great question because – I feel like I've done it wrong most of my life. Me too. Oh my lovely God, I'm so bad at it, i i you know I don't have any formal journalism training.
00:08:56
Speaker
um So i like this world really stumbled my way into because maybe a you know a sense of ah insecurity or you know imposter syndrome in that realm, i do a ton of research and reading ahead of time to the point where I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on something.
00:09:21
Speaker
But where I say that i ah that I have done it wrong many times, I don't even know if I should say most times, have have just written written the piece you know written a draft of the piece before I've pitched places. so so I mean, so sometimes and as things have gone on a little bit more recently, I've, I've pitched ideas.
00:09:49
Speaker
It's taken me a long time to get to that place where I felt confident enough to just pitch based on an idea as opposed to just writing ah essentially a you know pretty well done draft first.
00:10:05
Speaker
I mean, I never originally saw myself as a journalist. I was you know writing things and I think significantly for my own you know, pleasure and interest.
00:10:19
Speaker
Once I had something that I felt really good about, and some of these things are kind of like earlier essay type things, then I felt I could, you know, send it out into the world.
00:10:30
Speaker
I certainly just felt much more confident if I had a thing that I had written, i think this is pretty good. I felt much more confident sending that to people than doing the traditional pitching way.
00:10:45
Speaker
unfortunate aspect of this kind of journalism is so much of it, you know, to some extent you're kind of funding yourself or, you know, you get interested in an idea and you're just,
00:10:58
Speaker
pursuing it. And then you get to a point where you think, oh, maybe maybe there's a way for me to get reimbursed for the the expense I've put into this project already. This ah one thing specifically I can think of of doing this very backwards, but I had, this is a story that i wrote for Pacific Standard Magazine, um now dearly departed, but it was a truly excellent magazine that I i can't remember when it officially started.
00:11:28
Speaker
it was about 2020 or something like that, um that they, their funding dried up, but they were kind of concerned with, you know, social issues, environmental issues.
Unique Stories and Immersion Journalism
00:11:40
Speaker
And ah did a story about ah in, in Colorado, ah kind of out in the middle of nowhere, this place that was a former military base that had become, some people had turned into essentially like a Betty Ford clinic for unhoused people.
00:12:01
Speaker
And it was just kind of like, come out to this old army base that's been refurbished and dry out and get yourself right. And then we'll help you find housing. And it, but it was like a community out in the middle of nowhere that had, you know, a couple hundred people living out there and then ah and a full-time staff.
00:12:21
Speaker
And it was, I just thought it was such an interesting kind of vision and concept Because at the time, at least it was kind of out of step with some of how um you know homelessness work and theory ah goes where you know a lot of times people now are saying get people housed first and then address the underlying issues.
00:12:43
Speaker
And that's a totally valid way to go about it. But this place was having success doing kind of the reverse. But I pitched the, I had done a ton of research on the place and been in contact with the people out there.
00:12:58
Speaker
And I had pitched the story to this magazine Pacific Standard and the editor was interested in it. And, but I didn't quite get a straight answer.
00:13:12
Speaker
And eventually I was like, I'm just going to go out there. And then, so I went out there and spent a few days living out at the place And partway part way through the my time out there, got you know i had been in back in touch with the editor and they were like, okay, yeah, go ahead. we're We're interested. But I was you know like well invested, including you know flying myself out to Colorado to take part in this project before it officially got you know green green lit. And then I thought, okay, well, I'm going to at least get my my airfare taken care of here. Yeah.
00:13:48
Speaker
But yeah, so many times I have done it backwards and wrong. And I mean, I, I'm sure that's, that's true for so many people that you're just figuring out. But there's, um, in, in your piece for the believer, I, I, I love early on where you're, you're, you wrote that, uh, I'm a lifelong basketball junkie with a mild anti-authoritarian streak.
00:14:09
Speaker
And, uh, as such, they're the, you know, the, the young men playing their, their general gameplay shot lightning bolts into my limbic system. And, And you go on to say that you approach the the coach with the idea of wanting to follow them for a season.
00:14:23
Speaker
So ah take us to that moment of how you lobby someone for this access and build that kind of trust so you can ah write a story of this nature. Yeah, so i you know I had gotten interested in this team and started you know started following them kind of casually and going to some games. And once I got to the point where I was like, i i really feel invested in this idea. And I approached the coach and she was you know fairly wary at first, reasonably.
00:14:58
Speaker
i later found out that She had had a previous experience with a journalist who wrote about the team in a way that was ultimately kind of problematic and did not go over well with the players involved. and And so she had already kind of felt burned once once before.
00:15:21
Speaker
And, you know, like, you know, she's a ah figure of trust in the community and I think felt like she had let people down. And I mean, you know you you don't know how someone's gonna write about something until it's out there.
00:15:37
Speaker
So I was coming into this situation where there was already a sense of of wariness about it. And partly i what I did was, you know like I had my first book out at that point, which is about a tiny country in Southern Africa where my wife and I had lived for a couple of years.
00:15:58
Speaker
I was like, this is some of my previous work where I wanted to talk with her. And should and so eventually we went out to lunch and I was able to kind of do more than just a quick little elevator pitch.
00:16:13
Speaker
But I talked with her, you know, for a couple hours out at lunch. of kind of saying like my the way I approach these things. So my you know, my wife is an anthropologist, which is partly what has led us to travel around about and and be, you know, in lots of different communities where we're not from originally.
00:16:35
Speaker
Anthropology has a kind of mindset of, you know, you are going into ah space, an environment, a community that is not your space.
00:16:47
Speaker
And you need to tread very carefully when you're in a situation like that. And you need to think very deeply and carefully about issues of power dynamics and about, you know,
00:17:01
Speaker
the cultural baggage you bring into any encounter and just how you move carefully through a situation like that. So i felt that my first book demonstrated that I could move thoughtfully through places like that where I was not, you know, naturally ah ah part of.
00:17:25
Speaker
And so I gave her my first book and had this long lunch with her kind of talking through what I felt were, you know, how I wanted to approach this story and the level of attention that I wanted to put into thinking about what my dynamic was as a white writer, writing about an all black team and, you know, moving through spaces that were, you know, all black spaces for the most part and Somali spaces.
00:17:54
Speaker
I had enough time ultimately to kind of show her that I had, thought through, ah you know, my, my position, my, my positionality in the world is the, they sometimes say in the anthropology field. And she was convinced enough to at least like, give me kind of a shot to, to start hanging out with the team and, you know, told, you know, make sure, made sure the the players knew what I was doing there is just like hanging out.
00:18:25
Speaker
And then over time, you know, partly with a story like this, I've spent so much time with these, with these people and in this community that eventually people come to kind of get a sense of who you are and feel like if you're a trustworthy person and what, you know, do you have some alternate agenda?
00:18:51
Speaker
Uh, so eventually it, then it became just a matter of putting in the time and, and developing, developing that trust with people. How closely related would you say, you know, this kind of immersion fly on the wall journalism is to anthropology?
00:19:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that is it's absolutely something that kind of underlies the way I think about being being a journalist, if i if I want to call myself that term. I often feel that I'm more or less a ah fake journalist, but maybe everyone feels like that. Why is why is that?
00:19:32
Speaker
I mean, i i feel like just because I i don't have... formal training in this world. And and just because, I don't know, it's I'm sure it's just like, you know, the imposter syndrome that everyone feels.
00:19:48
Speaker
if If we're going to apply this ah this journalist term to me, i definitely think of it from an anthropological point of view. You know, from an anthropological perspective, you're thinking about my way of seeing and understanding the world is not the default way of seeing and understanding the world. You know, it is true for me and maybe for some other people in my community, but you quickly just like learn to think about the absolute subjectivity with which you encounter the world.
00:20:24
Speaker
As a journalist, I think that's super important to come to any situation, working to put your own perspective and your own you know assumptions about something on the back burner and to just...
00:20:43
Speaker
you know, mainly listen and and just, you know, you approach a place on its own terms. So you, as much as you can learn about the place, the space ahead of time and and just try to listen carefully and observe without, you know, as much as possible without bringing your own understandings of, you know, how something should be to bear on that situation and just...
00:21:12
Speaker
observe and talk with people about how that space operates. And what are what are some of the tools that you rely on for for your reporting and your information gathering?
00:21:25
Speaker
i Especially for a story like this, I you know i' i was going to say that I'm an unserious person, but that that might not be the right way to phrase it.
00:21:40
Speaker
In many ways, i i'm take what I do very seriously. I think I'm not a self-serious person. i'm i'm i So in this story where I was working for a long time and you know I'm still involved with working with teenage boys, I'm kind of like, yeah, my my brain's still more or less ah the ah headspace of a 16 year old. so So I think I bring to bear a certain un-self-seriousness and a goofiness to to some of the ways that I interact with people and interact in the world.
00:22:25
Speaker
It's not performative. that is That is who I am. But I hope that it makes people um feel comfortable and realize that, you know, like I'm never going to be a writer or journalist who's, you know, trying to take someone down.
00:22:42
Speaker
therere there are There are people out there in the world who need taking down and there are good journalists who are especially attuned to that kind of thing. But that is never going to be my way of approaching writing, approaching journalism. I'm so much more interested in learning people's stories and celebrating these stories that, you know, i celebrating stories that I think should be people should be paying attention to.
00:23:14
Speaker
So I think I come to the proceedings with a sense of goofiness and joyfulness that that that hopefully the people that I'm working with and interviewing and observing feel comfortable in my – that I'm not anyone.
00:23:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it just it's just suitable. I've worked with people who are like that and suited for it and totally get off on that kind of adrenaline rush of breaking news.
00:23:42
Speaker
I'm more on the other thing. You know what? I'm just going to sit back. I'm just going to observe. and That's just ah John McFeezy and that's just kind of how I operate. And that's why I walked into him or early on. like And that's why survival of the bark canoe is like...
00:23:56
Speaker
My gold star book, I just can't get enough of that book of just like hanging out with some weirdo and going out into the woods while he builds canoes. and You know, and when you say, i mean, hanging out, this is one of those other ways that I kind of think of like the anthropological crossover is, but I've heard people describe anthropology a deep hanging out.
00:24:21
Speaker
and And that's kind of like the whole thing is like you are investing to spend time with people and to get comfortable with people and just hang out.
00:24:34
Speaker
And, you know, it's the the minutia of everyday life. It's the quotidian stuff that is actually really interesting. So that, you know, came into play a lot in this article in the most fun way of, you know, I'm I spent, you know, in and I've been now years kind of involved with this project in a bigger way. But it's pretty fun when you know, when your work is like, oh, time to go hang out at the gym with these hilarious guys and just like.
00:25:06
Speaker
talk shit and shoot shoot hoops and listen to their hilarious dumb stories and tell my own hilarious dumb stories. And, you know, it's, it's not a bad gig if you can get it.
00:25:18
Speaker
How long did it take you or or for the, for the, the people you were following to eventually almost, you just kind of blended into the background about how long did, do you feel like that took?
00:25:31
Speaker
I probably never blended into the background exactly. But I can remember, you know, I've been at a lot of practices, um you know, several weeks and, you know, you're shooting around and chit chatting with people and there would be occasional strength training workouts that, you know, we would go to this gym.
00:25:53
Speaker
And, you know, one of the one of the nights. These guys were, you know, coach was putting them through their paces and they're like running wind sprints and doing all these plyometric things.
00:26:04
Speaker
And there was like a kind of team or like a cooperative element where, you know, someone had to finish and the next person went. And then I just like hopped into the drill with with people and was, you know, scrambling around and doing all this stuff. And the guys definitely thought it was it was very funny that I just like...
00:26:25
Speaker
through my through myself. you know like you know These are people in their prime physical fitness. And i you know I still play a lot of sports and do a lot of athletic pursuits, but I'm several decades past where where they are in terms of their physical fitness.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I think they appreciated that I was game to just throw myself in and embarrass myself in terms of like, getting out hustled by these you know 17 year olds and i think at that point there was a level of just kind of like oh this guy's this guy's just gonna be hanging out and doing the same stuff we do and he's like kind of an idiot but seems seems relatively harmless How did you navigate the the research and the reporting of it, you know, the participant participatory element of jumping in the drill line and then pulling, maybe pulling someone aside to interview them or in and then curating or just like ah transcribing all that information? Like, how did you go about that?
00:27:34
Speaker
Yeah, the I mean, I... so i spent so the you know the the article covers a year you know a year's worth of one one season and i had made i'd made contact with the team before that and then spent that what you know turned out to be um somewhat tumultuous season with the team so that was 2019 and i was planning to continue the project and then covid
00:28:05
Speaker
you know, came along and very much disrupted things. um But I, you know, so I had had all these notebooks and recordings um filled.
00:28:16
Speaker
But for a little while thought, you know, the project had just I don't know, you know, COVID kind of scrambled a lot of things. And there were times where I thought it was dead. and But then I, you know, i I just stayed in touch with the team and the players and the coach.
00:28:32
Speaker
And then once things, you know, probably 2022 kind of got back involved with the team as like, you know, normal activities were kind of ramping up again.
00:28:43
Speaker
And I was, you know, kept on, you know, i at that point, I didn't. even really know what I was doing. I knew I had a lot of just like raw material, but it wasn't in in any kind of form yet.
00:28:58
Speaker
And, but I just, it was like, it was very fun to spend time in this community and with these players. So I just kind of kept hanging out and it kept accumulating information and chatting with people.
00:29:11
Speaker
the The piece finally came together where, you know, and I think I had reached in in the covet years as i probably a lot of people did ah you know i reached points where i was like what am i doing with my life like what i'm i'm a fake journalist i'm a fake writer you know like what am i doing i don't know and then at a certain point i was like all right i need to i need to do something with this project and i kind of got reinvigorated with it and and
00:29:44
Speaker
At that point, I realized there was kind of this weird, weird secret benefit by this gap in that i I had originally conceived of this thing as just like I was going to spend 2019 working with the with the team and then and was going to be something after that.
00:30:01
Speaker
And then by the time. kind of the COVID disruption had passed and I was back involved. And then I realized like, I had, you know, known these guys for years at this point. And I had, you know, seen them finish high school and were off into, you know, their own lives doing different things. And,
00:30:22
Speaker
suddenly I realized it had actually become a more interesting project, having this like real longitudinal span of information and seeing, you know, you know how things look when you're in that season. And then the perspective you get, you know, a couple of years on and,
00:30:42
Speaker
At that point, I applied for this residency at the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, in ah which is out in Alberta. And there's a very cool place out there, which I highly recommend to to other people doing similar work, that they had a ah literary journalism residency that I applied for and got to spend...
00:31:09
Speaker
two weeks, I think it was two weeks out at this gorgeous campus in the Canadian Rockies. And there was, you know, other people doing this similar residency.
00:31:20
Speaker
And you had people who were kind of like the editor that you were responsible to. During that two week period, I went, I went, you know, with all my notebooks, all my tape, everything,
00:31:32
Speaker
and And again, so this is how I do things backwards. I had not yet pitched this thing to anyone um other than this residency.
00:31:44
Speaker
And so I went out there and essentially like wrote wrote the whole piece. fairly close to how it turned out over this two week span where I just, you know, churned through all my notebooks and just like painstakingly organized things into kind of an appropriately narrative form.
00:32:07
Speaker
And it was just like one ah one of those lovely romantic moments that you hear about and and pretty rarely get where like, oh man, I've just got two weeks in this incredibly beautiful spot and i better i better make something happen with this giant pile of notes.
00:32:26
Speaker
And so, yeah, just like worked and worked and and yeah, kind of got this draft together then. Structure is so important, and you said you had all this stuff. You had a lot of things that didn't have any form. So how did you settle on the shape that of the piece ultimately that ah that it ultimately came out to be?
00:32:48
Speaker
i' i'm a big I'm a big outliner and you know i'm I'm a big structural person and organizer. i'm in my In my personal life, I'm a very tidy person and I'm like an obsessive list maker and and organizer. so So I think there's like part of my brain is wired that way.
00:33:10
Speaker
But I just, so I just, you know, spent the first, pretty much the first week thinking about the structure of this piece and, and, you know, laying it all out and then deciding, you know, this piece needed to come a little earlier.
00:33:26
Speaker
One of the most important moments in that process. And this is, this is one of those things that having, having a good editor to just bounce ideas off of. So the person that I was working with out there is a ah Canadian writer, journalist named Michael Harris.
00:33:45
Speaker
Early, you know, i had written i'd written maybe five or six pages. And at that stage, you're writing you're writing things because you know they're important.
00:33:58
Speaker
And I'm writing up scenes that were kind of disconnected. But like you're doing it, you're you know, you write something because you're like, this is important. Maybe it's not fully conscious why it is.
00:34:11
Speaker
And so I it showed him ah few pages. And he picked out this one scene and was like, oh yeah, this is this is really great. I see how this kind of works as the you know this thematic underpinning for the piece.
00:34:27
Speaker
i was like, oh yeah, I also see that, which which I definitely did intentionally. I'm glad you too see it. And then I went back and I was like, oh yeah, that is like, I wrote that scene for a reason. i didn't fully consciously know when I wrote it, like why i had written it.
00:34:53
Speaker
And then, you know, just getting that little piece of feedback helped me shape the rest of the piece and helped me kind of like tie in this theme that kind of wove through the sections. and it was it was the scene ah that comes, you know, fairly early on of this kid who's a freshman on the team who's just getting like worked over in practice and just like knocked down over and over again.
00:35:18
Speaker
and it kind of is just like this through line that comes back and then kind of comes into to wrap at the end. But But yeah, just having it one little piece of of guidance from yeah an outside reader who's a very smart reader really helped shape the project for me. And I think the best editors that I've worked with are in a way the most hands off, but have that you know, just have that kind of big picture insight for what things or I mean, not even big picture, but like pick out a ah tiny little detail and see how important it is that right when you're when you're gathering all this information,
00:36:02
Speaker
There's so much stuff that you're gathering and all of it at the time seems kind of equally important. And it and it takes a, you know, a real sharp eyed person to be like, no, no, no, that that thing that you got right there, that's that's the thing.
00:36:16
Speaker
And it's it's incredibly valuable. and When you were reporting and writing this piece over the time you spent with it, ah what what what about it just over the course of your research
Finding Joy in Writing and Overcoming Rejection
00:36:27
Speaker
and reporting? like what ah What really energized you about this this project, be it the writing or the reporting or some combination of the two?
00:36:35
Speaker
i mean, at the end of the day, find... i find I find that, you know, the writing of things to be very fun. i know, I know some, you know, sometimes people feel very agonized about that. And, you know, sometimes, sometimes you can't figure out how you're trying to do something and it kind of sucks. But I find in general writing to be really fun.
00:36:59
Speaker
the The way my projects go I, you know, sometimes he I hear about fiction writers, poets and people who, you know, say like, I'm writing every day. I'm doing a little bit of this, you know, every day I'm touching my project every day.
00:37:17
Speaker
And that is, it's not the way that I work. And sometimes I wish it was, but it's just kind of not, not the nature of my work, but one, you know, so I spend so much time accumulating you I think that that develops its own energy in a way where it's like you're building up all these details and i can kind of feel something exciting coalescing.
00:37:44
Speaker
And then when it's, you know, it's almost like this little bit of withholding this of, you know, I i need to sometimes find the time when life is changing.
00:37:55
Speaker
you know, not too busy where I can actually focus. And then when I can get to that moment where I have some space to be focused and clear headed, and I know I've got all this material kind of built up.
00:38:08
Speaker
um It's just really fun to, to, to work at, to work at, you know, putting it down the right way. So I find the, the actual process of writing very enjoyable, even though sometimes it'll be months If I'm, you know, you know, there's some semesters where I'm teaching or doing other things. And so there's there's times where i won't be actually writing anything at all for a long time.
00:38:37
Speaker
Those, of course, are the sometimes the dark times where you're like, what am I doing? i i I'm a pretend writer. But then but then when you get to those places where you can just go for it, I find it I find it very fun.
00:38:51
Speaker
But also, you know, just the reporting of this specific piece was very energizing. It's just, you know, it's just fun to be around this kind of I i I've played some some sports, you know, casually and non casually for most of my life, and I just I'm very energized in those kind of team settings when you know the off field, off court, just the banter and the kind of connections you make with people, that kind of world is just energizing to me in general. so
00:39:27
Speaker
getting to hang out with this team and these players for so long and just be in that world was very energizing and felt it just felt fun. Like this is I'm doing work at the same time, just just hanging out with these kids.
00:39:42
Speaker
And yeah that that being energizing, you know, what ah what about the work do you find that ah that you struggle with or or challenging at times? Mainly, it's it's those times of of doubt. i think you know it's I think it's just easy to you talk with other people who are writers and they have their own systems.
00:40:07
Speaker
And sometimes you just see how other people work and you're kind of like, i wish I wish I could do that. Or I wish I had i wish i had that that discipline.
00:40:18
Speaker
although i think of myself as a fairly dis disciplined person when I come to the the writing itself. But I think ultimately there's it's an easy profession to doubt yourself and and and just feel uncertain about about what you're doing. like you know there's there's I remind myself all the time, maybe maybe too frequently, you're like there's no one there's no one out there just like,
00:40:45
Speaker
dying for my next thing. You know, there' there's no one out there begging me for for this next project. I'm doing this because I care about it and because me it gives me great satisfaction.
00:40:59
Speaker
But there's... It's easy, I think, in those moments when you're like, yeah, know no one is begging for this to be in the world. And it's sometimes easy just be like, why what what am I doing?
00:41:12
Speaker
why Why am I spending so many hours doing this? But... Ultimately, it's just, I mean, it it comes back to being fun for me. So that, I mean, those, i think the main challenges for me are are those feelings of ah of doubt about about your projects.
00:41:32
Speaker
Yeah. How do you work through that eventually? Yeah. Well, I mean, one of the things that is... most energizing when I'm not in the midst of a project is I do spend a lot of time reading and that helps.
00:41:49
Speaker
I think that kind of, I, I feel consoled where if I'm at some kind of um, um I will spend a lot of time just reading for, you know, for, and mostly for pleasure, although the, you know, the overlap between pleasure and professional is, you know, often usually fairly thin.
00:42:13
Speaker
So if I'm not like deeply invested in something, i I spend a lot of time reading and I've, and it's like one of those cheats where,
00:42:24
Speaker
Like I'm, I'm spending a couple hours a today reading because I really love this book, but I'm really secretly working by spending these hours reading.
00:42:36
Speaker
I'm actually working. And then, you know, if you get, you know, if you find a book that you love, i get so inspired by, you know, ah it it helps. You got, you know, nice caffeine buzz going in the morning and I'm,
00:42:52
Speaker
way into a book and i feed off the the energy of of other people's projects, you know, be reading something and loving it. And that will make me feel like, yeah, i want to I want to do the same thing. I want to, or, you know, I want to do my own thing differently, but I find that during those lulls, during those times of doubts, I really invest in reading and and that energizes me and makes me you know excited about excited about writing the stuff.
00:43:25
Speaker
Yeah, and then the danger, and i' i think I think I've matured out of this to some extent. but I ah tend to be kind of a ah ah bitter, jealous person at times, and and ah I've gotten to the point where, yeah, I will pull i will be inspired by someone's piece and instead of being like, ah, fuck, I wish had, you know, like... well Why can't I do something like this? How did this person get this opportunity? And they're so damn young. And it just had to how have you reached a point where maybe you're not necessarily comparing yourself, but you are getting that inspiration hit that you talked about a moment ago.
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, thankfully I've, i I'm, I'm pretty good at, at not, not comparing myself against other people that I, I can't, I can't take any credit for it. I don't think I haven't necessarily done any work to get to that place. like um It's just, it's just, I think like kind of some of my internal wiring is, is,
00:44:32
Speaker
I don't, I mean, yeah, everyone, i think everyone feels, everyone in a field like this feels competitiveness to some extent, or, you know, find some ways to fuel themselves.
00:44:45
Speaker
Thankfully, I don't, I don't find it too much in that like comparative, like the, if anything, the the kind of, I don't know what to call this.
00:44:58
Speaker
The, the thing that fuels me in a slightly, um, maladaptive or negative kind of way is, you know, when, when, when you, I mean, you get so many no's in, in, in this industry, so many people say no to you. It's just like part, part of, part of life.
00:45:17
Speaker
But I do sometimes feed on that in a, you know, I think in a productive way where it's, you know, someone says no to you and you're like, I'll show you. Mm-hmm.
00:45:29
Speaker
It's like a player like getting drafted. you know like Tom Brady was the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. in the l yeah He used all that, and so many players use it as motivation. All all of you passed on me.
00:45:43
Speaker
I'm going to show you you're wrong. Yes. Yes. There is a part of, maybe I don't like to admit it too much, but there is a part of me that is wired like that where, um, yeah, that I can, I can find that motivating in a positive way without I, so far I haven't gotten too bogged down into the kind of like negative aspect of that, but it, but it can add some good fuel to the, yeah.
00:46:10
Speaker
It's like, I'll, I'll show you, you'll, you'll regret saying no. Oh, that's great. Well, one thing I love ending these conversations on is ah like getting a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. And it can just be anything that you're excited about that brings you joy, ah makes your life easier.
00:46:29
Speaker
ah so i would just extend that to you as we bring our conversation down for a landing. like this has been on my mind. I don't know why, why it came up exactly, but I'd been, you know, i I, as a reader, I, even though I, you know, exclusively write nonfiction as a reader, I am probably 95% a reader of novels and, and fiction.
00:46:55
Speaker
And I, I, first of all, I think, I think that's maybe secretly a good thing in terms of like cross pollinating your writing with, with other genres. Definitely. Yeah.
00:47:08
Speaker
Letting, letting those other forms fuel what you're, what you're doing. i mean, I read, I read pretty like plenty of magazine nonfiction as well too, but pretty much in terms of book length stuff, I just read novels for the most part.
00:47:23
Speaker
I had been, i think like the kind of novels that i gravitate to, i realized i I, really respond to funny books, you know, to, to novels that are, that are humorous.
00:47:39
Speaker
And while also being serious, I feel like, you know, every time I read about, you know, i' see some critic mentioning such and such as one of the funniest books I've ever read. And, you know, I'll go to that book and,
00:47:53
Speaker
I'd be like, this book is not funny. this This is like ah a serious, you know. New York publishing and MFA world kind of person who like put one ride joke in their book. And that, that qualifies as like being, being one of the funniest books of the year. But so I recently been compiling kind of a mental list of just the funny books that I think are like sincerely funny books ah that are also serious books.
00:48:30
Speaker
And especially kind of in the current moment, feel like it's it's good to have this this element of, you know, it's escapist, but I think these books are very engaged with the world. But it's it's nice in in darker moments to have some things to kind of brighten yourself. So I've been thinking of just really funny novels that that I love. So I had i pulled together a few of just recommendations for people who are looking
00:49:01
Speaker
for um just for something to make them laugh. Oh, this is great. that they Funny novels are hard to come by. So yeah, I'm interested these titles too. um But so from, this is one I read in the last year, ah Big Swiss by Jen Began is one of the funniest and also dirtiest books maybe I've ever read.
00:49:25
Speaker
It's huge recommendation ah for that one. Miriam Taves is a Canadian novelist and she has written about one of the, it's a book about her sister's suicide.
00:49:43
Speaker
I don't understand how someone took a topic so heavy and it is like a sincere engagement with this topic. And it is also like incredibly funny.
00:49:57
Speaker
And that I think is like a magic trick that I don't understand even remotely how to do how someone can take extreme personal tragedy from their life and make a book that is at times incredibly funny.
00:50:12
Speaker
ah But she's just a great writer in general and had a kind of semi sequel-ish book to it called Fight Night, which also is very, very funny.
00:50:24
Speaker
um I think... This is again, heavy, heavy topics. ah Paul Beatty wrote, I think the funniest book about structural American racism that a human being could possibly do called The Sellout, um which a couple years ago now, I think it won the Booker Prize.
00:50:47
Speaker
But that, I mean, it's gotta be on the funniest Booker Prize winning book ever. Booker Prize, not, you know, well known for their for their ah belly laughs.
00:50:59
Speaker
But that one is very good. And then ah pretty much anything the Irish writer Kevin Barry writes is just hilarious, incredibly profane ah things as a way that the the Irish have a special gift for.
00:51:18
Speaker
um But his most recent book is called The Heart in Winter. And another recent one, Night Boat to Tangiers, very great. And Beetlebone, he's got a whole bunch of very funny novels that are also hilariously profane books.
00:51:35
Speaker
And then my final, final recommendation, this is, you know, this is a bit older, but Charles Portis, who he's most famous for um True Grit, which is not a particularly funny book, but, you know, an engaging story.
00:51:52
Speaker
He has a few other novels that are just fantastic and hilariously weird. One called The Dog of the South and then one called Gringos. Those two are very, very strange, um very wry, funny books.
00:52:08
Speaker
So that's my that's my kind of short list books. Books that are, i think, legitimately hilarious and also serious works of literature ah for potentially for a balm in our darker times.
00:52:26
Speaker
That is what I offer up. What was the the first title from Miriam that you said? Oh, it's called All My Puny Sorrows. Puny Sorrows. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, oh that, what a great list. And I gotta I know we didn't dig into like total the bones of American boys, but I enjoyed so much, uh, reading it and I can't wait for people to head to the believer and, and check it out. Cause it's such a, such a cool piece that is like, uh, Darcy phrase, the last shot.
00:52:53
Speaker
It just echoes that it's got that same kind of, kind of pulse to it and a, and a lightness of your narration in there and your experience through it. So it's, uh, Yeah, it wass such an ah an amazing piece, and I'm i'm so glad we got the I got to read it, and we got to kind of talk a bit about it and talk about a lot of other things too, Will.
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I mean, it's been a real pleasure to be ah talking with you. and And I will say this, you you know you referenced earlier people taking inspiration from music and you mentioned the master of puppets. And this whole time, I know I technically can't hear it right now, but I've been hearing the riffs from the the podcast music.
00:53:34
Speaker
in my head this whole time. I've, you know, that, that really had me pumped up for, for this conversation to, to, to know that those riffs were going to be involved.
00:53:45
Speaker
Oh, fantastic.
Podcast Reflection and Host's Style
00:53:52
Speaker
Thanks to Will and you, the listener, for sticking with the show, sticking it out. Thanks to the Power of Narrative Conference for promotional support. We're we're luke getting down to it. too couple weeks away.
00:54:05
Speaker
Consider pre-ordering The Front Runner and signing up for that new Substack Creative Nonfiction Podcast at substack.com. I got a few notes of feedback from listeners about me thinking about but me thinking about changing elements of the show. You know making it tighter.
00:54:21
Speaker
A lot tighter. And one listener thought I was going to issue elements of craft and process and throw it out the window. And they were not happy. I never meant that.
00:54:32
Speaker
That's the strength of the show, really. I also was worried about the length of the show. And this one listener said the length is just fine. Another listener assured me just to follow my taste, keep staying the course.
00:54:45
Speaker
The length is good. So all right. I think that's probably enough evidence I need to more or less stay. keep the Keep it in cruise control. Well, that sounds I'm getting complacent with it, but you you know what I mean.
00:55:00
Speaker
You gotta just keep it going on it's on a true line. And I'm not looking to change things just to change things. I like my little asides and interjections, but not everyone's crazy about them.
00:55:12
Speaker
I stole that idea from Allie Ward of Theology's podcast. I like them as they provide context and clarity and fact-checking and occasional joke that I find funny.
00:55:23
Speaker
Also, in a podcast space where interviews are a dime a dozen, the only thing separating one from another is the host or the host personality and taste and voice and style, just like writing.
00:55:35
Speaker
If you can read something that AI generates, then and what's the point? And so sometimes I feel the interjections are a way of imbuing and injecting a bit more of my personality and style and making the interview mine and my stamp on it.
00:55:51
Speaker
In the same way that if you wrote an essay, you're putting your stamp on it. Anyway, all of this is to say and nearly 500 of these, I'm still looking for ways to improve, to get better as an interviewer, to be tighter in my questioning so I don't have to rely on the edit to cut me down.
00:56:08
Speaker
I still think 45 to 55 minutes is a nice sweet spot to hit. um But if I have someone like an Elizabeth Rush on the show and she's just this rainbow of light embodied, I'm going to let that one ride because I so enjoy her company.
00:56:22
Speaker
And some people is like pulling teeth ah to get them to talk and think at length. But when you get Bryn Jonathan Butler all wound up, you just let the man cook. All of this is to say the show isn't going to change so much as it'll continue to mature.
00:56:39
Speaker
yeah My questions, I hope, will get tighter, more open-ended. I think I do a good job of that for the most part, but can always improve. I need to be better at following up on things. Don't always follow up, but, you know, you don't want to follow up so much that the conversation stalls on one topic for 20 minutes, unless the topic is so arresting.
00:56:58
Speaker
And this is the calculus of play you play as the time unspools.
00:57:04
Speaker
All right, listen, I got a jet. I got another one of these to package today. So let's just stay wild seeing efforts. And if can't do interviews, see
00:57:31
Speaker
you