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Episode 45—Bronwen Dickey Returns to Talk about the Paperback Release of Pit Bull, Troll Culture, and How Perfectionism Kills
128 Plays8 years ago
My good friend (can I say that? I think so) Bronwen Dickey returns to talk about the paperback release of "Pit Bull: Battle Over an American Icon," Troll Culture, and how Perfectionism Kills You.
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Transcript
Introduction and Book Tour Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
A, C, and F-ers, it's time for the show. Hit it!
00:00:15
Speaker
Not only am I excited by throwing in some heavy music at the beginning of this podcast, it's Satania. The band. Behind the curtain is the song. Got it from the Free Music Archive, so we're totally cool. Enough of that foofy shit I had before.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hey, but Bronwyn Dickey makes her return to the podcast as her book, Pipple, Battle over an American Icon hits bookstores and paperback. How can you not want to listen to this episode when you have her saying stuff like this? You know, like, what's the fact?
00:00:55
Speaker
kills me every time. Okay, so you know the drill. Share the episode with people you think will dig it. Subscribe to the podcast and my newsletter. It's all free. I'm not that annoying, right? Right? He has a Facebook page too, so like that. So in any case, let's get to it. It's Bronwyn Dickey, episode 45 of the hashtag CNF podcast.
00:01:25
Speaker
When I was really following and chronicling your accounting of the book tour, it was really almost a traumatic experience for you.
00:01:42
Speaker
What surprised you most about the tour for Pitbull and for those who might not be familiar, kind of like, refresh us about what a lot of those events were like around this book that just became really like a lightning rod for a lot of different issues. Sure. So if, you know, anyone out there is listening and is not kind of aware what the book was about,
00:02:09
Speaker
The book I wrote Pitbull, the battle over an American icon, battle being the operative term, I guess, was basically a social history of these dogs, Pitbulls or Pitbull terriers, all these things are kind of misnomers now. And the role they've played in American history and American culture and kind of American consciousness over time. And a lot of that had to do with kind of moral panics and
00:02:40
Speaker
um, public hysterias over things. Um, there were a lot of which were, you know, a lot of that stuff was happening in the 1980s. So there were, we had the satanic panic and there was the child abduction, you know, panic and stranger danger and all these things road rage. Um, and pit bulls were kind of part of that. So through the book, I parsed not only the history of the dogs, but the science of behavior.
00:03:08
Speaker
and really deconstructed how panics get built, kind of how the house that panic built was constructed. And there's a core group of people, a very small group of people, but a very devoted group who position themselves as victims advocates, advocating for people who have been bitten or injured by dogs.
00:03:37
Speaker
But they're not really advocates. They're kind of, they're more like dedicated trolls. And so they've turned this movement into, for lack of a better term, a hate group. A hate group for dogs, specifically for pit bulls.
00:03:57
Speaker
Um, I mentioned them a little bit in the book, but I tried not to get into them too much at length because I didn't want to give them, um, a larger platform, but I was well aware they were out there.
Security Measures and Positive Receptions
00:04:08
Speaker
Um, and it's probably a group of, you know, maybe 20 people. I mean, we're not talking about a huge movement, but they do spend an incredible amount of time on the internet all day, every day. Um, many aliases, like this is their thing. And so when the book came out, I started getting.
00:04:27
Speaker
um, messages from an anonymous Facebook page that said, um, basically that they were going to destroy me. Um, that I was a fraud. They called me a whore, a bitch, you know, I don't know how family friendly this is. Yeah, you can say whatever you, whatever you like. Yeah. I hoped I would be mauled to death. They made jabs about my, um, deceased father.
00:04:57
Speaker
having alcoholism, they posted photos of my house online, and it was just kind of this unrelenting thing, but still it was just kind of the internet, so I didn't think it was that big of a deal. And then at one reading, a reading that was actually very close to my house, a guy showed up and started
00:05:18
Speaker
you know, just kind of hammering me with questions about why didn't I talk to this person? Why didn't I talk to that person? Trying to imply that somehow I did not care that people had been injured by these dogs. When of course I very much did care and I spent, you know, a good bit of the book trying to get into that and especially trying to help people learn the best ways to prevent such things from happening. So, but he was disruptive enough that the
00:05:47
Speaker
the manager of the bookstore called the police and so that I could have a police escort out to my car and I left the store through the back entrance. But then that didn't really stop any of the harassment. It just kept going and going. So it got to the point where I really couldn't post anything on my public Facebook page without just being bombed with these like sock puppet troll accounts and stores where I read
00:06:16
Speaker
would, their pages would also be swarmed by trolls. And there would be, these folks would call and complain to the stores. They even sent actual snail mail to a couple of the stores. And so it just got to be this ridiculous thing where my publisher had to, at some of the readings, hire private security. And it was really unfortunate because the, the severity
00:06:45
Speaker
or the disruption that such a small number of people were able to cause was so kind of alarming that it almost drowned out all the positive attention and the positive feedback that I was getting from the book, which meant so much to me. I mean, so many people came out to my readings and were so supportive. And I just, you know, being able to meet readers is an absolute dream come true for any writer.
00:07:14
Speaker
And it was just kind of bizarre that the whole process kind of got co-opted by this small number of people who just have way too much time on their hands. But it was also really interesting to see that happen in the context of 2016 in general and what other journalists were going through and kind of the way we live now.
00:07:40
Speaker
and what it means to be a writer as a public person, even when you're as obscure as I am. If you do anything now and put your name to it, you're kind of inviting this army of trolls to move into your life. And it's really strange. I think it requires a different level of courage to do it now than it might have 50, 60 years ago.
00:08:09
Speaker
Do you find that despite this awakening of this kind of particular troll culture that really sort of hijacked a lot of the positive attention for your book and for you, do you look back on it and say it was still worth it? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Just to be able to see something that you've put so much time into
00:08:39
Speaker
have a life outside your head is amazing. And to connect with readers and to see that despite everything we hear about the digital age that people really do, they are still lining up to buy books. And they do still care about a culture of reading and learning and just kind of, you know, the community
00:09:07
Speaker
that books provide in that sense was really heartening. And I think if I had kind of let that put me off writing, I, you know, I would have just felt, you know, what a horrible waste. I mean, I think everyone hates bullies, but especially, you know, I hate them especially. And I hate that so many people are feeling kind of threatened or intimidated by
00:09:37
Speaker
by the way we live and that trolls are just everywhere now. What I thought about during the entire process was as bad as it got, I kept thinking about all the other writers out there who might have been seeing what was happening and might have said, well, I don't want to do that then. And that's horrible because the only way a culture kind of corrects itself is when people refuse to be cowed by that kind of bullshit.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, and in listening to some other podcast with Tim Ferriss, he talks about, he had a girlfriend at his, he put a jar on his desk, and it was called the Jar of Awesome. And it was like, if something really good happened to him, because it's easy to get drowned out by a lot of just,
00:10:26
Speaker
Negative stuff, especially if you're in the creative space, you know, you put a little piece of paper in there It's just and then pull it pull out the paper when you needed a little Joel and um, you're kind of like talked about that like you're You know on Amazon, I think well last I checked you had a hundred eighty seven Ratings for pitbull. It's like a four point It might be more than that. It's like four point eight seven out of five stars. So like massive massive positive response and deservedly so
00:10:55
Speaker
So what were some of those positive experiences that you were able to help drown out a lot of that negative, bullying, trolling behavior that really fueled you to this day?
Exploring Controversial Topics
00:11:10
Speaker
I mean, really just the most energizing thing for me, as simple as it sounds, was to go to any city and see that there were
00:11:22
Speaker
a whole crowd of people willing to pay $26.95 for something I wrote. And they were willing to spend an hour of their time listening to me talk about it and then spend however many 10, 12, 13 hours reading it was just, it meant so incredibly much to me. I can't possibly articulate it. I mean, it's almost worth, I mean, I get kind of, you know, almost worked up about it. It just meant so much to have that kind of support, but also to see how
00:11:52
Speaker
You know, I was very worried, probably overly worried, but very worried about getting things right in the book because there were so many competing perspectives and there was a lot of tricky science that I had to parse.
00:12:08
Speaker
And I didn't want to do the subject or my readers a disservice by being sloppy about any of that. I really wanted to get it right. And I checked and I checked and I rechecked and checked and had sent the draft to experts and had them look it over and all kinds of things. But you still wonder in that kind of dark night of the soul, you still wake up sweating, sometimes thinking, oh my God, what if I got something wrong? And it was really amazing how positive the response was
00:12:36
Speaker
from reviewers who reviewed the book and they themselves had a scientific background. So the Wall Street Journal review was written by Pat Shipman, who's a renowned paleoanthropologist who has written an incredible book about the way humans and animals evolve together. And so human-animal relationships over the course of history are her specialty.
00:13:01
Speaker
and she loved the book and she's one of my heroes. So the fact that she dropped me a note after that came out and said how much she enjoyed it was just awesome. Same with like Dr. Laurel Braitman who wrote this incredible book called Animal Madness and it was about mental illness in animals and how we kind of think of animals, the traditional view is that there are these like, you know, automata
00:13:30
Speaker
Um, or, you know, these kinds of machines that don't have the same sensitivities and vulnerabilities, um, mentally that we do, but the science is very clear that, that animals can, can have mental illness or, you know, compulsions or obsessions or anxieties the same way that we can. Um, and she also reviewed the book for the New York times and again, dropped me a note and said that she loved it. And that was just, that was just amazing.
00:13:59
Speaker
But it was also really powerful to get notes from readers who said things like, I was not interested in this subject, but I just picked the book up randomly. And it made me think so much about my own prejudices. And I realized that I have more prejudices, even against groups of people than I realized. And that's something I really want to work on. And I got several of those, and that just
00:14:29
Speaker
meant more to me than I can say.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's amazing to get that degree of validation, especially from such people you respect, too. And then it goes beyond that, because now they're essentially telling you that you're one of us, you're a peer. And that must have been especially moving, too. That's kind of the subtext of what they're saying, is that you're one of us now.
00:15:01
Speaker
I wouldn't go that far. I wouldn't go that far. I'm still very much the new kid on the block. But having people that I admire kind of pat me on the back and say, good job, kid. You did it really meant so much. And there were lots of things that were about the process that
00:15:19
Speaker
I think I'm always surprised when people are as generous or kind or supportive as they are, but people at my publisher were just wonderful. It was almost like family. It's so surprising to me still that anyone would be interested in anything I had to say. It shocks me every damn day.
00:15:42
Speaker
you talked about the the research being so intensive and then what you know worrying about whether you got certain things right and just and i remember when our last conversation just the the uh... the volume of stuff that you had like an evernote and everywhere just all this information yeah the unofficial sponsor of last podcast with evernote um... but yeah
00:16:08
Speaker
just like so much information it's easy to get bogged down and then it's easy not to ship the product finally. At what point did you finally relent and say it's time to go you've got to go to the book? When I realized I think when I and I'm not the first writer to put it this way I'm sure but I think at the point in the research where I wasn't learning anything new
00:16:36
Speaker
where, I mean, in one sense, I was always learning something new, but where you keep hearing the same things over and over again, or you, as I think Susan Orlean says, you meet yourself coming the other way. So you've interviewed all these people and then you get to a point where they say, have you talked to so-and-so and you already have. You know, so you start to encounter
00:17:00
Speaker
um, pieces of research or other sources that you've already talked to. And so there's not much new ground to kind of turn up or because you have been obsessively working on this thing full time for a period of years, you end up knowing more about the entire thing than a lot of people you're talking to who each have expertise in a certain piece of it. So once that happened, I realized that, um,
00:17:31
Speaker
I just had, you know, the pain, as you say, the pain of not shipping it, the pain of not having some sense of completion was it far outweighed the anxiety about doing it. And of course, you know, I mean, deadlines help. Yeah, it was a year, a year late, unfortunately, because I just kept nail biting over the details. And at a certain point, just as a professional, as a person,
00:17:59
Speaker
You just, you know, it's important to kind of not let that stuff drag on too long. But yeah, so, but at some point I did have to, I think I told you this last time, I had to just get out, get out of my office. I had accumulated so much stuff. I just had to, it was almost like a, it was almost like a physical weight that was crushing me. It was files, it was photos, it was everything. And I had to just basically move into a blank,
00:18:28
Speaker
empty carol in the duke wall library and just bang it out right right and the last time we spoke you were in the final like i think hard edits of your conspiracy crews conspiracy theory crews and um it's funny what it was funny you were going through
00:18:49
Speaker
the pitbull tour and then at some point this piece comes out and that exposed you to another set of trolling behavior in paranoid people.
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, and it's funny, it's like, you know, in a lot of these things, you're at the center of these universes here that really exposed you to a lot of criticism and vitriol. And I wonder, like, is there a part of you that feels like that's where you need to get the story to get? You know, like, what part of you wants to be at that spot? Because at that intersection is where the conflict is.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yes, that's a great observation. And there's a lot of that that's very true. I am very much drawn to kind of upending stereotypes or going into a community of people that the public may think it knows and trying to find something different and surprising and human there that, you know,
00:20:04
Speaker
just kind of upends those expectations because, you know, I think all of us at some point, some more than others, but all of us have been on the receiving end of some kind of bad stereotyping. I know even like being from the South, I've often had people assume that I was dumb.
00:20:25
Speaker
or that I had certain political views or that kind of thing, or being a woman, people assume certain things about you, et cetera. So I've always been interested in stereotypes and kind of upending them. So when I go into a community, like people who love pit bulls, you think a certain thing about those people. And I found something very different, conspiracies, conspiracy theorists.
00:20:49
Speaker
I was very interested in the kind of the psychology of that, partially because of the research that I had done for the book and a lot of these people that ended up trolling me from the pit bull thing had very much of a conspiracy theorist mindset that I must be working for some kind of dog fighting lobby that I must have been paid by someone to write this book, et cetera, et cetera. So that's when I started researching it and I became really interested
00:21:18
Speaker
in that mindset. And that's what kind of led me to do the conspiracy story. And there were a lot of those folks that I met on that conspiracy cruise who I really enjoyed and were really wonderful. And then there were a couple who were really problematic. But yeah, I think getting into those conflicts is where stories happen. But when you go into a community where people are so passionate
00:21:44
Speaker
It's 100% guaranteed that some of them are not going to like what you have to say, no matter how hard you try to paint them an empathetic light or dig under the surface. Regardless, if there are people who are passionately attached to something or who have rigid views about one thing or another, they are not going to like
00:22:10
Speaker
what you say and that's a really uncomfortable moment. And what was most interesting about that year and kind of getting hit from both sides with that stuff was that before it happened, before it started happening to me, that was probably my number one fear.
Dealing with Public Humiliation and Trolling
00:22:31
Speaker
I think public humiliation, nobody likes the thought of public humiliation and being consistently trolled
00:22:38
Speaker
has this element, like what they are attempting to do is embarrass you in public in some way. It's like a performance.
00:22:47
Speaker
Um, but then once it happens, you realize like there's really nothing people can actually do to you that matters. I mean, they can try to say mean things about you on the internet and that's emotionally draining. But, um, you know, the people I work with, the editors I work with, they all know who I am. They all know that stuff's ridiculous. My husband loves me. My friends love me. My family loves me.
00:23:11
Speaker
I have a very solid network of people who care about me, and the people I've worked with as sources or whatever, they know that I treat them with respect and all that. So there's really nothing that they can actually do. It's just this kind of background noise, and it's draining and awful. But once you kind of come through it, there's this
00:23:36
Speaker
I don't know. It's almost like a war reporter mentality or something. You're just like, OK, you know, put on the hazmat suit and let's go out there and get the job done. And that's kind of that's really liberating. And I would suggest to anyone out there who's afraid of something like that happening. You do come through it and it makes you stronger and you are much better prepared for the next story you take on.
00:24:02
Speaker
If dancing with that fear is ultimately where people need to learn to be because that's where all the great work is taking place and all the great work that has been done is usually because someone had to face their fear and have the courage to power through and do the work.
00:24:22
Speaker
put themselves in in uncomfortable positions to do something that's special something and something that will resonate with greater purpose and will actually have some staying power so it's like yeah I mean hope so yeah for sure and also I think it's just it's hard I think especially for writers because we are so critical of ourselves and to have your writing out there
Overcoming Self-Criticism and Perfectionism
00:24:48
Speaker
kind of attacked is like every writer's worst fear in a lot of ways. It's like the dream that you show up naked at school or something. But yeah, I mean, the good stories are the ones where that's probably likeliest to happen. And at least, you know, if it does happen to you, my God, you are not alone. It's happening to everybody. And so, you know, it's just one of it's one of those risks of the job
00:25:18
Speaker
And if it means enough tea, you just have to power through it with a lot of, you know, beers and crying on people's shoulders and that kind of thing. Now it's the criticism that comes from outside once the piece is done, like that's its own beast. There's also the type of self-criticism that goes on before it's published where you have a perfect vision in your head of what you want it to look like.
00:25:43
Speaker
but as you're going through drafts, it does not match that ideal that's in your head and sometimes that can, in and of itself is going to be very paralyzing because it's, you're doing some work but it doesn't fit the ideal you've made for it and the people who do this, do this and do this well can, they look beyond the perfect vision in their head and they get it to a close point by doing the work. So like how do you, how do you,
00:26:14
Speaker
reconcile say the perfect vision in the head versus. The work that has to get done in order to somewhat meet that idea how do you overcome the negative self talk in the drafting process.
00:26:27
Speaker
I'm so the wrong person to ask because if I have a pathology, um, that is it. And that sometimes it's completely paralyzing. Um, perfectionism will truly kill you. It will kill your work. It will kill anything that's original about your voice. It will kill everything good that you're trying to do. And it doesn't say that doesn't make it go away. I struggle with it every day.
00:26:52
Speaker
And that's why, you know, fortunately in nonfiction, if you are, you know, writing for magazines, etc., or you have a certain book project that's going, deadlines really do help. Because at the end, I think Paul Valerie, the French poet said, you know, a poem is never finished, it's only abandoned. And I think that's probably true for any piece of writing. I know it's certainly true for mine. Everything that I have ever written
00:27:19
Speaker
I can't read because I go back and I think, oh, I should have changed that or I could have done this better. It's very painful for me seeing that because it's probably like 50% suckier than I hoped it would be. But deadlines really are great in that they force you through it. Also, though, at a certain point, considering
00:27:47
Speaker
like the just mountain of stuff that is out there and the mountain of stuff that people are consuming. If I write a really bad story, I hate it. But, you know, the world goes on. The world will absolutely keep spinning on its axis if I write a story that just fucking blows. So, you know, there's a little bit of you have to get over yourself part of it.
00:28:16
Speaker
Like I heard Francis Ford Coppola once talk about filmmaking and he said that someone asked him, does he feel pressure knowing how many greats there have been in film and his own films. I mean, God, the Godfather, how do you compete with that the next time? And he said, I really don't feel that because I know it's not going to be the best film that's ever made. I mean, there's already been Fellini. They've already been these incredible, you know, it's
00:28:45
Speaker
I don't have to worry about that, but the likelihood is that it's not going to be the worst. So I'm free to kind of do whatever I want in between. And that's, that's something good to remember. I remember I walked into, there were a bunch of times when I walked into like Barnes and Noble randomly in an attempt to like soothe my own anxiety. And I would just look around and I would be like, Bronwyn, all these people did it.
00:29:11
Speaker
Like there are people here who like there are people on these shelves who wrote things like books about how to knit a sweater out of cat hair and shit like that. Like Snooki wrote a novel.
00:29:25
Speaker
You can do it. That's kind of how I feel about Jose Canseco. That guy's got two books on steroids out in baseball. Obviously he didn't really write it, but I'm like, I will not have made it until I surpass the overall, however you pronounce that word, of Jose Canseco. I mean, all these people found a way to get through it.
00:29:50
Speaker
So, you know, all you can do is all you can do. And I think I'm not to like pile quotes on top of quotes on top of quotes, but like Elizabeth Gilbert saying, you know, I promised I would show up and do the work. I did not promise that the work would be good. She's great. Yeah, she's really talk about a generous heart and someone who I always I feel very put off when people who have done very successful work
00:30:19
Speaker
When other writers out of their own pettiness or jealousy when they kind of like rag on people And she got so much of that And she's still out there trying to inspire people and encourage them and amen to that man. Amen to that. That's great That's what we all should be doing
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah, because she was an obscure novelist before Eat, Pray, Love. She didn't set out to write a blockbuster. She set out to write a book that scratched her own itch. And it just happened to just catch lightning. She didn't ask for that. And she's taking that power and that platform. And then she, I think she got pressured probably into writing the sequel, whatever. But then she wrote a beautiful novel and a signature of all things.
00:31:07
Speaker
which I loved because she needed to get back to the core of who she is, which is a novelist. And then she writes Big Magic, which speaks to the, I've read it twice. It's a wonderful book and it's one of the most generous things a writer or an artist can read. And she gave that gift to everyone out of the fame that came from the memoir that people just chastised and chastised her for the fame that she didn't ask for.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's horrible to see what people will do, like trying to tear down people out of their own insecurities. It's just such a shame to see that happen. I mean, look at what look at what Stephen King has gone through. And you talk about a generous, you know, kind, extraordinarily gifted person who has read so capaciously and wants nothing more
00:32:01
Speaker
than to inspire a love of reading and support writers. He's like my absolute heroes. How did you come to know Philip Girard? Or how did he reach out to you for his book, Art of Creative Research? I don't know him well. He came to a panel that I think I did at AWP with Maggie, actually, on research.
00:32:29
Speaker
I'm even blanking on what I said. I was just kind of riffing on things I'd learned about why truth matters because there's always going to be this conversation about, well, it doesn't matter if it's true, doesn't want creative license. Yes, it matters if it's true. If you're telling people, you know, what's the fact? You know, which is like, John, I understand you're very, very
00:32:55
Speaker
talented, extremely talented. You've done great, imaginative, wonderful work. But what is a fact? We do not need to parse. A fact is a fact. Yeah. I just read that book about a month ago. And I would just, if I had hair, it would be, I would look like I am now, which is to say no hair. I was just like ripping.
00:33:17
Speaker
Ripping my hair, you know is to start that provocative conversation, which is a very worthy conversation But yeah, I will definitely pay on my fist on the table and say goddamn it
00:33:28
Speaker
Yeah, so I've got what Phil chose to quote you in his book, because I spoke to him a few episodes ago and I just know him from Goucher and he's just an awesome, awesome dude.
Importance of Skepticism in Research
00:33:43
Speaker
But you say here, it's like, never ever lose your sense of skepticism, benevolent skepticism, but skepticism. As a writer, the most important tool in your toolbox is the question, how do you know that?
00:33:56
Speaker
Do you remember what he asked you when you had that conversation? No, I think we were just kind of riffing. We were all just kind of going back and forth and talking about why, in research, why it's important to kind of go the extra mile and find out the facts. There's that kind of journalistic old saw that something's too good to check, but nothing's too good to check. And the truth is always more interesting than whatever
00:34:26
Speaker
you kind of might see on the surface. But yeah, my benevolent skepticism was one of the things my mentor, patio tool, who was a biographer, she wrote a great biography of Teddy Roosevelt, she used to say is that like, that's the attitude you should, you should go around with as a reporter. And the how do you know that thing came
00:34:49
Speaker
about when I was researching the book and so many people were convinced of what they knew about pit bulls, about genetics, about science, about history, about all these subjects. I think the digital age, another thing that it has done is empowered people with so much information that lots of people assume they know a lot more than they do. And in the nicest way possible, I had to kind of gently nudge people and say, you know, when they were asserting things, that's true. Well, how do you know that?
00:35:18
Speaker
Well, everybody knows that. Well, no, they don't. And it's really important because people will, I think especially in the reporting process, if you're interviewing someone, a lot of times they'll want to impress you in some way because it's very flattering to have someone come to you and say, I think your viewpoint is important and I would like to interview you and hear what you have to say. And I think sometimes we forget as reporters, we forget that
00:35:47
Speaker
that people aren't used to that. And they might be trying to kind of puff up a little bit, not because they're trying to be dishonest in any way, but just because they want to make your time worth it. And if there's anything I can do to gently kind of disarm that and relax how I talk to sources and kind of dig into what they really think and believe and know.
00:36:15
Speaker
then that's what I'm trying to do. But yeah, a lot of people really don't like it when you say that. And so you have to be very delicate about how you phrase it for sure, but it is an awesome tool and it has never done me wrong.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's a fairly, if you preface it, if you preface it strategically, it's a fairly easy question to ask and be like, oh, that's like, that's really interesting. But help me get a greater understanding of how you, how you came to know that. Cause yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's like a really, really good way to yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how long can you sit without a writing project?
00:36:59
Speaker
Oh, um, good question, Brendan. Um, yeah. Um, a couple of months max. And that's kind of the, the point that I've been in this year is the book took so much out of me. It took so much out of me emotionally, psychologically, even physically.
00:37:24
Speaker
that I think I told you last time I was getting to this point where I was like propped up in bed and typing all day and I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating well, I was living on caffeine and so I felt really wired all the time and my help was just not good. So coming off of that is like coming off this weird years long work bender that's just exhausting.
00:37:54
Speaker
And then the book tour stuff and the publicity stuff where if you're like me who's kind of an introvert, if you have to be kind of on display and be on and you really want to be on because people are buying your book and they deserve your time, then it takes a lot out of you. And so I kind of hibernated for a while, but my
00:38:21
Speaker
My brain needs something to chew on and it always does. So I am now finally at that stage where I can't stand to not be working on something meaningful and big. So I'm like, I'm turning my, my focus to that now, but still it's every project feels like being at the bottom of Everest and like, you're going to have to get up there with like roller skates or something. That's what it feels like.
00:38:48
Speaker
So are you in, in a book research or like a long magazine piece research mode? Um, both. And the book research I won't talk about so much since that's, um, I mean that hasn't even been proposed yet. So it's literally just an idea sitting in my head and some files on my computer and a spreadsheet of people to talk to. Um, but yeah, there's some, a couple of,
00:39:16
Speaker
long magazine pieces. I'm trying to get together. But again, anything after the thing you've been working on for years, it all feels a little daunting. I was grateful that the conspiracy thing that I pretty much had to bang that one out while I was doing book tour stuff. It was hell at the time, but I couldn't fixate on it as obsessively as I otherwise would have and worry about it so much. I had to just get it out there.
00:39:46
Speaker
Um, cause when I, yeah, when I ruminate too much, it's not a, it's not a good thing. Are you like with your agent or anything, given, given the success of tip bowl, are you feeling, uh, some outward pressure be like, okay, what's, what's the, the encore, what's the follow-up to that? No, uh, because well.
00:40:11
Speaker
Or at least to have an idea not to like, you know, like some oh, what's the next book? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but I think that's from from most You know what no matter how you your book does or you know if it finds readership or not I think you know once The time to kind of strike while the iron is hot is when people are thinking about your current book Which is it doesn't give writers a whole lot of time but in terms of
00:40:39
Speaker
whether or not people are ever gonna read anything I write again. I don't feel that kind of pressure because I feel so lucky to be here in the first place. I remember in grad school doing my MFA, writing these really short pieces and looking at the kids who were working on book-length projects and thinking they must have this magical, special capability that I would never have. Like, how could you do a book
00:41:08
Speaker
Like that's so big, a book, the idea that there would be a book out there that I could go into a bookstore and there would be something with my name when it was just so outside of what I thought I could do, that I feel so grateful for the opportunity that I've been given in the first place, that it felt to me like a lightning strike. And so I don't expect that to ever happen again. And if it does, that's gravy.
00:41:37
Speaker
you know you given that you're you're kinda working on some magazine stuff and all that uh... it's what is uh... we know what are what are your days how have you been shaping your days to to start to to get to work on this stuff mhm you want the real answer or like the good answer i mean the real answer is the facts well i mean i i i don't think that uh... uh...
Impact of Political Climate on Creativity
00:42:04
Speaker
I don't think it can actually be discounted as much as I hate to bring this stuff up in the pure space of the Creative Nonfiction podcast. But I was really knocked off my center by the election. And I think a lot of writers are kind of going through that in that the world seems tilted in a way
00:42:32
Speaker
You know, like there are things I was very sure of about the world don't seem to be so sure. And I think there's a lot of kind of fear and anxiety just kind of seeing the partisanship and the tensions between groups and kind of the vitriol and the divisions that are out there. I think that was really I've never experienced anything like that in my life.
00:43:00
Speaker
Um, and that was destabilizing for a while. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. And I say that by way of saying that like now I feel compelled to read the news for much longer each day than I did. And in some ways it's good to be that informed, but in other ways it really takes away from the time that you need to be doing other things. So I've had the past couple of months, that's been a real struggle for me. Whereas before.
00:43:30
Speaker
It was easier to get up and scrawl in my notebook and do a cursory look of the times in the post or whatever and then get to work. Now it's like, oh my God, are we all gonna die? So that's a little different and I'm still trying to figure out how to accommodate that and kind of put that to the side and get back to focusing on the things that are most important to me.
00:43:59
Speaker
It's fine. Before I let you get out of here on this little segment, I'm reading Hellhound on his trail by Hampton Sides. Have you read that? No, but I love his writing. I love his writing.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah, so it's funny that you just bring up the current political climate. I just read this chapter last night before I went to bed, and it was talking about George Wallace. And at the beginning of this chapter, he was called the surly orphan of American politics, the grim joker in the deck whose night rider candidacy is a rough approximation of the potential for an American fascism.
00:44:37
Speaker
This is 1967. And then later in the chapter, Life Magazine wrote, in both the North and South, Wallace appears to be tapping a powerful underground stream of discontent. And I was just like, holy shit, this is 50 years ago. And he didn't win, but what he was platforming on won Trump the election. And it's just like, holy shit.
00:45:03
Speaker
We've come so far and not far at all. I know. And look at what happened in those years. I mean, you talk about upheaval, how much injustice and hatred and backlash and people, the whole country seems to be coming apart in so many ways than because of hatred. Look at the assassinations and all the things that were happening. I can't imagine what it was like to live
00:45:33
Speaker
through that time, except that this is this time. And people have a whole new arsenal of tools to rain down hate on each other. And so our ability to, I mean, it's something I've been thinking a lot about, our ability to spread hate.
00:45:57
Speaker
is exponentially greater now than it was in the 1960s. At least then you had to show up to a demonstration or show up to someone's house or send them an actual letter. Like you had to do something that required a serious amount of effort. And now there are so many ways you can ruin lives with, you know, a couple of strings of code.
00:46:24
Speaker
Well, Bronwyn, thank you so much for taking time out of your morning to talk shop. And this is always, always fun and deeply grateful for your time. And so, yeah. Anytime, man. Anytime.