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Episode 154: Julian Smith—Pitch Clubs, Falling in Love with the Work, and Aloha Rodeo
129 Plays6 years ago
"You gotta fall in love with your subject, and sometimes people have to pull you out," says Julian Smith (@juliansmith on Twitter).
Julian is the co-author of Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the World's Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West. It is published by William Morrow.
Thanks to Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction and Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction for the support.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.
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Transcript
Sponsorship and MFA Programs
00:00:01
Speaker
Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two-year, low-residency program. Online classes that you learn from anywhere while on-campus residencies allow you to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have Pulitzer Prizes and bestselling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni, which has published 140 books and counting.
00:00:27
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You'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey. Visit goucher.edu slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published and Goucher's MFA program for creative nonfiction.
00:00:46
Speaker
CNF is also brought to you by Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Discover your story. Bay Path University is the first and only university to offer a no-residency, fully accredited MFA focusing exclusively
00:01:04
Speaker
creative nonfiction. Attend full or part-time from anywhere in the world. In the Bay Path MFA you'll find small online classes and a dynamic and supportive community. You'll master the techniques of good writing from acclaimed authors and editors, learn about publishing and teaching through professional internships, and complete a master's thesis that will form the foundation of your memoir or collection of personal essays.
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Speaker
Special elective courses include contemporary women's stories, travel and food writing, family histories, spiritual writing, and an optional week-long summer residency in Ireland, with guest writers including Andre Devis III, Ann Hood, Mia Gallagher, and others. Start dates in late August, January and May. Find out more at baypath.edu slash MFA.
00:01:55
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Okay, hmm, bruh.
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I want to get right into it.
Guest Introduction: Julian Smith
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None of the usual nonsense. Today's guest is Julian Smith, a freelance writer based out of Portland, Oregon, and the author or co-author of three books of non-fiction. Julian writes about science, conservation, and adventure.
00:02:26
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Smithsonian, Wired, Outside, Men's Journal, National Geographic Traveler, among others. His books include Smokejumper and Crossing the Heart of Africa. His latest
00:02:41
Speaker
which he co-authored with David Wollman, is Aloha Rodeo. Three Hawaiian Cowboys, the world's greatest rodeo, and a hidden history of the American West. It's published by William Morrow. It's a great book, man. But first, be sure to subscribe to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, CNF, the show where I talk to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft of telling true stories.
00:03:07
Speaker
Wherever else you get your pods, go and subscribe. Just get it. Get to it. Join me on Twitter at Brendan O'Mara and at CNF Pod to keep the conversation going. Share this episode across your social networks so we can spread the CNF and love. I told you this would be quick, so let's do this. Let's get right into it.
Julian's Writing Journey
00:03:27
Speaker
Here's Julian Smith at Julian Smith on Twitter. And here we go.
00:03:39
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Well, I understand you're from Mount Kisco, New York, in upstate New York there. So, how did you get the writing bug or the journalism bug while growing up in upstate New York?
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, I was always been a huge reader ever since I've been a kid. The original dream is being an astronaut, but that didn't quite work out. So I took a lot of writing classes in high school and college. Sorry, this is my cat. I took a lot of writing classes in high school and college. And even though my next career plan was to be a scientist, I actually went to grad school in wildlife ecology.
00:04:22
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But that didn't pan out either so I'd always been you know really into writing as well and so I decided actually prefer to write about stuff like science and travel then actually you know commit to being a scientist so my first career path was actually travel guidebooks I did four of those three of them for moon handbooks and one was self-published.
00:04:46
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So I still do a little bit of travel writing on the side, but most of it is science, conservation, and stuff in that genre, and some technology, some gear reviews, and the books. This is my third book. So all the books have been nonfiction.
00:05:04
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And yeah, so here we are today. So after undergrad and so forth and you had the writer bug, what was the next step for you as you were progressing through this life? So yeah, the first pieces I had actually in print were for some local papers in Charlottesville, Virginia. I went to the University of Virginia.
00:05:28
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And right out of college, I partnered up with another student and we actually self-published a travel guidebook to El Salvador, of all places. Kind of did the whole thing from start to finish, you know, wrote it, laid it out, I took the pictures, had it printed ourselves in Singapore and actually got it onto the bookshelves. And that was a heck of an experience, not one I'd probably repeat.
00:05:55
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But once you have the foot in the door, once you can show publishers you've actually done something, then they'll actually write you back. So then I hooked up with Moon Handbooks and ended up doing a bunch of guidebooks for them.
00:06:08
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And in the meantime, went back to grad school for a master's degree, kind of the last stab at maybe being a scientist. But yeah, that wasn't the path. Where do you suppose that industriousness and entrepreneurial nature of your writing career came from at such a young age to be able to kind of put together and collaborate on a guidebook and put it together yourself?
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've always liked kind of the creative side of things. I've never been great at sitting at a desk and having other people tell me what to do. You know, I like the independence of it. You know, I do partner up occasionally with folks. Obviously the latest book David and I wrote together. We also did a long form nonfiction piece before this. The guidebook was with a co-author, but other than that, it's just been a solo ride and it's
00:07:01
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You know, it has its ups and downs, but the freedom of working for yourself, being able to choose which topics you go after, I really, it's hard to imagine doing anything else. And as you were progressing along as a freelancer, independent writer, as you, as you well know, it is, it's sometimes hard to get that toehold and then to sustain it.
Networking and Freelance Writing Tips
00:07:24
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Can you point to some early victories that allowed you to get some momentum that you were able to parlay into more work?
00:07:31
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Yeah, well, the travel guides are a really big entree into the world of travel writing. So I've done stuff along those lines for National Geographic Traveler, The Washington Post. I mean, once you can show editors that you've done an entire book.
00:07:47
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they'll actually take you seriously but you know as travel writing is you can imagine an incredibly competitive field and so that's why I've drifted more into the science conservation and also because that's a little more interesting to me but yeah I would say the the early books were were kind of the turning point for me and then a few
00:08:10
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Early articles, you know, you kind of build on the publications, you know, you start small and then you slowly get bigger and bigger and I was lucky enough to get a few small pieces early on in places like Smithsonian and Wired and you know, you just got you got to be persistent but it also takes a little bit of luck and a lot of networking and
00:08:34
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you know, sending out ideas, getting used to being rejected. You got to have kind of thick skin and be self motivated. But yeah, you just you got to shoot as high as you can, sometimes even a little higher than you think. And you'll be surprised sometimes.
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How long did it take you to hone a good pitch and query routine or even a pitch template that you felt like you could successfully send out there with a relatively good batting average?
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Honestly, I feel like I'm almost still working on that. The criteria is different for every publication and it changes over time. The publications are looking for different things. But I'd say maybe 10 years into the freelance thing, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on it.
00:09:28
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You know, I read a lot of books about how to do it. I've talked to a lot of people. We actually here in Portland, there's a lot of nonfiction writers kind of along the same lines. And so we actually put together, we call it a pitch club where we get together and usually at a bar, drink some beers and actually pass around pitches that we've written and critique each other. And along with suggestions on where you might pitch it and we exchange
00:09:58
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editor information and other nitty-gritty about publications. So that's been a huge help too. That's awesome. When did you start that up? That was probably about five years ago, I think. I met David soon after I moved here about 12 years ago. You gravitate towards people who are in your same profession. So we realized we knew a lot of people.
00:10:26
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And we just figured to kind of put our heads together and collectively take on this challenge of trying to guess ahead of time what an editor wants to hear to get the assignment. And yeah, that really paid off. It's everybody benefits all the way around.
00:10:42
Speaker
That's great because in a lot of ways some people I think this just comes with maturity over time that you start to approach this with a more abundant mindset versus like a scarcity mindset whereas like if you can share this kind of information it actually is a kind of a rising tide thing that helps everybody out instead of it being kind of a zero-sum game like oh shoot if Julian's getting published there then that's one less thing I'm gonna get published for it but it's
00:11:09
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That spirit of generosity, it's awesome that you're able to build that community up there.
00:11:15
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Yeah, absolutely. You know, sometimes it takes a little convincing for folks to, you know, to show them that it is a benefit, you know, because it's easy as when you're working for yourself to kind of get possessive over the contacts you make and the wisdom that you've accumulated. But yeah, very quickly, people realize that it's, yeah, it's not a zero sum game and helping each other out. And, you know, this kind of a mutual aid society is definitely the best way to go.
00:11:44
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Yeah and so much of the wisdom that say you've accrued over the years is hard won and sometimes like you're saying, there might be a tendency to want to hold on to that information because maybe it took you 10 years to learn something that maybe someone else coming into the group is kind of new to the group and they're new to freelancing and then you're giving them the Cliff Notes version that took you 10 years and they're learning it in 10 minutes.
00:12:10
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If somebody's coming to you, say, that's looking for – I don't want to say a hack or a shortcut, but they're trying to shortcut the process maybe. What are some of those conversations that you have with people that might be looking to not gain the system but kind of try to shortcut it without doing the work?
Pitching Stories: Best Practices
00:12:31
Speaker
So you're asking, what's the response to somebody who's trying to –
00:12:35
Speaker
kind of play the field a little bit? I guess, yeah. Someone who might be trying to find the shortcut before doing the hard, long work and not putting in the time. You know, maybe siphoning off or parasiting off your hard-won information from years of doing the thing. Yeah, you know, that's something I've never really encountered. It's kind of a balance between sharing information
00:13:06
Speaker
I guess the flip side of what you're describing is helping each other make it a more efficient process. There are definitely some shortcuts, but it's fair game. As long as you're not bad-mouthing somebody else or trying to
00:13:23
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you know, use some, I don't know, backdoor approach. I think it's all positive. You know, if you can help teach people how not to waste their own time and not waste editor's time, especially, everybody benefits.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, to that point, what would you say is maybe some best practices for people who are looking to maybe just streamline and just make their pitches and find the right places for them a little more efficient so they're just, you know, can feel like their energies are going more towards forward propulsion instead of just this flailing around hoping.
00:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, I would say the first thing is make sure you know the outlet and what they publish. And then it becomes a lot easier to think of your ideas in terms of what this specific outlet is looking for. Keep the pitches short, especially editors waiting through long pitches, short and sweet. Make sure you're sending it to the right person and make sure you spell their name right.
00:14:33
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and the name of the publication. I've known a lot of editors in my time. I've even done a few years as an editor of a science journal. And the first typo they see, it's going on the slush pile because you got to assume every editor is just completely inundated with ideas and pitches. And on top of that, I'd say networking with other people, trying to find people who have done
00:14:59
Speaker
what you want to do, even if it's only to sit down, buy them a cup of coffee, and absorb some wisdom, if they're willing. That's helped out a lot. Don't be afraid to ask for help. And I guess the last thing would be, there's a lot of organizations out there where a part of their mission is to connect writers
00:15:21
Speaker
You know, like the National Association of Science Writers, there's travel writer organizations, you know, they'll have some annual dues, but a lot of times on their website, they'll have either pitching guides or kind of a bulletin board system where people can ask for information and trade information. So, yeah, things like that.
00:15:42
Speaker
And as a freelancer, of course, you're always in the business of generating your own story ideas and trying to parlay that and snowball all that. So how do you find your ideas and nurture those? And then if they're worth nurturing, then start to really sort of lean into them.
00:16:00
Speaker
Honestly, it involves spending a lot of time online. I have a bad habit of going down rabbit holes online. Everything is interesting, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time. Reading the news, obviously, you can get on mailing lists of announcements from publicists that sometimes help,
00:16:28
Speaker
That's also, you got to keep in mind something that thousands of other people are getting as well. Basically, it's keeping an eye out. Finding sometimes certain websites are great aggregators of ideas and just keeping a running list, basically. I have folders on my computer with
00:16:50
Speaker
you know hundreds of potential ideas and so then the challenge really becomes you know triaging these lists and and it's always a balance between what interests you and what you think might interest an editor and a lot of times those are really different things I mean I have ideas that I'm absolutely in love with that for the life of me I couldn't figure out who to send it to but
00:17:16
Speaker
Yeah, just keeping an open mind and open eyes and open ears, really. And, you know, of course,
Nurturing and Pre-reporting Story Ideas
00:17:21
Speaker
talking to people. A lot of times I've come up with ideas while I'm on an assignment for one publication and talking to, you know, scientists or people on the ground. And, you know, they'll say, oh, have you heard of such and such? And they'll say, no, let's let's let's look into that. How much time do you spend on pre-reporting out a story before you feel comfortable pitching it?
00:17:45
Speaker
That really varies. I'd say definitely a day or two at least. It involves not just finding out more about the subject but also finding out how much has been covered and in what ways and in what publications because obviously a lot of stories are so amazing that they've already been out there or they already are out there.
00:18:11
Speaker
But at the same time, it's also good to offer a new spin on an old story that people have heard about. You know, you could say, you know, the story of XYZ, but here's the backstory that you didn't know. You know, here's a twist on it, which, you know, certain publications really love that stuff, especially if you can kind of overturn the conventional wisdom on a topic.
00:18:35
Speaker
But yeah, definitely, you know, sometimes it's really quick, sometimes it's a matter of a couple hours, and sometimes it'll take days or weeks. But, you know, typically I would say it's in the day's range. And when you've, say you've got your idea and you know you've got a central figure in mind to carry you through that story, how do you then go about lobbying that person to want to be in the story? You know, just baiting them long enough so that you can
00:19:04
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then at that point start querying out and then if you get the green light you can dive in whole hog. So what does that look like when you're pitching your central figure?
00:19:15
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Usually it's just asking, really. You say, here's what I do. I find what you're doing really interesting. A lot of times you just call them up or email them. And I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the people who I've reached out to that aren't totally thrilled to tell you about what they do. I mean, everybody loves to talk about their job and what they're into.
00:19:40
Speaker
So, you know, I'm trying to think of the last time I reached out to somebody and didn't get a positive response. I mean, you might get no response if they're super busy. That's definitely happened. But if you can, you know, track people down and contact them and say, you know, I'd love to tell the world about what you do, what you're into. I mean, 99 people out of 100 are fully on board with that.
00:20:08
Speaker
And having been in the freelance game for a while here and the way the landscape of feature writing and magazine writing kind of contracting and all that, how have you managed to kind of stay afloat and be able to keep your oars in the water and keep making a go of this thing?
00:20:28
Speaker
Good question. The books help doing a book every year or two. It's nice to have a big project to work on with a big chunk of money upfront.
00:20:41
Speaker
Other than that, just plugging away, really. One thing that I've done recently is I've paired up with my co-author on this recent book, David Wollman, and another guy, Chris Higgins, here in Portland.
Delve Story Studio and Historical Interests
00:20:57
Speaker
All of us are freelance writers with a lot of experience, and we've started a business called Delve.
00:21:04
Speaker
we're calling it a story studio and so we work with ideas that we have and ideas that other writers bring us. We help people craft pitches and help them place ideas and stories in publications where you know they have a contact, we have contacts and we have contacts in the film industry in Hollywood where
00:21:28
Speaker
You take these ideas and they can show them around and hopefully get a TV or film deal out of it. So this business has really started to snowball recently. We actually just had an announcement today where we've partnered with an agency in Hollywood. Last October, we arranged a cover story in Outside Magazine for a writer here in town.
00:21:56
Speaker
So yeah, that's been a way that we've actually tried to get past the role of simply pitching out ideas for other people to run with.
00:22:08
Speaker
to actually working on ideas ourselves and helping other writers and ourselves get ideas out there. So it's all non-fiction, long-form ideas, and yeah, the ball is really starting to roll. So what are the logistics of that? Is it kind of like a membership thing that you pay into? How does that work?
00:22:30
Speaker
No, not at all. We're always looking for ideas from people. They've got to be meaty enough to sustain a long-form narrative. There's this cool thing out there where this person had an interesting life, but they've got to have a narrative arc with interesting central characters. Beginning, middle, and end, as you always hear. Twists and turns help out a lot.
00:22:56
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, you know, people come to us and we, we help them arrange, uh, to get these pieces out there. And we, we sometimes we can offer a little bit of money for that and hopefully it'll be more in the future. Um, but you know, they also, the writer also gets the full payment from whatever outlet decides to run with the story. You know, we've worked a lot with the daily beast, um, outside magazine. We had an arrangement with a radio lab.
00:23:26
Speaker
where we were giving them ideas and so what how the business the delve interest comes into it is We we sign contracts with writers that say if this does become a TV show or a film down the road That's the kind of profits that we would be sharing but up front It's we're not taking any money out of anybody's pocket. So, you know
00:23:55
Speaker
Wow, yeah, that's great. And in the course of your own, in your own writing, and even other business interests, what excites you the most and makes you feel the most alive and engaged across all your projects? That's a good question. I kind of have a particular bug for interesting history stuff. A lot of my ideas are historical events or people that nobody knows about.
00:24:24
Speaker
and that they have this amazing story that also happens to be true. I think a lot of the most meaningful stuff is the conservation stories. I write a lot for publications like World Wildlife or The Nature Conservancy magazine. You're talking about
00:24:47
Speaker
good things that are happening in the conservation world. That's kind of one of the reasons I moved in that direction from the travel writing because travel writing is fun and it's got great benefits. But something like a good science or conservation story where you're getting the word out about something that's really meaningful and optimistic, I find that probably the most satisfying.
00:25:13
Speaker
And as you were leveling up and starting to write for more high-profile magazines, a lot of the magazines that so many freelancers aspire to, what was that like for you to, and even maybe the self-talk you were going through as you were leveling up and then realizing that you're kind of dancing with a new kind of fear? Because it's gonna be more visible and the standard is higher.
00:25:41
Speaker
What was that like for you as you were transitioning to that sort of next level up of publishing? Honestly, it wasn't that huge a leap.
High-profile Writing and Collaborations
00:25:52
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe that says something about if it's a confidence level thing or what, but I've always just tried to do the best piece, the best writing that I could.
00:26:04
Speaker
And, you know, early on getting, you know, fortunate enough to getting gigs with, you know, the Washington Post when I was living back in DC or National Geographic Traveler, you know, even if it's a tiny little 300, 400 word thing, just doing the best you can and
00:26:23
Speaker
Most of the time it seems to be well received. I mean, a feature is another beast. Usually the first feature for a high profile publication is a little bit nerve wracking. You want to make sure that you kind of got the tone that they're looking for and everything is a little bit different. But once you kind of get past that hump, it gets a lot easier.
00:26:50
Speaker
And I love the ice cream, the Cold War piece that you and David wrote for Epic magazine. That piece was just really fun and like wrought with this conflict and everything. So how did you and David come to want to like collaborate on a long form magazine piece of that nature?
00:27:16
Speaker
That was an idea that we knew an ice cream store owner here in Portland, and we had been given this germ of an idea about ice cream trucks actually came from the editor Epic. He was like, why don't you look for something about ice cream trucks? I'm sure that it's not a
00:27:37
Speaker
It's not a 100 happy world. So we started poking around here in Portland and one of the ice cream folks that we that we interviewed, he said, you need to go talk to this guy down in Salem, who turned out to be Dennis, one of the protagonists in that story. And David went and talked to him and he is an incredible character. Some people just seem born to be written about.
00:28:04
Speaker
And he told us about this kind of ongoing conflict he'd had with another ice cream truck driver named Ephraim, who was an immigrant from Mexico. And the more we dug into that, the story just kept going and going. And it was alternately hilarious and dead serious.
00:28:28
Speaker
And it was just such an interesting balance of those two. I mostly interviewed Ephraim and David mostly interviewed Dennis. And then we put these two stories together from opposite ends of the different versions of telling the same story. And sometimes you say these things almost right themselves. And this was one thing where we just
00:28:54
Speaker
sat down with these people and just took notes and took notes and the story just kind of got who was born like that. It struck me as a story especially for Dennis that it would be like I wonder what the conversations were that you guys had to lobby Dennis to go on the record and tell the story because a lot of his actions are
00:29:19
Speaker
are pretty or they're kind of hypocritical to his ethos and kind of unsavory in a lot of ways so I wonder how you guys were able to successfully lobby him and you know an Efren too to want to share the story which is you know it's part petty and fraught with this rivalry in Salem. I wonder like how you successfully lobby those guys to be written about.
00:29:45
Speaker
Honestly, again, it was just a question of tracking them down and saying, you know, I want to hear your story. I want to hear your version of this. Yeah, especially if they know we're talking to the other guy too. But with with Dennis,
00:29:59
Speaker
Honestly, it was more of a question of getting him to stop talking than getting him to talking. And he was happy to tell about all this stuff that was going on. We also interviewed other drivers in his business, but he was completely open, and we're so grateful for that. He had no compunction talking about all this stuff that went on. Obviously, some of it was coming from other people's versions of things and Ephraim's versions of things.
00:30:28
Speaker
But he I don't know if I've ever interviewed somebody like him who he almost spoke to be quoted, you know, every every five minutes, you'd say, oh, my God, this is these guys speaking in entire paragraphs. And instead of like a lot of people, especially scientists, it's kind of like pulling teeth sometimes to get them to just, you know, say something
00:30:54
Speaker
I don't know what to say, interesting, but you know something that you want to quote them in.
00:30:59
Speaker
But with Dennis, it was a question of choosing the best quotes from spending days with him. Efren took a little bit more convincing. But once he realized we were legit and we were not there to present just one side of things and we were genuinely interested in his story, I mean, his story before he even got into the ice cream business is incredible.
00:31:26
Speaker
Again, people are just, they want to talk about themselves. They want to talk about what they do and their experience. Did you find that for, especially for that story, that it helped that you and David were kind of taking each side of the story, like you predominantly interviewing Efren and he primarily taking on Dennis, that that was an easier way to navigate the reporting of the piece?
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah, that definitely helped. I mean, it cut the workload significantly for each of us. I mean, either of us could probably have done it on our own, but it was interesting. And yeah, I think definitely more efficient to split things up like that. You know, I speak a little bit of Spanish, so that made it a little easier to interview Efrem.
00:32:16
Speaker
But we also both got to meet Dennis and spend time with him. He took us around in his truck to show us all these places where all this stuff happened, which was incredibly generous. We even took out an ice cream truck on our own here in Portland for an afternoon. Somebody loaned us one and we got to just see what it was like, playing the music.
00:32:40
Speaker
Toodling down the street and seeing the kids come running. You know, it's the more you can immerse yourself in a story The better you can write about it. Hmm. And you said like with with Dennis too He was just kind of a quote machine you're scribbling like crazy In the course of your reporting What kind of sort of tools do you have with you? Are you a voice recorder guy? Are you just like kind of old-school notebook and pen?
00:33:07
Speaker
Both actually, I mean, it's always good to have the backups, you know it Definitely rule one is to record it if you can And also, you know pen and paper is is helpful and you know, especially for writing down the best quotes or even sometimes Writing down the time on the recording, you know at 27 minutes and 30 seconds. There's a great quote So, you know to go back and look there, but yeah, I'd say both hmm
00:33:36
Speaker
And so what I wanted to really talk to you about also is this collaborative nature of working with another journalist on a story. And this will obviously kind of feed into Aloha Rodeo. So what's that experience like, you know, splitting the research, splitting the reporting, and splitting the writing
The Making of 'Aloha Rodeo'
00:33:57
Speaker
and the editing? What's that like for people who are used to just doing it totally by themselves?
00:34:02
Speaker
Well, it's definitely different. You know, it's not common to find co-writing that's actually evenly split 50-50. You know, if you see two names on a book, it's usually one person did all of it or most of it. You know, the ghostwriting or whatever, that was kind of the
00:34:25
Speaker
the story of my second book, which was called Smokejumper. It was essentially the life story of a guy up in Washington who does this for a living. He and I spent a lot of time together. I recorded and wrote down a lot of stuff, but most of the writing was me.
00:34:46
Speaker
So this Aloha Rodeo book with David was still a new experience. We even looked around when we were considering it, trying to find other writers who had done something like this, and it was really hard to find. So a lot of it was learning from scratch.
00:35:03
Speaker
But, you know, we knew we worked together well already. We were, you know, really good friends and kind of had a very similar style and career trajectory. And we were lucky enough that the rodeo book
00:35:19
Speaker
pretty organically split into roughly in half with you know the first half most of it takes place in Hawaii and the backstory of the the culture of Hawaiian cowboys and then it kind of moves toward moves to Wyoming and Cheyenne where they went to compete in the big rodeo in 1908
00:35:39
Speaker
So that definitely helped in terms of splitting up basically the first drafting of these chapters. But by the end, we had gone back and forth and back and forth and edited each other's things over and over and rewritten each other's things that the final product is completely, equally both of ours. I don't think we can find any
00:36:04
Speaker
full sentences in the entire book where one of us can say that's mine. But it, yeah, and it definitely helps in terms of the, the research, you know, where one person can really dive deep into, into one part of the subject, you know, in this case, it was, you know, David became more of the Hawaiian history expert. And I was taking on more of the Wyoming stuff.
00:36:31
Speaker
So, but by the end, you know, we again, we just had gone back and forth so much that, you know, I ended up knowing a lot about Hawaiian history and Dave got a crash course in the Wild West Cheyenne history. So, you know, we basically everything comes out even. What becomes the challenge of creating a uniform written voice on the page when you're working with another writer?
00:36:57
Speaker
Basically having thick skin and being able to take constructive criticism because I'm sure you know, as a writer, you get, you kind of fall in love with your own stuff or it's pretty easy to, to when you write something, it's really hard sometimes to edit yourself because you're so deep into it. You know, there's that quote about writers need to be willing to kill their babies. Forget who said that, but it's sometimes it feels like that when you're trying to decide, you know, if you have to cut
00:37:27
Speaker
whatever you wrote by 25%, that can be a really hard thing. But if you have somebody else telling you what they think is worth keeping and worth not keeping, you know, basically in the editorial role, that editing can usually makes a piece 100% and 1000% better. So you just can't take it personally, basically. And, you know, we were lucky enough that we were both in that boat, you know, there's some things we, you know, kind of
00:37:56
Speaker
jokingly knocked heads about, you know, where, you know, I was particularly enamored with some, you know, side bit of trivia or, you know, the same with Dave. And we never took a little convincing to say, no, you know, this is, let's stick to the main story, or let's word it this way. But there was no major disagreements or major blowups. And, you know, you just got to have a sense of humor about it and not take constructive criticism personally.
00:38:26
Speaker
And be delicate about it sometimes. And did you guys carve out essentially a digital workspace, or did you do a lot of the final rewriting sort of together in the same room? You know, we kind of have different approaches to that. I mostly used a writing program called Scrivener.
00:38:46
Speaker
that helps you organize. Basically, it's a file organization system. It's also a word processor. But I'm much more of a visual person and I like to do everything digitally. Dave is much more of an old school, extensive handwritten notes and even editing, printing out things and writing on them in pencil and paper.
00:39:11
Speaker
So, you know, but at the end, both approaches worked. I mean, we definitely, after we did the first drafts and shared them, we started going back and forth and back and forth. And that was all electronic, but there was still also a lot of printing out and sitting down at a table and hashing things out.
00:39:35
Speaker
And at the end, we also read through the entire book out loud, which also really helps with just the feel and the sound of things. But yeah, our approaches were distinct, but I'd say complimentary. So how did you and David arrive at the story so that you guys felt like you could confidently tackle this project together?
00:40:02
Speaker
The original seat of the idea came from when David was in Hawaii and just was at a history museum somewhere and saw a photograph of these guys, the central characters, and just, you know, a couple sentences saying, yeah, they went to Wyoming in 1908 and won the roping contest at Frontier Days. And, you know, like all of us who are into nonfiction, if you kind of get the
00:40:30
Speaker
You get that little light that goes on in your head and says, whoa, that's I'm sure there's a lot more to that story. And so but at the same time, a lot of these ideas that you dig into, you find out now, you know, it's there's not enough there or there's not enough background information or it's it's you know, it can you can tell the whole story in a feature, you know, two, three thousand words. And not every nonfiction idea is big enough for a book.
00:41:00
Speaker
But once we decided to tackle it together and really started digging into this story, we just found that it just went on and on. And it wasn't just this rollicking rodeo story in itself, but it really touched on a lot of important big picture concepts like the passing of the Wild West, the changing from reality to myth.
00:41:28
Speaker
the history of Hawaii, the role of cattle in Hawaiian history, which is something neither of us really had any idea. And most people who we talked to had no idea that cattle and ranching was such a huge part of Hawaiian history and still is.
00:41:43
Speaker
and the idea of diversity in the Wild West at the time, the turn of the century, gender diversity, racial diversity, and how that was really a huge part of the story. That's obviously something that a lot of us are concerned about today. So it's not just the actual plot and the events, which is a huge part of it. And sometimes that's enough to talk about.
00:42:12
Speaker
But if the story ties into bigger, important concepts, all the better. And this one did. Yeah, and the introduction in the late 18th century of these cattle, these almost longhorn cattle on the Hawaiian archipelago is really emblematic of the sort of the closing in of the imperialism on the Hawaiian islands, right?
00:42:41
Speaker
Yeah, it was actually, the cattle were really a tool of imperialism. They were brought by English captains and they were ostensibly a gift for the Hawaiians, which they were. They just gave them to them and said, here you go. And the Hawaiians that kind of originally just kind of blew their minds because they'd never seen a land mammal larger than a pig.
00:43:09
Speaker
but they were also a way for the English to kind of spread Englishness around the world. This was the heyday of the English, the British Empire, and one of their ways of assimilating other lands and cultures was to bring a little bit of
00:43:31
Speaker
England with them, whether it was the language, the foods, or things like cattle. So their goal was to improve relations with the Hawaiians, but also to tie these far-flung islands into the empire using something as mundane as cattle.
Hawaiian Cowboy Culture
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah, and you could get a sense as the first cattle were introduced, that in a way was kind of like this imperialistic virus that was infecting the island. It was only a matter of time before other missionaries and other people looking to capitalize on these islands kind of as a way station for
00:44:22
Speaker
accessing the rest of the world. So you got a sense that, like, the world that the Native Hawaiians had experienced was slowly coming to an end. It would inevitably come to annexation.
00:44:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's definitely the case. The Hawaiian kings at the time were happy to take these gifts. And even though there was definitely an episode of them running rampant around the islands, digging up garden patches and goring people, the Hawaiians were also very interested in what the outside world had to offer. At the same time, they were
00:45:01
Speaker
of course very concerned with preserving their own way of life.
00:45:05
Speaker
They were definitely tools of imperialism, but they were also at the same time welcome gifts. And they turned out to be part of a very profitable industry for the islands where these cows were slaughtered. They sold their hides. They sold the tallow, the fat, which were products that were in high demand around the world. So it really tied the islands into the greater sphere of the world, especially because they were
00:45:35
Speaker
as they were ironically so isolated way out in the middle of the Pacific, that also made them an important way station for anybody sailing across the Pacific. So in an interesting way, their isolation also made them the center of this web of commerce and trade.
00:45:54
Speaker
As you guys write in the book too, you don't necessarily realize that there is this subculture of Hawaiian cowboys, and you guys detail how they come to surface as sort of a selective pressure, if you will, to help try to wrangle what ends up being the wild cattle. So how did the cowboy surface as a vocation on the Hawaiian islands?
00:46:25
Speaker
Well, once the cows were part of the wildlife of the islands, they were essentially wild animals. And the Hawaiian kings at the time realized that they needed to bring these animals under control because they were huge bulls running around with... They were longhorns, so they had these six-foot horns, and they were really dangerous.
00:46:54
Speaker
And if they wanted to get the economic benefit from these animals, they needed to bring them under control. So they brought over a handful of cowboys, macaros from New Spain, to help teach them how to basically be cowboys. And in the Hawaiian Islands, they took to it very quickly. Horses were brought over pretty soon after the first cows arrived.
00:47:22
Speaker
And pretty soon this this particularly Hawaiian breed of cowboy had they had adapted some of the Mexican the new Spanish gear and language and techniques
00:47:36
Speaker
and adapted them for the special demands of doing it in the tropics in the in the jungle or you know down on the beach and very soon there was this distinct culture of Hawaiian cowboys called Paniolo and they were as badass as cowboys anywhere and they were doing it you know decades before even before the classic cowboys of the American West were
00:48:03
Speaker
And so that's kind of the interesting twist on the story of the cowboy, which is such a huge part of the national identity of this country to learn that, first of all, there were cowboys in other places, too. And they were similar in some ways, and they were very distinct in other ways. And that's just kind of these new hidden twists on familiar stories that I was talking about before that we find so fascinating.
00:48:32
Speaker
In what ways were the Hawaiian cowboys different than, say, the sort of the John Wayne-ian version that we're sort of familiar with on the mainland here? Some of their gear was specially adapted for use on the islands. They used lassos made of rawhide instead of the lassos and the ropes on the mainland were mostly woven fibers because rawhide lasted longer in these really humid environments.
00:49:00
Speaker
You know, some of the other little details of their saddles and their spurs and their hats were also distinct. But I think the most definitely the most distinct part of how they were different was how they did what they did.
00:49:16
Speaker
not out in the sagebrush covered plains of the American West, but they did the same kind of roping and leading cattle in this incredibly dense jungle where there was pits all over the place, collapsed lava tubes. They could get their ropes tangled in trees. There's a great story from the book about one of the main characters, Eben Low,
00:49:43
Speaker
roping a steer in the jungle and galloping alongside this 2000 pound animal and suddenly realizing they were each going on opposite sides of a big tree. And he had to basically save his own life by getting the rope in the right position, but ended up losing his hand because of it. And things like this happened all the time. And so it was, it was a really especially hard version of cowboying as we know it.
00:50:13
Speaker
They would have to not just rope these massive, pissed off animals in the jungle, but lead them downhill across these barren lava plains. Mostly this happened on the big island of Hawaii, and then down onto the beach and into the surf, and swim them out to these waiting ships because there weren't any docks big enough to bring these ships into shore. So the Paniello had to bring the cattle to the ships.
00:50:41
Speaker
And of course, you know, being Hawaii, there was the occasional shark swimming around looking for lunch. And every so often a cow would just disappear.
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah, and you brought up Eben Lowe, who ultimately lost his hand in that sort of harrowing experience in that scene, and that he didn't lose it right away there. Like, he had to endure a whole lot of pain, a couple days' worth, as... Was it Ikkyua Purdy, who went and got the doctor, right? Yeah, the accident happened way up on the slopes of Mauna Kea.
00:51:18
Speaker
and they have a Ikua party had he was the best and the fastest cowboy in the group so they knew they couldn't ride Ebonlo down to the coast to get the doctor because it would probably kill him so Ikua took off and had this epic ride down the mountain and the first doctor he found
00:51:40
Speaker
uh wasn't around so he had to keep riding along the coast to find the next doctor who happened to be uh stinking drunk but he ended up dragging him back up to the the field station where evan low was waiting and yeah an intense pain and he saved his life by making this incredible multi-day uh non-stop ride bringing the doctor who eventually had to amputate evan's hand
00:52:05
Speaker
But if Edinburgh was going to do it, it was going to be equal party because he was the best of the best. So how did eventually the how eventually did the Hawaiian Cowboys sort of make their make their landfall, if you will, on the frontier days in Cheyenne?
00:52:23
Speaker
Well, Eben was kind of the entrepreneur in the whole story. He was one of the better paniolos, and then even after he lost his hand, he was probably the best one-handed
00:52:38
Speaker
He still was roping cattle and setting all kinds of records of rodeos. But he also always had the entrepreneurial streak in him. So originally he brought cowboys from the mainland to Hawaii to these rodeos that he organized.
00:52:56
Speaker
And in 1907, he visited the mainland and, you know, toured all around, actually met Theodore Roosevelt at the White House and ended up in Cheyenne during frontier days. And he was watching these incredibly talented cowboys from Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona, but also sitting there thinking, you know what, my guys can beat these guys.
00:53:19
Speaker
So he eventually arranged for the three best Paniello that he knew to come to the United States and compete in Frontier Days in 1908. Yeah, and some of the other characters too. One woman I loved was Bertha Kaepernick, which you go into not a ton of detail, but what you're able to unpack on her was really cool. What was it like finding a character like her to write about?
00:53:48
Speaker
Oh man, there were so many of those. That was another case where we really had to edit ourselves and watch the word count. You can go off on side stories and tangents as long as they're relevant to the main story, but you can't go off too far because you're going to lose the reader and you're going to get away from the main narrative.
00:54:07
Speaker
But she was, yeah, she was significant because she was the first woman to compete in Bronco riding at Frontier Days in 1904. Basically because it was really rainy and muddy and the men said, no, this is too dangerous. We're not going to do this.
00:54:24
Speaker
And then she steps forward and makes this incredible ride and shows them all how it's done, basically. And yeah, so stories like that. I mean, there's so many side stories we came across in the research for this that can easily make their own articles, if not their own books.
00:54:43
Speaker
And using other books maybe as examples, you know, were you inspired by other various books in terms of how you wanted to structure Aloha Rodeo? Like there were other kind of like, all right, maybe we can steal the structure from this book that will help inform the structure of ours. You know, nothing really particularly comes to mind for that one. I mean, we, you know,
00:55:12
Speaker
obviously read a lot of nonfiction books, a lot of history stuff, but the structure of every book is kind of unique. Obviously for a history book, you want to do it more or less in chronological order, but it's also still possible to jump around a little bit with flashbacks and flash forwards, and we did a little bit of that in our book.
00:55:34
Speaker
but the overall structure is basically chronological and nothing really particularly springs to mind as a model for that. Are there any books that you particularly revisit and reread that are kind of like a compass for you to kind of remind you how it's done in moments where maybe your confidence is a bit lacking?
00:56:01
Speaker
You know, honestly, I spend so much time immersed in non-fiction day to day that mostly what I read is fiction. I'm trying to think of some non-fiction books. I mean, things like... Well, you can even... any fiction you reread too. I mean, it's the principles behind great fiction that makes non-fiction like you've been doing really pop. Right, right. I'm trying to think of some non-fiction books. I mean, stuff like In the Heart of the Sea,
00:56:28
Speaker
And Manhunt was a story of the group who helped John Wilkes Booth assassinate Lincoln. That's just a gripping story. And it takes place over the course of basically a couple of weeks. And I'm not trying to think of any others.
00:56:49
Speaker
Yeah, nothing particular springs to mind. I mean, I read a lot of science fiction and, you know, mystery thriller kind of stuff.
00:57:01
Speaker
Yeah, was there a particular maybe a nonfiction book? I know when I read John McPhee's Survival of the Bart Canoe a bunch of years ago, I was like, that one just clicked with me in a way that I was like, oh, that's possible? Like you can write about someone who's –
00:57:19
Speaker
anonymous and do a really cool deep dive on bark canoes that the indigenous peoples and Native Americans at the time were carving all the time. And then there was this one sort of eccentric up there in Maine doing this kind of work. And I wonder maybe if there's a similar book for you that kind of turned the world, if you will, from black and white into color.
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I would say it probably in the heart of the sea was a big turning point for me in terms of realizing that history just doesn't have to be a dry recitation of facts like it often is. And when you're learning about in school, but it can be this gripping narrative with real characters and real events. Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King was another one that took this amazing story and brought it into the
The Art of Compelling Storytelling
00:58:14
Speaker
brought it into real granular detail with words from the people who were actually there. And definitely stuff by the guy that you just mentioned. Oh, McPhee, yeah. McPhee, yeah. Definitely stuff from John McPhee where I think John McPhee's real talent that I find amazing is taking what could be the most boring, obscure topics and just diving in so deep.
00:58:43
Speaker
But you can also tell that he's fascinated by it. And I think that's something that you really can't fake, is that enthusiasm and fascination with a topic, that enthusiasm and fascination with a topic that you can't fake it and you would know it when you see it. And a lot of times that can carry an article or a book where it's
00:59:12
Speaker
You know, some topic that, eh, you know, it might be interesting to hear a little bit about that. But, you know, as a writer, you can feel yourself falling in love with a story and it just kind of takes over your thoughts. And you can't put it down and you want to learn more and more. I think that's something that's maybe even the key to writing well about this stuff is
00:59:39
Speaker
You kind of fall in love with your subject and you dive into it and sometimes people actually have to pull you back out. Well, that's amazing. I think that's a wonderful place for us to end our conversation and what I hope is the first of several as we go forward, a podcast or otherwise since we're practically neighbors out here on the West Coast.
Where to Find Julian Smith's Work
01:00:02
Speaker
Julian, where can people find you online and get more familiar with your work? My website is JulianSmith.com.
01:00:09
Speaker
And the Delve business is delvestories.com, which tells a little bit more about that. You know, I'm on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all the usual stuff. But yeah, that's that's where you can find me.
01:00:27
Speaker
Big, big thanks to Julian for the time and the insights. That was fun. Mahalo. Big thanks also to Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction and Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction for the support. Hey, consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. It all helps with the show's packaging. Tell me you don't stumble across a podcast and be like, oh, that one's got like 300 reviews. It must be good. So let's
01:00:55
Speaker
Let's get ours up there. We're 35 shy away from 100. That's amazing. Let's get there. Also, keep the conversation going on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. It's just at cnfpod on Twitter and Instagram. At cnfpodcast on Facebook. But if you just type in, create it on Facebook.
01:01:15
Speaker
tag me or the show and I'll jump in the fire with you. Let's do this. Let's carry it beyond just the conversation that happens on every CNF Friday. I think that's it, friend. Remember, if you can't do Interview, see ya!