Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 264: Rachel Monroe Talks About the Things Writers Don't Tweet About
204 Plays4 years ago
Rachel Monroe (@rachmonroe) is a freelance journalist whose work appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Oxford American.
Keep the conversation going @CNFPod and consider supporting the show by visiting the Patreon page: patreon.com/cnfpod.
Show notes at brendanomeara.com.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Rachel Monroe
00:00:00
Speaker
I had been familiar with the work of Rachel Monroe, a freelance superstar and author of the book Savage Appetites. She wrote an incredibly popular feature on van life for the New Yorker a few years ago. That for a time was the most read story on the entire website for several weeks, maybe months. Who knows?
00:00:21
Speaker
As someone who has pined for a VW bus for the better part of the past 10 years, there's one for sale in Salem, Oregon. It's actually in really good condition for like $10,000, but Mino have $10,000.
00:00:36
Speaker
As someone who is, like I said, pined for one of these, the story spoke to me and made me also like deeply sad, mainly because of the social media curation and influencer narcissism element of the thing.
Existential Reflections on Van Life
00:00:50
Speaker
And then the real sad element is like some of the middle-aged dudes who saw the van people and also pined for it. And at the age of 41, I am that middle-aged dude.
00:01:03
Speaker
That's a gut punch already. Anyway, so I get the existential dread and sadness that creeps in as you look around and wonder where your life went wrong. And you're 41 years old, and you're no closer to your goals than you were at 21, and it was cute then, but it's pretty pathetic now. Shit. Where are we? Aw, man.
Discovering Monroe's Work
00:01:26
Speaker
Rachel Monroe came across my radar as a guest when I interviewed Jordan Michael Smith about his piece, The Snitch, for the Atavas magazine. He was following her on Twitter. She's a good Twitter follower.
00:01:41
Speaker
She said something about this story and he asked for the contacts if he could follow up on it. She gladly gave up some info so he could run with it. He was super grateful and I'm like, this Rachel Monroe character, I gotta talk to this person. And as luck would have it, she has a new piece in a recent issue of The New Yorker about ransomware and hacker negotiators. So like, what timing? What a world. Riff.
Creative Writing Promotions
00:02:15
Speaker
Hey, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Let's get into a little ad read. Why not? Support for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan College's low residency MFA in creative writing. Now in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student to faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Recent CNF faculty include Randin Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and CNF pot alum Sarah Einstein.
00:02:45
Speaker
There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty there include Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple. No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit nfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
00:03:11
Speaker
and also be sure to keep the conversation going on social media at cnfpod and if you're feeling kind reviews are always welcome they're stagnant and i'm gonna just stop asking at this point but if you want to leave one go for it they all help if you don't want to you're not alone
00:03:28
Speaker
And from now until August, I plan on giving the loudest of shoutouts to Hippocam 2021. It's back this year in lovely Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Registration's open. It's a conference for creative nonfiction writers. Marion Winnick will be this year's keynote speaker.
00:03:45
Speaker
We've got a debut CNF author panel featuring Lily Danziger. Remember her from a few episodes back? Greg Mania, Carol Smith, and Janine Willett. Dates are August 13th through the 15th. You dig it? And if you use the promo code CNFBOD21, you can get $50 off your registration fee. You can buy me a beer with the savings, or some books, or maybe a beer. Brendan likes beer.
00:04:12
Speaker
And you've heard me say in the past, if you want to get in shape, you hire a personal trainer. I mean, Roger Federer may be the greatest tennis player all the time. He hired a coach. He didn't really need a coach, but he hired a coach. Listen, you know the fundamentals, but sometimes that trainer, that coach is there to hold you accountable and put you through the paces and see things you can't see and to keep your chin up when it inevitably falls down to your chest. So that's where I like to come in.
00:04:39
Speaker
So if you're ready to level up, I'd be honored to help you get where you and your book or essay or book proposal needs to go. Email me and we'll start a dialogue.
Ransomware and Hacker Negotiators
00:04:48
Speaker
So Rachel Monroe at Rachel Monroe on Twitter is my guest. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Oxford American.
00:04:56
Speaker
And we get into pitching reporting living in remote places and away from the publishing epicenters and talking about things writers don't tweet about like killed stories and content marketing those things that tend to keep the lights on so you can take big swings and write these features for these magazines that.
00:05:16
Speaker
That on its own is unsustainable unless you're like a salaried staff writer. So oftentimes there are these other things that are subsidizing that kind of journalism that we see the writers tweet about. You're like, how the hell are they doing that? Well, they're not. They're doing this other thing too. And so we talk a little bit about that.
00:05:34
Speaker
And let's see, is that it? That is, that is it. I'm stoked for you to check this one out. It's a headbanger, baby. But before we get to that one more thing, I just wanna give a Patreon shout out to Isidra Menkos for being a tier three CNF-er. Big ups, just wanna give a shout out to that and how deeply appreciative I am of your support. Thank you very much, happy writing. And so let's get on with the show. You ready for this?
00:06:13
Speaker
because I think probably a lot of people, I, well, okay, what I'll say is people ask me all the time, I guess, because I'm a writer, what are you reading? And I had this terrible experience recently where somebody was asking me for a book recommendation. I couldn't think of anything because everything that I was reading was for work, right? So I'm reading a bunch of books about gun policy. I was like, I'm not gonna recommend this to my friend in the post office. Nobody else needs to be reading this.
00:06:43
Speaker
So I over the past like few months I've made a real conscious effort to try to read Just for fun like which you know, I'm like such a book person It's such a shame that I have to make this an assignment for myself. So I've been my following completely my own urges which have led me to be rereading the Hilary Mantel book about the French Revolution, which I've already read and it's like 800 pages and
00:07:12
Speaker
where there's like still a king and I'm like 500 pages into it. But I don't know, I found it really delicious. And then I'm listening to this like incredibly long podcast about the French Revolution too, because she, in her Hillary Mantle way, like doesn't, you're like, wait, what?
00:07:29
Speaker
is actually happening historically. So this podcast is giving me all of the stuff about the assembly general and who's the minister of the interior. So it has nothing to do with what I'm working on. I've already read this book, but for whatever reason right now, I'm obsessed with the French Revolution.
Monroe's Writing Journey
00:07:52
Speaker
So I read in an interview that great profile from Columbia Journalism Review about you that when you were a kid, you were a reedy, righty kind of kid in Richmond, Virginia. So take us there and to the reedy, righty Rachel Monroe of urban Virginia.
00:08:12
Speaker
I mean, well, suburban. I was just such a total little nerd. I had glasses from when I was in kindergarten, I think. I have really terrible eyes. You just picture this little Rachel with incredibly thick glasses with pink frames.
00:08:35
Speaker
I do like I definitely would read a book as I was walking around and like walk at least once like walked into something like, you know, a pillar or something. So, you know, pretty classic in that way. I don't know. It was just always like a world in which I felt really at home being absorbed in stories. I just love stories. Yeah.
00:09:03
Speaker
And at what point does it kind of click in your head that being a writer is something you want to do? I mean, it's funny. I feel like for most things in life, those decisions come on in a really vague way, sort of like at the slow movement of the tides or whatever. But for me, I actually do have a distinctive moment when I was like, I think I want to try to do this, which was,
00:09:30
Speaker
Just after college, I got a Fulbright and I spent a year in Morocco and I was studying Arabic and there was sort of a chance that my life could have gone in a very different direction and I would have been, I don't know, maybe an international development person, an NGO person.
00:09:49
Speaker
I don't know. I really love traveling. I love the Middle East. And a lot of the folks that I was there with on the Fulbright were heading in that direction or doing that now. And we went on this hike on the reef mountains and
00:10:04
Speaker
I just remember sitting down maybe this is like a big area of like hashish cultivation. So there might have been some of that involved, but I'm not entirely I don't remember. I remember just like sitting down at a pause on this hike and being like, you know, if I wanted to do this writing thing,
00:10:23
Speaker
I could do it. If I want to make a go of it, I just have to admit that to myself and try. And I think that I do. And then I went back and just applied to MFA programs. It was just one of those really clearly articulated thoughts. I was just like, if you want to do this, you have to say that to yourself. And then you have to take the actions that follow after admitting to yourself that you want to do this.
00:10:47
Speaker
And yeah, so I was, you know, in retrospect, I'm like very proud of myself for, I think that's, that's a sort of scary step and applying to MFA programs, you know, from Morocco was like not the easiest because it wasn't, it was only somewhat online at that point.
00:11:03
Speaker
Well, yeah, and I think all the more challenging must have been that your parents being doctors and having more – that more sort of traditional secure route, if you find out that your child is going to pursue a more artistic path, that can –
00:11:19
Speaker
That can lead to a lot of resistance on the part of the person trying to pursue that path. I imagine you had support, maybe you didn't, but what was that like for you just knowing that you were going to be taking a more unconventional path?
00:11:34
Speaker
Well, it's funny. Well, I guess two things. One thing is my parents were doctors, so they were financially secure. So I graduated with no student debt. I graduated undergrad with no student debt. So that was a huge advantage in me being able to pursue an unconventional path. I think that's pretty important to acknowledge the huge advantage there.
00:11:55
Speaker
I'm actually from a family of writers. I have a bunch of published writers. My mom is one of six kids and three, four of them have published books. My uncle, who was a journalist in Denver, my aunt has written a bunch of books and reviews books for the
00:12:15
Speaker
New York Times book review. So it's like that side of the family is like a super literary and my mom was sort of an aberration. And I think both of my parents, even though they were doctors are like frustrated creative people or sublimated creative people. So my little brother's a doctor. So he's
00:12:30
Speaker
It's great. He can pay for their nursing home and then I can be the like creative child. And our other brother is going to like give them children. So it's perfect between the three of us, but like it's all thing here. So do you think that, you know, having pursued a more, a more fiction path has, has helped you with your journalism?
00:12:54
Speaker
You know, it's so funny because I think at first early on in my career, I would get kind of frustrated with myself and be like, why didn't I figure out that I wanted to do nonfiction earlier? I could have gone to journalism school or at least like a nonfiction program where I would have learned actual skills for how to do this. But I think
00:13:14
Speaker
As time has gone on, I've come to come around to think that it is more of an advantage just because I spent so much time in those programs, in those fiction writing workshops, like focusing on
00:13:28
Speaker
things about like how to write a scene, right? Like how to capture a little like detail, narrative structure, things like that, which I think are so crucial, at least for like the kind of extended long form nonfiction stuff. It's so important. So and, and the other things, you know, like how to FOIA,
00:13:49
Speaker
how to interview all those other aspects. I mean, I think it would have been a big help to have somebody guide me through this, but you can you can pick up that stuff, you know, you can figure out how to do the more technical things, that training and like paying really close attention to like the texture of a sentence and the sensory details that make up a scene. I guess I'm glad that that's like what was drilled into me.
00:14:17
Speaker
Yes, when I read various anthologies, whether it be best American sports writing or travel writing or whatever it is, some of the greatest long-form journalism I read is from novelists or short story writers like Karen Russell or George Saunders. When you turn them loose on nonfiction, it's like, wow, this is pretty electric stuff. And it just comes from those fundamentals of using dialogue over quotes and making sure you're
00:14:45
Speaker
showing and not telling, you know, these basic tenets of narrative storytelling that's drilled into you in fiction because you get to make it up whole cloth. But if you have that sort of, I don't know, if your guitar is in tune to that, then when you apply it to the your reporting, you can report for scene, you can report for dialogue and in motion and in scene building. And so that's that's great. I imagine that's why you are where you are.
Lessons from Influential Writers
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I also had this incredible experience of my undergraduate writing teacher and mentor was David Foster Wallace, and at the time I was still thinking I wanted to be a fiction writer, but honestly, I like his nonfiction often more than his fiction, or that it just resonates with me more.
00:15:31
Speaker
And so I think having him as an example of somebody who would go back and forth between these worlds that they're not necessarily separate and that you bring that same kind of attention and curiosity and empathy to reporting as you would to making something up. That was cool to have that in my brain at a ridiculously early age in retrospect.
00:15:55
Speaker
For sure. He famously would mark up people's pages with three different colors, inks, and everything. What did that teach you? What were some of those notes that he would write there just as a coach and a mentor in your pieces that you've been able to snowball and coalesce into something that you can parlay into the stories you've written today?
00:16:19
Speaker
It's funny. I remember the thing that I remember most, I should go back and like I saved all of those drafts. He would, he has these very funny, very particular little smiley faces or like angry smiley faces that he would draw. And I mean,
00:16:35
Speaker
This is this is maybe not the answer you were expecting but like his the focus on grammar was so intense we would do it is like a three hour. Yeah or whatever and we would spend the first like forty five minutes to an hour going over sentences you would like take sentences out of people's drafts that were.
00:16:54
Speaker
either grammatically incorrect or in felicitous, as you would say. And then we as a class would be like, what's wrong with it? How do we make it better? And I think at the time I was like, this is just wild that this is how he would call it. He would always call these exercises your liberal arts dollars at work. And he's like, this is what
00:17:15
Speaker
this is what the tuition is paying for, like really we're talking about like dependent clauses. But I do think in retrospect, that attention to like clarity at the sentence level, not even just of ideas, I mean, they're entwined, right? Like the way that you express your idea and the idea itself and that focus on like,
00:17:33
Speaker
saying something clearly and not sort of getting in your own way is hugely important. And I think about it a lot in just trying to make my sentences the best versions of themselves. I definitely feel him hovering over my shoulder with that.
00:17:54
Speaker
And then he would talk a lot about having empathy for the reader and having to earn the reader's attention in a way, if that makes sense. You don't just get to expect that somebody's going to go along with you on something. You have to win them over. And I think he had a conflicted relationship with that feeling of
00:18:17
Speaker
trying to win the reader's heart or affection. But just that idea that you can't assume somebody is interested in something just because you are. You have to, through your language, through the delight and specificity of your language, through your well-expressed interesting ideas, you have to bring them along and you can't just be pedantic or tedious or abusive to the reader.
00:18:46
Speaker
But yeah, this idea of clarity and empathy for a reader is really important and especially for someone. Sometimes you read somebody like him, you want to impersonate that and someone like him is very pyrotechnic and he is very much a star. So for you, just in settling into your own skin as a writer, how did you cultivate your own voice? So you did have that empathic
00:19:16
Speaker
understanding of a reader at the end but still embodying something that is wholly you on the page. For me so it's so intuitive that it's hard to say exactly how it happens.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm thinking back to early things that I wrote. I guess it's also that I found my way from writing fiction before just going straight into journalism. I started writing a bunch of essays, and I think in that form I felt like there was more space to have a voice that I wasn't trying to sound like.
00:19:55
Speaker
a New Yorker writer or a New York Times writer or something, you know, have that idea of what that voice should be and trying to ventriloquize it. But I was writing these little essays that felt very much like they were just sort of for myself. And maybe that's another advantage of having gotten an MFA and like writing, you know, toiling over these short stories that like never got published. And even if they had would have been in some like tiny
00:20:21
Speaker
literary magazine that nobody reads. I had a little bit of freedom in my mind because I was like nobody's whatever I publish it's gonna be you know 30 people are gonna read it and that's like there's like a glorious freedom in that because those 30 people are reading it because they really want to and I could feel like I was
00:20:43
Speaker
I don't know, doing something like secret and private and that gave me the space to write how I wanted to write rather than trying to sound like somebody important or authoritative or official or impressive. So it was like a winding route, I guess, to get where I am, but I'm very grateful that it went that way.
00:21:10
Speaker
Who would you identify as big influences that have helped formulate your voice as a writer?
00:21:24
Speaker
That one hit me. I mean, I know she was old, but like, I don't know. I remember, I think it was like the second piece that I did for the New Yorker. She also had a piece in that issue and just like seeing my name in that font, like next to her name was- In the table of contents right there. Yeah. I was just like, I can't believe that I'm in this same room, even if it's about an actual room.
00:21:49
Speaker
I mean she she came across even within the sort of strictures of the new yorker like as such a distinctive strange mind and not in a pyrotechnic kind of way like you were.
00:22:04
Speaker
mentioning, but in a in a very restrained way, but you just got the sense that she was like, so weird, and so observant and like, so, so critical and so self critical. And there was just something about her. There was just something spiky about it, that even more than Joan Didion, if like, you know, those are going to be the two lyrical
00:22:34
Speaker
white ladies who write about crime from the mid-century who are going to appeal to a person like me. Really, if I had to pick one, I would pick Janet, Matt Joan. And then closer to home, Leslie Jamison was writing these beautiful essays. And I remember this was even before the empathy exams came out.
00:22:55
Speaker
Her work was just, I would always, she was maybe one of the first people who felt like something of a peer who I would notice her byline and just like perk up. And she was actually one of the first people when I wrote my first piece of, or when I pitched my first long form piece,
00:23:15
Speaker
I pitched it to the Oxford American and I did it specifically because Leslie had published a piece in there and I'm gonna forget the title of it but it was about the guy who was like a ultra marathon runner who was in prison and just like this idea of confinement and and you know the practice of like running and it was just like so beautifully
00:23:37
Speaker
and thoughtfully reported. And I was like, I want to write something like that. I want to write for a place that would allow me to write something like that. And so I like cold emailed her. I think I don't think
00:23:51
Speaker
I had never met her. I don't know where I would have met her. I was like, hey, can I have your editor's email because I love that piece and I want to pitch something like it. She was very kind and made that connection. That's amazing. Janet Malcolm felt like she was existing in this
00:24:11
Speaker
New York mid century world that you know was like looming huge above me that felt almost like mythological and Leslie was a person where I was like, okay, you're somebody who's like actually doing this who's I think she might even be younger than me, but you
Building a Writing Community
00:24:26
Speaker
know,
00:24:26
Speaker
That was something I wanted to ask too about earning an audience with the editors from places you want to publish. There is an example there of just you having the chutzpah, if you will, to email Leslie for a contact. That's not an easy email to send.
00:24:48
Speaker
And it's certainly probably a harder one to reply to if you're Leslie but she didn't was very gracious about that but so how did you get you know how did you have the.
00:24:59
Speaker
the comfort to do it, to be like, you know what, or the audacity to do it in the best possible way. You know what I mean? Totally. I mean, I think in that case, it really came from like a, it was that email that I wrote to her. I could go back and find it, but as I recall, it was like 75% like a genuine fan email. Like I just loved that piece that she wrote. Yeah. And, and it really did sort of like inspire me to write or to like conceive of writing in a new way.
00:25:31
Speaker
that felt more acceptable, I guess, because it wasn't like coming from a place of like mercenary networking. And also probably like from like pure ignorance, like I didn't know that maybe, you know, didn't even occur to me that it would be like a taboo. She also probably it's like her fault for coming across like so relatable and nice in her.
00:25:52
Speaker
And so I think...
00:26:00
Speaker
in her writing I was like I could just write her um we might have had like a friend of a friend in common I'm trying to think because it seems in retrospect I'm like wow it's wild if I just emailed her out of the blue so maybe we had a friend of a friend in common but I'm actually not sure who that was so it might have just been like uh
00:26:18
Speaker
pure audacity. And then also- I mean that in like a very positive way. Oh, yeah. No, but it takes, yeah, it's a confidence and audacity of hope, as our SBO would say.
00:26:33
Speaker
And then I think honestly like early on And even well, maybe less so now but early on like Twitter I know we're all supposed to talk about how much we hate Twitter and it like destroys our minds and that's certainly True, but for me, you know like living out here in the middle of nowhere in Texas Twitter was really important in terms of like feeling like I was in some
00:27:02
Speaker
virtual way connected to a community of writers and I there just are people who like I would follow them they would follow me and like whether that was editors or other writers and that helped me feel like I could you know ask for a connection ask for somebody's email like ask for a recommendation and it wasn't just coming out of nowhere it was like you know
00:27:29
Speaker
I'm just thinking back to the early days when The All existed. What a great website. It felt like there was a little cohort of writers who wrote for them and who read that website a lot. We were all in it together and we could reach out to anybody and understand that they would help you out as best you could. Getting to the heart of this community mindset that you're talking about, and this is how
00:27:57
Speaker
you got on my radar to reach out to you to come on the show. I had been familiar with your work, but it was when I interviewed Jordan Michael Smith for his piece in The Atavist about Scott Kimball and that whole story that he wrote for The Atavist. He was like, well,
00:28:13
Speaker
I reached out he knew you had your finger on the pulse of the story and he reached out to you in some way or another and then he asked you if you would is it okay if i pursued this this story and you're like yeah go for it like you.
00:28:28
Speaker
you gave him that blessing and everything. And it was one of those things where you didn't hoard something, you gave it away to someone who could do it because your plate was full. And I was just like, oh, I got to talk to Rachel now because this is an amazing feat of community. And I just love the ethos behind that.
00:28:49
Speaker
I was so happy that he reached out and he was like, he's been so kind and thoughtful about it. And I also really appreciate that he is, I don't know, he could be
00:29:00
Speaker
He could also like react to it in a sort of like hoarding or like scarcity mindset kind of way, right? And like not want to say that like this idea wasn't like, you know, he didn't discover this like out in the wild. I mean, he basically did. I think I just like tweeted about it. He was like, hey, can I follow up on this? And I gave him like one email address and he ran with it.
00:29:20
Speaker
you know, 100% his story. But I just, I don't know. Yeah, I think it's like the world is so full of amazing stories. And as a freelancer, it's easy to get, yeah, that scarcity mindset, that feeling of like panic, where's my next story coming from?
00:29:40
Speaker
Wanting to like have as much as possible Because which I think comes from the fear that like it's all it all could run out at any minute, but there are so many stories out there that like I'm not the best person to write them because of I Don't know like my my background my skills my Experience my interest like all of these things and it's so much but those stories like still should be written and I think approaching the world from that
00:30:10
Speaker
sense of I just want to see this. I want to see somebody do this and I can't do it, but I can't wait to read it and it was perfect. Then I got to read this amazing story and I didn't have to do any of that reporting, which seemed kind of intense. Oh, for sure.
00:30:32
Speaker
It's all the more impressive to me because in this line of work, competition and jealousy and all that is kind of a real thing. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not is definitely something that bubbles under the surface, some more fierce than others.
Living Outside Major Cities
00:30:48
Speaker
I wonder how you've been able to cultivate the more abundant mindset that we're talking about because it is a much more furtive ground in which to grow a career and certainly grow a community.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't want to act like I don't ever have like petty feelings. I have plenty of petty feelings. But I try not to act on them, I guess. Save those for my therapist. But I mean, I think, honestly, for me, and I wonder if you find this out in Oregon, like, I think not living in New York, I've never lived in New York.
00:31:22
Speaker
or LA or DC or any of these places where there are a lot of other writers. I think that has been very good for my mental health in a way because it means I'm just less exposed to the gossipy part of our profession.
00:31:45
Speaker
And I spend less time sort of like hearing about like what a bunch of people who I don't really know like what they're doing what they got that I didn't get What what good or bad thing that they've done? And I mean I love gossip. I love gossip as much as the next person, but I think
00:32:04
Speaker
There's a certain kind of industry gossip that whenever I do go to a conference or whenever I do spend time in New York and I start hearing that insider info, there's a part of me that loves it and just laps it up. But I usually do walk away from it feeling terrible about myself in one way or another.
00:32:25
Speaker
glad it wasn't like that's not why I moved to Marfa, but I do think that being somewhat insulated from the professional hubs of this kind of work allows me to like have
00:32:37
Speaker
some distance and to like approach everybody with more generosity. And I mean, my favorite mode is like out here, there's a bunch of, there's like all the art people are out here. So I get to hear all the art gossip and those people are vicious. There are also a lot of poets. So I get to hear like a certain amount of poet gossip. Those people are really vicious. And so I get to like satisfy my desire for gossip, but without it like being, it's like a world that's adjacent to my own, but not my own.
00:33:06
Speaker
And that feels better. I feel like it's poet vicious is going to be like its own kind of vicious adjective. It's just like, oh, how vicious is that community out there? It's not poet vicious, but it's vicious. I mean, I think it's just like there isn't a commercial
00:33:29
Speaker
Most of those people, they're not operating in a world where there's commercial demand for what they do. So it's all based on institutional affiliations, awards, grants, and stuff like that. And so much of that is who is picked by who, who is affiliated by who, who is
00:33:49
Speaker
Who do people choose as their mentees or successors or something? And so I think because there isn't, I don't know, all the money seems to flow based on personality and alliances. So I think that's why it's very intense. So how do you leverage your relative geographic isolation to still do this work that is incredibly visible in these prominent, very prominent magazines, New Yorker stories,
00:34:18
Speaker
I think it's so inspiring that when people are like you or Eva Holland, way the fuck up in the Yukon, that she's able to publish what she publishes and then you're doing what you do or you are. So how have you been able to leverage your relative isolation to publish prominently?
00:34:38
Speaker
Eva's so amazing, isn't she? Like her work is so cool. She came and visited a few years ago and it was like the first time there had ever been a drag show in Marfa. We were pretty sure. It was like the first ever, she was like, this place is crazy. I was like, it is not usually like this. But yeah, I mean, I think in both of our cases, well, it's because we've talked about it a little bit.
00:35:03
Speaker
There's the advantage of it, which is just like things come across your radar that, or you're exposed to like certain communities or certain issues or certain stories that like aren't going to come up in New York or LA or DC or even Portland.
00:35:20
Speaker
But at the same time, I think there can be, there's like editors don't always necessarily understand that those stories can be vital. So there's, there's like the tendency of editors to maybe see stories in like rural places or remote places.
00:35:38
Speaker
They want them to be quirky or aberrant in some way, or they feel like, what does this have to say about why is this going to resonate with somebody in a city? What happens out there has nothing to do with what happens here in New York, the center of the universe.
00:35:59
Speaker
I've had a real advantage or the way that I've been thinking about it more and more recently is that I guess there can be like a tendency to think about what happens in rural areas like to rural places as like somehow, you know, backwards, like left behind.
00:36:17
Speaker
you know, stuck in the past. And I think in some cases that can be true or aspects of that can be true, but also I think rural areas in some ways, like sometimes the flip side is true and things show up here actually like before they like trickle down into New York. I mean, I always think about the story that I wrote for The New Yorker about essential oils, which actually like before I wrote it for them, I had pitched it everywhere for
00:36:44
Speaker
a year, over a year probably, because I was like out here in rural Texas and I was like, oh my gosh, all of these ladies, like every lady I know suddenly is like in a multi-level marketing thing, like selling essential oils. This is huge. This is everywhere, like the MLM thing and the essential oil thing. And I just like pitched it all over the place. And everybody was like, you know, most of the editors I pitched it to were like men in New York City.
00:37:12
Speaker
And they were just like, I don't like, no, it doesn't seem to me like this is everywhere. Like, what is this? This just seems like a weird thing that you guys are doing out in the country. And then through a circuitous path, I like did end up getting to write it.
00:37:27
Speaker
for the New Yorker. And then like pretty soon after that, I don't know, I just started to see like, oh yeah, now everybody is like noticing that these multi-level marketing companies are just like really taking over the internet and it's so huge. And I was just like in an Airbnb the other day and there was like the
00:37:46
Speaker
the shampoo is like Pantene Pro-V now with essential oils, which is ridiculous because like all scent compounds are essential. So they've always had essential oils in their shampoo. But now it's like, it's gotten to the point that like Pantene Pro-V like feels like they need to advertise the essential oils in their in their shampoo. I was like, yes, this is like proof that this is a thing that I saw and I saw it out here.
00:38:12
Speaker
first, because it was here first, you know? Yeah, I think it's just like, for me, it's like reframing my own thought process, I guess, to see like, what's showing up in the world around me. And then, and what might be like, new, or fresh, or like an indication of the way things are going, and then
00:38:37
Speaker
There's a whole other issue of trying to convince an editor of that. How do you go about curating the ideas you want to follow? And then if one really makes your antenna stand up on end, how do you go about then lobbying the right editor? What is the nature of your queries to really lobby them? Be like, yeah, I need to go pursue the story and I want you to pay me to do it.
Pitching and Story Challenges
00:39:00
Speaker
I mean it's funny sometimes I like go back and look at older pitches and by older I mean just from like a handful of years ago and like oh that was a really no wonder nobody wanted that like it's it's such a specific skill form.
00:39:16
Speaker
Art form and like itself, you know, they're really hard. I think they're really hard I have a hard time with them. So my like like one of my strategies is like just working with people that I've worked with enough before that I think They they trust me. So even if my pitch isn't great, they know that I can produce something better than the pitch But that's you know
00:39:44
Speaker
That's tricky. You just have to have a, having those relationships I think with people over time. You still have to have that home run pitch to at least have the foundation of which to have built that relationship on. And then you can be like, Hey, there's this thing going on and I think it's kind of cool. Do you mind if I check it out? And like, okay, I've worked with Rachel before. Yeah, go, yeah, go for it. But you can't get there without, yeah.
00:40:10
Speaker
I mean, I think it took me a long time to internalize the advice that you hear a lot of people give or the...
00:40:20
Speaker
Instruction that it's like it's not enough to just find a subject right you need like a story so That was really confusing to me for a long time You know my pitch would just be like hey or even like with essential oils like essential oils isn't that interesting and You know isn't that interesting like isn't enough of an angle or a narrative or you know like there's not enough there and so I think
00:40:45
Speaker
For me, these days, I end up doing a lot of pre-reporting or like pre-pitch reporting and really trying to identify like who the characters would be and like what the narrative would be like right now. Or maybe I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I'm like working on a story in the world of sperm, sperm donation. And I'm just like trying to find just like, I know this is interesting.
00:41:16
Speaker
crazy stuff happening in the world of sperm. But I don't quite know.
00:41:23
Speaker
If I don't have a sense of what the first scene might be, then I sort of feel like I'm not necessarily ready to pitch it yet. Who am I going to follow? What is the animating narrative tension? And so I'll spend a lot of time digging and trying to find that and making phone calls.
00:41:47
Speaker
And that's tough, right? You're like doing a lot of money. I mean, doing a lot of work before you get any money or before you have a contract or before you even know if anybody's going to be into it, but.
00:41:57
Speaker
It ends up, I think in the long run, it ends up meaning that I have fewer, I don't know, the worst thing for me is like getting an assignment and then being like, I actually don't know how to do this. And those are the pieces that end up getting killed, right? And I wish we as writers like talked about that more. I think like when a piece gets killed, it's often
00:42:19
Speaker
Click never spoken of again right and so i remember talking to a friend of mine who got a story killed like a few years ago and she was like so upset and i really felt heartbroken about it and like a shame and i was like girl i got like two pieces killed you know already this year.
00:42:35
Speaker
And it's just, but I like, I don't tweet about it, you know, but maybe I should. So it's easy to sort of have the sense that like, you know, every, everything, like you only see the other people's like finished products, right? So you think like, oh, they're only producing finished products, but like there's so many.
00:42:51
Speaker
false starts and dead ends and things that like never work out and like disaster drafts and tragic emails from editors and all that and so I think like this the stronger my pitch is which is like it's sort of like writing a book proposal right it's like the stronger the idea you have in your head of like who's the character who are the characters what's the narrative what's the structure what's the idea like once I have
00:43:15
Speaker
if you have that in your head you're like giving yourself a head start and it's like if you know all that the piece isn't going to get killed because you know what it is and you have a strong sense of it so even though it is like a lot of advanced work i'm coming around to understanding why they force us to do it yeah i think we should probably run with this ball a little more of the kill of killed stories and how demoralizing it can be yeah
00:43:43
Speaker
I imagine they can be killed at any point. What might you identify as the most devastating kill that you've had and how you recovered from it?
00:43:59
Speaker
Hmm, I mean Devastating. I don't know. It's it's more frustrating I think like and usually like the pieces that I've had killed or like end up being a non-starter Usually I agree with the editor like I can't I guess I can't think of anything that I've written I've been like yes and the editor has been like no and I think that that would be a real heartbreaker maybe that's happened and I like blocked it out of my memory, but usually I'm just like
00:44:27
Speaker
I can't quite get this to work, and then I send what I have to my editor, and they're like, yeah, you're right. I'm like, you can't quite get this to work. And so in a way, it's a relief. So, I mean, I'm thinking about, there's like a story, I appreciate, this is like an editor I've worked with a lot, and they've sort of like, I was like, I think we need to kill this story. Like it's not, I wrote, I did a reporting trip, I wrote a whole, you know, five or 6,000 word draft, but I just like didn't quite feel right. And I sent it to him and I was like,
00:44:56
Speaker
And we, I don't know. And he was like, yeah, you're right. Like, it needs another element. And we bandied about, this is about like DNA evidence. And I was trying to write a story about like forensic
00:45:08
Speaker
a problem with like forensic science, but I was like, I don't want to do it in the traditional way, which is like you open with maybe a crime or somebody being arrested for a crime. And then you're like, but actually, you know, like the science pointed in this direction, but then actually like it twists and like maybe the science isn't so invaluable after all. You know, Pam Kollof does like the most amazing versions of those stories, but I was like, I want to write something slightly different.
00:45:31
Speaker
Basically, we didn't have a case. There was no case at the center of this. I was interested in the science, but the science that I didn't have, that central crime story. And I was like, no, it's interesting to write it without that. But it wasn't interesting. But my editor has sort of like, I was like, I think after going back and forth a bunch of times, I was like, we can just kill it. It's fine. And he was like, no, I think just put it on the back burner at some point. The case will come or the incident or the
00:46:01
Speaker
scientist or like whatever, it'll happen and we'll revive it. So it's like, but this was like a couple years ago. So it hasn't officially been killed, but it's just sort of hovering there. And it's a little bit, in some ways, I guess I'm glad that it's not killed, because I did a bunch of work on it. And I know a lot about DNA now. And it would be a shame for that to go to waste. There's also a little bit of a feels like a loop that's unclosed, if that makes sense. You know,
00:46:28
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Yeah, I love hearing you talk about this, and maybe this should be a new section of the show, like things we don't tweet about. Uh-huh, yeah, totally. You know, and I try to get, I try to burrow underneath a lot of that stuff, a lot of the insecurities of writers and, you know, what this, what it's like. So other people out there can feel like, oh, you know what, it's, if Rachel feels that way, then I don't feel so shitty that I feel that way too. And, and these people where you see their, their bylines in very prominent places and you're like, oh my God.
00:46:57
Speaker
You know, she's struggling with that. She's getting stories killed. I just had one kill that took all this wind out of my sails like, Oh, it's so good to hear her talk about that. Just because I feel so alone. Like I'm the only one who's ever had a story killed. And it's just it's just great to hear you talk about that. Because like you said, these are the things we don't tweet about.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah, and it happens to all of us. And I think I like for a long time, felt really if I couldn't figure out how to make a story work, I would I would sort of like suffer alone and try to like force my way through it. And I've recently been trying to work
00:47:34
Speaker
more with like bring those concerns to an editor. I don't know it's funny I think everybody has like different relationships with their editors but for me I like to sort of like go off you know like burrow into my cave until I have like a draft that's like as complete as I can do it and like be like ta-da here it is it's finished or close to finished. There's something about like checking in with an editor in the draft phase that feels really
00:48:02
Speaker
like too vulnerable to me or like, you know, they're going to, they're going to be like, what, you don't know what you're doing. And, you know, we, we rescind this assignment or something, but I'm trying, there's like a piece that I'm, I'm sort of struggling with right now. And instead of like suffering in silence and trying to force my way through it, I actually like, and, you know, trying to force the draft to happen. I like went to my editor and I was like, look, I can't quite figure this out. And then, and we worked on it together and then he brought it to,
00:48:31
Speaker
senior editor at the magazine and and I think we're gonna I don't know it's just like relying like feeling like I can rely on these people like you know the people who are working with me on the story and not feeling like I need to show up is only like perfect and invaluable that's been that's been a little bit of a quest for me but I'm trying it out
00:48:55
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Well, you know, this, you know, since you write a lot about crime and everything, I mean, it's why detectives have partners, right? Totally. They're never working alone. It's, it's collaborative. Someone else might have a blind spot that the someone else might see, you know, their
00:49:10
Speaker
Commanding officers above them be like, did you look at this? I have this much more experience like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just like, Oh, and they can turn, they might have the skeleton key that'll help unlock it. And it doesn't make you the writer or in this case, the detective, a weaker detective. It's just like, Oh, you know, someone imbued their experience with you and helped you see something you couldn't see. And then all of a sudden it's off to the races again. And you have more, a rejuvenated momentum to go pursue and close the deal.
00:49:40
Speaker
Totally. But I think I, I guess I, I don't know where I absorbed this idea, but as a freelancer, I definitely had the sense that like, I need to be so easy to work with. I need to, I mean, I like, I think I almost always, I can think of a handful of times that I have missed a deadline, but I'm like,
00:49:58
Speaker
I hit my deadlines. I try to be so pleasant and easy because I just realized there are like a million people. There's not a million, but there's like a thousand people who do what I do really well.
00:50:12
Speaker
They're just working with me based on, I don't know, it's like that lack of security. I feel like it's really easy to internalize that and to feel like you need to, I'm sure it's like a gendered thing too, like need to be really, really, really easy and pleasant to work with. But it's also just realizing that, saying like, I don't know how to do this, that's not being difficult to work with. That's actually like in service of the piece. So this is the pep talk that I'm giving myself these days. So now I'm saying it out loud. It's amazing.
00:50:42
Speaker
I love it. Well, it's easy as a freelancer to feel disposable. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And that's where a lot of the insecurity can come from is just like, well, if I'm not easy to work with, if I'm not going four for four at the plate every single time I bring a draft to them, they'll be like, well, we're going to kill this.
00:51:04
Speaker
they're not paying your health insurance and contributing to your 401k. So it's just like, ah, we don't, who cares? You know, we don't have to, we're not really beholden to her. And so it's, that is very hard as a, as a freelancer. Yeah. You get to call your own shots, but at the same time they can call the shots and, you know, push you off a cliff.
00:51:24
Speaker
And do you ever, this is like a totally masochistic thing that I do. I haven't done it in a little while, but like sometimes reading old pieces like from Esquire or GQ or something like from the 90s and then like Googling the person's name and being like, wow, that was a really good piece. Like this person wrote this really big story, you know, in like 1997 and then just, you know.
00:51:45
Speaker
didn't like what happened to their career and you know, you never hear from them again, or they're like NPR or something. I don't know. It's just, there's like no guarantees in this business. And I think that's become only more and more true with like the consolidation of media and the way that like digital media companies are going.
Financial Realities of Writing
00:52:05
Speaker
And so I don't know, it's scary. It's scary to like, it's, it's a scary world we're in. Absolutely. And
00:52:12
Speaker
Do you – when I read that profile about you, there was the part where you write some white papers for some other companies, too. That's kind of more of like an anchor-type gig thing. Is that something you still do that helps subsidize the journalism you want to do and the fallow periods between pieces?
00:52:33
Speaker
I did that up until I got my book contract and that was a really scary moment for me, giving up that work because that was the way that I knew that I could always pay my rent.
00:52:50
Speaker
And there was a part of me that wanted to sort of keep doing it, but I don't know. It was like a symbolic act for me, I guess, to be like, no, you know what? This book is actually my job now. And so I gave it up. But every now and then, sometimes they email me and ask me to...
00:53:11
Speaker
write a little something and I don't mind getting a check, so I'll still do it. But it's very intermittent. It's not my main thing anymore. But again, I wish that was one thing that writers talked about more, like how are you actually making money because it's just
00:53:30
Speaker
And honestly, at this point, my book contract money has gotten all the money from it. I'm never going to get any royalties. So at this point, the main way that I'm able to sustain myself is a number of my stories have gotten optioned. And so that's just this strange chunk of free money that arrives. But if that wasn't happening, then I don't think even just writing,
00:54:00
Speaker
feature stories for the New Yorker and the Atlantic, I don't know if it would, I don't know, I would feel financially precarious, I think, if there wasn't this random infusion of Hollywood money every now and then.
00:54:15
Speaker
Oh yeah, for sure. And this is another one of those things that writers don't tweet about is that there are people sometimes doing content marketing writing that is journalism adjacent, but not on their beat, so to speak. And it's something that, or ghost writing, things that kind of, you know, keep the coffers full. So then you can take, you know, bigger artistic in quotes swings with, you know, the features that really excite you. And even though it looks to the outsider like,
00:54:44
Speaker
Oh, someone is just categorically crushing it and they're just writing long form features for the New Yorker. That's what they're sustaining themselves on. Well, the fact is, probably not. There are these other revenue streams that people just don't publicize, but they're doing more or less, not even on the side. It might be the main thing. It's like a shadow career underneath what they really want to do, but it's what keeps the lights on and allows you to take the big swings.
00:55:14
Speaker
Totally. And I wish people talked about it more because I talked to kind of like writers who were just starting out and they are clearly like, it doesn't make any sense to me. Like how do you, how can a person live this way? And it's like, well, because like nobody actually is living this way, you know, like you marry rich or you get, you do some like content marketing, you know?
00:55:34
Speaker
And it's terrible to feel like somehow if you can't sustain yourself by writing pieces for $200, $300, there's something wrong with you. You're failing at it. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is like you're not getting the full picture. So that's why I think it is really important to talk about that stuff.
00:55:52
Speaker
That's great, yeah. I'd be remiss too if I didn't ask you how you came across Curtis Minder for the latest piece that you wrote for The New Yorker, The Go Between.
Tackling Complex Topics
00:56:04
Speaker
How did that get on your radar? Well, that's a funny one because this was an assignment or it was an idea that my editor floated by me. At first, I was like, are you sure? I'm not a tech reporter.
00:56:20
Speaker
reaction was like, Oh my gosh, yes. Like I'll do anything for you. He's my favorite editor. So wonderful to write for the magazine. But then as soon as I said yes, I started freaking out because I was like, this is not, I'm not a tech reporter. Like I don't like what, what is ransomware? Are you sure you want me to do this? So I like called him up and kind of tried to like talk him out of giving me the assignment. And he's a wonderful person. He was like, no, no, no.
00:56:46
Speaker
I think this is a really important thing for people to think about too is, I don't know. One way that I trip myself up a lot, and particularly I think more so earlier in my career, was feeling like, how do I have the authority to say anything about anything? How can I write about anything unless I'm an expert in it? People get PhDs in this, people build multi-decade careers in this.
00:57:15
Speaker
Why would I have anything to say? In some ways, I think that like insecurity is like not entirely a bad thing because it really does drive me to do a ton of research and maybe some people would call it over research, but I think it's like
00:57:34
Speaker
hugely important for helping me like understand a subject and I think there's like a Rachel Gansa I think there's an interview where she might have been her long-form interview or something else where she talks about this like how important it is to like do that over reporting even if it doesn't make it into the piece it's like you're approaching a subject as if like
00:57:55
Speaker
with that humility of being like, I don't know anything about this. I have so much to learn. And that sort of becomes the iceberg, the massive iceberg of knowledge that you amass, even if most of it doesn't make it into the piece.
00:58:09
Speaker
for sure and the courage to just to be like the the moron on the so like I have no idea what this is like pretend that pretend I'm a first grader because I'm basically a first grader and I apologize ahead of time for asking really inane questions but in my defense I have no idea what you're talking about and I'm wildly curious so please just talk to me like I'm a first grader
00:58:30
Speaker
And I would say for this piece, my initial interviews, I came away from them feeling really bad because I did a ton of reading, but this was a subject that I was learning about. And so I think my initial interviews, it was really clear that this was something that I was not
00:58:48
Speaker
that I was learning about. But then I think it is important to approach it with that humility and with that willingness that you need to learn a lot and to humble yourself for everything that you don't know. It's much better than approaching something with arrogance, right? But at the same time, I think you can't let that
00:59:12
Speaker
like stop you from then like actually doing the work and learning and I don't know I always think about like
00:59:21
Speaker
It's really important that people write about technology or law or politics or finance, all of these subjects that are these specialized fields. It's really important that people from outside of those worlds understand them. Honestly, in some ways, the corporate work that I did, which was mostly for financial companies, was weirdly empowering in a way because I was like, I don't know anything. I've never taken an economics class. I don't know anything about this.
00:59:51
Speaker
How are you going to let me write a white paper about it? And then I realized, oh, this is not some arcane world that I can't, I'm a reasonably intelligent person. I can learn about this enough to talk about it with other reasonably intelligent people. It's actually really harmful that these things get treated as if they are these rarefied realms that you can only understand if you have multiple advanced degrees in economics or something. It's like, no.
01:00:21
Speaker
We all bend our smart minds to think about what's going on here. We can understand it too. It's the same thing with the ransomware stuff. I did a ton of reading to get myself up to speed, and then I had to do a ton of psyching myself up and being like, no, it's important that ransomware is affecting
01:00:42
Speaker
like almost everybody at this point. And it's being written about in these like technical spheres. But there are a lot of people who it's affecting who are never going to read those technical manuals who aren't going to understand them. And I don't I frankly don't need to understand how it works like
01:00:57
Speaker
you know, on the level of the network to be able to talk about how it functions as a social phenomenon. So yeah, it was kind of a fun story. And I think the reason that I was like reached out to a bunch of people in this world and had some
01:01:14
Speaker
had a ton of conversations. And Curtis was a person I found who was able to talk to me. He wasn't talking down to me. He explained things in a human to human kind of way. And that was the sort of piece I was trying to write. How does a normal human being understand what's going on with this strange new cybercrime world? And so he was just a person that I
01:01:42
Speaker
helped me feel like I understood this rather than like the opposite feeling of, you know, oh my gosh, I'll never understand this. I'm like, you know, too dumb or ignorant, which some other people did make me feel that way. And so I think that that was, it's always good to make like that person the centerpiece of a story, because you're sort of bringing everybody along with you. They're like a good guide to a world that might otherwise feel forbidding or intimidating.
01:02:11
Speaker
Yeah, Lawrence Wright would call it the mule of the story. Exactly. Yeah. And over the course of, you know, your body of work to date, you know, what would you identify as the, maybe the through line of your curiosity?
Closing Recommendations and Farewells
01:02:24
Speaker
Oh my gosh, what a good question. You know, I was talking to my friend
01:02:34
Speaker
all namedrop because they're a cool friend to have. My friend Eileen Miles, the poet and genius. And they were, I was explaining this, I want to write a book. I'm like putting together a book proposal for a second book about gun culture. And I was kind of trying to like struggle to articulate why it was interesting to me. And Eileen was like, you know, you're interested in like looking at things that other people don't want to look at and like going inside them.
01:03:04
Speaker
things that people would rather not like go inside and and you want to talk about them from the inside and I was like you know what that's like that's a good way of putting it that is like something that drives me I think that connects some of the stories about crime or some of the stories about you know like uglier social or political aspects you know writing about the manosphere which I've written about or
01:03:29
Speaker
things like, you know, GoFundMe and racism or just like some of the darker motivations of the human soul. And that was like, I appreciated them saying that.
01:03:43
Speaker
And as I bring this conversation to a close, I always like to ask people for a recommendation of some kind. And like I said, that could be a book, a movie, a podcast, or it could be a brand of coffee you're excited about. So I'd extend that to you, Rachel. What is something out there you might recommend for the Wayward Listener? Can I have two? Oh, yes, please. Great.
01:04:07
Speaker
maybe it's silly to talk about these two things next to each other, but two things that have been making me happy. I've been rereading the brilliant Natalie Diaz, just won the Pulitzer Prize for her most recent book of poems, Post-colonial Love Story, and I've been rereading that in honor of her. She's just such a
01:04:28
Speaker
smart. She's like one of the smartest people that I've ever met. It's incredible to be around her but also like with a really, I don't know, she knows how to like live. I admire how she like lives in the world like just with her senses and her brain wide open and her heart and her intellect and that's all there in the poems and so it seems like the Pulitzer Prize is like a good excuse as ever to to reread those or read them for the first time.
01:04:58
Speaker
Her first book is also amazing. I'm also a really big fan of nuts.com. Just got another package in the mail. Do you know nuts.com?
01:05:07
Speaker
I've seen the commercials, yeah. Oh my gosh, I didn't know they had commercials. I bet they're amazing. They're just, you know, you get this box like full of, you know, candied walnuts and like pretty cheap pistachios and like wheatgrass powder and like vegan gummies and I don't know, just all these snacks, just like a good vibe from that place. They used to always give you like a little free sample in all your boxes, but they stopped doing that.
01:05:35
Speaker
maybe the corporate or overloads have like made them into less of a nice company. But I feel like reasonably priced snack packs can't go wrong, nuts.com.
01:05:49
Speaker
Fantastic. You don't want to recommend Testosterone Planet, true stories from a man's world. I almost wish I had bought it just to look at it. I bet some of those stories are good. It's just really worst marketing plan that I've ever seen truly.
01:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, and I'll be sure to just link I'll link up to that. It's just that's an inside joke for anybody like Rachel tweeted out this the most unnecessary book of all time. It was hilarious. I'll make sure I embed that tweet or something because it's just hilarious. And the fact that something like that even exists in the world delivered and packaged in that way is says a lot about the year 2000. Exactly. Very much so.
01:06:40
Speaker
Rachael, where can people find you online and get more familiar with your work? On my intermittently updated website, I guess, which is rachel-hi-fin-min-ro.com or, you know, on Twitter. I'm on Twitter too much at rachemin-ro. Fantastic. Well, what a pleasure to talk to you and get more familiar with your work and everything, Rachael. So thanks so much for the time and best of luck and continued success. Thank you so much. It was really fun to talk to chat.
01:07:13
Speaker
That was inspiring. I think it really was. I remember living in upstate New York and thinking that it was far too remote there. And we're just talking Saratoga Springs area. Like, uh, I don't know. That's about two hours north of the city. Anyway.
01:07:29
Speaker
that the
01:07:45
Speaker
and the
01:08:05
Speaker
Fact is, I was and am just not good enough at this racket to make it work. And so I work part time for the benevolent overlords of a Gannett newspaper. A dead end job where hope does in fact go to die.
01:08:21
Speaker
Thanks, of course, to Rachel for coming on the show. What a treat. Hope to have her back when maybe she's got a new book coming out at some point or another. Savage Appetites is her current book that came out a year ago. And thank you to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing at the Hippo Camp 2021 for the support. Drop that CNF pod 21 code for 50 clams off your registration. Tell them BO sent you.
01:08:50
Speaker
I'm going to keep beating that Patreon drum because that's what's going to take the show to the next level, man. Having the show be listener supported gives you ownership, gives you agency, helps pay writers, and speaking of that, I need to cut a few checks after taxes and fees from Patreon. I think the writers are going to get about 25 bucks. I mean, for a literary magazine, that's like Puff Daddy money.
01:09:13
Speaker
Helps me make a better product, of course. Helps me celebrate more CNF-ers and build the community. And it's not like you get nothing in exchange for a few bucks a month. So go window shop at patreon.com slash CNFpod.
01:09:26
Speaker
And you know what? You could email me what you think would be worth it to you. Like, I'd be a patron if you offered this, as if putting this show out every week weren't enough, but I get it. This show comes out for free every week, always has for close to nine years. And then to pass around the collection plate, I understand, I get that 99% of the audience is like, yeah, hard pass, B.O.
01:09:50
Speaker
What that means is I need to offer you something that is magnitudes of order more valuable than $2 a month or $4 a month or $10 a month. So if you have ideas, I'm open to them. All right? You know, if that's like, okay, I will join this tier if you did this.
01:10:08
Speaker
So I want to do it. It's up to you. Visit brendotomerra.com for show notes and to sign up for the up to 11 monthly newsletter. 11 recommendations, including books, articles, blogs, pods, writing prompts, and interviews, and also that code for the exclusive CNF and happy hour that I tend to do on the second Wednesday of the month. Sometimes as a special guest, sometimes it's just me hanging out with a few newsletter folks.
01:10:37
Speaker
It's kind of fun to have a beverage of choice and talk shop and see what's on your mind. Newsletters, first of the month, no spam. Can't beat it. All right, so a downer alert. You heard of spoiler alerts. So this is kind of like a downer alert. So you can feel free to either skip this or skip through it or delete or unsubscribe. Don't do that, but you could. Power is in your hands.
01:11:09
Speaker
What I'm slowly realizing is that in order to get good at something, you have to have a diligence and a willingness to say no to a lot of things. To almost everything, really.
01:11:19
Speaker
We really can get quite good and skilled at anything we put our minds to, but the problem becomes we put our minds on too many things, most of us anyway, and the few of us who don't are exceptional at what they do, and we wonder why. Why am I a shitty journalist and reporter and writer of narrative features? Because I don't do enough of them.
01:11:39
Speaker
Why don't I have more freelance assignments? Well, because I haphazardly pitch, waste my time doing other bullshit, and don't have enough pitches out there. And about the only thing I'm decent at these days is interviewing and producing this podcast. But for all the time and labor it takes to put this show together through editing and admin and trying to just be good and in service of the listener, it's a glorified hobby.
01:12:05
Speaker
That's it. Hobbies don't pay the bills. And this show certainly does not do that, much to the chagrin of my domestic partner and producer Hank. I haven't had a book published in 10 years. What do they do the last 10 years? I think I wrote perhaps 10 features, a few columns, an essay or two. I'm 10 years older and 10 years more bitter and 10 years sadder and not an inch farther.
01:12:34
Speaker
than where I was at 31 years old. I've been doing this pod for more than eight years, then it's ninth year. I know people who are in my sphere who started podcasting like the last year or two have something like hundreds of Patreon supporters and pulling thousands of dollars a month from just their podcast alone. It's like
01:12:57
Speaker
I know I talk about running your own race and trying not to compare yourself to others but when you sit with it and objectively and dispassionately look at your life and your career and your body of work you soon realize the reality of it all and it hits you across the face like damn.
01:13:14
Speaker
that you did something wrong and you keep doing the same things wrong and expecting a different result, that age-old definition of insanity. And how are all these other people doing it?
01:13:28
Speaker
Why haven't I graduated to the next level when so many people have, when I've put in so many years of this endless tire spinning grind? At least in sports, they have the decency to cut you when you're too deluded to quit. At some point, maybe I just have to have the courage to cut myself from the team.
01:13:51
Speaker
I have a poster of a cat that is a kitten and it's jumping in the air, it's swinging, it's about to miss this rope, so it's gonna fall. And it's from despair.com. And the captain says, at some point hanging in there just makes you look like a bigger loser. So I've got some thinking to do, seeing after us. Stay cool. Stay cool forever. See ya.