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Episode 68—Peter Brown Hoffmeister on Failure as Fuel, Staying Hungry, and Wolf Naps
125 Plays7 years ago
"After you're in it for a while and you actually become better, you realize how bad you are," says Peter Brown Hoffmeister. It's The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in the worlds of narrative journalism, memoir, essay, radio, and documentary film, where I tease out their stories and habits in the hopes that you can apply some of their tools and tricks to your own work. Episode 68 is with author Peter Brown Hoffmeister, be sure to give him a follow on all the socials: @pbhoffmeister on Twitter and at Peter Brown Hoffmeister on Facebook. He’s the author of the memoir The End of Boys, and his latest novel, Too Shattered for Mending, published by Random House, just published. In this episode we talk about the power of failure, being able to compartmentalize various tasks to get the work done, the regenerative nature of getting outdoors, the toxicity of competing with other artists, and some key tricks that Pete uses to sharpen his writing. Things are hoppin’ over here at CNF HQ, so I ask that you please leave a nice review over on iTunes and share this episode with a buddy, someone you think can benefit from it. We’re all a relay team. Pass the baton. Show notes at the website, brendanomeara.com, as well as an easy sign up sheet for my monthly newsletter that gives you my monthly book recommendations as well as what you may have missed in the world of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it.
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Transcript
Promotional Support and Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Promotional support for the Creative Nonfiction podcast is provided by Hippocampus Magazine. Now in its fifth year, Hippocampus publishes Creative Nonfiction essays and just completed its third annual conference, Hippocamp, in lovely Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Be sure to check out the website, hippocampusmagazine.com for submission guidelines, but also to read the wonderful work being done there.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hippocampus magazine. Memorable, creative non-fiction. And a one. And a two.
00:00:38
Speaker
What's up, CNFers? Hope you're having a CNF and good week. Here I bring you the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world's best artist about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in the world of narrative journalism, memoir, essay, radio, and documentary film, where I tease out their stories and habits in the hopes that you can apply some of their tools and tricks to your own work.
Featuring Peter Brown-Hoffmeister
00:01:06
Speaker
Episode 68 is with author Peter Brown-Hoffmeister. Be sure to give him a follow on all the socials at PBHoffmeister on Twitter and at Peter Brown-Hoffmeister on Facebook. He's got a website too with an active blog. Go check that out.
00:01:24
Speaker
He's the author of the memoir, The End of Boys, which we get into a lot, and his latest novel, Too Shattered for Mending, published by Random House, was just released this past week.
Themes of Failure and Writing Techniques
00:01:37
Speaker
In this episode, we talk about the power of failure, being able to compartmentalize various tasks to be able to get the work done, the regenerative nature of getting outdoors,
00:01:49
Speaker
the toxicity of competing with other artists, and some key tricks that Pete uses to sharpen his writing. Easy stuff that I know if you apply it right away, your work's gonna get, you know, it's gonna take a great turn for the better. Things are hopping over here at CNF HQ, so I ask that you please leave a review over on iTunes and share this episode with a buddy, someone you think can benefit from it. We're all a relay team here, so we're just passing the baton.
00:02:19
Speaker
Show notes are at the website, brendanomera.com, as well as an easy sign up sheet for my monthly newsletter. That gives you my monthly book recommendations, as well as what you may have missed in the world of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it. Let's do this thing.
Peter's Journey: Troubled Youth to Authentic Stories
00:02:44
Speaker
writing, what was your goal and your vision as you picked up the pen and wanted to sort of take this on as an artistic sort of journey and artistic, just a way to express yourself? Well, when I started writing, honestly, I mean, I was journaling as a kid. So that's kind of where I started. But then in high school, I was a pretty troubled teen and getting
00:03:14
Speaker
Expelled multiple times and arrested and all that and I wrote these really dark horribly written short stories like awful and I kind of had the early writers delusions of grandeur and thinking that I was gonna be a great writer and well
Learning from Failure: Writing and Sports
00:03:34
Speaker
-known or famous or something like that, but after you're in it for a while and you actually become better you realize how bad you are and
00:03:44
Speaker
So that slowly took place over a 10 year period and by my mid 20s, I realized, oh, I'm really not talented. I had to work really hard at this. So I don't know. I mean, that phrase was that coming to Jesus moment in my mid 20s when I realized I'd written a terrible novel. And my friend Jose said, you know, you gotta, you gotta like, burn this book and actually write
00:04:08
Speaker
your true story, your memoir. So that's when I started to actually write for real, when I started to write my real stories. How did you not get discouraged by just the early sort of self-imposed ineptitude? You looked at that and you're like, ugh. Some people would be like, you know what, maybe I'm not cut out for this. But you saw that as a challenge and kept going. So how did you work your way through that? I mean,
00:04:36
Speaker
Honestly, I'd had a lot of failure in my life to overcome. So I kind of channeled those former failure experiences and just accepted that everything you try to become good at, you're going to fail at a lot. I mean, in life as a teenager for a little while, I ended up sleeping in a bus station in Dallas under a counter. So I mean, I know life failure. And then in wrestling, I wrestled in college and, um,
00:05:02
Speaker
at the national championships trying to make the junior world team, I pinned myself in a freestyle match. I mean, I've got lots of failure stories. So failing in writing, especially early failure, didn't really demoralize me. I kind of expected to, after a little while, I expected to be bad. After I kind of had a realistic approach to everything. And I mean, I started wanting to be a poet and I was in this poetry workshop at U of O with Dorianne Locks and
00:05:29
Speaker
I realized really quickly that there were 12 college poets in the room, and I was the worst. So, I mean, I know failure. And how did you then use that as strength to get better? And this might even stem back to your athletic career too, because I think a sport, any athlete can tell you that.
00:05:55
Speaker
failure, it can either lead you down that road of giving up or use it as fuel. And it seems like of these multitude of failures that you're citing, you chose to put that in your tank and totally ignite the fuel and take off the higher orbit. So how did you use a mental sort of jujitsu to take that failure, not get discouraged and just use it to propel yourself onward?
00:06:20
Speaker
Well, I studied mixed martial arts. And that's always humbling because there's always somebody better than you. And that gives you a very realistic, real worldview. Like you walk into the gym and you're not going to walk up to the baddest black belt and think you're going to win, especially not early in the game. So, you know, you got to put in the years of work, you got to put in the hours and wrestling and mixed martial arts are like that. And writing is like that. I think anything's like that. I'm an optimist and, um,
00:06:51
Speaker
I really identify with hip hop and that whole, you know, chip on your shoulder, work hard, come from nothing, make it for yourself, do it for your own reasons, be self-motivated and come out of the game, you know, a little better than you were before. And wrestling was like that is like, I mean, you were a college athlete, you were a baseball player. You understand that when you're a freshman,
00:07:18
Speaker
in college you've been dominating sports your entire life and then suddenly you're a D1 athlete and you're getting murdered every day. I mean that's how it was for me at least.
00:07:30
Speaker
I just expected to be the best. And then I stepped in that room and it was like, well, everybody's a state champion and everybody's been to nationals and everybody's good. And then suddenly you're just a pathetic little freshmen. And I think that's how starting a writing career is. You're just a pathetic little freshmen. And as long as you realize that and accept that and want to be a learner and you're still curious, I think you can move on. So sports helped a lot for sure.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, I've talked to Mike about this, Mike Opperman as well, because when we had him on the podcast, we really started with talking sports and how that...
00:08:08
Speaker
having that sort of competitive career, those principles learned on the field, like on the mat for you guys and me on the diamond is just, it translates so well to the arts. And, um, I wonder what, uh, what, you know, what other lessons did you take away from your athletic career that applied so directly to your writing career? Well, I mean, Mike understands this getting second is a big thing.
00:08:34
Speaker
I got second at state. I got second at state between wrestling and track five times. And so it's, it's that almost success moment. It's that moment where, you know, you want to win, you're capable of winning. I also did win state. Um, and, but in those second in state moments, that's where you really learn and, uh, where you stay hungry and, you know, being a career writer is all about staying hungry. It's just like wrestling. It's just, just like being a track athlete.
00:09:04
Speaker
where, you know, you've got to improve your craft. You've got to think about the long game. You can't think about today. It's like, if you want to put together a book, whether it's, you know, a memoir or a novel, you got to think, okay, in two or three years, I'm going to have a good book. So what is it going to look like to work out every single day as a writer?
00:09:27
Speaker
What's that workout look like? And, you know, when do you push hard? When do you rest? What's your consistency model? And how do you draft? How do you revise? How do you edit? How do you redraft? How do you revise that edit? I mean, can you put in the two or three years of work to win state or do you, you know, kind of struggle and, you know, think of your second place as failure and become bitter and
00:09:57
Speaker
not learn.
00:09:59
Speaker
That's really brilliant. I love asking everyone on this show, for the most part, what does rigor and hard work look like? In the arts, it's sometimes hard to define because it's not physical. You're not limping around on the floor on the next day with delayed muscle onset soreness. But it's brilliant how you put it that, say, in two to three years, all right, so now you work backwards. Well, what's your workout regimen going to be?
00:10:29
Speaker
When do you push hard? When do you get, quote unquote, like, sore and back off? And how do you how do you plot and chart a course for your work so that you're maybe like you're you're peaking at the right time so you can get the most out of yourself and then pull back? Like, how do you how do you navigate that those waters? Yeah, that's a good question. And I'm thinking about that a lot. I think about that every time I start a new book and I just started a new book this summer. I mean,
00:11:01
Speaker
Something that was really, really important for me to read was Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird. And thinking about that shitty first drafts idea, because all of my first drafts are shitty. I guess there are people out there that write strong first drafts, but that's not me. So what I try to do sometimes in that drafting stage is I just go on pure word count. I'm like, okay.
00:11:26
Speaker
I'm going to put down 500 plus words every single day because if a soluble book draft is 60,000 words revised, if I'm doing 500 words a day, I'm thinking in four months I can put that first draft together and a first draft is never something you want to send to your agent, of course.
00:11:48
Speaker
But if I can put together a first draft in under six months, I can spend the next six months writing a second draft, and then the next six months writing a third draft, and the next six months writing a fourth draft. And suddenly, in a two-year period, I have a fourth draft, which could be somewhat solid to go forward, to show to first readers, or to send to my agent, or maybe even to show to my editor at the house.
00:12:15
Speaker
If you start with like a simple word count thing and it's like a daily routine, then the first few months are just sort of laid out for you. And then you really have to think, how can I make it good? And that's where it gets more difficult, but that's kind of where I start.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, that takes an incredible degree of self-discipline, but also patience. Just to hear, it sounds like you're okay that this first phase is gonna be six months, and then another six, and then suddenly, some people might be put off by two years to try to get something that is shaped well, and it's close to its
00:12:57
Speaker
close to its ideal as possible. So how did you learn to become that patient with the process of writing those drafts early and then get to a point two years after day one where you're like, okay, this is something I'm okay showing to people? Well, I mean, I think I learned that patience and that work ethic from my dad actually. He's really inspiring as a worker.
00:13:22
Speaker
He coined this phrase, Hawkmeisters don't quit when we were kids. And my brother and I kind of morphed that phrase into something else when we were troubled teens. But it's a great phrase. You just don't quit. You just keep going. And my dad demonstrated that work ethic. He just retired. He worked until he was 70 and he took night call. He's a doctor, started an emergency room and then became a subspecialist.
00:13:50
Speaker
But I mean, he took night call until he was 70 years old. So he'd be working all night. He'd be working 24 hour shifts as a 70 year old is crazy. And that's just, that's the model that I got growing up. And so I just saw, you know, if you want to be good at anything, you, you work really hard long-term and you work towards your goals and you do your daily work and you have to be incredibly, incredibly patient. And if you do that.
00:14:18
Speaker
Even if you're not talented, which I've never really thought I was, you're going to eventually create something of value, which is what we're trying to do in art is just create something of value, you know? Yeah.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's incredible. That even in the face of a reality that maybe you're not as talented as the next guy and maybe not getting as daunted by seeing like a Jonathan Safran Foer like get this Titanic book deal when he's 20 years old or something like that, that chick can really bum me out. Yeah. I know, and I don't even love his novels. No, I mean,
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah, you don't even want to look at book money. You don't want to think about what's getting the million dollar advance or the half million dollar advance. You do not want to read that and think about that because that is not going to be helpful. That's a strange thing as much as writing is similar to playing a sport long term.
00:15:18
Speaker
It's also not because if you're competitive with other writers, it's not going to be healthy. If you think you're better than them, that's not a healthy mindset. If you're frustrated that you're not getting the attention they're getting, that's not a healthy mindset. That's not to say that you never go there. You never think like, oh man, if I had somebody promoting me like that person is promoting that other author, then an editor at a house or something, then my book would be doing so much better, but you never know.
00:15:48
Speaker
Sometimes things sell and sometimes things don't sell and you really can't control that and that doesn't mean much. Some people are making a lot of money and they're not even good writers and some people are making a lot of money and they're using ghostwriters. So that's not important.
00:16:05
Speaker
Yeah, I've taken the mantra of late because I've suffered just from my own personal defects from thinking like comparing myself to others and not running my own race and feeling jealous about this person and then as I'm getting older and then seeing people you know five and ten years younger than I am like hitting marks on the track that like
00:16:29
Speaker
Man, I've been doing this for 15 years and I'm not even close to that. They're 10 years younger than I am. It can really start to mess with you. In the face of that, if you're starting to feel jealous, make something. If you're starting to feel angry, just create. Make something. Redirect the energy. Record another podcast. Interview someone cool. Talk shop. Redirect that negativity into something great.
00:16:51
Speaker
I wonder, like, how did you, like, if you ever felt those twinges of jealousy and anger and that kind of stuff, like, how do you run your own race and stay on your tracks and do your thing? I like that. First of all, if you get frustrated and make something, I'm going to steal that. So yeah, I mean, sometimes you get you get jealous, you know,
00:17:19
Speaker
I had a book last year that was getting start reviews and ended up being on year-end lists and things like that. It didn't sell all that well. I was sent to one thing by the company and then my friend who was sent to 25 big conferences and events, his book sold really well. So you start to think, if they want this book to sell, they'll just send me more places and have me meet more people and sign more art copies and all that kind of stuff.
00:17:50
Speaker
You know, they'll commit and that's why it's selling, but you really don't know. And so if you start to get into that mentality, one, you can get better, but two, it's also a logical fallacy. I mean, maybe I do get sent 25 places and flown all over me, all these people, but the people, I mean, don't like my work, you know? So it's just really good to stay out of that competitive or jealous mindset. But I mean, I think everybody slips into it.
00:18:20
Speaker
I think at any level somebody's got to slip into it. I mean maybe J.K. Rowling doesn't. Everybody else probably does a little bit. Yeah. And so as you – in your early 20s you write this – what you deem a horrible novel and then it starts to – Oh, it was. It was. It was terrible.
00:18:41
Speaker
then you pivot to start writing closer to the heart, closer to your personal story. And that's when things start to sort of galvanize for you. And so what was that experience like as you turned your eye more inward to what ended up becoming the end of boys? So what was that process like as you were working through that? Well, that book's all about me and my brother. I mean, my parents are in a little bit and all the places I went, you know, the schools and couch surfing and being homeless for a short period, all that kind of stuff.
00:19:12
Speaker
He's in there, but it started with me and my brother, and even the inspiration started with my brother. My freshman year in college, there was a knock on my door, and I opened it up, and it's my brother, and he has a stolen computer in his hands, and he hands it to me, and he's like, man, you gotta write some of our stories, you know? And I'm like, all right, and I tried, but I just, I couldn't. When I was 18, you know, I wasn't ready. And then I did in, you know, let's see here,
00:19:40
Speaker
23, 24, 25, I wrote that novel. And then my friend Jose Chavez, also a nonfiction writer, he was, you know, talking to me about my life and my experiences. And I'm 25 years old and he's like, you got to write that book. I mean, you really do. And so from 25 to 31, I worked on that memoir. It took me a long time. It took me six years before I was even ready for an agent. And then it took me two more years before it was published. So it really took eight years, that whole process.
00:20:10
Speaker
So that was a long, slow slog and it was actually draft number 13 that got published. So, I mean, the first draft of that book was terrible. It was 521 pages of too much information. And then the draft that sold in Microsoft Word was 213 pages. So I mean, it was just a totally different book from start to finish.
00:20:34
Speaker
So how were you able to whittle that down, that pretty much more than in half? How did you ultimately distill what the narrative was about to that really, like all that coal and crushed it down to what the diamond was? How did you do that? Diamond's pretty generous. To that very more dense piece of black coal.
00:21:03
Speaker
You know, I mean, I know and it's true that most of what I write isn't that important and isn't that good. So cutting's not really difficult for me. I'm constantly cutting. With my novel last year that came out last year, this is the part where you laugh. Even from the draft that sold to the draft that printed, I cut a hundred more pages.
00:21:28
Speaker
just working with my editor saying, this isn't important. This isn't important. This isn't important. Um, but with the into boys, the memoir, the first book, um, I just, you know, I, I had all this stuff in there from childhood backstory that can kind of get you bogged down as a writer and as a reader where it's just too much backstory. And that's kind of where I fall apart in draft stage. Anyway, I started going into, you know, 300 pages of backstory and then.
00:21:55
Speaker
My editors, and I've worked with a lot of different editors, are always saying, you know, I don't know about this. You might want to cut your backstory a little bit. Maybe do backstory one fifth of the book or one quarter of the book or one eighth of the book or whatever the editor says, you know, or every three or four chapters maybe put in something that's backstory. But I always want to tell backstory.
00:22:16
Speaker
Yeah, a way that I've – I fall into the same thing because I have more of a newspaper journalism type background. And so like the backstory is something that is always something that sometimes is really heavily hinged on. And I've always felt – did you ever watch the show Lost when it was on TV? Yeah, that's a great show actually.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah, and the way that they did the flashbacks to backstory, to me, was like, oh, that's how you do it. Because it was the only critical part of the backstory. It only made sense if it connected to the present. And so I've always kind of kept that in my mind. If I'm going to do – if I want to tell a back personal history, well, it has to have
00:22:58
Speaker
the residents to the future so that's always something i've used just as as a compass in the back of my head like when i get into that back story sort of a trap if you will. And with back story i always think tell a really really good story if you're gonna tell that back story does have to be relevant to the president has to be the matically and so you're doing that circular arc but also has to be really entertaining short story so.
00:23:27
Speaker
I'm not going to go back and tell something that doesn't matter and that isn't entertaining, but if I've got something that does matter thematically, that does link thematically and is a really good story, then I'll keep that backstory. I had a poetry professor in college, actually, who kind of changed my life. He would take me out and we'd play pool and talk about poetry on Friday nights. He was great.
00:23:53
Speaker
He always said, you know, it doesn't matter if you write fiction or nonfiction, just tell a fucking good story, you know? And I always think about that. I think, okay, what's a good story, you know?
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah. How important was that? I always like to talk about influential mentors and stuff. So what was that like for you to have someone like that take you under his wing? And just to kind of give you that one sentence shot like that is like, so what valuable advice? And then the time spent with you. So what was that relationship like and how important was that for you? I mean, it actually changed my life.
00:24:34
Speaker
I was a freshman in college and I only got into the University of Oregon because of wrestling because I'd been expelled from three high schools and arrested a couple times and all that. So I really had no track record that would allow me to go to the University of Oregon but the wrestling coach talked to the admissions office and the day I turned my application in and the admissions office called me the next day and told me I was accepted so I could go start working out with the team. And so I'm really there to wrestle.
00:24:59
Speaker
And then I don't know what I want to do with my life. And the athletic department likes their athletes to have a major. So I just declared pre-med. And because my dad was a doctor, even though, you know, it wasn't right for me. And so then I'm in poetry, I'm in chemistry classes and just hating it. And then I take this poetry class and I love my professor and I love the poems. And I mean, more than anybody in the class, I'm the most into this class and
00:25:30
Speaker
Maybe because of that he picked me out or maybe because of our backgrounds because when he was a teenager he was a gang member in Washington DC and he was in a Korean gang. We just talk about stories about failure and violence and all kinds of stuff from our teenage years and then
00:25:51
Speaker
We started hanging out on the weekends, and then pretty much every weekend we were hanging out, we'd play pool, and the loser would have to write really sappy love poems and turn them into each other, and he hated them. But he'd always beat me, so I'd write all the love poems. No, he was just a funny guy, and he just kind of expanded my world view. And then I quickly dropped chemistry and pre-med, and started taking as many creative writing classes as I could, and then there wasn't creative writing as a major,
00:26:22
Speaker
I started taking English classes and then I applied for the English Honors Program and just kind of went from there. How did you settle on the structure for the end of boys, which kind of seesaws between these italicized sort of flashbacks to memories and then has this other forward moving thread? Like how did you work through that? Oh, that's a good question too. Well, I don't write in chronological order ever.
00:26:50
Speaker
And so I'm always thinking about theme, theme, theme, you know, what's going on, what's really going on. And so I wrote all these thematically linked stories, you know, more recent and then further in the past and more recent and further in the past and trying to write everything in present tense so that I could access the emotions in that moment. And I was fortunate because I had journal entries and I had
00:27:17
Speaker
you know all these notes and events and things that are written down and my brother had written a journal and so I didn't have to rely just on memory and that was really nice with the memoir. But I was always thinking linking theme, linking theme, linking theme. And so I let myself jump. Anytime one story made me think of a different story, I just went straight to that story. And I think that's why the structure is pretty weird in that book where, you know,
00:27:44
Speaker
a chapter will begin in this one time period maybe when I'm 16 and then suddenly it'll jump to when I'm nine years old and then it'll jump right back to that same scene when I'm 16. And when you know when I was trying that it wasn't working at first but then it just started to work and I went with it and ended up being the format and the stylistic choice that I went with even after I got an agent.
00:28:09
Speaker
What was the experience like writing it, like dredging up all the personal stuff, the expulsions, the violence, the drugs, and digging up all the reporterly stuff that you went back and got the documents and you had to put it on your website and your blog to actually prove to people, like, this shit actually happened and here's the proof.
00:28:34
Speaker
What was it like for you working through that? Because it's deeply personal stuff. And it happened fairly close to you and your personal timeline from when you started writing it to when it had actually happened. So what was that experience like for you? I mean, it was like therapy, honestly. Writing a memoir is like working through stuff with the counselor. It just happens to be you and your book draft.
00:29:02
Speaker
First draft was tough. Like I said, my brother wanted me to do it at 18 and I couldn't. I wasn't emotionally ready. I really worked on that book starting at 25 and some of the scenes were pretty horrible. I have such a complicated relationship with my dad who I get along with really well now and I loved as a kid and love as an adult.
00:29:26
Speaker
We had those three terrible years, so it was hard to write the most difficult time period in our lives and the most difficult time period in my mom's life and my brother's life. That's where you start to regret a little bit once you publish that you outed all these people around you and that you outed yourself. Critics talk about what a bad person you are. Sometimes a bad person happens.
00:29:49
Speaker
I had a newspaper writer write an article about a drug-dealing teacher in an op-ed article in Eugene. That was really strange because it was like, well, yeah, I was a drug dealer, but now I'm a teacher who's not a drug dealer, so it's a different time. At that point, it was like 17 years, but it's hard.
00:30:11
Speaker
It's really difficult emotionally to go back there, you know, and if you're in present tense, writing these scenes that you feel really guilty about. For me, I sometimes was even crying as I was writing scenes, so, you know, it was tough.
00:30:28
Speaker
In the acknowledgments of the book, I remember there's a little part that you cite your sister saying, like, are we going to support Pete's art or are we not going to support his art? What was that like to get that vote of confidence from your sister and your family as you pursued a really personal, raw story? Yeah, I mean, that was such a great moment. I was so thankful for because my mom was
00:30:55
Speaker
My mom is an oil painter in Tucson and she was always pro art and she was really pro books. She used to take the four older kids on road trips and she'd drive 85 miles an hour and have a Pepsi in one hand and a book in the other and read aloud to us. She'd always say readers are leaders and things like non-readers are vacuous. She just loved books, loved art, revered authors and so I always had that support and that inspiration growing up.
00:31:24
Speaker
I worked for six years on this book and then I'm finally ready to get an agent and I submit to agents one round to get rejected and then I submit to agents again and three are interested. It's like this crazy moment where you realize that maybe this career is going to happen. Some you've been working on for six years and then my dad asked me not to publish the memoir.
00:31:48
Speaker
I worked on it for six years and been totally supported by them. And it felt like a betrayal, but looking back and thinking about it from his perspective, I completely understand that request. And then he said, well, maybe publish it as a novel, but these were true stories and these were things that I wanted to face publicly and that my brother really wanted out there.
00:32:14
Speaker
So that was difficult, you know, it was a difficult decision to go ahead and publish. And now, now I'm not so sure about my decision. And now I identify more with my dad and my mom's hesitation in that time period. But, but I, but I went forward anyway. And then I was thankful for my sister finally saying, Hey, look, what are we going to do? You know, we're a family. Are we going to support this?
00:32:41
Speaker
When I had Bronwyn Dickey on the first time in the podcast, she elegantly cited that how Henry Rollins said that music is made by the people music saved. And she thinks like for her, she said that stories are written by the people stories saved in the same way. And it saved her from loneliness and boredom specifically. And it sounds like writing
00:33:08
Speaker
And stories saved you as well. And I wonder if you could speak to that and how important stories and writing were to your maturity and development as a human and an artist. I like that a lot. Yeah, I guess books are probably written by the people who are saved by books. I haven't thought about that, but I think that has to be true. Well, writing, saving me, for example,
00:33:36
Speaker
I was arrested my senior year and then under house arrest with my brother for a couple of weeks and then remanded to a rehab and parole center in East Texas to get me out of state so that I wouldn't, since it was minimum security, so I wouldn't run, basically find a way out, something I'd have to commit to. And it was supposed to be nine months, but I was 17 and it was an adult facility and everybody was paroled out of the Texas state pen and it was really scary and I was totally overwhelmed that I ended up running anyway.
00:34:06
Speaker
So I hitchhiked across East Texas and back into Dallas and into sleeping on the streets a couple nights, um, then sleeping a series of days in the bus station. And there in that bus station, kind of in the turning point of my life, I, I was writing, I was writing down what was going on and I was writing letters to my friends and I was writing stories in this notebook.
00:34:32
Speaker
And I wouldn't end up sending those letters until later. So I had this thick notebook full of letters and true stories. So in that moment, I think writing kept me sane, you know, and I'm sleeping under a counter in an urban bus station and I'm actually enjoying the writing process. And then later writing the actual memoir was the therapy that allowed me to be the hopeful, positive adult and English teacher and
00:34:59
Speaker
outdoor program teacher that I am now so writing saved my life but I mean books have always saved my life not just really from boredom because I don't I don't tend to get bored very often but more books save me because they allow me to connect to other people and even if it's a novel I mean I connect to novel characters as if they're real and the novel characters I write you know whether it's my first novel or my most recent novel too shattered from ending I mean
00:35:28
Speaker
I am each of those characters and talk aloud as each of those characters and it allows me to be creative and connected to other humans even if they're fictional humans and everything I read that I love I'm connected to so as far as connections go I think books have saved my life.
00:35:46
Speaker
As a high school teacher and leading the outdoor program and then writing what's essentially like a book a year, how do you not make the time, but how do you prioritize the time and build it into your life so you're still getting
00:36:01
Speaker
You're getting the work, the book work done while also not eschewing everything else you have going on. How do you navigate that and what routines do you have in place to ensure that you're getting the important stuff done that you deem important anyway? I mean, I compartmentalize a lot. So I just go, you know, this is my writing time. This is my teaching time. This is my reading time.
00:36:28
Speaker
I take little short naps in the middle of the day to kind of reset my brain in between like wolf naps as Farley Moett, the writer put it. I mean, as far as routine goes, my ideal routine is to get up and really early and write for a couple hours before everyone wakes up. And then, you know, my daughter's and wife wake up and then we all eat breakfast and then the girls go to school and
00:36:53
Speaker
Jenny goes to work or wherever and then I go back to writing for a while, take a wolf nap and then go to school and go teach. And so I just kind of try to break up my day by naps and cups of coffee and little transitions, but really try to keep things compartmentalized and do a little bit of each thing every single day. You know, I don't, I don't feel great at the end of the day if I haven't written and if I haven't read.
00:37:22
Speaker
And if I haven't had a moment alone and if I haven't connected to other people, whether it's teaching or talking to my daughters or talking to Jenny. So I try to do a little bit of everything every single day and kind of stay in that rhythm. And if I stay in a rhythm, then I end up being fairly productive.
00:37:44
Speaker
The writing's the one thing too, but also reading, which is incredibly important to me. To become a good writer, you need to be a great reader. How do you build that into your routine as well, build that into your day? How are you able to consume stuff that inspires you, but also leave time to generate stuff and to tight balance? But I wonder how you approach it.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah, you have to balance reading with staring off a little bit I mean to be to be a writer you have to write every day But you also have to read every day and you also have to allow for a quiet mind every day so You know you have to find moments for that third thing like Biking to and from school when I'm teaching in the afternoons I just teach half-time But those bike rides are really important for my brain or sitting in the hammock and staring at the sky or watching birds or I mean
00:38:43
Speaker
really, truly quiet moments. Like you said, if you want to be a good writer, you have to be a great reader. And I think that's maybe the biggest warning sign with some of these wannabe leaders like Donald Trump and Sarah Palin is that they can't name a single book that they've read recently. If that scares me, I mean, our culture scares me. It sounds harsh, but people who don't read aren't very intelligent. We're kind of in this watching culture, but watching is passive. That's the passive brain.
00:39:12
Speaker
Reading is the active brain. And if you talk to a neuroscientist or read neuroscience, you know that those things are true. And we have so many adults in our country who maybe even tell their kids to read and want their kids to read in school, but they don't read a single book in an entire year. And that that's scary to me, you know, because there are so many books that have changed my life and there are so many books that I'm rereading all the time. And I mean, it's crazy.
00:39:41
Speaker
how passive our culture is right now. Yeah. And in the end of boys and also let them be eaten by bears and the program you lead at South Eugene, you know that the outdoors are really important to you. And how regenerative and important is getting out there and unplugging? And how important is it for you and then maybe just the people that you help coach along at large?
00:40:08
Speaker
my brain is best when I'm in the natural world. Like the other day I was just sitting next to the river and I had my feet in the water and a garter snake crawled down the tree next to me and I was just like, wow. I mean, I'm sometimes just astounded by so many little things in the natural world and getting away from my computer and even my book draft and just being in my favorite outdoor spaces is really important for my brain and really important
00:40:38
Speaker
for me as a human and those moments, even if it's just a two or three day camping trip or an afternoon in an outdoor space, I mean, that can, that can make your entire week better. I got home from school yesterday and it was raining really hard. And my daughter said, let's go bike around the neighborhood barefoot in the rain and hit puddles. And I was like, yeah, let's do that. So, um, so we just biked around for like an hour and a half and smashed the biggest puddles we could barefoot. And, uh,
00:41:09
Speaker
Even the little moments like that are going to make your life a better life or at least they make my life a better life. They help me be a better writer and they restart me and recharge me. I think for more people, the outdoors would do a lot of good. I guess there are some people who don't love the outdoors, but I think nature is pretty important.
00:41:29
Speaker
And I used to have this thing on the podcast called the Bookshelf for the Apocalypse, which is basically like, what are like three to five books that if you had to fill one pack and like the world had gone to shit, zombie apocalypse, and you had three or five books you could take with you, like what would those books be? And I've since kind of reworded that question to just what, like three to five influential books. But I wonder what those books are for you. Like maybe the books that turn the world from black and white into color and things you reread over and over again. Like what are some of those titles?
00:42:00
Speaker
Wow. Well, if I'm allowed three to five books, I'm going to take five. Let's see. I probably go with the books that I reread every year or almost every year. So this is a good question. My zombie apocalypse book pack would include Jesus Son by Dennis Johnson, Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith, Poetry Collection, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which just
00:42:29
Speaker
completely blew my mind as far as extended metaphor and structure goes. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I just reread that to my 12-year-old. Nice. And then maybe All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. And then because it's really thin, I'd sneak in a sixth book, Dismantling the Hills by Michael McGriff. Yeah. All right.
00:42:53
Speaker
That's, yeah, some people are believers in rereading. Others think there's too much out there to bother with rereading. I kind of see it the other way. Like, there's so much to read. You're never gonna get to it anyway. So if Great Gatsby resonates with you, reread it every year and just figure out how he does it. And it's, I like that you're a rereader. Like, what value do you see in like the,
00:43:20
Speaker
and the rereading of books of this nature, that clearly strikes a chord with you. So what about these books that really just hooks you? Well, I'm with you. If there are five million books on Amazon, it's just not going to happen. So reread the good stuff. And if a book's bad, I give myself permission to stop. I used to not, but now I'm 147 years old and I'm like, I'm not going to do that for the rest of my life.
00:43:51
Speaker
Let's see what resonates. I mean, for me, it's about understanding craft. And, you know, if I admire something so much that I'm going to reread it once every couple of years or twice a year, like Jesus, son, I want to understand, you know, like, how did he or she do this? You know, how did they put this book together? And what about this is so enticing? Why do I feel, you know, enraptured?
00:44:22
Speaker
So I want to go back through there. I mean, think about the introductions to the to the seasonal chapters in the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, where she writes the Dick and Jane, you know, early readers as this as this new, you know, morphed single sentence eventually. And that's kind of going along with the eventual chapter of summer. And then I always think of Shakespeare. I don't know if she did. I'd like to sit down with Toni Morrison, but I think of
00:44:52
Speaker
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines and we've got craziness in our character in the bluest eye in the summer season at the end and Well, how did she put those three things together, you know or with to kill a mockingbird? You know, you can read that as an 11 year old and it's kind of like a coming-of-age kid adventure and you love Scout and you love dill and you love Jim and everything else is maybe going over your head and
00:45:20
Speaker
or you can read it when you're a little bit older and you'll start to realize that there are all these elements and there's, you know, understanding that maybe the recluse isn't a bad guy. Maybe he's a good guy, you know, which is kind of weird because he kind of seems like a ghost or a phantom or something negative or dark. And then you can read that when you're 60 and think about parenting and think about grandparenting with Atticus or
00:45:46
Speaker
You can read that book in 2017 and think about race and culture and privilege and think about it being a book about race and rape and incest and what is the true story going on here. When a book has a lot of parts, when it has many things going on,
00:46:09
Speaker
That's when I'm really invested in reading and rereading, like with Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler, that poetry collection about Hurricane Katrina. She's writing in all those different people's voices, even a dog's voice over and over. I'm just thinking, how did they do this? Like, I want to be better. I want to learn. So what other artistic media do you like to consume that helps inform your writing? Sort of still accesses the creative brain, but maybe not the writer brain.
00:46:39
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So I mean, like as a writer, I'm thinking I read a lot of fiction and poetry to make my fiction and nonfiction better, but not the written word. I definitely have to say that my number one is music. I love, I've always loved Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, you know, and that's, those are kind of gifts from my father. But for me, it's hip hop. It's like Blackstar and Biggie and Tribe.
00:47:04
Speaker
ghostface, the old stuff, mad villains, beats. But I even like some pop hip-hop. I love Jay-Z. That chip on your shoulder, like, I'm never gonna be good enough, this is where I came from, this is where I wanna go, you know? Laylee, Kendrick. Yeah, music's huge.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah, do you watch, you would probably say music's number one. Are there any particular documentary films or feature films that they're like, oh, that's cool. How can I render that visually on the page when I get back to writing my novels? That's a good question because people always say I'm a little bit of a hater as far as movies go. But really, it's just because the popular movies are so terrible.
00:47:52
Speaker
I mean, Transformers, if Transformers can make $200 million, then I'm like, I can't get into that. But then there are great films and there are even great adaptations of novels that I sometimes are just, I'm blown away by Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone is a great novel. I mean, he's a gorgeous novelist, but then Winter's Bone, the movie,
00:48:19
Speaker
as blasphemous as it sounds might be even better than the novel. And I love that novel. That's an incredible film. And it wasn't really popular. And for that reason, you can watch it free on Netflix. But no, I mean, that's a great film. And I sometimes think about that film when I'm writing, like, how do you evoke? Like that film evokes, you know, because I'm always trying to call forth emotions. As far as documentaries go, I mean, so many, but
00:48:47
Speaker
Well, I love 180 degrees south. I love that kind of adventurous spirit. I'm gonna get on a boat and I'm gonna just go. And then I end up on Rapa Nui and I'm surfing with a random local. And then suddenly I'm in Patagonia and I'm trying to climb a mountain that I saw a picture of years ago. I mean, that's a cool film.
00:49:11
Speaker
Yeah, there are some aspects of craft that I try to do daily or every other day. I have a nice big fad. Garner is modern American usage. And I'll just thumb through and I'll pick out something. I'm like, oh yeah, that's something I'm pretty shitty at. But I can become better at it by just applying that. And I wonder if there's maybe an aspect of craft that you find that you struggle with. And if so, what are some little incremental things that make you
00:49:41
Speaker
a better writer, you're on Monday and by Friday, you're a little bit better than you were on Monday. That's a good question too. The biggest little thing, the thing that changed my writing forever and it's such a small thing is cutting almost every single adverb and every single adverbial phrase. So just don't modify verbs ever.
00:50:10
Speaker
When I heard that, I was like, wow, I never really thought about that because adjectives can be lyrical and modifying nouns can create, you know, this kind of rhythm and music in your writing. But adverbs and adverbial phrases are just basically not trusting your reader. You're saying my reader's not smart enough to picture how I'm running. So I'm going to modify running so that she can picture it. And that's pretty insulting. And, but it also slows down the phrasing.
00:50:40
Speaker
And it just sounds terrible. So I mean, that's the biggest little thing for me is like, cut adverbs, cut adverbial phrases. And with my first novel, Graphic to Valley, my goal, my craft goal in that book was to not use a single adverb for an entire novel. And you know, that was tough to do. But I was like, I got to do that. And I got to see if it works.
00:51:01
Speaker
When you're getting ready to embark on another book or essay or something, what sort of internal checklist are you using when you're like, all right, this is going to strike me better as a fictional tale versus maybe something that could be
00:51:18
Speaker
Rendered as a true story like what what kind of where do you sit on that spectrum or you know? What do you gravitate towards as you know you just have this new novel out? So what uh you know what what pushes you towards fiction and what pushes you towards nonfiction when you're ready to write I Mean it's easier with fiction because I just deal True moments and insert those all throughout my novels. I mean there's so much nonfiction in my novels
00:51:47
Speaker
with a memoir, you have to do your best to tell the truth. And so you can't fictionalize, you can't, you know, exaggerate for effect. Yeah. Or I think you really shouldn't because you've got to try to be true and it's your truth. So it might not be the same truth. Somebody else, like a different witness would witness it differently, maybe see a different story or see something that's more important in the story or maybe hear slightly different dialogue. And with dialogue, you know, you're,
00:52:18
Speaker
representing the emotions of the conversation sometimes more than the actual words because you can't accurately, perfectly remember what's going on in a conversation when you're 11. But you can remember how you feel and you know how those characters speak if you're writing characters that are true in your life. So you're doing your best to tell the truth. But with novels, the nice thing is you can create this fictional conflict and you can create a series of fictional characters. But
00:52:44
Speaker
half those characters could be amalgams of real people that you know and a lot of the dialogue in my novels if not most of the dialogue in my novels are things that I've heard people say in real life and then I'll even sometimes just throw in an entirely real scene exactly how it happened and you know it's in a novel that's kind of nice freedom right there so I don't really
00:53:09
Speaker
I don't really worry about fiction and nonfiction. When I'm novel writing, I just write the best story I can write and put together everything I can put together. And with Too Shattered for Men being my newest novel, you know, it's set in a town in Pierce, Idaho, that's a real town that I've been to many times, that I've spent a lot of time in, that I've talked to people. And I stole so many things, particularly dialogue and little observational moments.
00:53:34
Speaker
things that actually happened in that town or I overheard people say in that town. How do you deal with the ugly middles of a draft? How do you push through and endure through that part when you're too far away from home to turn around so you just need to keep going? That's a pretty relevant question right now since I'm 31,000 words into a novel draft right now.
00:54:03
Speaker
I think that's the toughest part. I think that's a great question because that, that is where you really have to draw on discipline and your old experiences, you know, in writing or in other portions of your life, because it is so difficult when you're bogged down in the middle of a book and you're kind of like, or at least I am kind of thinking I've lost the plot. I don't know what I'm doing. Um, all this doubt creeps in and you're thinking,
00:54:31
Speaker
This is going to be one of my failed novels and I don't even know. I'm writing a backstory here and I don't know how I'm going to get back to the main story and maybe this should all be in one time period and over just a couple months and it would be a better book. No, I mean, you have got to really push through and be disciplined and that's where I would say you got to go on word count and as simplistic as it is, just go.
00:54:58
Speaker
I'm going to write 500 words a day or I'm going to write 1,000 words a day or I'm going to write 200 words a day, whatever your count is, just do it. And what still excites you about getting to the ledger, getting to the computer? And so far as writing and reading goes, where does your optimism lie too? I mean, I love stories and I want to hear good stories. I want to read good stories. I want to tell good stories. When I hang out with people,
00:55:28
Speaker
I love to say, let's trade awkward middle school moments. Or I carpooled with another parent up to a high school soccer game in Portland recently and we just told failed stories for two hours up and it was so great. We kept telling them for two hours down. I want to be involved in good stories.
00:55:54
Speaker
being a writer is just choosing to be involved in good stories as a career. And so I'm excited about that every single day. And as long as I'm reading good material, reading good poems and nonfiction and fiction, and as long as I'm, you know, inviting good stuff, then I'm gonna keep probably creating my best work. And as long as I'm creating my best work, I'm always excited to do more of it, you know?
00:56:23
Speaker
And so we've come to the end. Thanks again to Hippocampus Magazine for promotional support for this week's episode. That's hippocampusmagazine.com. Check out some memorable creative non-fiction. And also thanks to Pete Hofmeister for his time and insights. Great stuff.
00:56:42
Speaker
If you got some value out of this episode, I ask that you share it on all your social channels, and maybe take one minute and leave a review on iTunes. I've been doing this a lot, even for podcasts that quote-unquote don't need the reviews. It only takes a minute, but it means more than you can imagine. That's it, friends. Let's do it again in a few days. Cool? Cool. See ya.