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Episode 162: Seyward Darby—Editing as Collaboration at The Atavist
149 Plays6 years ago
"Let me be your sounding board for how the piece should come together," says Seyward Darby.
Seyward Darby is the executive editor of The Atavist Magazine. She's also a writer and a brilliant mind.
Thanks to Goucher College's MFA in Nonficiton and Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction for supporting the show.
Twitter: @CNFPod.
Instagram: @cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, greatest podcast in the world, sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction.
Goucher College MFA Program Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
The Goucher MFA is a two year low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on campus residencies allow you to hone your craft, while accomplished mentors.
00:00:22
Speaker
with accomplished mentors, with paulter prizes, and best-selling books to their names. They've got them. Think I missed a word. Program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni, which is published 140 books and counting. You'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
00:00:42
Speaker
visit Goucher.edu slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published and Goucher's MFA for nonfiction.
Bay Path University MFA Program
00:00:53
Speaker
Oh boy. CNF is also brought to you by Bay Path University. Discover your story. Bay Path is the first and only university offering no residency. Fully accredited MFA focusing exclusively on creative nonfiction.
00:01:06
Speaker
ten fuller part-time from anywhere in the world. The world! In the Bay Path MFA you'll find small online classes in a dynamic and supportive community. You'll master the techniques of good writing from acclaimed authors and editors. Learn about publishing and teaching through professional internships and complete a master's thesis that will form the foundation of your memoir or collection of personal essays.
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Speaker
Special elective courses include contemporary women's stories, travel and food writing.
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Speaker
Family histories, spiritual writing, and an optional week-long summer residency in Ireland, with guest writers including Andre the Beast III, Ann Hood, Mia Gallagher, and others. Start dates in late August and January. Find out more at baypath.edu slash MFA slash slash slash MFA. Hey, CNFers, you know the rules.
Meet the Host and Guest
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Speaker
I say this time and time again, you must be tall to ride this riff.
00:02:14
Speaker
That's right, kid. Get out of the line. You ain't tall enough. Hey, I'm Brendan O'Mara, and CNF is my podcast. The show where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, producers, about the art and craft of telling true stories. Got a good one today, friend.
Insights from Sayward Darby
00:02:30
Speaker
Sayward Darby. Just love the name, Sayward Darby.
00:02:33
Speaker
executive editor of the Adivis magazine. She drops some serious how-tos when it comes to pitching, pitfalls in pitching, but also her great story growing up, North Carolina, going to Duke, grad school in Yale, wicked smart as we used to say, and how she balances all of that stuff, that reading for work, the reading she does for the book she's writing, and reading for pleasure, if there's even time for that. It's pretty baller.
00:03:04
Speaker
So, what's happening? I do. Remember to subscribe to the podcast. That's a thing. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Why wouldn't you? It's free. Go to brendadomara.com, hey, hey, for show notes and head to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher to get your fix. Join the show on Twitter at cnfpod and Instagram at cnfpod and even Facebook. That's still around. Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
00:03:32
Speaker
I had a great conversation the other day with Daniel, who's a great supporter of the show. We were going back and forth for a good half an hour to an hour. It was really pleasant. No reason why you can't jump in the fire too, man. And if you're feeling super nice, head over to Apple Podcast and join the over 70 people who have left a rating or review of the show.
00:03:54
Speaker
We're assuming their people could be extraterrestrials. They could have picked up the Golden Record and be like, I bet there's podcasts back on Earth. I'm going to leave a review for that guy. Normally this is the time where I riff on something that's on my mind and believe me, I've got some things on my mind.
00:04:14
Speaker
but I'm kind of eager to get to say word and I think I just want to get out of the way. So I think I'm going to just launch into that and maybe save the audio blog portion for next week.
The Influence of Upbringing and Accents
00:04:27
Speaker
Hope you don't miss it. Signing off here in a sense. Here's say word Darby episode one 62 cue that lovely intro riff right now.
00:04:46
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You don't sound like you're from North Carolina. Did you always know? No. Yeah. Is that something you worked on? Um, you know, it's interesting. I don't know that I worked on it exactly. But so a couple, I think I do have a little bit of an accent that like comes out when I'm talking to other people from the South, you know, I just kind of like slide into it. Um, but more than that, both of my parents, because my dad is a theater professor, my mom was a theater actress,
00:05:12
Speaker
they were people who, you know, spoke, like their voices were something that, you know, they professionally, um, I dunno, uh, they did not have accents, I guess is what I'm saying. Like they were from Georgia and South Carolina. They didn't have accents because presumably, you know, professionally it didn't work for them. And so like, I grew up around so many accents and all of my wider family has accents, but neither of my parents really do. And so I think that as a result, like,
00:05:41
Speaker
I just kind of aped them and they're the same as me like they'll slide like they're talking to my grandmother or something like they'll slide into having more of an accent.
00:05:49
Speaker
For instance, if you were talking to my mom on the phone right now, you would just be like, oh yeah, they sound pretty much exactly the same. This woman could be from anywhere. Yeah, similarly, when I go back to Massachusetts or something, my Boston accent will just start kicking in. And it's just like, I did consciously try to iron it out a little bit in college. But at the same time, it's kind of like, I almost wish I didn't. Because as you kind of get older, especially in being and writing in the arts, voice is everything.
00:06:18
Speaker
Exactly. It's almost like, I kind of wish I kept it, even though it kind of sounds moronic. I'm like, oh, that's kind of singular. And that's kind of what I sound like. And you want to embrace that more. But there was a time when I was like, I got to squash this thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I have a friend who's an actor. He's also from North Carolina. And he is a very thick Southern accent.
00:06:41
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And I keep meaning to talk to him about his stage actor mostly, and I keep meaning to talk to him about how he navigates that, because surely he must have to turn it on and off. But he's also made a conscious choice to go into auditions, for instance, and that is his baseline voice, you know? He comes in with this drawl. And I think that's an interesting, yeah, I don't know. I grew up around theater people. I'm not a theater person, but I grew up around theater people and sort of those minor manipulations of your person, I find really, really fascinating.
00:07:10
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because they're something that I think other people take for granted and theater people have to think so consciously about them. So anyway. Yeah, that's all cool. And when I was looking at your website too, I love that you call attention to your name. You're like, my peculiar name comes from this book. And I wonder if maybe you could tell people how you got your quote unquote peculiar name.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so the name comes from a book called The Awakening Land by Conrad Richter. And I actually have it. I'm sitting right next to it on my bookshelf. And it was, it's actually a series of three books called, let's see, these are the trees, the trees, the town, and I forget what the third one's called, but, um, it's about a pioneer family called the Lucketts who, I forget exactly what the time period is, but they move into the Ohio River Valley.
00:08:04
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And the mother dies. I'm not giving anything away because that happens pretty much immediately. And Sayward is one of the daughters and she has to kind of become the matriarch and take care of her father and her siblings.
Sayward's Journalism Journey
00:08:21
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And she's just this like strong pioneer figure. And so my parents took the name from that and there are not a lot of Saywards in the world. Yeah.
00:08:34
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So people often think it's a man's name, which makes for good times on the internet when people think I'm a dude. But yeah, it's the name. When I was a kid, I was always like, why can't I have an easier name? But now I like it. Particularly, I think in the world we live in now, I don't mind that people don't immediately know my gender. Like if they're sending me an email or whatever, I don't know, it's kind of an interesting little
00:09:04
Speaker
experiment to see, you know, do they talk to me differently, treat me differently based on whether or not they think I'm a man or a woman. Um, so yeah, no, it's a, it's a highly literary name. And it was also made into a mini series. I always feel like I should tell people this. Um, it was made into a mini series in 1979. Like one of those, you know, showed once a week on like CBS, um, like ethics. And, uh, it started Elizabeth Montgomery as Sayward Luckett, uh, how Holbrook plays her husband.
00:09:33
Speaker
Jane Seymour, isn't it? It's just like this, you know, perfect like 70s TV. I don't know. I don't even know. I don't even have the right word. It's just it's like epic and rich and also like kind of over the top and totally worth watching. I also been watching that discovered that my name was spelled incorrectly. In the book it's S-A-Y, W-A-R-D, and my parents decided to go with S-E-Y because I guess they were the right way. It wasn't weird enough.
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, it wasn't... Oh no, it was perfect. And the only way I knew how to ultimately pronounce your name was by reading that. I was like, oh, say word. Because I wasn't sure if it was C word or say word. But yeah, say word it is. So you already alluded to, you know, your father was a theater professor, your mother, actor, actress.
00:10:24
Speaker
So what kind of people were they that they would name their daughter Sayward and kind of pass on maybe some of that artistic sensibility onto you? Yeah, I think that my parents were, I don't know, they grew up in the South and the South is a conservative place and they were always rebels in their own way.
00:10:53
Speaker
My dad didn't want to go to college, for instance. And his dad was like, no, you have to go to college. And my dad went to college and discovered what would become his passion, which was set design and construction. And my mom was a tomboy who ultimately decided to become an actress. And they both moved away from the small towns where they were from. I guess my dad's from Jacksonville, Florida, which is a big city.
00:11:21
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you know, they were just people who took individuality
Transition to Editing and Career Growth
00:11:24
Speaker
really seriously. And so when I came along, and I'm an only child, when I came along, they were determined to give me an unusual name. And so some of the other options were India, which I'm not sure I could have pulled off, Savannah, which is actually not, I mean, that's a super Southern name. I don't necessarily know that it's unusual, but you don't meet a ton of Savannah's, certainly not up north.
00:11:49
Speaker
Um, and then if I was a boy, it was going to be Atticus after Atticus French. So yeah. Um, and it's, it's funny cause you know, I, I don't think that they expected that I would be a person whose name was like a part of my career, but then obviously as a journalist it is. Um, and so, uh, in some ways they did me a favor because, you know, I could be named like Sarah Smith and there would be a million Sarah Smith. Um, but instead my, my byline is really, really unique.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of those great names. You see it in print and it just kind of catches your eye and it's fun to, this sounds weird, but it's like fun to say and it's fun to look at. It's that great bit of individuality that your parents so adeptly passed on to you. Totally, totally. Yeah, I mean it still baffles people and I get lots of mispronunciations and gender confusion and all sorts of stuff.
00:12:47
Speaker
but I like it. And my family called me Sadie for short, which doesn't like immediately present itself as a nickname, but that's what they went with. And yeah, so I'm just, I'm just say word. And then in the social media age, I've been able to find other say words, which has been, has been like a fun. Facebook must have been around for a couple of years when I was like, I'm going to look for other say words. Like, of course, you know? And then there they were, which was kind of crazy. Say word support groups.
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Tell me about your life with teachers mispronouncing your name in roll call. Nice. So as an only child and everything, what were you into growing up? Were you one of those kids that was kind of brought along and into the adult circles or did you kind of have your own circle that you ran with?
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, I my parents were definitely the kind of parents who were like, you know, the kid comes wherever we go. So, you know, I was expected to come and sit at the table with the adults. And it's funny, my husband is one of five.
00:13:55
Speaker
And his family, because everybody has a lot of kids, there's a very different approach because it's like, well, there's so many kids, there literally has to be a kid's table or whatever. And in my case, it was like, well, there's really only you. So it would be weird to put you at your own table. And so so, yeah, I was definitely brought into adult circles.
00:14:17
Speaker
They definitely went on like some vacations and stuff without me, but by the time I was about seven or eight, they started, you know, taking me with them places and whatnot. Um, and so I was definitely, uh, I was always really good at talking to my friend's parents. Let me put it that way. Like I was the kid who came over for a solver party and would like have a conversation with the parents first in the kitchen for a while. Like that was my, my MO. Um, and I think it's just cause I grew up.
00:14:42
Speaker
exclusively around adults at home. Yeah. And were you a bookish kid or were you what kind of crew were you running with? Yeah, I was a really bookish kid. Loved, loved, loved reading. I there was this in my town, there was this bookstore called Michael's Bookshop owned by Michael. And this was like before Barnes and Noble came in. And so it was, you know, the
00:15:12
Speaker
only bookstore in town, I think. Um, and I used to go with my mom and I would buy books and then we would come, we'd drive back to our house and I would just sit in the car with my feet up on the dashboard and like read a book, like all the way through, um, uh, before going inside. Um, cause I was so excited to read. So I was a huge nerd like that. Um, and, uh, I was also, uh, really into singing. I was like in a, in like chorus groups and stuff like that. So, um,
00:15:39
Speaker
Uh, and played sports, but that was never like my never what I was terribly good at. So, um, definitely more on like the nerdy bookish side of things.
Editorial Process and Pitch Evaluation
00:15:49
Speaker
Nice. You play soccer. You kind of look like a soccer player. Oh yeah. I did. I did play soccer. I also played basketball. Um, I was, I grew really fast. So like I'm like almost five eight and I've been almost five eight since like forever. And so for a while I was really tall relative to, uh,
00:16:06
Speaker
other girls, and so I played basketball even though I wasn't terribly good at it just because I was tall. But yeah, soccer definitely. It's funny, my town is known for baseball, baseball and softball. Like some team, I don't totally understand how baseball works, but there's some team that won like the Little League World Series that's from my town. And so everybody played baseball and softball. I did not, I don't even know why exactly, but
00:16:36
Speaker
That was not something I ever got into. And then I got to high school and just studied all the time. Well, yeah, if you're going to get to Duke, you're doing a whole lot of studying. That's for damn sure. I did a lot of studying. Yeah, to the point that sometimes my parents were like, please go socialize. Be a human. You don't need to read the assignment five times.
00:16:59
Speaker
So as you're kind of developing a just voracious reader, what were you reading at the time that maybe that kind of gave you a bug to maybe pursue that as a vocation, whether it be writing or editing or journalism? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, as a kid, I was primarily into reading fiction and never interested in writing it.
00:17:24
Speaker
I was just having a conversation with someone the other day about how the first book that I remember being really moved by from the standpoint of, oh, wow, writing can make me feel something that nothing else can was My Antonia by Willa Cather, which I read when I was 13 or something. And that's a book that just sticks with me as, again, I was never interested in writing fiction, never have written fiction. But that book,
Balancing Work and Personal Life
00:17:49
Speaker
I don't know.
00:17:50
Speaker
When I think about reading it, I'm like, oh, that changed something for me in terms of how I thought about language and how I thought about stories and what they can mean. And then I started in high school. It was less nonfiction books that I got into in terms of my interest in journalism and more just I started reading magazines and newspapers. And somebody got me a subscription to The Atlantic. I can't remember. I can't remember who. Maybe my godfather.
00:18:20
Speaker
And I started kind of getting into that nonfiction space. And that being said, I didn't go to college with the goal of getting into journalism. I didn't really have a goal at all. I wasn't like, I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a doctor. I just wanted to go to college.
00:18:42
Speaker
And I
Literary Influences and Perspectives
00:18:43
Speaker
kind of fell into doing journalism there. I went to the student newspaper office like the first or second week that I was on campus and like, oh, I'm, you know, maybe interested in writing stuff for the paper. And when somebody asked me, where are you from? And I said, North Carolina, they were like, oh, perfect, because they like wanted somebody who already kind of knew the state a little bit to, you know, write articles about like state politics and
00:19:11
Speaker
that segued into in 2004 the presidential election, like I got to cover rallies and stuff around North Carolina for the college paper, which was fun. This was like pre-John Edwards falling from grace and he was running and it was a big deal and and whatnot and then obviously became the VP candidate. So yeah journalism it didn't
00:19:35
Speaker
You know, it wasn't the sort of thing when I was younger, I was like, oh, this is absolutely what I want to do. I just kind of, I knew that I loved reading and writing. I knew I loved talking to people. As you can tell, I talk a lot. And the idea of being in conversation, being in conversation with people and asking them questions about their lives was interesting to me. So yeah, and then I was at the
00:19:58
Speaker
student paper all four years. And well, if you were in North Carolina, you remember this, everybody remembers this, but the Duke lacrosse scandal in 2006, I was the editor of the student paper when that happened. So
00:20:08
Speaker
That was fun. Yeah, I remember that all vividly. I was at that newspaper up in Henderson. Not that we covered, it was outside of us having to cover it, but we were running stories about that every day. That was just such a, I mean, what a big story that was. Yeah, it was nuts. It really was. I remember thinking things are getting out of hand with The New York Times called my desk.
00:20:38
Speaker
that the student newspaper office, they were looking for a copy of a search warrant or something. And I can't remember who was on the phone, but this reporter was like, hi, I'm so and so from the New York Times. And I'm wondering if you can help me get access to the search warrant. And I was like 20.
00:20:56
Speaker
Uh, um, it was just a very, or then I remember Nick Kristof emailed me, Nicholas Kristof emailed me. I was like, hi, you might not know who I am. I'm Nicholas Kristof. I write a column for the Times. I'm thinking about writing about the people across case. And it was just like, this is surreal. Like what is happening? Um, so yeah, but it was also a good introduction to, you know, how to be a journalist, um, in a very professionalized sense. Um,
00:21:21
Speaker
So, you know, obviously a horrible situation and I joke about it only insofar as there is a surreal quality to it looking back. But, you know, from a journalistic standpoint, we all who everybody who worked at the student newspaper office really had to, you know, go from covering, I don't know, debates over food in the cafeteria or whatever to, you know, really having to play the game vis-a-vis every major news network, every newspaper.
00:21:49
Speaker
Not that we necessarily thought we were going to get the story before they did, but we had to take the story just as seriously and kind of become mini professionals overnight, which was nuts. How
Engagement and Opportunities for Writers
00:22:03
Speaker
did you not get overwhelmed by that entire situation?
00:22:10
Speaker
Oh, good question. I mean, that comes with the assumption that I didn't get overwhelmed. Or how did you like process it? Yeah, I'm sure if you like talk to my college boyfriend, for instance, he would be like, oh, yeah, she's totally overwhelmed. But, you know, I think it was kind of a crisis mode type situation, where you just look around and realize like, you know,
00:22:35
Speaker
this is what it is. We can't control the situation. And we just kind of have to go, go, go until, you know, it stops. And so I didn't sleep very much. I remember I was only the editor, like the editorship at the student newspaper only lasted a year. And I only had at that point about two, three months maybe left in my time. And so there were
00:22:59
Speaker
you know, there was a ton of legal stuff, obviously, that happened after the initial news, other editors were in charge then. But during those first couple of weeks of, you know, all of this crazy news and protests and, you know, falsehoods getting thrown around and people refuting the falsehood, it was just, I mean, it was a storm, basically. And I kind of set myself up as like a barrier between
00:23:25
Speaker
The reporters, the student reporters and the wider world. So, like, I spoke on behalf of the newspaper and on behalf of the reporters and the work that they were doing and, you know, kind of just turned a lot of my focus outward so that they could, you know, again, do that, like, professionalized work that they suddenly suddenly had to do.
00:23:45
Speaker
So, so yeah, I mean, I just didn't sleep very much. That's, that's what I remember the most is just being like, Oh, well, got an hour of sleep. Like, you know, CNN is reporting this. Let's, let's get on it. Um, which is kind of nuts. Um, looking back, I do remember sleeping a lot when the school year ended. There was like a stretch where like for three days, I was basically just like, and like just taking naps constantly. So yeah.
00:24:08
Speaker
I feel like your upbringing and being comfortable speaking with adults essentially like professionals in life really set you up well to mitigate the stress and the overwhelm of this flood of national attention coming onto Durham for this and you being that sort of intermediary between you, your reporters and the situation at large, I feel like that kind of came to a head for you right then.
00:24:36
Speaker
Oh, interesting. You know, I'd never thought about it that way, but I'm sure, I mean, if my parents ever listen to this, they will be pleased as punch, as they say, to hear that. Because I do think, you know, yeah, like, you know, I went on national TV a lot to talk about the case, you know, had to sound as adult as I possibly could. And I'm sure that, you know, my parents always stressing the need to be able to converse with adults and, you know, speak
00:25:05
Speaker
speak confidently and be informed and things like that. I'm sure that it came into play. My mom has a reel of some kind. I think she just kept a VHS tape in the TV. And so if I came on, she would hit record. And so she has this VHS reel somewhere of the various times that I was on TV. I never watched it, nor do I care to, but yeah.
00:25:32
Speaker
I don't know. She has it for her own proud mom purposes, I guess. So what happens next for you after your time in Durham and your time at the student paper? Where do you go from there? Yeah, so when I graduated Duke, I got a fellowship that was run through public policy school at the university and for a year
00:26:00
Speaker
uh with this fellowship I was an editor and researcher and reporter at a digital publication that covered the former communist space so it was based in the Czech Republic and covered 28 countries when I started working there and then Kosovo declared independence about halfway through so 29 countries if you acknowledge that Kosovo is a independent state
00:26:24
Speaker
And yeah, so I moved to the Czech Republic and I bounced around covering things in Poland and Hungary and Bosnia, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, kind of all over the place. And it was a great, great experience. It was a small newsroom. It was a nonprofit newsroom. And in addition to publishing stories, they did training exercises around the space. So, you know, places where
00:26:54
Speaker
Freedom of the Press was still a relatively new concept, offering training for digital storytelling and things like that. So it was a great experience and also fun to live outside the country for a year. So after that, where do you go from there? Do you start working your way up to New York?
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, so I worked with the New Republic several iterations of the New Republic ago. I was a reported researcher, I was the assistant managing editor, I was the online editor, I was there for three years and then and I freelanced through all this time, you know periodically I would I would write for other publications and you know through all of that I think I fundamentally realized you know I loved to edit and I think a lot of there aren't a lot of
00:27:43
Speaker
young people who by the time, you know, they're 25 were like, I really like to edit. Um, but, uh, but I just, I really did. I really enjoyed it. And so of course, you know, I liked reporting and writing, but, um, you know, editing was really something that appealed to me. And so, uh, I took a short break. I went to graduate school in international relations, which sounds odd, but it really wasn't. Um, I studied human rights and human rights reporting. Um,
00:28:11
Speaker
and was able to travel again. Where was that? I went to graduate school at Yale, but I was able to travel. I lived in Kosovo for a little while during grad school and reported stories there. When I left grad school, I got a job as a story editor at Foreign Policy Magazine, which made a ton of sense given what I had just
00:28:36
Speaker
spent two years doing. And so I was at foreign policy for, oh my goodness, let me see, three years, three and a half years. And again, like during all that time, you know, again, I was periodically freelance, but primarily I was working as a story editor. And at that point I really started focusing more on long form narrative stuff. I worked almost exclusively for the print magazine at foreign policy and did a lot of feature work for them.
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, to your point that being in your mid-twenties and being more attracted to editing versus writing, I kind of equate it to the player-coach relationship, especially when you're young. You want to be on the field. You want to be the player, because that's where a lot of the ego comes from. You want to see your story in print. You want to manifest your own kind of vision.
00:29:27
Speaker
usually as an editor you're more like trying to help other people realize their vision and you're kind of on the back burner and only the people in the know know what you're doing and there's not as much as that publicity and ego charge. So why did editing appeal to you at such a young age when so many of us in our mid 20s are so ego driven? Yeah, I mean I think probably a couple of different things. I think first of all
00:29:57
Speaker
I started working formally in the industry in 2009, so bad time to be in the world of getting new jobs, just given the financial crisis and everything. This is also, media is in a constant state of maybe dying, definitely dying, kind of regrowing, dying again. I saw friends who primarily worked as reporters lose jobs, get jobs, lose jobs, struggle to freelance,
00:30:27
Speaker
And I think that some piece of me that really values stability also saw that an editing job was likely a more stable gig. But I think, you know, even then, the things about editing that I immediately loved were, you know, that collaborative aspect of somebody saying, like, here's this idea that I have, and I enjoyed approaching it as a puzzle and saying, okay, well, here, like,
00:30:57
Speaker
let me be your sounding board for figuring out how to put the pieces together. Um, I really liked that collaborative aspect. Um, and, uh, you know, I think for a while I wondered like, is there something wrong with me that I, you know, I'm not just running around chasing by lines constantly. Um, but I got so much satisfaction out of editing that, um, you know, I just realized, well, this makes me happy. So, you know, why not just go with the thing that makes me happy?
00:31:26
Speaker
And I also think I'm a very type A organized person. And I think that editing, running something, keeping track of moving pieces. There's a reason I was an assistant managing editor for a while. I think that that also just appealed to some piece of my psyche. So that's the exciting part of getting into working on long form as opposed to daily news stuff on a website.
00:31:53
Speaker
was, you know, it's that collaborative aspect on steroids, basically, because you're working on projects that take so much longer, that have so many moving parts that have, you know, you're thinking not just about getting all the facts down, but how to make it sound beautiful, how to structure it, how to, you know, all these different things. And so I think I gravitated towards that because it then, you know, brought in a creative element to editing that
00:32:21
Speaker
doesn't exist when you're just trying to populate a website every day. And so that became my home, basically, professionally speaking.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, and did you have a – or can you point to a particular mentor or something that really kind of unlocked that kind of world for you, that this is kind of a way to still be creatively fulfilled, but yeah, to be more in the dugout versus on the field, to borrow a baseball term. I'm sorry.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, that's totally fine. Yeah, I think, you know, I've done some long form editing, but the person who really made me feel like, you know, I could make a career out of it was, it's interesting, he was my boss at both TNR and Foreign Quality, Peter Scoblec. He was the executive editor at the New Republic.
00:33:16
Speaker
And then he left. He worked for John Kerry for a while and then came back into media and was the magazine, the print magazine editor at foreign policy when I was there. And he kind of asked me to be his like, I don't know, long form story editor with him at the at the print magazine. And so, you know, he was doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but wanted another person to kind of be like a number two and
00:33:45
Speaker
on these features. And I learned so much from that process. And I so enjoyed cracking the code of a really long story. Somebody sends you something and there's so much material and it jumps across time. And because it was foreign policy, it jumped across countries. And working with someone to figure out how to crack that code was really, really fun.
00:34:12
Speaker
And so, uh, Peter was, was like hugely influential in making me feel confident that not only was it something that I could be happy doing, but also something that I could do, um, which was, which was a lot of fun. Um, and, uh, and then when I got the, the atavist, um, I came on board as the, uh, executive editor and, uh, Evan Ratless, who he'd spoken to, um, was the editor in chief at the time.
00:34:41
Speaker
And Evan was similarly just so smart and great at thinking about stories and storytelling. And that was hugely influential as well. Those two people's brains. Yeah. In what ways do you feel maybe your writing or your writing time and energy dedicated to writing suffered as you transitioned more into editing?
00:35:12
Speaker
And did that sting at all? Yeah, that's a great question. Not really. I think there are some people who get up every day and are like, I need to write, I need to write, I need to write. My husband is one of those people. He writes fiction. And his day, it's like oxygen for him. He needs to sit down and write. I've never been that way about writing. I've always been friends with him. I'm a terrible journaler. I'm a terrible,
00:35:40
Speaker
I would never have been a great beat reporter. You know, I like to write when I feel like I actually have something that I very much want to write about. And in some ways, you know, being an editor, which I have said now many times I love doing, allows me to then when I want to write something, you know, I can put some attention into it, but I don't have to
00:36:04
Speaker
you know, every day, stole my guts trying, trying to write, which is just not how I've ever, ever been. So yeah, so I don't think that it stung really. Yeah. And I don't even know that there was like a suffering that happened because I mean, I certainly think I'm a better reporter and writer for being an editor. And, you know, I've become a better reporter and writer because of other editors. And so I kind of see these things as like,
00:36:31
Speaker
, and
00:36:52
Speaker
copy to you and writing reminds you what it's like to start a blank page and how hard it is to create that first draft that you send to an editor. So I think it's good to go back and forth a little bit. Right. Right. Do you find that and it doesn't sound like you would but I wonder if if you maybe maybe this happened earlier on and maybe it never happened at all. But like did you ever experience any kind of that
00:37:23
Speaker
for resentment, if you will. I'll just use that as a term. Maybe you wanted to do more writing, and here you are in this more supporting role. And meanwhile, everyone, the people you're helping, they're realizing something, fully realizing a piece. And here you are just helping them. And meanwhile,
00:37:45
Speaker
Meanwhile you're maybe you've got some things that you wish you could get done But you're not because you're too busy helping other people realize they're they're writing pieces Did you ever experience any like man shit like I wish I was the one on the field right now? Yeah, I mean it's interesting because I think early on yes to a certain degree you know particularly working in
00:38:08
Speaker
political journalism, like working at TNR during the presidential campaign, and in 2008, for instance, in the last rows of it that fall, or, you know, just being in DC and like in that kind of, you know, go, go, go all the time media environment. I think, to a point, I probably felt some like, oh, man, you know, I got to sit here and
00:38:33
Speaker
you know, keep the trains running on time, uh, as the assistant managing editor, as opposed to, you know, chasing down a story. But at the same time, I think it was sort of in this like imagined way. You know, anytime that I did find myself, like they sent me up to the Hill, like for a day to be a beat reporter. And I hated it. Like I hated it so much. I was like, Nope, this is not fun. I don't want to chase senators from office to office. Like this is not enjoyable to me.
00:39:01
Speaker
And so I think it was like, I imagined what being on the field that it was somehow like more glamorous or, you know, it may be a more interesting person or something. But then, you know, anytime I really got into it, I was like, oh, no, this is not, this is not my thing. And again, I felt differently if I had a project that I felt super strongly about just because, you know, something that I really wanted to sink my teeth into. Then I was excited to be on the field. I think I didn't
00:39:29
Speaker
I didn't want to be on the field just for the sake of being on the field. And any impulse that I felt was learned from the ways that sort of being that go get them reporter gets just glamorized, I think. And it's for some people and it's not for other people. I mean, the whole like foreign correspondent kind of, which I mean, what does that even mean anymore, given the state of media,
00:39:59
Speaker
um but at foreign policy especially like I worked with a lot of younger writers who you know their dream was to be like the roving foreign correspondent and on the one hand I was like oh that sounds so glamorous so cool but then at the same time you know they were
00:40:15
Speaker
struggling to pay their bills and moving all the time and all these things that I knew also didn't appeal to me. And they weren't necessarily able to work on projects they felt really passionately about because they needed to pay the bills. They were writing the other thing. And so I think, yeah, I fundamentally got to a point where I was like, I do love editing. And then on top of that, when I write, when I
00:40:43
Speaker
you know, go out and talk to people about something. I want to feel really strongly that it's something I want to be doing, as opposed to, I kind of have to. So. Nice. And how, in what ways, and I think you've alluded to this a little bit, but I'd love for you to expand on it. In what ways has becoming an editor in a, especially at a magazine, online magazine like the activist, how has that informed your writing and made you a better writer?
00:41:11
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that, I mean, I love my job so much and I have the luxury in working at this job of, you know, getting to know writers well, getting to work with them on pieces that, you know, wind up in 15,000 words and we just start with an idea. And so, you know, watching something build from scratch and being a part of that is so fun. And I think that it's made me a better writer because
00:41:41
Speaker
I have to spend so much time thinking about what makes the story effective and working with really brilliant people who are also thinking about the same question. And they are constantly showing me insights into thinking about how to structure something, thinking about how to pace the scene, thinking about what if we actually jumped out of chronological order. I think that then I
00:42:10
Speaker
when I am writing, like, I bring those insights and lessons to what I'm doing. And, you know, I find that, like, constantly inspiring. And also, you know, working at the activist site, obviously, I'm keeping tabs on long form elsewhere, and so I do so much reading of other writers, and I learn so much from that, too.
00:42:37
Speaker
And like I said a moment ago, working with editors is great. Like anytime I do write and I get to work with, you know, essentially my counterpart on another magazine, you know, I learned so much from them because they too are coming with, you know, ideas about storytelling that I maybe have not thought of before. And I don't know, I'm always, I'm always, I'm so grateful when I get edited because I'm like, oh wow, yeah, like this makes it so much better. And I always like writers who,
00:43:07
Speaker
writers who feel like antagonized somehow by editors. I always, you know, I'm sure like an editor can be an asshole, but like, you know, generally speaking, like they are there to make something the best thing that it can be, or at least that's what they should be doing. And I'm always so grateful when someone, you know, shows me the ways I can unlock a story's potential. And I think it's really fun to do that, to be that person as well.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah, I pretty much unilaterally accept that it's from editors. And the right answer for anyone is just thank you. You know what I mean? Like the editor is investing the time. You just, it's thank you. Don't push back really. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I always like to tell writers, you know, I don't think I'm an authority on, you know, to be clear, like in journalism, and particularly this kind of journalism, there are a million ways to
00:43:58
Speaker
like cook the egg so to speak right you know like you can tell a story any number lives and one is not necessarily better than another um and so um you know sure it's nice when when writers are like i accept your edits but also i always try to put a caveat in my notes back to writers where i'm like you know if you don't like a suggestion like let's talk about it um you know because maybe there's
00:44:24
Speaker
there's a gist inside of the suggestion that you do agree with and then can we build on that if not, you know, taking wholesale, whatever the suggestion is. And I really like to think collaboratively in that way. I like looking at outlines. I like, you know, kind of thinking about things with blueprints almost. So, yeah, I don't know. I think I think editing is just
00:44:53
Speaker
cool for lack of a better word it's so unique and it's so it allows you to like see inside other people's minds in a way that I think is really special especially at the out of it so many of the projects that we work on are people's passion projects you know things that they've been working on for a really long time or they've been thinking about for a really long time and oh my god they have so many notes and so many interviews and
00:45:19
Speaker
Um, and, you know, getting to kind of like, go along on the ride with them while they. Bring that project to fruition and, you know, present it to an audience. That's just such a cool cool experience. Um, and there's something really gratifying, um, and, you know, helping. Helping bring the ship into port, so to speak.
00:45:39
Speaker
Yeah. How do you structure your day? What's your workflow as you're working on, say, this month's story, and then you're probably working on stories six months down the line, if not longer, and then you've got pitches coming in. So how are you structuring your day so you can adequately manage all this stuff? Keep the trains running on time, as you said. Yeah.
00:46:06
Speaker
structure to my days in part because it just depends on where we are in the cycle of producing a story. So you know I'll have spurts where for a couple of days I'm totally buried in working through an edit. So last week is actually a good example of this between like Wednesday and Friday I had a 14,000 word edit that I needed to get through get it back to the writer. And so actually just before we got on this call I was
00:46:33
Speaker
responding to pitches because I was behind from from doing that. But I basically I kind of instead of thinking about it in a daily sense, I kind of think about everything in like a two week sense. And so part of that is because we have a note on our submissions page that says, you know, we asked for two weeks to review pitches. And you could assume after that that you can pitch it elsewhere if you want. Right. And I try to I really try to stick to that as best I can.
00:47:00
Speaker
And so what that means is that over a two-week time period, I know that I need to respond to all the pitches that I get, and I need to, you know, triage within that. There might be pitches that are absolute yeses, and there are pitches that are absolute nos, and then there are ones in the middle where I'm going to need to go back and forth with the writers, see what they have, you know, talk to them about, you know, how an idea might shift a little bit to become more of an out-of-its story as opposed to, you know, a 3,000-word feature for a different publication
00:47:30
Speaker
And I also within that two week time frame, you know, need to make sure that the next story is where it needs to be according to the production schedule. And then with regard to the stories that we've designed that are down the line, you know, depending on where they are, it's kind of like a stove where you've got burners and, you know, one burners turned all the way up because that's the next story. And then the other one behind it is, you know,
00:47:54
Speaker
a month down the road, two months down the road, so the burner is a little bit lower. And the tickets are coming in still. Exactly. Exactly. And so it's kind of like moving everything around to make sure that it's all on the right burner. So all that is to say, I'll get up on a given day. And after I reap whatever terrible news there is in the world, as we all do when we wake up in the morning,
00:48:25
Speaker
kind of structure my day according to where I feel like I am within that two-week block. And every other Monday, myself and Jonah Ogles, who's our auditory editor, we have a phone call and we go through all the pitches from that two-week stretch that we feel like we should be talking about. And I always try to hit that mark. So yeah, as opposed to a daily schedule, I feel like I
00:48:55
Speaker
move pieces around in a fortnight, which might sound odd. But I also, again, I have the luxury given the Addivus is such a small operation. I don't have an office. The Addivus was purchased by WordPress a year ago, and WordPress has no offices. And so I'm also, I work from home, I work from a shared space. And so that also means I don't have to be at my desk at a certain time. I don't have to be in meetings at a certain time. I'm able to have a more fluid schedule each day.
00:49:25
Speaker
How many pitches do you typically receive in a given week or a two week stretch since you work in a fortnight? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say like two dozen maybe. And of those, a lot of them are not fits for us just because we have a very specific narrative
00:49:55
Speaker
nonfiction approach that we take and we get lots of good ideas but they're better suited for you know they're more explainery or issue focused or something like that and so you know those pretty quickly i try to respond to and say explain why they're not a good fit um but yeah i would say about two dozen um depending on you know is it a holiday um
00:50:18
Speaker
weirdly, like there are like in the summer, people don't pitch as much. These aren't the kids and things like that. So, so it kind of depends. But, but yeah, I'm like visualizing my pitch inbox, like in my head. And I would say I usually have about, you know, somewhere between like 15 and 24 to deal with.
00:50:38
Speaker
And how do you, like you were saying earlier, how you treat are some of these, some are just like straight up no's, then there are ones that are like, yes, slam dunk, and then there are those in the middle. So what characteristics do each of those share that you're able to adequately shuffle them into the right pile? Yeah. Well, I would say for the absolute no's,
00:51:03
Speaker
99% of the time it's not because, and I try to respond to every single pitch that I get because I know that pitching is really hard, especially if you're a freelancer and not hearing back from the abyss of pitching is hard. And so I try to respond even if I know it's a definite no. And 99% of the time it's an issue of fit. It's not because I don't think an idea is good or worthy, it's just not for us. And so we,
00:51:32
Speaker
you know, we run very long narrative-driven stories. They need to have a plot line. They need to have rich characters. They need to have scenes, you know, which doesn't mean that every single one has to be a whodunit. We run, you know, stories across the gamut subject-wise, but we also get a lot of pitches where you read it, and it's like, here's an interesting thing that I want to go see, you know, or an event that I want to go to, or a person that I want to profile, and there's not necessarily a plot within that.
00:52:02
Speaker
and you know anything that's newsy where it's like this needs to come out next week like we have to say no to that because we only publish for a month and you know 99.9999% of the time like whatever that newsy thing is it's like there's just no way we could produce that in a week nor would it make make sense for us so so the the no's most of the time really fall into a fit category and we have a submission
00:52:28
Speaker
page or guidelines that explain this, you know, the kinds of stories we don't run. And then for the absolute yeses, I will say this, there's rarely an absolute yes. And I say that not because pitches, you know, I think all pitches are imperfect or anything like that. It's more so that because our projects are so intensive and because they take so long,
00:52:53
Speaker
um I never I never just want to be like yes let's do it and send a contract without having a conversation with the writer about like their expectations my expectations um and to really get a sense of you know is this going to make sense like this might take a year like how how does that sound to you so um so there are ones that are like probably going to be yeses but um but I always like to
00:53:18
Speaker
you know, at least have a conversation on the phone or over email where, you know, we're understanding each other in terms of, you know, what they want to do and what we're looking for. And then ones that fall in the middle and the vast majority of pitches, I feel like probably fall in the middle. Oftentimes, the reason it falls in the middle is because the pitch kind of presents an idea. You know, here's the thing, a murder that happened and
00:53:48
Speaker
you know, there was a bad, totally horrific, there was a bad investigation. And, you know, as a result, somebody was wrongfully convicted. And like, I want to tell that story. But the pitch doesn't necessarily tell you how they're going to tell that story. It doesn't, you know, explain what sort of access they have to sources or documents. It doesn't, you know, explain, sometimes they just don't even say like, what actually happened in the end. So we, you know, have to go back and ask
00:54:16
Speaker
okay, but what happened in the end? Or if you don't know what happened in the end, are you going to be able to find out what happened in the end? And so the conversations we have are usually around plot and characters and how they're planning to craft the world of the story. And so a lot of those questions come down to access
00:54:43
Speaker
you know, what pre-reporting have you done? What pre-reporting can you do? And, you know, any number of things within that space. And then there are also pitches that come in where I read the pitch and I'm like, well, this doesn't really make sense to the out of us, but maybe there's like a nugget inside of it that does where it's like, well, tell me more about that thing. You know, and so somebody has a profile idea. And again, we don't really do profiles.
00:55:09
Speaker
But within the profile idea, there's some animating incident or event or whatever that, well, what if we made that the emphasis of the story? Could that turn it into a narrative? So, you know, going back and talking to writers about the possibility of thinking about the story from another standpoint. And I feel like it's so funny talking about these things in the abstract because it sounds really abstract.
00:55:37
Speaker
Um, but, uh, but I feel like it all, like when you, when you read all these pitches and you're, you know, doing this all the time, it starts to, you can just immediately see like, Oh, they have the right idea. Want to talk about access. And so you can kind of put that in a pile or no, this doesn't really fit our guidelines, but would be great for Wired or California Sunday or the Atlantic or whatever. Um, and you know, I will tell them that. Um, and then the ones where.
00:56:07
Speaker
you know, I immediately forward it to Jonah and I'm like, Jonah, Jonah, read this one. This is so good. You know, like this, this, this one is like grabbing me. Um, and there are also, um, like there, there are other considerations that we take very seriously. So, uh, in terms of our mix, you know, we don't want to only assign crime stories. And so, you know, sometimes we'll get really interesting pitches, but I'm just like, there's so much thematic overlap between,
00:56:35
Speaker
whatever the pitch is and something we've already assigned or you know wow we could really use the story that focuses more on culture or science or whatever and so there are also those considerations and then we also take the you know diversity of writers question seriously and we in the past as many publications have struggled with particularly gender wise you know we
00:57:03
Speaker
historically publish more men than women. And this is actually the first year we're on track to have at least 50% women as our writers, possibly more. And so that's another thing we take into consideration when we're looking at when we're looking at pitches. And again, I keep using the word luxury, but we really do have the luxury of, you know, we only publish one story a month. There's pretty much no story that we have to publish. And as a result, you know, we're able to be picky,
00:57:33
Speaker
and also to work with writers, even if a pitch, even if we ultimately don't take it, we have the time and space to talk to writers about the pitch and really turn it over, look at it, and really assess its potential.
00:57:56
Speaker
That's a very long-winded answer to your question. This is brilliant. No, it's brilliant. Brilliant. What are some pitfalls that you tend to see in that two dozen that comes in every single two weeks? I think that the biggest pitfall is, well, aside from just clearly not reading the out of this. And so, you know, pitching up and it's just like, no, I don't want to, we don't publish op-eds about, you know, politics in Eastern Europe.
00:58:25
Speaker
I think the biggest pitfall is clearly the person has found an interesting story, but the pitch doesn't convince me that they are the person to tell the story. So, you know, there are just some pitches where the way that it feels is that they read an interesting wire story or something, or had been following something on local news, and they pulled it together in a couple of paragraphs and said, what do you think? Like, this sounds interesting. I want to go report on it.
00:58:54
Speaker
And on the one hand, great, yes, that's awesome, like good impulse. But for us, and again, this comes down to, you know, the amount of time and energy that really goes into our stories. I want to know how you're going to go about doing that, which is not to say, you know, I don't, I don't expect people to come with a story reported. And, you know, I, especially in this freelance environment, like I understand why that's not possible, but I think there is a certain level of
00:59:23
Speaker
if not doing the pre-reporting, then showing how you will have access to key players or to key documents or to, you know, I don't know, any number of things that are required to tell the story. And so that to me is the biggest pitfall, which again, does not mean that I'm going to reject the pitch, but it also means I'm going to come back and ask that question immediately because that, you know, is so, so, so important. And
00:59:53
Speaker
I think it's probably, I mean, it certainly has been the same when I've worked at other publications, this question of, okay, well, but how are you going to do it? It just comes up immediately because it's a lot to ask an editor on faith to take a gamble and be like, yeah, sure, go find out what happened. It's like, well, but what if nothing happened? What if there's no, what if there's really no story there? I need to be very confident that there is a story.
01:00:23
Speaker
So, yeah, I think that's probably the biggest pitfall. The other one that I see is people who want to write about a really high profile story and think that, you know, well, it hasn't been covered from this angle or it hasn't been covered, you know, from this person's perspective or something like that.
01:00:45
Speaker
And on the one hand, I completely, particularly with regard to crime, there are lots of questions of who gets to tell the story, how the story gets told, who has the right to a victim's story, for instance. But the bar for our stories, because our stories are so long and so comprehensive, we're very rarely going to run a story that doesn't feel like the authoritative story on whatever it is.
01:01:14
Speaker
So, you know, people are like, if you, you know, have read in the news about, you know, this, that, or the other, you know, high profile criminal case, for instance, that's like what people don't know about. And, and inevitably, yes, that, that thing we don't know about is interesting, but rarely does it feel like it could sustain, you know, a 10,000, 15, 20,000 word story. It feels more, again, like a fit somewhere else.
01:01:40
Speaker
And do you think people tend to maybe under emphasize the amount of research and pre-reporting that they should be putting into, you know, a three to 400 word pitch in order to get your attention to have this dialogue? Um, you know, I oftentimes on the surface, it can read like,
01:02:04
Speaker
maybe they haven't put in the time and effort, but oftentimes when I follow up, it turns out that they have and they just didn't present it in the story. Like they think that they, in, you know, grabbing my attention, grabbing an editor's attention, you know, need to kind of lay out the most salacious, engaging, whatever, whatever dynamics of things. And then they probably feel like they're writing too long. And so then they don't tell me,
01:02:33
Speaker
about why they are the ones positioned to tell this story, and so and so has already agreed to talk to me, any number of things that would convey that access. And so I think definitely there are times when people haven't done that legwork, but more often I think that they're not emphasizing that they have done the legwork. And so that's always really nice when you go back to a writer and say, hey, I'm really interested in this idea, but I'm not sure, have you talked to the main
01:03:03
Speaker
source or whatever, and then you find out they've spent 15 hours talking to the main source. And so, you know, again, I'm in the position where more likely than not I'm going to come back and ask that question. But certainly, you know, they're busy editors at publications that publish more frequently or, you know, have a certain space to fill or whatever, you know, who might not respond and ask the question just because they don't have the time.
01:03:32
Speaker
And so, again, that's like a luxury for us that we're able to say, well, maybe you left this part out of your pitch. Tell me more. So, yeah.
01:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, and it seems like one mistake I made in a pitch I did to Outside Magazine was I had someone vouch for me for a pitch I had and the mistake I made and the editor called me out on it nicely. There was an element of mystery to my pitch that I didn't know. I was just like, this is something I kind of want to explore.
01:04:03
Speaker
And he's just like, you know, and he's just like, you know what, for us, we need to know the answer. Like the reader, of course, like mystery for the reader. Great. That gets them turning the page. But like for the end, they're on your end and it makes perfect sense. Like you need to know where this thing is going and you need to know that I have done that legwork. And is that something you run across to that you run into too much mystery in a pitch?
01:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, oh, yeah, definitely. And I think if you know, we get a lot of crime pitches. And, you know, so often people, you know, pitch something about an unsolved case or a missing person or something. And, like, I, I will, I watch so much, like, bad, like, you know, procedural crime TV, like, I will eat that stuff up. But I also in and out of this story,
01:04:52
Speaker
you know, we don't like to get to the end and feel like we left things dangling. I always, I just write it to writers and like, I feel like we kind of have a contract with our readers in a way, where like, if they're going to sit down and read 15,000 words, I want them to feel like getting to the end of that 15,000 words was worthwhile. And to me, that means feeling satisfied with the story, which does not always mean, and I always tell people this, like, I'm not expecting you to solve, you know, a murder that nobody has been able to solve before you.
01:05:21
Speaker
But at the very least, by the end of that 15,000 words, I want to feel like you have moved the ball forward, narratively speaking, and given readers something that feels like, oh, well, they connected the dots in a way that I found really compelling. Or they uncovered some interesting source or piece of evidence or something. And crime is the easiest one to talk about because it has this natural element of suspense.
01:05:51
Speaker
But it goes for other stories, too. You know, ones that involve legal cases or ones that involve, you know, even, you know, science, like an experiment. Where is it going to go? Like, what's going to happen? What is it going to prove? What is it not going to prove? And so I always, you know, talk to writers about, you know, ideally everything gets tied up in the end and, you know, everything makes sense. Doesn't have to be a happy ending, but at least it's conclusive.
01:06:16
Speaker
But I think that satisfying is the word I would apply more often because it's OK for there to be some degree of mystery that lingers. But that has to be counterbalanced with a feeling of, you know, like, again, the ball has moved forward as though the reader feels like they wound up in a different place than where they started. And so it's a slightly intangible thing and very much depends on the story.
01:06:46
Speaker
we, you know, pitches that end with, we may never know what happened. It's like, well, no, okay. We can't like, but we want to know, we have to know, or at least like have a pretty good idea. And so, you know, that's definitely something that we emphasize in deciding which stories make the most sense for us.
01:07:09
Speaker
And how do you balance the reading that you're doing for work, this real critical thinking of trying to crack the code, as you said earlier, versus the reading that you're doing for your own writing projects? And then, aside from that, just reading for maybe for pleasure. You only have so much bandwidth, right? So how do you balance all of this?
01:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. My husband, as I mentioned, writes fiction. And like when he's done writing and reading fiction as part of his like workday, he then is always reading at least one book for pleasure. And I get to the end of my day. And again, I turn on like a British crime procedural, like that's like I need to use a different part of my brain. And so, you know,
01:07:58
Speaker
I, last weekend actually, or yeah, last weekend, I visited my in-laws and I read a whole book sitting on the beach and I was like, this is such a luxury. You'll sit down and read like a work of fiction, just like front to back because that doesn't happen very often. I mean, for work, you know, I try to keep work within work hours. And so, you know, if I'm reading pitches, if I'm reading copy, if I'm reading, you know, other
01:08:25
Speaker
other publications because I'm interested in what other publications are doing or what writers they're working with. I really try to keep that within work hours, which can be hard when you work at home because your office is your home, your home is your office, so it can be hard to draw a line in the sand. But then for writing projects,
01:08:47
Speaker
So I really only have one writing project right now. I'm working on a book that's actually due in October. God help me. And so that I try to a couple of mornings a week, get up early and work on that.
01:09:06
Speaker
um and then actually next month I'm going to a writer's residency um and using it as my vacation time this year so that um so that I can you know really bear down hard on it um but it also means there have been other things that came along where it's like oh man I really want to write about that that would be really cool and I just don't have the bandwidth um because I've got my job um and then the book um and then in terms of reading for pleasure
01:09:32
Speaker
I love nonfiction books, but I do admittedly have trouble making that whatever my escape is, because it feels like work. So like reading that of a story. So, yeah, I try to always be reading a book of short stories or poetry or novel and it helps them in a book club that meets every like six to eight weeks, which is actually perfect timing.
01:09:55
Speaker
Um, and I'm a person who very much follows rules. And so like, if you tell me to read a book by a certain time, like I will read the book by that time. And so that's a nice way of, you know, keeping something in the mix, um, that, you know, feels like it's not work. Um, and, uh, and I love fiction, so it's, you know, it's good to, to have it there. Um, we'll see, we'll see if that is able to sustain itself as I go into book deadline.
01:10:23
Speaker
hell. But for now, that's how it all fits together. Do you have any books similar to My Antonia that really connected with you that these books that you kind of revisit and reread to remind yourself how it's done? Yeah, it's funny because I was making a list before you called. Especially the nonfiction books that I think about because I mean, I do get a lot of inspiration from not
01:10:53
Speaker
not nonfiction books. So, you know, from, you know, stories, honestly, from podcasts, from television, from movies, like I'm always interested in storytelling and how it works no matter what the genre or medium is. But I was trying to think specifically about nonfiction books that really stuck with me. And the one that I bring up all the time to people is The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace. I don't know if you've read that book.
01:11:21
Speaker
I read it on my honeymoon, which is probably weird because it's about a person dying, but as the name suggests. But it's a phenomenally good book and it's about this young man from New Jersey who grew up in really bad circumstances but was brilliant and was able to go to Yale and then
01:11:46
Speaker
graduates and life does not go as he had hoped. I don't want to give it away. But the person who wrote it was his college roommate. And he just does such a lovely job of telling the story in this very straightforward, but very compelling way. And it, you know, with so much humanity, because he obviously cared about this person.
01:12:08
Speaker
But he's able to, you know, tell an entire life story while also feeling like he's giving you insight into the forces that shaped that life. I think it's a really, really great book. And then I actually wrote a thesis in college. I was inspired by The Year of Magical Thinking. And that's a book that I've read many, many, many times. I think, I mean, Jung Vidian's brilliant, of course. But that book, I think, is
01:12:38
Speaker
It's a book about, you know, grief, certainly, but it's also a book about language and about how language, you know, creates empathy and creates spaces for feeling things that you otherwise might not feel. And it's about her relationship with language. And then from a reporting perspective, one of my favorite books is Under the Banner of Heaven.
01:13:05
Speaker
I am a big John Krakauer fan as many people are and I think that's probably my favorite book of his. I just think it's a brilliant case of how you take a particular story, a crime story in this case, and tell that story in a way that keeps you turning the page but also gives you a tremendous amount of history in a way that feels very
01:13:28
Speaker
I don't know, engaging. And he also, at least the version I read, he has an afterword where he responds to criticisms in a way that I found, from a reporting perspective, very intriguing. And then from the standpoint of writing about other people and just really feeling like you're capturing other people in all of their dimensions, Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams, as the title suggests, I think is great for that.
01:13:59
Speaker
And I just, I really love the vignette approach that she takes, and yet it all fits together in some way. And then I'm actually reading a book right now as part of my research for my book that I'm really enjoying from both a reporting and writing standpoint called A Hundred Little Hitlers. It came out in 2003 by Eleanor Langer. And it's about this hate crime that was perpetrated in Portland and about the case
01:14:27
Speaker
that came out of it and it's also about like the rise of like the neo-nazi punk scene in the Pacific Northwest and I'm only I don't know a quarter of the way into it but I thought it was auspicious in some ways but I knew we were going to be talking about great books because I think it's a real gem of recording and I mean it's a really difficult topic but she does a
01:14:52
Speaker
a really great job of putting everything on the page, treating the subject humanely while also being obviously upset by the subject matter. So that was my little list. That's awesome. Do you have any books on writing that you return to to sharpen the sauce, so to speak?
01:15:16
Speaker
I really don't. And I was thinking about this before the call because I was like, huh, is that weird that I don't? You know, I definitely have read books about writing. My mom got me on writing Stephen King's book back when I was a kid, and I remember reading that and enjoying it. I think that part of the reason I feel like I get so much more out of reading other people's writing than I do about
01:15:40
Speaker
from reading about writing, if that makes sense. Yeah, if you know how to ask the right questions and read as a writer, there's no reason why Killers of the Flower Moon can't teach you every bit as much as bird by bird. Right, exactly, exactly. And I think it's probably, it also just has to do with how some people enjoy reading about craft and get a lot out of it and absorb things that way.
01:16:07
Speaker
for whatever reason, like that's just not my jam. And so I would rather read, you know, a great book that I then find myself talking about, thinking about what made it work. You know, how did they weave this and that together? You know, that to me is so much more instructive. And I feel the same way about reading, you know, long-form journalism. I'm constantly, you know, reading and probably spending too much time.
01:16:33
Speaker
reading things I don't immediately have to do or what I need to get done with my day because you know I love to read a good story. And one of the nice things about our current situation at the Atavist is since getting purchased by WordPress we are sister publications with long reads which obviously does you know their own amazing content but also you know started out as an aggregator of great writing and I get to
01:16:58
Speaker
do editors picks now with long read. So, you know, if you read something and you really love it, you can do an editor's pick on the website. And that's a treat because if you read something really awesome, there's like a ready-made way to share it with a wider audience. So, and, you know, I feel like I learned so much from just reading what other people have put together, even if it's not perfect. You know, my husband likes to say that some of his favorite works of art are ones that are
01:17:25
Speaker
imperfect, flawed, maybe even failures. And he's like, but I love thinking about why. And I think about writing and books and journalism similarly. Something doesn't have to be pristine for it to teach me something.
01:17:42
Speaker
Well, this is really awesome for you to come on the show here and talk about all your wonderful insights into editing and pitching and your own writing and your own reading practices. I want to be mindful of your time today and I really hope that when you're
01:18:00
Speaker
When your book comes out next year, I'll have you back on to talk about that and dig into that. And who knows, maybe once or twice a year, we can just do this and talk shop and kind of pull back the curtain a little bit to help out everyone else who's kind of in this morass together. Yeah, definitely. No, thank you so much for having me. And for people who are listening, you know, I really do love getting pitches and talking about story ideas. And so I hope that
01:18:26
Speaker
Um, people will reach out, just say word at atavist.com. Um, and where else can people find you online too? Sure. Sure. So we are, the magazine is magazine.atavist.com. Um, we are also on all kinds of social media at atavist as am I. Um, and, uh, yeah, the best way to find me if not through email is probably on Twitter. Um, since you know, so many of us are denizens of that space these days.
01:18:56
Speaker
But truly, I love hearing from writers and I am counting my blessings that I get to spend the time to really have conversations with writers in a way that having a different kind of gig might not allow. So please reach out with your ideas or just to chat. All right. Well, what a service to be able to open up your doors like that. So yeah, in any case, this was a ton of fun. Thanks for carving out the time and let's do it again soon.
01:19:25
Speaker
Okay, sounds great. Thank you so much for calling. Of course. Enjoy the rest of your day.
01:19:31
Speaker
Hey, did you dig that? I sure as hell did. I hope she becomes a regular, like a quarterly or a six month regular on the show. She's just, it's always gonna have something good to offer. Great personality too. It's just one of those people it's good to talk to. Good talker. We like good talkers on this show. Thanks to Goucher's MFA Nonfiction and Bay Path University's MFA and Creative Nonfiction for the support. We like support.
01:19:56
Speaker
Hey, head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to receive my monthly newsletter, reading recommendations, podcast news, first of the month. So if being late July, if you sign up now, you're going to get the August 1st one in the morning. Unbelievable. Just the best, the best Jerry once a month. No spam. Can't beat it. Be sure to keep the conversation going on Twitter at CNF pot.
01:20:23
Speaker
Instagram and Facebook too. Twitter's where I jam. I do a lot of stupid shark drawings on Instagram these days with little newspaper blackout thought bubbles for great white sharks. Don't ask me where the idea came from.
01:20:38
Speaker
If you want to head over there, it's the kind of thing I'm doing these days, because I need to do something else to unplug my brain hole. Anywho, consider linking up to the show and leaving a nice review on Apple Podcast. We're all in this crazy mess together. One last thing, friend. If you can't do interview, see ya!