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Episode 37—Author Angela Palm is a Cartographer? Well, sort of
122 Plays8 years ago
Angela Palm, author of "Riverine" (Graywolf Press) and the essay "Hierarchy of Needs" talks about the perils of the submission game, the power of leveling up, and to be on the lookout for organizing principles.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, what's going on, CNF-ers? It's your host, Brendan O'Mara. Hope you're having a CNF and good week. We're back for yet another episode, number 37, with Angela Palm. She's the author of Riverine, a memoir from anywhere but here, published by Grey Wolf Press. She's the second Grey Wolf Press author who's been on the podcast of Paul the Sickie.
00:00:31
Speaker
is episode 27 so here we are she also has an essay in creative non-fiction's joy issue number 62 titled hierarchy of needs and it's a wonderful essay on unhappiness and it's uh it's really really really funny
00:00:51
Speaker
So we talk about that in Riverine and kind of go back and forth between the two throughout the whole conversation. So it's really, really good and insightful. I think you're gonna get a lot out of it. Lastly, just the usual. I'd love to have you subscribe.
Memoir Themes and Influences
00:01:08
Speaker
This episode means anything to you. Share it.
00:01:10
Speaker
Hashtag CNF has a Facebook page now. I went through a period of time where I deleted Facebook all together and sort of back, but I'm back as the podcast. So go ahead and like that page if you wouldn't mind.
00:01:26
Speaker
And, you know, why don't we just get to it? I started this conversation by asking Angela what impactful books she had read throughout her life that helped forge her voice as a writer. So here's Angela.
00:01:45
Speaker
That's a good question. So I think before I started writing newer stuff, so before I wrote Riverine even, it was Joan Beards, Boys of My Youth, Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks on a Road, David Shields' Reality Hunger was a little bit of an influence, Wendy Walters' Multiply Divide, Who Else, Anything by Rebecca Stolnett, Susan Sontag, all of her work.
00:02:13
Speaker
And it's really kind of like this essayistic influence, I think, combined with these really voice-in-place oriented personal narratives that is kind of like melded into what is emerging as a kind of style for me, I guess, even though I'm still experimenting with it. And after I wrote Riverine, I immediately read a book and it was Ongoing This by Sarah Manguso. And it struck me as
00:02:42
Speaker
You know, working in brevity and collage and small pieces. And I thought, oh, well, instead of, you know, pouring everything out onto the page.
00:02:52
Speaker
This is another way to do it. Yeah, showing some restraint in some ways. Yes, showing some restraint, exactly.
Literary Inspirations
00:02:59
Speaker
And not only what you include in experience, but also in form and in a line level, too. So that was really a big influence on this new essay, which is the very first thing that I wrote after writing Riverine, is the essay that's in the creative nonfiction issue, Hierarchy of Needs. And it does reflect a little bit of the conciseness, I think,
00:03:23
Speaker
is kind of Hallmark of Sarah Maguso's work and also extended collage. I guess they're not like really tiny pieces, but longer pieces that kind of work together into a braid.
00:03:35
Speaker
and you said that uh... you mentioned a whole a whole bunch of writers that real that were you know powerful influences for you and um... and then you even said after that like even working through riverine that you're you feel like you're at your voices kind of still still uh... still developing in some sense um... how do you see your voice as a writer and not to what extent is it
00:03:58
Speaker
I won't say fully formed, but where do you see yourself on a spectrum of that novice level voice and a level of as close to mastery on the other side of the spectrum? Where do you see yourself on that continuum? I would say I'm far away from mastery. I'm certainly still learning and experimenting. Rivering was that book where I tried a lot of different things before it became a book and they kind of came together in the book. I don't think it's a perfect
00:04:25
Speaker
execution of what I was trying to do but in some ways I really like that it's imperfect because to me it shows that I'm trying, you know, I'm trying this style or this approach as an artist and working through that even more so now. I feel like I learned a lot about how to write and how to sort of express my voice along with my ideas alongside one another. So
00:04:51
Speaker
Somewhere maybe I'm in the middle, I guess you could say. It's still being relatively the beginning of this year.
Writing Goals and Process
00:05:00
Speaker
How do you process writing goals and then with that in mind, divide up the year and how do you approach it as you're trying to develop increasing levels of publication and mastery and how do you process that?
00:05:19
Speaker
funny you should ask that um instead of making like personal resolutions about myself for a year which I feel like are always sort of setting me up to fail I do make resolutions that sort of little goals for writing and I write them out specifically in like a very Octavia Butler kind of way like I'm a little card for myself to look at and they're just very tangible items that I can look at as
00:05:46
Speaker
as maybe like a publication that I want to get published in or a grant that I want to apply for and just small, tangible things. And then within that, a little bit more abstractly, I think I'm working, as I said, just toward more understanding of what it is I observe in the world and how I observe it and what I care about and what is really worth putting on the page at this point and especially with respect to the state of
00:06:16
Speaker
the world and the country and all of that, I think it's really pushing me to think very deeply about intention and impact. So that's kind of where I'm at now.
00:06:32
Speaker
I sometimes forget that I have this list and I'll go back to where I'll find it because my things are always such a mess and like very unorganized. I have really good intentions and then I get very unorganized. But I'll find it, you know, three quarters of the way through the year and I'll be able to kind of tick through like, hey, I did three of these five things. How can I sort of push through these last couple items?
00:06:53
Speaker
And honestly, it's been a, it's been a great way to organize my time. Cause I feel like it's just, it's so easy to get pulled in a million directions. You know, we're constantly, especially if you kind of live in the online world to some extent, the way that I do, I'm seeing, you know, everything that everyone else is doing, where they're getting published, all of the, all of the contests that are open, all of the sort of great opportunities that exist when you're part of those communities and being able to exercise some restraint over what you participate in, I think is really, really key.
00:07:22
Speaker
and to just focus on what your personal goals or success looks like. I think that people get really trapped into the submissions game. And one thing that really helped me even be able to finish a book was to stop participating in the submissions game, which became really quite maddening. And once I did that, stop trying to get all these one-off publications. And once I just sat with my book and said, how can I make this a book or complete this as a book,
00:07:50
Speaker
I got so much done and came out with a book and I felt like taking a step away from that was really useful and just sort of refocusing what I cared about. What did that submission game look like to you and at what point and in what moment did you decide to take yourself out of that playing field and then do the focused work that turned into what is an outstanding book?
00:08:16
Speaker
Thank you. At first, it was really useful because I hadn't been published anywhere. And in order to get some credibility, I did need to have some publications out there. And but it was it's sort of addicting, I think. I don't know if you feel that way. I felt that way. And I realized it was just becoming sort of crushing, you know, like the rejections are hard and, you know, just not feeling good enough. Like, that wasn't a good feeling for me.
00:08:45
Speaker
And so it just, it just was time for me to step away. You know, once I felt like I had enough and I sort of lost sight of the reason I started doing that in the first place was not to just have an endless list of, um, publications, but it was for me to practice what it felt like to have a successful short work and then build into a longer successful work, um, from those sorts of smaller successes. I heard this, um, metaphor, uh, from, I don't remember who said it, but for book writing, which is,
00:09:16
Speaker
that a composer who is going to write a symphony doesn't just sit down and write the symphony. They learn each individual piece and then put it all together.
00:09:25
Speaker
And I kept that in mind as I was sort of balancing that act between the individual submissions or the individual essays and the longer book work. What does leveling up look like to you? And how does that how has that changed maybe from early earlier in your career to where you are to where you
Visibility and Narrative Challenges
00:09:42
Speaker
are now? And how do you approach that and and dance with that requisite fear that comes with starting to reach greater levels of visibility with your work? Well, I mean,
00:09:53
Speaker
Leveling up, that's such an interesting term because I've been playing so much Nintendo. The old Nintendo? The old Nintendo, the NES classic. Oh, fantastic. And what's funny about that that's actually very relevant is when you level up, you still have to do all the work. You still are kind of starting over. And though there are more opportunities, more doors opening for me, which is very exciting,
00:10:23
Speaker
you still have to start at word one, sentence one. And so, I mean, in some ways it's easier because you're not worrying as much about whether the opportunities are out there or whether anyone will listen to what you have to say or take the time to spend with your work to consider it. But at the same time, you're holding yourself to a high standard and an even higher standard perhaps than before, which I think is a great challenge and a great pressure to have
00:10:52
Speaker
But also, you know, it doesn't make it easier by any means. Again, like after I finished Riverine, I went to go talk to an MFA program and I remember just thinking and saying to them, you know, we're in the same place now. You know, I'm back at square one and I'm thinking, you know, what am I writing? What do I care about? How do these things relate to each other? I think the process just starts over and over again.
00:11:17
Speaker
What was that experience like for you being in front of a group of people the way you were probably once sitting in front of someone speaking and looking up there and saying like, wow, I wanna, what they're doing, that is what I wanna do. And now you are sort of in a reversal of positions. What was that like? Yeah, it's really surreal and it's such an honor to be in that position and I feel like a privilege to have had the chance to do that and I think
00:11:48
Speaker
I consider myself to be a pretty humble person because I don't feel like I'm any different from anyone sitting in the room. And for me it's important to just be very open and honest about what it's been like for me and that it's still a struggle, like writing is hard. And any kind of chance I have to talk about what's helpful or what I can share
00:12:16
Speaker
give to someone else to help them on their path I try to do. When you were starting out writing essays and even getting into the work that would turn into a book length narrative, what were some of the things that you struggled with early on and as you're piling on new skills and then what are the new struggles? So I guess it's kind of a two parter. What was hard for you early on and then what's hard for you now?
00:12:46
Speaker
Well, I think at first, you know, you have your three, four or five essays or chapters that are really obvious parts of the story. And then, you know, when you're looking at a book like narrative, you're sort of saying, where are the gaps? Where are the holes? What's missing in either the argument I'm making or the trajectory of the narrative arc or whatever it is. And I think pulling out those additional pieces comes a little bit harder than those those really obvious ones. And for me, it was hard to sort of stretch
00:13:15
Speaker
between what was done and what wasn't done because it felt a little forced and it felt a little almost contrived until I really understood what it was I was trying to write about or what it was that I came there to say and then it got a little bit easier. So that was a challenge or even finding the thread between all the things that ties them all together was difficult for me because my book has a lot of different pieces and it's trying to do a lot of different things at once
00:13:44
Speaker
to find a single thread to tie it together was something that I worked on with my editors, but also something that I really struggled with. And now it's kind of maybe like defining which direction I want to go in. Do I want to write fiction? Do I want to write another essay collection? Or do I want to write another memoir? I'm sort of casting a net or rolling the dice and seeing what comes up.
00:14:13
Speaker
And just kind of spending time with the stories that I had to tell or the observations that I'm making in the world and seeing what rises. And that seems worth spending time on. In some ways, I think the first book for me was the most obvious story I had to tell. So now I have to go a little bit deeper or a little bit wider to see what else is there.
00:14:40
Speaker
Now, at what point in your generative process, whether it be an essay or something longer, do you come to the focus of the work? Sometimes it can be, sometimes you have the idea in your head and you write to it. Sometimes you think you've got something that's just cool to write about, but you don't quite know what it's about yet. Yeah. So how do you come to that? Yeah, I mean, it's such a wonky, haphazard process for me.
00:15:09
Speaker
crazy notes in crazy places and I've learned that you know, I actually reminds me of the Brian Doyle essay that was in the crazy nonfiction issue about always having a pen in the pocket in case a book needs to be written suddenly. I've learned to sort of grab the thoughts as they come and that's kind of the starting point for me is these errant observations or you know a line that pops into my head and I'll start collecting them on the page and
00:15:38
Speaker
and thinking in terms of, you know, what is this about? What is the deeper meaning? Or what is the sort of human element of the things that I'm witnessing and seeming to be attracted to on the page or in the world? And it really starts, it's like a little, it's like starting a snowball and just kind of rolling it and seeing where it might go. And for me, it's a trial and error process. Like sometimes I have, or I think I have a good idea or things are building into an idea and then it just doesn't work.
00:16:06
Speaker
or maybe the argument is wrong or illogical or sort of contradicts itself, that happens too. Yeah, so it's a wild process for me, but it's an exciting one, I think, because I really love engaging with the world and sort of bringing these potential ideas along with me wherever I go and seeing how they interact with something and how a third thing can maybe be born from them.
00:16:32
Speaker
Kim Kankowitz, who was on last week on the podcast, the previous episode to yours, and she won the best essay prize for this issue, the Rumors of Lost Stars. She had this essay kind of just laying around, and this goes to the point of focus.
00:16:51
Speaker
when Creative Nonfiction put out the call for a joy-themed issue, it clicked in her head and she was able to shoehorn this essay to the focus of the joy, and then it really coalesced the whole thing. So it's like, that's part of the thing. Sometimes you might have something just kind of sitting in your drawer, but you need to write maybe an external prompt to be like, oh yeah, I can write to that theme. So that's kind of the organic process of it.
00:17:21
Speaker
Yeah, and a similar thing happened for me with this essay. I had written it and then I saw the call for the issue, the joy issue. And mine was clearly already about how happiness is sold to us or how we feel it in our lives or how we don't and what it looks like and how it's sort of charted through culture or whatever. And it really wasn't until
Essay Themes and Research Methods
00:17:44
Speaker
I saw that word joy in the issue that I realized that this is a theme I've been writing on in pretty much every other piece is the privilege of the pursuit of happiness and what that means. So really, I'm so grateful for that sort of magic that happened because I realized that it was going to launch a whole other series of ideas for me.
00:18:06
Speaker
So with the opening passage there, it's the line of dialogue from your son saying, like, you never laugh anymore. And you're like, what did you say, even though you heard it? Was that always the beginning of this essay? Or did that come? It was always the beginning. And it was the coloring books that were the best-selling books on Amazon in 2015. And then the scene where I'm in the pizza place
00:18:36
Speaker
watching this live stream of people getting water in Uganda and thinking, what the hell is going on in this world? And from there trying to think through it on the page, which is kind of what essay is for me, that little bit of conversation from my son, I wrote down that the same day and just kept coming back to it and coming back to it. And it really drove the other thoughts into place.
00:19:03
Speaker
And what does your research process look like for stuff of this nature? Because there are some elements in it where you're reading other things that help inform this. And so how do you go about curating all the information that you like to help inform a piece of writing like this that's in 3,000 words or whatever it is?
00:19:24
Speaker
Yeah. So sometimes I, you know, I I've heard research, you know, some kind of statistic or I've read something and I can't quite remember it is and then I have to go hunt it down. Other times I'm already bringing the idea with me and I encounter something and then kind of email it to myself to look to look into. And it's it's all over the place. I do a lot of reading and and looking for things that sort of speak to what I'm writing about. And I kind of try to corral them into one place and read through all of it and see
00:19:56
Speaker
What takeaways I can get from everything that I'm compiling. I'm not really in the library. I'm an online researcher looking at articles and whenever I can kind of get my hands on. But I'm open to wherever the information finds me and I'm always kind of paying attention.
00:20:18
Speaker
How do you go about organizing all that information that you find? Well, I'm kind of old school. I print everything out, and I put it in little folders. This is the little folder about the hierarchy of needs, which I'm trying to figure out. And then I write all over the folder, and it's kind of a mess. But that way, I can take it with me wherever I go. And I use labels in Gmail, too. I don't know if anyone else does that.
00:20:43
Speaker
Because I'm always emailing things to myself that I want to read later or print out later. It's great. I love talking about that with people because someone might use Bronwyn Dickey, a friend who I've spoken to a lot about this. She's big into Evernote. Evernote saved her life while she was writing Pitbull.
00:21:07
Speaker
And Philip Girard, whose latest book is coming out, it's called The Art of Creative Research. It's like a 200-page book. It's awesome. That's great. I'm going to write that down. Yeah. That one's going to be great. And he's on the podcast after you next week.
00:21:25
Speaker
and just hearing him talk about the research and you read the book and you see what's possible and it just makes you want to go out there and just lead with your curiosity and see what you can pull in. It's great to try to cherry pick like how, here's how Angela Palm
00:21:46
Speaker
organizes some work with the labels in Gmail and how some of you ever know and some just bury themselves in microfiche. It's really, really cool. Is there anyone who, any research technique that you've picked up from other people? Not really. I have started taking, actually, yeah, and I don't remember who I even got this from, but one thing I found really helpful, especially for nonfiction writers, I think, is I take pictures of places and things that I'm writing about now so that I can come back to them.
00:22:16
Speaker
And smartphones make it so easy because you know it's like always on your person. But I found it's really helpful in recreating detail rather than relying on just memory or notes. And helpful too in putting me back in the sort of spatial memory of a place which does this whole other really interesting cognitive thing on your psyche.
00:22:39
Speaker
So that's been pretty cool. I also use Google Maps a lot. I was just talking with this guy, Dave Ryan, who is also a writer, and we were talking about spatial memory. And I was talking about a writing exercise or writing prompt that I gave that involves drawing a map of where you once lived and putting X's on the map for where certain things happened.
00:23:02
Speaker
to sort of reorient yourself into experience. And he said that he did a similar thing with his students, but he has them go back and look at their homes on Google Maps where you can see the landscape view. And confronting change over time geographically and topographically, he has led to these really interesting essays.
00:23:29
Speaker
So I've been having fun talking to other writers about how we research place and memory and how they kind of connect together to create different kinds of tensions across time. A great exercise in dredging memory I found is, and I got this from Madeline Blaze who I took a memoir class with back in undergrad. And it's just writing out like linearly a timeline. It's real simple.
00:23:57
Speaker
But you're like, okay, in 1989, obsessed with Ninja Turtles. But then that might lead you to, okay, I used to watch these cartoons with so-and-so, or I was playing Legends of Zelda on the phone with my controller. All of a sudden, these little things are cropping up. And one little memory becomes a lead domino to others, and they go forward and backward. I don't know if you've exercised that as something to try. I do it a little bit differently.
00:24:26
Speaker
I'll just try to list every single detail I remember about a place or an experience or a person or whatever. What was the music that was in the background? What's every physical detail that I remember looking at? What was the mood? What was the weather like? What was said? What are the snippets of dialogue I remember? I find that it is like the dominoes effect where you start. One thing leads to another and pretty soon you fill up a page or two pages of things that you haven't thought of in years.
00:25:13
Speaker
going back to what you were saying about taking pictures, he had a vivid memory of this, I think people come by in this train, or it might have been the RFK funeral trains going by, and he remembers it as being a super rainy day, but someone had taken a picture, and it was like a perfectly sunny day or something. So it's one of those things where memory loves to lie to you,
00:25:19
Speaker
It sounds like it's a very similar thing, but it's not necessarily related to a timeline.
00:25:38
Speaker
And yeah, but like the picture there so you can play with that you can either just like issue the memory all together or you can kind of like use the memory up against what actually happened as I documented by film. Oh, that's brilliant. I love that. But it's so scary too, because it calls into question every memory you have. Yeah, which means it's like as someone writing any form of nonfiction, whether it's a personal or more repartorial, it's like you kind of have to turn into a reporter no matter what and like
00:26:07
Speaker
Go vet it out. And I think Walt Harrington has a great line. He's a professor in journalism and in his essay, The Writer's Choice, I think he said, your mother loves you, check it out. So I mean, it's just drilling it down. You assume something, well, make sure, get it on tape or something.
00:26:33
Speaker
So when you were, I'd say, a younger writer in your early 20s or so, or mid-20s, what were some of those growing pains that you experienced that all writers tend to go through?
Conceptual to Narrative Transitions
00:26:45
Speaker
Well, I think the most obvious one for me is that getting the music in your head to translate on the page was
00:26:54
Speaker
a very difficult thing to figure out how to do. I would often think I had a great idea or a great story and then I would take it to workshop and it would be just absolutely horrible. Everyone would just tear it apart. And it's not even just like accepting criticism because criticism is part of the, you know, part of the process, but not, there's something, I don't know, I think maybe a maturity in writing
00:27:24
Speaker
of being able to sort of be your own editor and see your work through eyes other than your own. It becomes a part of the process of writing that I think you have to learn how to do. I mean, I'm definitely still learning that, but I think that was one of the toughest things for me to sort of wrap my head around. And when you were just starting out, what did a successful writer look like, and how has that changed in the, say, the last 10 years or so?
00:27:52
Speaker
That's a really interesting question. I was actually this is a pretty extreme example, but I was just thinking today about some of the earliest books that I read from like recommendations and on the in this case Oprah's recommendation and which was in the 90s and I didn't have access to You know anybody who was really a reader or or a sort of intellectual I guess that I guess I would say and so when this the list of books began I
00:28:22
Speaker
would read the books. And it occurred to me today that I never thought of the people who wrote those books as being real people in the world who you could someday become. I didn't think of the author as a place that you could get to. It was just such this foreign idea. It was an island. Yeah, it was something other people did. Right, yeah.
00:28:53
Speaker
It's really kind of amazing. I mean, I just see it so differently now because I'm sort of, you know, in, in the world a bit, but it was just such an unfathomable place to be when I first started thinking about it. And then as I, as I, you know, kind of got involved more in the writing scene and started to have some publications and, you know, just engaging with the community in a different way, in a way other than just being a reader, um, things, you know, became,
00:29:23
Speaker
seemingly more tangible or reachable. How important is being a part of a community in terms of writing community of some sort? How important is that to you? For me, it's everything. I mean, it's most of what I love about writing is the community around it and sharing a very particular kind of joy with other people who love
00:29:52
Speaker
to read and write. And I think, too, it's, you know, although we love the times when we're in our writing alone and it's sort of reaching that magical place without the community, you know, to sort of share that with who cares. I think it's everything. It's like all my favorite people in the world besides my, you know, immediate family are from my writing community.
00:30:21
Speaker
And is that community geographically local or is it more virtual for you? Now that I've had the opportunity to visit more writers and readers across the US, I feel like it's growing beyond what it was. And that's a really exciting thing for me because it does continue virtually beyond the sort of shared spaces of like AWP and readings and conferences.
00:30:47
Speaker
It's been really one of the most fulfilling aspects of my life, it's turned out. I think it's great to be able to have the conversations, the kinds of conversations that really excite you in the world and to have the people to share those with is huge because not everybody else you know and love wants to hear about it.
00:31:10
Speaker
So when you were at AWP this year, the writer industrial complex that it is, how do you navigate it? It can be very overwhelming. Yeah, it remains overwhelming maybe in a different way now than what it used to. The first time I went to AWP, I didn't know what was going on. Of course, tried to do a million panels and did about half of what I intended and was sort of weirdly disappointed in myself with that.
00:31:38
Speaker
And then, you know, over time it's changed into a place where I reunite with friends and just celebrate new books from friends who have books coming out. I try to learn a bit more every time. I think now I'm sort of in this space of exhausting myself with social activities as you do. But it still remains like a really,
00:32:08
Speaker
a really great place to connect with other people and to sort of build relationships with other writers. I'm much less freaked out by it than I used to be, though.
00:32:20
Speaker
Yeah, what do you tend to gravitate towards there in terms of things you want to see and balance the communal aspect of it, which is, in a lot of ways, in terms of getting published. That's far more important in a lot of ways. This game, if it's anything, it's knowing people. And that kind of gives you legs up in terms of slush pile stuff.
00:32:49
Speaker
I never think of it quite that way because I always end up just hanging out and having a blast and meeting all these great people who I then realize much later maybe are in those positions. But I just never know going into it. It's never a good idea to go, oh, I can leverage this conversation over this delicious IPA over and get myself published somewhere. I'm not the person who probably thinks about that.
00:33:19
Speaker
I just love being around people and having a good time. I do still always try to learn something craft-wise or community-wise. So I'm always kind of on the lookout for what's new or what are people talking about that have to do with something I'm working on personally in my writing. Because I do think there's always a lot of room to grow and learn from each other and I really value what other people have to say.
00:33:48
Speaker
I like going to the readings, the people who I admire and wouldn't necessarily get to see read at home here in Burlington, Vermont. I'm just trying to take advantage of those things.
00:34:02
Speaker
I love Burlington, Vermont. I used to live in Saratoga Springs. We would occasionally make a day trip out of Vermont. It was still a good three-hour hoof up there from Saratoga. Man, what a cool little town. We were actually up there for Halloween one time. There was a zombie march down.
00:34:26
Speaker
Of course there was. Yeah, I got some candy blood on my jacket. The Zombie March, the Santa 5k, the Penguin Plunge, the Turkey Chase, all kinds of holiday events outside. It's pretty fun.
00:34:44
Speaker
So when you're in the throes of writing an essay or book, what does your routine look like?
Balancing Writing and Editing
00:34:52
Speaker
Starting from when do you wake up and how do you win the morning so you can win the day? Well, what I found is getting to work as soon as possible is pretty key and just focusing on adding words and adding length and building onto whatever I'm working on.
00:35:13
Speaker
And by early, I mean like nine o'clock in the morning. I really love hearing about writers who get up at like 5.30 and I really secretly want to be them and just absolutely am not built for that. So I usually, you know, get a cup of coffee. I sit and I write like in my pajamas for a couple hours. And then I'll stop and do my editing work. So like one of my other jobs. And then I'll come back in the afternoon if I have time and revise
00:35:44
Speaker
And then at night, I usually read. So I'm kind of always reading three or four books at a time. Usually some poets are usually, you know, one book of non-fiction and a novel. And I kind of hop around. I think I have like writer's ADD, because I feel like I'm always working on a different project unless I'm under a deadline. I know it's coming up, then I can really kind of focus and get it done. But that's the day to day of it, mostly.
00:36:11
Speaker
And with your editing, are you a freelance editor? I am, yeah. So how did you get into that and start that as a vocation to compliment your writing?
00:36:25
Speaker
Well, I actually did that first, so I was always just kind of a hobbyist writer. I was never setting out to be a writer. I worked as an editor full-time at an educational editing firm, basically. We did work for Pearson, McGraw-Hill.
00:36:42
Speaker
all the big educational publishers. And then some of my former professors started hiring me to review their manuscripts because they were putting books out and I had always known me to be a good editor and a good reader and a good writer. So I did that for them and I started taking myself more seriously than I thought, well, you know, I'd like to write more too, more than just, you know, kind of as a hobbyist writer.
00:37:07
Speaker
And I slowly scaled back my work editing and scaled up my writing time until I got to about a 50-50 balance and I've kind of stayed in that balance for about five years now.
00:37:22
Speaker
Put a value on your on your work. Like how did you come to what you and I'm sure it varies from job to job But like if first maybe for someone who is looking to get into some form of freelance editing Where you actually can dictate the rate unlike a lot of freelance writing which you're just kind of beholden to the magazine or newspaper so how did you come to an area of comfort where you're you're you're getting some you're getting getting income and and everything and sustaining yourself that way and
00:37:51
Speaker
First, I did everything for cheap, much cheaper than I should have just so that I could get the job and prove myself. Then once I built up a clientele and respect as an editor, I was able to charge more and focus the markets that I worked in. Over time, having a lot of one-off clients led to having more long-term sustained clients and not needing to do as many of those one-off projects.
00:38:22
Speaker
Probably, I guess after Riverine came out, I kind of leveled up a little bit my rates to where they are now. And it can be a little bit more selective about what I work on as an editor and how much time I spend editing to. It's hard to do editing and freelance writing and then also do creative writing that you want to publish or sell. It's just hard to be with words in that way for 12 hours a day.
00:38:52
Speaker
Do you find people don't value editing at a high rate? Like they think it should just be almost complimentary? Sometimes that's the case. But you know, I try to be pretty clear with people who think that this is a skill that someone has that you're asking them for because you don't have the skill yourself. And therefore it is a, you know, something that should be
00:39:20
Speaker
valued for a cost. But yeah, it's certainly a thorn in the side of writers and editor sides of people wanting us to do work for free. Yeah. And what does a typical client look like for you? It's a little bit out of the place. I do some editing work for the Harvard Business School, working with professors there on their course module notes and some of their books.
00:39:49
Speaker
And I also work with prose writers, mostly people who are writing first works of fiction or non-fiction. So when you were getting back born to some of your writing process, when you were writing Riverine, a friend of mine here in Oregon wanted me to ask you how you
Structure and Sense of Place in 'Riverine'
00:40:13
Speaker
chose to structure it. Like in terms of the chronology of the writing, like was it kind of scattershot and then you tried to stitch it together or were you able to write it kind of as a cohesive thing from beginning to end? No, I was not able to do that at all. So I started with probably two or three essays that I felt were kind of the heart of the book.
00:40:38
Speaker
And then I wrote other essays that I felt like were sort of examining the same topics and places and themes in the same set of characters. And then I tried to put them in an alternating order of like youth and adult voices, which really kind of wasn't working. And I tinkered with that a bit. I moved things around, finally kind of settled on, or no, what happened was I came across this,
00:41:08
Speaker
book that DJ Waldie had written in the book was this line, Every Map is a Fiction. And that line, which is the opening epigraph of the book, really became an organizing principle for me that I had been actively searching for and unable to locate myself. And I realized that that was really kind of the heart of the idea that I was working with, which is that
00:41:33
Speaker
I was trying to map this place where I had grown up, these experience that had taken place where I had grown up, and was finding it very difficult to do in chronological narrative from start to finish. So what I had done is taken little cross sections of that place and time out and looked at them individually. So taking a sort of scan of or a survey of the religion in the area, the agricultural sort of
00:42:02
Speaker
state of the area. Different pieces like that and then organizing the book according to those different kinds of maps. But I think it's, you know, I think it's good to be always in search of an organizing principle or organizing thread and then also be able to let go and get into a little bit of an uncomfortable place where you don't have the answers and allow a sort of external
00:42:32
Speaker
magic or influence enter your work and lead you into maybe a better place or a final place. I feel like for me, there's a turning point where that thing happens and then suddenly everything else begins to click into place. That definitely happened for me after that mapping epigraph.
00:42:54
Speaker
If you had mentioned, I'm sorry if you mentioned it, but when in the process did you come across that epigraph? What percentage were you through the manuscript where you came across that? I was about halfway through. Okay. And so then at that point, something clicked for you. Yes. Yeah, it was this idea that you could look at a map or look at a place and be misled about what that map
00:43:22
Speaker
or what a story of a place held, and that there was something deeper to be found. And I organized it around that layering and that peeling back of layers to get at a deeper understanding. And what was the feeling like as you were writing it just before you came to that quote that you used for the epigraph? I felt a little bit lost, to be honest, and a little bit like,
00:43:50
Speaker
that challenge of having an idea and translating it on the page and having it not quite be what you wanted to say. And for me, it was a difficult place to be in that sense of being lost on the page a little bit or not quite being able to put into words or organization the thing that you were trying to do. So finding that epigraph was just
00:44:18
Speaker
you know, finding my way, really, in the work. Yeah, some things like that end up being like a lighthouse in the distance. Yeah. You're like, oh, wow, now I have, there's a destination now. And I can't imagine now what the book would have been without it. It's like, where was I going? Where else was I going if not there?
00:44:38
Speaker
Yeah. So when, uh, so after you, you, you, you get, you read that quote and then everything from there and it's like your, you're like gravity assisted running downhill type thing. So what was the, what were those mornings like those generative mornings, like when you were hitting the keyboard and running after that, what were those days like? Yeah, on those days, everything just flowed and, you know, gave me, you know, purpose and drive and motivation to keep going.
00:45:07
Speaker
And then the sort of memories that unlocked even was pretty amazing. You know, where I had said that, well, what else can I put in this book? What else, you know, suddenly there it all was. And I think it's so important to kind of, you know, take a half turn from where you are and look at something from another angle or another perspective to see it in a fresh way. And it really allowed me to do that.
00:45:32
Speaker
Those days were great. There was a couple times where I would go rent like a really cheap little Airbnb and just hole up with the work because there was so much of it coming out and to be done. And even I would sometimes write till three o'clock in the morning because there was just so much. Yeah, I can't wait to get back to that place again where the work is pouring out. I understand what I'm doing.
00:46:00
Speaker
Do you have any, for lack of a better term, meditative practice to try to find that flow state where you are, where you can sit in a chair and sit still and think through things and generate an amount of work where you feel just damn good when you're through? Yeah, one of the really important things I found is that I don't do well with
00:46:27
Speaker
snippets of time, you know, 15, 30 minutes an hour. I really need four to five hours of like no interruptions to really sit and get into those moments. And it's a very sort of visual process for me. And I use a lot of, this is a very weird thing, but like post-it notes. And I just start to sort of shift ideas around visually until
00:46:52
Speaker
I see how they're working together and then can kind of move into an essayistic mode or a writing mode where I'm actually putting words on the page. So that's one of my processes. I also, truly meditatively, I guess I go for walks and just kind of clear my head, which has this amazing effect of allowing for a new thought.
00:47:21
Speaker
watch you the way. Is that part of that four to five hour block of uninterrupted time that sometimes you might skip out for a walk to help? In a perfect day, that would be what I do. Real life doesn't necessarily allow for that. I have two young kids who often
00:47:44
Speaker
changed my plans. For example, one day it was a snow day so my kids were home and I had just gotten back from being gone six days and had a ton of riding to do and of course wasn't able to but that's life.
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, and in reading Riverine 2, you ground it in such a sense of place. You just feel it, I don't know, you just kind of feel the geography and you feel the weight of that river that you grew up on around it. And how mindful were you of trying to elicit the
00:48:20
Speaker
I don't know the pressure from the external world on you and how that influenced your life. How did you dance with that kind of feeling? I was very mindful of that and it was sort of part of this mapping idea too and the river runs through this book in the same way that the mapping does.
00:48:39
Speaker
And what I realized for me is getting across this very textured experience of place to make it feel that way for a reader was me going beyond this idea that experience happens in a void. So experience happens in a very specific time, a very specific place, and with very specific characters. And getting down into the details and the sort of history and the feel and the sense and the smell and the sort of
00:49:08
Speaker
folk tales around all of the things that happened at that river was the only way to really transfer my sort of intimate experience with it to a reader who has never been there. And so I try to think of that as nothing happens in a void and how do you get out of the void by engaging with the world and in different ways and with the senses in different ways and with time and with place and with character. And so I tried to do all of that for the river
00:49:40
Speaker
You know, to make you just feel it, I hope. Yeah. No, mission accomplished, for sure. Good. Thanks. And with hierarchy of needs, too, what I love about it, too, is this idea of happiness you're trying to get at.
00:49:59
Speaker
And some of the most happy people are the ones who are able to not seek more, but actually just be content with what they already have. And you come to that in the final passage, too. I believe it sounds like you're in Provincetown at the end. I don't know if you were. I've been on set.
00:50:18
Speaker
OK, all right, so near Wareham. Yeah, I grew up around there. I grew up in Lakeville, which is right off 495. I think it all sort of has a similar feeling around there, right? Yeah, it's awfully bleak in the winter. Very gray and devoid of tourism. Yeah, totally.
00:50:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's very isolated and so forth, but it's like a perfect place for for you to kind of look inward at the at that time. So like where where were you headspace wise as you when you were there and then how did you plan on what was your motive then to translating that into your essay? So I started that essay when I was there and I had my son had just said the thing, you know, the line about me never laughing anymore, which is the thing I had written down and brought with me.
00:51:05
Speaker
I was in this place where I finished Riverine, the edits were turned in, I wanted to start the year off by doing new writing. And I was just in such a mentally sort of sad place.
Personal and Political Influences
00:51:23
Speaker
Donald Trump was running for president and that was a new idea.
00:51:29
Speaker
I was really, really just upset about a lot of the things that were happening in the world and in the country. Is that why he noticed that you weren't laughing anymore? Yeah, I think I had just gotten so deeply into thought about those things and was carrying it with me everywhere and feeling like I couldn't do anything about it.
00:51:54
Speaker
You know, it was a wake-up call to hear that from my son that he wasn't seeing me as a person who laughed anymore, which is, it was devastating. And I wasn't laughing at that little writer's retreat I was doing in Onset, Massachusetts. I was really kind of despairing and trying to climb my way out of that.
00:52:17
Speaker
It echoed some of the early stuff in Riverine, too, about how you were seeing your mother in some ways, like the indoor sweatsuits and the going out in public sweatsuits and her banging the pots and slamming the phone. There was almost like a mirrored thing there. Yeah, that's a really good point. I hadn't actually caught that, but you're right, that it was a sort of coming into that place of
00:52:49
Speaker
being in my head and not engaging in the way that I wanted to engage. As a writer in these times, how do you see yourself in this period of history, doing the work you're doing, and where does your optimism lie? Well, I'm trying to find my place in this world.
00:53:18
Speaker
And I think, you know, I can write a lot about class in America is one thing I'm really drawn to writing about and have some thoughts about and observations to make. And I think that that will be something, you know, relevant and hopefully valuable. And yeah, I mean, at this point, optimism, you know, we have to kind of craft it for ourselves, I think, and I'm just trying to
00:53:47
Speaker
as I did in the creative nonfiction essay, I'm trying to find the joys of daily life and really take pleasure in existing in the moment, which sounds hokey, but I think is a real thing that we all need to do is spend time with people we love and sort of foster joy wherever we can, but still do work, still do work that matters and that can help transform things.
00:54:16
Speaker
It's kind of the only thing, you know, we have control over too. A lot of these things that you touch upon in this essay is like, you know, there's a lot of things that are crushing you from the outside, but what can you do among the sort of immediate circle and try to help, you know, radiate some of that goodness from your core out? Totally. And what can you tune out to? You know, I think there's a lot that can be tuned out that is
00:54:40
Speaker
totally unnecessary noise, and being able to do that for yourself, I think, is really, really crucial. Wonderful. And I want to be respectful of your time, so let me just ask you where people can find you online, and where can people get more familiar with their work?
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:54:56
Speaker
And I'll put as many links as I can in the show notes to your work where it's linkable, but where else can people find you?
00:55:06
Speaker
Angiepalm.com is where my work is listed and information about readings I'll be giving and so forth. Fantastic. And Twitter? My Twitter is at Angiepalm, A-N-G-P-A-L-M. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for carving out an hour of your day. This was a lot of fun getting to know you and talk about your work.
00:55:30
Speaker
I love your shovel. Thank you very much. You're a part of the family now. Fantastic. Thanks again, and we'll be in touch. Okay, sounds good. Bye-bye.