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Episode 134—Harrison Scott Key on Finding the Nature of His Talent, Humor, and the Pull to Create
221 Plays6 years ago
"I always felt this indescribable pull to create something I'm proud of. 'Look. I made this,'" says Harrison Scott Key. Harrison Scott Key came back to the show to talk about his amazing work. Since that day way back in 2013, Harrison has published his first memoir The World’s Largest Man about his father, which also won the Thurber Prize for the funniest book in the country. And his latest book, Congratulations, Who Are You Again? Was my single favorite book from 2018. Do you subscribe this here podcast? You can find it just about anywhere and if you dig this show and others, link up to it on your social media platforms. You are the social network, CNFers. Rage Against the Algorithm. And if you have a minute or two, please give the show a rating over on Apple Podcasts. Follow the show @CNFPod on Twitter and @BrendanOMeara on Twitter. It also has a Facebook page. This is where we continue the conversation and I’d love to hear from you.
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Transcript
Introduction to Goucher College MFA Program
00:00:00
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two-year, low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on-campus residencies allow you
00:00:15
Speaker
to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni. Which has published 140 books and counting, you'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
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Speaker
visit goucher.edu forward slash nonfiction to start your journey now.
Audio Quality Evolution with Harrison Scott Key
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Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for nonfiction.
00:00:53
Speaker
Get a load of this. Get a load of this. This is hilarious. And believe me, there's context for this. You hear how buttery and warm my voice sounds now on episode 134 of this podcast? Check this from episode four.
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Harrison Scott Key is the winner of Creative Nonfiction's Southern Sin Essay Prize for his story, The Wishbone, which is about his father suiting up a too old Harrison to play people involved. He's great, right? You can just keep going. Gotta love that connection. I can elucidate you and inform you, or whatever the words are, about the rig that I had for those first maybe
00:01:37
Speaker
Seven or eight episodes it is primitive The Chronicle of higher education and teaches at the Savannah College of Art and Design It's my great pleasure to welcome the author of the wish okay now wait for it and wait for it Hit it
Harrison Scott Key's Award-Winning Memoirs
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Love that audio. The only thing that has stayed the same is that I'm still hosting this hot mess, and Harrison Scott Key came back to the show to talk about his amazing work. Since that day, way back in 2013, Harrison has published his first memoir, The World's Largest Man, about his father, which won the Thurber Prize for the funniest fucking book in the country. That's how they phrase it on the official release.
00:02:30
Speaker
In his latest book, his second memoir, Congratulations, Who Are You Again? was my single favorite book of 2018. And this book is kind of an origin story of how he wrote his first book. It's mind-blowing. It really is.
00:02:48
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I read a lot of books. How many books, Brendan? Shut up. Fact is, I read a lot. And this one was so funny, inspiring, and entertaining that I took it with me on walks. And when I found cracks in my schedule, I'd pick this thing up and read a few pages, if I could, while my boss wasn't looking. But we'll get to that.
00:03:11
Speaker
the book that is not my boss averting his eyes while I read, I guess I forgot to mention that this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft telling true stories. I also unpack their origins and how they approach the work in the face of day jobs and crippling self-doubt.
Engaging with Listeners on Social Media
00:03:35
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Am I projecting? Perhaps. If you subscribe to the podcast,
00:03:40
Speaker
You can find it just about anywhere, and if you dig this show and others, link up to it on your social platforms. You, my friend, are the social network. Rage against the algorithm, man. Rage. Rage against the algorithm. And if you have a minute or two, give the show a rating over on the Apple Podcasts.
00:04:02
Speaker
Follow the show at CNF Pod on Twitter and at Brendan O'Mara on Twitter. It also has a Facebook page. If your stomach's turning, so is mine. This is where we continue the conversation and I'd love to hear from you. What else? Oh yes, head over to BrendanOMara.com for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly newsletter. It's chock full of my reading recommendations and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. Once a month, no spam, can't beat it.
00:04:32
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Today's episode is also brought to you by the verb dread. Jane was dreading the party. Dread. Anticipate with great apprehension or fear.
Editing Challenges with Harrison Scott Key
00:04:45
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So Harrison came back to the show, and as always, I try and cut these interviews down by 10 to 15%. It makes everyone sound better. And I simply couldn't do it with this one. He's just such a good talker, a great storyteller, and just a funny person to be around.
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So I couldn't cut it, couldn't do it. So I hope you enjoy the big man himself, Harrison Scott Key, the notorious HSK. Thanks man. You too. You sound handsome and intelligent and wise. Oh wow. That's the first time I've ever heard that. Thank you so much. It could be a bad connection. You know what? I think it's true.
January Dislike and Setting Practical Habits
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Speaker
I can't believe it's been, um, over five years since we first talked, uh, since spoke when, uh, the wish, when you won the Southern sin contest out of creative nonfiction with the wishbone, it's kind of crazy. It's been that long. You were, you were my very first, uh, um, like oral interview ever. No kidding. Yeah. That was, um,
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I think it was the first time I'd ever done like a phone interview or a podcast interview or anything like that. I'd been interviewed by a few small newspapers, but really that was it. That was the beginning of all of this, man. Yeah, the literary stardom that you now bask in started with episode four of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Imagine that. Thank you for all of your assistance helping me achieve fortune and glory.
00:06:19
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You're welcome. It's the least I could do. Very nice. Well, given that it's the start of the new year and all, I wonder what do you have put before you as a resolution of sorts or how you process the new year as a writer and a teacher? Well, I don't know, man. I really hate the month of January. I think most people do.
Balancing Writing and Personal Life
00:06:46
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Or at least I have for a long time. For all the usual reasons, you know, it's when you've had a week or two weeks or in some cases even more if you teach at higher ed or if you're a student. It's so hard going back and getting back into the rhythm of things. But my wife loves January. She loves like the clean slate of it. And I've slowly come around to that and have found myself
00:07:15
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sort of not enjoying the Christmas holidays as much because there's just so much to do and really enjoying the having very little to do socially at least compared to like December as far as resolutions and you know I'm always resolving to be much more physically attractive and I don't know if I'm gonna have much success there but I always
00:07:44
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Like right now, to be like a very large and unattractive human being, I'm very healthy. I ride my bike to work every day. It's about a 15 minute bike commute in the wind and rain and in the sun of Savannah in July and August and in the pretty cold weather of January, February. I do that every day and I walk every day for about
00:08:13
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I'd say about 40 to 45 minutes on my lunch break. And I eat like shredded wheat for lunch every day like an insane person. And so I'm as healthy as I'm going to get. I'm still like 20 pounds overweight. I am resolving to have like at least
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three 10,000 step days a week. I mean, I already get like 7,000 steps maybe plus the bike commuting, which is hard when you're a 500-pound giant like I am, but I'm trying to walk more. I just love walking and I do my best thinking when I walk. I do read print books more than I listen to audio books, but I do listen to a lot of audio books while I walk.
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I tried podcasts for a while and there's lots of podcasts now. It's like every year it's like a golden age for podcasting, but I find most of them boring after about 15 minutes. When I'm talking about like the investigative journalism podcast, I just felt like the tropes are all so obvious now. And so I don't listen to as much as many of those true crime podcasts as everybody else seems to. But anyway, so I'm trying to walk more. I'm trying to write a novel.
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I was trying to write a screenplay. I'll probably be trying to write a screenplay instead by next week. But right now, I vacillate day to day, week to week on what I want to write next. And right now it's a novel. So I'm trying to eat a little better. I'm trying to walk a little more.
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Those are you know, I don't believe in resolutions. I don't think that I mean anything that you start in January I mean January is already a hard month in most places in the US. It's very cold and It's sort of you know, you're you're not gonna have vacation for quite a while. It's not a fun time. I
00:10:06
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And so starting something that makes it even less fun is just a recipe for not finishing whatever you started. So I definitely am a big advocate of habits rather than resolutions. In other words, I'm not going to set a resolution to walk 10,000 steps three times a week. I'm just going to start doing that.
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and you either stop or you keep going, but to call it a resolution sort of feels like there's an end point to it, like a goal, but it's a goal you'll never reach.
Exploring Truth in Fiction through Novels
00:10:42
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I don't know, that's really stupid like psycho babble talk, but anyway, I'm just trying to figure out what's next. I had this book come out and I toured with it, and I'm still doing a few events here and there, but it feels like I'm in a season of
00:10:58
Speaker
All right, that thing's done. Now what am I doing next? And that's always an exciting time. You know, having written two memoirs now, what's the impulse in you to want to write a novel that, you know, is, you know, certain departs from the verifiably true sort of landscape of your first two books? Well, there's so many answers to that question. I want to write a novel so I can finally like tell the whole truth.
00:11:25
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and not just have to change people's names and give them, you know, and say just nice things about them. I'm just kidding. Um, I do, I do like the, um, I do have an idea, a really good idea, Brendan, for this, for a third memoir and like, it's my clearest and best idea that I've had for a book so far. I have a title.
00:11:50
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I know what it's about. I kind of know where it moves. I kind of feel like I understand what stories I would be telling in it. Um, I really love the idea, but I have written two memoirs and I, I don't feel like there's any rule that says I can't write a third. I mean, people are weird. They're like, Oh, you know, you're 43. Why would you write? Like when I was published my first book, I was 39, you know, and I was like, is that really like old enough to write a memoir, which is such a dumb,
00:12:20
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idiot question and completely misunderstand what memoir is. I'm not writing my biography. This is not like the presidential diaries that every president writes after they stop being the president. This is not that kind of thing. Memoir, as you know, is just a little slice. It's a piece. It's a really long essay about your experience with one particular area. It could be about your battle with
00:12:47
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you know, gingivitis, that would be an amazing memoir. Or it could be about your dating life or it could be about, you know, your dissolved marriage or trying to adopt a child. I mean, there's so many ways, a memoir is just a slice. So I don't think, so I, it's not, I'm not saying that there's like any rule that says I can't write a third, but I do feel like I know how to do it now in a way that's probably not good. Meaning I, I'm very comfortable with the form.
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And part, and just, I don't know, the artist part of me or the self-lagulating, like Protestant Christian part of me wants to make it a little more difficult and try something new and stretch myself a little bit. That there's nothing odd about that. I just, I want to try something new. Cause I feel like I can be, I know what my voice is in memoir. I know how to be funny. I know how to tell a story. I know how to, uh, twist and turn the experience and the reader and the moments.
00:13:46
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And, um, it's still really difficult and it still takes a long time to get it right, but it feels very familiar to me now. And I feel like I want it to be the writing to be a little less familiar and I want to try something new, which is why I thought maybe, I mean, I'm talking about, I mean, I've been working on a TV show adaptation of the first book on and off for, uh, six months.
00:14:11
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and hating it. And then I've been working on, I mean, over the last, since the second book, since I turned it in and sort of was done with it, which was maybe, I mean, I really turned it in like a year and a half ago. And, you know, I did tweaks on it off and on for about three or four months after that. So it's really been about a year since I've pretty much been done with it.
00:14:35
Speaker
meaning like not editing, not changing much of anything. And when you get to that place in the book publishing process, you then move into the promotional writing piece where you're writing essays that you hope your publicist can place at a magazine to help people discover your book. Because that's so hard for people to find out about books. I mean, there's so many amazing books in the world, and it's so hard to get attention for those books unless
00:15:05
Speaker
something crazy happens you know a famous person posts about it or you know it's going to be word you know like so and so bought you know the New York Times does a story about Leonardo DiCaprio buying book rights to your book stuff like that will bring your book to the public and so but what you do is you know you pivot and you start writing essays and things about the topic about the book so you can hopefully develop a platform and people will find it and I did a lot of that
00:15:33
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But then that's just that feels like that's I think that's the hardest part of all this is trying to then you've written this amazing book which what will you hope is amazing and what your editor and your agent are telling you is amazing and which is pretty good and you feel good about it and all of a sudden you have to start writing these little commercials for yourself.
00:15:56
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or for your ideas to hope just so some magazine will take them and publish them and you know 30 people will read it and we'll see at the bottom that it says you know Harrison Scott Key is the author of Congratulations Who Are You Again and hopefully they will click the link if the editor is or if the magazine is thoughtful enough to put a hyperlink in there unless they have something against Amazon or something against HarperCollins in which case they won't hyperlink it.
00:16:22
Speaker
And all of you doing all of this so somebody will click that link and buy the book and read it and then tell a hundred of their friends about it. So it's really that's that part is very difficult. So I took time over the last year to try other things. I started writing a weird children's book.
00:16:41
Speaker
Like a short children's book. I didn't really enjoy that, but that was kind of fun to play with. I played around with an idea of like a short book of Christmas poetry. Funny, weird poems to read at Christmas time. If I actually finished that, that would probably sell better than everything I've ever written combined. But I haven't really done much with that.
00:17:04
Speaker
just sort of toyed around with the idea. And then back to this TV idea, this TV adaptation, and then a screenplay instead of a TV show. And then now I've sort of fallen into this novel that I've been wanting to write for quite a while, been wanting to write this novel ever since before I wrote my first book. And so I'm playing around with it and playing around with my voice to get to answer your question of what it's like, what's the desire there to write something else?
00:17:34
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So right now, so this morning, in fact, this very morning, I was struggling with this question of, okay, is this a first
Narrative Style Debate in Novel Writing
00:17:40
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-person novel? Like, I know what this novel is about, kind of. I have a title and I have a subject and a character and I kind of know what happens in it, sort of, enough to get writing. And so I'm struggling with, is it first person or is it third? And my instinct says third person because I've written so much in the first person as myself that
00:18:03
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I wouldn't want to confuse the reader or I wouldn't want to slip back into the persona of me if I'm playing somebody else as the writer. That seems confusing. It seems like just to help my brain, it's like you don't take your new girlfriend to the restaurant where you always went with your old girlfriend. It's just too weird and that's what it seems like. So I started trying to write it in third person and Brendan, it wasn't funny at all.
00:18:31
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I was like, why am I like mediating myself and trying to play some weird omniscient or semi omniscient narrator when I am funny. I should just tell it. I should tell the story as me. And then I'm like, but wait, this isn't me. And then I thought, well, this is all just this morning. And then I'm like, well, maybe I'll just call myself Harrison Scott Key.
00:18:56
Speaker
And I'll narrate it as a fictitious version of myself that seems cheeky. Of course that's been done and that's kind of weird and fun and has its perks and pros and cons and stuff. So those were all the questions I was wrestling with this morning. And then my wife made me, I'm just telling you what it's like to be a writer for me. Then my wife, she texted me. She's in, she's one room away and no, she FaceTimed me at about seven. I'd been up for about two hours.
00:19:25
Speaker
She FaceTimed me at seven to bring her coffee, which I always do on the weekends. On Saturday and Sunday, I always bring her coffee. I went and made her coffee, and then I took the coffee to her. Then I put this question to her, the one that I just described. Am I playing myself? She's just rolling her eyes, and she's like,
00:19:48
Speaker
And she's so sweet. She's at least, like, she entertains the question. She doesn't say, like, leave me alone like she used to. And she actually had some decent, she has some decent ideas. She's laying there in bed, like, and drinking the coffee that I just bought, or brought her. And she said, what did she say? She said, she said, well, why don't you just write? She said, why can't it just be fun? And I said, why would I write about some guy who really hates the way his shoes fit?
00:20:18
Speaker
when I hate the way my shoes fit. And I am more important than somebody who's not real. And she said, why can't you just make the not real guy hate shoes as much as you do? And I was like, because if I'm going to make it funny, he's going to think all the things I think about the stupid shoes. And so why would I add a layer of
00:20:40
Speaker
Fiction to it when I could just talk about the shoes because I'm funny and she said stop being selfish About what's funny about you and let let somebody imaginary also be funny And which is like it's probably good advice and I was like that's dumb and then I came back and kept trying to write So I'm just it's it's really fun to struggle with all those questions at the end of the day It's got to be funny
00:21:05
Speaker
I want it to be funny. I would also like it to be full of meaning and have moments of pathos and even make people cry and feel deeply and look at the world in a different way. Of course, I want a book to do all of those things, but if you've read my work and I know you have, I want it to be funny because those are the kind of books I give to people.
00:21:29
Speaker
I'm not going to call somebody and be like, oh my gosh, you have to read this book that's really heart wrenching. I've done that occasionally. Like a book like Stoner by John Williams. I love that novel. And it's so powerful and profound and not funny at all. It's the opposite of funny. But but the books that make me so excited and like text my friends and show people in bookstores are books that are funny books that I found like just vibrating, humming with life and energy and excitement.
00:21:58
Speaker
comedy and so I did write a funny line this morning and it was very exciting and I went back and I read the whole paragraph again I was like that's funny like that would that could be in a book and that's very there's nothing more exciting than that moment that is the most exciting thing about being an artist or being a writer for me
00:22:17
Speaker
That's so great because this this whole way you've been talking around all this, you know, everything from the FaceTime moment with your wife and then you're talking to her about, you know, how are we going to narrow? How am I going to narrate this book? And then you make the coffee, bring it to her.
00:22:32
Speaker
and you're having this conversation and you sit down and you write that line and it took several hours of pacing around quite literally, departing from it, having a conversation with someone you trust and then you came back to it fresh and you wrote the one good line that punctuates that paragraph very well and that's a good morning's worth of work and it might have only been a hundred words.
Joy of Creating Humorous Writing
00:22:54
Speaker
No, that's exactly right. In fact, it probably was only about a hundred words but man,
00:23:01
Speaker
If you don't like that part, if that part isn't pleasing enough for you, you'll never finish anything because it doesn't get better. I went for a walk afterwards before you and I are talking now and I just thought,
00:23:20
Speaker
I was thinking about this interview and I've got some more interviews coming up and I mean talking to you is fun because you're like a nice normal human being. Not all these interviews are fun and I mean you read the book, you know what I mean by that. But I was thinking about it and I just got a call yesterday to do some interviews from a publicist and I was kind of just dreading it and I was thinking I'm like
00:23:47
Speaker
Listen Harrison, you jackass. You're dreading this thing that most writers would die to have. Publicists calling them to do interviews about their writing and their books and their views on the world and literature. This is everything that you've dreamed of. Why are you being such a dick about it? This is just happening in my head. I thought, well,
00:24:11
Speaker
That part is the work part of it. Being on tour and being at a book event or at a book festival where you do a reading and people are dying, laughing, and loving it, that's a very close second. But nothing is as satisfying. No drug in the world is as satisfying as that moment when you've written a funny line and you go back and read it.
00:24:38
Speaker
And it's not just a funny line, but it's connected to character and to the story and it advances the story and it feels natural. There's just nothing like it. And you have to, in whatever you do, whatever your dream is, whether you want, you know, to be
00:24:54
Speaker
you know, one of the great filmmakers or one of the great painters or one of the great dancers or one of the great writers. Like you've got to find what that little magic moment is for you and realize that that's really what you're creating for. You're not creating, you can't, there is no glory beyond that. There might be, you know, audiences cheering and awards presented. You know, people giving you lots of money is also really nice. That part is really fun.
00:25:25
Speaker
But it's fun in a different way. There's no pure, I mean, there's instrumentality and utility attached to those moments. Like you have money so you can buy a house and that's more heartache. You get an award so you have to do 25 interviews, which is a little bit of a heartache. I mean, it's not fun always to do interviews, but the moment when you write the funny line at your desk,
00:25:52
Speaker
and it explodes with power and wonder and beauty and nothing can compare to that and that has to be why you do what you do because that's what that's where wisdom is. Wisdom is in comedy and in beauty and you know I've been we were talking about audio books I've been listening to the King James Bible and it's just awful Brendan it's just it is like
00:26:13
Speaker
It is like sitting with your great-great-great-great grandfather who won't stop talking. It's just awful. But there are moments of real beauty in it. I mean, I'm very familiar with the Bible. I've grown up in the church. I'm a Christian.
00:26:31
Speaker
I've been listening to it and what hits me has hit me so much about I'm in Ezekiel right now. It's taken me like 30 years to get to Ezekiel and I'm listening to it at double time. So it also sounds like my grandfather's on cocaine while he's reading to me. But I'm listening to it and the thing that hits you over and over again is that wisdom really is the most valuable thing in the world.
00:26:55
Speaker
more than fortune and glory, more than praise, more than love even from another person. I don't mean to sound cold or calculating when I say that, but just the idea of wisdom. That's what is happening in that moment when you write a beautiful line or paint a beautiful picture or paint a beautiful stroke that is so great, is that there's nothing attached to it. There's no money attached to it. There's no expectation.
00:27:21
Speaker
It's just something you've made in the world that makes the world a better place for you for that moment. So I'm trying to hold on to those moments in my writing as well as in my life with my children and my wife and my friends.
00:27:35
Speaker
Mary Kaur wrote in the Art of Memoir about finding the nature of your talent, whatever that is. Both of your memoirs are funny. Your essays are always funny and that is where you feel most alive as a writer because we can tell and you're talking about it.
Embracing a Comedic Voice in Writing
00:27:54
Speaker
Even the novel you want to write about is going to be a funny novel.
00:27:57
Speaker
I know you were always someone who could make people laugh growing up and then clearly you're very entertaining and funny as a writer. So how did you just learn to sort of lean into it and be like, you know what, this is the kind of writer I am. I'm not going to write a brooding epic. I'm just going to lean into what I know I am good at, the nature of my talent. Batman, that is such a difficult and important moment for any artist.
00:28:27
Speaker
Really anybody because even if you're a president of a company, at some point you have to decide what kind of president you're going to be. Are you going to be a tough boss or a kind of compassionate boss? Are you going to be visionary? Are you going to be rational? What kind of podcast do you want to create? You've had to think about that, right? Is it going to be
00:28:50
Speaker
Zany, is it going to be meaty and substantive? Is it going to be this or that? What kind of books are you going to be talking to people about? And so that moment where you're sort of deciding, and I hate to use this word, but like what your brand is or what your voice is, like what, like what ideas should inform how you do the thing that you are trying to do. And in terms of writing, the big questions are, what am I going to write fiction or nonfiction or plays or films?
00:29:20
Speaker
And when I write them, what will they be about? I mean, literally, what will they be about? It is such a hard question to know. And when you're a writer and when you're a young person who thinks they want to study writing, and then when you study it, and then when you try to write, by the time you start trying to write, you have really forgotten why you're trying to do it. You really have. And my experience as a teacher and as a writer
00:29:48
Speaker
you often forget and you find yourself at the first paragraph of the essay you're trying to write or the first paragraph or the first chapter of the book and you're like, why the hell am I doing this? What am I trying to say? And what I would tell a student or what I would say to you asking the question of how did I know that comedy was my thing and trying to help students understand what their thing is, I would say,
00:30:17
Speaker
Think about the books that you have loved and the films and the art experiences that you have loved. What have you loved about them? And when you give them to other people to read, when you give somebody a book, when you point out a book in the bookstore to somebody, what do you say about it? Because that's your heart telling you what your voice is, what you love to write, what your special secret talent is. And for me, that's comedy.
Comedy Revealing Truth in Writing
00:30:47
Speaker
it took a long time to get there. I didn't really, I thought, you know, and I don't know if I say this in the second book or not. I mean, I know I thought a lot about it when I was writing it that, you know, I really struggled. Like, should I write something serious? Should I write something funny? If I write something funny, is it going to be silly? And will people not take it seriously? I definitely wanted people to take my work seriously. And I think that's probably why I eventually
00:31:17
Speaker
did not really try to write screenplays because I felt like if I had written a funny movie or a funny TV show, it would really just be silly. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I love silly movies and TV shows, but clearly there was something in my own experience and in my life and maybe in my childhood that made me want to write, I wanted to be taken seriously as a funny person. So there's this weird, it wasn't just a desire to be funny and wanting to be funny.
00:31:46
Speaker
there was definitely a big chunk of that was a desire to say something real. And so maybe not, maybe it's not quote to be taken seriously, but it was rather, I wanted to write something funny, but I also wanted to write things that said something real about the world. And it made people think or feel or maybe even cry or be moved by. And I'm,
00:32:15
Speaker
You know, you I got there by trying every other kind of way to do it. I tried to write funny things and they were silly and shallow. I tried to write really serious, like searing stories and they were boring. I tried to write suspense. You know, I tried to write tragic comedy that was like really melodramatic and sad and funny at the same time. And it was neither sad nor funny and only melodramatic. And I just tried every everything I could think of, but I found that
00:32:45
Speaker
I was the most excited and my heart leapt the most often when whatever I was reading or writing was funny. And that made, as I say in my second book, that kind of made my brain melt. It made it explode and overheat and melt in this glorious puddle of amazingness. And I wanted, that's what I wanted to create in other people when I was writing. And I also found that I could speak the most truth when I was being funny.
00:33:13
Speaker
And that's probably the real answer that I could say something, you know, like when you listen to a comedian, at least I can remember when I was a kid. And, you know, I mean, we didn't I didn't get to see a lot of stand up comedy because we didn't have cable. So I heard comedy albums. And the most commonplace I saw, Brendan, how old are you? What year were you born? 1980. So I'm 75. So we're not far in age.
00:33:44
Speaker
The most common place that I saw comedy growing up was a TV show called Star Search with Ed McMahon, which you might remember from your childhood. It was on in the 80s and early 90s. And they had a singing competition and a dancing competition and a comedy competition. But whenever a comedian would say something funny, of course, I also saw comedians on like The Tonight Show when I was allowed to stay up late.
00:34:11
Speaker
whenever they said something really funny, I would find myself saying, that's so true. That's so true. And I'd be laughing and I would like be, you know, my mom and I would be saying it to each other. My dad would be sitting there wondering what was funny about whatever was just said. Cause he had a very different sense of humor, but I would find myself saying that's so true. That's so true. And when I write something, when I write funny lines, I find that they penetrate to the truth of something so quickly and so magically.
00:34:37
Speaker
that would take, if you were writing just plain straight prose, it would take paragraphs to get to this point, but comedy just bypasses all of the sort of ratiocination that happens in the mind and just gets straight to the truth of something, of how ridiculous something is or how obsessed people are with this or that. And that's thrilling. And so that's not, it's not just fun. Like that's why you laugh. You laugh because it's sort of a roller coaster ride very quickly to the truth.
00:35:07
Speaker
And so why would I, like, I feel very lucky that I can think that way and write that way if I try really hard. Cause it's really like, I'm really funny, Brendan. And it's really hard for me to be funny. Like I have to work really hard to get that line to sound just right. But, but I feel very lucky. Like why wouldn't I write that way? Uh, it just took me a long time to figure out how to do it with my fingers, the way I'd been doing it and just talking to people my whole life. I was funny.
00:35:35
Speaker
but I couldn't do it on purpose with my hands at the laptop. It took a long time. And that's why I have like two chapters devoted to that in the new book of how I got there.
00:35:44
Speaker
When you're writing something that's funny, how do you know it's still funny after you've reworked it 50 or 100 times when it loses its initial
Trusting and Refining Comedic Instincts
00:35:58
Speaker
luster? And to you, it's just another sentence. How do you know that it still has that pulse that a fresh reader is going to read it and be like, oh yeah, that is funny? Yeah, well, it's like food. I mean, not everybody likes every taste, every flavor. But if you like it,
00:36:14
Speaker
You just have to trust that. I mean, I've been saying funny things my whole life. Now, not everybody thinks I'm funny. I think that's pretty obvious. You just go read my Amazon reviews and see that. And there are a lot of people that I know that clearly do not think I am funny. But I have been making people laugh for a long time. So I feel like, just like if you cook for other people,
00:36:42
Speaker
you learn to trust your taste. Because if people have been liking your food for a long time, then your taste is probably pretty good. Meaning what you taste when you taste your food. And it's the same way, I think, for humor. I've been making people laugh. I feel like I got a pretty good sense of what's funny. If I think something's funny, I'm pretty sure somebody out there, somebody else is gonna think it's funny too. Not everybody, but somebody is. It's making me laugh. So if I like the flavor of this pizza,
00:37:10
Speaker
that I'm pretty sure there's gonna be some other people out there who are gonna like it too. So there's a bit of just trusting your instincts that if you find it funny, I mean there's a lot of stuff I think it's funny that my wife does not. There's a lot of stuff I find funny that my mother does not.
00:37:26
Speaker
But almost everything I find funny, my best friend Mark also finds funny. And there are a few other people out there that have similar, very similar senses of humor. My wife's and my sense of humor overlaps about 80% of the time, maybe 70. But you just have to trust it. And you talked about the reworking part, like you go over it again and again and again, and you would seem to take the freshness out of it if you do that. And so that's part of the skill of just being a writer is
00:37:56
Speaker
You have to remember that the audience is going to be reading it for the first time and they probably will only read it once. This is not necessarily going to be a book that somebody is going to keep and read three or four times. And so you have to remember the freshness with which the audience is experiencing it. And that's why that's why you.
00:38:15
Speaker
you know, you go back over and over again and make it funnier and funnier and funnier, but eventually you show it to other people just like you, you know, restaurants hold a soft opening and they let everybody taste their food to make sure it's like, and they change their food a little bit after that opening, getting the recipes and getting the processes just right. It's the same way with comedy. You know, you show it to people and you're like, and I'll tell people like, please circle or highlight or otherwise denote
00:38:44
Speaker
Any passages that aren't funny enough or feel like they're hitting the wrong note, anything that feels like I was trying to be funny and I missed the mark, please let me know. People do. My editor will say, I just don't think this is funny or this is kind of a tired joke.
00:39:04
Speaker
I mean, when I teach humor writing, I have two marks that I make. One is MO and one is KT. And MO means missed opportunity, meaning this could have been funny right here. Like this whole paragraph, like you're talking about the way your stepmother's enchiladas taste. Like that's just comedy gold. Like go there, talk about how bad they are or how great they are, how disgusting you are when you eat them because you eat so many. So I'll circle something and write MO
00:39:34
Speaker
or I'll write KT, which stands for keep trying, which means, oh, I see that you were trying to be funny here, and I think that's awesome, but this is not funny. And so it's a way of encouraging saying like,
00:39:46
Speaker
This isn't quite there yet. And I do that with my own writing. I'll circle something or highlight something and I'll just write KT. It means like, you know, I'll kind of wince when I go back and reread it. I'm like, oh, that is not as funny as I wanted it to be. And I'll, I'll give myself a note to just keep trying and make it funny. And a lot of times it's about making it lighter and making it flow better. And so that's why people say great books are effortless to read. Sometimes they just, you devour books so quickly.
00:40:14
Speaker
There's a lightness to it. It takes a lot of work to achieve that lightness.
00:40:18
Speaker
I think too that what makes things resonant and funny is that truth you were talking about with the comedians when you just say that is so true. So much of great comedy and stuff really stems from the story and is not necessarily jokey. It's just something that's incredibly relatable. I think of Wes Anderson movies, which to me are my favorite movies.
00:40:44
Speaker
Some of the funniest and most touching movies and there's nary a actual joke in it It's just situationally funny based on the story and I kind of got that sense from I get that sense a lot from from your writing to especially with your latest book like this one is one passages and
00:41:01
Speaker
It's not jokey at all, but for someone in my station of life, I could really relate to it. You know, you write, these were happy if, and possibly hard times, our checkbook empty and fallow, the teetering towers of student loans, casting a shadow over everything. Like that's not a joke, but that's funny because so many of us of this age bracket are smothered in student loan debt, but that's a funny line because of it's true. Right.
Balancing Narrative and Humor
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah. So like when I wrote that,
00:41:30
Speaker
Like I wasn't thinking, oh, this has to be funny. Like to me, I mean, there are some like comic elements in that passage you read. Teetering towers is a funny phrase. You know, that it's got a T sound and it's got the hard E sound. So that just naturally that feels like a more comically sort of vibrant phrase. But like literally in that passage, writing that,
00:42:00
Speaker
That to me, that's just like, that's like narrative. Those are narrative details. Like I'm just, I'm telling you what was, I'm keeping the stakes high by reminding you like we did not have a lot of money. Um, but in my head, that's not one of the punch lines of that chapter or that passage. That's just, that's almost like transition material between jokes. So like you can't, you can't be at like level 11 with the humor the whole time. He just wears people out.
00:42:28
Speaker
And so you have to have moments of lightness where you're giving people space to breathe, you're moving the story forward. So that's what that passage was, was raising the stakes by pushing the story forward. But nothing is funny. I don't know if you watch a lot of stand-up comedy or if you've seen a lot of live shows,
00:42:55
Speaker
but they're kind of exhausting and they are only funny for about the first 30 minutes. And so like, I can remember when I was trying to do standup comedy and I'd go to a comedy club and I would do like a little five minute set and then I would sit there and listen to the headliner who would usually talk for about an hour. And after 30 minutes, you just stop laughing. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen.
00:43:22
Speaker
And I think because I've never seen live comedy before, because when I ever saw a comedy on Comedy Central in grad school or something, there's TV commercials. And they give you these little moments to breathe. But when I saw comedy just straight on, everything's funny. There's no filler. It's just joke, joke, joke, even really funny narrative-based jokes.
00:43:47
Speaker
I found myself week after week, around 30 minutes, I would just get bored. I'd light a cigarette, or I'd walk out, or I'd just find myself looking around the room. My buddy Mark, who often came to see me in graduate school, and we would go to these shows together. These were just at local bars when I was working on my PhD. Afterwards, I'd be like, did you get bored after about 30 minutes? He's like, yeah, I did.
00:44:12
Speaker
And it was the weirdest experience and it applies so much to films and to books too. You have to have moments like that moment that you just read. That's not something you would hear a comedian say. That's not a line from a stand-up act. That just sounds like something from a story. But what it does is it allows, it like lifts the windows a little bit and allows a little light and air into the story. So when the really funny thing happens, a paragraph later, you're ready to laugh again.
Pursuing a Writing Career with Determination
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think that builds ultimately to this point about 60 pages later or so when you said, I needed to handle my shit too. I'd opted for a life in art, by God. I'd made this bed. If you're gonna have the courage to live the dream, then live that shit. Art is work. Put your pants on and get your fool ass to work, son.
00:45:03
Speaker
I love that line and it speaks to this is work. You have to put your ass in the chair and in your case, get into the coffee shop super early in the morning and getting to work. How did you arrive at that moment? I don't know. I think there's definitely a part of me that is
00:45:28
Speaker
My father was a real workhorse and worked as hard. I talk about that in both of my books. I definitely learned the value. I worked on farms. I didn't grow up milking cows every morning at 4 a.m. for 10 years or anything, but I did haul a lot of hay and drove a lot of tractors and cut a lot of grass and chopped a lot of wood. More than most guys my age,
00:45:58
Speaker
Um, and so you learn the value of hard work and, you know, I played a lot of sports. My dad was obviously a coach. Uh, you hear a lot of like, you know, um, suck it up, son, you know, uh, shake it off. You hear a lot of just like man up a little bit. Don't be a little baby about it.
00:46:17
Speaker
And that can be tough to hear when it's shared at the wrong time with a student or a kid. But man, that's value. I just found myself, even as I was writing the book and remembering, at the end of the day, yes, writing is hard. And yes, that life of art. I still have friends who have so much more money than I do, and they have so many more toys.
00:46:43
Speaker
than I do. In Savannah, the go-to toy is a boat, which is why I talk about boats so much in the second book. But these families with these guys who are my age, they have toys and they have nice things, and it's so easy to be like, I wish I had that, or I wish I didn't have school loans. And it's like, man, shut the fuck up, son. Work. You picked this. Don't be a pussy. And there's a part of me that's very much that sort of redneck,
00:47:13
Speaker
suck it up, shake it off, you made this bed, what are you complaining for? It's just a part of my persona and a part of how I was raised and has definitely stood me in good stead in my writing life. I'm definitely a sensitive
00:47:31
Speaker
and as much of a pussy as anybody you will ever meet. When somebody criticizes some of my work, you'll definitely find me moaning and wailing and wearing sackcloth and ashes and saying, I deserve better, and that was mean, and why do they say that? But I also tend to snap out of it very quickly with a, shake it off, get your fool ass to work, son, sort of a thing that I say to myself.
00:48:00
Speaker
I mean, I come from very modest working class people who really worked and slaved for much of their lives, especially like up until around the 70s or 80s. These were farming people. These were people who never had a lot of money, people who worked so much more physically, strenuously than
00:48:28
Speaker
that any of us do today who sit around listening to podcasts and writing books and living this sort of bourgeois, late middle American luxury. And so having the memory of that is very powerful for me, knowing just seeing how hard my grandfather worked and how hard my father worked and seeing the places where they grew up and the places where they had to work.
00:48:56
Speaker
It's just been very good for me to remember that I'm living a dream and yes, it's hard and that's okay and it's okay to whine about how hard it is and go have a beer with your buddies and talk about how hard the podcast or the memoir game is. But we're also standing on the shoulders of our forefathers and foremothers who worked really hard to get us to where we can have the time to talk about ideas and not just
00:49:25
Speaker
slave over a barn full of horses. That's where that line came from and I try to remind myself of that all the time.
00:49:36
Speaker
Another line I really love is this this part where you say, I felt like a selfish ass face and then wondered if selfish ass faceness was a prerequisite to the task of American dreaming. And did you find that in the pursuit of writing and writing these books of which that you had to sort of detach from your family to get that work done that the cost of
00:50:03
Speaker
not doing it was greater than the cost you were absorbing by actually doing the thing? I guess so. I don't know. At the end of the day, I just really worry. I don't want to wake up and be 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 and wonder why I didn't do it. I just can't imagine that.
00:50:34
Speaker
And that's, you know, I try to, it's a real ineffable quality. I talk about the quirk of greatness that we are all sort of, we feel inside of us that we are nurturing. Like there's a lot of things I do not want to be great at or do not care about being great at. I do not really care about like looking my best. I do not really care about being a great leader, even though I have had leadership roles
00:51:05
Speaker
for much of my career in higher ed. I probably should care more. I don't care enough about being a great leader. I don't care enough about having the most beautiful house. I like the grass to be cut and I like it to be clean, but I don't care about having the most amazing Christmas lights on my house. There are a lot of things I don't care about being great at.
00:51:33
Speaker
always felt that this just indescribable pull to create something great and something that I'm proud of, something that I can show people. Like, look, I made this. And I think everybody has that to some degree. You know, what they made might be a new business or it might be
00:51:54
Speaker
a new song or an album or it might be a podcast or it might be a new school that they are creating. But for me, I wanted to create a personal work of art that I could show people. And I was going to do whatever I could to do that short of really committing heinous crimes.
00:52:18
Speaker
or completely being a derelict father and husband. I mean, I definitely would have, I mean, I do think having a wife and children and a relatively normal, stable, pretty predictable, iconic American family has helped my work. But that was definitely a time that I did not think I was going to get married or have kids like so many other artists. I did not want to do that. I wanted to do it eventually, but I really wanted to write a book first.
00:52:46
Speaker
And I thought, oh, my dreams will come true. I'll write a book. My dreams will come true. I'll be relatively wealthy, affluent, popular, beloved among everybody I see on the street. And then I will get married and have kids. And that will also be awesome. That's how I thought it would happen.
00:53:08
Speaker
You meet a beautiful woman who doesn't run away when you take all of your clothes off. You decide, you got to lock that down too. That's pretty awesome. Sex with a beautiful woman who is your wife is amazing. You find yourself doing that and you're like, okay, I've got a wife. It's fine. It's fine. She's awesome. I'm still going to write my book.
00:53:33
Speaker
We're not going to have kids yet. She's on birth control. And we have a very small income. It's fine. I'm going to write my book. I'll be rich soon." And then your wife is like, oops, I'm not on birth control. Oh, no, look, I'm growing. I must be a person inside of me. And you're like, oh, dang it. And this is great. This is exciting. And OK, you will have a baby. And you find yourself being pulled in so many different directions.
00:54:00
Speaker
Being married is a good thing. I believe that as hard as marriage is. I believe marriage, the institution, is a very important and necessary thing to the building of human civilization. And I think children also are very important to the building of human civilization and they are a natural and innate good. And also believe like living your dream and writing a book and like that's pretty modest and that's a good thing.
00:54:26
Speaker
those things just fought so much and I was pulled in so many different directions. It's like the most difficult questions that most of us will have in our lives will be between two competing goods, not something good and something bad, not like, should I do drugs or go volunteer at this orphanage? Like that's not how it happens. It's should I, you know, should I be a school teacher and change the lives of children for years?
00:54:54
Speaker
or and be poor or should I make enough money for my to be able to take my wife on a vacation and have a different job and probably have to sell a little bit of my soul but I'll have a little bit more money and I can take my wife on a vacation and that will be fun you know like that's what life is about it's about choosing between two things that are good at least in a in a in a culture
00:55:19
Speaker
and a nation and an economy that's doing well, meaning we don't have riots in the streets every day. Their food is plentiful and pretty cheap in America. I understand that not everybody is doing great in America, but if you look at human history and you look at the rest of the world, we are doing pretty great.
00:55:42
Speaker
Poverty, starvation, disease are at historic lows when you look at all of history and where we are today. In that situation, it should be doable to want to do something as modest as write a book, have a family, live a normal life. It was so difficult, man. It was so hard.
00:56:08
Speaker
That was the real energy behind this second
Balancing Family Life and Artistic Pursuit
00:56:11
Speaker
book. That was what drove it. That's what both drove the story, but also sort of what powered the whole tone of it too, is that fight between, I just want to have a wife and kids and be a good dad and be a good employee. And I also want to do this thing that shouldn't be as hard as it is, but that's pretty awesome.
00:56:31
Speaker
I would similarly go on walks, but I had this book with me because I just kept it with me for the two days that it took me to read. On my walks, I was just holding this thing open and just reading it while I was walking. I'm not a very fast reader to begin with and even slower when I'm walking, but it was one of those books that as a writer and an artist, a podcaster, and I'm sure whoever else picks this up who identifies as a creative person,
00:57:00
Speaker
they just don't feel as alone anymore. This book was an indirect self-help book. Did you have that notion as you were constructing this that it was in fact something that was going to no doubt help a lot of creative people feel less alone? It makes me feel so happy that you said that just now because that's exactly what I wanted it to do. One of the hardest parts about writing this book was
00:57:30
Speaker
Should it be a sort of self-improvement, how to write a bird by bird kind of book? Like how do I do that and write a memoir? And that was really hard. A lot of this book was sort of born in an essay that I wrote and published for just over four years ago called How I Became a Famous Writer.
00:57:58
Speaker
And it was a short essay about 2,500 words at the Oxford American. It's online, so you can find it. But it was just like the sort of conceit of the essay was I had just done a, what do you call it, career day at one of my kids' schools where you go in. I didn't, I saw it, it was like a first grade class. And talk about what you do.
00:58:26
Speaker
And I just, it was, this was in 2014, the fall of 2014. So I had just finished my first book and turned it in. And I was, so I, my dream had sort of come true. I think I'd gotten the first check from my, I'd already gotten the first check from my book advance. My book was finished. My father had, you know, had only been dead for about six months. But my dream had come true and I got asked to do this career day.
00:58:55
Speaker
And so I didn't have a book yet to take, but I took some magazines and things where I'd published stories. And then I took some books that I really loved and I went to this school and I talked about it. I was like, here's some, you know, I talked about, here's some places where I've published stories. Anyway, so the conceit of the essay is I was at a career day the other day and you know, the teacher asked me, how did you do it? How did you accomplish your dream? And everywhere I go, people ask me this. And so it's sort of,
00:59:23
Speaker
So the essay sort of tells the story of how I got my first book deal very briefly, while also kind of being like an advice column, like there are moments like meta moments where I stop in the story and I say, so if this ever happens to you, you should do blah, blah, blah. And you probably remember those moments from the book too, because there are moments in the book where
00:59:45
Speaker
I stop telling the story and I sort of pause and I say, by the way, when this happens to you, you should always remember to XYZ. And that was the solution ultimately to how do you write a book that's really a memoir, but could easily be in the writing resource or self-help section of the bookstore. I even toyed with putting the whole book in the second person. In fact, I wrote about the first half of it in the second person.
01:00:14
Speaker
Because I thought, well, that'll help me bridge this gap between memoir and advice. Because if I'm saying you and I'm talking about you, then it does feel like I'm writing an advice column. But that just got too precious and weird after a while. I even thought about putting little lessons in it, like little moments, like little sidebars, where I would sort of describe, like, here's what you should do if you are struggling finding an agent.
01:00:43
Speaker
Um, but then that made it seem that just took people out of the story too much and it kind of, uh, broke the spell that a book should cast over any reader. So we ended up with this hybrid version, but I've had a lot of messages and emails that express what you just shared, which make that makes me so happy to hear that the book gave somebody else hope. Like that's what you want, man. Like that's, that's beautiful. I love that. Thank you for sharing that.
01:01:11
Speaker
Oh, of course. Well, thank you for writing it. It was because it's so relatable to the struggle and the grind of trying to do something creative and live or do something that is nourishing in a sense.
01:01:26
Speaker
And partway through the book, actually about halfway through the book, you know, you said, and this speaks to the just the quiet, almost despair when you finished the work is you wrote that there was nothing to write or revise. All was done. The surging tide of the dream had risen and ebbed with me sloshing back and forth day and night, heaving me to the desk every morning. It was gone, just like that.
01:01:51
Speaker
And what was that moment like? You finish a buck, you want fanfare, but all you're doing is hitting a key on the keyboard and then, well, that's it.
Celebrating Book Completion Milestones
01:02:03
Speaker
Yeah. Oh man, those are always very strange moments because you realize that you've done the thing that you set out to do and nothing happened.
01:02:16
Speaker
It's like that scene in the various Star Wars films when they crank up the Millennium Falcon and it doesn't crank. That's kind of what it feels like. You've got this beautiful machine that you have made and you've been working on it and it's there and then you crank it up and it goes, you know, and you're like, oh, huh, okay.
01:02:39
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of what it feels like when you finish a book. And, of course, there are also about a hundred different times that you finish a book. You know, there's the end of the first draft or what we would call the rough draft. That's relief, I think, when you finish that, because you've at least gotten to the end. And you can say, hey, I finished a book. You know, like, that's that may in some ways that may be the most
01:03:05
Speaker
The best finishing feeling that you'll have is when you finish the rough draft, even though you know it's terrible. When you finish the first draft, you feel exhausted.
01:03:21
Speaker
because you've taken all the joy out of it. You've had to work really hard at making it better. And then you have to proof it again. And then you have to read it again. And then you, you know, after your editor sends you edits back a month later, you got to spend another month with it. And then you send it back again. And so you have like 20 final drafts. So there's like 20 moments where you're finally finished with it. And by the time you actually get to,
01:03:50
Speaker
The moment where you are proofing it for the very last time and your agent or your editor rather says, okay, the deadline for changes is now. Can we like, they'll send you a PDF and they're like, you have 24 hours, just like thumbs up or thumbs down. By the time you get there, it's like your arms and legs have been chopped off. You are wearing a ball gag.
01:04:20
Speaker
you are blind and you haven't eaten in 30 days. So it's hard to be like, and done. It feels like it's been done 20, 30, 40 times already. But when that moment happens, what I've learned to do is
01:04:41
Speaker
have little moments of celebration, which I mean, it's such a simple thing and probably a little silly. So whenever I finish a big draft, a rough draft or a first draft,
01:04:54
Speaker
my wife and I will go out to dinner, or sometimes my wife and my mom and I and the girls will all go out to dinner, or we'll take a little two days out of town vacation, or I'll go buy myself a $50 bottle of bourbon instead of the usual $10 bottle. Little ways to sort of celebrate that moment that passed, or it could just be going out with your buddies for a beer. But I've tried to mark those occasions so they don't feel so anticlimactic.
01:05:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's inescapable now. Every time I finish an essay or even a book, I'm just going to say, punch it, Chewy, and then go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then you go drink your bourbon, and then it's all better.
01:05:39
Speaker
Oh, man. Let's say I want to be mindful of your time. I feel like I could talk to you for another hour about this book and everything that you've done in it. But it's I do want to let you get on with your Saturday, of course. So, well, you know, where can people get more familiar with you and your work online and find the book?
01:06:00
Speaker
I have all the usual places. You can find me at harrisonscotkey.com. It's my full name, no spaces, harrisonscotkey.com. I get emails there and I answer them. I talk with readers a lot. A lot of people have ideas. They want to bounce off me or share the stories of their own that are similar to the stories I've told and I always like hearing those.
01:06:28
Speaker
I'm on Instagram. I think it's at Harrison Scott Key, and then on Twitter as Harrison Key. And then I have a Facebook author page. Also, I live in Savannah, so if you're ever here, just send me an email and we'll go have a beer. I do get on the road from time to time. I'll be doing some book festivals in 2019.
01:06:50
Speaker
But mostly, I just want people to read my books and be encouraged and be moved and laugh and like them so much that they want to read passages aloud to their loved ones.
Reflecting on Podcast Journey and Challenges
01:07:00
Speaker
That's the greatest compliment any man can have. And, Brennan, before we close, I want to congratulate you on keeping up with this podcast. Man, you were in the game very early. Like, you were doing it. You're like in the primordial ooze of podcasting.
01:07:16
Speaker
Well, thank you. Thanks for coming on so early in the run of the show. At that point in the show, this is kind of funny to see how far it's progressed just in terms of rudimentary technology. I think I had you on speakerphone on a landline with my iPhone recorder recording the interview as you were coming out of the speaker and I would kind of have to crunch down and lean into
01:07:45
Speaker
the speakerphone and the iPhone recorder and then transfer that disgusting recording from that point on. Now it's a little bit more advanced. I went back and listened to some of that podcast we did and literally it sounds like we were communicating across like three galaxies.
01:08:07
Speaker
But that's just because that's what it was like back then. I mean, so many podcasts were like that, but you've got to have stuck with it this long. You've clearly learned a lot about the form and I see lots of
01:08:22
Speaker
likes and retweets about the podcast have over the years. So congratulations on that and thank you for spreading all the gospel about books and about writing. I'm sure you've learned a lot too, but congratulations on your success, man.
01:08:40
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a it's a kind of a drip-by-drip thing and I you know I'm just gonna keep showing up and you know it will just keep making people feel like they have an advocate out there that they're not alone that people as as as talented and brilliant as as you or Laura Hillenbrand or Susan Orlean or Andrea Debuse the third like these people go through
01:09:04
Speaker
the same struggles you're going through. But they're getting the work done. So that's the ethos of the show. And so it's always the value of it and the validation of it is when people like yourself are willing to come back on one time, two times, and hopefully more down the road. So thank you for being so forthcoming and honest. And I deeply appreciate your time, man. Yeah, man. Thank you, Brendan. Had a good time.
01:09:33
Speaker
All right, fantastic. All right. Well, friend, here we are. We got to the end of another one of these jobs. Hope you liked it. Thanks again to our sponsors and Goucher College's MFA in nonfiction and the verb dread. Let's continue the conversation on Twitter, folks. Be sure to follow me and the show.
01:09:55
Speaker
at CNF Pod and at Brendan O'Mara. We're two sides of the same sexy corn. Facebook is the creative non-fiction podcast. Follow Harrison at Harrison Key on Twitter and visit his website HarrisonScottKey.com for all things HSK.
01:10:13
Speaker
friendatomero.com is where you'll find show notes this episode and all episodes there you'll have a chance to subscribe to that awesome monthly newsletter once a month no spam can't beat it that's all friend some things never change the same is true in 2019 if you can't do interview see ya