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Episode 260: Jordan Michael Smith Spins a True-Crime Yarn for The Atavist
162 Plays4 years ago
Jordan Michael Smith (@WriterJMS) came by CNFPod HQ to talk about his piece for The Atavist Magazine, a true-crime zinger.
We talk about:
- Structure and pacing
- Obsession and singular focus
- How he's a better reporter than a writer
- And depth of commitment
Social media: @CNFPod
Support the show: patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction: Craft of Storytelling
00:00:02
Speaker
We're getting after it again, CNFers. This is your extra podcast. It's your cherry on top. And if you don't like maraschino cherries, like me, consider this your extra dollop of whipped cream.
00:00:20
Speaker
is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. This is your monthly fix of celebrating the ad of its magazine and its monthly writer.
Upcoming Conversation: True Crime and Storytelling
00:00:33
Speaker
This month I speak with Jordan Michael Smith about his true crime piece. The lead editor of said piece is Jonah Ogles. So I start out this jam sesh with him, of course, about what made Jordan's piece special and how they approached the story.
00:00:50
Speaker
Then I talked to Jordan about how he arrived at it via the kindness of other journalists, structure and pacing, obsession and singular focus, and the depth of commitment that it takes to make it as a journalist of this cut of silk. Great stuff, man.
Support Quality Journalism: Adivus Magazine
00:01:10
Speaker
It's great stuff. Before we get to that, I want to strongly consider
00:01:16
Speaker
or strongly suggest subscribing the Adivus magazine to support the incredible blockbuster journalism that say we're Darby and Jonah Ogles are publishing every single month. We need to get back into the habit of paying for the stuff that matters. I'm as guilty of it as anybody. Trust me. But isn't it great that you're not bombarded with ads?
00:01:40
Speaker
And when you're reading one of these stories, that's because it's largely subscriber supported. I know I appreciate it. I'm sure you do too, man. And I get it. We only have a few bucks to spare at the end of a month after we account for bills and our vices. But if you can, consider throwing some of them bucks their way. And speaking of bucks,
Support on Patreon: Exclusive Content
00:02:04
Speaker
patreon.com slash cnfpod is how you can make the show better and support writers and really make a difference with the production of the show. I publish an audio magazine that is exclusive to the patreon community. I've got a new one coming up soon on the theme of summer. Being a patron helps keep the lights on at cnfpodhq.
00:02:24
Speaker
grants you goodies like transcripts and coaching and you can sometimes solicit a call for questions that you can that I will ask guests some prominent guests that come on the show and I give you credit for that that's kind of cool and you know other other exclusive content as well
00:02:42
Speaker
but also the knowledge that your dollars are funneled into the community to celebrate great, true stories and the people who tell them. As always, you can keep the conversation going on social media by linking up to the show and tagging me at cnfpod and at Brendan O. Mirra and digi fistbumps if you tag me, bruh.
00:03:03
Speaker
And I'd be remiss if I didn't lastly add that if you're looking to get into better physical shape, you hire a personal trainer. Listen, you know how to eat, write, and exercise, but having that coach in your corner holds you accountable. When it comes to your book, or your essay, or a book proposal, or query letters, whatever, man, consider giving me a call so I can be there in your corner to serve you in your work, and maybe see things that you can no longer see. Email me if you're interested, and we'll start a dialogue.
Interview with Jonah Ogles: Editing and Pacing
00:03:31
Speaker
Brendan at BrendanOmero.com.
00:03:34
Speaker
All right, I think that's about it. That's enough housekeeping. Why don't we just get right into it first with Jonah. Here we go. What's the feeling for you as the editor and the coach behind a piece of this nature that Jordan wrote? Yeah, well, you know, true crime stories are
00:04:03
Speaker
are sort of a, well, obviously they're a genre unto itself, you know? So you, I guess for me it's about sort of pacing and when to reveal certain information, you know, because any true crime story, you know, somebody can go online and figure out what happened
00:04:28
Speaker
pretty quickly. So at least for me and maybe other editors have figured this out, but I'm always trying to walk the line between knowing what information to keep from a reader in order to make for a good reading experience and what information to give them so that they don't then feel cheated.
00:04:51
Speaker
when they reach the end of a piece because we're cheating them the entire time a little bit. We know what happened from the get-go, but if you just explain all of that, it's just a Wikipedia entry and we want this to feel immersive and for readers to
00:05:16
Speaker
you know, develop an emotional attachment to characters and to be surprised. And so doing that, it really, you know, involves a lot of craftsmanship, I think, just sort of trial and error in trying to figure out where to reveal certain information.
00:05:39
Speaker
It raises a really neat point about having to be very sort of genre listically nimble as an editor. Like you're saying, like teasing out the information so you're giving the reader a little bit each time, a slow reveal.
00:05:56
Speaker
in the case of a true crime piece. But then there might be some other repartorial pieces where maybe that's not as important or certainly something that's more personal or memoir driven where it might not be. It's sort of like a different kind of hat and a different kind of editorial nimble is the best way I can frame it. So when you're approaching something of this nature, is editing a story always the same or do you approach it a slightly different depending on the genre of the piece?
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, I do approach it differently. And certainly I try to be aware of the genre that it's falling in. And true crime is one of those where you can borrow a lot of tricks and tools that other true crime writers have used because it's just so prevalent. And so it's easy to find lots of good examples. And so that
00:06:57
Speaker
That is certainly nice. You know, it's a little bit comforting, I think, to know that other people have told stories like this, and if I ever feel stuck or the writer feels stuck, there are lots of places we can go to see how to get around it. But I think that aside, you still have to take every piece as its own piece of writing, you know, and what might work in one
00:07:27
Speaker
may not in another, even if there are two pieces of crime writing. And I can't remember what the piece was exactly, but there was a piece recently where I was just sort of beating my head against the wall, trying to do what I would normally do. And it wasn't until I had Sayward read it that just that different perspective allowed us to see it differently. She just,
00:07:56
Speaker
saw it as its own piece without all the stuff that I had tried to do. And that can sometimes sort of free the piece up and allow it to move forward and become the best version of itself. And what grabbed you in particular about Jordan's piece when it came across your desk?
Unique Angles: Law Enforcement Focus
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's dark, isn't it? Yeah.
00:08:22
Speaker
It's a fairly dark piece, as a lot of true crime stories are. Because of that, we reject an awful lot of true crime stories because they just feel
00:08:38
Speaker
they feel like other pieces. And what really intrigued me about this was the relationship between Scott Kimball, the main, I guess, antagonist in this story, and law enforcement. There are a lot of interactions between the character and
00:09:02
Speaker
either individual law enforcement officers or FBI agents or entire organizations. And that is what stood out to us with this particular story. Like yes, the crimes themselves, if it had just been that, I'm not sure we would have been all that interested because there are stories like that out there. But in this particular case, those interactions and that relationship,
00:09:30
Speaker
made it feel new and surprising to us. And some writers and reporters are, let's just say writers can be great stylists or others are maybe are just super strong reporters, if you will. But what was it or what was that a little special something that Jordan brought to this piece that elevated above some of the slush of true crime, if that makes any sense?
00:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, he had access, you know, he had really good access on the story to all sorts of characters. And he had done a lot of interviews already before he even came to us and had a lot of documentation. And so we always, from the very beginning, we felt confident that no one was going to out report us on this story, you know, and I think every editor and writer sort of has that fear of like,
00:10:29
Speaker
Oh God, someone else could be working on this at the same time. And there are times where I get, we get pitches and we think there's a 100% chance that someone else is writing this story and there might be a good chance that they have the better version of it.
00:10:45
Speaker
But that was not a fear with Jordan. We knew that no one else was going to have the access that he had because he spent so much time interviewing both Kimball and Karl Schloss, the main FBI agent in the story. And so we were really confident that Jordan had the goods on the reporting side.
00:11:07
Speaker
And when you get a pitch that kind of lights you up and you're like, oh, this is something I think we want to pursue. What are the, you know, the first, you know, question or two where you're like, all right, this is a, you know, we're thinking about this one. So what's the first, you know, question or two that you then take back to the writer and be like, if you can answer these, you know, we're going to really green light this.
00:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, we spend an awful lot of time talking to all writers about the beginning, the middle, and the end, which sounds really basic, but so many stories fall apart when we ask that question. Where does it start? Where does it go? And how does it end?
00:11:49
Speaker
I've probably even said those words on this podcast before because it's central to what we do. In this case, and this is an advantage a lot of true crime stories have, you know what those are. Generally, you know
00:12:09
Speaker
when they were caught or if they were caught or how they got away. And there's a lot of crime in the middle, which naturally makes the story dramatic and filled with tension. So that is usually the question that I go back to writers with, just to make sure we're on the same page, that the way we imagine the story progressing and the way we see the arc is also the way the writer sees those things.
00:12:40
Speaker
Excellent. And maybe just in closing here, what are some things that just really excite you about this piece for readers to think into and sink into? Yeah, well, it's a beautiful layout, first of all. Our designer Ed Johnson did a really great job with it.
00:13:00
Speaker
And which I know isn't at all writing related, but I was so happy with it when I first opened it up. I needed to mention it. Um, but you know, with, with Jordan, it feels like Jordan and I kept saying, you know, like they're, they're definitely like some Elmore Leonard moments in this. There, there's a lot of, a lot of tragedy in it and, and
00:13:29
Speaker
you can see, I think readers will start to see characters moving in a particular direction and
00:13:38
Speaker
be hoping that they somehow pull themselves out of it and sometimes you know catastrophe is averted and sometimes it's not but it felt very novelistic to me the way just the general plot of this particular story and I think Jordan did a nice job you know you talked earlier about like some some writers are great stylists and and sort of have
00:14:04
Speaker
you know, their language does a lot of the work. And my own personal preference with these types of stories is for that language to be really punctuated, you know, really just a moment of it here, a moment of it there, a quippy little line every so often, but to otherwise let the story do the work. And I think Jordan really struck the right balance on pulling that off.
00:14:34
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Jonah, as always, a great pleasure to talk to you about this and tease out the piece. So thanks for hopping on as always and have yourself a wonderful holiday weekend. Yeah. Thanks so much. Good talking to you, Brendan. You do the same.
00:14:54
Speaker
Alright, not too shabby, right? That gives you kind of a teaser. So, Jordan Michael Smith here, he's written this piece. Here's a little bit about him. Let me, I'm just gonna read it straight from his website. JordanMichaelSmith.com, go check that out. Follow him on Twitter.
Background: Jordan Michael Smith
00:15:12
Speaker
And...
00:15:12
Speaker
Check out the work, but here's a little blurb. Jordan Michael Smith is a journalist, ghostwriter, and speechwriter. He is the author of the best-selling Kindle single, Humanity, How Jimmy Carter Lost an Election and Transformed the Post Presidency, former speechwriter for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Comptroller Scott Stringer, and a former communications consultant at the UN.
00:15:35
Speaker
His writing has appeared in print and online for many publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, BBC, and MSNBC. And I might as well add the out of us, right? So we start our little conversation here. I asked him straight up just how he arrived at this story. Ready? Let's do this.
00:16:03
Speaker
The story itself actually came from a different, better writer named Rachel Monroe. And on Twitter, she's a writer who mostly writes about crime in Texas. And I follow her on Twitter. And she mentioned a couple of years ago, this is in 2017, that she had been hiking with a friend who was in the FBI. And the FBI agent mentioned that the FBI once had an informant who was a serial killer.
00:16:33
Speaker
And I tweeted back, I said, that sounds amazing. When is your story going to appear? And she said she wasn't writing up. She was preoccupied with her book. And so I spoke to her a little more and she very generously and graciously encouraged me.
00:16:50
Speaker
to pursue this story. So that's how it all began. The first thing I did was I got the name of the killer, a guy named Scott Lee Kimball, and I tracked him down and wrote him in prison. And to my surprise and to my good luck, he said that he wanted to talk for a story and he had never spoken at length.
00:17:16
Speaker
But it was really a great time for him to do so in his life. He wasn't truthful with me about virtually anything, but he was able to give me access to a lot of different things.
00:17:33
Speaker
How do you navigate that when you're dealing with a primary source of that nature who is very unreliable in that way? Well this was the fortunate thing was that I knew going in that he would be unreliable because he is a serial killer and so I knew going in that I had to distrust every word that he said but knowing also that it could
00:17:58
Speaker
some things might be true and that I might be able to have him, you know, get me access to members of his family or things from his past, even things inadvertently, he might say. What I had to do was just double check everything that he said and triple check and not maybe use what he said as the starting point for some things.
00:18:22
Speaker
Use him as just a sort of as he said unreliable person But maybe one who might be interesting to talk to for other reasons in that he can give me insight into maybe His thinking or the thinking of a sociopath and he might he actually helped me get a lot of documents and So, you know it just you have to be
00:18:44
Speaker
ultra skeptical and obviously that's not you know a bad thing for any reporter and it's the people who didn't know when they first were dealing with Scott that he was in Better Liar those people were in more trouble I sort of had the luck on my side
Generosity in Journalism: Rachel Monroe's Influence
00:19:03
Speaker
I love how the genesis of the story came from Rachel Monroe having it and then really graciously giving it, essentially giving it away. As you know, being in this morass, a lot of it can be competitive and where there's toxic jealousies and all that kind of stuff going on. It's just the nature of being a writer.
00:19:25
Speaker
But that must have been, I don't know, that's really encouraging for me to hear. And I suspect listeners to hear that someone like Rachel would be like, you know what, I'm tied up here. I can't work on this story. I'm going to hand it off to someone that I trust with it. She's that generous a person and that good writer that she has so many good stories that this was, I guess, just really one among many. And I think you're right, it is very encouraging that there are people like her out there.
00:19:53
Speaker
I was following on Twitter for a reason, which is that she's just a first rate reporter and I love her stories and so it was just really good fortune to happen to be a fan of such a generous person. And when you say that she was a better writer and a great reporter,
00:20:17
Speaker
Um, you know, what is it about her writing and her reporting that you've been able to sort of, uh, you know, I don't deconstruct or put on the X-ray glasses to be like, Oh, that's, that's how she's doing it. Like I need to, I can do that or apply those tools to my work.
00:20:31
Speaker
Well, one thing that she does, she has a great book called Savage Appetites, and it's a work of true crime, but it really deconstructs true crime as a genre, and really isn't so much about crime as it is about us and people who consume true crime, and obviously there's a big true crime boom, I think really since serial,
00:21:00
Speaker
came out and that's what her book is about and what I tried to make this story like is a sort of anti FBI hero story and you know, it's a real trope in
00:21:16
Speaker
in movies and television shows and in books. A crackerjack detective who breaks the case and or who either picks up a cold case or you know through long hours and diligence and fighting with a bureaucracy is able to somehow save the day even if they're sort of gritty.
00:21:36
Speaker
What I tried to do, partly inspired by Rachel's work, was sort of reverse that and say, well, no, actually, here you have an FBI agent and an entire FBI office who missed something right under their nose that they should have seen. And so I think that true crime is a dangerous
00:22:00
Speaker
genre. You're dealing with other people's pain and their trauma and trying to spin that for entertainment. And it's fraught.
00:22:12
Speaker
And there are a lot of ethical conundrums. And I think Rachel is very good at spelling those out and navigating those. And that's what I tried to do in my piece. We didn't write it, in fact, we didn't write it at all from the killer's point of view. And there's very little about, there's very little that's gruesome. And I think for a lot of people,
00:22:41
Speaker
for whatever reason, are interested in serial killers. And we want to know what makes them tick. And we're interested in how they did their awful things. And this story really doesn't get into that. It's a story about a serial killer that is more about the mistakes that were made that enabled him to carry out what he did. It isn't really about what makes him so fascinating.
00:23:09
Speaker
And you mentioned dealing with people's pain in order to write a story that is ultimately lands on a reader for entertainment purposes, informative, but also that level of entertainment. How do you approach those difficult conversations with people whose pain is quite literally in your hands? Well, the first one is,
00:23:34
Speaker
you definitely want to understand that there are things that are more important than your story, and that is people's lives. And so I'm very, very willing to take no for an answer. I know that reporters are not supposed to take no for an answer, but I think that in true crime, when you're dealing with people who have suffered unimaginable losses, I think taking no for an answer is a very reasonable, smart thing to do.
00:24:04
Speaker
And so, you know, I'm just prepared for that. And the other thing to keep in mind is that when you're writing about crime, you are bringing all these horrible acts.
00:24:20
Speaker
and horrible events back up in memory. You're reviving the trauma for these people. And so you better have a good reason to do that. There was a Ted Bundy documentary on Netflix and it was completely gratuitous and it didn't add anything. And that's the type of thing that I've always tried to avoid doing. If you're going to bring people's
00:24:49
Speaker
pain back up if you're going to tell their stories, their worst stories, even with their permission, you better have a good reason for doing it. And so you need to have some larger social purpose and are trying to get at something beyond just indulging people's
00:25:10
Speaker
titillation. And so I think, you know, I consume a lot of true crime. I read a lot of it and I think I, you know, I'm very attuned to the stereotypes and the pitfalls and the problems and the failures that can result in the genre. And so I just try to be hyper aware of that. And of course I have
00:25:35
Speaker
you know, my editors who were very helpful in talking through any conundrums or issues, thorny issues that I had.
Story Structuring Challenges
00:25:46
Speaker
And regarding the writing of the piece, what was the nature of or your approach to the structure and the pacing of it?
00:25:56
Speaker
Yes, that was without a doubt the hardest thing for me, because there were so many different years that the story goes through, starting all the way back in the 1960s and to the present day, and important
00:26:20
Speaker
times in the 1980s and the 1990s, as well as the present day. And so the time shifts were really difficult. On top of that, there were a lot of different characters. It wasn't just one or two. It was one or two main ones. But there's a lot of secondary characters in here. And so this was a really heavily-edited piece. And I have to give a lot of credit to my editors, especially Jonah Ogles,
00:26:49
Speaker
uh at the adivists because they changed it a lot and they changed it for the better the version that i first went in with um you know was very different it was much more of a of a uh
00:27:04
Speaker
almost a ProPublica type piece that was really heavy on investigation and wrongdoing, as opposed to an Atavist piece, which is much more cinematic and much faster paced.
00:27:23
Speaker
that was definitely the biggest challenge, you know, what to do. We had to figure out how much to include of the Kimbell, of the perspective of the killer, Scott Kimbell. And eventually we went with almost nothing because it's very easy in a story like this to make him the focal point of the piece, but of the fact that he's unreliable. And the fact that really what's new
00:27:49
Speaker
You know, Kimball has been written about a little bit before and there were two documentaries made about him. Nightline, actually three, I guess, including one about his ex-wife. So three sort of one hour shows made for TV shows about him. And I was doing something very different, which was I was focusing on the FBI and how they had made mistakes. And so I knew that that was going to be
00:28:17
Speaker
you know, what I was really adding to the story and what has not been reported at all. So I wanted to very much forefront that. And so my editors and I sort of agreed that, you know, we would basically made the FBI agent named Karl Schlaf. He and not the killer was the main focal point of the story. And we follow him as he does his work. And we go through what he was thinking.
00:28:43
Speaker
right from beginning to the end, how sort of the FBI was able to make all their mistakes. And, you know, it was not difficult. We've been making changes right to the end. And the pacing and the structure has definitely been the harder part as opposed to, you know, I think I'm a better reporter than I am a writer. And so I'm
00:29:09
Speaker
I'll get to any story but when it comes to putting it together that's where I have more trouble and this was very much a learning curve and very helpful in figuring out ways to build out tension and a lot of that really did come from from my editors.
00:29:29
Speaker
I love that you bring up that you feel that you're a better reporter than a writer. I feel like a lot of people might feel the other way around where they feel like they're better writers but they don't have the repartorial fundamentals or foundation to
00:29:47
Speaker
I don't know, to curate the best information from which they can then spin a good yarn. For maybe people who struggle with reporting and the skill and the craft of reporting, what might you say to those people so they can get a bit better at this, so they can get better information and write better stories?
00:30:06
Speaker
The keys are to be endlessly curious to, despite what I said about the victims, not really take no for an answer. And it doesn't mean you take no for an answer from a source. I mean, you don't take no from an answer. You don't assume that you can't get to the bottom of something. And you don't assume that there isn't an answer.
00:30:31
Speaker
And there's always more to report and there are more people to talk to and more questions to ask. And it's really just a matter of getting on the phone and being able to track people down. I would say that they should join IRE, investigative reporters and editors.
00:30:51
Speaker
which is a membership association for investigative journalists. They have annual conferences and guides and a lot of mentorship, tip sheets, story examples that are super helpful. I have a master's degree in political science. I never took a journalism course in my life.
00:31:11
Speaker
I'm pretty much self-taught and that means I read a lot of different books and I watch a lot of webinars and I go to see people in person and I understand that I'm very much a permanent student of learning how to be a reporter and sort of getting better all the time. And I'll give you an example of that where it worked with the story.
00:31:36
Speaker
In 2010, a newspaper in Boulder did a series on Kimball, and it's by far the best thing that has been done on Kimball. But by the time I started reporting my story,
00:31:54
Speaker
Which was really, by the time I really began writing it was in 2019 and 2020 and the links were all broken for the website that this appeared on. It was a bolder daily camera and all the links were broken so I couldn't really read the stories and they had a lot of uploaded documents and photographs and I couldn't get any of them.
00:32:17
Speaker
And it was very, very frustrating. And I even reached out to the reporter who wrote the series. And he said he was basically tied up and couldn't help me out. And Lexus Nexus didn't have anything because it was mostly web stuff.
00:32:32
Speaker
But I attended a talk in a tip sheet where some reporters were talking about best practices. And to be frank, I don't remember who it was, but they mentioned the Wayback Machine. And they said, that's your best friend.
00:32:49
Speaker
And for those who don't know, the Wayback Machine is a website that catalogs the internet through time. So links that get broken one day maybe exist on the Wayback Machine from when they were correct. And so I plugged in the website to the Wayback Machine to 2011 and 2012, and it worked.
00:33:12
Speaker
And so i was able to get access to these crucial documents and crucial stories that i had trouble finding anywhere else and that only happened because i was paying attention to some veteran who offered that tip and that's the type of thing that
00:33:31
Speaker
I'm a freelancer, so I'm not even in a newsroom with veterans and better and more experienced reporters who can teach me. But there are a lot of places where you can go and follow them on Twitter. And people are always sharing best practices and tips that investigative reporters can share with each other. And I very much learned from them.
00:33:59
Speaker
And you said there's always more to report, and that's a great instinct to have, that there's always another call or several calls to make. That said, on the other side of that, how do you know when you're finished and when you really have to turn that faucet off?
Balancing Reporting and Writing
00:34:18
Speaker
I mean, so there's no correct answer if, you know, I might turn the story into a book and if I do, I'll do more reporting. And if it gets made into something else, I'll do even more reporting. I think the answer is you want to feel that you have enough reporting for your medium. So I was working on
00:34:38
Speaker
a 12,000 word Atavist story, and I wanted enough reporting with plenty to spare to tell the best possible Atavist story that I could. And there's more reporting that I could do, but we do want to get this out. And as I said, the most challenging parts of the story had to do with the writing and the crafting than it did with the reporting. So once we had a lot of different interviews,
00:35:05
Speaker
and a lot of primary source documents, court records, documents from the FBI, then we were able to begin writing. And as we went along, my editor would ask questions and I would go back to my sources or even contact new ones as part of the writing process. So unfortunately, there's no
00:35:27
Speaker
you know, rule of thumb for that, my best answer is just I want to have enough to tell the best possible story that I can. And at some point it starts to be, you start to get diminishing returns where I could spend six months reporting more, but I wouldn't have much more. I'd have a little more, but not much more to add to the piece. Whereas if I focus on the writing,
00:35:50
Speaker
that both brings out the problems with the reporting and encourages me to do more reporting. I love hearing you say, and you've said this throughout the whole conversation, that regarding this piece that it's like when we were writing this and we were working on this, and I love hearing you say that because it really gets to the heart of pieces of this nature are very much a collaboration, right?
Collaboration in Journalism
00:36:16
Speaker
Right, I do believe that one thing that the activist does that is fantastic because they don't just list the writer, they list the editor, the copy editor, the fact checker, the art director and if ever there was a piece that does not belong solely to the writer, it really is this one and it is something that
00:36:38
Speaker
would look radically different and be much, much worse if I had done it on my own. Or even just with some editors who were sort of hands off. This was a piece that needed a heavy hand because they were much more experienced at building intention and figuring out when we should reveal information, what we should hold back,
00:37:02
Speaker
I'd written much more of a straightforward, I guess you could even say a news piece, a really long news piece. The draft that I first handed in was 20,000 words, but it was much more comprehensive than it needed to be.
00:37:19
Speaker
uh and you know it was sort of almost like an encyclopedia of this story but that's really not what people want to read and and Jonah and say when Darby the editor in chief were really uh really great about turning this into something that people would want to read while also maintaining the most important elements and the focus on the FBI.
00:37:46
Speaker
I came across a blog post this morning, and this is sometimes one of those deals where I love how just randomly stumbling across something can then lead to something that I could ask someone like yourself. And it's always that kind of fluid nature of these interviews and conversations. And it was a blog post by Steven Pressfield who wrote the War of Art and several other novels, just a brilliant writer and a great person, a great inspiration.
00:38:12
Speaker
And his blog post was about the depth of commitment and that's usually what it takes to make it as a fill in the blank as a writer because it gets very hard and there's a lot of dark nights of the soul.
Commitment in Journalism: Obsessiveness and Drive
00:38:26
Speaker
And so I kind of wanted to extend to you in this line of work, this kind of journalism, this kind of freelancing.
00:38:32
Speaker
It takes a tremendous depth of commitment. I was just wondering if you could speak to that and what it's taken you to get to the point where you're at right now.
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think it has, there's a couple of things. One is sort of a basic obsessiveness. You and I were sort of talking a bit right before we turned the recorder on. And I mentioned that I'm reading an 850 page book. And as I was saying that, I realized that sort of sounds weird because I described it as great fun, but it is. And so if you're the type of person who does that, you might be the type of person who
00:39:11
Speaker
is willing to spend countless hours with stacks of FBI files and going through transcripts and court records. So I think there is a basic obsessiveness there. And then I think maybe if you have some sort of hunger for recognition or success, that often has its roots in childhood.
00:39:38
Speaker
that sort of thing can really be helpful too. You know, I've just sort of always wanted to be a really good writer and I didn't want to be anything else. Since I was 13, that's the only thing I ever thought I wanted to do. And so it's all I put my energy into really, certainly professionally, but even, you know, socially and personally, I spent a lot of my spare time doing reading and writing.
00:40:07
Speaker
And so if you're the type of person who does that and the type of person, and I think that's true for a lot of different people who work in the arts or other people who work in these type of fields that require a degree of obsessiveness. It's just helpful to have that sort of singular focus. I know that there's a bunch of people who
00:40:36
Speaker
I respect who are smarter than me, but they sort of, um, they have many different hobbies and, uh, they're, they have many different interests. And because of that, I think they have sort of trouble, uh, nailing themselves to their chair and, and doing one particular thing. And, uh, so, so it's sort of a, uh, it's a blessing and a curse because it can seem strange to outsiders to be so, so focused on
00:41:05
Speaker
some small things or one particular field, but it's very helpful if you're an investigative reporter or a writer to have that type of passion and obsessiveness.
00:41:21
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. And Jordan, before I let you get out of here, I just need to ask you one more thing. Tell me a little bit about Penny, your Dalmatian Basset Hound man. Yes. Well, I'm glad you asked. She was a very good friend during the writing of this piece. And though she isn't mentioned in the credits, she has gotten a lot of extra treats for being a wonderful muse. And especially during COVID, I live alone and she was a great companion to have.
00:41:48
Speaker
and she never let me get too down and always made sure I did get out of the house and laughed and so as lonely as writing can be it is definitely enhanced by having a pet and so I recommend any
00:42:06
Speaker
any writer have one. And you can't write them off. I've looked into it. You can't claim them as a tax deduction as work helpers, but they really are of great value to any writer. Oh, fantastic. Well, Jordan, this was great talking to you. Awesome job on the PC row for Atavist. And I guess keep up the great work, and let's keep in touch. Thanks a lot, Brendan. I appreciate it.
00:42:40
Speaker
Well, as I want to say, that was a toe-tapping good time. Thanks to Jonah and Jordan for the time, and thanks to you for listening. Hope this was entertaining, informative. I know it was for me.
00:42:53
Speaker
Be sure to check out Jordan's Story at Magazine.Adivis.com and get the show notes to this and over 250 other interviews at BrendanOmera.com. Where you can also sign up for my monthly reading list newsletter. I send out book recommendations, links to articles.
00:43:12
Speaker
writing prompts, and an exclusive digital happy hour link that I do over Zoom. I sometimes bring on a CNF and friend so we can have a little conversation with someone who's a good pal who's been on the show and he can come in and pick their brain. It's a fun time. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it.
00:43:34
Speaker
Also check out patreon.com slash cnfbot if you want to support the show and your fellow writers. You get some cool goodies too, transcripts, coaching tiers, and the knowledge that you know that your dollars are going to help the community and the tellers of true story. So go window shop, it doesn't disappoint.
00:43:56
Speaker
Yeah, no real parting shot. This is that extra podcast where I really just keep it laser focused on out of it. So that's going to do it. See you in efforts. New episode coming this Friday. So stay tuned. Subscribe to the show. Let me know what you think. Stay cool. See you in efforts. Stay cool forever. See ya.
00:44:36
Speaker
you