Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 538: The Enduring Mystery of Amelia Earhart with Rachel Hartigan
1 Playsin 12 hours
"My career is not a straight path; it's a lot of happenstance where I just sort of somehow get a job and then figure out how to do it once I'm there," says Rachel Hartigan, author of Lost: Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life.
Today we have Rachel Hartigan, who, yes, is dignified and reputable. She’s the author of Lost: Amelia Earhart’s Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life. It’s published by Nat Geo.
We share an agent, so that was how her book got on my radar. If you’re a relative newb to the Amelia Earhart story, Rachel’s book is a riveting take on the three main theories of Earhart’s tragic death either by castaway, captive, or having sunk at sea in her beautiful Lockheed Electra. Rachel weaves together all these theories with a lean, propulsive biography of a woman far ahead of her time.
She’s written about everything from the genetics of persimmon trees to the long road to women’s suffrage for National Geographic. She is the former editor of the Washington Post's Book World and she has also covered education and culture for U.S News & World Report. You can learn more about her at rachelhartiganauthor.com. Had a lot of fun with this as we talk about:
- Happenstance
- Hard-earned experience
- Breaking down David Grann’s The Lost City of Z
- Modeling a text
- Focusing on clarity
- Being in partnership with the reader
- Being a minimalist interviewer
- Saying yes to things
- Finding something new to say about Earhart
- Why Earhart is still appealing to this day
- Cave Day
- And learning how to sell your story as if you’re telling it at a cocktail party (this echoes Alex Ronan’s quip)
Pair this episode with David Grann's two appearances, Nick Davidson's appearances, as well Cassidy Randall's appearances.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Unauthorized Biography Lecture
00:00:00
Speaker
On August 1st at the Eugene Public Library, I'll be delivering my world-famous lecture on unauthorized biography. What is that? 3 p.m. I talk about what exactly unauthorized biography is, how I went about the research and the writing of the frontrunner, and I end it with an annotated reading that shows all my citations from interviews, magazines, newspapers, and photographs of how I built a key scene of narrative history.
00:00:27
Speaker
It's free and open to the public, you cheapskate. ACNFers. Want to get better at selling stories? Sure you do, right? Sometimes the best idea you can come up with is the thing you wish you had when you were starting out. That's what Pitch Club is at welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
00:00:44
Speaker
I was such a frustrated freelancer, still am, not knowing how to pitch, not getting any traction, so-so. So Pitch Club is that thing that 2010 me could have used.
00:00:55
Speaker
Pitches ranging from age inquiries, feature stories, and off-the-cuff unhinged essay essay pitches and more. Forever free. You read a little, you listen a little, and I think you're going to learn a lot. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
00:01:07
Speaker
I feel like every job I've taken, they're like, oh, it was just great, and now it's declining. You just missed the high point.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast Overview
00:01:23
Speaker
OAC and Effort, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I talk to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, how they go about the work, and why, oh why, do we torture ourselves so. With sympathy, I'm Brendan O'Meara.
00:01:35
Speaker
Hey, if I could hand the reins over to someone more dignified and reputable, I would, okay? Okay? Today we have Rachel Hartigan, who is, yes... dignified and reputable. She's the author of Lost, Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life. It is published by National Geographic.
00:01:57
Speaker
We share an agent. So that was how her book got on my radar. You never know how these things get on your radar, but that's one way. If you're a relative noob to the Amelia Earhart story, Rachel's book is a riveting take on the three main theories of Earhart's tragic death, disappearance, either by castaway, either by captivity, or maybe having sunk at sea in her beautiful Lockheed Electra.
00:02:23
Speaker
Rachel weaves together all these theories with a lean, propulsive biography of a woman who was far ahead of her time. Two things atop the show. We have a new CNF and patron in Shane Cleveland, so thank you, Shane.
00:02:36
Speaker
If you want to support the costs of this little podcast that could, head to patreon.com slash cnfpod, where any paid tier gets you access to the Flash 52 sessions, which is merely a Sunday morning writing group.
00:02:47
Speaker
You also get to submit questions to future guests if I have enough runway. I rarely do, but sometimes I do, like the Susan Orlean one. I got some questions. I even solicited some from some other people. And I think it adds a little bit of pulse and energy to the show. I think it it gives you even more ownership of the show.
00:03:04
Speaker
So that that can happen if you're a paid member, as Shane Cleveland is. Thank you, Shane. And free ways to support the show are leaving ratings and reviews.
00:03:16
Speaker
Like this new one that appeared about a month ago, ah but I only saw it like the other day. i But I check every day. So it just, it published in mid-June and I'm only seeing it now. Anyway, got a new review. And anytime I get them, I read them. So here's this one from DocCRB from June 13th. A riffing good time.
00:03:38
Speaker
I drive back and forth between Maine and Massachusetts an hour and ten minutes, which is exactly the length of an average CNF podcast. This tells you the first thing you need to know about our boy Brendan O'Meara. He doesn't just play to our culture's bite-sized attention span like so many other pods. He conducts hour-long, in-depth interviews with his authors, skillfully pulling out stories, emotion, and advice, bracketed on either side by our host's own insightful and and entertaining takes on literature, craft, and the writing life. Maybe it's his expansive knowledge of heavy metal that allows him to go off script with the flow of a conversation, riffing with his guests in fun, inspiring ways.
00:04:14
Speaker
Yet he's always in control of the content, keeping his audience in mind, extracting practical tips and strategies for writers, experienced or emerging. Your good company, B.O. So cool, right? And thanks for that. And I understand that even $2 or $4 a month for Patreon is a big ask, but these reviews, stuff of this nature, cost you nothing but a few minutes of your time, and leaving them for the podcast or any of my books, specifically The Front Runner, is just as valuable.
00:04:46
Speaker
Trust me on that one. All right, so we have Rachel Hartigan coming in hot. She's written about everything from the genetics of persimmon trees to the long road to women's suffrage for National Geographic. She's the former editor of the Washington Post Book World. And she has also covered education and culture for U.S. News and World Report. You can learn more about her at rachelhardiganauthor.com. Had a lot of fun with this.
00:05:12
Speaker
As we talk about happenstance, hard-earned experience, breaking down David Grand's Lost City of Z, modeling a text, focusing on clarity, being in partnership with the reader, being a minimalist interviewer, saying yes to things, finding something new to say about Earhart, why Earhart is still appealing to this day,
00:05:32
Speaker
Cave day, what's that? And learning how to sell your story as if you're talking about it at a cocktail party. This echoes Alex Ronan's quit from a couple
Rachel Hartigan on Amelia Earhart's Life and Mystery
00:05:41
Speaker
episodes ago. I think you're going to want to pair this episode with both of David Graham's appearances on the show.
00:05:48
Speaker
ah any of Cassidy Randall's appearances on the show, and I would say any of Nick Davidson's appearances on the show, among others, but those will give you about six to seven to chew on.
00:06:03
Speaker
Rachel has a cool recommendation, and there's a parting shot about limiting beliefs, of which I have a few. But for now, here's Rachel Hartigan riff.
00:06:20
Speaker
Does everyone know I'm a fucking genius? Thank you, everybody. Remember what Brendan said. got it because we're sadistic motherfuckers. Go lemurs. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:06:45
Speaker
We kind of have a vision of what it would look like. And then the career happens and we're doing all sorts of things to pivot and the ground is changing underfoot. So what did your career kind of look like in your head at the start? And how did that change?
00:06:58
Speaker
yes Well, I was not one of those kids who had like a clear version of what they wanted to do. I just... I don't know. I was like, I really like to read. i really like to write.
00:07:11
Speaker
i really like to learn things. I don't know. i majored in history, which, you know, combines all that stuff. And then... I really did not know what I wanted to do. And my parents were quite aggravated with me because they had spent a lot of money to educate me.
00:07:29
Speaker
So I tried being a paralegal at a legal publishing company and then at the Nevada State Legislature. I'm from Reno, Nevada. um And those were pretty boring. i didn't i thought, well, maybe I want to go to law school. And I did not want to go to law school.
00:07:47
Speaker
finally, I was probably like just lounging on the sofa and my dad came into the house and he just slapped a Harper's Magazine on me and he said, there are internships there. You should apply to that. I was like, okay, it's in New York. I'll do that.
00:08:06
Speaker
i have friends in New York. So that's what I did and somehow got it. And um my career is not a straight path. It's a lot of happenstance where I just sort of somehow get a job and then figure out how to do it once I'm there. um So I did the Harper's thing and then ended up moving to Washington, D.C. because there was a job opening at a magazine that was really great but didn't last very long called Civilization, which was kind of like National Geographic, but it was tied to the Library of Congress instead of National Geographic or Smithsonian or anything.
00:08:49
Speaker
So i I mean, I really, people come to me with these plans, I'm going to do this, this and this. And I just, I'm, the yeah, that's not my my mindset. I wish I was more like that.
00:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, my career is just always a surprise to me. Truly, it's amazing how nonlinear a writing career is, nonfiction and journalistic career is, because it's going to I guess it's always been changing underfoot. I mean, even when I talk to Anthony De Palma, who wrote this, he's written several books, but most recent ones on this ground
Navigating a Journalism Career
00:09:23
Speaker
and he teaches at Columbia on top of doing you long narratives. And when even when he was starting, maybe in probably the 70s, late 70s, you know, his professors were like, you might want to find something new. This journalism thing is very uncertain. And so we kind of talked about that. and That is so long as you are curious, at least that's a driving engine that maybe you can give yourself the best chance at survival in it. Right. Right.
00:09:50
Speaker
yeah And you go as long as you think, well, OK, this might be worth a shot. Let's see what happens. You know, I'll learn something. I don't know much about science, for example, so we'll see what I can learn at National Geographic.
00:10:03
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And I mean, the same thing. I feel like every job I've taken, they're like, oh, it was just great. And now it's declining. You just missed the high point. Yeah.
00:10:15
Speaker
Yeah. I wrote a newsletter not too long ago. i have a sort of ah a monthly one that I've done for a long, long time. And um I always i always had the feeling that I had missed my train, you know, whatever it was. And I was I kind of came to a realization a couple of years ago that. As long as you have certain a certain measure of perseverance and maybe be a certain measure of domestic infrastructure that allows you to persevere. So know my wife is the breadwinner, brings in the health insurance. That is probably the principal reason I've been able to survive as long as a nonfiction writer. 100%. There's usually ah another train coming that you never saw coming.
00:10:52
Speaker
and' it And you just have to be ready to board that train. Like I had no idea the podcast would be a thing. and It's by no means a huge podcast, but I started on a whim. And it was that was a train that I jumped on that could never have predicted. it was not I didn't train as an audio person.
00:11:08
Speaker
not a radio guy i just taught myself and it's just become this little this thing that i get to talk to people like you all the time right and so like you have that in mind of like oh you know it feels like maybe the best is behind us but there's always like kind of something new you never saw coming and you kind of just have to be ready for that yeah yeah my son just graduated from college and he's very much on the you know i'm going to go to med school and everything i'm like well That would be great. you know, totally support that. But you just never know what you're going to encounter, what's going to just shift your gears. And you just have to be really open to it and kind of curious about what these different things feel like. And are you interested in it?
00:11:51
Speaker
But I wish I had thought about that more when I was younger. Yeah. the the fact that your your parents were a bit worried that you didn't have like maybe a more concrete vision of your career trajectory, you know, and sometimes pursuing yeah something that is a bit a bit of a squishy career like writing. it's ah How did you deal with um the pressure of expectation and and the burden to prove yourself in you know in this business to eat to your peers, but maybe to your parents, too? Um, my parents weren't too bad about it, but it was more to myself because, you know, I never went to journalism school. I really, i always have felt like an apprentice, like I'm still figuring it out.
00:12:35
Speaker
And really it's only been until recently where I'm like, oh I do kind of know how to do this. I mean, i do especially if I see, i do some editing on the side and and did quite a bit of of editing in my career. If I see, okay,
00:12:51
Speaker
this person doesn't know how to do this thing that I know how to do. You know, I know how to structure something. I know how to sort of get a reader going, but I never felt like I had the right credentials or, you know, people would talk, well, like journalists do this and journalists do that. It's like, we do. okay. I'll better internalize that thing, whatever it is. So so Yeah, again, i'm I'm such a squishy, i don't know person or just going along, just figuring it out that I don't have anything like concrete necessarily to say.
00:13:28
Speaker
Yeah, i I understand what you mean, especially when you're you're moving along through time and you don't feel like maybe it does feel a bit squishy. You don't feel like maybe you have any degree of mastery. And then maybe if you help out someone who might be 10 or 20 years behind you and you're like, you can see all.
00:13:47
Speaker
For lack of a better term, you can see all the errors. And you're like, oh, i i can I know how to fix this. I've done this before. and And the few people that I've helped that might be ah less experienced than I am, it's actually given me confidence that I actually know something. I'm like, oh, I can see what i can see the holes to spackle. And I can tell you how to structure this pitch a little bit better so someone's going to like lift their eyebrows earlier and not just delete the email. And it's like, oh, OK, maybe I have, in fact, learned something over the last 20 years. Yeah, yeah. it is I mean, it is kind of gratifying. And it's also one reason I've really gone back and forth with writing and editing. And I feel like each one has helped the other because i can it's much easier to look at somebody else's draft and spot the weaknesses than sometimes it is to look at mine. Or at mine, I'm like, oh, it's all terrible. But you know but it's just you can have a certain amount of distance and figure out
00:14:42
Speaker
look at it more like a puzzle piece and how it's going to fit together, then sometimes it's it's just harder to do it with your own prose. And ah sometimes getting maybe an app metaphor for that, be it someone else's work or your own, is kind of looking under the hood like a mechanic and seeing how the how the how the things are working and if everything's moving as as it should. and you know what ah And sometimes I often liken reading the things that inspire us to like an athlete's film study, just going to the table. like How is this? How are they doing this? How are they breaking this down? And just for you, what are some yeah what is the the practice by which you maybe revisit text or analyze? stuff that inspires you so you can maybe you know learn from it and apply it to your own work.
00:15:26
Speaker
ah Well, you know, when I was working on this book, i i i have a copy of David Graham's Lost City of Z, where I pretty much wrote down what each paragraph was doing and then what each chapter was doing and just trying to figure out how he balanced telling a story, you know, a historic tale along with the story of the people who were looking for people.
00:15:52
Speaker
Percy Fawcett, and then his own story, because that was what I was wrestling with. And so I will, and I would use to, even earlier, I used to do that with features I liked, or if I was assigned a feature and I just really had no idea how to go about it, i would look at similar ones, whether from my colleagues or from other publications and just really break down the structure. That was the thing that I was really trying to understand.
00:16:20
Speaker
So I have just, I've done it to novels, even though I've never really successfully written a novel, but it just, I want, I want to expose the scaffolding or not the scaffolding, the actual structure. That is ah really well put about that, the modeling of it. And you can almost take certain things and treat them like a a stencil, but you you you infill it with, you know, your own reporting and the own facts and your own story. You're like, this is a satisfying and effective and successful structure, but I'm going to take, yeah, like to your point with Amelia Earhart and maybe, you know Percy Foss and that story, like, yeah, I can see how they almost
Creating Writing Frameworks from Text Structures
00:16:59
Speaker
rhyme. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:17:01
Speaker
But it unlocks something for you to say, oh, that structure is going to work here. Like, what if I just port that, the, oh, like the wireframe, use a code term, and then then hang my own fax on that wireframe and tell a very satisfying story. Yeah, and you can take that and that's almost maybe your second draft or something. And then you can add the things that really make it your own.
00:17:26
Speaker
It's not like you're just doing a cookie cutter writing. you're giving yourre It's just one step of many as you're putting this piece together or this book or whatever. Yeah, I had a similar experience with um the the prologue to the Front Runner, this biography I did on Steve Prefontaine. And I had a hard idea. like I was struggling to get into it in prologue-wise, like how do we set the table? And I had been reading American Prometheus, the Oppenheimer biography, and that starts with a funeral. I'm like, oh, I have a funeral. Yeah. And so I, to your point of like almost annotating every single paragraph, I did the same thing. I kind of like, I'm going to basically copy this paragraph, copy this one and just, you know backfill it with my own facts. And that helped set the stakes in a very satisfying way. And then the book was off to the races. And it's just, ah it's such a great technique that ah you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to like change the tires. Right. And then it gets you over the hump of the blank page because you're like, oh, I'm just filling in these slots. So I don't have to worry about how do I start my great masterpiece? You're just like, nope, this is what this paragraph has to do.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah. And I love how you said, like, maybe in the later drafts, you're going to start imbuing it with, you know, your point of view and your voice. And ah just how have you cultivated that sense of voice over your writing career, be it from your own influences and just the sheer repetition of doing the work?
00:18:57
Speaker
I don't know. i've just been by doing it one One thing that I've learned, I mean, I've been a journalist for a very long time, feels like. And a priority has always been clarity, especially at National Geographic, right?
00:19:13
Speaker
when I was writing um pieces, you know, scientific stories, and some of them had to be really, really short. So, you know, it's like front of the book for the magazine. And it's almost like writing poetry because you every word has to count. and especially if you're doing something complicated, you really have to think about how the reader is taking it in And so that kind of thought process of, you know, every word counts. Is this clear to the reader? Is the reader going to want to read the next book?
00:19:48
Speaker
paragraph? What is the momentum here? Those are the kinds of things that I'm thinking about a lot. I'm not a very um florid writer, I would say. i just really focus on clarity and just, you know, not not a lot of adverbs, just trying to have sort of muscular words that keep you going and aren't dumbed down, but are, um you know, that are clear. I'm not trying to show off, you know, i'm I'm trying to remember that I'm in partnership with a reader and they need to understand what I'm writing about.
00:20:22
Speaker
That's a really great point to underscore. I think i'll I fell into this trap, too, when I was you know coming up in newspapers and you're writing a certain way. And then you know I earned an MFA. And then suddenly you're like, oh, I need to suddenly be a more artistic writer. I fell into that trap that took me ah kind of a long way to kind of scrub that varnish. off off my hall be like, no, like actually good writing is leaner. Good writing is writing you don't really notice yeah so much. you know And it's when you start getting purple and florid that it's like, oh, you're trying too hard. right um
00:20:54
Speaker
Did you ever fall into a similar trap? When I was younger, I certainly did. i mean, I just thought I had to use all the adjectives, especially if you're describing a landscape or something. It just has to be very, very, very descriptive. But I just have realized that in in this instance, less is definitely more. um And I just really value that, which was, I mean, I don't love reading more poetic writing, but I just don't think that that's necessarily my strength.
00:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, it has its place if you can pull it off. But it's, I love the novelist Karen Russell, but even some of her early work is just like, I don't think she ever ran across a compound modifier she didn't love. And I was just like, you know, there's something to notice. But like, okay, in small doses, this this will work. But it's just like, in in lieu of trying to come up with an adjective, she would just squish two words together. I'm like, okay, this is clever, but this is actually worse. Right. I don't know what this means. Exactly.
00:21:50
Speaker
ah And i central to things we do in long form narrative and even something in shorter is is interviewing, you know be it for information or for scene. So how do you approach interviewing as ah as a skill and as a craft?
00:22:06
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting. um I always have my questions, but I really, i am not an aggressive interviewer. I really like to let people talk. um And I really, i do like to use people's own words a lot in my writing. I like to hear people's voices. So i um,
00:22:31
Speaker
I am probably a minimalist interviewer and and wouldn't say a minimalist reporter, but for instance, I took, when I went on the expeditions to Nicomararo, this island where people, some people think Amelia Earhart died a castaway.
00:22:49
Speaker
i just felt almost like I was a spy and an eavesdropper. I mean, I would interview people and ask them what they were doing and everything, but mostly I'm just trying to watch and listen and see how people are doing and kind of hoping people forget that I'm there.
00:23:05
Speaker
so and you know, I don't know that I would necessarily make a great investigative reporter, you know, where are you? know, I'll go back afterwards and, you know, check things.
00:23:18
Speaker
But I just really like people's personalities and expertise to play out in front of me. i don't know if that's the best way to do it, but that's the way I do it. Yeah, and I think it it reveals a ah sensibility among writers who are more of that narratively driven nonfiction writers who do want to be more fly on the wall, notebook out, and just kind of scribbling things, you know, forget I'm here. And then maybe later we kind of circle back and be like, hey, you did this. up can the Explain a little more about what you were thinking here. And it's ah it's a much more, yeah, it's not like hardball. Like I can't, I don't do hardball. I guess maybe there's a time to press and to maybe challenge, but that's different. That's not like gotcha and trying to sneakily get people on the record. But i'm more I'm much more like you and my taste where I just yeah kind of want to just ah recede into the background and not be sneaky about it, but just I hope you forget I'm there. And then we can talk about some of these details too. Yeah. In the event that maybe you forgot I was there and like you shouldn't have forgotten I was there because I'm taking everything down. Like you said this and, you know, we cool with this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't i don't really have any interest in being a gotcha kind of reporter. That's just not –
00:24:39
Speaker
I mean, there's a rule for that, but that's not my inclination. Yeah, and breaking news people, too. I don't have that that adrenaline junkie need to go chase down you know accidents and disasters yeah and stuff. i It doesn't appeal to me. I realize the value of it, but I'm much more the person maybe like a year after the disaster.
00:25:00
Speaker
I'll like maybe try to come in and then yeah tell the tell the story, a deeper story, a slower story, slow journalism. I don't like fast journalism. I like slow journalism. Same, same. Sort of halfway to history. Yeah.
00:25:13
Speaker
I think AJ Liebling was a lot like that. like He followed in World War II, after the D-Day invasion, like he was way behind you know and just kind of following and eating his way across Europe or something. yeah After all the hard work was done, he did his Liebling thing. um I might have just made that up. I don't know. Someone might fact check me out there.
00:25:35
Speaker
um But I love at the start of Lost and ah of like a fun fact is fun fact or a fun observation. Like the the font of Lost on the cover of the book. It reminded me and I think it's the exact same font of the TV series Lost. Did you notice that at all? No. think I know they twist it and everything, but it looks like the same exact block block face. Oh, kind of weird. I'm like, that's a kind of cool detail, the cover designer. That's interesting. um Another fun fact is that the same guy who cover who did the cover design did Mel Robbins' Let Them Theory, which was like a massive, gigantic bestseller. So i was like...
00:26:15
Speaker
Just a little bit of that pixie dust that a little of that dust. Yeah, entirely different books. note ah But it's it is it is ah an arresting cover. It is really a cool, cool cover. Yeah, I'm really happy with it. as ah as ah as a note to say, like I just think it's a beautiful cover. And um it speaks to that isolation on there.
00:26:35
Speaker
they Her and Noonan were no doubt grappling with at the time and it is just gorgeous and expansive and yeah you kind of sense the the pending doom in a way yeah yeah but at at the start of the book I love that you said uh you know you said yes to this thing and you were like I was bored of my job working on tiny morsels uh for the magazine bored with my marriage to another death-bound journalist and most of all bored with myself like Take us to that moment of this kind of, you could call it just like kind of middle-aged malaise of being just bored. Yeah, well, it was just, you know, i was writing, you know, I had had my little cubicle. i was doing for the writing and editing for the front of the book, which was a fairly...
00:27:21
Speaker
routine. mag you know i knew what was happening this week and the next week was writing and the next week was editing. And then my son was in school. So there was the school routine and i just didn't know what I wanted to do next. i mean, the Writing and editing for the front of the book had become pretty easy and felt somewhat underemployed. I'm not the most confident pitcher in the world. So I wasn't sure, like, how do I pitch one of these big National Geographic stories?
00:27:55
Speaker
And I, I'm not sure I ever figured that out, but so I was just kind of like, nah here I am again at my desk.
00:28:06
Speaker
And I mean, literally, um One of the editors at Nat Geo, Glenn Oland, stopped me in the hallway and was like, we have a we have a berth on this ship that's going out to this island in the Pacific. Do you want to go? And I was i said yes, and I just really had no idea even where I was going, but anything about it.
00:28:31
Speaker
I think that's also important that you didn't overthink it and an opportunity came along and, you know, you just say yes, you know, like it's so, so often it's just like, do the improv thing. Yes. And like, yeah, figure it out later. And like, yeah. So in this instance, how did saying yes or open up for you?
00:28:52
Speaker
i had When I started at Nat Geo, I had been a book review editor at the Washington Post, which is a very desk-bound job. When I started there, I really was like, I have no idea what I'm doing, so I'm just going to say yes to things, which up until that point didn't mean anything hugely dramatic. I'd traveled.
00:29:10
Speaker
You know, to different places in the U.S., did some stories, all that kind of stuff. So this was the biggest yes. And I realized it wasn't just a yes that I had to say, but I also had to get buy-in from my then husband and my son, who was 12 at the time.
00:29:30
Speaker
And I also had to really think about all the details that were involved in going to a place like this. You know, I had never been on a ship. I had never been to a tropical anywhere.
00:29:45
Speaker
So I had to think about, well, what am I going to wear? And that's, of course, all my anxiety focused in on that. Like, am I going to have the right gear? so I, you know, I had to go to ah REI and pick out all the sun shirts and the shoes and all that kind of stuff. And i was lucky in that I could talk to um some of the people who had been to this island before and they could give me advice about, you know, wear old tennis shoes because the water's really gross and you don't, not gross, but there's a lot of bird poop in the water. You don't necessarily want to be barefoot, you know, all these little details.
00:30:21
Speaker
And so I was really worked up with anxiety issues figuring all that stuff before I got there. And then I was, i remember I was waiting in line and l LAX to check in for the flight to Fiji.
00:30:35
Speaker
And there two videographers there who I had never met before, but they were coming along from Nat Geo. And they were, you know, asking like, well, where have you been? Where have you been? And I was like, oh my God, I'm such a poser. They don't These guys are real National Geographic and I'm not.
00:30:52
Speaker
But once I got on the ship, I was just focused on doing the story. And it felt like a huge weight fell off my shoulders, even though I was very seasick at first. But, you know, once the preparation is over, you just immerse yourself in the story and the people and trying to figure out the dynamics and what kind, of what do you need to find out? And that is, um it's such a,
00:31:22
Speaker
flow state. There's a little bit of anxiety to it, but it's so much better for me, at least, than the preparations. Oh, you're definitely alluding to kind of my follow-up with this, which is how do you how did you deal with that repertorial anxiety of, we talk about the blank page in writing, but so the blank notebook page when you're trying to gather, like, I need raw material, and what's going to go in this thing? And that not knowing can be very anxiety-inducing.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, and I wasn't sure. i mean, there were a lot of... and Well, another thing that was very anxiety-producing is there wasn't a photographer on this exhibition. There was just a videographer. So I got maybe a 10-minute course in how to take photographs that were supposed to end up... This was going to be on the Nat Geo website, but I mean...
00:32:09
Speaker
like i can't I can't do both. I can't take notes and also look for scenes and stuff. So one thing I jettisoned quickly was the photography. it's just like i just i can't I can do one job. um I just used my phone after a while.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this was a weird expedition because it was the first one, at least, because it was part expedition with Nat Geo folks and these people from Tygar, which is the International Group for Historic Aircraft restoration. I always get that last R wrong. and so and But then the other part of the group was people who were basically on vacation. They had signed up to be on this adventure tour to go um look for Amelia Earhart.
00:32:53
Speaker
So on the five-day journey from Fiji to Nicomaroro, they had all these seminars and so that where they would, the experts would explain what we were looking for. And it was great for me because i was like, okay, good. I can get all my background stuff and I can figure out all the context that And then once we're on the island and actually doing things, then I can look for the scenes and, you know, figure out what people are actually doing. So it was it was a very convenient setup for me. And then I just tried to make sure I was always on the first boat out.
00:33:31
Speaker
We were on a big ship and then we took a small ship to the island every day. And I just had to make sure i was on the first boat out and the last. close to the last boat in. So I wouldn't miss anything.
00:33:44
Speaker
And as you're yeah reporting this out and just tackling the project at large, it can be oftentimes overwhelming to think about like the scope of it. You know, be thinking, oh my God, this is going to be a book. How do I even do that? how do And ah it just and in what way did this book really stretch you?
Challenges in Writing Earhart's Story
00:34:04
Speaker
And yeah it just how did you deal with ah yeah that that sort heart tightness that can come with reporting and then eventually writing the book? Yeah. Well, at first it was I was just reporting what were basically news features. So I was only figuring thinking about what was sort of in front of my face. Yeah. um so And I did two expeditions covering, one covering...
00:34:32
Speaker
looking for Amelia Earhart's bones and the other with Robert Ballard, who was the guy who found the Titanic, looking for her plane to see if it was in the waters around the island.
00:34:44
Speaker
So that was um a little bit easier just because it was fairly clear what the stories were and they were kind of, you could put your hands around it.
00:34:56
Speaker
But then once I got back from the second expedition and started thinking about doing a book on it, I was really struggling because for one thing, it's like, well, we never found anything. We still don't know what happened to her. So is there really a book here? And how and if there is a book, how do I write about all these different things. I mean, there's basically, there's at least four narratives that need to be tackled. I mean, I could have just written a book that about the theories about what happened to her, but one thing I was frustrated about when writing the news stories is that
00:35:36
Speaker
it was mostly about the search for her and not as much about Earhart herself, who I didn't know that much about beyond what we learned in elementary school, but it was just sort of in passing, you know, groundbreaking aviator disappeared. This is how they're looking for her. And I really wanted something that incorporated more of her biography.
00:35:57
Speaker
So that would be one narrative, but then there's the narratives of all the theories and the people who pursued them. and it's all very, involved. So I just really had a hard time figuring out how to braid all those strands together. Yeah. And fundamental to those braids, you know, you come up with ah ah ah basically a three part structure that is, ah you know, captured, cast away and sank. So how did you arrive at that as like the three sort of deaths of Amelia as ah as the scaffolding to kind of start weaving these stories around?
00:36:35
Speaker
Those theories are the ones that have been around and that what I was using is the short term that all these searchers use in their conversations with each other. The thing I that was challenging was figuring out how to approach each theory like how to lay it out in a way that wouldn't be utterly baffling to the reader. And the first way I tried was utterly baffling to my editor. So I had to give it another, another go. I was trying to do it almost chronologically, which involved basically all the theories all at once.
00:37:13
Speaker
And it would have been very difficult. So instead I decided to do alternate things, between the biography chapters and then one theory at a time, starting from basically the least likely to the most likely. And I don't know what happened. I don't advocate for any one theory in the book.
00:37:36
Speaker
But part of the reason I wanted to start with the least likely is that it's also the most um exciting. Spies and, yeah you know, World War II and all that stuff.
00:37:49
Speaker
Yeah. And I also like how you start the book with her flight, you know, and it's just like, well, I mean, everybody knows that she they likely crash and disappear. But it's like you kind of get that out of the way. Let's like, right you know, we this is how we set the table. It's get the crash out of the way. And now we're going to let the story spider out from there. we're not going to build to that moment. this moment happened and now let's autopsy all these different theories. So I like that.
00:38:19
Speaker
I like that decision you made. Yeah. Part of that was just, it's hard to write about um the theories, without understanding all the details of that last flight. So people, i couldn't describe the theories without referring back to you know, whether they had enough fuel or what the radio situation was, where she was going. you know, there was there was a certain amount of information that a reader needed to know in order to understand a lot of the book. And i was really spent a lot of time figuring out
00:38:55
Speaker
where and when to put in details and information so you know readers wouldn't be as lost as the book title.
00:39:07
Speaker
yeah Well, unpacking that that flight, you know just how you're able to build the scene through whatever you know materials you're able to procure in your research, granularly speaking, can't spell and say that word. um how How did you you know organize your materials and curate your materials to really build that out and tease that very dramatic scene out?
00:39:33
Speaker
Well, I mean, in terms of what, you know, the sourcing was, i mean, lucky for me, there have been a lot of biographies. Well, there have been several very solid biographies of hers. So I did have that.
00:39:48
Speaker
And there have been, you know, some of the material was already out there, for instance, the radio messages. but radio log of the Itasca, which was the ship that was waiting for the plane at Howland Island. so there were So there were a lot of sources that um laid out moment by moment what we knew. and I really wanted to make sure I was just writing what we knew because a lot we don't know very much. We don't actually know what was happening on the plane.
00:40:21
Speaker
And then I just sort of kind of wanted to parcel things out. And I mean, the situation itself is just very dramatic. The radio messages, you know, first they can hear her, then they realize that she hasn't heard them at all. I mean, it's just innately dramatic.
00:40:38
Speaker
So, I mean, I was very lucky. It's hard to build hard to build drama out of something that's not dramatic, but I had something dramatic. Well, and you you bring up that there have been a lot of solid biographies written about her before. And I imagine that as you were looking to drop a proposal and sell this book, it's like, well, what new can be said that hasn't already been said? Oh, yeah.
00:41:01
Speaker
So, yeah. So how did you approach you know that central question to selling a new book on Amelia Earhart? Well, it was, you know, in my darkest moments, I'm like, who needs this book? I don't know but um so there had been some good biographies and a lot of the different searchers had written books arguing for their, what they think happened.
00:41:27
Speaker
There hadn't really been that, that combined it all together. and there hadn't been a book that provided some context to the searches, you know, why they got such traction when they got traction.
00:41:45
Speaker
And so that's, I think that's what helped sell the book and confession it's published by national geographic. So it's not like it was so hard, that but, but yeah,
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it it's not a book that promises to come up with any solutions. And I really didn't want to. I wanted to lay it out for the reader. And there isn't a book that does all of that at once, like a one-stop shop.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's a I know when I was writing The Front Runner and and ah and i didn't I wasn't able to come up with like definitively what happened to Prefontaine as he crashed his car, like concrete. There's still a little mystery around it. And I remember talking to our mutual literary representative. She's like, did you find out what happened? i was like, no, not really. I think I have more detail, but it's not like still concrete. And she was just like, oh. Oh. She was so disappointed in me. And I was like, I'm sorry. I did my best. Right, right.
00:42:52
Speaker
Yeah, I know. I think... My editor, you know, there were a couple and searches in the last two years, and there was one group who thought they'd found Earhart's plane because they had a sonar image of something that looked like the plane.
00:43:09
Speaker
And my editor was just jumping out of her skin. She was so excited. We have to get this out early, loveh blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking, it's it's rocks. I'm sure it's rocks.
00:43:19
Speaker
And it was rocks. But just the idea that there's going to be this definitive proof. And I'm more um i'm more comfortable with not knowing. I kind of like that.
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, geez, like a few years ago, that giant airliner like down in the Pacific and no one found that plane. And now we have all this modern technology to yeah very find a modern plane. It's like, what's the odds of finding one that's, I don't know, like 60 feet across? And and we if we can't find this one that's like 120 feet across from here.
Enduring Fascination with Earhart's Disappearance
00:43:51
Speaker
I think to your point, that it's okay for there to be mystery and for there to be fascination in her life. And the fact that there is mystery and nothing definitive maybe exists. It allows us to keep, I don't know, like resurfacing her story and drawing more inspiration from her and seeing and bringing her into modernity.
00:44:12
Speaker
i think into this current moment, it makes her all the more inspiring for what she was accomplishing 100 years ago Yeah, I mean, I think we might not be talking about her. something We probably wouldn't be talking about her so much if we if she had crashed on a Newark airport and there was footage and everybody knew she died that way. Like, okay, that's sad. But what is going to keep her going? I mean, she also had the advantage of having...
00:44:39
Speaker
really aggressive publicist for a husband. And he made sure that she was on the front pages all the time. But yeah, the mystery keeps it going. In fact, I um was talking early on to somebody who runs that Amelia Earhart Festival in Atchison, Kansas, which is where Amelia was born. And she's just like, I hope they never find her because it's a big festival. It does great for the town and...
00:45:08
Speaker
She likes the mystery. And I think that's I do, too. Yeah, I love, ah you know, or know ah first third of the book or so, you know, you write she wanted a life of purpose and she couldn't imagine finding it in a purely domestic existence. What do you think it was about her that her and her personality that she was so almost at ease with bucking those societal norms of the time?
00:45:30
Speaker
um I think she she was so interested in and what was new, in new experiences, in new technology, that having a life where things basically stayed the same just would have been the end of her. I mean, I just don't think she would have been able to handle that. And, you know, she she had kind of an unstable childhood, but her parents did do...
00:46:00
Speaker
Very well. i mean, they had two girls and when the girls wanted BB gun, she they got them a BB gun. Her mom sewed these rompers so that they could actually play rather than being constricted in these dresses.
00:46:15
Speaker
She was raised to be herself, basically, And so I think she just never, she never learned how to shut that down, which is wonderful. She just was always looking for what she could do beyond what was expected of her. And I think it made her 20s pretty difficult because she knew what she didn't want to do, but she didn't know what she did want to do But I think that's one of the reasons that she's still so appealing because she found a way through
00:46:46
Speaker
The things that, you know, a lot of women think about, but also men, you know, how can I be what I want to be when society expects me to be a certain way? And it's a question that we all still struggle with. And she was pretty eloquent about wanting people to be able to do what they wanted to do.
00:47:09
Speaker
What can you point to as the inflection point where she did discover or her purpose of what she did want to do and what she did want to stand for? Well, I think she had a ah couple. I mean, i think her first ride in an airplane, which happened in LA, just literally opened up the world to her. And we forget how, um,
00:47:36
Speaker
People didn't know what the world looked like from the air. And to be able to see that and to have the physical sensations, I think absolutely thrilled her and to know that it was possible she could learn how to do it.
00:47:51
Speaker
I think that um was an inflection point. i think another one was, well, I mean, there's so many, it's really interesting. She had a lot of times when she really changed direction.
00:48:04
Speaker
When she was working at Denison House, which was a settlement house in Boston, um settlement houses were sort of like community centers, and this one served a lot of immigrants in the Boston area.
00:48:20
Speaker
And she really liked taking charge of that and helping, you know, she started a girls basketball team, did all these very community building things for a lot of the Syrian and Chinese immigrants.
00:48:33
Speaker
And she got a call to get the to ride, not pilot, a flight from U.S. across the Atlantic. And I think when she got back, the flight made her very, very famous, even though she had basically just sat the whole time.
00:48:51
Speaker
But when she got back, she had thought she was going to go back to being a social worker. And then she realized she had become too famous to do that, but that she could do...
00:49:03
Speaker
similar kind of work as an advocate for aviation and particularly as an advocate for women in ah aviation. So she found um the aspects of social work that she liked and i applied it to what had just been basically a hobby before and turned it into something new.
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah, there's a moment, you know, where you're right, you for a time she had her own clothing line, which introduced tiny propellers and buttons and parachute silk as the materials for shirts, you designed for women who lead active lives. And it just got me thinking, like, this is so modern day, like, influencer type stuff. I can almost, like, picture be like, you know, hashtag ad and, like, Like, tagging her brands that she's advocating. But, like, talk about someone who's on the vanguard of her celebrity and trying to position herself, you as this inspiring figure that's also trying to, you know, sell things for her brands. But, yeah, positioning herself as something of a leader on the vanguard of something wholly new at the time.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, and that was... sort of a combination of her feeling that she wanted the world to be air-minded. She wanted aviation to be part of everything. She also had a luggage line. You know, she was really pushing to get women, not only to pilot planes, but actually to be passengers because that would grow the aviation industry.
00:50:30
Speaker
But it was also because of her husband who was very good at branding and positioning Her as you know the the female aviator, the woman woman that people thought of when they thought of aviation. So it was a combination of the two. But yeah, she was very much an influencer. You know, it's like she had the content and he knew how to package it basically.
00:50:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I i think that that ah something that also speaks to kind of our current day, that maybe a lot of people who are very famous for what they do aren't necessarily the first. Amelia's not the first woman to ever, like, set foot in a cockpit and fly. Like, she was of a lineage, but she kind of had the look and the moxie and certainly ah a promotional engine behind her to make her a figurehead. Uh, so i maybe just talk a little bit about the the culture of women in aviation at the time of which that Amelia truly took it to like different heights.
00:51:27
Speaker
Yeah. Well, when aviation was so new, anybody could join as long as you were, you know, willing to risk your life and absolutely you were risking your life and somehow acquire a plane. And we, you know, it was a new technology wide open and And there were a lot of, what's the word I'm looking for? um You know, like shows, air shows where people could go and they could see, you know, the fast planes and the tricks. And so if you, mean, she was performing in these air shows when she'd only learned how to
00:52:03
Speaker
She'd been flying for like a year because there was such an appetite to see aviation, to see the tricks and to see a woman doing it. And, you know, she was very well-spoken and very attractive, but she definitely wasn't the only woman doing this. I mean, a lot of women were trying to get into it.
00:52:21
Speaker
They all knew that if you could break some records, then you could become famous. The trick was, how do you pay for flying? It was expensive you know,
00:52:32
Speaker
So you had the the fame and the making it a living went hand in hand. So that's one reason it was fairly competitive. But at the same time, the women bonded together because they were quickly outnumbered. once After World war one ah there were just so many male pilots who'd been trained to fight in the war and women didn't have any official sort of training. So Earhart and some other pilots created this organization called the 99s, which was based on the 99 pilots, female pilots who signed up for it. And that organization still exists. So it was an interesting balance of
00:53:16
Speaker
women trying to marshal fame in order to keep doing this thing they really like doing and supporting each other to carve out a small space for women in this new field.
00:53:31
Speaker
Yeah, at the Oregon Historical Society, you know two hours north of me in Portland, they have an exhibit about women aviators in Oregon. and there was this video, you know um I don't know the name of the pilot, but she's still like doing barrel rolls and there's ah like a radio announcer and sort of that old timey, he's like, yeah, look at her go. And good luck you know if you're a man, good luck taming this woman. And all right ah I was like, good God. yeah oh yeah But that was also the the backdrop of all of of this era too, is this pervasive sexism and and everything. And did that that leads to some really gross writing, um but also the kind the commentary around it too. Yeah, I mean, they the women, the first um women's race in the national air races, the organizers really, they were insisting that there had to be a male navigator on each plane. And the women said, no, we're not doing the race if you insist on that.
00:54:31
Speaker
And they won and they ended up being able to pilot themselves. Or if they wanted to, they could have another woman on board to navigate or co-pilot. But they really had to fight every step of the way.
00:54:44
Speaker
and there's ah There's a moment ah kind of later in the book where um Susan Ware wrote about the sort of ah a goodwill flight. think Amelia was going to Mexico or Mexico City. She said, like, this episode blatantly revealed to the public what was usually a behind-the-scenes process for of ah paying for and profiting from record-breaking flights. And it got me thinking of how...
00:55:05
Speaker
a lot of brands, be it like it's commonplace now with say Red Bull or North Face or Patagonia that really push the extreme in the envelope and put these like athletes in harm's way to really draw attention and to their brands. But it's like, okay, you know, it's that fine line of doing something really dangerous, but I, you know, are they going to come back alive from it? And even here you're seeing that,
00:55:27
Speaker
that that degree of pressure to keep pushing the envelope, fly around the world, you know, draw attention to yourself and these brands. And it's like that knife's edge. And she was living on that knife's edge the way, you know, Alex Honnold is living yeah on a certain knife's edge too.
00:55:43
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's really, she really had to keep breaking records in order to have the lecture tours that allowed her to live comfortably you know,
00:55:55
Speaker
At some point, you know, like this, the round the world flight, that was such a risky, clearly dangerous flight. But she and her husband felt like, well, she had she was almost 40 and she better do it now before somebody else does it or before she just doesn't have the stamina to do a flight like that.
00:56:19
Speaker
But I mean, 20 hours to find an island that's just a mile long. Yeah, no thank you. Yeah, no kidding. And i also like very, ah very much like, oh, it's something I want to get you to comment on. I won't read it because it's pretty long. But right before Amelia marries George Putnam, she writes this letter to him.
00:56:40
Speaker
which is almost like a manifesto of sorts. And i I'd love for you to just speak to that letter because it's one of the most, don't know, compelling things that I've ever read. And here's this you know woman writing this in the 30s or whatever. And it's just very progressive and empowering in a way and a very forward-looking. She almost didn't care if they had an open marriage. She's like, let me do my thing. I'll marry you, but let me do my thing. Yeah.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah, so she... um She had been engaged to somebody else for about six years and he kept wanting to get married. and He was very nice engineer named Sam, but she was so afraid of being trapped in a marriage and her parents had had a tumultuous marriage and and ended up getting divorced.
00:57:25
Speaker
So... Earhart was really leery of getting married, but George Putnam, who she'd met because he was the publicist for her first, her Atlantic flight, um kept pushing and pushing And she finally, they got engaged, but then it took a while for them to actually get married.
00:57:47
Speaker
And the morning of the wedding, she gave them this letter, which said, let's give it a year. And if it doesn't work out, that's fine. We'll just go our separate ways.
00:57:59
Speaker
Sometimes I need to be by myself or to go off and do my own thing. i have to do that. It's not personal. If you find somebody else, if I find somebody else, that's fine.
00:58:11
Speaker
But this isn't necessarily forever for keeps because I can't make that kind of promise. And yeah, it's it's an amazing a letter that seems full of self-knowledge of what she can bear and not bear. um And I think it speaks well of George Putnam that he...
00:58:34
Speaker
said, okay, let's do it. And he he described it later as a sad letter. I don't know if I think of it as sad. its She does sound a little bit resigned, but then a few weeks later, she tells her sister um that this is going much better than I thought. I like i actually really like this. So um and feel it seems like she had to get that, her reservations down before she could take that next step.
00:59:02
Speaker
Yeah, it was a ah declaration of some kind. Like, these these are the terms. Right. you know And it's totally cool if you're not okay with my terms, but these are going to be the terms. And i have read just the fact that she that that she wrote it, put pen to paper, and made that declaration when so many people might just resign themselves to to something else. i was just like I was riveted by that by that letter of which you you quote the whole thing, which is great to read the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, it's also so interesting that she didn't think of marriage as an institution that had to be a certain way.
00:59:40
Speaker
She thought that she could make this institution the way she needed it to be. It didn't have to be the way you know generations before her had endured or enjoyed whatever the yeah marriage.
00:59:57
Speaker
And later later in the book too, you're talking about like like um you know legacy resting atop the obsession of her death. And you said, like I'd understood Earhart only in terms of three opposing forces, but in Atchison, Kansas, her birthplace, um you know like as I listened to the beautifully ordinary banter of her descendants, she also began to take shape as an actual person with a place and a family. And that kind of gets to this idea of like she's become mythologized. And here you found a place where you could ground her and sort of get to the the person behind the myth again, I think.
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, it was really interesting to meet her family, especially her niece, who was only five or six, I believe, when she disappeared. and just had very hazy memories of her, but was also a very practical person and not didn't romanticize her at all.
01:00:51
Speaker
And it just felt like, okay, she was just a person that some people have Their opinions are not based on her amazing feats in aviation. They're just, this is the aunt that I barely saw because she was traveling all the time. you know she She knew her in relationship to her mother and her grandmother.
01:01:12
Speaker
And you realize that her heart was not perfect. She wrote some pretty scathing letters to her mother and her sister because she was supporting them somewhat, but also expecting them to behave certain ways. given her support. um And she can be very critical. So she wasn't she wasn't two-dimensional. She was ah real person who left behind a hole in a family.
01:01:38
Speaker
And I hadn't thought of that until about midway through the book. I was like, oh, wow, she's real. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. that when when When these figures, especially if they die young and die mysteriously, the mythology often displaces the human. And it's the the skill of, say, you as a real skilled biographer and storyteller in this instance to like...
01:02:04
Speaker
get to that, get beyond the mythology and to the person
Earhart's Early Life and Aviation Path
01:02:07
Speaker
flaws and all. And then we're like, i i like them all the more for their humanity versus the thing we might see on a motivational poster on the side of the wall.
01:02:17
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I like that. And I also like learning how in her 20s she was just lost. She did not. She kept trying things and they didn't work out. And I was like, oh that seems kind of familiar. yeah That's great. And ah I always love getting a sense of.
01:02:36
Speaker
ah the various idiosyncrasies that we bring to the to the page or our writing routines or just the the practice through which we go about the work. So just say, for instance, when you were writing this book and getting your materials together, you know how did you go about when you knew you had to have a good day of writing, yeah what was the the situation that you created for yourself to be able to to work productively, hopefully?
01:03:00
Speaker
Um, that that shifted because for a while there I was working full time and working on the book, which was very difficult. I think I so sprained my brain, ran out of words and all that.
01:03:14
Speaker
Um, so I was working really early in the morning or late at night. You know, I have my two screens set up, like my writing screen and then I had entered a lot of notes into Devon Think, which basically allows you to have sort of these digital note cards. So anytime I came across something when I was doing research, I would write it on the note cards and label it and be able to um organize outlines for the chapters that way. um the thing that...
01:03:48
Speaker
Really was helpful, especially once I, in a foolish financial new move, but helped with the book, I think, quit my job to finish the book. um Signed up for this thing called Cave Day. Have you ever heard of Cave Day?
01:04:04
Speaker
I have not. Please tell me. Okay. It's um something for people who have challenges with their attention, which I do, um where you sign up.
01:04:15
Speaker
you know for one hour slots to be on Zoom with all these other people who are working. And the idea is that it's hard to stay focused if you're just by yourself in a room.
01:04:28
Speaker
But if you have a sense that there are other people that you're working together with, even though you're not talking to them, you don't communicate them with them really, but you can see them working on their stuff on the Zoom screen while you're working on it. And I could schedule my day based on when they had the Zooms available. So they would have like a three hour chunk in the morning. So I would work from 9.30 to 12.30. And then there was another three hour chunk from 1.30 to 4.30 in the afternoon. And that's really how I built my schedule. um
01:05:04
Speaker
And in terms of how I wrote, i I wish I was more of like a free, just... write it, just get it all out kind of writer, but it's just agonizing sentence by sentence. I just am adding brick by brick. So it takes, it takes a while. I never would do it. I never would write by word count because that just didn't work for me.
01:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, I love the bricklaying image. that I can really attest to that, because I'm a big cite-as-I-write kind of guy. so each So if I come across that detail, I better cite it mid-sentence. Otherwise, I'm likely to lose that information. yeah and it's just And so yeah, this idea of like laying down a brick, making sure that cement and that mortar is set, like, okay, still wet. Okay, let's move to the next one. And ah it's a plodding, rock climbing kind of way to go about it. But if i don't if I don't do that, I'm going to lose stuff. And I can't bear to lose stuff. And I've lost stuff. And it it breaks my heart to this day. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Could you hold on one second? Sure. It's dog-friendly podcast. Yeah. Yeah.
01:06:18
Speaker
Did you see the dog or hear the dog? I i did see the dog poking at one point and I heard the collar shake and I was like, I know that. Well, i usually have one or two in the studio with me at any given time. Yeah. I was just letting her out of the room. Yeah.
01:06:32
Speaker
Very nice. Well, cool. I want to be mindful of your time, Rachel. And as I yeah um bring these conversations up for a landing, I kind of have like two things I like to ask because I didn't ask one of them
Engaging Storytelling Techniques
01:06:41
Speaker
earlier. I always end with one and I sometimes thread the other one in mid conversation, but We'll start the with the first one, which is kind of just like general writing advice, maybe advice that you've received from someone that you really employ, or maybe just ah writing advice that you've through a life of hard earned, like hard earned advice from just doing what you've done for so long. So ah yeah, what's some good advice that you'd like to share if you've received?
01:07:06
Speaker
Way back when I worked at US News and was covering like their college rankings and things like that, um I was struggling with a feature about with organizing it. And my editor said just tell it like you're telling a story at a cocktail party, as if I went to cocktail parties, but whatever. But, you know, just imagine verbally telling the story.
01:07:35
Speaker
And that has always helped me. And it's sort of the bedrock for how I think about telling a story to a reader. I'm not just writing for myself. I'm writing for somebody else to hear and understand what I'm writing. So that that was crucial. and And there's a second piece, and I don't know where I got this advice. I think it might've just been a colleague who mentioned this, but it was, if you're stuck, you don't have enough, you need to do more reporting or more research.
01:08:12
Speaker
And I found that to be true. Like, I just don't have enough information. i need to um find out more. That's a great a great piece of advice. yeah Anytime I have felt nervous going into writing something, it usually means I need to make more calls, ah do a few more interviews. If I feel nervous or apprehensive before an interview for like a podcast or even someone who might... have like a a big body of work and i have you know want to know something about them if i'm feeling nervous like if i do that extra bit of research like ah it it tends to settle me down a little bit and be like okay i feel more prepared that i can go in any direction yeah and in that way and yeah same with the writing like if it if it's struggling to come out it's it's because yeah i haven't done enough reporting i need a little more reporting and then that raw material helps It just gives more authority to every little brick that we're trying to put together. Yeah.
01:09:08
Speaker
Yeah. Nice. And the last thing I want to ask you, Rachel, is just ah for a fun recommendation for the listeners out there. And that's just like anything you're finding cool and fun um that you want to share with the readers, so ah listeners. So I just extend that to you.
01:09:20
Speaker
Okay. and Well, lately, i've after I watch whatever show I watch on Netflix, I'll watch an episode of This is a Gardening Show with Zach.
01:09:32
Speaker
I'm going to mangle his last name. Galifianakis. Galifianakis. Yeah, it's just delightful. 15 minutes. Last night, I learned about corn. And it's goofy and it's joyous and it's only about 15 minutes. So i've I've been loving that.
01:09:52
Speaker
Oh, fantastic. well Well, Rachel, I'm so glad we got to have this conversation and talk about how you go about the work and Amelia Earhart and everything. I love the book and I'm so glad we got to talk some shop. So thanks so much for carving out time to do this.
01:10:02
Speaker
Well, thanks, Brandon. It's been so much fun.
01:10:12
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. Thanks to Rachel for coming on the podcast and thanks for you for making it this far. You know, be sure you're subbed up with the podcast wherever you listen to them. And with Pitch Club on Substack and with the monthly Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. You can find that at either an embed form on my website or at rageagainstthealgorithm.beehive.com. Follow the show on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And stay abreast of it all at brendanamero.com. Hey.
01:10:44
Speaker
Have you seen The Odyssey yet? I haven't, but I want to. I love the ambition of Christopher Nolan, and I'm always amazed at how he even got his start. Like, no film school, which is always a good lesson, right? It's like, should I could do the MFA thing or not? You know, if homies like him can go they can do what they're doing without going to film school, maybe the best way to do it is through the sheer act of repetition.
01:11:07
Speaker
Anyway, he made his first movie with friends, and then he makes Memento and based on a short story written by his brother, I think. And then he's directing Insomnia somehow with Robin Williams and Al Pacino, then the Batman franchise. It's like, how do you get ad you get a shot out of the cannon like that?
01:11:27
Speaker
I'd like to know what connections he had and then how he had the confidence as a relatively untried filmmaker to work with titans of the form. He's very clearly someone of no or very little limiting beliefs, which brings me to my parting shot today. Now, I'm your classic self-saboteur. Like, I have a tendency to drink too much, which does a number on my training.
01:11:50
Speaker
I have even more of a tendency to pre-reject myself, so you can't reject me. take that. you know I'll come up with what I think are great story ideas. And I think they are objectively good story ideas, right? But then I'm like, wait a second.
01:12:07
Speaker
Pump the brakes, BO. You're not David Grant or Pamela Koloff or Seth Wickersham or Susan Orlean or Nick Palmgarten. So slow down there, Sparky, and put a lid on that misplaced ambition of yours. In the end, who am I really hurting by doing all this? In fact...
01:12:25
Speaker
I'm going to pause and write a follow-up query that i've been that I had shelled for a long time because I had just taken... i e i am I'm going to do it right now, okay? BRB.
01:12:39
Speaker
All right, I'm back. It happened. Needed to send that out because my previous follow-up had gone unanswered, and me being me, I have a tendency to just say, oh, well, guess that was garbage anyway. Let's move on to something else.
01:12:54
Speaker
But I suspect this will be my last follow-up. It's been three times now. And if I don't hear back, ah I'll be like, all right. Oh well. Oh well. It's a source pitch.
01:13:06
Speaker
Okay. But then I realized how selfish all this is. These limiting beliefs affect more than just me. And it and if it takes that thinking to get you out of your own head, then good.
01:13:17
Speaker
I mean, on the one hand, it's what makes me me, right? Few people are as punishingly self-deprecating as I am, which you might say is part of my charm. But at some point long ago, I started believing the self-deprecating nature of my humor.
01:13:32
Speaker
and This was back in the late 90s, and it hasn't really stopped. And when I say selfish, it's affecting my partner, my lady wife, who believes in me. Sometimes I wonder why, but she does for now.
01:13:45
Speaker
ah Who has carried the burden for too long. So my self-limiting beliefs, it affects people who... it ah It affects more than just myself. It affects people who believe in me out there in the podcast world, who I know want me to do well in the same way that we always wanted Marc Maron to do well, even though we knew he was doing well and even though he maybe didn't believe in himself or maybe he does and he projects a certain image of himself.
01:14:10
Speaker
That's why I always felt a a certain kinship with him, even if he was doing objectively well, even with his podcast and his comedy. You know, you always rooted for him. I think that's true of people who are long-time listeners of this show, too. And that doesn't fall on deaf ears, believe it or not.
01:14:28
Speaker
And maybe there are people out there who need me to do well as proof that it's possible for a no-name jabroni like me to make a go of it. See, there I go again. And how can I expect to put fuel in other people's tanks if I don't walk the walk?
01:14:40
Speaker
If I can't point to winds and say, shit, if I can do it, then you can, too. Or if I can endure, then maybe you can, too. And yes, point to the failures as well because it's evidence of being in the arena and yes it's a matter of perseverance and yes the conditions for perseverance need to be in place and no one talks about that part perseverance is one thing but who's covering that trip to the doctor and those groceries uh don't know your kids soccer fees your vet bills fuck vet bills man damn it
01:15:16
Speaker
You could say that I like getting in my own way. Otherwise, why do it? I guess fear, most likely. But at 46 years old, that sounds more and more pathetic. At some point before it's too late, we need to step away from the trunk of the tree and get out on that limb and feel it sway under the weight of our own daring.
01:15:34
Speaker
It's better to have that limb break than live in a regret of fearing the fall, right? So stay wild, C&Evers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.