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Episode 446: Harrison Scott Key and the Plight of Memoir
358 Plays23 hours ago
Harrison Scott Key knows how to write a funny book, and he did it again, this time with How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (Avid Reader Press). Only this time, he found a way to find the funny as his marriage was under duress.
Sponsor: The Power of Narrative Conference. Use CNF15 at checkout for a 15% discount.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Excitement for Steve Prefontaine's Biography
00:00:01
Speaker
Front Runner, The Life of Steve Prefontaine is available for pre-order. I've gotten some nice notes from people who beat that link like it owed them money. You can visit the bookseller of your choice, be it Powell's Bookshop dot.org, HarperCollins.
00:00:16
Speaker
Barnes and Noble, and yes, even Amazon, I don't care, I don't discriminate.
Significance of Pre-orders for Authors
00:00:20
Speaker
Plunkdown, 32.99, or 65.98, or 98.97, everything helps. Every author you know under the sun begs for pre-orders, and you only have so many dollars at your disposal, and it's ah it's challenging, because you're like, that's not a little amount of money, and if you order it today, you're not gonna see that until May, and that's just, you're like, ah if you're gonna spend something, you like to get something.
00:00:46
Speaker
Like right away, we're kind of conditioned that way. Anyway, consider it.
Incentives for Bulk Book Orders
00:00:51
Speaker
Hell, if you order five or more, email the receipt to me and I'll be sure to do, nah, private book club kind of thing for you and your you and your crew.
Narrative Conference Promotion
00:01:03
Speaker
All right, bullets and promotional support for a creative nonfiction podcast is brought to you by Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28th and the 29th, three to 400 journalists from around the world.
00:01:20
Speaker
will descend on Boston. Keynote speakers include Susan Orlean, Connie Shelton, Dan Zach, they'll deliver the knowledge, and then I think it's just announced closing Keynote will be none other than Connie Chung. Listeners to this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the CNF 15 code. To learn more, visit combeyond.bu dot.edu and use that CNF 15 code for 15% off your enrollment.
Storytelling Style Preference
00:01:58
Speaker
three days out right i feel fucked up and you know depressed I like to write books that sound more like someone telling a story over a campfire. Then you gotta keep moving on because tick-tick, you know, tick-tock. This is gonna have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Harrison Scott Key's Memoir Discussion
00:02:17
Speaker
Hey there, seeing efforts, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan O'Mara, the voice of a generation. Who do we have today? Oh my gosh. Harrison Scott King, he's back, I think it's his third time on the show. We've recorded this back in June of 2024, right around the time that his latest book, How to Stay Married, the Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, published by Avid Reader Press. It had come out, recently come out in paperback.
00:02:51
Speaker
We were supposed to talk during the hardcover run, didn't happen, talked the last June, yada, yada, yada, I'm finally getting around to it. It's an amazing memoir. Harrison's third, the world's largest man, being his first, and congratulations, who are you again? ah His second.
Public Reaction to Memoir
00:03:11
Speaker
And what a great conversation this was about how he responded to just the onslaught of media and the book promotion and how heavy that was and the cost of writing his most raw, personal, and vulnerable memoir, but still very funny. You know, a lot of people dumped their baggage on Harrison ah during the promotional tour and the promotion of this book. Turns out marriage is falling apart. It's big business.
00:03:41
Speaker
Spoiler alert, Harrison and his wife are still happily married, but it is the craziest love story, most insane love story you'll ever hear, and it's a great read. It's a great read. What Harrison pulled off in this book is pretty spectacular and I highly recommend that you take some of that holiday money you got.
Engagement with Audience and Live Events
00:04:01
Speaker
and plunk it down on how to stay married or pre-ordering the front-runner. Show notes of this episode more at brendanomare.com. Hey, there you can read parting shots, blog posts, and sign up for my monthly rage. Here's the algorithm newsletter. Links to cool shit. Book recommendations. An exclusive happy hour.
00:04:21
Speaker
in ways to live a more intentional online life or something resembling that. Hey listen, are you in Eugene, the Eugene area, for Sunday January 19th at 1 p.m.? I'm doing my first ever live podcast recording with the writer and journalist Chandler Henderson at Gratitude Brewing. I have no idea what I'm doing and it will be fun.
00:04:46
Speaker
This is part of the Oregon Writers' Colony, and something me and President Ruby McConnell are doing to make Eugene a literary destination on par with Portland. Grab a beer and pack the house. Okay, Harrison.
Memoir Writing Process Insights
00:05:00
Speaker
He is at Harrison Scott Key on Instagram. You can learn more about him and HarrisonScottKey.com. Tom. And he's here to talk about how writing a memoir is like reviewing the security footage of an event, how this book was a lot. Emphasis on lot. The cost of writing a super personal memoir, the character of you, structure and shaping, and how this book was like writing a true crime novel where the murder victim was his marriage. Great stuff. Stay tuned for a parting shot about galleys and so forth.
00:05:35
Speaker
But right now, we're gonna deal with Harrison, alright? Riff.
00:05:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think you just you deserve that kind of break from it, given ah just how yeah heavy heavy the material is and how you got to, you know, not only did you live it and you wrote about it and then you got a tour on it and then talk about it again. So it's like constantly rehashing, ah you know, very ah just a very problematic and traumatic time in the both are your whole family's life. Yeah, that's that's a big part of it. It's um Um, to your point about, you know, the material being so awful and raw, uh, and traumatic that, oh, here's how I'll say it. It is, this is definitely, probably for obvious reasons, been the hardest book to promote personally. I mean, it's, it has, it outsold my other two books combined already, like within three months of it being out, it already outsold the others. So clearly struck a chord.
00:06:48
Speaker
And I've written renowned fiction books. And so I'm used to when I write about my life, I'm used to people sort of interacting with me in kind of a weird way. Like they know me. I'm not a celebrity. I'm not even really a famous author by most metrics.
00:07:07
Speaker
people I'm gonna jump in for a moment right here, point being Harrison's volume went way down. He was for a time, I think, pacing around his office as he was talking. And I shut that shit down. I was like, Harrison, you get the fuck right in front of your fucking laptop.
00:07:28
Speaker
Or I'm gonna, I end this interview. that That never happened. But I did say ah to stand in one place or or in, that and that way the volume, it improves. It does. It really, really does. Get really weird around me because readers do because they feel like they know me and they know my deepest arc of secrets and I can make people act a little funky.
00:07:55
Speaker
very familiar, way overly familiar, which is incredibly off-putting. And, I mean, there's no way around that. That's just how it is. And people tell you all about their marriages. They tell you every terrible thing that they've ever done or that's ever been done for them. Like, you're talking about your, like, people driving me around at festivals or people hosting me at universities or people at bookstores, DMs, emails. It is a lot.
00:08:25
Speaker
And I knew it would be a lot. I did not realize how hard it would be to deal with all of that because I've done it. You know, I've had these other two nonfiction books come out, so I'm used to it, but this has been so strange. And so the way I describe it to people, it's like, all right, so living through the very difficult events of my marriage, that was definitely the hardest thing, staying alive and keeping my family together.
00:08:50
Speaker
And then writing about them was very cathartic and very healing. And it was was hard because you were having to kind of, you know, when you're writing nonfiction, especially autobiographical nonfiction, you really are sort of astrally projecting yourself back into that scene, back into that place to
Emotional Challenges of Memoir Writing
00:09:08
Speaker
sort of get the details and remember how it felt. And that can be a clear, that's one of the most fun parts of writing.
00:09:15
Speaker
is to sort of project, using your imagination to project back to a moment and try to remember it and try to see it again, almost like you're reviewing the security footage of this event. And I love that part, but when you're, you know, when you're writing the stuff that I wrote about, about my wife and me, it's really hard. Like Lauren could tell, this is like, it's always really writing the book in 21 and 22. And twenty two and she could tell if I was working on a particularly like delicate difficult chapter because I would just you know i would come out of my office and I would just look like I would just go to a funeral and she could tell and she's like maybe you need a break or I can tell you've been working on something you know especially traumatic today because you you don't see yourself so I thought that was actually harder
00:10:07
Speaker
And then, you know, when I ended the book and, you know, based in I'm not spoiling anything for people who haven't read it, but when I ended the book, I kind of said like, hey, here here's my story. Like I'm done with it.
00:10:20
Speaker
I'm ready to move on. And so I'm giving the story to the world. We are giving the story to the world. And what's, as you said, so ironic about it is that as soon as the book came out and the story sort of out of my hands, I had to, you know, I did probably three podcast interviews a week for like six months. And I went on the road. And so you're having to retell the story over and over and over.
00:10:45
Speaker
And I'm a funny guy and I write funny even a terrible tragic story has this terrible tragic story has a lot of comedy in it But that weirds people out in person Like it's they they either want it to be funny or they want it to be like hell They really can't handle it being both and the modulating back and forth between a funny story and a terrible story and a funny story and this all terrible thing happened. and so It's just been exhausting. I mean, I feel like I um need a master's degree in marriage and family therapy. At this point, I get so many inquiries about marriage and people want me to call them. ha for They want Lauren and me to come stay with them at their house and visit with them. And it's like, no, dude, I'm just a writer, man.
00:11:32
Speaker
So i that's that's why I'm happily not promoting the book. I'm like, it's out there, it's doing its thing, it doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah, what a I think a lot of people who write memoir, especially something that really cuts close to the bone, they might ah underestimate ah just how much, not that you underestimate it, but a lot of other people might underestimate just how, or that ah parasocial that that that feels where the people feel like they know you to the extent that they can start to spill their guts and you gotta,
00:12:00
Speaker
somehow metabolize that and carve out some boundaries for yourself and even a way for you to process the experience as it has been imbued upon you by other people. So you know what did you do to just try to keep people at as best at arm's length, if not farther?
00:12:18
Speaker
You know,
Publicity and Personal Boundaries
00:12:19
Speaker
I was, I was so eager when my first two books came out. I was so eager to be discovered and for the book to blow up that, I mean, you know, if you'd asked me to sign your dog's hind leg, I would have done it. And it was all kind of a joke.
00:12:37
Speaker
But it was also serious. like i I was hustling, buddy. I was trying to get all the attention I could on this work because this is one of the primary ways that I provide for my family. and I had no shame about... i mean i would I would agree to any event. I did ah did the weirdest possible events, you can imagine.
00:12:59
Speaker
Speaking of weird book events, 14 years ago, it's hard to believe it was that long ago, when Six Weeks in Saratoga came out, I did this horse show in the middle of upstate New York, and not just like Saratoga upstate New York, like interior Adirondack Park upstate New York, where there was just this giant horse ring, and I was wearing you know suit and tie you know everyone else is in cowboy boots and spurs and all sorts of shit like that and I remember doing a short reading in front of a microphone like on the outskirts of the horse ring and there's like some people riding their horses or training them in the middle and then I'm just reading this thing in front of people who that they seem to be paying attention but it was just such a a weird event and so I can totally relate and And I imagine you will have some very weird outlandish book events in in your life at some point or another. Be ready for it. Book events and speaking appearances and interviews and all that. I've done i've done all that. I'm shameless about it. But with this one, it was very different. And I realized that I needed to kind of
00:14:20
Speaker
i needed to protect my sanity. um Lauren did not, Lauren did, she's done a handful of book events with me. We had the book launch in Savannah a year ago. She came up for a Q&A and she's joined me for a few podcasts in the news. She's, she has taken it much better than I have. I mean, she hasn't dealt with the the brunt of it.
00:14:48
Speaker
But she's awesome. when i When I do an interview with her or she comes to a book event for a Q and&A, she's very funny. I think people love meeting her and seeing how funny and genuine she is. um But I've done most of them alone. A lot of them require travel and, you know, my wife works. And so I would hit the road and stuff. And I learned very quickly that I needed to sort of protect my sanity. And the way I did that was, well, I'll give you an example. So just today, somebody made person I know who's had a podcast and I met her through the podcast but she was very personal and personable and it was like we were instant friends and she was just very outgoing and she visited Savannah like a few weeks after we did this interview this was like a year ago and she had up some friends with
00:15:41
Speaker
And she was like, come get a drink with us. And so I told Lauren, I was like, all right, there's this really nice podcaster. I'm going to go have a drink with her because she's a professional courtesy. She said, sure, fine. But when I got there, like her friends were like, oh my gosh, we've all read your books. We shot our books. Let's take selfies. And it was a little weird. um um yeah know Five or 10 years before, I would have been like,
00:16:06
Speaker
Let's do it. You know, like, hack me. ah You want me to take my shirt off? You know, I would have done anything. And I'm just, you know, um I'm just older and I've got a few more scars. And and I was just like, yeah I was, ah you know, I humored them and I was a good sport about it. I didn't get, you know, surly or anything. But I definitely felt like, oh gosh, I couldn't imagine being a real celebrity. You would feel like you just wanted to crawl into a hole.
00:16:33
Speaker
And that was, and that was in in a sense, that was one way I knew the book was doing really well is because I was getting freaked out by the attention. And that was really bothering me. And it made me want to write a novel. I was like, oh, I just wrote a novel. You know, it might be awesome when people would want to meet me, but they're not they don't want to meet me and tell me all about my life that they've read about. And then this same person,
00:16:56
Speaker
And she's sweet and she'll send me a funny meme or she might tag me in an Instagram post about the interview that we did together for the podcast, whatever. She's very nice. But she texted me last night and she said, hey, I'm going to be in Savannah helping one of my friends find a house or something. Would love to meet up for a drink.
00:17:18
Speaker
and And I mean this when I say it, like there's nothing weird going on between me and this lady. She's very nice. It's all professional. She's a media person. And she was like, you know, would you meet my friend and me for a drink? She's, you know, she's read how to stay married and just loves it. I just told her straight up. I was like, I'm sorry. I don't want to meet this friend. She's like, well, do you not want to meet with me? I was like, no, I mean, you're, you're like a real person now. We know each other, but I don't, I don't want to go be a show pony for your, for your friend.
00:17:48
Speaker
That's the worst. Like you have to meet my friend. He used to play guitar and the strokes, you know, and then and all of a sudden that just becomes who you are. You show up at the party and everybody's like, they all want to like take a picture of you and poke at you. And that just feels so weird. So yeah, there's stuff like that that I just don't do anymore. People, I get, I get invitations to meet with people about once a week. So, you know, Savannah is a tourist town and so people are like, oh, just read your book and we're going to be in Savannah next week. We'd love to sit down and talk about your work.
00:18:18
Speaker
or we'd love to sit down and have you sign from the bar book, but I don't want to do that. And it feels bad. I feel like I should be a better publicist for myself. I mean, I would drop my kids off at camp last or two weeks ago, drop them off at camp. And two days later, my assistant sends me an email from some mom who had just dropped her kids off at camp and she's like, I was listening to your book.
00:18:48
Speaker
And you were talking about a summer camp in your book and then we were dropping off our kids. And then I looked at the website and I saw a picture of you and I knew that you must have just dropped your kids off too. And you know, can we meet when we have pickup from camp? I mean, it's just, um you just have to be a jackass. You know, like I just have to say no. So my assistant fortunately is very patient.
00:19:12
Speaker
He's a great, great, have an intermediary. So she'll always say like, I'll pass your message on to Harrison. I don't know if you if he's available, but I'll let him know. And that that helps me from having to be be a jerk to people who just want to meet you.
00:19:25
Speaker
I'd sound so arrogant what I'm saying right now, but it just with a book like this, yeah it's so psychologically spiritually intense and intense in every other way, relationally, emotionally, that
Reflecting on Memoir's Impact
00:19:37
Speaker
I'm glad that it's out there, but I don't want to, it's like a, it's a little bit like a radioactive bomb and I don't want to just sit there hugging it for the next 10 years of my life. I'd like to just let it be out there doing its own thing while I write another book.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yeah, like it feels like you're using that radioactive bomb and metaphor, it's like if you if you stay too close to it, it's just going to like, ah the radiation of it is going to just continually infect you and probably overtake you and kill you. A hundred percent, Brendan.
00:20:10
Speaker
Is it something, like now now that you've been like you know ah more or less a year removed from its ah initial publication, ah like is it something that given all the fallout that, do you regret having published it? Or you i come to terms with, like I'm glad it's out there? That's a good question. I do not regret publishing it most days. There are some days where I'm just like, I mean think there are things
00:20:39
Speaker
You know, there's a, the book is not highly religious, but, you know, if you read the online reviews that you would probably think it was, because I do talk about God and talk about the church and the religion. And that's definitely not the biggest part of the book, but that does, that does play a role in the plot and the narrative. And the Christian, the Christian literary community,
00:21:07
Speaker
which is very different than the Christian communities. um most A lot of Christians do not read and are interested in that, but there are a lot of a lot of the really glowing reviews are by Catholics and evangelicals and other people who were fascinated by the religious angle of the story and felt that was like affirming to them. And that's cool, but like they have so promoted the book on social media yeah And like, you know, when they'll, when they'll talk about it on Instagram, they'll emphasize the spiritual stuff. And it kind of makes it seem like the book.
00:21:45
Speaker
about marriage far Yeah. Like a handbook or something. Yeah. part Part of me, if I could go back, I've got to be honest with you. I would probably downplace a little religious stuff a little bit.
00:21:59
Speaker
so that it wasn't, I mean, I probably, I might even cut a couple of chapters out of it because I think it was distracting for a lot of people. you know Anything that is but has religion in it, the religion is sort of like, I don't know, it's like hot sauce. It's going to be very prominent in the whole mixture of the thing. Just a little bit of religion makes a book feel way more religious than it actually is. And I'd probably downplay that a little bit I think, you know, I played around with the structure of the book early on to make sure that have I treated the character of Laura and my wife very fairly in the book. And I wouldn't have changed anything about how I did that. I think I would change the title. How to stay married was like one of like 15 titles that I had for the book. And I think I would
00:22:52
Speaker
I think it would have changed the title, and I didn't come up with a subtitle. We had about literally 500 subtitles from the absolutely provocative, inappropriate, um with cuss words in them.
00:23:08
Speaker
and to to really anodyne, kind of flat, boring subtitles and everything in between. I do think it, I do love the book cover and the how to stay married, most insane love story ever told. It looks really good on a cover and I think that has helped sell it. But the how to stay married part feels a little pedantic to me, like obviously it's a cell phone club. Just reading, I don't read reviews.
00:23:34
Speaker
way fear and i lock them on my computer i any review that's a That's a good idea. Yeah, but early on, I was just seeing like, oh, a lot of people were mistaken for a self-help book. And I probably changed it. I don't regret publishing it.
00:23:55
Speaker
But I do think if I could go back upon this set, some parameters about the kinds of interviews I was going to do, the kinds of interviews I wasn't going to do. um Yeah, man. just I mean, it's just a lot it the price of art. I mean, if something epic like that happens to you and and you happen to be a person who writes about his own life, like Lauren and I both felt an obligation to tell the story.
00:24:22
Speaker
especially when we before the book came out we were telling our story to friends and just kind of getting their reaction to it to a person they were all like you have to publish the book like the world needs to hear this you don't there just are stories about marriages that are as honest as this where they where they didn't end in divorce or something worse And so we felt it needed to be told, but man, it's just, I don't know. You know, if, like, if somebody asks you, like, um, you know, if you have lung cancer and you got to take out an entire lung, like you don't regret taking the lung out, but you know, it's going to be a total bitch. You know, it's going to be a pretty awful year, year or three of recovery. And that's where, yeah.
00:25:11
Speaker
well A moment ago you mentioned something that yeah like yeah treating the character of Lauren in the book with respect. And Lauren, your wife, is a real person. But like in books and how they get shaped and written, even real people, even yourself, are characters in it where things are left out, ah certain things are heightened, maybe other things are toned down. So that is that's always tricky. So how did you navigate that over the writing of this?
00:25:42
Speaker
i mean know
00:25:48
Speaker
who I mean, all of, where much of nonfiction is about choosing what to say and what not to say.
Nonfiction Writing Techniques
00:25:55
Speaker
You can't say everything. You have to find ah the most meaningful moments, the biggest moments, and you have to tell the story in such a way as that people don't miss what's not there. ah So they feel like they're getting the whole story, even though, I mean, you can't tell the story of a life in a single book. Too much happens.
00:26:15
Speaker
So yeah, it would be hard to answer that quickly. But I did, you know, when I write nonfiction, I have a pretty standard process. And it's part of its very left brain and part of its very right brain. And I'm going to make it sound simpler than it is, but let's just say I'm going to write a nonfiction story about something that happened to me a couple of years ago. I'm going to start just by writing down, and where are you at?
00:26:46
Speaker
like this happened and this happened. Oh, I forgot about the dog. Oh wait, there was another dog and this happened. I remember it rained at this particular moment. Like I will write all that down to sort of download that from my memory and just put it on the page. And then you start to sort of get right brain with it and play around with the, what does it mean? How did we get here? Were there any feelings that like the more you remember, the more you remember, you know, so you, so it's, you know, feeling the layers of the onion. And, and so I'll start with this, literally this just giant list of all the stuff I remember, then I'll kind of try to put it in order of what happened. That is a very terrible story. Like it's not just all these things happened in this order. but That's not what creative of nonfiction is, but I put it out there because it's sort of like,
00:27:36
Speaker
It just helps me remember here were the boring facts of the story. And then usually in another column or on a different page is where I start to talk about feelings and emotions. How did I change? What was I like at the beginning versus the end? Why did I engage in this story? How did I get drawn into this story? Was this my doing? Was it someone else's doing? You know, when I'm writing book chapters from my first book, The World's Largest Man, a lot of those stories were not my doing. My dad made me do that stuff because I was little.
00:28:06
Speaker
I was young, I was playing football, hunting, fishing, working in the yard, all that stuff. He made me do it. So that was important to remember. like I didn't jump into this story. I had no choice. I was a kid. But then other stories, when you're older, you may have had a say. and doing this thing. Like maybe it's a story about going to a concert with your, you know, dying mother in Ireland. Well, you know, you have a you have a say in that. So i I start writing all that stuff down on a different page, and then start to try and sort of, you know, see the alchemy of it. Like, all right, what's funny here, I might open a whole new document of just, here's what's funny in this story.
00:28:46
Speaker
And then this part was funny like so I did all this for the book as I was I like I knew So these are all notes on the page. I knew that and I was gonna write a book about my marriage falling apart I knew I was gonna tell the story of our wedding. I mean, I didn't know where it was gonna go, but I that was a wild story and which involved the death of a family member and all this crazy stuff. And if anybody's read the book, they know the story of sort of our wedding, which is kind of one of the climaxes of the whole book, even though it happened way, way in the past. right I knew that was going to be in the book somewhere. So I knew that the marriage story was going to be there. I knew there was going to be the moment where my wife told me she was having an affair.
00:29:28
Speaker
um knew that That has to be in a book, this book. I knew that there was going to be, I knew that there were certain specific scenes that were going to be in this book somewhere and literally broke them on index cards and just spread them on the floor. I'm like, all right, what's first? Like naturally the brain tends to think chronologically. So, you know,
00:29:50
Speaker
The first thing would be, I met my wife. And the second thing would be, then we got engaged. And then we got married, and that's way in the front, on the left side of that spectrum. And when we're right is, you know, she had an affair, and we were separated, and da, da, da, and then she came home, and that's all sort of there chronologically. But that's always pretty boring. And people tend to get bored when they think they know what's gonna happen next. And so keeping it interesting by like, all right,
00:30:16
Speaker
the for Here's one example. So the wedding story, which happened when we got married in 2003, is such a heavy story and funny, but heavy. And I thought, gosh, if I put this at the front end of the book, it just didn't feel right. But it also feels weird to have one of the earliest events in the story at the end. And so what I had to continually do throughout the book is like, all right,
00:30:44
Speaker
How do I get the reader's attention? How do I let them know, like, you can beat this, but, you know, how do I let them know the shit's about to go down? Well, somewhere in the first chapter, I need to tell them, my wife had an affair.
00:30:59
Speaker
And I didn't know what to do. That's going to give people's attention. now It's not going to keep their attention for a whole book, but it's going to go to be a good start. I knew that was going to be first. And you can't say that without pretty soon after showing the scene where she tells you she's having an affair.
00:31:19
Speaker
So I knew i would I would have that scene come pretty short after that, shortly after that. And I wanted to end it with, in that particular chapter, I think it's like chapter two or three, with me saying, okay, like that's, you want a divorce, that's pretty heavy. Who are you having the affair with? And I thought I i was like, that's a great place to end a chapter. Cause it's going to make the reader go, well crap, I need to know who's she's having an affair with and turn turn the page. So a lot of it was about how to get people to turn the page.
00:31:48
Speaker
if they don't, if people don't read it, then the story can't have an impact on them. So I've got to find a way to keep them interested in the marriage of these two strangers and how it's falling apart. And so one of the, and this is the last thing I'll say to this question about the structure. I knew that the reader was going to expect me to be very upset with my wife and with ostensibly her boyfriend.
00:32:17
Speaker
and possibly other people but at least these two people so I needed to express just for catharsis I needed to I needed to show how angry I was but I couldn't stay angry that's a big turnoff in a book so I had to find a way to sort of express that like I had a whole chapter where I just threw this guy under the bus just reamed it like you would expect somebody to when you find out that you're having an affair with your wife or your husband. But I couldn't keep doing that for the whole book. I had to like do it, get it out, sort of vomit it out, and then move on past this guy to get to the real question. I think about my wife and me.
00:32:55
Speaker
So a lot of it was just about modulating how the reader reacts to us. Like I knew before I told him about the affair, I was gonna have to tell him how awesome my life was. Sweet, funny, a great mom. Like I need people to see how awesome she was because that's why I was so shocked by the affair because she's just, she's a better parent than I am. She's kinder than I am. She's smarter than I am. She's funnier than I am. She has more friends than I do.
00:33:24
Speaker
Like, I wanted people to see that because I knew that. um If I just say, yeah, my wife had the fair, but then they're like, oh, what does she think? She must be a terrible person. So I had to show them that she wasn't before even told them about the fair. So that when I tell them, they're like, oh, crap, this is terrible. You don't even know who this woman is.
00:33:43
Speaker
And so the the the final key for me to the plot of it was that I really approached it as like a true crime novel. You know, like all great true crime novels, there's a murder at the beginning, somebody dies, there's death, somebody's got to investigate. And the thing that died was our marriage. And our marriage is pretty dead. In that very opening scene, the marriage is just dead. And we're there at marriage counseling, and you're pretty sure, like, we're not gonna survive this.
00:34:13
Speaker
And the book is really structured as an investigation. I don't say it that way and I never talk about that. It's just implicit. But the whole book is structured as me trying to figure out how could this happen? Who killed our marriage? Is it really dead? Can it come back to life? Who's guilty here? That was the real structure of the book. And once I've sort of figured that out, that it's an investigation,
00:34:37
Speaker
and and an inquiry into myself, into the mirror, into my past, into my wife, into this other guy. The whole structure just kind of came together at that point. So the sort of marriage, the wedding scene, which happened so long ago, fits perfectly near the end because that's like sort of the final clue about what happened to this marriage. So I'm like, oh, okay. So it's like you find this clue at the very end. So that's how I ended up structuring it.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, and I love how you're you know you're you talking about the structure of it was very um very good. It was one of the notes I had, because it was there is a distinct shape to the story. You know they you get that, the the marriage is killed, and somewhere in the middle, it's kind of rekindled. And you're like, this is a little too early for things to be resolving themselves. I was worried about that. I thought people are going to get to this reconciliation, which is in the first half of the book, but like basically near the middle. yeah We reconcile. and i'm like I felt I hoped that would be suspenseful. like People would see that and then see that they had 150 pages left to go and had to wonder like what is going to happen to make this book so much longer because it looks like they're back together.
00:35:51
Speaker
Oh, it totally had that effect. I was like, all right, are that there's not going to be 150 pages of denouement here. It's like, all right, when when is the other shoe going to drop? So one of the ways that I played with that is I would drop these little clues, like I think I, I don't know if I ended the chapter like this, but I said something like, we thought the battles were over, but you know the harder battles had yet to come. i Little things like that that just played the seed in the rear, like, all right, like some really bad stuff is still going to happen here, even though everything seems like it has worked out.
00:36:33
Speaker
And so I would try very intentionally to leave these little bright problems that would, at least if you're paying attention, let you know like, well, something's going to happen. And I knew that people would think, well, either he's going to have an affair. I knew some people would think that. Like when they got to the halfway point and we reconciled and she's pregnant and like things seem like they're OK.
00:36:56
Speaker
and they I knew if they saw that they still had half of the book left. And if they saw these little breadcrumbs and Easter eggs about the ah really bad stuff hadn't even happened yet, I figured they would think it was probably something related to to cancer, disease, a child dying. Maybe I was gonna have the affair next. Maybe she was gonna have another affair. Maybe this something's gonna happen with this other guy.
00:37:23
Speaker
I didn't care. i I wanted people to be thinking all that just to make them turn
00:37:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's so important, ah everything you're talking about, just from a story mechanics point of view of you've got your the chronology of the facts, and this is what you talked about earlier, and how do you modulate them and move them around so you are constantly creating tension, relieving tension, adding tension, and yeah we're following sort of those Kurt Vonnegut story graphs.
00:38:00
Speaker
you know throughout the thing where we're we're we're really riding that wave and that is that is the creative part of non-fiction and how you played with that I think is really really masterful and ah if we just read it from a story structure point of view and speak nothing of just how well you handle the writing like you could really see like oh this is how really playing with structure can really create the tension you need out of ah of a life, you know, an actual life. Yeah. Yeah. I knew there'd be long sections of the story that needed to be a montage. Like, you know, I knew that. Like, if if there were tent poles for this story, you know, the first big tent pole is my wife had an affair. We got to find out what happened. Another big one is I refused to leave. She refuses to leave.
00:38:55
Speaker
So stubbornness, you know, save the marriage. Then the third one is she she comes back, she breaks it off with this guy and she stays home. So we reconcile. And I knew that the next big tent stake was going to have to be, and then the marriage goes really south and she gets back with this guy. And then there's a big climax that precipitates an eventual reconciliation.
00:39:20
Speaker
later. So I knew those were like tent stakes, like where those were like high points in the curve on again structure. And so, but in some senses, there were, there were like years between these two of these high, high points. And so I'm like, all right, I gotta like basically yeah have to do a montage that lasts from 2018 to 2020.
00:39:42
Speaker
Like, how do I cover three years in a montage? And so, like, the pandemic chapter kind of did that. I was like, all right, well, there's this is about religion, too, and finding a community. It really isn't about church. It's just about finding a community. I knew I needed a chapter about the new church that we found and how cool all those people were.
00:40:01
Speaker
how surprised we were that they were cool and normal and nice. So that became like a little bit of a montage chapter and then the pandemic, that was a montage. But that was tough. I knew that that was probably hardest for readers and i I'm sure I lost a few readers right in the middle when we reconciled and we're just kind of having a pandemic. You're like, what's the point of the rest of this book? That was a real struggle. you know handle it is masterfully is I as my limited brain could.
00:40:31
Speaker
But that was a huge challenge in the writing, was how to flash forward and backward in time and how to keep their keep the momentum going forward. ah An actual human life doesn't have a lot of momentum. It gets pretty humdrum until a bit hits the shad. Yeah. ah Just a quick aside, are you walking around your office? Yeah, it's very small and I'm just kind of pacing.
00:40:58
Speaker
OK. There it is. If you could be as a little closer to your computer that'd be possible. It's um um I've been not noticing that the audio I can tell when you're getting farther away. I should have been a bit more assertive early on. um But yeah if you could just. Fortunately it's a very small office. It's literally like six feet wide. why don't Just stand here and. in front of the computer for you. Oh, that's what that's met much better. Oh, cool. Thanks. um Yeah, and also I think ah another ah interesting choice, and ah and a great choice, is to have you know a chapter written by Lauren in in her voice that ah appears towards thing you know the final 20% of the book. And ah you know what were the some of the discussions about including Lauren's voice on the page in the book?
00:41:44
Speaker
It was sort of her idea and my idea separately. I really wanted, I just realized that I don't remember where I was in the process. This is probably like winter of 22. Yeah, it was like winter, spring 22. So about six months before I finished the manuscript, um it just seemed like theyre needed i I needed Lawrence, I needed the reader to see that my wife was okay with this book existing in the world. And I could say something in an introduction like, thanks to my wife for letting me write this, you know but that that's one thing. And then her actual voice in the book is a very different thing. And so I played around with different ways of doing it. The first idea I had was to have her annotate the book.
00:42:42
Speaker
So there'd be footnotes, you know David Foster Wallace style, but they'd be in Lauren's voice and she'd be like, this didn't happen this way, or this is not how I remember it. Or when Harrison said this, this is what it felt like for me to hear that. And that honestly, like that would have been fascinating too. Yeah, I think it would have been fascinating, but it could also have felt like watching like a couple bicker at a... Yeah, yeah. like about yeah that yeah You get tired of it after a while, I think. It would be funny. like that That actually would have been funny for just one chapter. I don't like it when a book is written by more than one person and some and they sometimes use we and sometimes use I or they'll have a parentheses and be like, this is Sean here. It just throws me out. so I didn't want to do that. I thought it might be interesting to alternate chapters like I write.
00:43:38
Speaker
I knew my wife is so much more understated and introverted than I am. Like, I did want to be like, like I did, like if I describe a scene, then like on the next chapter, she describes the same scene from her perspective. I just didn't think, you know, she's not a writer. She's not, she doesn't want to sit in front of a computer for six hours a day for two months.
00:44:05
Speaker
So I just, I thought that would probably be asking too much of her. And so then I floated the idea to her about writing a chapter. I was like, I don't know what it is. I don't know what you, I don't know where it is in the book. I just feel like you could write some, maybe it's an introduction. Maybe it's an epilogue. Like it could be a lot of different things, but I felt like she needed to put her imprimatur on it.
Inclusion of Family Perspectives
00:44:25
Speaker
And then after she read the manuscript,
00:44:29
Speaker
She said she said she was shocked. She's like, I didn't think you'd be this funny she because I thought it would be a little more emotional and angry. I'm like, that's fair. I felt really, I was very flattered when she said it was funny. like I was like, I've really tried. I know that this is hard stuff. I didn't want to just make people sad you know for 10 hours of their lives. like I wanted this to be funny in the show that, I mean, there's so much that happened that was absurd that comedy just seemed like the best approach to a lot of the material. Like when you're fantasizing about killing your wife's lover, like that's that's funny. no matter No matter who's writing it, like that's comedy.
00:45:06
Speaker
yeah And she said she said, it's really good. She goes, but it does need a chapter by me. And I was like, yes, because I just, I didn't know what my editor was going to say, but I love the idea. So I told her, I was like, she's like, what should I say? I was like, I think you just tell your story. Like basically a little memoir in miniature.
00:45:29
Speaker
Like talk about your parents, talk about our marriage, talk about meeting Chad, talk about how that affair began, like let people see it through your eyes. And so her first draft was like 10,000 words long, it' probably three chapters long. not one And so we had a little like mini creative nonfiction workshop, you know, and I was like, I'm very hands off. And I was not like, tell her what to say and not say I knew that I had to feel authentic, that it couldn't be forced. I didn't want her like, you know, writing this chapter by gunpoint or anything. And so
00:46:10
Speaker
She just wrote and wrote and wrote, you know, and so then I she gave it to me and I read it a few times and it was very strange and shocking to actually read. My wife had been reading my stories about her for so long to have the tables turned. It was really strange.
00:46:25
Speaker
exhilarating and a little frightening too. And then I told her, I was like, all right, I'm going to make some editorial notes, but I'm going to have a very light hand. I'm just going to say like, so I would like, she would have a little detail about her childhood that didn't really add anything. I'll be like, you can probably lose this. It's like, you probably need to trim it down to at least like 5,000 words.
00:46:46
Speaker
And so I just told her what I would cut. There were a couple of places where I was a little unclear about what she was trying to say. So I'd like, you know, highlight it with that, you know, make a comment like, can you say more here or can you clarify what you mean by that? It's just very, very light, you know, light hand. And then I told my agent about it and she was like, oh, she was very doubtful.
00:47:08
Speaker
And my editor was very doubtful too, very positive. They understood why I wanted her to be in the book, but basically they just didn't know if she could write or not. Um, I mean, she hadn't written anything in the book proposal. She'd never published anything. So I think they were just trying to keep me from like telling my wife she was going to be in a book when it was ultimately going to be up to them too. And.
00:47:32
Speaker
When I read her chapter, her revised chapter, I was like, oh, it's so good. They won't be able to say no. And I sent it to them. Like when I, they didn't see her chapter until they read the full manuscript of the finished book. And they were, they were very impressed and they had no misgivings at all about including it. And I'm so glad she did. And the coolest part about her being in the book.
00:47:59
Speaker
is when you're listening to the audiobook and you don't realize that she wrote a chapter and then all of a sudden out of nowhere you hear her voice, like people say said that that was like the coolest audio listening experience they've ever had.
00:48:15
Speaker
because they've been thinking about this person for hours and hours of listening to the book and all this terrible stuff that has happened to them and because of them. And then out of the blue, you just hear her voice. They said it changed how they understood who she was when they heard her. And that to me it was definitely the coolest.
00:48:35
Speaker
How disorienting was it for her to be a part of the machine ah of the book and its ah publicity? you know You're used to attention to some degree, but you know you know, she's not. So this brought a lot of attention to to you guys and especially her. So how did how how was it on her? I think she she's been on book tour with me before. She's been at book events. So she wasn't completely new to it.
00:49:05
Speaker
And I was very protective of her. I mean, know you know, I'm doing all the business stuff and I'm talking to agents and editors and publicists. And so I didn't, I did not, I mean, that stuff can make you crazy like picking an interview time and preparing for an interview and all that stuff. It can be very overwhelming.
00:49:23
Speaker
So I told her, I was like, all right, I'm going to handle all this stuff. And if an interview request comes up, I'll let you know. If if a book event comes up and they they would like you to join me for the Q and&A, I'll let you know. And so um I just took all that worry off her plate because she has plenty of other stuff to worry about. And kind of was her wingman through it all. I was like, OK.
00:49:49
Speaker
so they're sending us book cover looks and we're going to look at them and just tell them what kind of what we think but there's one we really hate we need to tell them if there's one we really love we need to tell them and then we would do that kind of stuff together and she was she was great and I was just kind of saying all right here's what's going to happen now whereas before when it was just my books that I had written I didn't involve you know her or my kids in that process at all. And I did involve the kids. I mean, you know this is a pretty traumatic thing for your parents to have a book like this about their marriage. And so we engaged them in the process too. like they knew we were writing a i mean They knew that their mom laughed. They knew that their mom had an affair. They were here for it. They saw it all happen. They were younger at the time, and the youngest was 10.
00:50:42
Speaker
She was 10 or 11 when it all went down, which is still kind of young, and it's hard to get your mind around what an affair is, what a separation means. But then we were writing a book, and then when the book cover came out and it was time for me to start promoting it on social media, you know we would have a, while we were eating dinner, talk about that. you know We would say things like, all right, you're gonna seek, like two of them are on Instagram, because they're older, they have phones,
00:51:12
Speaker
I'm like, all right, you're going to see me post about the book and you're going to see me post links to it. And you might go click on the link and you might read the Amazon description and you see words like fidelity or divorce or da, da, da, da, da. And so we just talked about that very openly as a family. We didn't want to freak them out. I mean, my kids have, they've been on tour with me. They know what it looks like to promote a book, but this was a little bit different and much more sensitive.
00:51:36
Speaker
And so we both with Lauren and the promotional process, but also with the with children, like we make sure to kind of do it all as a family, like going into it together. And that includes our close friends. And so it's been a very hard year to keep promoting the stuff and keep talking about it. I mean, interviews with you, like for this, you know, you like to ask more technical questions.
00:51:59
Speaker
Two, you're interested in the craft and the process. that's That's a much happier, fun place for me to be. that that you know you're You get it. You're not just a guy with like a marriage podcast. You're not some pastor with like a marriage and family therapy. I've done podcasts like infidelity, exclamation point. I'm like, why am I like why am i doing this?
00:52:24
Speaker
um But we've all gone we've gone through it all together and that has made a very difficult year much easier because I haven't felt like I was doing it alone. that's good Yeah, and in in Memoir 2, as the primary you know the writer and the narrator and use the the main character in it, you know a bad point of craft is to make yourself too much of the hero. And I think in this story it could have been very easy for you to have played that role. yes And you do a good job of of balancing you know
00:52:55
Speaker
your culpability as ah you know as someone, it takes two to dissolve um a marriage usually. you know so yeah And so how cognizant were you of to to make sure that you know you were laying blame at your own feet as much as you were laying blame at others?
00:53:13
Speaker
Well, it's definitely a good rule of thumb that you are the villain of your memoir or if not the villain. um I mean, some stories, there's an obvious villain, but most stories there isn't. So always, you know, try to make, I tell my students this too, you know, try to, if you're not the villain of your story, you're at least the idiot of your story. You're at least the person who doesn't know what's going on, trying to figure it out.
00:53:39
Speaker
Readers have ah have very sensitive ears when it comes to writers kind of puffing themselves up. And you know when you're when you're writing a story, you have a lot of power. You literally quite literally are controlling the narrative. And readers that have to trust you. And so if you make yourself look a little too cool, a little too funny, a little too awesome, that's going to be a big turnoff.
00:54:06
Speaker
I mean, I write humor and humor is already a turn off for like, you know, humor is like food. You know, not everybody likes every kind of food. And I know that a lot of people are going to be turned off by my humor. I can't control that. They don't have to read my books. It's fine. There's a lot of funny stuff that I read. I'm like, how is this supposed to be funny? This is not funny at all. But putting that aside, ah you don't want to make yourself seem too clever, too intelligent.
00:54:35
Speaker
too interesting, too cool. you always and you know Humor does a good job of undercutting that. But even in books that are not traditionally funny, you can see the narrators doing a good job of their character in the book is unsure or naive or unclear or little lost or want something that they don't have. And that can give the narrator slash writer a little bit of underdog status that will help the the reader get on their side.
00:55:05
Speaker
And I knew it was going to be really tough with this book because when wife has an affair, she immediately becomes the villain and her boyfriend becomes the second villain.
00:55:17
Speaker
And even worse than that, I, as the narrator, become this martyr. And that is not a good place for any narrator to be, but unless it's funny. Funny can help with that. And so I was constantly modulating the tone so that I didn't you know sort of power grab too much in the story, because I'm already writing the story.
Balancing Power Dynamics in Storytelling
00:55:42
Speaker
That's already a power grab.
00:55:44
Speaker
And so when I had readers read the manuscript, um I had many, many women, artists, friends who I deeply trust read the manuscript. And I'm just like, please tell me, is this weird? Are people going to hate me for telling this story? like Help me find the moments where you where I lose the reader.
00:56:08
Speaker
And they were very good at saying, all right, this part was weird. Or they would highlight a section of dialogue and be like, it feels like you're being unfair in this section. or you know So they they really helped me get it right. There are some people who are going to read a book like this and instantly hate me. Even though my wife had the affair, and I was just minding my own business,
00:56:32
Speaker
i'm I'm a man, white um I'm I'm powerful, you know, being a man and being a writer and having a PhD and working at this great university and having these books and, you know, and she's this poor stay at home mom. People are going to think I'm abusive for writing it or but because of some of the things. I mean, I said a lot of stuff in there that makes you not like me.
00:56:56
Speaker
about how I treated my wife or about how I took her for granted or about how cool I could be when joking with her. And that wasn't just to get the reader to help the reader see that I was being honest. It was also for me to figure out why would she do this? Why would she leave me for this other guy? And so like maybe it was because I was a real asshole for a long, long, long time. And then other readers came back and were like,
00:57:23
Speaker
You know, I think Harrison was too hard on himself. i don't think I don't think anything he did or any way that he spoke to her would have merited her having an affair. But that's for readers to decide. i was just But I was very aware of the there the reader rooting for me or against me the whole time yeah and trying to keep it fair. And people who know Lauren and who know the other characters in the book um I felt very comfortable, you know, they said, look, you could have said things a lot more worse, a lot worse about your wife or about this church that you hated where they were very, you know, judgmental. You could have said things like, I was giving a lot of people, um I was putting a lot of people in much better light than probably they deserved. And I'm not talking about about my wife there, I'm talking about a lot of the other groups. There were a lot of really terrible things that people did
00:58:22
Speaker
before endearing and after this process that I didn't say. Because again, I don't want to look vengeful. I don't want to look bitter. This is really about our merit. Just not about those people. Yeah, if you're writing a memoir to settle a score, that's not a good place to to write from.
00:58:40
Speaker
No, no, I mean, you know, you could maybe pull it off, you know, you might be have to be brilliant to pull it off, or we could maybe pull it off in a short essay. But ultimately, that's just, that's too bitter. And people don't want that. and a You know, the 350 page book. Yeah. And I think you do a ah really good job throughout the book and it's not like there's these monumental indiscretions. It's often just these micro complacencies that take place over 20 years.
00:59:12
Speaker
that they just they add up to a lot and I think a lot of people can relate to that you know you're when Lauren has like migraines you're like well it's all in your head and it's like this little one-off little line but like if you if anyone who's ever had I've never had a migraine but I've had bad headaches I know migraines can be like you just want to die ah from people but if you know you take a little jab like that it's just like all I want is a little bit of empathy I don't need a joke right now and if you do that for 20 years little one-liners and little zingers they add up to quite a lot and you do that out in the book over the course of it enough to make yourself an unflattering character here and there and it balances everything out which I just think is a testament to your skill throughout this entire book.
00:59:55
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, I think it's good for people to see like, like nobody comes out clean in this story. I want people to be conflicted about how they feel about me. I want people to feel conflicted about how they think about Lauren because the the real story is, I mean, one of the more common stories, he's a guy, decent dad, decent father, decent husband.
01:00:19
Speaker
wife had an affair, she's evil and selfish, destroyed their family, she leaves, whatever. Like that's bait, that's the story that people tell like on the street about when something like this happens. And I did not want it to be easy. I wanted people to root for my wife. I wanted people to feel for her. Their natural inclination is going to be to judge her and hate her, most people. There are some very angry women readers out there who you know, love every man to be castrated in every book about men. um i've I've read their reviews. i won't I won't ever read their reviews again. but But your natural inclination for somebody who cheats is is you judge them, you revile them, um you look down on them. And so I wanted, I needed to give a reader something that would counteract that and compliment that.
01:01:10
Speaker
and make that harder to do. So I needed to show them, show Lauren being sweet and funny and awesome and a good mother. And then for me, the natural inclination is to pity me, feel bad for me, or you know what a cut, what a sad sap, or poor guy. So I needed to give them something to seat to to make me to villainize me a little bit. Oh, like, oh, he's an asshole. Oh, he's kind of a jerk. Oh, he's he really mean when he's being funny.
01:01:37
Speaker
Then it makes it harder to pity me. And so I'm just trying to, like, I mean, with Chad, you know, that my wife's boyfriend, you know, for many years, like, very easy to hate on this guy. And so there were very specific, very intentional moments in the book where I talk about, like, he was a nice guy. Like, he had a great yard. He cut his grass. He took out our trash and we were out of town. Like, those are important things to say because you're trying to complicate the reader's view of reality because reality is complicated and you don't want to give them a symbol. This is not a fairy tale. This isn't a fable. You need to show them how screwed up and strange and complex real people and real relationships are.
Journey of Creating and Promoting a Book
01:02:19
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's yeah it's a brilliant book, and I i love how you yeah just handled it from just a writing and a craft perspective. I think it it is a it's a great book to read from any any kind of angle like that. And ah as as always, it's just I got to commend you on another on another wonderful book. yeah I always love the trip that you take me on you know in your stories. Thanks, man.
01:02:42
Speaker
Brendan, I really appreciate it. I think you were my very first podcast interview to do ever, ever in my whole career for the Wishbone, which was like, I don't know, in 2013 or 14 or 15. It was before my book, my first book even came out.
01:02:58
Speaker
Um, so when I hear your voice, it's like, I just feel like, wow, it's like I've known you for a long, long time. It's wild. they I remember that you were episode four and you know, this is, this will be something 400 something, uh, by the time this runs and a yeah, 2013. So we're talking 11 years ago when we first, you know, quote unquote met.
01:03:20
Speaker
And, ah you know, we've had some really rich conversations about just ah doing this kind of work. And yeah, it does have a feeling of like, oh, we've kind of known each other for a while. It's kind of nice. ah Well, when you take your podcast on the road, we' we'll have to do something. We'll have to do a live event. Oh, I love that.
01:03:44
Speaker
Sweet. Yes. Awesome. Hey, thank you for listening. Thanks for coming this far. See you in efforts. Thanks to Harrison. We did it. Didn't we? The name of the book again has had to stay married. You can also visit Brendan American for show notes and maybe.
01:04:00
Speaker
go window shopping at patreon dot.com slash cnfpod we've seen a little uptick in subscriptions there and that's pretty nice things are getting spendy with the book and stuff on the patreon it helps it helps with that helps offset a lot of ah gear upgrades and i'm going to be making soon as well to bring you the best possible product Galleys are here, man. Photo at my website, printedonmarin.com. It's wild. This week has been insane. ah Spending nearly $1,500 on photographs for licensing. $650 on one. Yeah, one fucking photo. But we desperately needed an Olympics photo, and the Olympics is kind of the biggest set piece of the whole book. Man, that one stung.
01:04:54
Speaker
but I'm going through proofreader queries, drawing up the captions for all those photos, laying out a perspective design for the photos, getting my head around the messaging of the book, which I still have time for that, but I'm still trying to think about that so I don't ramble. A lot of people come on this show, haven't thought about the messaging of their book, and they tend to ramble. I try to edit that down to some degree, but as long as they're being interesting, I leave it in, but you can tell that people tend to ramble, and I don't want to ramble. I'm rambling now.
01:05:24
Speaker
Met with one of the organizers for the pre-classic here in Eugene. We're excited to kind of partner up and celebrate the life of Steve Prefontaine. So anyway, it's been a week. It's been a week been a lot.
01:05:39
Speaker
Got great business cards with the pre-order QR code on the back, like the hustle is starting. But it's not your average hustle. It's way more, I don't know, for for lack of a better term, one-on-one. Like I'm texting and emailing single people and like not blasting it out. Like I i am sharing it a little bit because I'm just excited.
01:05:59
Speaker
But it's laborious, a bit tedious, and sure, I like and like going door to door instead of passively putting up a billboard that 99% of people are just gonna drive by. The galleys are wild. I haven't held the one in my, one of my own books in my own two hands in 14 years. I think my publisher wants to forget that I actually wrote a book 14 years ago, and because inside the book, you know, it's like, also buy so and so. There's no mention of six weeks in Saratoga.
01:06:30
Speaker
14 years between published books. What the hell was I doing from 2011 to now? It's amazing how the time slips by from 31 years old to 44 and now I'll be 45 in the middle of this year. At 31 years old, I was a jealous, bitter dude working at a running shoe store while trying to still be a writer or a sports writer, writing long features for SB long form or ESP in the magazine.
01:07:01
Speaker
All those places, trying to make a living on something that wasn't in retail. College educated, MFA, working in retail. While all my peers, who they were just publishing widely widely and wildly.
01:07:16
Speaker
So it would seem few people knew how social media was warping our expectations of what a writing career looked like in this age. Since 2011, I worked in, let's say, landscaping, stacking produce at Whole Foods, working in a wine cellar.
01:07:33
Speaker
working at a bookstore, not as romantic as it sounds, all while trying to flounder my way through this morass. All the advice is futile. You know, I tried following the war and paths of generations gone by, and it led to a bitterness and frustration that I can barely describe.
01:07:48
Speaker
The only advice really is to pursue something as as long as you love it because honestly it's love of doing say this podcast or narrative that fuels you while you take on that day job or that contract job you don't tweet about.
01:08:06
Speaker
Or maybe you're lucky, like me, and after doing this for 20 years, you finally get a break. Yeah, maybe this parlays into another book. that That's my goal. That's been my vision, if you want to call it that. I can't express the luck it took to get here and being able to stay on the playing field. You know, there's a reason both my books have been dedicated to my marital spouse, partner, lady wife. The last line of my acknowledgements in the Prefontaine book is, thanks for the health insurance.
01:08:36
Speaker
You know, some people do make a great living as a freelance writer.
Financial Challenges and Creative Work Privilege
01:08:41
Speaker
You know, I'm thinking of the the Jen Millers of the world. You know, they can really support a life on that degree of work. But many writers need a day job, be that teaching or work in retail or baristas. Or they need a spouse with a steady paycheck and that dental insurance. Ugh, the dental insurance.
01:09:04
Speaker
We do a disservice if we benefit from such privilege and don't acknowledge it. Sometimes I'm asked how I make a living and I say, I really don't. The podcast makes a hundred bucks a month. Yeah, that's it. You know, and as of now, I don't take money for ads, not that it would even equate to anything. So it's just not even worth wasting your time with ads that aren't just promotional benefit kind of thing.
01:09:30
Speaker
Before I earned a good book advance, which I've been lucky enough not to really have to dip in too much, you know to the tune of maybe around six grand that I've needed, I worked three years as a part-time newspaper editor in the opinion section. I left just before they axed my entire section. That unemployment would have been nice.
01:09:49
Speaker
Point being, I think it the it does the whole community a disservice if you withhold the privilege that allows you to do a certain measure of this work. And I'm always very forthright that the spouse with the steady income and the insurance allows me to stay on the field instead of being like Moonlight Graham and having to step off and then die as many of you know I'm a bit bipolar in my screeds next week I might be ready to fling myself off a skyscraper but for now this week has been a clusterfuck of insane goodness I'll take it as it comes so stay wild see you in efforts and if you can't do interviews see ya!