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Episode 319: Neal Bascomb
221 Plays3 years ago
Neal Bascomb is the author of several book and these days he's most excited about his newsletter Work/Craft/Life (workcraftlife.substack.com).
Sponsor: Athletic Greens
Support: Patreon
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Neil's Literary Journey & Previous Podcast Appearance
00:00:07
Speaker
You know, I've always thought that the story dictates the style.
00:00:21
Speaker
Was that a little aggressive? I'm sorry. It doesn't matter. I'm just real excited. Neil is the author of several books. He was on the podcast two years ago to talk about faster how a Jewish driver, an American heiress, and a legendary car beat Hitler's best.
Discussing 'Red Mutiny' and Introduction of Host
00:00:38
Speaker
His most recent book is Red mutiny, freedom, revolution, and revenge on the battleship Potemkin. I didn't even know about this last book.
00:00:48
Speaker
and I would have had him on earlier to talk about it. But we'll blame his publicist. Here's some advice, kids. Always blame the publicist. Oh, by the way, this is the Creative Nonfiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara. How's it going? So yes, this was a fun one.
Neil's New Newsletter Project & Creative Leap
00:01:11
Speaker
As we talk about Neil's book burnout, which led to this newsletter project of his,
00:01:17
Speaker
It's a great way, it's a great creative leap, something risky he hasn't done in nearly two decades since he started writing narrative non-fiction. It's giving him the beginner's feels and the sense of dancing with the fear of doing something new.
00:01:35
Speaker
Now I'm a newsletter junkie, as you know, and I can't recommend Neil's enough. At first, I thought it was just going to be Neil talking about his own craft, his own writing and life, which would have been just fine by me. And the first issue dealt with his research and organization. Great stuff. Go check that out. But the main intent is to profile everyday people and how they go about the craft of their jobs, their everyday jobs.
00:01:59
Speaker
Be they a chef, an abstract artist, an ER doctor, or for Sunday, June 5th, which Neil is super excited about, a profile of a first-time war reporter. If humans of New York meets Stud's Turkle and then it gets translated through Neil's incredible taste and skill as a writer and storyteller.
00:02:22
Speaker
You can learn more about Neil at neilbascom.com. That's Neil N-E-A-L. And subscribe to his newsletter at workcraftlife.substack.com. Show notes for this and every other podcast for our BrendanOmero.com. And you can subscribe to my...
Newsletters vs. Social Media: Building an Audience
00:02:41
Speaker
newsletter up to 11 rage against the algorithm first of the month no spam as far as I can tell you can't beat it well maybe Neil's but aside from Neil's can't beat it
00:02:53
Speaker
That's the thing with newsletters. They're like the rebel alliance and social media is the empire. You don't think for a second that Emperor Palpatine has a dark side algorithm working the knobs of the invisible force. Think about it kids. Think about it. Newsletters are a slow go. It's so hard.
00:03:14
Speaker
to build an audience, especially if you don't have like a baked in audience. It's really and it's even harder to keep an audience because we're bombarded with so much email. But if you can do it, give me 10 email subscribers to 100 social media followers, eight days a week. Yeah, it's a thing.
00:03:35
Speaker
You are effectively unplugged from the algorithmic matrix with a permission-based asset from people, true fans, who are enrolled in your journey and elected to receive your information. Don't violate that trust. Think value, value, value. And my parting shot at the end of this humble podcast, I'll share a little bit of newsletter etiquette. Listen, I have far from a big newsletter audience. It's growing very, very little, but
00:04:03
Speaker
It's so important to me. It is tiny, but it grows like an oak tree, which is to say very, very slowly. And it seems like when you lose subscribers, you lose three, you gain three, or you gain three, and then you lose five. It really, that's the slog of it. And it's demoralizing. But it's okay. We're all going to get there one of these days.
Support for the Podcast: Patreon & Reviews
00:04:27
Speaker
Lastly consider heading over to patreon.com slash CNF pod to support the show with a few dollar bills And if slipping a few bucks our way is a bridge too far Leaving a kind review on Apple podcast goes a long way Towards validating the podcast for the way we're seeing ever and it's free. It just costs you a couple minutes of your time So, what do you say? What do you say? We just get into it with Neil Bascom here about this newsletter jam? Okay Let's do it
00:05:05
Speaker
Nice. I'm so pleased to find out that you started this newsletter about work, craft, and life. It's a really cool topic and an idea behind it. I was hoping to maybe get a sense of what the motivation was for you to start this newsletter. Newsletters are kind of like the new blogs in a sense.
00:05:29
Speaker
It's the latest wave, right? Yeah. And I'm usually so far behind the wave that by the time I catch it, it's onshore and too late. So I feel like this may be one where I'm catching it perhaps at the right time. And yeah, so the genesis of Warcraft life is, I think, two fundamental things.
00:05:57
Speaker
First is I've sort of always been fascinated, just utterly fascinated by like what people do.
00:06:05
Speaker
Like whenever I'm at a party or socially or meeting people, like what they do in their daily lives, not just, Oh, I'm a lawyer or Oh, I'm a carpenter. But like, what do you actually do? Like, what is your craft? How are you good at your job? How are you bad at your job? No, I don't always ask those questions. But like, I'm always very curious about people's work. And
00:06:33
Speaker
For a long time, I've been thinking of different ways to pursue that interest and have never really found the outlet that made sets. For instance, I'm thinking for a while about doing a book on building a house and following that over the course of a year or two and getting to know the carpenters and the plumbers and the demolition people.
00:07:01
Speaker
simply because I'm so interested in what those individuals do, how they got there, how they became, how they got into those professions.
00:07:11
Speaker
But that seemed very limited to me. I wanted to do this broad scope from literally everything. I mean, the reservoir of stories and crafts and jobs is limitless. And so, you know, so the primary reason or one of the two reasons of doing this newsletter was to just satisfy this curiosity and this fascination and bring it to readers.
00:07:40
Speaker
And the second thing is, from the point of view of my books and my author career, I've been writing books almost exclusively for 22 years since I was 29, 30 years old.
00:08:01
Speaker
And I've written almost so many books that I can't remember how many books I've written, but something like 14 or 15. And I got to a place after this latest book about Gandhi and his salt arch in 1930, which I wrapped up and finished. And I started thinking about my next book and coming up with ideas. And some of them were what I thought were quite good ideas.
00:08:27
Speaker
and saleable ideas. And I just didn't want to do it. And I couldn't sort of, you know, rile myself up. And I try and figure out what that is about. And I think it's, you know, at this particular stage, I'm not challenged by doing another
00:08:45
Speaker
narrative nonfiction book, either haven't found the idea or, or I need a break in a way. And so this, uh, work craft life is, is such a different kind of work that I've been doing. It's immediate. I'm interviewing people, I'm publishing, you know, a week later, I'm taking photographs, I'm taking video, I'm doing audio. And it's just all these skills, which I'm learning and I feel challenged by the interview process.
00:09:15
Speaker
format, these 3,000 to 5,000 word profiles, how to write them. This is a long answer to say, one, it's a fascination of mine that I'm satisfying, and two, I'm finding a new way to challenge myself as a writer and as a journalist.
00:09:34
Speaker
I'm very excited about it. Well, there's a great quote from Emilio, an abstract artist that you profiled, where he said, I found that excitement again, but it's also scary. It's my career. I don't plan on doing anything else for a living. This is it. You have to take the chance. And that was him talking about a slightly different artistic pivot. And that struck me as something that you're doing here, an artistic pivot that appears to be putting that fuel back in your tank.
00:10:03
Speaker
Exactly. I mean, Emilio and I spent time, he's an abstract artist. He lives in Bushwick, Brooklyn. And, you know, he had quite a successful career doing a particular process of art. And very similar to me, he got kind of tired of it and found that it didn't, as he said, sort of provide the escape that art had always had for him.
00:10:31
Speaker
And so when we were talking, it was very much sort of two comrades at the same points in their careers trying to explore something else. And the fears that are involved with that, the excitement that's involved with that, and the learning that goes with that. And all those things are the same for me as they are for a million.
Transition from Book Writing to Journalism
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah. And when you were let's say before, you know, book burnout and just tired of the the chain smoking nature of, you know, stringing those book and then book proposal and then keeping that flywheel spinning, you know, what was it specifically that that maybe that you needed to get away from in terms of the mechanics of of that whole of keeping that flywheel up and running?
00:11:24
Speaker
Well, it absolutely is a flywheel. I think that's an excellent analogy because you are in a constant state of moving the ball towards the next book and the next book. So even when you're writing or researching one book, you're publicizing the one that just came out and then your brain is looking forward to what's coming next.
00:11:53
Speaker
that cycle can be very intense. You know, you're doing a new book every two to three years. And you sink yourself into it. And then you come out three years later, and you got to sort of start afresh on a whole new thing. And so in a way that, as you described it, that flywheel became
00:12:14
Speaker
an issue for me and it could be my age, right? Like I'm 51 years old. I think this is the time for a midlife crisis. So my midlife crisis is stepping into doing a different kind of journalism. But I think the fundamental thing is
00:12:36
Speaker
the challenge, right? Like I remember when I first started writing books and when I first wrote that first proposal, which became the book, Hire, and this was like 1999, 2000, and not knowing what I'm doing, right? And venturing into the unknown and being scared. Am I going to be able to do this and pouring
00:13:05
Speaker
effort and love into the project to make it work, to make higher work. And after you've done that eight or nine times, you become good at it like anything else. I put in my 10,000 hours, right?
00:13:27
Speaker
I no longer had to think about it. It was work still, and it was enjoyable, but that scariness, that challenge wasn't there, and that's what I was looking for, and that's what I'm finding with Workcraft Life. What would you identify, or who would you identify, the people that you're most attracted to, to profile through this newsletter? It's interesting.
00:13:54
Speaker
I perceive it as something that will be forever evolving. So right now I'm looking for individuals sort of in my world, if that makes sense. I live in downtown Philadelphia. I spend a good deal of time in New York.
00:14:16
Speaker
And so I'm looking to explore the world sort of in my immediate surroundings. The UPS guy who's the sort of prince of my street knows everyone there and has keys to all their houses, knows what they're doing and when they're out of town and knows the intimacies of their lives. Like, what is Vince's
00:14:37
Speaker
What's his craft? How does he enjoy his job? How is his job drudgery? How does he bring this joy that he does to his work? To interviewing an ER doctor in Philadelphia, to interviewing the dry cleaner down the block, or an artist.
00:14:59
Speaker
So right now I'm looking at sort of the immediate surroundings. But I kind of see this as something that is, as I said earlier, limitless. So that let's say in mid-summer I'm going to Seattle.
00:15:16
Speaker
This is a perfect opportunity to interview two or three people while I'm there, whether it's a fishmonger, right? At Pike's plate market, or it's, you know, gosh, literally could be anything. Like a barista to, you know, a barista at a sort of Starbucks flagship, if it were, it could be, you know, an Amazon worker, you know, so finding
00:15:44
Speaker
In some ways, this is just an opportunity for me to talk to people and ask them questions that you normally wouldn't be able to sort of explore. And that's one of the great things I think about being a journalist and being a writer is it almost offers you a permission slip to go into people's lives that you normally wouldn't be able
Purpose & Impact of Newsletter Profiles
00:16:11
Speaker
to.
00:16:11
Speaker
And so when I go to Seattle, I'll have that opportunity. Or if I'm visiting family down in Charleston, similar things. So it's exciting in that respect in that I can constantly be doing this.
00:16:30
Speaker
Yeah and what it strikes me that these are the kind of character sketches that you would, that you used to find in the daily newspaper and these great community profiles of people and now just you know based on various analytics and just the kind of the sad state of local journalism on
00:16:48
Speaker
It's you don't see these things anymore so in a sense you striking out as just an independent journalist who's just doing these studs Turkle ask character sketches is such a great service to people who love stories but also trying to unpack the the joy that people get from the the mundanity of a day job to.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, I, in some ways I was inspired, of course I was inspired by Stokes Turkle. Like he just, you know, his book working, which was ages ago was sort of very groundbreaking in a way, but also like present day, like humans of New York, like Brandon Stanton. His profiles are fantastic. I want to do what he does, but for people's work, you know, I want to focus on what their,
00:17:41
Speaker
craft is what their work is and like that is what sort of
00:17:47
Speaker
interest me, you know, when I was just, I was just interviewing this ER doctor and it could be something as, you know, what's the best day to go into the ER? What's the worst day to go? Why? When you see a patient who's just been shot, like what is going on in your head? How are you making decisions? What are you thinking? What are you feeling?
00:18:12
Speaker
And I think what's exciting about this is we all experience these people in our lives, whether it's someone who's cutting your meat at the deli or picking up your trash or selling you your house.
00:18:32
Speaker
And yet you know nothing about actually what, you just touch a small sliver of their lives and what is it to know about what they do? And I just think we're all gonna, my effort is we all sort of understand the world that we're living in and the people who are inhabiting it. That sounds very high-minded and ambitious, but it's something we said for ambition.
00:18:57
Speaker
Oh, 100%. What you're talking about, too, reminds me of a podcast I listened to a couple years ago at this point on an episode of The Happiness Project. One of their podcasts was about job satisfaction, and they interviewed an exterminator in just a really dirty, grimy job, and he was one of the more
00:19:19
Speaker
had one of the more higher levels of job satisfaction, and they were like, why would someone who's working in a field that seems objectively gross be so happy with his work? And they kind of unpacked the fact that it was an act of service, and he just saw his work as a craft, even though he was getting rid of rats and other pests. So I kind of feel the pulse of that and what you're doing, too. And I think it could unlock
00:19:47
Speaker
And a lot of people just had to be, how are people with these everyday jobs, some sort of low on the skill level, some very high on the skill level, ER doctor, but how are they getting joy and happiness? And you're kind of like sketching that. I think it could make other people feel a little bit more energy and maybe happiness and find meaning in their own lives too. Yeah, I mean, I imagine that some of these stories will inspire people.
00:20:17
Speaker
I imagine some of them will make them angry. I imagine that some of them, they'll learn things that they may want to do themselves. It's going to be pretty broad. What's not going to be broad is that every week I'm going to be providing a profile of
00:20:38
Speaker
some individual and delving into their work life and seeing what gets them up in the morning, where they get the joy, where they get the sorrow and sort of examine their lives through their work. I mean, there's that cliche of, you know, do you live to work or do you work to live? The fact is we all work, right? Yeah.
00:21:04
Speaker
It doesn't really matter what the motivation is. It's what you're getting out of it and what's sort of bubbling up into the surface. And that's what I'm trying to do.
00:21:17
Speaker
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Diverse Storytelling & Interview Process
00:22:51
Speaker
How would you say the people that you've selected so far kind of reflect on you and your taste and maybe the things that you're most drawn to? For a long time, and most of my books have always been if you were to find a through line with them.
00:23:14
Speaker
They're inspiring stories, right? They're stories about people overcoming odds. They're about David and Goliath kind of tales. And my instinct is to go towards those stories. Like that's where I find myself leaning in. And I think one of the challenges, and again, like I said earlier, like one of the things I'm excited about is the challenge is to
00:23:44
Speaker
not necessarily lean always in that direction of what's the inspiring story that's gonna come out of this. Some of my work, some of my profiles are gonna have exactly that. Some of these are gonna be stories of David Black, people finding their passion and being successful at it. And some of them aren't. And I wanna be equally interested and I think we all should be equally interested
00:24:14
Speaker
in the humanity of work. And not all work is joy. And not everyone loves their work, but they do it. And it's a significant part of their lives. And it does something for them, whether it just pays the bills so they can pursue their passion, be it trout fishermen or a deer hunter or whatever it is.
00:24:43
Speaker
But I think we miss out on a lot of what makes us who we are, if we only talk about our family, if we only talk about our vacations, if we only talk about our sort of, you know, our, our upbringings or all that, when the core of our lives, the most of our hours of our lives are spent working. And
00:25:11
Speaker
That's the world I want to inhabit. Now, when you're curating or getting a sense of the people you want to interview and profile, what's the process by which you go about lobbying to get access to them and pitching them that you want to write about them?
00:25:33
Speaker
think it's going to be, you know, in, frankly, in the beginning, I'm looking at people who I know tangentially, or I know through a friend, I'm not interviewing friends, but like, yeah, people, again, as I said, in my surroundings, because, yes, I'm an author, and I've written all these books, but I've never done this. And so it's very hard to convince
00:25:58
Speaker
the locksmith down the street who you've never met before to sit down with you for two hours and tell you the story of his craft and his work. Right now I'm sort of seeding things with these individuals within my world who I can have access to and already it's becoming much easier and I've only published two profiles. I have my next one's coming up on
00:26:25
Speaker
on Sunday as they all will. And so the tide of it will get easier and my ability to walk into a shop or call someone up on the phone and say, this is what I'm doing. You can see what I've done here and will you talk to me? And I think that's getting that level of trust is something that's just gonna be gained by doing this more and more and more.
00:26:55
Speaker
And the other thing that I'm finding that is super helpful with the people I've interviewed is, you know, this is not gotcha journalism, right? I'm not here to expose anybody. I'm here to tell their stories. And so I interview them. So far, what it looks like is
00:27:14
Speaker
We'll have a preliminary conversation on the phone. Then I'll go out and sit down with them for two or three hours and talk about all kinds of things. Then maybe take some photographs, maybe watch them do some of their work. Then I go back and read through what's 30,000 or 40,000 words of
00:27:38
Speaker
for just an individual and figure out what the story is that is at the heart of this person's work. And it could be
00:27:51
Speaker
It could be a personal story that is significant to them. For instance, my first profile was about a chef entrepreneur, it's sort of surviving in COVID. And that story was less about her craft than it was about her overcoming something and sort of getting through it with the help of her family. That's part of her work life.
00:28:13
Speaker
Now, when I did Emilio, the artist, it was a lot of craft talk. I was so fascinated to know how you look at a blank canvas. How do you start? What's the first move? What's the second move? How do you make a mistake and correct for it?
00:28:36
Speaker
And so each story, you know, I take all that material and try to figure out, you know, what's the most important thing that can be said about this person's work or their life. And that's what I'm focusing on. And then I give it to them. I'll write it up and I'll say, here it is, you know.
00:28:59
Speaker
Tell me something, if you want to edit something, if we want to rewrite something, if we want to add to this, great, let's do it. And then we collect it with photographs and then it's published.
00:29:13
Speaker
So I'm not sure if that answers your question in terms of how I'm curating it, but that's the process so far. Oh, for sure. Because some people are reluctant to give access and talk. But it's also you're doing something that it does give them some degree of editorial control that you wouldn't normally do with, say, a book or a magazine piece. So you're like here.
00:29:42
Speaker
I'm going to – like you said, you're not doing the gotcha journalism. You're doing these character sketches to really celebrate people's work lives and the work that goes into their craft. So yeah, the body of work is going to essentially be the resume through which you can be like, hey, this is what I'm doing. I'd like to include you in this. Exactly. And the fact is that I've been – I was a journalist before I was an author.
00:30:13
Speaker
I know how to interview people. And then when I became an author and I was writing various books about various different people and interviewing families or the subjects themselves, like I spent a lot of time interviewing people and understanding how it is to get that level of trust with interview subject and getting them to relax. And a lot of, and so much of it is,
00:30:44
Speaker
showing how interested you are. Presumably you can fake that, but when you're authentic and you're clearly very interested in someone, they want to tell you their stories. People want to talk about their lives. Once you get them going, it's usually very hard to get them to stop.
00:31:10
Speaker
And that's a great thing, right? Because people don't ask these questions very often. And you go out to a dinner party, or you meet someone in a bar, and you're not delving into the darknesses and the light of someone's work life and how they do their craft. It's just not what you generally talk about, even though that's how you spend your days.
00:31:38
Speaker
And with a lot of your historical narratives, sometimes you have the benefit of being able to interview principal figures or people tangential to them. Sometimes they have since passed away and then you don't have that access to that direct connection. But when you are able to forge that connection through the interviewing process, you can mine it for more depth.
00:32:02
Speaker
And so for you, Neil, when you're doing this kind of reporting, whether it be for your book worker or for the newsletter, what is the key to reaching that level of depth through these conversations so you can write the best possible piece? That's a great question.
00:32:22
Speaker
And I think the first thing that I do is I never come with a set of questions. Like I'll sit before an interview and I'll even make a list of questions that I'm interested in asking or that I think might promote some different avenues of conversation. But then I do not look at that when I'm sitting down and talking to someone.
00:32:53
Speaker
I feel like the best way to interview someone is to have a conversation with them. If you're going down a list of questions, you're not listening to the answers. You're waiting to ask your next question. And if you're there and you're in the moment and you're authentic and you're interested, and I'm super interested in these people's lives and what they do. So it comes very naturally.
00:33:22
Speaker
people will talk to you. And in an interview, a good interview should be this back and forth and also hearing something and saying, oh, tell me about that. And even though you're probably leaving behind some good stuff, right? You're leaving behind, oh, this train of thought that they have, but you hear this one thing and you're like, oh, I got it.
00:33:49
Speaker
ask about that. Because if you don't, you're probably going to lose it. And you're going to lose that moment where it made sense to ask that question and felt authentic in the moment. Because that's how people's brains store information, right? It's not a linear process. And an interview should not be a linear
00:34:07
Speaker
process item. And I think that's my sort of interview technique. And I think the other interview technique, which I think is not mine, but is probably one of the most valuable things I was ever told when I was an early journalist, was shut up. And to just let people talk. Because most people want to fill the silence.
00:34:36
Speaker
And oftentimes they'll fill the silence with just jibber jabber, but sometimes they'll fill that silence with a truth or an admittance of something that they were maybe hesitant to say, but are glad to say once that's said. Does that make sense? And so when I get lost in an interview, I shut up.
00:35:04
Speaker
and let the person just follow their own train of thought. And with those sort of like two ways of having a conversation, I find that
00:35:18
Speaker
With that, you can generally get their story. Or you just wear them out, and then they tell you what you want. Right. Yeah, so I think Robert Caro will write in his notes when he was interviewing people for all his Lyndon Johnson biographies, just S-U-S-U-S-U, and the margins, just saying, shut up, shut up, shut up.
00:35:42
Speaker
And then I think Bob Woodward too has a tactic when he's interviewing someone where he like presses his thumb into his ring finger to make sure he doesn't interject or to tell himself, remind himself to shut up and just let the silence ask a question.
00:36:00
Speaker
like and it people do is uncomfortable it is like if we sat here for just five seconds of dead air that would seem like an eternity and you have to really build up a muscle and some endurance to let that silence do some work for you.
00:36:15
Speaker
I totally agree. And those, those anecdotes are great. I mean, you know, there'll be moments in an interview where, you know, nothing said for 10 seconds, right? Or 15 seconds. That is an eternity, sitting with some of the you don't know and not saying anything.
00:36:31
Speaker
And it's very hard to do, but it's essential, I think, to the review process. And I will say one other thing that is, I've noticed particularly now that I'm doing Workcraft, the technology has made things so much easier. You know, I remember when I was first
00:36:58
Speaker
you know, interviewing people on the street for a story in my 20s where I would be frantically writing in my notebook what people were saying or, you know, taking shorthand. And then even while writing books, you know, I'd be interviewing someone and I'd be typing it out or I'd tape it. And now you can be so immersed in who you're talking to because you can just record it.
00:37:24
Speaker
And the technology can take a transcript for you so you're not going back to your hotel room after a three-hour interview and spending three and a half more hours re-listening to it, typing every word. It's made it so that
00:37:39
Speaker
The technology has made it so that when you're in a room with somebody, you can be solely focused on that. There's not taking notes, there's not scratching, you know, all your attention is on the interview subject. And that is just incredible.
00:37:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I know you and I both revere John McPhee and... Oh, we do, we do. Yeah, and he would push back on the tape recorder thing. He is not big on voice recorders and tape recorders. It's fun, like, for the same reason that I definitely like him, the reason that you're using him too, you do feel more present knowing that this thing is capturing everything. So you can...
00:38:17
Speaker
Maybe take some notes on ambient details. But you can be more engaged. It actually shows some eye contact. And then, jeez, you're handwriting as you're trying to scribble everything. You don't have to worry about that. Maybe a battery dying, but that's neither here nor there. But McPhee does feel that it's too passive to have a recorder. He wants to be engaged with a notebook. And given your admiration for McPhee and that, I wonder if he were to push back on that, what would you say to our hero McPhee?
00:38:47
Speaker
Yeah, who's, you know, much greater. I would say you're wrong. I just don't agree with it. Yeah. I think that a tape recorder can disappear very quickly. Once you're really engaged in the conversation. Yeah. And I just don't see what the advantage is.
00:39:12
Speaker
of missing a single word that someone is saying. Because I reread these transcripts after the interviews. And I'll see lines in there that I didn't even pick up when we were having the conversation. It could be just a word or a nuance of how something is said that changes the meaning of it. And I just can't imagine
00:39:43
Speaker
writing down every single one of those words in a way while also actively being engaged with somebody. And I know that there is some, oh, that people are more reluctant to speak when a tape recorder is going. But again, I'm not looking to get anybody. So people know that when they tell me something, they can tell me, you know what, Neil, I thought about that and I don't want to include that.
00:40:13
Speaker
And I may try to convince them otherwise, but if they tell me firmly, Neil, I don't want to include that, then it doesn't come in. And I think I will get a lot more truth that way than I will trying, not that I'm saying that John McPhee does this, but trying to sort of convince someone not every word is being taken because I'm just taking notes and not taking notes.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, and I've said this before with somebody I can't remember who I was speaking with, but it was when I was reporting for six weeks. You've interviewed so many of us. Yeah, no kidding, like over 300 of you guys. Amazing, amazing.
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, and when I was reporting on Six Weeks in Saratoga, I was on the backstretch with Nick Zito's Hall of Fame trainer. He's just like one of those classic charismatic horse trainers. He's just like everything that comes out of his mouth is just like a quotable sound bite.
00:41:09
Speaker
So I had my recorder going and I'm just talking to Nick. But just these other things too that a tape recorder affords you is that in the background there were just blue jays chirping out in the bushes. And when I sat down to transcribe that tape, because this was before some of the AI interfaces that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
00:41:30
Speaker
It was just like, oh, that's a blue jay. I didn't even catch that that time. I was talking to Nick. I was listening to Nick. And now I'm able to put in the blue jay there. And it just it starts to the it starts to layer flavor if we're going to use chef talk. And it's just like that little extra grace note that just makes the scene a bit more evocative. And I probably would have missed that were it not for the recorder.
00:41:52
Speaker
That's a really, really great point. Those sort of visceral details that you can tape are tremendous. Why miss them, right? Yeah, there could be cars going by. My experience there on the back stretch, you might hear a horse snort or you might hear a pawing at the dirt.
00:42:14
Speaker
or you'll hear the shank jiggle from a hot walker just looking on the halter. All these little things and that way while you're just engaged with your subject and making eye contact and nodding along and really encouraging them to open up and the most
00:42:33
Speaker
I don't know, just because our curiosity drives us, you're able to just capture so much more. And some people find it lazy, but I think we're in the same camp that why not get as much information as possible so you can discard as much as you want later.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah, and the other great thing that I'm able to do with Workcraft as a newsletter is that, you know, when I'm interviewing these people, I'm also taking their photos, right? Or I'm videotaping them doing their particular work and following that. And, you know, the fabulous thing is I can include some of those, I can include as many images as I want into profiles, I can include video into the profiles. And so it becomes this, you know,
Preview of War Reporter Profile & Multimedia Experience
00:43:19
Speaker
the ambition is for it to become this very immersive experience for readers or listeners or watchers, depending on what you wanna be. And again, that just for the point of view of a challenge and steering away from just book writing, this is just for me an exciting opportunity. And my grandfather,
00:43:45
Speaker
I always think in view of my kids now. My grandfather was a photographer for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. And one of his great claims to fame was that every week he would take a photograph of a dog and it would be in the Sunday issue.
00:44:07
Speaker
And the photograph of the dog was an avenue to interview its owner, right? And to know about their laws.
00:44:19
Speaker
And so in a funny way, I'm sort of just going sort of full circle on. I mean, the walls of his house and his library were full of dog photographs, right? Of these people. And again, you can, you know, I've been so limited for so long with just the written word and like,
00:44:41
Speaker
those photographs that he would take tell their own story and being able to do that in the newsletter with these people's work and craft
00:44:54
Speaker
is tremendous. And for instance, I'm just doing a profile on a first-time war reporter.
00:45:13
Speaker
It's dropping on Friday, June 3rd. This profile of the war correspondent goes live this coming Sunday, June 5th. Just so you know, I plugged it at the top of the show, but I just want to reiterate right now, sound good? All right, back to Neil. And for the Wall Street Journal who went to the Ukraine and
00:45:42
Speaker
You know, I can talk about what he saw. I can interview him about what he saw. I can describe, you know, the cars crushed like soda cans. But when you see some of those stark images and video that he took during his time there, it just brings, as you say, another layer to the story that the written word just can't always capture.
00:46:12
Speaker
And so it's just this whole world that this newsletter, which seems like a sort of dull term on its surface, but given where we are in terms of technology, it becomes this sort of very dynamic platform.
00:46:32
Speaker
an immersive multimedia universe. Yeah, I don't want to go too overboard. This is not a Disney movie. It's mostly words. But it definitely has these hints of other things. The Neil Bascom cinematic universe. That's right. Neil's Marvel universe of people's work craft.
00:46:52
Speaker
I love CGI. I'm doing the whole thing. I'm still trying to figure out Photoshop, so I think CGI is a long way away. I love one of the quotes from the Jezebel piece where I'm blanking on her name. Is Jezebel the central crook or is that just the name of her restaurant? I'm blanking on her. That's her first name. That's also the name of her
00:47:20
Speaker
OK, great. Yeah, so Jezebel, she said, everybody in my house, we all cook. We all have our own style. From my mom, I learned how to make pasta. We're extremely connected to food. And I'm someone who loves a good cooking show. And all the judges, they're always telling you, we need to see more of you on this plate. And style is always forefront in cooking. And we can really extrapolate that to writing in terms of style and voice and finding your voice.
00:47:49
Speaker
So in terms of maybe your own writing, whether it be your book writing or certainly with the newsletter, how have you sought to develop your own style and voice through trial and error and then something that becomes wholly you through the sheer reputation you've done over the years?
Creative Process & Writing Style
00:48:08
Speaker
I think the style – I've always thought that the story dictates the style.
00:48:19
Speaker
And so I'll give you an example that I've given in the past. And that is, you know, Perfect Mile, which was my book about Roger Bass or Brady the Four-Minute Mile. There are moments in that story where he's training and he's going through these just grueling regimes that are endless. And the sentences that I write
00:48:50
Speaker
mimic that in a way, if that makes sense. They sort of tread the same, sort of grew, you know, they're long, they're multi-part. I want people, readers to sort of almost sluggishly have to go through it. Very different from Winter Fortress, my book about the sabotage of the atomic bomb program, and you have these sort of Norwegian spies going in to bomb this plant on the edge of a precipice.
00:49:20
Speaker
And the language there is very staccato. Sentences are short. They're stripped down. Not a whole lot of adverbs, not a whole lot of adjectives. It is action, because the story is about action and movement and quick, quick, quick. And so I think it's going to be similar with these profiles.
00:49:44
Speaker
that their stories are going to dictate the style. And that seems sort of highfalutin in a way. But I think one of the things you get from
00:49:59
Speaker
writing for so long, hopefully, is the confidence to break the rules and the confidence to not always be grammatical or, you know, noun for, you know,
00:50:18
Speaker
clause period and to play with sentences and play with their structure and their length and their shortness. And so I think I'm going to
00:50:32
Speaker
be bringing that similarly to these profiles. I just started writing the war reporter story and that again, it feels very already very staccato because he's dealing with these frontline battle situations and these sort of gruesome moments, terrifying moments. And to be in his shoes, I'm trying to write it in a way of, okay,
00:50:59
Speaker
Brett, what were you thinking? What were you feeling? And he talks about it in a way of the classic time slowing down. And so the style of his dialogue and his recollections are conveyed.
00:51:20
Speaker
And in the very first installment of your newsletter, you talk about how you go about the work of your research and everything. And you call it looking into your kind of obsessive crazy. And how would you describe your obsessive crazy?
00:51:40
Speaker
how would I describe myself? It's no different than my sort of interpersonal crazy eye. But, you know, I get obsessed with
00:51:56
Speaker
with things and go down the rabbit hole with them and time disappears and kind of like my profile of Emilio, like when I'm really into it, I've escaped the world and I am in living in that moment and sort of everything else disappears.
00:52:23
Speaker
what I'm you know I brought that sort of obsessive level of things to my books and to my research and to sort of try and uncover every little detail so that I could just pepper the next sentence with something that
00:52:40
Speaker
you know, whether it was like 78 degrees in the room or the paint was peeling off the walls, you know, being able to know that level of detail to make the story come alive. And I think my poor interview subjects for Warcraft is very similar, right? So I'm like an hour three of these interviews and these people's eyes are like, oh my gosh, I'm not sure I got into, I knew what I was getting into.
00:53:08
Speaker
Um, but I'm asking those questions because, and I'm going into that, those, you know, small little lanes because, you know, that's where something comes to life in my opinion. And so even though it may cost a little for the interviewer and for time and a level of obsessiveness, I think the value that you get out of that, um, will hopefully come through.
00:53:35
Speaker
Yeah, and you're dogmatic about the research and how you organize it and then rereading it and coming up with the right degree of the structure, where to put the information. You use Excel spreadsheet, which I think is great because it's by its very nature organized, but it's searchable too, which I imagine is something that you find very valuable when you've got a big sprawling document.
00:53:59
Speaker
But point being, after a while, you write that it's very important to put it away and then to go away. So why is it so important for you, after you've done all that labor, to kind of get away from it for a bit? Because I think your mind is amazing things that we have absolutely no idea.
00:54:20
Speaker
I think that connections are made in ways when you're not actively thinking about something that if you were to just obsess over it and try to figure out an answer, you'd never figure one out. And I think just going away gives your brain time to do that. And what I love about these shorter profiles versus the larger book is
00:54:49
Speaker
you know, with a book I will have, you know, I mean, I'll have hundreds of books, hundreds of hours of interviews, streams of newspaper and magazine articles. There's no way in the world my brain can
00:55:05
Speaker
Some brains probably can do it, but mine certainly can't. It's just sort of absorb all that information, hold it, and figure it out. But with these interviews, I'll cut the words down to 20,000, 20,000 words, and then I can read that, and that's all in my head. And then I can go away, and it all sort of coalesces.
00:55:32
Speaker
That to me is also exciting. I think the other thing is I was just reading this article about creativity and walking and how, you know, it could be a writer, it could be a mathematician, it could be a painter, where ideas and solutions come through the very act of walking. And I think
00:55:58
Speaker
That is a similar situation as I quote, go away.
00:56:04
Speaker
And to kind of bring it full circle, it would appear that the newsletter also is a sense of getting away from the book work, which we talked about earlier. And it must be fun and energizing just to do it unto itself. But in a sense, it's like, oh, here's a way that I can still kind of flex the muscle of the journalistic and writing skill that you've had over the years, but also get away from the
00:56:29
Speaker
from the machine of book writing, which was, you know, as we already established it, you know, a bit of a drain, you know, after your latest book. Yeah, and you know what, it's just, it's fun to explore and do something new. And I'm just
00:56:45
Speaker
I can't tell. I bore my wife with this, but I'm so excited about this in a way that makes me feel, not that I'm old, but it makes me feel like I did when I first started writing books.
00:57:03
Speaker
And it's still telling people's stories. Everyone's story is extraordinary in its own way, whether I'm writing about them in a profile for this newsletter or for a whole book. And the joy or the greatness with the newsletter is
00:57:23
Speaker
can do a lot so much more. And I'm actually talking, you know, I've done a lot of historical books. So I've, I've written a lot of stories about dead people, right? Yeah, to put it coarsely. And it's really nice to sit across from someone and interview them. You and you just get
00:57:48
Speaker
just remarkable stuff that you never expect. Maybe you can find that similar kind of thing in archival work or diary work, but it's just a totally different thing. And you have 100% agency and control over it too. You don't have to worry about market forces or stuff of that nature.
Autonomy & Passion in Storytelling
00:58:08
Speaker
You're like, I'm just going to follow my taste and my curiosity and that's all that matters.
00:58:13
Speaker
Exactly. And that's, you know, um, that also is scary, right? Cause there's no, you know, it's me, right? No one to blame. Yeah. There's no one to, you know, I can't blame my publisher for not, uh, or the marketing department and the publicity department. Like I'm doing everything here. You know, I'm, I'm interviewing, I'm writing, I'm marketing, I'm publicizing and it's fun. So, and I'm passionate about this.
00:58:43
Speaker
subject matter. And I think that the greatest work comes out of passion. And so that's very similar to Emilia. We had the same conversation, like, who cares if it works? The fact is, you're doing something you want to do. You're exploring something you want to explore. And just do that.
00:59:07
Speaker
I love it. Well, Neil, I like to bring these conversations down for a landing late in these conversations. I love to ask the guests for a recommendation for the listeners of some kind. And like I said, that can be anything from a brand of coffee to a pair of socks or an app, anything's game. So what might you recommend for the listeners out there?
00:59:31
Speaker
You know, I'm staring out at my city of brotherly love here out of my window. And I think one thing I'd say is visit Philly. It's a fabulous town.
00:59:40
Speaker
Oh, yeah, well, speaking of Philly, whenever we are back visiting family in South Jersey and we're able to kick over to Philly, we like to go to the restaurant Vej. It is an incredible high-end vegan restaurant, if there are any of you vegans out there. Incredible stuff. And the Moshava food truck? It's Israeli food, and a friend of ours, his son is one of the owners of it.
01:00:09
Speaker
and yeah they are accommodating to the vegetarians and vegans out there but if you if you're into that kind of food oh my god you gotta go um and you did give me a little prompt and i have to say i have become an absolute obsessive fan of bombas socks all right they're the best socks i've ever worn
01:00:33
Speaker
And in fact, I was wearing them and someone came over to the house and he was wearing the same exact socks and he's like, these are the best socks I've ever seen.
01:00:41
Speaker
And so a good pair of socks goes a long way. Oh, I love it. Well, Neil, it's so great to touch base with you again after about two
Episode Wrap-up & Audience Engagement
01:00:51
Speaker
years. It's been about two years since we last spoke. So I'm glad we were able to do this again to talk about your work craft life over at substacks.substack.com is where you can find that and subscribe to that. So as always, thanks so much for the time, Neil, and thanks for the work you're doing. It's really exciting and a ton of fun to read. So I wish you the best of luck with it, man.
01:01:12
Speaker
Thank you. It's always fun. Very nice of Neil to come back on the show so we can celebrate his newsletter, workcraftlife.substack.com to subscribe.
01:01:30
Speaker
Awesome. It was great talking to him. It was, uh, two years. Can you believe it? A little over two years since he was on for faster. Yeah. I like, uh, I like talking to talking to Neil. That was fun. Keep the conversation going on Twitter at CNF pot or at creative nonfiction podcast on Instagram. And please consider Patreon.
01:01:49
Speaker
or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Okay, so I promised a little bit of newsletter advice and take it with however many grains of salt you want. I'm no expert. I don't have a four figure audience, let alone a five or a seven or six or a seven figure newsletter audience.
01:02:09
Speaker
upper threes, upper three digits. That's what I have. Take this advice and you can tell me to shove it or you can put it into good use. Here we go. Number one, newsletters are permission-based. So resist, resist, resist the urge to add people's emails from your own address book who you've corresponded with in the past.
01:02:33
Speaker
onto your newsletter list to give yourself that little bump in subscriber numbers. I can't tell you how many authors have done this to me because we've had a few back and forths. If I know you have a newsletter, I'm probably going to subscribe to it because I know how important it is to have that number go up, especially for the middling or
01:02:56
Speaker
upstart writer who really needs every every subscriber is like this beautiful little flower that you just have to nurture and please don't die don't be like the basil on my shelf that just keeps on dying damn you basil I don't unsubscribe from these lists that I get put on without my permission because I know from personal experience how demoralizing it is to lose a subscriber it is a gut punch
01:03:26
Speaker
I can't help but look at the reasons. Thankfully, most people say none given, but sometimes they're no longer interested, and I look, and all the analytics, I'm like, God damn it. And some people are like, I didn't sign up for this, and I'm like, that's fucking bullshit, because I don't do that shit. See, rule number one. I think maybe they're just selecting something, and sometimes I'll write back to them, like, listen, I don't care that you left, but I don't wanna be dragged through that mud.
01:03:51
Speaker
Anyway, this is, wow, maybe this is the only rule. This is a big no-no because I didn't give you permission to put my email on your list. I didn't hand my information over to you to do this. You may ask me, but please don't do it without anybody's permission. That's rule number one. Oh boy, I went off script there for a little bit. Yeah, there's a script. I'm reading a script right now too.
01:04:20
Speaker
that wasn't on the script. Two, it's got to have a ton of value for your subscribers. Like we're hit with so much spam, so much email, social media, it goes on and on. I mean, think about it for what I bombard you with. I bombard you with podcasts about once a week. I say about because sometimes it's more than once a week. So you get that. And then it's the social media stuff. And then I asked you about Patreon.
01:04:46
Speaker
And then I'm like, who subscribed to the newsletter? It's like holy shit. So anyway, your newsletter can't be the everyday ramblings of a disgruntled so-and-so. It can't just be a glorified blog post. Unless you're so damn funny that it doesn't matter. I guess like if David Sedaris did something like that, he's got the audience and people find him so damn funny that maybe they would like that.
01:05:10
Speaker
My guess is you're not. Think about George Saunders' newsletter too. It's just like so focused on making you a better reader and by extension a better writer, like tons of value there. And you're learning from a master. I don't know if Substack likely drove a dump truck full of money to his house, but George is making it work. I dig it. It's a lot of emails. So it can be hard to keep up with, but I do appreciate it.
01:05:38
Speaker
Anyway, let's just think, with my newsletter for instance, I tend to write a very short intro essay most times and give 11 cool things that'll entertain you or make you a better writer or maybe you'll get a book recommendation that you've never heard of.
01:05:52
Speaker
Brad listies is very good in this his is very short. It's very It's very just very sure yeah, I imagine if you're looking at on your phone. It's just a real quick list with cool links to stuff so we have similar ones and It's I think it's a nine things. I like to 11 up to 11 you know me right metal so in any case
01:06:17
Speaker
I like to include a happy hour link too. That's pretty neat. I mean, I have like a little crew of people who go to the happy hour since most of them are on the Patreon list. Anyway, I might kick that over to Patreon to sweeten the Patreon pot. As a result, someone who's not on Patreon would be grandfathered in, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, number three, pick a schedule and stick to it. If you can swing weekly, great.
01:06:44
Speaker
Austin Cleon can do it every single week, but he doesn't have a classic day job and a lot of other stuff. He's all right. He's doing okay for himself. But weekly, that's a lot of effort. I settled on monthly a few years ago. Been doing this thing for years. Less pressure.
01:07:03
Speaker
and also just less email for people. If they start seeing you too often, I'm like, oh my God, I can't keep up with this. And so anyway, it doesn't matter. It could be one week, two weeks, one month, stick to one schedule. Lastly, four, number four.
01:07:22
Speaker
Have fun! I'm gonna start one soon that's totally unrelated to anything that I do, and this is gonna be a fun one, just for shits and giggles. For all the shits and all the giggles. It'll be called Fade to Blackout, and it'll be blackout poems from Metallica lyrics. So I'm gonna take a Metallica song, say Fade to Black,
01:07:42
Speaker
and then just blackout things and just maybe change the entire meaning of the song. Maybe pick out the words that are by their very nature kind of sunny lyrics and turn a Fate the Black song about suicide into something that might be something that might be the opposite of it. I don't know and I'll put a photograph of this blackout poem into the newsletter interface and that'll go out to people.
01:08:04
Speaker
Does it have anything to do with my core writing life? No. But it could be fun. I'm doing blackout poems anyway, and if I can entertain people with a little bit of art, then I'm happy. And it's kind of nourishing to do it anyway. So there you go. Don't add people without permission. Ton, add value. Pick a schedule and stick to it. And have fun. Oh, and one more thing. If you can't do, interview. See ya.
01:08:47
Speaker
you