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Episode 90—Mary Pilon Brings You "The Kevin Show"
131 Plays7 years ago
"I can't think about writing a big project. It's too overwhelming for me but I can think about a thousand words a day and then this magical thing happens which is you end up with 90,000 words," says Mary Pilon (@marypilon).
Hey, there CNFers, my CNFbuddies, I’m Brendan O’Meara and this is my podcast. The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is the show where I speak to the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction: leaders in narrative journalism, essay, memoir, radio, and documentary film to tease out origins, habits, routines, key influences, mentors, self-doubt, so you can ‘Oh, that’s pretty cool, I’m not alone. I’m not a loser.’ And apply those tools of mastery to your own work.
I welcome back Mary Pilon who hasn’t been on the show since Episode 18, now we’re on Episode 90. Mary comes back because she has a new book out: The Kevin Show: An Olympic Athlete’s Battle with Mental Illness.” Feel free to say hi to me on Twitter, @BrendanOMeara or @CNFPod, Instagram @BrendanOMeara where I’m showing how I’m making the first issue of CNF Pod Zine. What? A zine? Oh, yeah. And Facebook, @CNFPodcast. Say hi, my friends say I’m a pretty cool guy. That’s it CNFers, have a CNFin’ great week.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey there, CNFers, my CNF buddies. I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is my podcast. And if you'll indulge, I prefer the thrumming of a momentous riff under my intros. The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is the show where I speak to the world's best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in narrative journalism, essay, memoir, radio, and documentary film,
00:00:32
Speaker
tease out oranges. Oranges? Like oranges? God. Origins, habits, routines, key influences, mentors, self-doubt, so you can say, oh that's pretty cool, I'm not alone.
00:00:48
Speaker
I'm not a loser, some of us are still working on this, and apply those tools of mastery to your own work.
Mary Pallone on 'The Kevin Show'
00:00:56
Speaker
I welcome back Mary Pallone, who hasn't been on the show since episode 18, now we're on episode 90. Mary comes back because she has a new book out, The Kevin Show, an Olympic athlete's battle with mental illness.
00:01:13
Speaker
Have you ever heard of the Truman Show Disorder, where people think they're on a reality show? Well, Mary's central figure, Kevin Hall, had that before the movie The Truman Show was even a thing. Mary does an incredible job of the story, and I think you should pull out your preferred method of payment and go buy the book. Link will be in the show notes, along with, what's this, a transcript of the episode?
00:01:42
Speaker
You'll go over to BrendanOmero.com to see all of those goodies. Hey, you know the show needs reviews and ratings, right? If you leave an honest review, I'll edit a piece of your work up to 2,000 words to show the evidence of your review and I'll reach out. It's that simple. That's gonna do it. Here is the brilliant Mary Colan.
00:02:11
Speaker
So during our last conversation two years ago, Kevin Show, which is your book that's coming out, which will have been out for three days by the time this podcast airs. Oh, right. Yeah. And so it's out. It was in its nation stages then. So how did you come to this story and then realize that it
00:02:34
Speaker
Was going to be what it turned out to be, which is this this long, you know, a great, you know, long book length worthy project.
00:02:49
Speaker
heard about Kevin Hall from a colleague of mine at The Times, Andy Laron.
Exploring Kevin Hall's Story and Mental Health
00:02:53
Speaker
He walked by my desk and was like, hey, there's this really weird thing called Truman Show Disorder, and I think this Olympian has it. And Andy knows me well enough to know that, again, my mother worked as a shrink, and I kind of had carved out this niche of doing offbeat sports stories and
00:03:09
Speaker
Sometimes that also meant dealing with folks who were quite frankly unhinged or angry. I was doing a lot of yoga at the time, so I felt very stable about dealing with angry agents and whatever controversies might arise.
00:03:25
Speaker
you know, reached out to Kevin kind of thinking like any reporting call, it's like, you know, nine out of 10 times people don't get back to you or it, you know, at best I thought maybe it's a cool Sunday dress page story, you know, and I, and then as I kept talking to Kevin, I thought, well, maybe this is more than like a cool Sunday dress story. Maybe it's something more like tomato can where I can, you know, convince people, the, the folks on the digital staff to kind of put some more resources into it.
00:03:51
Speaker
And then I got laid off in the middle of it. But I was working on it, the Kevin stuff, in my spare time. And as I kind of left the door, I was like, well, I want to keep doing this story. I think it's really important. It's about the reality of being an athlete. It's about mental health, which, you know, even now more than then feels so important to me.
00:04:10
Speaker
changing the way we talk about. And I had to make this really awkward, reach out to Kevin and say, hey, I'm so interested in this story and I really want to put more into it. I totally lost my job this week. And I got to hand it to him. He believed in me. I was like, I don't know where I'm going to land, but I really, really want to do this. And I think
00:04:33
Speaker
He's done three or four America's Cups in Olympics. He's seen the good and bad of the media cycle. And I wouldn't blame him if part of him was like, oh, yeah, right. She's really going to follow through with this. And I kept reporting and reporting. And I was freelancing and thought, well, maybe it's a magazine piece. But then the weirdness of the story and the scope of it got so big that I had
00:04:58
Speaker
stacks and stacks of notes and interviews. And I thought, God, there's a technology piece, there's a sports piece, there's a mental health piece, there's a science piece, there's all this stuff. And I called the agent and I was like,
00:05:08
Speaker
my book agent, and I said, you know, I have a mountain of stuff. I haven't even pitched this anywhere because I don't know if it's an Esquire story. I don't know if it's a Times Magazine story. I don't know if it's a multimedia thing. And she said, Mary, that's called a book, like what you've described, like, has a beginning, middle and end. And it's really long. And, you know, that's
Mary's Writing Journey and Techniques
00:05:26
Speaker
what a book is. And I was so I had a blast promoting the monopolist. And but I was exhausted. You know, I was like, God, I spent five years on this thing. And
00:05:35
Speaker
And I told her, I was like, I feel like you're telling me that I'm pregnant when I'm in the delivery room. The idea of doing another book is just totally exhausting to me. And she said, well, do me a favor. And just this weekend, just sit and try and write a proposal. If it comes to you, great. If it doesn't, that's totally fine. But just give it a whirl, because it seems like you've done a lot of reporting on this. And I sat and just, boom, 70 pages.
00:06:00
Speaker
And that was the first time that had happened to me. My monopoly proposal took a year and was this agonizing, torturous process. And so I thought, oh my gosh, you know, I kind of like went back to my agent with my tail between my legs and I was like, yeah, this is definitely a book. And so that's how we went about it. But it was totally, I was very resistant to the idea from the get-go and not having anything to do with Kevin or the merits of the story or
00:06:26
Speaker
Why it matters, but but just because the whole book gauntlet even though Bloomsbury was great to work with even though the monopolist did well It was like the idea of running a marathon, you know again after you just finished I was like, oh my legs are so tired like you want me to do what?
00:06:42
Speaker
So this story is, it must have been a challenge for you to report on this story. Everyone is alive and well. They're alive and you had to speak with them about very, very sensitive topics. And what was that like for you? And how did you garner the trust of everyone involved to be able to then handle this story in such a,
00:07:10
Speaker
really a tender way that you were able to tell it? That's a really great question because it is like, you know, no pun intended, but it was a crazy proposition, right? Like I basically was like, Hey, Kevin, I want to talk about your brain and your infertility and your marriage and your, you know, your family and your teammates and stuff. And I got to hand it to Kevin and Amanda. Like I just never asked more of sources than I have of them. I mean, just in terms of time and their patience,
00:07:41
Speaker
And they were able to kind of round out their story with photographs and journals and medical records and all this stuff.
00:07:50
Speaker
And it was incredible. And I don't know. You know, I was talking to Kevin about it yesterday. Like he told me that his approach was kind of all in. And I kind of when I do this sometimes with folks, I send stories that I've done in the past that I think are kind of what I'm shooting for again or give a sense of the tone. And if people don't like the output, if they don't like the work,
00:08:13
Speaker
then that's totally okay. And so I think I kind of was able to make the case that I'm not a tabloid. Here's the monopolist. Here's how I worked with Ralph and that story and what our process was like. And whether it's a newspaper article or a book, I don't believe in surprises. I don't want you to say things you're not comfortable with. We can talk on the record, off the record. What are your terms that you want to work with?
00:08:43
Speaker
And they were incredible. I mean, it became this joke that I was like the Hall family biographer because I had never done anything quite like that. I was kind of embedded with them in a lot of ways. And they, you know, with the monopolist, it was such a departure from my newspaper work because I love history and I love libraries and documents, but it can get a little lonely because you have these moments where your characters, you want to just pick up the phone and say, Lizzie McGee, like, why did you do this? And you can't.
00:09:11
Speaker
So it was a nice change of pace for Monopoly to have a story that was so that they were still living.
Narrative Style and Storytelling Challenges
00:09:17
Speaker
You know, Kevin was having, you know, episodes while we were reporting this. And so I had to figure out how to report the story while being sensitive to someone who is very much dealing with a huge life transition. I mean, he was on the America's Cup boat in 2013 that capsized and one of his teammates, you know, passed away. And that's, I think, was a big
00:09:40
Speaker
transition point for him and you know in the last year or two they've moved back from New Zealand to the United States which has been a big deal and they've got young kids and you know so you're very
00:09:51
Speaker
conscious of, okay, this is something that someone is, you know, who's not necessarily a full public figure. I mean, he has been on the national stage and he has competed, but this is something that his kids are going to read someday and how, you know, if it was me, how would I want that portrayed? And I think Kevin and Amanda also had some time and distance from a lot of the events in the book. So they were really able to kind of put it into context for what
00:10:19
Speaker
you know, certain episodes meant in the grander scheme of things. And they just had an incredible amount of self-awareness. And I had never reported on delusions before. So, you know, Kevin was really great about saying, I know this sounds crazy. I probably hallucinated this part. This part, I think, might be real. You might want to pull a police report on it. And that's why I kind of tried to report around not just relying on Kevin and Amanda, because even though they were these wonderful
00:10:45
Speaker
recounters their stories, I realized pretty early on that the nature of mental illness is that it's experienced by not just the person who has it, but their friends, their family, their teammates, their loved ones. And I wanted the book to not only serve the Kevin's of the world, but also the caretakers, the family, the friends, the folks who are kind of on the outside looking in, which is something that evolved in the reporting. I didn't set out originally to switch the perspective of each chapter, but I realized
00:11:15
Speaker
a little bit in that that was going to be, I think, a more effective way of telling the story. The way that I kind of approached the reading of it, given that Kevin's bipolar disorder gave him these manic episodes that made him feel like he was part of a reality show.
00:11:38
Speaker
In a sense, going from character to character, it was almost like changing the channel. And so it was like a TV experience, at least for me, like reading, like, okay, you know, here's where we're. I didn't even think of that. Yes. Let's go with that. Yeah. Sure. All right. Great. But yeah, whether, you know, whether that was the intent or not, you do go from Christina to, you know, the, is Gordon the father?
00:12:03
Speaker
Am I remembering that right? Yeah, and like Suzanne. Yeah, Suzanne. So like you go from each person to each person, so you're kind of like in the head of that person each time. And so how did you arrive at that as your way of moving this whole family through this story? Oh, Lord, I note carded this one so hard. I had different color note cards for each character, which I'm a big note carder in general with longer projects.
00:12:32
Speaker
So, and the structure, I have been reading and doing a lot more work with screenwriting, partially because, and that kind of grew out of the work with Monopoly because I realized if I was going to tell a longer story, I needed to really go back to school on structure and how you piece those things together. And so the Monopoly was in some ways a harder book to structure because I had all these different timelines that were going back and forth. And I was so worried about it not making sense because you were going back and forward in time.
00:12:59
Speaker
With The Kevin Show, with the exception of the first chapter, which I knew pretty early on I wanted to open with, I really wanted to make it chronological. I felt like the nature of his disorder was changing as he was growing up, and I really wanted readers to kind of come of age with this with him. And the idea of switching chapters
00:13:25
Speaker
You know, I'm a big, obviously, reader of fiction. And it's actually a technique that you see used a lot in mysteries and thrillers. And part of the reason I think it's effective is that we as the reader know stuff that the other characters don't. And what I was finding in my reporting is that, you know, there actually wasn't that much disputing of the facts. You know, Kevin and Amanda, or Morgan, his teammate, or whoever would, they would agree on the dates, the times, the places, like all of the kind of reporterly details
00:13:54
Speaker
but their experience of them was so different, which to me was more like a mystery, right? That you can be at a dinner party, and if you're sitting at one end of the table, it's very different than if you're on the other end, but you're still at the same dinner party. And there's kind of this meta, I mean, my head was spinning as I was thinking about this, because that's kind of this meta thing about reality, right? Like, what is reality is a question that I had on a post-it note on my desk for a long time, and then the election happened halfway through all this, and I thought, oh my God, I've just been,
00:14:24
Speaker
you know, sitting on my own thinking about like male identity and reality TV for the last two years and then this happens.
Influences and Real-Life Connections
00:14:31
Speaker
So at least now like the book will be out and people understand why I've been like a little bit extra crazy. And so I just thought like it's a great tool in fiction. Why not use it in nonfiction? And I looked for examples of nonfiction. It was really hard to come by. I emailed my agent and a few other people like, hey, has anybody done this? And I honestly didn't know if it was going to work. That was not in my proposal at all.
00:14:53
Speaker
And I kind of cringed when I clicked send on the first draft to Nancy Miller at Bloomsbury because I thought, oh my God, this could be it. This isn't real. And it worked. I mean, they were really into it. And I really don't like sports memoirs as a genre. I think they're very formulaic and they can get very trite. And with a few exceptions, they don't really tell you the truth. They don't tell you what
00:15:23
Speaker
it's like to be a supporter of an athlete. Um, and so I, I kind of wanted to rip apart that genre a bit. Um, so the, the multi point of view thing kind of helped with that too, that it wasn't just one athlete talking about how great he is, although that's not really Kevin's nature anyway, as the book describes. Um, so, so yeah, I wanted to kind of rethink how we tell sports stories to more generally.
00:15:48
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure you've read the How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart by David Foster Wallace. Oh, I love that piece. Yeah, like speaking about sports memoirs. And so what like, you know, his point in that whole thing is they can't be reflective, because what makes them so great is that they are not reflective people, they can just be reactive in the moment. So they can't really convey that in a way. And it's the thinkers like Wallace, who, who think themselves out of competitive sports.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Wallace is brilliant on so many levels, and it was such a thrill to be able to and he was a big force for Kevin. You know, a lot of I interviewed people with Truman Show disorder, who aren't named in the book, but in addition to Kevin, because I felt like I wanted to understand how his experience compared to other people and
00:16:34
Speaker
One of the things that came up over and over and over again in my interviews, and most of these folks were not in the sports world, was they all read Wallace, David Foster Wallace, and James Joyce like it was a secret language. Those two authors really connected with people who have this in a really powerful way. I love Wallace and I read Joyce, but I don't read it the same way. For me, I really need to sit with a pen and a highlighter and really work my way through it.
00:17:00
Speaker
And I thought that that was an amazing lesson about kind of the gift of fiction and how comforting and that really basic sense of like, you're not alone. And I think that Wallace's work, at least to Kevin and a lot of the folks I talked to, really, really does that. And, you know, one of the things I love about the Tracy Austin piece is he, you know, he makes this point that
00:17:21
Speaker
an athlete's job is to be good at being an athlete. It's not necessarily to be able to describe how eloquently they do it. And yet, you know, Kevin and Amanda both just the way they described
00:17:34
Speaker
these delusions and the aftermaths and stuff was so eloquent. I mean, this is somebody who double majored in math and French lit. He's more well-read than English PhDs, I know. It was such a gift to be able to have someone have these experiences, both as an athlete and with the manic depression, and be able to describe it in just such great verbal
00:17:56
Speaker
detail and, you know, you zoom way out and you think about just kind of the sports landscape now. And I would argue that, you know, we live in an era where our best athletes are also some of our most eloquent spokespeople, like LeBron James, Serena Williams, Michael Phelps. Like, these are all folks who have really, I think, done an amazing job of expressing ideas in a way that is beyond sophisticated and kind of obliterates this, you know,
00:18:23
Speaker
jock stereotype of that, you know, that people who are good at sports can't talk about their experiences well. And I don't know how or why that that is, or how that's become, you know, Ali Raisman is another name, right, with all this gymnastics stuff. I mean, I don't know if you could ask her a better advocate for sex abuse right now in gymnastics. I mean, she's just been, and all those women. So
00:18:43
Speaker
That's the other thing with this book, too, that I think was really great is it really took everything. I covered three Olympics by the time I was doing this, and it took everything I thought I knew about sports and writing and really turned it upside down and inside out and challenged a lot of that, which was really great. And it was an excuse to read Wallace's work over and over again.
00:19:05
Speaker
So you already mentioned the note cards as a way of keeping things straight.
Organizational Strategies and Research
00:19:12
Speaker
How else did you go about sort of setting up your day and your notes and just your general organization? So you were keeping things straight and making sure that you were sort of on that narrative line just very well from cover to cover. So I wonder how you
00:19:33
Speaker
When about structuring that and structuring your work so you could actually pull it off, which you did, of course. Sure. So I, um, I'm a big believer in Google docs mostly because it's searchable and it really, really helps me. Um, and I did the same thing, um, that I did with the monopolist and actually a bunch of different investigative projects I've worked on is like, you create a timeline.
00:19:57
Speaker
I felt like if I didn't know the order of events and what was really powerful about doing that with Kevin. And I told him, I really tried to include him in the process as much as I could because I wanted, he was also just really curious about how journalists work and how books are made. And I was like, are you sure you're an Olympian? I think what you do is way more interesting. But one of the things that was really helpful about that is
00:20:20
Speaker
we were able to look at this pattern of like a traumatic thing and then an episode and the relationship of the trauma to the nature of the episode and how long that had been. So, you know, after his first episode in 1989 in Boston, you know, Kevin and I talked a lot about what the triggers were for that. And he's described it as it was a fear of failure. You know, he was a junior at Brown. It was the first time he might fail at something.
00:20:47
Speaker
And that, you know, he was a world champion as a teenager and that was a really new and frightening thing for him. So it was really helpful to be able to just step back and look at the order of events. And then I think you have to have the basics down as a writer before you can even think about playing with how to tell it. I would say I spent 80% of my time on this one reporting.
00:21:12
Speaker
and another, you know, the other 20 writing. And I like that ratio because when you sit down to write, it's a little less scary. You have too much material and you're organizing it. So I had a lot of note cards. I had a timeline that was a separate like Google document.
00:21:27
Speaker
I had all of my interviews just in different folders. And then I had other documents, right? So that's police reports, that's medical records, journals, all this other stuff. And then on top of that, and this is kind of a lost art, I think, I read maybe 10 to 20 books related to this one. And in the back of the book, there's a big bibliography because I wanted to know what the lineage was. I wanted to know
00:21:56
Speaker
What other mental health memoirs were out there? How was this going to push things forward? What sports books were there out there? What stories? I had never really written about psychology, so I had to understand more about the history of mental health. And I don't know. It seems obvious to me that you should read a lot of books before you write one. I think academics are really good about this, understanding where they fall in the lineage of scholarship. I think with narrative nonfiction, it gets
00:22:24
Speaker
kind of crapped on a lot by journalists for people being lazy. And I've just always been a library rat. And I thought that that was an important part of the process too. So I was running on all cylinders with all of that. And then, of course, right when I would think I was done with the section, I'd find another book or document or something I wanted to weave in. But I'm a big outliner. So once I'd kind of done that, I then made an outline. So I wasn't going into the draft.
00:22:54
Speaker
you know, bear. And I would, I made a schedule for myself of like, okay, the manuscript is probably going to be 90 to 100,000 words, I need to do 1000 words a day.
00:23:04
Speaker
and I would just I took a calendar and I marked it out and you know I had days where I had one by 10 30 a.m and that was great and I went on with my life and I had days where it was like pulling teeth um and I I can't think about writing a big project it's too overwhelming for me but I can think about a thousand words a day and then this magical thing happens which is like you end up with 90 000 words um yeah so I think that like when you take these big projects
00:23:31
Speaker
you have to break them down like that, or else you will just totally feel like a loser. But you have to think of them as a bunch of little wins. And I'm a morning person, so I just write in the morning and when I'm fresh, and then it kind of gave me the confidence to go through the rest of the day thinking like, well, okay, you know, this New Yorker draft might not be where I want it to be, and I'm not going to send it in today, but I got I had a good Kevin show morning. So it was a good kind of stabilizer in a strange way.
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, and you did a pretty special thing throughout the whole book. And this is a testament to your immense skill as the writer putting this together, is that when I was like just in the throes of the book, like I kind of forgot about you as the narrator, I was like, just you kind of dissolved away. And I was just left with the story. And that is music to my ears. Thank you.
00:24:27
Speaker
And thank you for doing it because that is so hard to do. And when it's done, I was like, oh, it's like I blacked out. I'm like, oh, wow. This is Mary writing it. But for almost the entirety of the whole book, it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot that there was actually someone behind this. I just got that absorbed into it.
00:24:51
Speaker
That is probably the ultimate goal of any writer doing this kind of work. Oh, that's great. That's exactly what I wanted. Thank you. Yeah. How did you pull it off? I really tried with each chapter. And again, these were real people who I was able to interview to try and get in their heads as much as I could and see it from their perspective.
00:25:12
Speaker
What did they have at stake? What were they trying to win or lose? What were they experiencing? And in the case of just about everybody in the book, people were so eloquent in answering these questions and saying, I was terrified or I was really excited. And Kevin's mother in particular, I expanded some of the later pieces because her changing about medicine changed quite a bit. And I felt like that was really important to include more of.
00:25:39
Speaker
And then, you know, I was kind of torn. I'm not like a a memoirist at all. And then at the end, one of the notes earlier drafts the book.
Personal Connections and Hopeful Narratives
00:25:49
Speaker
I rewrote the ending really heavily because I wanted it to be more open ended because the election had happened. And one of the biggest notes I got from people was
00:25:58
Speaker
This is such a weird story. How on earth, like, why are you connected to it? And I realized it was about my aunt Letty, who I never even met. She died before I was born, but her mental illness and then my mother taking on a profession where
00:26:14
Speaker
You know, people with mental illnesses weren't stigmatized. They were my mother's patients. She cared very much about them and that my Aunt Letty had a life that she lived on a farm and, you know, raised chickens and wasn't, you know, she was treated humanely at a time when that was certainly not the case, particularly not for women in rural communities.
00:26:36
Speaker
who didn't have means. So, I think that, you know, with any story, it's a good note. Why are you the one to tell it? Why are you here? And, you know, Kevin, I did the thing that you should, most reporters shouldn't do, which is I said, you know, why are you telling me all this? Because I remember thinking, like, good Lord, like, they're just so open and so kind and honest about all this stuff. And he said, and this is in the book, but that I want people to know you can be a little crazy and have a life too.
00:27:04
Speaker
And I thought, that's it. That's the story that the idea that, you know, you I have a problem with victim stories because I don't know if they serve people very well. And, you know, Kevin has had the show his, you know, pretty much his entire adult life and.
00:27:22
Speaker
you know, has been married for, you know, 16 odd years and has these three great kids and made an Olympic team and has done all this amazing stuff. And I think that that is the hopeful, important part of it, that just because somebody, you know, labels you something or you have something going on doesn't mean that you're
00:27:44
Speaker
you know, forced to live a horrible life. And that was something I thought was really important and made me feel very urgent about this book because that was a gift that someone in my family had. And I think it's one that really matters.
00:27:57
Speaker
Yeah, that was a note I had made that even before the afterward, which is when you pop in to close the book, I was like, this book, even though we mentioned that you dissolve the way, to me, it still felt like a deeply personal book. And that's where it comes through at this dig. There is a personal connection to you in the story.
00:28:22
Speaker
Well, also their family, you know, it was interesting to kind of in my head, compare and contrast. You know, I grew up with two parents and I'm the little sister. The joke was like I was the Christina in the book because I understand, you know, I have an older brother and he actually still lives in Oregon and we get along great. But he was he was a handful as a teenager and I think he would admit that too. And so I know what it's like to have an older brother that can like totally take up the room.
00:28:46
Speaker
and then be the rebellious one. And there was also a lot of West Coast culture in this book, which was fun to return to as well. But then I had moments where I really understood where Kevin's parents were coming from and the idea that they really wanted to help their son and be there for him. And I have a lot of nieces and nephews and I thought, God, if there was a young person in my life and my family who was going through this, it would be really terrifying and you wouldn't know what to do.
00:29:14
Speaker
So it was really really personal and I've been heartened by the response that a lot of athletes have given me too because I don't understand athletes in a lot of ways because I don't you know in journalism nobody lines us up once every four years and says you know one two and three and you might even grow broke trying to get to the podium and so that drive and that focus and that sacrifice to me is
00:29:39
Speaker
is just such an extreme example of what so many people go through in their careers and day to day lives. And I think it's a story about family, ultimately. And that's something that, you know, is important and fascinating to me and always has been and probably always will be. So it was a good mix of topics and hopefully, you know, others agree. But it's funny, I also just didn't know anything about sailing. So now I feel like
Humor, Wellness, and Reflections
00:30:01
Speaker
You know, I can hold my own in a sailing conversation, but that to me was like the least of it. And then one of the, not the most interesting thing about Kevin for sure. Yeah. How were you able to maintain that sense of fun given the sort of the heaviness of the subject matter? You know, I think a lot of the book is very funny sad, which is my favorite type of writing. First of all, Kevin and Amanda have an amazing sense of humor about all this. Like they made that really easy because
00:30:31
Speaker
You know, what's the expression that comedy is tragedy plus time? They really made a lot of that easier for me. And they were really just wonderful to work with. I mean, they were as low maintenance and, you know, wonderful. I mean, I just felt so fortunate that nobody was throwing plates. Nobody was screaming at me. Nobody was calling me at 4 a.m. or, you know, which considering they lived in New Zealand is very, very impressive because the time changed.
00:30:59
Speaker
So they made that easy, but also I think when you're writing a book about wellness, in some ways, it forces you to assess your own, like, you know, I can't write a book and say people really need to mellow out and rethink their relationship to technology and take care of themselves when I wasn't going to do some of that myself. So I think a lot of this stuff that I kind of wrote off as being like,
00:31:23
Speaker
self care bs i realized like i'm a better writer and friend and colleague when i get a run in the morning and eat properly and so it did kind of force me to think about my own like lifestyle and mental health and relationship with the world around me and others because. Every single piece of that was being examined in kevin's life and i think for better for worse you see the world through the prism of the book you're working on.
Conclusion and Community Engagement
00:31:51
Speaker
Hey, you made it to the end. This show is produced, Soup the Nuts by me, Brendan O'Mara. If you don't already subscribe to the podcast, go and do that. And then if you leave an honest review on iTunes and show me evidence, I'll coach up a piece of your writing of up to 2,000 words to give you get. Also, I've got a pretty slick monthly newsletter.
00:32:17
Speaker
where I give out my monthly reading recommendations, just head over to brendanomera.com, put your email into the smart bar on top or the pop-up window, and you'll get the next one. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it. Feel free to say hi on Twitter, at brendanomera, or at cnfpod, Instagram's at brendanomera, where I'm showing how I'm making the first issue of the cnfpod zine.
00:32:47
Speaker
What a zine and Facebook at cnf podcast say hi like the page my friends and a pretty cool guy That's it cnfers have a scene