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Episode 503: An Atmospheric River of Rejection with Jason Brown
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"I will always go back to the well, and I will write until I die," says Jason Brown, author of Character Witness.
Jason Brown is here. He is a brilliant short story writer and the author of the memoir Character Witness (University of Nebraska Press). It’s an incredible book and we recorded this conversation at the end of October as the fourth and final LIVE podcast of the year at Gratitude Brewing here in Eugene.
Jason, as luck would have it, teaches at the University of Oregon in its writing department, forging the young minds who will publish in the most obscure lit journals, the future bitter podcasters of America, sorry, speaking from experience. I’m projecting, OK?
But thanks to Jason and his clout with the University, we had our biggest gathering of the year, live and in person. There’s something pretty rad about the in-person jam.
Jason can be found at writerjasonbrown.com. He writes fiction and nonfiction and was a Stegner Fellow and Truman Capote Fellow at Stanford University where he taught as a Jones Lecturer. He has received fellowships from Yaddo and Macdowell colonies. He taught for the MFA program at the University of Arizona and directs the MFA program at the U of O here in Eugene. He’s the author of the collection Driving the Heart and Other Stories, Why the Devil Chose New England For His work and his work as also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Best American Short Stories, The L.A. Times, and The Guardian, among many others. This is getting obnoxious.
In this conversation we talk about:
- Persistence
- Hiking out from the moment
- The atmospheric river of rejection
- Escape velocity
- Woodworking
- Rule breakers
- Maturing around himself
- And working with Tobias Wolff
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Special Offers
00:00:00
Speaker
AC and Everest, if you want signed, personalized copies of The Front Runner for the holiday season, you better hurry. Email me, creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail.com, and I'll email you a PayPal invoice, or you could just mail me a physical check, remember those, so PayPal doesn't skim off its fee, and then I'll ask you how you want your book personalized. It'll be $30 total, and that covers that really ritzy media rate shipping while supplies last.
00:00:26
Speaker
I got lots of supplies, so go for it. This podcast is also sponsored with this house ad for Pitch Club, the monthly substack where you read cold pitches and hear the authors audio annotating their thinking behind how they sold and crafted their pitches that landed publication.
00:00:44
Speaker
There are three atavist writers so far. Featured. I just landed a pitch and I'm going to ah annotate that. I might annotate a book proposal overview. Yeah, I'm going to jump in. Why not? It's my thing. Welcome to Pitch Club.
00:00:58
Speaker
Club? Welcome to Pitch Club. Fucking idiot. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. And also, this podcast secured the sponsorship of the word disappointment. The act or an instance of disappointing. The state of emotion of being disappointed. Or one that disappoints. Or how passive-aggressive moms get their points across.
00:01:22
Speaker
There's no coasting. Yeah. You know, what's next um for the artist means... You have to climb the mountain again as if you've never climbed it before.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Feature
00:01:39
Speaker
OAC Everest is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where i speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan O'Meara. AI openly said, nah, we're not going to copy you. You know, I heard an advertisement on the radio about a restaurant in town or across the river that said something to the effect of blah, blah, blah, like it's 1995, back when we had something to prove.
00:02:02
Speaker
And I'm like, you no longer have something to prove? Seems like an odd thing to celebrate. I, for one, approach each and every week with something to prove on this show because your attention is finite and George Saunders, I am not. Jason Brown is here.
00:02:17
Speaker
He's a brilliant short story writer and the author of the memoir Character Witness, published by University of Nebraska Press. It's an incredible book. And we recorded this conversation at the end of October, I know, as the fourth and final live podcast of the year at Gratitude Brewing here in Eugene.
00:02:35
Speaker
Our next live one is scheduled for January 25th. It's a Sunday, naturally, 1 p.m. with Daniel Pollack-Pelsner. ah More on that in a few weeks, but figured I'd plant the seed if you're in the region.
00:02:49
Speaker
ah Jason, as luck would have it, teaches at the University of Oregon in their writing department, forging the young minds who will publish in the most obscure lit journals the future Bitter podcasters of America, sorry I'm speaking from experience. I'm projecting, okay?
00:03:05
Speaker
But thanks to Jason and his clout with the university, we had our biggest gathering of the year, live and in person. There's something pretty rad about the in-person jam. Show notes to this episode more at brendanomero.com. Hey, bookmark it, man.
00:03:20
Speaker
so you can browse for hot blogs and sign up for the two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm and Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. I don't charge for anything regarding either of those newsletters, but your permission is payment.
00:03:36
Speaker
As I like to say, I can leverage that for maybe book contracts down the road, or if you want to hire me to help you with a pitch or coach up a piece of writing, that's always on the table. You can always reach out to me, whatever. We'll work something out. Also, if you care to support the podcast with a few dollar bills, you can go to patreon.com slash cnfpod. It's probably where I'll host or at least clue people into the hashtag Flash 52 sessions. What?
00:04:03
Speaker
You don't know what that is? It was in the Monthly Rager. Don't say I didn't tell you. So Jason Brown can be found at writerjasonbrown.com. He writes fiction and nonfiction and was a Stegner Fellow and Truman Capote Fellow at Stanford University where he taught as Jones lecturer.
Jason Brown's Writing and Teaching Career
00:04:23
Speaker
he has received fellowships from Yaddo and McDowell colonies. He taught for the MFA program at the University of Arizona. and directs the MFA program at the U of O here in Eugene.
00:04:34
Speaker
He's the author of the collection Driving the Heart and Other Stories, Why the Devil Chose New England for his work, and his work all has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Hopper's Best American Short Stories, The l LA Times, and The Guardian, among others.
00:04:50
Speaker
This is getting obnoxious. In this conversation, we talk about persistence, hiking out from the moment, the atmospheric river of rejection. Nice. Escape velocity, woodworking, rule breakers, maturing around himself or yourself.
00:05:06
Speaker
Depends. And working with Tobias Wolfe. You know him. I don't need to tell you that this conversation was great, but I do need to tell you about this week's parting shot, about the bitter pill of rejection. But for now, cue up that riff.
00:05:28
Speaker
You need to be truffle pig. But, you know, i it was a machete brandished. I almost always have a very specific reader in mind. I know, I sometimes wish i would have never done any of these things. because This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than
00:05:52
Speaker
me. So with no further ado, i give you Brendan O'Meara and Jason Brown in the Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:06:06
Speaker
All right. Thanks, everybody, for coming out. What a crowd. This is great. And thanks to Gratitude for hosting us for the fourth and final live podcast of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast here, this quarterly series of In Real Life, our way of raging against the algorithm.
00:06:19
Speaker
So I'm really stoked to have all of you here and to enjoy and celebrate the work of Jason Brown. So let's go. One more round of applause.
00:06:32
Speaker
There's a line in in Character Witness, and we'll get to that in more depth, but it has to do with, at least in my experience, the inner life does not follow a linear path. And i like talking about the the non-linearity of what it means to have a literary career. So in what way would you describe you know the arc of your career and the ups and downs and the zigs and zags that have gotten you from, say, you know driving the heart to where we are now?
00:06:59
Speaker
Well, I feel like there... First of all, thank you, Brendan and Ruby, for having me on i I really appreciate it and I'm honored to be here. So I feel like there are two tracks. One is the track of the artist, and one is, I suppose, the track of the career.
00:07:20
Speaker
I don't feel like they're the same track. And so I've gotten better, and I feel like my career's gotten worse. And that's not abnormal, you know, because ah you know that's just how it how it works. um you know Who's going to pay attention to you and why and for what reasons? And and then there's your work and whether it it it deepens and and gets more interesting, and which I feel like it really has. um and
00:07:52
Speaker
And that is through many, many years of working and as a, you know, on the work, you know. Yeah, well, it it takes a tremendous amount of patience and repetition in writing through a lot of bad stuff before you get to even something that is remotely good or even competent. yeah So, like, just through through your experience, how have you weathered that degree of of patience and the bumpy road that it takes to get published and, know, weathering the bad writing to eventually get to the good?
00:08:21
Speaker
I mean, i need a lot of help doing that. You know, I'm looking over at my partner, Nicola, and ah she's endured. No one's paying attention to me, you know. No one cares. um She's had to listen to a just an obscene amount of whining. and And, you know, but i'm also ah I'm also very stubborn in various ways that aren't so good for my career, but I feel like are good for the the work itself.
00:08:52
Speaker
So it's just ah it's just a matter of persistence. And the older you get, the one luxury you have is that it's too late to do anything else. Yeah. And so you may as well just go deeper in.
00:09:04
Speaker
Right. well Yeah, there's even ah
Balancing Writing with Carpentry and Teaching
00:09:06
Speaker
a line in the in the memoir, too, where you you talk about like almost fantasizing about other career tracks of like be it and you know going to Alaska and like getting into more carpentry yeah and stuff. and ah ah you know it There were any number of of detours along the freeway of like on my own path of being a writer. i'm like, that exit looks really good. you know I could really pull off here and maybe get into, like I don't know, winemaking or something. yeah And I did try that detour, and it sucked. And I'm still back. I got back on yeah this freeway. I don't know like about you. Does it just pull you back in?
00:09:38
Speaker
it's It's sort of the wrong time in my life to ask me that question, I feel like. I keep wondering if I'm frankly done. you know um And I really love carpentry, and I'm getting a lot better at it.
00:09:55
Speaker
I also really love teaching. I really love these younger people, who are many of whom are sitting here, who have so much enthusiasm and are passionate and they want to get better. And I get a lot of pleasure from that, being around that and that energy. i'm I'm a little bit of a, it's like a monstrous energy sucker, you know, is that...
00:10:16
Speaker
ah in the guise of a teacher. I'm pretending to help them, but they're helping me. um so But no, i do have, the thing about writing is that, as my mentor Tobias Wolfe said, it's always asking you, what have you done for me lately?
00:10:34
Speaker
you know It's not like being in a business or whatever where you maybe are really successful and then you get to coast. you never There's no coasting. yeah you know What's next?
00:10:46
Speaker
um for the artist means you have to climb the mountain again as if you've never climbed it before. I mean, yes, you have more skills, which means you can recognize sooner that you have, your bad ideas are are more apparent earlier in the process. But otherwise, you still got to go climb that mountain.
00:11:03
Speaker
and And I guess I'm revealing something about myself that I'm a little bit of a baby. I don't want to engage There's a part of me that always wants to hide from life and the difficult things. And so writing is difficult. Writing a good book that I'm going to be proud of is is a huge amount of emotional energy you know and time.
00:11:24
Speaker
So sometimes I wish I didn't have to. But then I find that I don't know what life means or who I am unless I'm constantly going back to that well. So the answer is I will always go back to the well, and I will write until I die.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah, Ruby was saying a moment ago the degree, the the fearlessness through which, you know, the the work is coming is coming to pass. And the in in in approaching that fear is very uncomfortable. So do you know that you're on to something when you're starting to maybe, the more uncomfortable you feel, the more you need to kind of push into that?
00:12:01
Speaker
It depends entirely on the project. I mean, um I really admire... um you know, biographers like yourself, and and I'm jealous because you're going into, you get to go deeply into material that has nothing to do directly with yourself.
00:12:17
Speaker
And what we're here to talk about today, in my case, is my memoir, and that required going through a lot of difficult emotions. Not only going through them, I've been through them, but then figuring out how to make meaning from them, and that was all very difficult.
00:12:33
Speaker
But um I've also done writing, journalism and screenwriting, where i don't it's not deeply personal, and i'm and I'm sort of writing about not writing about myself. And that is much more, has a different energy and is invigorating in a different way.
00:12:49
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, and there's um early in the, you know at one point in the book, you write, like, to write about myself for an audience other than myself has necessitated that I attempt to treat myself and my story objectively as a subject of investigation. I've had to be willing to see what was in me and what was in my mother and what has existed between us, which has meant, most importantly, being willing to see what I haven't wanted to see.
00:13:14
Speaker
And that that to me encapsulated really what's such a challenge about memoir and going into those uncomfortable places. So I don't know, just maybe you pull on that thread a little longer about having to detach a bit to write fearlessly.
00:13:30
Speaker
Well, it's it's really interesting because you have to detach, but you also have to go there and be in those moments, depending on the scene.
00:13:43
Speaker
I had to bring myself back to moments that I don't want to think
Challenges and Humor in Writing Memoirs
00:13:46
Speaker
about and and remember and and re-experience. And then i have to hike out from those moments and and look at it from a more objective point of view.
00:13:58
Speaker
In other words, how would other people see these moments and try to make sense of it? And that's a lot of work and I mean, a ton of energy, but also, It's not just the the experience of something that was difficult, but it's also maturing about, working on this book is forcing me to mature in terms of my own life and in terms of you know the things I maybe had to endure. And so, for instance, my default mode is frankly to just feel sorry for myself. And you know I already mentioned whining and so,
00:14:35
Speaker
It's a similar thing. and and And so, for instance, when I go into this material to write about it, I'm feeling the pain of something that I've experienced, right? It's easier to go, that's one step, is to go into that feeling again. And then that produces a feeling of, poor me, I had to go through this, and I had a difficult mother, you know, and or a difficult relationship with my mother.
00:14:58
Speaker
And you know I had a drinking problem, and you know who doesn't? but you know um And then, oh, poor me. you know And then part of coming out is realizing, actually, my life, is and I've been incredibly fortunate.
00:15:11
Speaker
I have gratitude. you know um I've been incredibly lucky for so many different reasons. you know and And part of one of those reasons is my mother. And so that's the difficult journey, is to mature around myself.
00:15:31
Speaker
Does that make sense? Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's um yeah and there's there's a moment, too, where you know your your mother refers to this collective story as like our book. you know She really kind of tethers herself to it like a barnacle on on a whale. And ah you know and you know it wasn't the book I was writing. it was the book I was living. Yeah.
00:15:50
Speaker
And this also speaks to you know needing distance, especially in memoir, to get that meaning that you can hike away and find that perspective. So like you know maybe at what point did you sense that you were, in fact, ready to tackle this material?
00:16:03
Speaker
Oh, i I started poking away and thinking there was nonfiction here in this material 15 years ago. And then I kept finding that it wasn't the right time to write about it. For one thing, I was still i very much immersed in living it still. And I had not worked through a lot of the the the stuff in my relationship with my mother and in myself. And I don't know why, but um when the New Yorker article came out, that was a sort of turn of the screw for me where I felt like I had turned a corner with this material.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, the in you know a little a moment ago, too, you brought up, talking about maybe yeah nonfiction, certain things that are hard to approach, and you know you write a lot of fiction as well. Do you find that you know you can use fiction as a way to metabolize things but still keep a bit of distance more than something like ah like a memoir? Yeah.
00:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of memoirs are difficult for me to read. e Because i don't I'm not that interested in and hearing someone narrate to me, tell me about their understanding of their life.
00:17:23
Speaker
um The kind of memoirs I like are where someone just recreates a scene for me from memory. And so Tobias Wolfe, This Boy's Life was first written as a novel. And his agent said, we can't sell this thing. I don't, you know, for some reason, whatever.
00:17:38
Speaker
How about write it as a memoir or rewrite it as a memoir? he He took out the stuff that wasn't true. It took him a couple months. He resubmitted it and it became one of the books that put, you know memoir, create and and I mean, literary memoir back on the map. Yeah. And and and one of the things I love about that book is it's just written scene after scene. He's not spending a ton of time analyzing himself.
00:18:04
Speaker
right And so as a fiction writer, I tried to, you have to step out, but that the way I am bringing that understanding to the page is how I render scenes from memory, truthfully, but memory is also flawed.
00:18:20
Speaker
And what degree of humor am I bringing to it? You know i mean? Things like that in the scene um is where the commentary is. So I had, you know, I've done a couple readings where people have asked, oh, I really felt like I wanted you to talk to me about all the things you'd learned about this relationship with your mother. And I thought, that's explicitly what I didn't do. Right, right. have to read between the lines, as you do with fiction.
00:18:46
Speaker
For sure. And know you know, you're bringing up Tobias Wolf as a mentor and he's, I got to say just what are some things, you know, if you could point to a few that he really coached out of you and, you know, set set the example and set the bar for you?
00:19:02
Speaker
One of the greatest things I learned from him is I have a tendency to think, and I still believe this, is that ah no one's going to be interested in me unless I, um,
00:19:15
Speaker
am a little bit funnier if my work is a little bit more over the top, a little bit more melodramatic. And as a writer and as a person, he recognizes, i feel, that in himself and and intentionally is always trying to achieve a certain degree of honesty.
00:19:38
Speaker
And I feel like I've spent most of my life failing to do that. and But he's one of my, I guess his example has always been important to me of of just trying to be as honest in the work and part of that means not overplaying it, you know, just being who you are, telling the story you're going to tell and in other words, not blowing the scene up too much, not being too melodramatic as a, out of a sense of insecurity that you're afraid no one will find it entertaining. yeah and you've talked about self-pity and whining and stuff, which is something I can totally attest to and from my own experience. And ah in you know Ruby being a cheerleader and talking about low self-esteem of writers is, of course, I am one of her clients. And it's... ah
00:20:26
Speaker
In those in insufferable moments of self-doubt, too, like how how do you manage to you know to push through that headspace to get to a place where you're getting something constructive done that you might be able to rework later and maybe a higher level of self-confidence?
00:20:42
Speaker
Well, I usually either cry or take a nap. And then everything's better afterwards. Yeah, that's a great sequence. Cry, nap yeah Wake up and try it again. or i try to read some things that I feel like really inspire me or really important to me.
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really great point to underscore. And I sometimes use this ah metaphor, if you will. I like i imagine that you know whatever your favorite band is, if they're feeling stumped in the studio, ah they don't listen to their own stuff or just crawl into a hole, though I'm sure there is some aspect of that. But I'm i'm guessing that Metallica is pulling down an album from Deep Purple, like a band that was instrumental to their development, and be like, oh, yeah, let's see this song phrasing, and let's get draw inspiration from what's happened before us. yeah and that will inform what we're trying to do. And so like for and you know for you, like to what extent or what are the things that you're pulling down from your library to just inject into your brain as a model of how it's how well it's done so you can get energized for your own work?
Inspiration and Maintaining Balance
00:21:45
Speaker
I mean, and there are things I should say that energize me on different levels. I mean, I'll read something that I just know is going to be funny and is going to entertain me or even watch something on Netflix that I think, wow, that is so good. And um I'll be reconnected to the point of doing this.
00:22:02
Speaker
My despair has to do with mostly the career side, not the artist side. If I'm focused, if I stay focused on the act of doing the writing and pursuing my path as a writer, whatever that may be, and and making that contribution, then it becomes more about continuing to do that act and less about you know the world's response to it. And that's very, very hard to do because you know the world may decide they're done listening to you you know or whatever. And and that doesn't... and yeah So to learn how to detach from that, I do that by reading things that on various levels just reconnect me with um the excitement. And so um I recently read this nonfiction book called The Wager.
00:22:49
Speaker
who read that Who wrote that? and David Gran. Yeah, yeah. And I just thought, as as a work of nonfiction, as a research, I wish I could do that. I mean, it's just so engaging. And um I love nautical things. I'm from Maine. you know And i just I picked that book up and read it in like two days and just couldn't put it down.
00:23:10
Speaker
you know Yeah, yeah, he's a master of that historical recreation, everything. Killers of the Flower Moon, Lost City of Z, yeah The Wager is amazing. It's just that he's an appointment reading. Whenever you see his byline or his book coming out, it's like an event. Yeah, and just the arc of it, and it's pushing me through, but then a book I love is Gretel Ehrlich's This Cold Heaven.
00:23:31
Speaker
It's about her being up in, what is it, Greenland, I think? I don't know. And it doesn't have that same driving force. It's really anecdotal. There's something about just being with her and watching her notice this iced world, you know, and these people who live there, and um I don't care about the structure. I don't care about being it's not I'm not reading it for the plot or to find out what happens.
00:23:59
Speaker
And it's similar to me with, in terms of nonfiction, Svetlana Aleksevich, I think is how you say her name, ah Voices of Chernobyl, second-hand time. She's a Nobel Prize winner from Russia or what is it, Belarus? I'm sorry if I'm getting these things wrong. But anyway, she collects people's stories and weaves them together.
00:24:22
Speaker
And so she's a more of a curator or almost an anthropologist. she Her career was really in journalism. And so secondhand time is is about about Russia and she she goes and interviews these people, these veterans and people living in Russia post-perestroika and gets all these different points of view, people who wish Stalin would come back, people who hate capitalism now and then they feel like it failed them, you know the promises and and just the portrait she creates. And it's the same with Voices of Chernobyl. I mean, it is just heartbreaking and nothing can replace this sort of pointillist view of things where you're getting many, many different ah points of view of a single event, you know these sort of geological layers. So it doesn't have a single narrative arc.
00:25:13
Speaker
But to me, I'm like, how can I do that in fiction or in memoir in an or in essay where I can just create that kind of excitement that I'm reaching out and touching real life. you know Yeah, for sure. yeah like Looking ah outside of, you know say, your you know you little cloistered genre that you might traffic most of your work in, it's like when I was writing The Front Runner, was inspired structurally by The Last Dance docuseries of Michael Jordan, yeah and I desperately, desperately, desperately wanted to have this over-the-top
00:25:50
Speaker
ah By that, I mean literally like this narrative that's going over the top of The Last Dance for Pree's life. And i just I couldn't pull it off. But it's like I love that you brought up finding something maybe on Netflix or something else that is giving you an inspiration. You're oh, how can I do that yeah with with your own work? And I think that's just really a breaking outside of your own your own little bubble to find that inspiration. is like That's where some of the juice is. You can model that stuff and bring it over to your playground, your sandbox. Yeah.
00:26:19
Speaker
Yeah, and the good thing about the great thing about being a writer is you can move around. I mean, we're here to talk about a memoir, and I'm not ready to climb that mountain maybe ever again, although I've started another essay collection called Bonehead.
00:26:32
Speaker
The subtitle is, you know, Tales of an American Male. No one will publish this, so it's okay. But I'm more and more interested in doing what you've what you've been doing, which is writing about other people. I'm really tired of myself.
00:26:47
Speaker
in ah in ah In a good sense. Like I've mined whatever is in me in my little very normal life, like a middle class American white male, you know, to give to you.
00:26:58
Speaker
um i think I've mined it pretty thoroughly. And I'd really, if I can do some interesting things in writing about other people, that would be great, you know? Yeah. Well, and, you know, you you a moment ago you brought up kind of the the career path versus of the author path and then laid the artist path. And then It's like in that career path, I think, lies a lot of where sometimes like resentments and jealousies and bitternesses start to surface. And I know that I've suffered that from that ah in myriad ways. It's the crucible through which this podcast was formed in 2013. I was just so just angry and didn't and frustrated. And it just it's one of those things that we might not want to admit, but it's definitely something a lot of us experience. And now just from you, just in the arc of your career, how have you metabolized those comparison feelings where you're you're looking over your shoulder and you're like, how how hell did that person get that? And here I am in in this pile of sewage.
00:27:53
Speaker
um i cry and then I take a nap.
00:28:02
Speaker
And then if it gets really bad, i call my medical provider and make an appointment. And they say, well, I don't know. Sometimes I have to just...
00:28:13
Speaker
go out, and this is why I have a wood shop. I have like a lot of tools I barely know how to use, and probably at some point will cut my fingers off, but I love to make things, and in the wood shop I go out there and can make things, and there's no pressure.
00:28:28
Speaker
you know I'm not comparing myself. I do compare myself because that's who I am. because you know like i have an uncle who's a real craftsman and a a woodworker, cabinetmaker, and then my cousin is a wooden boat builder, and these guys can do incredible things, and I compare myself to them.
00:28:43
Speaker
And if I had two lives, I'd probably do something else because I've lived this life and I'd i'd rather work with wood but for the second one. But anyway, this is a way, it's another outlet. It's a way of removing myself.
00:28:56
Speaker
And then I have to be very philosophical or spiritual, if you will, like that I've been incredibly lucky. if ah If it all ends now and crashes down and and, you know, I've been incredibly fortunate just to, as a human being, you know, And that is always something I have to come back to. you know i mean, we all know this. There's no promises of success in anything.
00:29:21
Speaker
There's no promises of anything. and yeah And there is no sense that that reason why one person suffers the earthquake in Haiti and and I get to write my little tales of woe. yeah and and And so that that's the ultimate thing is I'm you know here to,
00:29:42
Speaker
I have to remind myself what my values are and what the truth is. And and the truth is I'm here to do the best job I can. and that involves other people. So getting over myself and being a part of the world. Right. I can attest that nothing good remotely happened to me until I started lifting trying to lift others up.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah. For sure. like Until I started doing this and platforming other people and celebrating other people's work instead of being bitter and angry that someone else is getting some cover story. I'm like, I could have written that. And the fact that it's like, no, you couldn't have. You know you weren't ready for it. and or you probably could have. It's just you didn't get it. you know Yeah.
00:30:19
Speaker
that's That's just it. That sucks. Yeah. Exactly, it's just so much rejection. Speaking of that, that's a great segue to some rejection. How how have you dealt rejection over the years? Because everyone in this audience is about to deal with a... but Oh, it's an endless... What do they call what we're experiencing? The ah the aqua river, the the atmospheric river. Being a writer is an atmospheric river of rejection.
Facing Rejection and Persistence in Writing
00:30:42
Speaker
It is. It really, really is. and But you've got to just... you know Start from the other end of it, which I try to do and and ask myself, well, why would anyone care anyway? I mean, and and anyway, you know, and people read for different reasons. And so when I'm working on my fine-y-wrought short stories or a little essay or my little boutique-y memoir here, i have to understand that it's really, you know, the kind of, there aren't that many people in the world who even want to read that kind of thing.
00:31:19
Speaker
You know what i mean? um Which is why I've tried to work in other genres too, you know? But ultimately, you know, um inspiration from some of these athletes or or people who've really had to overcome things are stories that I love to I made worked on this film about the Afghan girls robotics team called Rule Breakers came out last year. and These young women were so inspirational. They had to overcome so so the Taliban, you know their families, the whole culture they lived in. and Then, you know of course, the Taliban retook the country and they scattered all over the world. They're still going to school, going to college, trying and one of them goes to the U of O here.
00:32:01
Speaker
Things like that. i mean the world is conspiring against you in everything you may want, and often. and so But also, you know look for the doors that open.
00:32:15
Speaker
If a door is closed, instead of curling up and crying and taking a nap in front of that closed door, like you can get up and say, what other doors might be open? yeah And that's kind of what led me to doing this film. you know like I knocked on one of these doors, just I keep knocking, hey, this door opened.
00:32:33
Speaker
And it's hard to live that way. you know It's easier to choose a career where you know you get trained to do something, you go out and you do it. And you know it's not a massive amount of daily questioning and rejection.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I love the atmospheric river of rejection. It is it is persistent. ah But yeah, I'd love to get a sense of how you're thinking about structure. you know and Maybe and we can tie in Character Witness to this because it is a memoir. It's this memoir on the title.
00:33:04
Speaker
But it feels it feels essayistic. But they are bound by a certain kind of connective tissue. So how how are you thinking about structure was yeah specifically to this? um Not thinking enough about it, is what some would say.
00:33:18
Speaker
I feel like a lot of memoir, a lot of traditional memoir really does focus on, oh my God, your life was terrible. You had no chance.
00:33:30
Speaker
And then you climb this mountain. And then now, you know, you've totally succeeded. You've overcome all these incredibly horrible obstacles.
00:33:41
Speaker
The memoir people don't want to read is... Your life was you know pretty good. Your dad was a lawyer, and you're a normal middle class guy, and you were neurotic and drank too much, and your mom was a troubled person, and then you cried a lot, and then you curled up in a ball too much, and then and then and then things got a little better. Yeah.
00:34:03
Speaker
yes
00:34:06
Speaker
That's not the structure they're looking for, you know. And so I kept thinking, well, that's, you know, I'm um i'm being very flippant, but um that's, you know, to me, A, why it doesn't have quite the dramatic arc, you know. It does have an arc, you know. i did get sober, you know, and then i I, you know, worked on things, but it's not this rags to riches kind of, archetype that we're looking for often in memoir, but those are the memoirs I don't read.
00:34:36
Speaker
Even if they're true, I realize that the literary book culture, I mean the the gatekeepers have curated you know, all the things that people write, they curate towards that kind of story because it sells books, you know. And, but I'm actually more interested in essay collections half the time, you know, that have a little bit of art to it, you know.
00:34:58
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, and you you toggle between, you know, your mother as a character is, you know, on the one hand, just like maddening, and you know, and you're feeling like Like, why is someone doing this to herself and to other people around her? And then there are other, you know, instances where you see her like, her heart and her humanity come out. And then you're like, oh, wow, like, you really soften and sort of surrender to that. And then another one would be like, oh, my God, why is why is she like this in this particular instance? So how did you just navigate writing that into that that ebb and flow of her as a character in the page?
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, well and that's really interesting in terms of structure because I did have some people say, well, I'm noticing this structure where things get a little bit better with your mother and then they and then they revert and get worse again.
00:35:46
Speaker
That's not so great for narrative structure. I said, but actually that's what happens in life, right? And then i i as I have in many ways, I've had this experience you know when they start in the New Yorker piece and in the book, you know there's this impulse to put on the cover you know ah things like incest survivor or, you know, you know memoir addiction. I mean, ah not memoir addiction.
00:36:12
Speaker
Memoir of addiction or something. And and for and that that implies that there's going to be this sort of, you know, kind of arc that you climb this mountain out of where, in fact, life is messier than that. And and yet there is that. And also, i don't I don't subscribe to a lot of those boxes.
00:36:30
Speaker
I actually see my story My approach to it was what I've experienced is incredibly normal, you know, in many ways, like difficult parent, neurotic kid, sensitive kid, and nothing I've experienced really is all that extraordinary or or out of the norm. And so that, I'm conscious of that as as my very important feeling about this book.
00:36:55
Speaker
While I'm sort of working against this impulse, I feel like that I'm supposed to be saying this is the special experience that I have to deliver to you. and And so, and how does that, how do I resolve that in the structure where I do need a sense of arc? And the arc of the story is really that like my life continued and has continued to get better and better and I'm happy. i have a wonderful family, have a beautiful daughter and I love my work.
00:37:23
Speaker
And my mother, you know, never really climbed out of the, um, she never reached escape velocity from the childhood that she had. right And that's sad.
00:37:33
Speaker
And then yeah that widening gap between the two of us became a source of pain. Right, and she like would accuse you of being elitist because you did achieve that exit velocity. yeah And as a result, you can you can either choose to try to you know leave that orbit or you can let it pull you down. And you know similarly, just from my own experience, like i had to put I have to put on like with my mother, like a loser cap. Because there's a thing, I have to play a part with her because if I show that I have lifted myself up out of maybe whatever mire we were experiencing, it's like all of a sudden, oh, I can't relate to you anymore. like you've you know you
00:38:08
Speaker
So in order for me to have any degree of connection, I had to really tamp down any success I've ever had. Otherwise, she might think i'm a i have I've achieve achieved ah elitism. And I really could relate to that that that tension that you were experiencing with your mother too.
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and anyway, it's, so that's why I feel like some of the way, you know, that there's a tendency to frame this book isn't quite how I would frame it.
00:38:41
Speaker
I just feel like this is stuff that we're all experiencing. Yeah. and To one degree or another, you know, so. Yeah, and yeah' kind of echoing something you said a moment ago, you know just um yeah i think it had to do with kind of kind of the arc of, like say, like a recovery memoir or whatever. But you you know you you wrote that most of us think we're free and clear once that habit is broken, you know whatever that habit might be. But later there is the crisis of facing what led us to abuse alcohol and drugs at such a young age in the first place. And so it's just like something, it's like you achieve a certain measure of exit velocity, but that thing that maybe caused you to go down a certain path, you know it keeps it keeps following you. If you reach a point where you have to stop drinking, the stopping drinking is the in many ways the easiest part. And you think, good, done, done with that. No. Because if you reach that point, you're sitting on a mountain of things that will become your memoir someday. Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
And it can only become a memoir, though, if you deal with it in such a way and come to a certain understanding that you feel like the journey you took through that is going to be, you're going to find you things that are useful to other people and what you can report back.
00:39:52
Speaker
That's the hard part. Yeah, that observations I had, like there aspects of recovery, but this wasn't a recovery memoir necessarily. It was like, it was kind of recovery around a parent in a lot yeah lot
Personal Relationships in Writing
00:40:03
Speaker
of ways right? absolutely, yeah.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've read so many Drunkolog memoirs where it's like all about all this bad behavior, and it's not any, you know, we've all read Jesus' Son, you know, and that was amazing. But, so I'm not going to write that.
00:40:19
Speaker
It's not what it's about. Yeah, in um and you know a spoiler ah or something, but your your mother you know passes away. Did you feel like your mother needed to pass away for you to enter this material and to you know approach it and to have it published?
00:40:36
Speaker
No, because I assumed that was the plan. I would wait until she passed away, and then I realized she was never going to pass away. Her mother lived in 95, and I just thought, I've got to just do it. because And that's when you know I also started talking to her about, while I was doing it, I started talking to her about it.
00:40:55
Speaker
and then ah So one of the most amazing moments to me is the New Yorker is this incredible fact-checking operation. And so they wanted to they need they had They had two calls with my mother before they published that piece.
00:41:11
Speaker
And I'm just like, I was practically having a heart attack. you know Oh yeah, the New Yorker called me. And we had a great conversation about you.
00:41:21
Speaker
And I just thought, I definitely, I didn't cry, but I almost had a panic attack. Which is, it's easier to cry than have the panic attack, but sometimes the panic attack is necessary.
00:41:34
Speaker
when your mom has just talked to the New Yorker about you for an hour. yeah And they still published it. I don't know what they decided exactly. Well, perfect. All right. Well, this is, well, maybe a great place for us to bring our conversation down for a landing. And what I always love doing, Jason, at this point is asking the guest, you in this case, for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. And that's just like anything you're excited about that is bringing you any any modicum of joy that's taking you out of nap and cry mode. in ah And just what you might recommend for everyone out there.
00:42:07
Speaker
Well, I would definitely recommend the wager by, what's his name again? David Gran. Thank you. My brain is Swiss cheese. And if you haven't read Gretel grettel Ehrlich's This Cold Heaven, i would definitely read that.
00:42:21
Speaker
So. Oh, fantastic. And and and i i read um ah someone DM'd me on Instagram, Matt Caputo, who's a... Oh, yeah. you You know Matt? yeah Yeah. Yeah. And he was just like, have he's like, you're having Jason on? I'm like, yeah. He's like, have you have you read Driving the Heart? I'm like, no. I'm like, can I find it online? he's like i don't think so. So I went to library and I got it. Nice. And I read that that story. And i like that to me reads like, i like talk about like ah gripping... pacing, and I was like, this could be journalism, too. I could picture a reporter riding shotgun with someone yeah doing that, too. like It really inspired me. I was like, maybe I should find someone who who drives organs around. But ah but in any case, it was just like, you got to read that. You found them. used to.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah. no that was one of my jobs when I first got sober. Oh, no kidding. Yeah, mostly eyeballs. Eyeballs, all right. There's a lot of eyeballs and kidneys, too. Sorry, this is true. I'm not yeah having a i not having a mental breakdown, though. i actually had this job.
00:43:23
Speaker
Well, it's awesome. so like my point being, I'm bringing that up because I would i would just recommend driving the heart and and in stories as well as well as Character Witness. So just in in any case, Jason, thank you so much for coming on the show and coming in front of this audience and ah sharing a bit about Character Witness and how you go about the work. So thanks so much for coming.
00:43:40
Speaker
Well, Brendan, I'm honored to be here, and thanks to you and Ruby. I really appreciate it. You got it. And thank you, everyone.
00:43:58
Speaker
Awesome. And so we've come to the end. Big thanks to Jason for coming down to gratitude on relatively short notice to join us for a live podcast. Pretty great.
00:44:09
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe to ye olde CNF pod wherever you get your podcasts and fire up your email machine for the Reach Against the Algorithm newsletter and Pitch Club at welcometopitchclub.substack.com Not Pitch Club.
00:44:23
Speaker
Pitch Club. Okay? It had a... it it it had um It had been a long time since I submitted anything cold. cold publication of mine is McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I've pitched four or five pieces to them over the years and have been rejected every time.
00:44:41
Speaker
I wrote a shorty about author photos and and what they signify. You know, like a lot of author photos come with, you know, there's the the pensive one looking off in the distance. There's the very earnest one. Oh, then maybe there's the goofy one.
00:44:55
Speaker
Or maybe there's no photo at all. Anyway, so that was the riff. My rejection note from editor Christopher Monks was, Hi, Brendan, we're going to pass. Thanks for considering us. Best, Chris.
00:45:09
Speaker
Now, I understand to even receive a rejection almost counts as publication in this climate of ignoring. But man, it still stings. stings Here's this thing you kind of like labor over for hours, and then it clearly it's just like, nope.
00:45:25
Speaker
And I hadn't felt this sting in a while. Not because I've been pitching with a high degree of success, but because I hadn't been pitching at all. And I want to land some work in 2026 just for the sheer creative pulse of it all, hence the Flash 52 challenge. Oh, what's that? You didn't catch it in the December newsletter?
00:45:41
Speaker
Anyway, the goal is to write one Flash essay week for a year. And I think just at in the Patreon community is where I'll link up to either writing in community or prompts to to make that happen.
00:45:55
Speaker
Patreon.com slash cnfpod. It's all about community, baby. Anyway, its ah pitching this essay to McSweeney's internet tendency. It was a good exercise to refresh myself on how shitty it feels and how personal it feels.
00:46:10
Speaker
Even though it shouldn't, it does. It just does. My confidence, already something of a rare earth metal, took a major nosedive after that short little rejection.
00:46:21
Speaker
Now, I imagine that publication probably receives double-digit submissions a day. So logically, I know it's nothing personal. It's likely a very gut decision, a gut reaction.
00:46:33
Speaker
Like, oh, this made me laugh, or oh, this sounds like someone trying too hard. And he sends off a one-sentence rejection. Is there a better word for rejection? A rebuff? you know By the way, paging through my dictionary here, i was looking for synonyms for rejection. um I came across rejectamenta, and it's a word. It is an actual word, and it is things or matter rejected as useless or worthless.
00:46:57
Speaker
Now there's our next sponsor for episode 504. I just signed him up. Sent over the contract. ah But I like to remind myself, and certainly others, that rejections mean you're in the arena, right? That famously hijacked Ted Roosevelt quote, commandeered by Brene Brown and tech bros and life coaches.
00:47:16
Speaker
But it's true. I'd rather shoot my fucking shot and miss than sit around tinkering on something to death. yeah Make no mistake, this game is subjective, and it's a numbers game.
00:47:27
Speaker
The more you submit, the better your chances, be it for essays or features, books or poems or whatever. That's not an excuse to ship garbage.
00:47:38
Speaker
and You should ship things when they're ready. That doesn't mean they're perfect, and that doesn't mean they can't be tweaked. But when shit is ready, and you know when it's in a good place...
00:47:50
Speaker
It deserves to get on the field. Go ahead. Get it out there.
00:47:56
Speaker
That may be you know good enough, but more than likely you will need work. But you take pride in the fact that you're getting your shit out there because that's what a professional does.
00:48:07
Speaker
That's what a working writer does. That's what an artist does. Plus, if you're, say, coaching or editing, mentoring, it helps to know the sting.
00:48:19
Speaker
They have to ice down the swelling so you can better relate to others who might not be quite as seasoned or scarred or weathered. At every turn, you want to walk the walk.
00:48:31
Speaker
And even when you have some books under your belt or a few essays, maybe a lot of essays over the years, columns, whatever, It's easy to not share the rejections and keep projecting this image of constant crushing.
00:48:46
Speaker
It's even more important for the accomplished and the semi-accomplished writers to share their rejection slips so we can see that people, even with a track record,
00:48:57
Speaker
maybe awards, maybe books, maybe some burrito money to spare, suffer the sting of the impersonal rejection. When we normalize it and not demonize it, we can get back to work.
00:49:09
Speaker
Maybe with a little road rash, but that'll clear up in due time, right? So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interview, ya.