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Episode 181: Amy Fish — Starting Late, Dealing with Rejections, and How to Get Someone to Clean Up After Their Dog
120 Plays5 years ago
Amy Fish, author of I Wanted Fries With That, joins me to talk about her writing and coming to the genre later in life.
Thanks to Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing for the support.
This podcast is also brought to you by my monthly newsletter. Head to brendanomeara.com to sign up.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, man.
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Transcript
The Creative Writing Process
00:00:00
Speaker
I just think to myself, I'm gonna throw up on this page. I try to throw up on the page until I get something that works.
00:00:13
Speaker
Amy Fisher's here, bruh.
Introducing Amy Fish and Her Book
00:00:15
Speaker
Author of I Wanted Fries with That, how to ask for what you want and get what you need from New World Library. Hey, this is CNF, the greatest podcast in the world.
Podcast and Sponsor Introduction
00:00:28
Speaker
Let's hear from our flagship sponsor. Discover your story with Bay Path University's fully online MFA and creative nonfiction writing.
00:00:38
Speaker
You know, this recent graduate, Christine Brooks, recalls her experience with Bay Paths MFA faculty as being, quote, filled with positive reinforcement and commitment. They have true passion and love for their work. It shines through with every comment, every edit, and every reading
Bay Path University MFA Program Promotion
00:00:53
Speaker
assignment. The instructors are available to answer questions big and small, and it is obvious that their years of experience as writers and teachers have made it faculty that I doubt can be beat anywhere, unquote.
00:01:05
Speaker
Don't just take her word for it, man. Apply now at pay path.edu slash MFA classes begin January 21st. You know, what also sponsors this podcast, my monthly newsletter. This is going to be real important heading into 2020. So you need to head.
00:01:26
Speaker
He'd, can't even read my own house ad.
Newsletter Promotion and Personal Story
00:01:29
Speaker
He'd this house ad, and subscribe to the newsletter at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, hey, once a month, it might be weekly. Who knows, no spam, can't beat it.
00:01:40
Speaker
Imagine this being like the movie, this is Spinal Tap, okay? And that turn it up to 11 scene, that just idiotic, hilarious scene. I was feeling pretty manic after a killer session in the weight room today, and I was thinking how this CNFing train doesn't stop. It keeps moving. It stops for no one, man. I thought of Rob Reiner then saying, well, how do you pick people up if the train never stops? You know, wait, wait.
00:02:10
Speaker
This train, it keeps rolling.
00:02:24
Speaker
I don't know why, but that cracked me up. It just did. And I gotta say, before my lift, I was feeling a bit morose, and this intro was going to be a one-way train to Bummerville. But I'm feeling all kinds of good. Where are my manners? This
Podcast Engagement Encouragement
00:02:42
Speaker
is CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I talk to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara. Be sure to subscribe to this.
00:02:52
Speaker
Hot mess of a podcast wherever you get your podcast and consider leaving a little love. Over on Apple Podcasts, let's hit 100, man. Ratings or reviews were almost there. I hope I've made something worthy of your time and worthy of your endorsement. Means a lot coming from you.
00:03:09
Speaker
Amy Fish, like
Amy Fish's Late Start in Writing
00:03:10
Speaker
I said, she's here. She lives in Montreal in the great white north. She's the ombudsman at Concordia University and resolves complaints from students, faculty, and staff. She's written for the Huffington Post Canada, Reader's Digest, and the Globe and Mail, and like I said at the top of the show, name of her book is I Wanted Fries with that, how to ask for what you want and get what you need. Pretty rad.
00:03:36
Speaker
What I love about Amy is that she got kind of a late start in this game. I think eight years ago is when she like kind of took up the mantle, if you will. As cool as it is to hear about people who knew from when they were a little kid that they wanted to be a writer. I love that, Amy.
00:03:56
Speaker
Though always had a nose in a book, came to writing only in the last few years. So I like that. I like late bloomers and people who come to these things late because they gotta do it, right? So why wait? Here's episode 181 with Amy Fish. So actually to kind of start things off, I wonder what's something
00:04:23
Speaker
really good that you've read lately a book or anything. What are you reading lately that's really just like kind of really just it's sticking in your brain.
Influences: David Sedaris and Humor in Writing
00:04:34
Speaker
I'm listening to masterclass and I'm listening to David Sedaris class right now. I think I'm on lesson three. And it's just great to hear him talk about the process of writing and what he's talking about now is where he gets his stories from. And I find when I listen to these things,
00:04:53
Speaker
they stay with me and then I think of more stories indirectly. You know what I mean? Like I, I listened to his story ideas. I'm driving, so I'm not even taking notes, but then I'm on the elevator going up to my office and I'm like, Oh, that could be a story. Ethical dilemmas on the elevator. And I don't know if I would have thought about that if I wasn't listening to the master class that he was giving. Nice. What are some other, um, it's what are some other takeaways you're getting from that?
00:05:23
Speaker
Well, so far, that's what I'm getting. He's talking about how to be funny, which of course is a topic very dear to my heart. And he's talking about exaggerating, which I think I do pretty naturally. If anything, I have to exaggerate less. So that one's giving me a laugh as I'm listening to it.
00:05:42
Speaker
Isn't it kind of nice to, with respect to people like him, you know, he's got this big stage perform sort of presence, and then of course, and then when you drill down, like I've seen some of the ads of this masterclass online, but how it's much more muted in that there is like really rigor and work and lots of thought behind what he's doing and behind what we see on stage or on the radio.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah, I've actually never seen him on stage. I've always wanted to, and I've never been fortunate enough. So this is working for me. And I just, somebody just asked me if I would recommend it. And my answer is it depends what your expectations are. If your expectations are this is like taking a class with David Sedaris, I think you might be disappointed. But if your expectations are, oh, I could listen to David Sedaris being interviewed, or I could listen to David Sedaris talk about his work, then I think it exceeds expectations.
00:06:37
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. And have you found that it's it's giving you a lot of juice, a lot of fuel in the tank to want to tackle the things that that sort of resonate with your taste?
Finding Meaning in Everyday Stories
00:06:48
Speaker
Well, yeah. And I actually he talks about things that I agree. So I find myself talking out loud to him like I'm very interested in tiny little stories. And I like to write about very little things. And sometimes, especially in creative nonfiction,
00:07:05
Speaker
our colleagues talk about giant stories. And so I feel almost embarrassed, but listening to him makes it feel right to me somehow.
00:07:17
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Yeah, for sure. And I like that, you know, tiny little stories. I love the idea of drilling down on something that's really, that is sort of minuscule in terms of like physical scale, but sometimes those smaller things actually have a lot of meaning to unpack, right? Right. Right. I'll give you an example, which is the first year that I went to a HIPAA camp conference for creative nonfiction. I did a workshop with Sarah Einstein.
00:07:43
Speaker
called The Collage Essay. And I was so new to writing that, first of all, I had never heard of Sarah, and second of all, I didn't know what a collage essay was. And I didn't really completely understand that creative nonfiction was mostly memoir. I just, I didn't know exactly what I was walking into. And so we had to write our essay, and I wrote an essay about making a tuna sandwich. And then it became time, the first time I ever made a tuna sandwich was the piece.
00:08:09
Speaker
And then it came time to share. And of course I volunteer to go first and I read about my tuna sandwich and I'm all proud. And then the next person goes and they're like, we had no food in our house and the cupboards were completely there. And I remember going to school hungry and I'm like, oh no, Amy, what did you do? And then the next person is like, I heard this footsteps on the stairs at night and I knew he was headed toward my room. Anyway, everyone had these big, deep, terrible secrets.
00:08:36
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OK, Brandon, as I was talking about me and my neighbor not knowing that we had to drain the can of tuna and we were little girls and it was July and we made these sandwiches and they were awful and we sat under a tree and ate them. I mean, really childhood I was talking about, but it was really nowhere is profound. And I was so mortified after that. And it's taken me years to feel comfortable with realizing that there is a place for small stories and there is a place for big stories and both have their role to play.
Transition to Nonfiction and Blogging
00:09:06
Speaker
So you, at what point did you come to writing and writing nonfiction in your life and in your career? Oh, I've only written nonfiction. So I started writing probably about eight years ago. I started my blog, something like that, eight or nine years ago. And what was that moment like? When did you decide that this is something you wanted to take up? I really wanted to be a motivational speaker.
00:09:36
Speaker
as a side hustle because I needed more money. And I thought, okay, I need more money. What do I do all the time? And then I thought I never stopped talking. Cause you know that thing about the 10,000 hours, right? And I was like, what have I spent most of my hours doing blah, blah, blah.
00:09:53
Speaker
So I said, I'm going to be a professional speaker. And then I did a couple of lunch and learns. People invited me to do very small things. And then somebody said, you know, if you want to be a speaker, the best way to promote yourself is to write a blog. And I was like, OK, I don't think I'm going to have anything to say, but I'll try it. And I started this blog called Complete Department.
00:10:15
Speaker
every day, not every day, but whenever I posted, I wrote a piece, what I now understand to be a piece of creative nonfiction, almost like a flash essay. Nice. And what were some of your friction points or early growing pains with that and the regularity of keeping that up to build a readership and to just enjoy the sheer pleasure of writing, if you will?
00:10:38
Speaker
The friction points. Well, I mean, I tried a few different things that didn't work. At one point, I posted some photographs, and that didn't resonate with anybody. And I tried different kinds of pieces. And then I realized that really what people are looking for from my blog, and it's to this day, I still post in it. I try to do it on Mondays.
00:11:00
Speaker
It's little stories, and so I just post my little story. I lost a lot of readership when I stopped posting regularly. I did it regularly for a long time, for years, and I had a very decent readership. And then for about a year, I barely posted, and I decided I was going to close the blog down.
00:11:17
Speaker
I went to lunch with a few local bloggers and I said, listen, this is actually a funeral for my blog and I'm not going to be posting anymore and I think I'm going to tell everybody that I'm not doing it and my idea was to do a eulogy and I'm running this idea past them. They were outraged. They said, no, that's ridiculous. How can you stop? You have to keep going even if you don't do it regularly. I resuscitated the blog and for the past probably almost a year, I've been posting regularly again and my readership is not up to where it was at all.
00:11:45
Speaker
Do you find that blogging these days is that you find that maybe you didn't get some of the old readers back, but you find that blogging now, given that there's so much, the battle for attention with social media is so fragmented. Do you find that people are getting more comfortable sitting back into the blogosphere, if you will?
00:12:12
Speaker
That's a good I actually don't know enough to even answer that but I'll say that for me I think
Discipline Through Blogging
00:12:18
Speaker
it helps me just write in a disciplined way because I'm not currently enrolled in a writing program or teaching a writing course on any kind of regular basis and I'm not working on a major project right at the moment. So at least I know that if I'm posting on Mondays I got to get a piece in. And so it keeps my voice fresh and it keeps me
00:12:38
Speaker
I don't want to say disciplined because that's a big word, but it keeps me writing for sure. And that's the payoff for me more than the audience payoff right now in my career. So how do you go about building and I do like the term discipline in a writing discipline. And how do you go about building that into your into your week so that you do have this Monday piece coming out? I tend to be a person who writes in my head before it hits the page. So I toss the piece around in my head.
00:13:07
Speaker
And then Monday morning, first thing I get up very early and I write it usually. And when you sit down to write, what's your endurance for writing? Well, for in general, like when I was writing the book, I had a lot of endurance. Yep. Yeah, because I really wanted to get as many words on the page as I could.
00:13:33
Speaker
And so once I heard what Stephen King could do, it was a bad day for me because then I wanted to hit that word count. And I know that some people say that it's not about the word count because then some of your words are awful, but for me, it was absolutely about the word count. And I sat down and my endurance was, I'm blasting through this till I want to have a 5,000 more day, I want to have a 10,000 more day. I think I did hit it once in a while. And yeah, some of the stuff wasn't good, but most of it was usable.
00:14:01
Speaker
I'm totally in favor of throwing 5,000 bad words to get to 500 good ones every day. I think getting comfortable with writing shitty first drafts, shitty words over and over again, that's the only way you get to good stuff. For me, for me too. I know that different people have different processes, but I'm definitely a quantity person.
00:14:26
Speaker
I just think to myself, I'm gonna throw up on this page. I try to throw up on the page until I get something that works. But my endurance for blogging, I mean, these pieces are small, right? Like 400 words, 600 words, so I don't need that much endurance. I just need to do it. I need to remember that I'm trying to do it weekly.
00:14:44
Speaker
Do you think having a relatively later start to this kind of writing, do you think that gave you the confidence to be able to write lousy and write sheer volume to get to that small, like to get comfortable writing bad to get the good stuff?
00:15:02
Speaker
Well, I definitely got a late start because I don't have a story of, oh, I was a writer my whole life and I have no books filled in every, I wasn't that person at all. I liked writing in school. I majored in American history and psych, so I wrote a lot of papers and I loved writing papers. And I would write for a newsletter here or there if people asked me. I published scientific papers too in my work. And so I was happy to write them and I didn't struggle. Maybe it wasn't, the writing process was never,
00:15:30
Speaker
super difficult for me in that way. So I knew that I loved writing, but I never, never thought I would be a writer. So definitely, I think it's fair to say I had a late start. And does that give me confidence? I guess. I mean, I don't know. I think it's more just once you once you're a writer, you kind of have no choice. You have to write. That's how I feel. I have no choice. It just comes. It just has to happen.
00:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think too like kind of what I might be getting at is that sometimes people who have had this like writer itch from like being a kid on and then they major in it and then they try to make a go of it as a living and then they're trying to hold themselves up on.
00:16:09
Speaker
hold themselves to these standards of of their idols that sometimes they get stifled and it's not perfect enough or pretty enough and it seems like sometimes people who come to it a bit later or later bloomers they have there's a sort of naivete about it where they just do the work and oh yes and so that's what I kind of kind of think like you getting a later start you're just kind of like yeah like screw it like I'm just gonna do it
00:16:36
Speaker
Yes, I think that's 100% fair. And I definitely think my naivete has worked in my favor because the whole story of how I told you about the blog, but then how I wrote my first book and how I wrote my second book, it's completely not understanding how to write a book and then being lucky. What lessons have you learned from book to book? Oh, well, my a few things. First of all, my first book was published by a small press that was owned by my great uncle and
00:17:04
Speaker
Whenever people ask me about it, I said it was self-published, that it was not actually self-published. It was published by what I now understand to be a micro-press. So that wasn't very smart of me. If I could go back in marketing time, I would have said it was published by a small press. The fact that it was owned by someone I know is not really that relevant. And that's different than self-publishing, I think, because he had a few titles on his list. That's one thing I learned. The other thing is, when I wrote the first book, the first book is
00:17:32
Speaker
12,000 words. I think it's very, very small. And it's not very polished, I feel. And the second book, which is published with the traditional press, they really helped me polish it. And I think the value they added was huge. I was surprised at how actually at how what a big difference it made to have them polish it up for me. So that was another is that the kind of lesson you mean?
00:17:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, you know, those things that you that, you know,
Lessons from Publishing Experience
00:18:02
Speaker
after writing the first one and building that musculature to do that and then carrying that to the next one and then, you know, seeing what the the growth is from from book to book, you know, like, oh, that's a if I now that I know this, this next book is going to be that much better because I already, you know, weathered that storm and right. Yeah.
00:18:22
Speaker
Well, when I wrote the first book, also, I didn't realize that I was going to write more books. So I took my first writing class after my first book, if you could imagine. And so then I went and I took a class in Montreal here where I lived called Writing a Personal Essay. And it was a great, great course. And I got I published a few pieces out of that course.
00:18:45
Speaker
I guess it's called a workshop. See what I mean? I'm always behind on the terminology. So that workshop teacher is still a friend of mine. She's an excellent local writer. And then from there I continued to do workshops and then I found Hippo Camp Conference right after that. And that's where my writing career really began.
00:19:05
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. And given that you do a lot of your writing or pre-writing, if you will, in your head, I kind of do this similar thing. I'm always carrying notebooks, but I often have this notion in my head. And oftentimes, you have this idealized perfect version in your head. Ira Glass talks about this, about that creative gap.
00:19:28
Speaker
between what you're capable of and what you think, what you want it to be and what you're capable of. And so, since you do a lot of that writing in your head, how do you start to marry that perfect vision in your head with what's ultimately coming out and then trying to manifest the vision after you've labored through the work?
00:19:49
Speaker
Oh, Brandon, that's the question, right? We're all trying to marry that. I, oh, I don't know. I have no secret formula. I mean, like you said, it's just the work and I'm, I'll work. Like I'm okay to have it not go, not go, not go. Sometimes I'll work on a piece and if I can't marry the vision, then I save it and I abandon it. So I have a few pieces that have been in my computer for years and I take them out every couple of months and try and make them happen. And if I'm not happy with them yet, they just wait for me to get ready.
00:20:20
Speaker
That's great. How have you learned to cultivate that kind of patience with the work? Well, I guess it's a combination of patience and not wanting to let go, right? Like on the not plus side, there are pieces that I'm not willing to let go of that I don't think are ready yet, but I hope that they'll be ready someday. So I just leave them to marinate away for me to catch up to them, I guess.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yeah. Well, sometimes it's, it might just not be the right time for him. It just, you've written it, but then maybe five years from now, it's just going to be the perfect moment. You will stumble the cross at another experience that maybe makes it much more powerful. And then you can really run off it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's what I'm hoping.
Writing Process and Overcoming Challenges
00:21:09
Speaker
Right. And you talked about tiny stories, tiny moments. What are things that interest you the most, that spark your creativity, that make you want to lean in and write these essays? What really sticks in your brain? Well, I write about complaining a lot, so I'm very interested in retail transactions and stories where people try to complain effectively or ineffectively, and they get what they want or they don't get what they want at the end.
00:21:37
Speaker
So when I hear a story like that, I really like to pull it apart. I'm also interested in dialogue. I'm interested in the way different people speak. So if I hear someone speak in a particular way, sometimes I want to write about them because I want to use that voice. Yeah. And where do you feel most engaged in the process? The writing part or editing or the rewriting? Where on that spectrum do you fall where you feel most alive? Writing. Writing, for sure.
00:22:07
Speaker
Editing is like, I don't have the best editing habits. Cause my editing habit is that if I'm working on something big, like a manuscript, I have to, my inclination would be every time I sit at the computer, start editing from the beginning. So chapter one is going to be amazing. Chapter two is going to be okay. And by the time you get to chapter seven, it's pretty blah. Cause it's only been rewritten a couple of times. Right? So that's not a good habit. So I had, I had to break myself with that habit and just not edit till I was done.
00:22:36
Speaker
And that was hard for me. I like to go back and see what I did. But then I got to get overwhelmed easily. Because when there's a big volume of work, right? Like, I wanted fries with that has 27 chapters. So I there's no way I could edit it every time I sat down. I definitely felt more engaged when I was writing new work, the new chapters. That was more fun.
00:22:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think Hemingway was always of the, he always needed to reread everything he had written before and then keep going from there. I think, yeah, of course had to abandon that at some point. Like if you're 80,000 words in, you're not gonna read. But I think, especially early on, like if he was gonna write chapter two, he would read one and so forth down the chain. That way he was just kind of back in it.
00:23:27
Speaker
Well, thank you for telling me that. I'd like to be in good company. And one thing that was preoccupying me was that I wanted to keep the same rhythm of each story. So I didn't want it to read disjointed. So I was always making sure that the flow was similar. And so that required going back and looking at what I had done.
00:23:44
Speaker
That's a really good point too, especially if it's something as an example like so this book I'm trying to finish up like it's basically been a 10 to an 11 year project and I'm a much different writer than I was when I started this 11 years ago.
00:24:01
Speaker
And so I think to your point of reading the things that way, that way you're staying abreast of the tonality of it. Because if you can write it quick enough, at least you're kind of the same writer from when you started to when you finished it. But if it's like this long, long-ass project, you might realize, like, ah, shoot, I'm so different.
00:24:23
Speaker
back when i started this thing and then you almost have to rewrite the whole thing because you're better like illustrators who do a hundred illustrations in a book they get better by the end of the illustration so then they want to keep going back to refine and refine and refine right right that's a real challenge.
Strategies for Overcoming Writing Hurdles
00:24:41
Speaker
So as you're writing too, I know sometimes in the middle of a project it can get daunting or overwhelming. How do you mitigate the overwhelm of being in the middle of something when you're past the honeymoon stage but you know you've still got a long way to go? I set smaller goals for myself and I live by a schedule and I keep my eye on the end. Those would be the three things I do.
00:25:10
Speaker
What's the schedule you keep? Well, I because I work full time, right? And I have three teenagers and everybody still lives at home. So between my family life, which is pretty busy and my work life, which is pretty busy, I have to figure out when I'm going to have writing time. So I have to put it in my calendar. So I book appointments with myself and then I can't get rid of them.
00:25:32
Speaker
So if I know, for example, Saturday mornings are a time that I usually write. If I know that I'm writing from 6 to noon on Saturday, then I better cough up my pages because I have nowhere else to put that in my week.
00:25:43
Speaker
That's great. There are some people I know that if they only, they don't feel like they're writers or they can't call themselves writers because they might only have 6am to noon on a Saturday to do the work. Have you run across people like that too that don't feel like it? You know, it's so funny, Brandon, because, like,
00:26:02
Speaker
Like I said to you, I was excited to speak to you today because I was excited to be on a writer's podcast like a real writer. And even though I have written two books, I still am not sure if I'm a writer. It's the funniest profession because I'm compensated for my writing, I'm interviewed for my writing, I have writing friends, and I still say, do I really merit it? Do I really deserve it?
Owning Your Identity as a Writer
00:26:24
Speaker
So I can understand that 100%.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's hard. A lot of people have this imposter thing and they feel like, I can't be a writer until I accomplish X. But really, you just have to, if you want it, you just have to own it and own the title and do the work, right? Yeah. So I know that they say writers write every day, but for some people, it's not realistic.
00:26:54
Speaker
The other thing is I know that some people who have a lot of other commitments will tell stories about how they rode on the back of an envelope or they rode in the car during a soccer game or that that doesn't work for me. I have to take a deep dive. So a better investment for me is half a day on a weekend than an hour every day. But everyone has to get to know themselves in their process. Right. But by the time I settle into my project, I can't I get so deeply into it. It's almost like scuba diving. I can't come if I come right up to
00:27:24
Speaker
the surface and then I have to reemerge the next day and I have to come up again and then I have to go and you know it's too many feet underwater. How did you arrive at that and become comfortable with that particular approach of you know of your writing discipline making that date for yourself? I just learned what worked for me because I when I try to do it in short bursts I can't get enough done for me to feel satisfied.
00:27:53
Speaker
So it doesn't work for me. I could do it for editing. I could do it for rewriting. That's not a problem. But if I'm writing fresh material, the more time I have, the better. I've taken in my life a few 24-hour writing retreats where I go off by myself and I write sleep, write sleep, write sleep, and then it's over. And so that helps me too.
00:28:14
Speaker
I love that. I love this kind of like binge writing approach. Binge writing. That's it. Yeah. I think Cheryl Strait is the same way. Like when she's really cracking and she'll go get a hotel for a weekend and like just crash out, you know, 30,000 words or something, but then she's not writing every day. I'm just throwing that number out arbitrarily. 30,000 words. I mean, that's ridiculous.
00:28:37
Speaker
But it could happen for her. She's just going nonstop. She's got all her material. And I think she has similarly had to have this kind of conversation where it's okay to be a binge writer. You don't have to write every day to be this vaunted writer. For me, I think I agree with you. And also, I'm results-oriented. And so whatever your process is, if you put words on the page at the end of it, then you're a writer. Yeah.
00:29:03
Speaker
Absolutely. I remember when I was doing – when I come out of college and then took a little while to get my first newspaper gig, even though I was generating actual stories every single day, I didn't feel like a writer until I had an essay published. And then I felt like a writer because it was a little more artistic, I guess. Right.
00:29:25
Speaker
So it's like everyone needs to come up with their own definition. But either way, you just have to find a way that you're comfortable in owning it and then trying to just cast off the comparisons because they don't do anybody any good. I agree with you. I agree with you. And own what you're doing. If you're a writer of small little stories, that's okay too.
00:29:48
Speaker
Yeah, and comparisons and jealousy is always something I love talking about.
Mindset Shifts: Abundance vs. Scarcity
00:29:53
Speaker
And is that something that you wrestle with? Like if you, you know, you'll look over your shoulder and compare yourself to others and, you know, and sometimes let those toxic feelings bring you down. Is that something that you experience? You know, I'm optimistic to a fault. So it takes a lot to bring me down, to be honest. I'm usually excited and happy for people when they're successful.
00:30:16
Speaker
I'm sorry if that sounds Pollyannaish, but that's really my truth.
00:30:19
Speaker
That's awesome. It's taken me a while to get to that point. I don't know why at first that I had this more scarcity, zero-sum mindset. But I've gotten to the point, thankfully, that if Amy is publishing books of this nature or essays of this nature, all of a sudden it's like, oh, that means I can too. It truly is an abundant mindset, the whole rising tide metaphor.
00:30:48
Speaker
Right, right, right. That's one thing. And the other thing is because I came to it so late, my expectations were pretty limited. So I didn't, it's not like I needed to achieve this by a certain age or I needed to make it work. I came with all my experience and I just was like, well, I'll try my best.
00:31:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's another thing, too, that I love that you've got this attitude of having come to it late, that you don't have these expectations of trying to have these prestigious glossy bylines by the time you were 35 or try to get on the 35 best writers under 35 and all that crap. You're not bogged down and weighed down by that. You're doing the work and doing it because you have a sheer joy and love of it.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah, my insecurities relate more to the fact that I'm so out of my depth, right? Like I go to a writing conference and I really don't know what people are talking about. Like I just found out what AWP was two years ago and nobody was able to explain it to me. So I went to just see for myself what it was like.
00:31:55
Speaker
And then I thought, okay, I got the point. I don't need to do this again. Exactly. I've been a few times and it's like, you know what, after going to Hippo Camp, I'm pretty much like never going to another conference that's unlike Hippo Camp. It's got to be like that.
00:32:15
Speaker
Right, right. And I just, like, I really didn't know. So those are more of my problems that, like, I don't know. I didn't know what a lyric essay was, or I didn't know what things were. And I'm very often texting Lara Lillibridge and saying, what is this person talking about? Like, she's my writing mentor and tutor, and she explains all the terms to me. I'm often at a loss. And also, I could be, if I want to be self-conscious about something, it's that my work isn't particularly literary.
00:32:42
Speaker
So as far as being received by a literary community, I know that that's not really my audience because I'm more light and funny. And even though I have a message, I always have a message when I'm when I'm writing, you know, it's not going to it's in terms of literary prizes or literary recognition. That's not really where I'm headed.
Pursuing an MFA and Education Balance
00:33:00
Speaker
That's great to recognize that. I know when I went through my MFA program, I got into this thing where I had to try to write pretty or literary. And it took me several years to kind of unlearn that and get back to who I am at the core, which is just kind of more gritty and ugly and reverent.
00:33:22
Speaker
And so it's great that you have that recognition. I think oftentimes when we get into the MFA thing, everyone starts kind of sounding the same. And they're all trying to impress each other, which you want to connect with a reader, not necessarily impress other artists, if you will. You want to write stuff that's going to be read. And ultimately, you have to just
00:33:47
Speaker
You know, find out who you are at your core and just write to that and double and triple down on who you are. And so now that I'm sitting in this position and I never, I don't have an MFA. I don't know if I should try. I don't know. Like I, it's really a question mark. It's something that I'm grappling with right now. I'm wondering, does it make sense at this point or, or not? When, you know, when you're basically self-taught, it's hard to decide whether
00:34:15
Speaker
more formal education will help or what will it do to my voice? These are my concerns. Yeah, definitely a great question. The fact that you're even asking those kinds of questions means you can have a good dialogue, a good conversation about it. In my estimation, I think knowing what I know now, I think I could have benefited from just writing more, doing more work, and then reading.
00:34:41
Speaker
more extensively and then just experimenting, just seeing what works, seeing what sticks against the wall and just doing work. I think there's just no substitute for just doing a lot of bad work and seeing where your talent starts to surface from.
Organizing the Writing Process
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah. And when you're working and you're doing various research or however you frame that, how do you go about organizing your work and your notes so you can access it when you're ready to do your favorite part of the writing process? I'm very paper oriented, so I have print things out and put them in binders. I take notes by hand. If I'm interviewing someone, I don't record it.
00:35:26
Speaker
And then I don't even type them up. I put the notes into a sleeve in a binder and then I organized the binder. Very old school. And the reason I do that, I have a few reasons. One is because I find I listen better when I'm actually taking notes. And the other is because I'm not a journalist.
00:35:45
Speaker
I'm writing about the experience of this conversation as it relates to me. So I'm okay that I can't go back and fact check what I wrote down because I'm interviewing you and I'm writing about how I'm perceiving what you're saying as part of it. So I don't mind that all I have to look back on is my own notes. It's a deliberate choice. What other artistic media do you like to consume that helps kind of inform your writing?
00:36:16
Speaker
Oh, I'm a huge reader. I was a reader before I was a writer. I mean, I was a kid who always, even though I said to you my experience wasn't that I had tons of notebooks, but I had tons of books. I read and read and read and read and read as a kid. I always had my nose in a book. And I read very widely, even now. So I could have on my nightstand a mystery, a book. Right now I'm reading, you know, there's a new book out about the semicolon. So I'm reading that. I'm reading a YA novel.
00:36:45
Speaker
That's a romance and I'm reading and I'm listening to David Sedaris. So what informs me to answer your question is variety. Yeah. Do you draw inspiration from, from movies or documentaries too? I like to, but if my time is limited, TV is going to go. Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
So I'm not a huge Netflix watcher. I'm always behind. I always have big dreams of what I want to watch on Amazon or whatever on Netflix. And then I don't really have time. I'm also a knitter. So my TV watching has to belong with my knitting projects. If I'm working on something, then I'll watch a knit.
00:37:26
Speaker
Do you have a selection of books that you like to reread? No. No. No. Life's too short. I don't reread because I have so much ground to cover. Yeah. Right. Like I have piles and piles of books. First of all, I would like to write a mystery. And so I read a lot. I try to read mysteries and how to write mysteries. I'm nowhere with that. That's an example of something that's at the back, been at the back of my head for years. I even took a workshop on writing dangerous characters and I went to a crime writing conference.
00:37:56
Speaker
but I have trouble with plot, so I'm not there yet.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a re-reader of books. Oh, really? I use the same exact logic, because there's just too much out there, I'm never gonna read it all. So I might as well read, I read Great Gatsby every single year. And I just do, I know what, I'm like a little kid that can watch Frozen probably every single day. So I try to take that mindset. It's just like, if I like something a lot, I might as well just drill the hell down on this thing.
00:38:30
Speaker
and figure out what's really going on in the cracks and crevices of everything. And so that's kind of been my approach. I used to be like, don't reread anything. But then I'm like, you know, I'm not I'm never going to read it all. So I might as well if something really connects, I might as well just try to reread it a lot and see what's going on. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, it's funny. The same logic can get you to a totally different place.
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And with your latest book, what were some of the things that you were kind of, some of influential books or essays that kind of helped inform your approach to the writing of it?
Influences: Malcolm Gladwell's Impact
00:39:09
Speaker
Malcolm Gladwell helped for sure because he talks a lot and writes a lot about asides and unanswered questions. And I heard him speak about how it's okay to have
00:39:21
Speaker
to write about something that you don't know the answer to. And so I wrote a chapter in the book about a complaint that remains unresolved. And when I wasn't sure whether or not I should include it, I thought about him and what he said. And I just was honest on the page and said, this was unresolved, and here's why, and here's why I'm including it. And I thought that was very interesting. So that's one thing. Another thing is, I like footnotes and asides and details. So when I read a piece that has footnotes, I'm always very excited. And I
00:39:52
Speaker
included that informed my work as well. Did you have any sticking points that were, as you were writing, I Wanted Fries with that, that were kind of hard to power through?
Effective Complaining in Writing
00:40:07
Speaker
Well, at a certain point, I felt like I was repeating myself because the basic theme of the book is that you have to stand up and complain even if you're not doing it perfectly.
00:40:20
Speaker
So even though each of the 27 chapters has a lesson, the lessons are different. The basic tenet of the book is if you don't complain, nothing's ever going to change. So here's how you complain about this. Here's how you complain about that. And I just had to convince myself that each story had another nuance that was something I had to offer and I had to
00:40:45
Speaker
convince myself that different things will resonate with different readers, so it's okay to give the message in a few different ways. And why do you suppose people are so uncomfortable formally complaining in a way that allows them to feel like justice is served or they're getting their way? Because we all complain, but there's a different kind of complaining that actually gets things done.
00:41:11
Speaker
My theory, my working theory is that a lot of us don't do it because we don't know how to complain and still be nice. We want people to like us and we don't want to make waves, but we also want our voice to be heard. And that's why I write about it. That's why I wrote the book and that's why I write the blog. And that's why I talk about this all the time, because I think that most of us really believe that we want justice to be served, but we just don't know where to start. And I think it's learnable.
00:41:37
Speaker
I know, just speaking from experience, I know my mother is very sort of timid and passed that on to me in every single way. And she got it from her father. Like any time there was any kind of
00:41:53
Speaker
Let's just say an injustice of some kind. He would tell her, he'd be like, Jerry, just let it go, and it'll all blow over. And so she would want to stand up, and then he just told her, no, just let it go, just let it blow over. And so as a result, you just get steamrolled all the time.
00:42:18
Speaker
That's right. That's right. Yeah. So like your book is in a sense is teaching you like, listen, there are, there are ways to go about this where you won't get rolled over every single time. Right. And also that you have a moral responsibility to stand up not only for yourself, but for everyone else who's going to have the same experience. Yeah, exactly. It's a, how did you develop that muscle over, over the years?
00:42:44
Speaker
Oh, I think I was born with it, to tell you the truth. My dad was a defense attorney, and my mom taught emotionally disturbed kids. And so everything about my family growing up was helping the underdogs all the time. So I just grew up believing that justice needs to be served, and it's my personal responsibility to make sure it happens.
00:43:05
Speaker
And it was something that I was thinking, what is something that I've always stuck in my craw that I never had the courage to complain about? And I think a big one would be people who don't pick up after their dogs on walks. And how would you approach that? I would say, hey, excuse me. You didn't pick up after your dog. Do you have a bag? Did you need a bag? Did you need help?
00:43:35
Speaker
say it as something like, like they made a mistake. Like, oh, maybe you didn't see your dog went here. Yep. Or do you have a dog? I, uh, I used to have to. And so, okay. Yeah. So like this used to happen. Cause if I were, if I were walking a dog at the time, I would say to the person, hi, oh, you dropped it. Your dog just went. I have an extra bag. Here you go. Yeah. Like that. If I didn't have a dog,
00:44:04
Speaker
it's a little more awkward. But then I might say something like, hey, excuse me, that's my lawn. Or I take, you know, I walk in this park all the time. Pick up, please pick up after your dog. Or maybe you didn't notice something gentle. Yeah, I would start there.
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah, it's like starting, it's hard though, even if you're doing it, start trying to be gentle, you feel like you don't wanna, because when you complain you're being, of course, you're being judgmental, and when your people's hackles can go up, and it's a matter like, it's tough, that's hard waters to navigate, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah, I agree with you. I think the key is doing it in the least judgmental possible way.
00:44:50
Speaker
So that's where I would lead off with, did you run out of those bags? Oh, I hate when that happens to me. You know, that kind of thing. That's why if you have a dog, it's kind of easier.
Short-term and Long-term Writing Goals
00:45:02
Speaker
You could say you saw them on sale or you could lend one to the, you could say the person I have one for you, or I can pick this up for you, but maybe did you notice?
00:45:11
Speaker
And with your writing and where you want to take your writing, where do you see yourself? What are some things that you're looking to accomplish? And what are some of those goals that are on your horizon, on your near and short term and long term? Oh, that's a good question. Well, in the short term, I'd like to get some of those essays that, as I told you, I've been sitting on my computer for years. I'd love to get some stuff placed. So I've been working on polishing some things that I think could find a home somewhere.
00:45:40
Speaker
But that's a lot of work for me because there's researching and pitching and fixing them and tracking it and that whole thing. So that's a short-term goal. In the longer term, I would like to write another book for sure.
00:45:56
Speaker
Do you think it would be, well, you know, you said you wanted to write a mystery, of course, but in the nonfiction world is there's, what's the, you know, you've done this book, which is kind of prescriptive in these anecdotal stories of how to complain better. You know, what vision for some of the nonfiction, maybe a nonfiction book you want to write, you know, what might you want to tackle?
Interest in Narrative Nonfiction
00:46:22
Speaker
I would be interested in finding a narrative nonfiction story that I could dive deeply into, maybe something historic, maybe a figure, maybe a story that happened that could involve a lot of research and then recounting the story in my own voice, sort of a bigger project. I think that would be something exciting to work on.
00:46:42
Speaker
And something that struck me that you said at Hippocam, and I think you were echoing Lisa Romeo saying, like, aiming for 100 rejections in a year. That really stuck with me. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I did say that. And then she actually wrote to me after saying she was echoing someone else now. I can't remember who it was. So were a few echoes down the road. But I have tried, not this year, obviously, because this year my book came out in October. So it's been hectic. Like, I don't have so much
00:47:13
Speaker
psychic energy to be trying to get 100 rejections, but I really am nowhere near 100 submissions. So it's really hard to get 100 rejections. It does change your frame of mind though, because you are excited when you get a rejection, you add it to the file. Yeah, I think it's just a great it's like not bad news.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I think it's just, I don't know, I like that approach. Not to, because the sheer fact that you're just throwing more darts at the board, you're gonna get closer to bull's-eyes. Right. Yeah, I have a feeling a lot of people, they might have one or two pieces and they submit them maybe one or two times a year. When they get rejected, it's like, you know, they're crying in their cereal. It's like, well, what do you expect? Very few people are gonna hit a home run on
00:48:00
Speaker
on one submission, but if you just get used to that repetition and that, that will breed its own kind of competency and confidence too. And you will get more, it's just by sheer numbers, you're going to get published more if you aim for that many rejections.
Dealing with Rejection in Writing
00:48:15
Speaker
Right. And I just got a couple of rejections in the past few weeks and it always stings a little bit, but my relationship with rejections is not, they don't wound me particularly because they just mean I'm writing.
00:48:27
Speaker
If I'm not getting rejections, it's because I'm not getting acceptances, I'm not doing anything. And I don't know if that's due to age and expectation because I came to it later, if it's because I have another job, so it's not like I'm a writer and that's all.
00:48:42
Speaker
And that's my whole focus. So maybe that would make it more painful for me. Or maybe it's just, like I said, in general, I'm just very optimistic. And I think it takes a while to find a home for your piece. So I have rejection. OK, I will that one out next. I mean, you can't be a writer and not get rejected. So I have trouble relating to how upset people get. Like, I know that people get upset. They are in bed for days. Like, you can't do that. That's expensive time that you're spending being wounded, that you could be spent working.
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think a great way to, and I've heard some people talk about this too, like they have like a tiered submission process. So they have their type, well, they're one, two, and three, and four tiers for the essay, or whatever. And it's just like, it's almost like before starting any project or a business or a podcast, you should probably have how you want to end it built into its
00:49:39
Speaker
right show recipe so it's like that way you know okay when this is rejected here we're just going right to level two and then level exactly right exactly exactly yeah
00:49:52
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of love, I love, I don't love getting rejected, but there are so many, because it means you're in the game. It's like the Teddy Roosevelt quote that Brene Brown has, like the man in the arena. It means you're in the game, and that's all that matters. And the longer you're able to play this game and keep going,
00:50:11
Speaker
eventually things will happen for you, but you just got to be comfortable there. You can't get first downs every single time. You're a hockey person, of course, being Canadian. You're taking lots of shots at the net to get that one goal. You just got to be in it. Exactly. I have one piece that I wrote, which is about broccoli, and it's about a complaint that I once received
00:50:40
Speaker
where somebody thought that there was a vendetta against her husband in this nursing home because of the broccoli he was receiving. And I think it's such a good piece, and it's been rejected easily 25 times. So I have to realize that there's something wrong with the piece. The piece is not working. I have to figure out another way to tell this story, because the way I'm telling the story is clearly not effective.
00:51:02
Speaker
At a certain point, you do have to say it's me, right? Yeah, it's such a subjective game, but to your point, if it's been rejected 25 times by 25 different people, it's like, okay, you do have to take a step back. And the last one was one of those rejections that took three seconds, like I sent it, and the editor wrote me back, oh, great, I'm looking for new pieces, thank you so much, I'll get right back to you. And then within a half an hour, it was like, no, this one's not for me, what else do you have?
00:51:30
Speaker
Like it was so so I haven't played with the broccoli for a while, but I think I'm gonna take it out That's hilarious. Yeah
00:51:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's just an anti-broccoli agenda. That's right. That's right. What would, as we kind of wind down here, what would you, you know, what advice, if someone's out there struggling right now, you know, just can't seem to maybe get the traction they want or they feel a bit beleaguered and just run down by the grind of this kind of work, you know, what might you say to that person to
Staying Motivated and Taking Breaks
00:52:05
Speaker
to tell them to keep going. How would you approach them if you're having coffee with them and they're feeling down on their luck? You know, what would you say to that person? I would say you chose to be a writer for a reason and get back to that reason. What about this interested you? What about this excited you? Try to get back there and think about your early motivation and how can you bring it back to the forefront? And at the same time, I would also say to the person, maybe you need a break.
00:52:34
Speaker
Maybe you need to be kind to yourself. Maybe this is a moment for you to refresh and recharge and take the time to, like you said, watch those documentaries, listen to those podcasts, do some of the things that will inform your work later on. I think that's great. Amy, where can people find you online and get more familiar with your work and then maybe where they can find that I wanted fries with that and just get more familiar with your work if they don't know you already. My website is amifishrights.com.
00:53:04
Speaker
And my blog is a complaint department. You can find it on the front page of the, um, of the website. There's a button that says blog and all my old blogs dating back to, I think 2011 are all still available online.
00:53:17
Speaker
Oh, fantastic. Well, I'm so thankful that you're able to carve out time on a Sunday to do this, Amy. Thanks so much for doing this and for writing the book. It was a lot of fun to read. Thank you. And I think it'll help a lot of people out. So yes, thanks so much for doing this. I look forward to a chance when we get to do it again.
Podcast Conclusion and Reflection
00:53:36
Speaker
All right. Thanks, Amelia, and thanks for having me. You got it, Amy. Take care.
00:53:43
Speaker
I honestly don't know how these podcasts are getting done every week, if I'm being honest. I was telling my wife that I don't know how it's happening. We're both pretty overwhelmed with work and life, and I told her this morning that I have no memory of these podcasts coming together. I'm very detached from it in a way, like I'm floating somewhere outside of myself. It's very dissociative and weird. Anyway,
00:54:05
Speaker
Subscribe to the newsletter or CNF or a little tease. I get a lot of books. You know this. I read a lot of books and I often donate a lot of them. I'm thinking, why not just randomly raffle them off to people who subscribe to the show? I mean, why not? You listen to the show. You're likely interested in a lot of the books from the people that are on the show. Why not just give some away?
00:54:26
Speaker
You know, why not? You know, you're giving me a little bit of your time, a sliver of your time every week. It's the least I can do. Do this, you know, might as well throw in some sugar. So anyway, subscribe to the newsletter. Like I said, good stuff coming once a month, no spam, can't beat it. BrendanTheMero.com, hit hit.
00:54:46
Speaker
If you deem this show worth sharing, link up to it on social media. You can tag me in the show at cnfpod, though as you know, maybe you don't, but I'm scaling a bit back on social media hard, so if I don't give you those mad props, that's why. Got a lot of work ahead of me and I really want to focus on that work, so. And you know this drain doesn't stop. And also, if you can't do interviews, see ya!