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Episode 190: Adrienne Brodeur on Taking Your Story Head On, Loosening the Grip on Your Narrative, and Her Memoir ‘Wild Game’
133 Plays5 years ago
The author Adrienne Brodeur is here to talk about her memoir Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me (HMH, 2019)
Thanks to our sponsors in Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing.
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Transcript
Introduction and Program Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
And I alone am thinking like, what, the what, the what is wrong with you? Like, this is not good news.
00:00:12
Speaker
A, C, and Fers. Discover your story with Bay Path University's fully online and the thing creative non-fiction writing faculty have true passion and love for their work shines through with every comment, edit, and reading assignment. The instructors are available to answer all your questions and their years of experiences writers and teachers have made for an unbeatable experience. Head over to baypath.edu slash MFA for more information.
00:00:45
Speaker
And it's about time. It's about time we do this. What do you say?
Guest Introduction: Adrien Brodeur
00:01:01
Speaker
Yeah, so Adrien Brodeur is my guest today. She's the author of Wild Game, a memoir about her mother and her mother's lover. It's about secrets, man. It's a damn good read. By the way, I'm Brendan O'Mara, and this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I talk to badass writers and filmmakers about the craft of telling true stories.
00:01:26
Speaker
That's it. Is that it? No, no.
Event Announcement: Hippocamp 2020
00:01:30
Speaker
Hey, registrations open for Hippocamp 2020. No more early birds are available. I guess they sold out in like record time. Amazing. The worms are gone. The early birds got the damn worm. But there's ways you can still save some dough CNF-ers. Visit hippocamp2020.hippocampusmagazine.com and use the promo code CNFPOD2020 to get
00:01:54
Speaker
$40 off your fee. In fact, I think I'm going to use the promo code myself to get that $40 off. That's going to buy me some beer. That $40 is going to buy me some beer at the Thursday night social hour. You're going to want to be there for that. It's where I met Damon Brown, guest of a show last week, 189. If I wasn't there at that bar, I would have never met Damon.
00:02:24
Speaker
one presumes anyway best money you'll spend on a conference this year I promise you in any case I wanna
Listener Feedback and Gratitude
00:02:34
Speaker
read
00:02:34
Speaker
to you. A nice review the show got over on Apple Podcasts. If you leave a kind review, an honest review, I'll be sure to read it on the air here. It means a lot for the show and the show's packaging and the show's validation and it kind of just builds community around the show to have that kind of validation. Especially if people are passing through, your time is finite and
00:02:58
Speaker
seeing those reviews are like, you know, you read those, you see some new ones, you see some fresh ones, you're like, all right, if you're a passerby, I give this show a shot. And you guys know it, you dig it, you dig what we're up to. So this is my way of giving you that shout out. And I wanna show my appreciation for you by giving the best of shout outs here in the intro. So Louise Sokal, she wrote, delightful, quirky, informative.
00:03:27
Speaker
Creative nonfiction is my true love for both reading and writing, and in Brendan and the CNF podcast, I can tell I found a kindred soul. I love his passion for all things CNF that comes through in the interviews, and I always get something out of them. Brendan obviously does his homework before talking with each guest, and it shows. But he's also not afraid to show his personality, which is refreshing.
00:03:54
Speaker
Thank you, Louise SoCal. That was awful sweet. Digital fist bumps from me to you. So I'm getting ready to pitch a story or two. There isn't a whole lot of time left in the day, what with the day job that's sort of killing me, the reading, the research and production of this podcast, of course, this marketing seminar I'm in the middle of, which is very labor intensive.
00:04:23
Speaker
And then finding the time to drink my stress away, there just isn't that much time left in the day. So that's where I'm at.
Writing Services and Encouragement
00:04:33
Speaker
That reminds me, hey, we all need editors. We all need editing. We all need accountability, man. If you've got an essay or a book that needs coaching, I'd be honored and thrilled to serve you and your work. You can email me, Brendan at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, hey.
00:04:49
Speaker
And let's start a conversation, because the world, trust me, the world needs your work. We need you to show up, and I'd love to help.
Adrien's Literary Heritage and Career
00:04:59
Speaker
So, like I said, pardon, Adrien Brodua is here. She's a pretty special person and she wrote a great book, Wild Game, and it got a tremendous amount of coverage and press. I mean, just Google her and you'll see her TV spots, New York Times, poets and writers, I mean, it's all over. Great stuff, pretty impressive.
00:05:25
Speaker
but it was nice because after we were done she emailed me and said it's it's nice when you forget when you're being interviewed which is kind of the best compliment a guy like me hosting a pod like this can hear so here we go adrian brodore episode 190
00:05:46
Speaker
Right. Well, I definitely had sort of a literary heritage in that my father was a writer for The New Yorker. He started out his life as a novelist and went on to become, you know, a nonfiction writer for The New Yorker. And so it was always and my mother was a food and travel writer. So it was always part of my
00:06:06
Speaker
um, the world I inhabited, but of course, you know, I rejected it too. And I, you know, I thought I wanted no, no part of it. I actually wasn't a big reader as a child. I mean, I read as kids read and I, you know, had a decent education, everything else. So I read a lot of books for school and so on, but I was never one of those children who was under the blanket with the flashlight or that kind of thing. But I did,
00:06:32
Speaker
I did grow up in that world, and it took me a long time to circle back and inhabit it of my own free will as an adult. When I went off to college and
Influence of Stepmother on Literary Passion
00:06:45
Speaker
school, I was much more of the mind that I was going to sort of do good work and save the world, and I went on into a career in politics at first, in government, and then realized
00:07:00
Speaker
over in my 20s when I really did start reading voraciously, sort of realized I was watching the pile of political journals or public policy journals shrink as the literary journals on my bedside table rose and I just, I, you know, felt an overwhelming pull towards, towards literature. Yeah. And it was your, your father's second wife, your stepmother, who was really influential in terms of that literary taste, correct?
00:07:28
Speaker
Yes, I mean, actually, she was my third, my, she was his third wife, my second stepmother. Both my stepmothers were in the literary world in some capacity or another. But that stepmom, who's Margo in the book, owned a beautiful independent bookstore in San Diego, California, or in Del Mar. And I remember from the very first time I met her before she and my father were married, that she would just press
00:07:56
Speaker
novels and memoir and poetry, just all sorts of wonderful books into my hands. And she really ignited that passion in me. And I just, you know, it was it was such an eye opening time in my life because I had gotten myself into a whole lot of trouble with where I was just emotionally and in my own life and not having enough agency in my own life. And she
00:08:22
Speaker
I think she just intuited it on some level, but she would give me these books that often sort of featured a young female protagonist sort of working her way out of a situation and in that way that reading is such a fundamentally empathetic act. You know, you put yourself in someone else's, some character's head and you go from there. I think it,
00:08:48
Speaker
in these very subtle and profound ways sort of allowed me to see a way out. Isn't that something that's just so cool that somehow certain books can just kind of turn a switch on for you? Absolutely.
00:09:03
Speaker
Do you remember some of those first titles that, you know, Margo, as she's known in the book, gave to you and you're like, oh, wow, this is... I do. I mean, I remember that I think it was the very first batch were three books and it included Jim Harrison. This is all fiction, but Jim Harrison's D'Alva, Barbara Kingsolver. And I can't remember whether it was The Bean Tree or Animal Dreams and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.
00:09:32
Speaker
And, yeah, I mean, such different books. But, you know, just that that struggle of sort of being on the wrong path, getting on the right, I mean, that's oversimplifying, but sort of finding your way, which I think most books shed some light on.
00:09:50
Speaker
Looking at your father's career, that he was a novelist turned journalist, usually it's kind of the other way around. Usually journalists, they do their assignment work and then they pivot to novels as a way to sort of scratch that artistic itch that maybe the repertorial stuff isn't doing.
00:10:08
Speaker
Was that something like looking back on that you thought was just a different kind of path, something that was maybe somewhat unrecognizable compared to the typical path? That's interesting, and I haven't actually thought deeply about that before. I think what happened to my father was sort of what you're saying. I think fiction was always the dream, and he had some early success.
00:10:35
Speaker
He gained a name for himself at the New Yorker as a nonfiction writer, as a writer who wrote about the environment and big business, the asbestos industry, those types of things. And I do think he kept reaching back and he wrote other stories and other novels much later in his life, but he never got the traction back on that part of his career in the same way.
Returning to Writing: Family Influence
00:10:56
Speaker
But I think it was always the great love.
00:11:00
Speaker
And as much as you might have pushed against that early on subconsciously or even consciously, were you at all surprised that the apple of your life rolled back towards the roots of those trees? That's a beautiful way of putting it. I mean, hindsight always makes everything make so much more sense. I mean, I think I'm doing what I was always supposed to be doing, but I'm not someone who sort of
00:11:27
Speaker
regrets to deeply taking these different paths, because of course they always inform what you're doing in the present. And no, I mean, it's not surprising in hindsight, although, you know, it's, as we all do, when we, when we see, like, in our siblings or something go a very different path. I mean, DNA just has such a strange way of trickling down. So one person gets the sort of business obsession, one gets the artistic obsession, then
00:11:54
Speaker
what parts of nature or nurture fall in to create the self. And it's one thing of course to be a voracious reader and devourer of that kind of culture, but then it's another thing to want to pick up the pen and sort of contribute to that as well. So at what point do you realize that you want to start writing yourself and putting your own stories down, whether that's fiction or ultimately what would become, you know, wild game, this memoir you write?
Literary Transition and Magazine Founding
00:12:23
Speaker
Well, I mean, my first step was sort of becoming part of the literary world. So once I realized that this was my passion and I was really sort of in this wrong place in my life, wrong town, wrong career, wrong man, all that sort of stuff. And I and I in this sort of bold move kind of changed everything in my late 20s.
00:12:44
Speaker
But I entered the literary world and I started by, I found the literary magazine with the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and I did that. I love that. I did that for years. And, you know, initially I think I was quite in denial of my own desire to write. So sort of discovering new voices, helping new writers along was really my passion. And then I continued that into book editing and
00:13:12
Speaker
Now I also run a literary nonprofit. But I think, you know, I was writing at various times along the way. It was always sort of part of what I was doing while I think I was sort of keeping it on the back burner in some ways or not making it public. Like I was very impressed and surprised by people who, you know, boldly announced that they were writers, even whether they had a book out or not or anything published or not. They just knew that that was what they did.
00:13:41
Speaker
I was pretty shy about it, and I think part of it was it took me so long to process the events of my life, which later became this memoir, Wild Game, that I think I was figuring out for much of my life how to tackle the subject matter, and in my 20s I did write some sort of very earnest and overwrought short fiction about it, and later
00:14:10
Speaker
I tried to write it as kind of with humor. I think I used humor to deflect some of the greater pain that was involved. And so it wasn't until fairly recently, and I did do other writing along the way, but it wasn't until, you know, maybe five or well, longer ago than that. But I realized that I needed to write it head on in memoir as directly as possible. And I think that's simply because, you know, the longer you
00:14:38
Speaker
you tamp down a story or you deny a secret or one of these profound moments in life, I think the more power it has over you. And so it was almost the only way to take back the power.
00:14:52
Speaker
How did you find that the courage and the will to actually tackle it head on and not come at it with these other deflecting tactics?
Family Secrets and Parenting
00:15:05
Speaker
Right. How did you come? Well, one thing that really sort of urged me forward, frankly, was having children.
00:15:17
Speaker
having children requires revelation and there had been such a legacy of secret keeping and deception in my family and it was when I realized you know I hadn't done all the work that I needed to do on some level when I had children and sort of having these my past and the future collide in these present little beings that I realized I needed that that
00:15:44
Speaker
I needed to break that cycle and have that pattern end with me and in my, you know, and who knows if I'll succeed. But that was, that was in some way, that was the moment that I realized I needed to do, I needed to write this in a different way than I'd been thinking about it beforehand.
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah, there's that really touching moment late in the book when you give birth to your daughter. And as I was reading it, I'm like, what's the connection Adrienne's gonna make between her own mother and then the fact that she is now a mother and everything. And that sort of mental calculus, as you're probably holding your newborn daughter, be like, you know what, this is not going to happen to you the way it happened to me.
00:16:29
Speaker
And honestly, it was that physical moment. I mean, I have always had a close bond with my mother, for better or for worse. I love her dearly, despite our very complicated past together. But when I gave birth to my daughter, I was in Mass General Hospital. I literally remember coming up in the elevator sort of on the gurney, you know, with my daughter in hand and those doors pinging open and there was my mom. And I was
00:16:58
Speaker
had been so excited to introduce her to her first grandchild. And it was such a physical, a shocking and physical response. I mean, it felt like I had an elephant sitting on my chest. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. I'd never had, you know, what I imagined was some variation of a panic attack. And it wasn't until sort of this very capable and efficient nurse sort of sent my mother
00:17:22
Speaker
back to the waiting area and took me in and I was like, what the hell just happened? And, um, but it, it felt like a collision. It felt like just this pay attention, pay attention to what's happening. You know, this, this is a moment and it reminds me, I don't know if you've read that book, the body keeps the score, but it just felt like I just had a physical reaction, you know, to this, this moment of my life, this collision of fast and future. Hmm.
00:17:50
Speaker
You know, early on, too, of course, you know, for people who might not be too familiar, what happens is, you know, you're 14 years old and your mother wakes you up, and then what happens?
Mother's Affair and Secrecy Burden
00:18:02
Speaker
So my mother woke me up when I was 14. The setting was Cape Cod. We were at our family home, and she at the time was married to my stepfather. And she woke me out of a sound sleep in this sort of desperate moment, like, wake up.
00:18:19
Speaker
And she told me that Ben Souther, who was my stepfather's best friend, had just kissed her. And I remember just this moment of understanding, even though I didn't understand that that would, neither of us understood that she was going to go on to have this epic love affair with Ben Souther. But even in that moment, like in real time, I understood that there was a before and after in my life and I had gone to bed
00:18:48
Speaker
is my mother's daughter and I'd woken up and I had become overnight her best friend and her confidant and would become a co-conspirator in this love affair. And I got incredibly enmeshed in all the details because of course it was, you know, for most people, you know, their thought bubble is probably like, good God, how horrendous, which, you know, as now I'm the mother of a 14-year-old myself and I can totally agree
00:19:17
Speaker
But at the time, of course, it was very seductive and very exciting. And we all want our mother's love and attention. And I suddenly had my mother's love and attention in a very real way. And, you know, it was also a whole lot more exciting than, you know, they spin the bottle on the beach. You know, we were in a real live grown up drama. And, you know, I've said this before, but I liken it to kind of a mother daughter version of Thelma and Louise. It was like I was
00:19:47
Speaker
you know, behind the wheel of the getaway car and she would come careening in with some, you know, close call and I would jump on the gas and, you know, it was just, it was very exciting. I think on the surface and probably a lot of people reading it would be like, you know, the snap judgment is like, how could Malabar like do this to her adolescent daughter? And then like, if you just kind of like unpack it a little further, and I'm sure maybe you've done this too, it's like,
00:20:15
Speaker
maybe looking at it through some empathic eyes. I wonder what it was about that time where maybe your mother felt she needed to confide in her 14-year-old daughter versus maybe someone more mature, more capable of carrying that burden. Have you thought of that at all, just as to why it was you versus someone else? You know, every day for 40 years. So yeah, I mean, one of the great gifts of writing
00:20:45
Speaker
memoir, creative non-fiction is, you know, you have to do it well to write, I mean, I believe to do it well. You have to kind of loosen the grip on your own narrative and you have to really do your best to understand what was driving other people in your story. And so one of the beautiful and unexpected outcomes
00:21:14
Speaker
for me personally was that I really did a deep dive into my mother's life. And I, you know, you can't really walk in anyone's shoes. You can't know their story really well and not feel compassion. And for however complicated my childhood sounds, and it was, you know, it was a walk in the park compared to my mother's who had two very
00:21:40
Speaker
self-involved, domineering parents who were also, I think, both huge alcoholics who were married to each other, divorced from each other, married to each other again, divorced from each other again. She was an only child. She was incredibly lonely. There was a secret other family that her, at least one that we know of that her father had. So it was just, and, you know, then she
00:22:05
Speaker
she had an unhappy marriage to my father she lost her first child i mean i could go on and on and on but the woman really experienced tragedy so you can you can be you know one of the things that i was very determined what they didn't want to write a mommy dearest style book with you know them bad mom angelic daughter i wanted to be all the gray in this relationship although uh... though but all those those subtle and true part of it um...
00:22:35
Speaker
And so I think, you know, I think why, you know, I can't begin to explain why my mother woke me up, like why she chose me. I think when I think about it, it was probably she'd had too much to drink. It was late at night. I was there. And also, you know, if we go to the sort of deeper, darker place, I think she knew that I was devoted to her. She could manage me in a way that she might not be able to manage someone else. But I think
00:23:06
Speaker
I think you can look at Malabar, which is my mother's first name, as sort of a villain, but it's really oversimplifying because I also think you can look at her as a survivor, as someone who, you know, went for love as terrible as that might sound to people. And the other part that I haven't told you is my stepfather was terribly ill. He had four massive strokes in five days right around the time of their wedding.
00:23:32
Speaker
and essentially went from the love of her life to not quite an invalid, but not a healthy person, and she took care of him. He was more child than husband, and so I don't know. I just think it's all much more complicated than it appears on the outside.
00:23:49
Speaker
For sure, yeah. And given that, like your stepfather, her love there and then has those strokes, there are desires and needs that people have as adults and couples.
Understanding Mother's Choices
00:24:01
Speaker
And then suddenly, it's sort of in the prime of her life, that thing gets swept from her. And then she has to seek that out. And you can almost understand, even though it does seem kind of
00:24:15
Speaker
for lack of a better term, villainous, but you can kind of go there and be like, yeah, I almost understand because... And that's, I find, the most interesting part because that's certainly how I intended to write it. Not with judgment, although there's some... Look, anyone can question the boundarylessness of waking up a 14-year-old girl to bring her into it. I mean, that is problematic for sure.
00:24:44
Speaker
But whether or not you judge her on having the affair, I mean, what's been one of the most interesting things having published such a personal book is realizing that what I have written is not necessarily what you, for instance, have read. I mean, it sounds like it is what you read, but as I've been going around the country and on book tour and talking to people, I mean, literally I will be introduced back to back one night to the next where one person will describe
00:25:11
Speaker
you know, the book and my mother is sort of, you know, a feminist before her time and going for it and seeking out what she wanted in these very sort of, not quite heroic, but somewhat sometimes. And then the next night there'll be no one in the history of the world has ever seen a worse mother. And you're kind of, I was like whiplashing between all these people's reaction because of course we read through our own lenses. So, you know, some people might see it all black and white. I did my best not to portray it that way.
Memoir Reception and Public Reaction
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, and I think you accomplished that masterfully, and it goes to a point, too, of what you're saying is that once you have spent the time with it, it is at one point yours, and then you have to cede it to the public, and they get to do with it what they will. And I have to say, that's a challenging moment, right? Yeah.
00:26:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, you're alluding to it, of course. So what was that experience like of how this story, which is still yours in every bit the thing that you grinded on for, well, two and a half years of the solid writing, but also the past 40 years of life, to then give it to other people and have them run with it? You know, that's disorienting in a way. It was disorienting, but it also ended up being
00:26:32
Speaker
very positive experience like I felt great anxiety of course before the book came out which I think all writers do no matter the book but especially a Memoir because you realize you you're getting judged along. It's not just your writing. It's it's sort of your story too and So it was it was destabilizing and also I didn't feel somehow I hadn't really anticipated the degree to which
00:27:01
Speaker
people would connect to the story itself because of course I thought I had written, you know, one of the quirkier stories I knew of. I mean, it's not something that everyone's like, oh yeah, my mother did that too. But I think many people can relate to having a powerful parent, to the dynamics of that relationship.
Breaking Free from Family Patterns
00:27:25
Speaker
as well as to the, you know, the patterns that go down in families and trying to break free of them. So it was like, I didn't expect to have that conversation as much as I've had and to have people thank me for sort of opening a door onto that conversation. Um, but it has been, you know, you, you have to let people have their reactions, which, you know, in the beginning I kind of wanted to explain, no, no, no, that's, you know, not what I meant. I meant this, but, um,
00:27:55
Speaker
In the end, it's all valid, so the people who, you know, some people are obsessed with my betrayal of my stepfather or, you know, how did that feel? Or, you know, everyone has a different part that they're most interested in, and I think that probably says a lot more about who they are than what I wrote.
00:28:15
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. And as you were saying earlier how you're essentially trying to write this story with the right degree of detachment so you can have more shades of gray in the story.
00:28:34
Speaker
What was the challenge in doing that given that it's not like it's not like this is, you know, fiction and made up where you can kind of paint those colors and these are real people that are real close to you. You yourself of course are a character in this too. So when something is as real and true as this, what becomes the challenge for you as the writer to step back and write with that detachment that you need to tell this true story? Well I think one of the
00:29:02
Speaker
gifts that I had, which not all memoirists have, is, you know, a significant amount of time to process it. I mean, I, you know, when you look at people, I, for instance, am in awe of Danny Shapiro writing inheritance almost in real time as she discovered that her father wasn't her father. She was writing this book. I don't, I couldn't have written this book in real time. This took a lot of
00:29:29
Speaker
maturing and being away from it and processing. And, you know, some people can write grief books about loss or addiction or whatever else. So I think that the thing that was helpful for me in this book was really that marinating time that I had thought about this for years, not necessarily a book, but in the writing of it, it was almost this way to
00:29:57
Speaker
know how I thought about it, to put down in words to finally sort of express how I had always felt. And it was really a study of getting every right and true word to match those feelings. So it was a very satisfying process. Once I was sort of had my butt in the chair to do it, you know, a lot of people have asked me, you know, was it incredibly painful? Was it reliving? And you know, it was all of those things, but mostly,
00:30:27
Speaker
Mostly, I found it very helpful to put it down exactly as I wanted to, as I needed to, and to express all the nuance of it.
00:30:45
Speaker
Where did you, if you did, over the course of the writing of the book, did you find yourself pumping the brakes in various areas where there was a resistance to wanting to dive into a certain rabbit hole that eventually you just like, no, I gotta be more unbridled here?
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's an interesting question because I think I've always sort of thought, both as an editor as well as a writer, there's sort of, I'm sure there are many more kinds of writers, but if you were just sort of making this loose separation, there are writers who sort of go down absolutely every rabbit hole, you know, so they write just this sprawling, you know, there's no thought that doesn't make it to the page and then
00:31:36
Speaker
all the work is in scaling back and finding the thread of the story and seeing that through to the end. And then there seem to be the writers who, if they don't outline, they have a very specific idea of the trajectory of the story and then kind of build upon this sort of skeleton and flush it out and flush it out and flush it out. And I'm definitely more of the latter than the former, although
00:32:03
Speaker
You know, there was a lot of stuff I wrote and just threw out, because one of the things that you, that I think most memoirists try to do is, you know, it's not autobiography. It's not every single thing that happened to me. You know, as I wrote in the author's note, like friends and lovers are edited out, like whole swaths of my life aren't in there. This is a shaped and crafted story. It's true, but it's like one little piece of it. So my guideposts were just sort of always
00:32:33
Speaker
keeping the focus on this particular relationship. So I didn't go down a lot of digressive paths with, you know, other relatives or, you know, I mean, I, I included the people who were part of the story itself, but I tried to, I tried to hone sort of closely to just that piece of it. If that makes sense.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Yeah, because you do have to zoom in and be super selective. And as I was reading it too, I'm like, I suspect her father probably played, it was more prominent in her life, but this isn't that story. Oh, yeah. I mean, father, brother, stepfather, step siblings, they were all there. But part of it is that this book is ultimately about keeping a secret, about storing that and what that,
00:33:26
Speaker
what that did to me. And I mean, I think one of the most complicated parts of keeping a secret, of course, is that it keeps you from being known or authentically known. So whether that's with boyfriends, friends, lovers, teachers, whoever, you are holding a whole side of yourself in there. And that didn't involve, I mean,
00:33:48
Speaker
It involved all those other people in as much as I was keeping the secret from them, but it was just the dynamic with my mother that I wish to explore in this book.
Secrets as Psychic Poison
00:34:00
Speaker
In what ways did harboring the secret start to really poison your life and maybe even infect those around you too as this thing was kind of rotting you out from the inside? That's a very graphic way.
00:34:23
Speaker
young who said, you know, secrets are like a psychic poison. I mean, they very much are. And it's just sort of what I said. You know, I imagine it's like someone who always knows they're gay but can't tell people. I mean, like, how do you actually have a best friend if they don't know something so fundamental to your life? This was the most fundamental. This was sort of my seminal story. And, you know, the other thing, which may or may not be obvious to people, but
00:34:53
Speaker
You know, it's one story. It wasn't like this was the only secret in our household. Like, so, you know, my brother had his, I had mine. It was, we grew up in this environment where it was the norm. And so I think it has taken, you know, it took a huge act of will at some point to say, this is not the life I want. Like how do you undo something so fundamental to
00:35:23
Speaker
your upbringing and and your family history as i said my you know my mother discovered both my parents had a half sibling they didn't know about as children um you know so there's this really goes back and then how it how it continues to exist even though i feel on the one level like i've done the work between talking about it writing about it reading all sorts of stuff being in therapy those types of things but there's this story at the end of the book um
00:35:53
Speaker
which I just love because it just, you know, this is where you, you can't undo everything, but after my, my father-in-law, so I'm happily married. I have two children. Um, my husband's from this lovely, very functional family, which is foreign to me. And when his father died, we all descended on my wonderful mother-in-law. So,
00:36:19
Speaker
There were 6 siblings in my husband's generation and 15 grandchildren and we all show up and we're all telling stories and all this. And at one point, one of the adult grandchildren finds a locked stainless steel box in the basement and he rushes this up and it's put on the dining room table or the kitchen table.
00:36:40
Speaker
And everyone in this room greets this as, like, great news. What could be in the box? You know, they're just beaming. They're excited. It's like a message from beyond. And I alone am thinking, like, what? The what? The what is wrong with you? Like, this is not good news. And I have a toddler at the time, and I'm looking at my husband thinking, like, good God, get this box away from your mother. Are you all on crack? What's going on? I am convinced that
00:37:10
Speaker
something disastrous, like they all worship this man, like we are about to find out about some disgusting fetish, some illegitimate child, some lovers, like whatever it's going to be, like none of us want to know this. And I'm breaking into a sweat and they're, you know, they go from bobby pins to, you know, a crowbar to open this thing.
00:37:31
Speaker
And of course it pops open and out come all these love letters that my father-in-law saved from my mother-in-law before, during their courtship. My husband just looked at me like, you know, what is wrong with you? And so that's my paradigm. I mean, that's the way I view the world. Like I don't think I will ever find a locked box and think this is probably good news. I mean, it just,
00:38:00
Speaker
You know, that's one of the legacies, right? Yeah. In the book, too, you write that I was 27, but I felt so much older as if the best years of my life had already slipped past me, not fully lived. And at that point, how do you go about reclaiming those years that you thought you lost? Well, slowly, right? I mean, I think I don't actually
00:38:29
Speaker
And it's funny hearing you read that line because I do remember feeling that and I no longer feel sort of the regret from it. I mean, it's the life I had and I am in a good place. And I, you know, in that way that I think when I reflect on the past, I think if any one of these threads were different, you know, my whole life might be different. Like it's sort of dangerous to sort of say, yes, if only this didn't happen, then I could have had another life. I mean,
00:38:57
Speaker
I like where I am. I like what I do. I love my family.
Processing Hardships
00:39:03
Speaker
But I don't think anyone escapes difficulties in life or tragedies. And I think we process them as best we can, and we get through them fully. But I think you have to face them to move on successfully. I really don't believe putting the blinders on and proceeding is
00:39:27
Speaker
successful for many people. Yeah and I think that that parlayed into this this this other other part where you write the thought of pursuing a creative life in whatever way I could made me happier than I'd felt in years and it goes to what you said earlier about trying to find that agency in your life and it finally happened right? Oh it absolutely did I mean I one of the things that I'll say about
00:39:55
Speaker
my literary career is that, you know, I mean, during much of it, I never made a whole lot of money or anything else, but I, I have enjoyed pretty much every day of my working life. I mean, you know, there are obviously bad days and so on, but like I'm doing something I love and something I believe in, whether that was as a story editor, a book editor running Aspen words, which is the nonprofit I run. I mean, it just, it's so fulfilling giving
00:40:24
Speaker
voice and attention to stories and, and, you know, seeing, seeing how they help people. I mean, hearing other people's stories is sort of sharing stories or sharing our humanity. So it's all such a positive. It's been such a positive way to go through life for me. You know, other people want to do, you know, whether you're a doctor or what have you, but I think
00:40:49
Speaker
Finding a thing that you love to do and actually sort of enjoy walking through each day is what could be better.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah, and you helped Shepard four stories that would win the National Magazine Award for fiction. So that must have been just an incredible experience to be the person to help develop these stories that went on to gain some cultural traction. Oh, it's been so great because, of course, now Zoetrope is –
00:41:20
Speaker
30 years ago, 25 years ago. But it's so wonderful, like these writers whose first stories I published have now won, you know, National Book Awards and Pulitzer Prizes and, you know, are the writers on Game of Thrones or whatever else. But it's just, it's, yeah, it's very exciting and lovely. And I think, you know, all of us who work in the literary world, you included, you know, you
00:41:48
Speaker
The more citizenry, the more support of one another, I mean it all helps all of us, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think there is a mindset probably early and more early on than later when you feel like, especially if you get into like a comparative, almost toxic, jealous kind of mindset where you kind of look over your shoulder and you're like, ah, why is that person doing this? Like, I wish I could do that or I feel like I'm capable of that and I'm just not getting the opportunity.
00:42:14
Speaker
But I think maybe the more you develop, you realize, oh, when Gia Tolentino is writing this, and it's brilliant and beautiful, and if Adrian's doing this kind of thing, and you're inspired by it, it means, like, oh, they did that, so maybe if I just work hard, I can do that too, not they're taking something from me. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the fact of, you know,
00:42:38
Speaker
I mean, I so firmly believe, look, there is definitely natural talent. No question. But boy, so much of it is just is just working hard. It's like you're in a courtship of you have to show up and show up and write. I mean, it's not just sort of.
00:42:56
Speaker
waiting for inspiration for the, you know, that brilliant book, you know, just drops into your mind. I mean, you have to be there and usher it through and work hard. But yes, I think, you know, none of those authors started out writing brilliantly, right? We muscle along and then you turn up. I mean, you can even tell this in your own initial drafts. I mean, first drafts are
00:43:25
Speaker
generally bad for a reason and then it's just so magnificent to shape sentences and and see them emerge and squeeze the most out of every word and you know all of that.
Writing Process and Habits
00:43:38
Speaker
Yeah and you said muscling through and I love that I love that sort of that that image and and when you were writing this book or any of the other you know essays you've written over the years what does the muscling through a draft look like for you? I mean
00:43:55
Speaker
I can tell you I'm starting something. I don't even know what it is yet, but just, you know, every day just you save that different file that's slightly different and slightly different. I just, it's, um, so let me just step back and talk about my process a little bit. I mean, when I started writing wild games, so, you know, I have a job. I have elderly, sick parents. I have two children. Like it wasn't like, Oh,
00:44:21
Speaker
gosh, I've got plenty of time to do this. I actually magically had a, I went on a residency. So for two and a half weeks, almost three weeks, I was really allowed myself, which was, you know, guilt inducing and everything else to take time away from my family, to take time away from my job, to just go and immerse myself. And I got a toehold on the book, you know, then I sort of, I heard the voice, I figured out,
00:44:49
Speaker
the essential framework, which had been in my brain a long time, but down on a page. And I wrote several, the early chapters of it. And then when I came back to New York and got home, I remember seeing a writer friend who's very successful and writes beautiful novels. But she doesn't really have to work and she doesn't have children and she also happens to be
00:45:15
Speaker
I think a Buddhist priest. And she was like, yeah, all you need to do is write every day. And I remember my thought bubble was just like, what are you talking about? Like there is no part of my world that I can write every day, but I realized she was right. And I started not with any grand idea of writing for hours a day, but I had, I usually got up at six 45 to get my children sort of fed and off to school.
00:45:40
Speaker
And I started getting up at 6.30, and then 6, and then 5.30, and then 5. And somehow touching something every day is really important to me. It just connects me very solidly to the material. And then once I'm super connected to it, then it's like everything I absorb in the world, from the walks I take to the books I read to the conversations I have, are all filtered through
00:46:10
Speaker
my thoughts about the book and I it's like it's like sort of a net in the ocean I'm able to sort of collect the things that I need from my daily life that then when I touch it the next day sort of infuse it somehow but muscling also is just like when a paragraph sucks you know it sucks you've got to just sit down and you're longing to go on but you you have to figure it out and you have to make you know in the end you have to make every word thing which is not
00:46:38
Speaker
easy or pleasant all the time. I mean, it's one thing to sort of get all the ideas down and that's bad for a draft. But then the muscle part to me is in the editing, is in the just pushing through and not letting yourself be lazy or not. And sometimes you need friends and readers to help you with that because we can all have a blind eye to the sentences that are bad. But usually when you have someone go through it and sort of
00:47:08
Speaker
put check marks where something isn't as good. You're always nodding your head. You're like, yeah, I knew I was letting that one. Just hoping for the best there.
00:47:18
Speaker
There's something very empowering about even just doing a little bit every day. I've even set just a timer for, let's say, 20 minutes and just do what you can in 20 minutes. For one, you'll be surprised how much you can get done in 20 minutes. And then it becomes sort of addicting, that flywheel starts and you're like, I can't wait to get to the next 20 minutes on the next day. And it has this Newtonian momentum to it. Absolutely. I mean, I feel like it's almost
00:47:48
Speaker
You know, I suppose this is the most benign way or boring way of putting it, but it becomes a habit. So in the same way that if you run every day, you don't feel well. If you don't run or if you meditate every day, you really miss it. If you miss a day, that's how I felt about writing and actually when I was finished.
00:48:09
Speaker
I mean, it took me a long time, because at that point I was getting up at 4.30 in the morning. It took me a long time just to shut those characters up, who like, I would wake up and they would start talking to, you know, it was sort of, I was, oh, I'd been in the head of that book for two years. And, you know, I kind of just thought they'd know they were done. But they did not. They talked for a good six or eight months afterwards. So it's just, it's,
00:48:36
Speaker
It is a habit. And of course, we all have such a finite amount of time. But you have to give something up, unless you really don't need to work and don't have children and sort of lives that are complicated and everything else. But for most of us, if you don't have enough time, how can you make time? Will you give up television or you give up your morning trip to the gym?
00:49:05
Speaker
you know, you don't drink from nine till midnight anymore, whatever it is. You know, it's simply, it's a decision.
Finding One's Voice in Writing
00:49:17
Speaker
And what was the, you know, for someone like yourself who coached and edited a lot of great writing along the way, and what was that moment like for you to give yourself permission to write your story, given how much you were giving of yourself to other people's stories?
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think part of the reason I was able to to write Wild Game is that I wasn't actually sort of actively editing that in that time. I mean, the I love the fact that I'm still in the literary world, but I'm doing something entirely different than I did for much of my career, which is I'm still sort of supporting writers, but I'm not as as sort of immersed in
00:50:03
Speaker
the creative process with other people and I know some editors are able to do that but I found that to do that piece of my life well it is such a creative act to edit and to be as involved as you need to be to help someone because you essentially have to really put their helmet on your head and see the world of their novel or their memoir or whatever you're working on with them and it's a pretty exhausting
00:50:33
Speaker
or, you know, depleting in a lovely way, but it's, you know, if you're doing it well, you're giving it your all. And I certainly didn't have then room beyond that to do my own writing. And the other thing I'll say is also I was able to read so much more also after I left editing, simply because, you know, when you're editing, you're reading so,
00:50:59
Speaker
so many manuscript so much stuff that you probably aren't going to be able to publish in your responding to that and um... and i i mean i think my reading reading of actual books probably tripled or quadrupled once i left uh... publishing which sounds counterintuitive uh... and then the only other thing i'll say on that point it's it you had said something earlier that reminded me of this but i don't feel like i felt as much
Overcoming Self-Doubt in Writing
00:51:29
Speaker
It was less feeling competitive or jealous of people's success, but I was daunted by how incredible some of the writers I worked with were.
00:51:44
Speaker
the internal critic in my own head would be kind of like, you're not going to be able to write like that, like give it up Dorothy kind of thing. Um, so, you know, I think we all battle whatever insecurities we have, but the problem with working with great writers, and I had the opportunity to work with, you know, many wonderful writers is just, you sort of think, well, I'm not, you know, who am I to think I can do that?
00:52:10
Speaker
Yeah, and that becomes the challenge, too, because that self-critical voice will stifle you. So you have to dance with that fear. Yes, you just do. And just to, you know, I just reminded myself time and time again that everyone, you know, every writer I know seems to feel this way.
00:52:38
Speaker
By that, I'm including the great-greats. They're like, I think this is the worst book I've ever read. Or the next day, this is brilliant. It's such a mercurial, I'm a genius, I'm an idiot feeling.
00:52:55
Speaker
And given that it's such a robust experience as an editor and then making the transition to write your own book, how successful were you or how did you take off your just inherent sort of editor hat? And that way it wouldn't get in the way of the generative process of getting the drafts done. Yeah, it's curious because of course the common wisdom is just
00:53:24
Speaker
you know what my son would call a sloppy copy. You just get it all out, you get it all out. And I am not quite that kind of writer. I mean, I definitely, I think in the generative phase, you have to be loose. You have to allow yourself to go down the wrong path a bit to, you know, to just spill. I'm not, you know, and then the editing part is definitely cleaning up the mess. And I tend, you know,
00:53:53
Speaker
The editing part of my brain will kick in pretty quickly, so I do need to quiet her as I do this, although I will say that my personal process, I am not able to move off of something that is too rough, meaning if I don't feel like I've got the scaffolding right in chapter one, it doesn't need to be perfect or beautiful, but if I don't feel like I've got that right,
00:54:22
Speaker
it's very hard for me to move on to chapter two, um, just for structural reasons. I just need to feel very sound in that I've, I've kind of got it mostly right. And then I can move on. Um, which, you know, I don't, I'm not recommending cause I think probably there's a lot of to say for just writing a freer, um, you know, start to finish, uh, effort, but it's, that's not easy for me to do.
00:54:51
Speaker
Yeah, that structure was in my notes, too. And I wanted to get your sense of your approach to it as well. And to that point, it's kind of alluding to that you need a rung on the ladder to kind of climb to the next one. Absolutely.
00:55:08
Speaker
At what point do you confidently come to the ending of your story? Like, do you kind of know where it's ending early in the process? In this case, I did not. Yeah, okay. Which sounds crazy because it's a life story, right? So it seems like, you know, well, that's one of the things memoir has going for it, you know, the story. But the fact is, you don't. You know, this book could have
00:55:32
Speaker
ended with the marriage, with my children, you know, with my mother's health. There are sort of all sorts of different places it could have ended. What I know is that, people told me, I wrote a very sort of almost novelistic style book, and I will say that various scenes were always incredibly clear to me in my mind.
00:56:00
Speaker
You know, one of the complicated parts of writing a memoir is, of course, you have this grown-up voice in your head telling you how to feel about the events that happened to you. And, you know, at least I wanted to actually write those events, especially the early events, without my 50-year-old self intruding and telling, you know, telling the reader what the lesson was here. You know, I had to shut her up and go from these
00:56:30
Speaker
these scenes that were powerful for me, like I always knew I would start with my mother's kiss and that night of waking up. I always knew, you know, certain like that dinner with my future in-laws, you know, that is one of the most powerful evenings of my entire life, the wedding scene, the necklace, like these moments I knew, so it was sort of
00:56:55
Speaker
arranging the furniture of the book in that way. And obviously this is mostly a chronological book, but then the decision of when to let the wiser older me come in, when to keep her at bay, all of those things were really studied efforts in the end. And so if my book is broken up into three parts, the first part is arguably where I was
00:57:25
Speaker
a child and relatively blameless. And the second part is when somehow of my own accord, I made my life more complicated. I leaned in when I should have leaned out, which is one of the areas I was most interested in, which was, why was I so, you know, moth to flame on this whole thing? Because I created some of the drama later. You know, I was interested in
00:57:51
Speaker
I understand why I might have done this at 14, but when I was 23, why was I still in there? And then the third part is sort of me reclaiming my life. And so sort of seeing them in distinct ways was also helpful to me. And I do think it's important to see a book in its parts and to understand what experience
00:58:17
Speaker
you're giving the reader as they go through it.
00:58:23
Speaker
Yeah, of course. Yeah, and it gives... Yeah, it's... Yeah, giving it that shape, that sequential nature in these sort of thematic chunks gives us something to glom onto and also just shows you as a character moving through this period of life. So like you were saying earlier about not being autobiography, like this is how you were able to structure it through this telephoto lens looking at this particular chunk of life.
00:58:53
Speaker
Yeah, and even if your reader isn't aware of that, I mean, you have to be. You have to be in control of the narrative in the end of a book, of course.
00:59:06
Speaker
And of course, to this, I think anyone who has self-involved parents will definitely connect to this.
Setting Boundaries in Parenting
00:59:16
Speaker
Both of my parents are self-involved in different ways, but definitely very self-involved. What's your relationship to that? Given that you saw
00:59:26
Speaker
you know the way the way your mother was in that detachment then at becoming a mom yourself. So what was your relationship to you know self-involved parents and how did you end up ultimately breaking that cycle? Yeah I mean it's been a very conscious decision and I think I spent much of my life working on it even before I had children. You know just just
00:59:53
Speaker
Who did I want to be? Did I want to be an honest person? What does that mean? All those things. But, you know, with having children, of course, you know, we all parent either in reaction to or replicating what we liked in our own parents. And, you know, my parents had a lot of great qualities, too. I mean, they really were
01:00:16
Speaker
big personalities and lived in the world and lived large and lived by their own rules. And some of that stuff I truly admire. With my own children, in reaction, I would say, is I am very conscious of boundaries of wanting to be their parent and being wary when one has the impulse to be their friends.
01:00:45
Speaker
And I hope to be both of their great friends someday when they're adults. Um, but it's funny, you know, having a 14 year old girl now, what I see in my daughter is of course this very intelligent, graceful, mature, you know, to all outward appearances. This girl looks like a woman and she has, she's sensitive and she's sweet, you know, and, and I can totally understand the lure of
01:01:13
Speaker
wanting to talk to her about stuff. I mean, you know, I get it. But the other thing about having a daughter at 14 and writing about, you know, a self who was 14 is, of course, we remember 14 really differently. So it's been such a gift to actually see that despite how she looks and how she behaves, she's also a child, like she is so young. She's
01:01:36
Speaker
you know, can be so serious and then you see her skipping and with a bunch of stuffed animals on her bed and you're like, okay, yes, this is a child. And so, you know, that is kind of just a marker for me is, um, never, you know, obviously I'm not worried about doing the same things that my mother did, but sort of, you know, just, just having clear boundaries of, of what I,
01:02:04
Speaker
tell her about my own current feelings about things, you know, like if I were mad at her dad, like that is not something, you know, that's grown up stuff that I need to handle on my own, those types of things.
01:02:16
Speaker
Well, that's great. Well, well, Adrian, this was, you know, so great to get to talk to you about your writing and
Connecting with Adrien Online
01:02:22
Speaker
the process. And of course, your wonderful memoir. And we're kind of up against our time. So I just want to, you know, ask you, you know, where where can people find you online and get more familiar with you with in your work and maybe connect with you online and and get more familiar with your stuff? Absolutely. Well, I am on
01:02:42
Speaker
Facebook, all of these things are just my name. And Instagram, Twitter, I'm going to admit, I'm not a good tweeter. I make efforts, but it's not my natural, I don't know, I don't handle the pithy sound bites that well. And I also have a website at adrianbrochre.com. But I love being in touch with readers. And thank you so much for this interview. It's been great.
Episode Conclusion and Call to Action
01:03:11
Speaker
We did it. We made it CNF-ers. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure you're subscribing to the show. Of course, this crazy show is produced by me, Brendan O'Mara. I make the show for you. I hope it made something worth sharing. And if you really dig the show, leave a review on Apple podcasts. Show notes are at BrendanO'Mara.com.
01:03:31
Speaker
Follow the show on the various social media channels at cnfpodacrossamall. Get that newsletter at my website. Win books, win zines, hang out with your buddy BO. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it. Are we done here? We must. Because if you can do interviews, see ya!