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Episode 418: Surrendering to the Subconscious with John Julius Reel
645 Plays5 months ago
John Julius Reel (@johnjuliusreel) is a writer, memoirist, and language teacher who lives in Spain with his family. He's the author of My Half Orange: A Story of Love and Language in Seville (Tortoise Books).
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Humorous Cold Open
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, I don't know, one of these days, perhaps by episode 500, I'll start with a cold open, much like I am now, then give way to an intro theme bumper type thing with some pithy pull quotes from the backlog of the show from a few guests, and then into the intro proper. I don't know, maybe that'll work. Should I even read my house ad for editorial services? I don't think so, but if you want someone to help crack the code, see if you need someone to see what you can't see, consider reaching out and we can start a dialogue, creative nonfiction podcast at gmail dot.com. I guess that was a house ad. You know, with writing, it's easy because I can say, okay, John meditate, walk around, get this son of a bitch out of your mind.
New Sponsor and Guest Introduction
00:00:53
Speaker
Oh, new sponsor alert, the word. ah epistograph. Now, a manuscript, parchment, or book having writing on both sides of the leaves. My prefontane biography, if the publisher doesn't pull the plug, is an example of an epistograph. John Julius Reel, bless his patient heart, is on the show. We recorded this episode in late 2023. It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago and me being the glorious dickhead that I am, I had accrued and have
00:01:31
Speaker
accrued an upsetting amount of unpublished interviews that I must produce to honor these generous guests and you the listener. At long last, you'll get to enjoy this wonderfully insightful conversation with John. You know, we talked for nearly two hours and I i cut some big chunks of it just, you know, because, God, you got it. i'm not go i I'm not going to be one of those podcasters that dumps a two or three hour podcast on you. i'm just i'm I said I was a glorious dickhead a moment ago. I'm not that big of a dickhead. I'll share some of the deleted scenes, if you will, with ah the Patreon crew. Why
John Julius Reel's Memoir and Background
00:02:10
Speaker
not? There's some baseball talk in there. John was a very good athlete in his day. ah So we talked about our bad, rotten heads in athletics and the perils of self-awareness. I'm on fire in this intro. My gosh, coming out the blocks. Okay, John's memoir.
00:02:28
Speaker
My Half Orange, a story of love and language in Seville, is a brilliant memoir. Really is, published by Tortoise Books, and it bridges John's native country, being the US, and his adopted country. of España, Spain. His father was a titan in New York City journalism, a columnist with millions of readers. And John wrestled with developing as a writer in the shadow of that. you know And by moving to Spain and throwing himself into the language, know he found his voice. He also found the love of his life and a family he never thought he would ever start. All of that by emigrating to Spain. Pretty cool.
00:03:09
Speaker
John also has a great presence on Instagram doing micro language lessons and he has a YouTube channel called Book Rants where he reviews primarily memoirs you know somewhat off the cuff. He does a lot of thinking about it. um But he's not reading from a script in the way that I'm reading off a script though the the last couple sentences I just said including this one this ongoing sentence is not in my script this one is Off the cuff. He's a very good speaker I'm reading now and can articulate things beautifully on the fly showing us that this episode and more at brendan america pay there you can sign up for my
00:03:48
Speaker
Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, its primary aim is to give you the juice, man. Maybe put a smile on your face. It's not merely a self-promotional tool, though on some level it is. If every subscriber to this podcast subscribed to the newsletter, I'd be one happy CNF bro. And that's what I am, dude. Also, there's Patreon. New patron alert, thanks to Carol Marsh for joining the crew. Welcome. Always nice. Also, only one patron from the $4 to $10 tiers has taken me up on the office hours offer that I now bake into those tiers as a further incentive to help subsidize this show.
00:04:35
Speaker
You know, the post and the link to to book is still up there and I am cataloging, ah you know, who gets what and when and how much and so forth. good go Go there, go look, patreon dot.com slash CNF pod. If you factor in what my hourly rate would be versus what you're getting for a couple clams a month, the CNF pod CFO would lose their mind.
Writing Journey and Challenges
00:05:03
Speaker
A little more about John. His memoir took him 10 years to get right. He also has a radio gig in Andalusia's public radio affiliates station. ah His ah rants from a foreign land is on substack.
00:05:20
Speaker
He's working on another memoir about his athletic career, which I can't wait to read when it publishes. it's ah his His memoir will really rhyme with mine. it's good It'll be cool. It'll be cool if they ever come out and if they come out if they come out around the same time, because that would be really cool to... I don't know. Sing each other's praises, right? In this conversation, we dig into how he surrenders to his subconscious. Writing through the bad stuff to that get to the good, I always like talking about that. And how self-awareness can be a great asset, but my gosh, also occurs. So, CNFers, let's get after it.
00:06:14
Speaker
that aspect of the game. Like every time I did well, I would make an excuse. Oh, wow the picture wasn't that good. Or the team wasn't that good. Like I would always play down my, I didn't know how to take advantage of highs. And then I would over, I give much more weight to my lows. Like I was much more I was brought much lower by an 0 for 4 day than I was brought high by a 4 for 4 day. yeah didn I didn't know how to ride the wave. You know, in i it's one of the skills that I learned over time. It's like, how do you, for example, with the book stuff, how do you, because when I'm confident, I write better. I just do. So, you know, something happened today. Something good happened today. I'm going to think about that. I'm going to meditate about that so that I write better tomorrow.
00:07:06
Speaker
you know i And it's in then a bad something bad happens, something that affects my self-esteem. Well, then I have to work against that. But like I have to sort of go know my weaknesses and sort of ride with them. I know I'm the type of person to downplay my achievements. So I've got to say to myself, well, John, you did something. Think about what you did. What you did is important, because if you don't think about that, you won't write well map tomorrow. And I know I'm someone who overplays my defeats. So I have to think about my defeat and say, John, how would you say what would you say to a friend who just went through what you've gone through? Would you?
00:07:45
Speaker
tell them that they're a piece of shit and they've got no future? No, you wouldn't. you would you you would Don't speak to yourself. Speak to yourself like you would speak to other people. Respect yourself and give yourself a certain amount of credit for what you've done. So, I mean, I've learned a lot of lessons from the failures that happened to me when I was a school boy. Like I also went pretty far in sports. I made my division one football team as a wide receiver, but then I quit yeah before i I could even figure out how far I could have gone. Like I just didn't want to deal with
00:08:22
Speaker
failing again like I had failed in baseball, like I had failed in basketball. I just wanted to see, make my dad happy. And once he was happy, I lost all desire to continue. it was I was so wrapped up in, I don't know what, you know, I'm still trying to figure it out, really, at 56 years old. Imagine that, right? Exactly. it's I just heard an interview with Marc Maron and Taika Waititi, the filmmaker, and Taika's father has long passed, and they were just they were just talking about how everything everything that he's every movie he still makes is still trying to impress his dad. He's like, my dad's been dead for years, and I'm still trying to impress the guy. ah Totally. No, and that plays a lot into the book that we're going to talk about. I mean, that's very much
00:09:10
Speaker
you know, writing like sports was my way to impress my father. You know, when I decided to leave my life in New York behind and I said, well, I'm going to set out and try to remake my life in Seville to a degree. I mean, I won't say that was my first vision of the future. I thought I was going to go to Seville, learn the language in one or two years, return to New York, and then live the Latin side of New York to the fullest. That's what I thought, okay? But also there was living in the shadow of my father's success as a writer, as a columnist in at the New York Daily News, where he would, you know, he had 3 million readers on Sunday, and people would approach him in the street and
00:10:00
Speaker
priests and my teachers, my priests, the the the priests in my at my and my parish would all look up to him and admire him. And I remember once as I write in the book, like sitting on the bus and seeing someone read his column and burst out laughing. like i And then starting in the business and people tell me, you'll never be the right your dad was. I lived in that kind of shadow. you know I think he felt for me because I was living in his shadow. And then I went abroad to to spread to Spain, met my future wife, my half orange. and
00:10:38
Speaker
f After three years there, I told myself, okay, if I'm going to really learn the language, I'm going to have to stop reading and writing in English. I'm going to have to only do it in Spanish. And I started
Language Influence on Writing
00:10:49
Speaker
doing that. I wrote five or six pieces in Spanish. I sent them to the editor of the local newspaper, and he decided to publish them. And I got a series, a weekly column in the local paper. The first 10 of those people pieces, there ended up being a hundred. The first 10 of them, I was able to say, look dad, you know, I did it. I became a writer too. I became a journalist. I became a columnist like you without your connections. It was really kind of miraculous in a way that I ended up sort of with this in this with similar, a similar destiny.
00:11:28
Speaker
you know, despite sort of leaving behind all his clout, which I hoped wouldn't get me there in New York, but didn't. It was really, really bizarre, really bizarre that my father had very little ambition. His ambition was to be a family man. His ambition was to go to all my little league games, and all my basketball games. And he always was very, very supportive. He was very, very supportive as an editor. I think for many, many years, I burdened him with my stuff. And I think a lot of it was very, very, I know a lot of it was very, very bad, but he encouraged me nonetheless. So, no, I was very, very lucky, Brendan, in that I never had to deal deal with my father exacerbating that
00:12:15
Speaker
sort of shadow that I felt existed, you know, I mean, I think a lot of it was just a figment of my imagination too, you know, I was a victim, like, just like in sports, when we were talking before, I mean, I stepped up to the plate, all the pressure was really imagined, I would say, let's say, 80% of it was imagined, okay? And I think I'd say 80% of that shadow was imagined too, but just because it was imagined doesn't mean it didn't affect me. It affected me tremendously, you know? And having it lifted off my shoulders when I came to
00:12:51
Speaker
Spain helped me, let's say, find my groove and maybe write with a kind of comfort that I didn't know before. Also, writing in Spanish was fascinating because the book or a version of the book was first published in Spanish. Those 100 articles that I originally wrote in Spanish ultimately were converted into my half orange. And so I had the tendency before I started writing in Spanish to maybe disguise my lack of experience, my lack of wisdom, or to show off my talent by with flourishes of prose. And I think that it was a real detriment to my writing.
00:13:44
Speaker
But once I started writing in Spanish, if I didn't say something, there was absolutely no hope of capturing the reader because I just did not master prose in Spanish well enough to even try to show off. So the idea of sitting down and writing a sentence, I knew the sentence had to say something and that ultimately transferred over to writing in my native tongue, I saw that I could communicate something if I just shed any pretense to style or I'd stop trying to give an impression. I just said, okay, this is what's in my head. This is the pure
00:14:32
Speaker
information, whether that be factual or emotional, that I'm just going to put out there for the reader. And it was working in Spanish. And imagine in English, because I have A mastery of a certain nuance that I just do not have in Spanish. i just don't i I can't produce in Spanish what I can produce in English as far as prose. I just can't. I can't pull a sentence together as efficiently.
00:15:08
Speaker
in Spanish as I can in English. I mean, it's normal. It's the same when in spoken spanish Spanish and English. I'm always a beat behind in my second language. How long did it take you to, when you were learning Spanish, to to not constantly like translate what you were hearing in Spanish to English and just fully absorb it and just metabolize in Spanish without having to do the internal translation? It's a good question. I still do it sometimes when I'm nervous. I think that if I'm having a conversation in my comfort zone with somebody about something that I know, I can almost sound like a native.
00:15:52
Speaker
in Spanish, but if I'm outside of my comfort zone, whether that's, for example, I go to the bank, there's a whole vocabulary that comes with going with the going to the bank and I'm not fluent in that vocabulary. Or if I'm sort of speaking about something at the limits of my sort of emotional capacity, sometimes my Spanish breaks down and I begin to sort of translate or let's say speak in Spanish, but think in English. And so the Spanish becomes quite clumsy. As we were saying before about how much self-consciousness is, so language speaking language is a skill. It's not knowledge. It's a skill. And so skills are affected by self-awareness.
00:16:43
Speaker
When you play an instrument, or when you play a sport, or when you speak a language, well, those are three very good examples. You sing, for example. What ends up being the production is very much affected by your emotion. If I'm feeling confident, I speak Spanish so much better than if I'm not feeling confident. I work on the radio here. I work in sort of the Andalusian public radio. I'm i um' on three different shows. And if I'm having Brendan a hard time with my wife, if i'm if things are not going well with my wife,
00:17:24
Speaker
and it's affecting my emotional state, it's noticeable when I go on the radio. Maybe not to everybody. But I listen to myself and I'm like, how could I possibly have forgotten that word? The other day I couldn't remember the word for popcorn in Spanish. And I was like, what? I mean, how could I not know the word for popcorn in Spanish? I know that word. I've known that word for 18 years, but it didn't come up because I was having a hard day emotionally. So it's it's really, it's amazing how much emotion affects fluency and it affects, let's say, the how articulate a person how articulate a person is. It's very, very, it affects, it I'm an emotional person and it affects me.
00:18:10
Speaker
you know I've learned to hide it to a degree, but I see it happening. I see myself stumbling over words, and I know it's not because I don't know it. It's because my mind is elsewhere. and yeah A moment ago, you said something like that that was really poignant in that you know skills are affected by self-awareness.
Creative Process and Emotional Influence
00:18:26
Speaker
I just i ah love hearing you say that. And you know if you're an artist, or you know you have to like to not be judgmental on yourself as you're learning the new skill. And I i wonder for you, like even in those and those moments of developing ah as a writer, how have you maybe cultivated a sense of trying not to be and judgmental of yourself as you're learning something new, be it writing, be it
00:18:50
Speaker
uh you know sports be it a new language well it's funny with writing you know we have an advantage because really it's not like performance art i mean i guess it could be you could turn it into that i mean there are writers out there who don't really i think revise their work and sometimes that work has a tremendous energy that other work doesn't have like for example henry miller I'm a big fan of Henry Miller. I don't like Tropic of Capricorn, but Tropic of Cancer, especially the last 50 pages. You just get this got the sense that he was just in his own, and he wrote it, and has this tremendous energy that almost feels like it hasn't been revised. But I'm not that kind of writer. That's a huge advantage, because I know that I have the final say on whether, when this thing is before an audience,
00:19:45
Speaker
And when it's before an audience, I'm not gonna be present. This is the great thing about being a writer. I'm not going to be present when someone's reading it. If I were present and I saw them drift off, it would affect my self-esteem. What point in the chapter did they stop reading? you know when did When did they start looking at their phone? like I would really affect it by that if I were there, a fly on the wall, watching someone read my work. But the great advantage of being a writer is that there is I can revise it.
00:20:18
Speaker
I can wait for those moments where i'm my self-consciousness doesn't prey on me. It doesn't prey on my creative self. Let me just restate that because sometimes self-consciousness is my best friend because I'm an observer of myself. So in other words, It helps me observe myself and draw conclusions about myself in my day-to-day life. But when I'm sitting down before the work, I don't want my self-consciousness there. I want it there when I'm out in the field, because it's an ally out in the field when I'm observing myself, when I'm taking notes on myself. But I don't want it there when I'm sitting down before a blank page.
00:21:05
Speaker
you know I need to know when it's its company is appropriate and when it's inappropriate. And over time, I guess I've learned that. you know With writing, it's easy because I can say, okay, John, meditate, walk around, get this son of a bitch out of your mind. okay But sometimes when I'm speaking, for example, a foreign language, there is the urgency of articulating myself in the moment. And I can't really say, get the fuck out of here to this person who's being so bothersome. I have to kind of sit there and say, okay, I'm just going to try to ignore you in the moment and just sort of wait for you to go. So, you know, my wife is a yoga teacher, so, you know, she always talks about, you know,
00:21:53
Speaker
you know I guess James Thurber was the first person to stay it say it, but like i never he never stopped writing. He was always writing. And my wife says, I never stopped doing yoga. It's sort of like you want to live in a constant state of, in her case, meditation. I don't know that I agree with James Thurber. I think that, like I said, there are Maybe I'm writing when I'm observing myself, I'm taking notes, but it's a different type of writing than it is when I'm sitting down before the page and I kind of want my subconscious mind to help me discover things. That's really our ally. I think when we're writing, don't you think, Brendan, that it's especially when we're writing memoir, let's say.
00:22:38
Speaker
You know, I know you have your memoir. and And I'm sure when you sit down and write it, the things that move us as writers are the things that we surprise ourselves with. And I think those come from our unconscious mind. Don't you think? Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And it's a it to your point of what your wife was saying about yoga always doing yoga. And I think it's kind of like writing to is always you're always in practice with it, you know, whether you're sitting down to scribble something or be it in a journal or a notebook or you wake up in a from a dream and you scribble down something. It's like it's always it's always with you. And then
00:23:18
Speaker
the subconscious at times will will creep in and it might be because you heard the chord of a certain song and it just instantly elicits a memory and and suddenly that memory could be the seed of ah of a scene and it did come from something that was plucked from your subconscious because of something external, be it a movie, maybe the way an actor's face just expresses a mood and you're like, oh my God, that's the mood I felt when dad let go of the bicycle when he taught me how to ride a the bike and it's like all of a sudden you're transported there and you're crying because that's like the most intimate moment you've ever felt in your life or something, you know? Yeah. i've One of the things I've learned recently is to sort of listen to my subconscious because sometimes it'll pop up in my youth. Very often I would be afraid of the suggestions that my subconscious would give me and that you've sort of articulated it very well. A song, something, an idea will come up.
00:24:18
Speaker
You know, maybe you'd go for a walk and you've been stewing over a scene that's blocked. You go for a walk or you take a shit and suddenly there's an idea that's in your head. And, you know, I would silence that in the past because maybe it didn't, it doesn't fit exactly with what you were stewing on, because maybe you just wanted to get a particular sentence to work. and you're dwelling too much on that thing. But whatever idea popped into your head, I've said, okay, let me listen to that. Let's see what that develops into. And maybe it allows you to drop that sentence you were hung up on. Maybe the sentence you were hung up on didn't even need to be there at all, and that your subconscious is giving you a kind of clue that you have to listen to. ive I'm becoming, I think, a better
00:25:13
Speaker
listener to my subconscious with the years because it's just so it makes life and I hope my writing so much more interesting because the things that my subconscious gives me are very often unpredictable. I didn't know they were going to be there the moment before they came. They don't figure into my outlines. They they veer me away from the the on the predictable. and i think and But if I trust them, they're not that far away. they can they They stay within the limits. They kind of show me the limits, or they allow me to interpret the limits in a way that maybe I didn't know before I kind of let my subconscious in. And the more I listen to my subconscious, the more favors it offers me.
00:26:10
Speaker
Oh, that like ah the movie, the Pixar movie Ratatouille, and I'm just thinking of Vigo, or Ego, the the food critic, and he's just hardened from a whole life of doing this food criticism. But then he takes that one bite of the Of the ratatouille and yeah, and it sent it shoots him back to his childhood of having the peasant meal having his mom serve it to him and that little that meal broke through his veneer of his ah You know his cynicism over the years and shot him right back to a subconscious moment of his childhood and it released a floodgate of emotion and And and things that he just forgot were there and it's like the subconscious in that way can be
00:26:54
Speaker
ah Guiding light totally because it's also like you when you said before about you know, maybe you see the face in a film and It reminds you of a moment with your dad and suddenly you're weeping so it's it's like the emotional blockages that I think that they're also creative blocking, they block our creative mind. So suddenly, you know, even if the slightest, the slightest emotional change, well that might just give you the tone that's going to lead you to a sentence that's going to solve a particular creative pickle that you're in. Or move you on to another, you know, and there'll be a kind of
00:27:37
Speaker
you a building of momentum. and And so I think those emotional changes, as you say from that the the Pixar film, yes. In that moment, he goes from this bitter critic to being this boy open to wonder. And that is something that I think I want my subconscious to give me too. you know I want to be open to wonder all the time. you know Absolutely. Yeah. and it's ah it's you know If we're to write to that to that to that moment, or you you you know in and when memoir is really humming, it it does it particularly well where you're able to take that ah yeah know that that feeling, that emotion of something that happened to you and have it you know bridge to a reader.
Writing Techniques and Feedback
00:28:26
Speaker
you know Sometimes I think when memory gets wrong, it gets ah it becomes a bit too navel-gazing and I wonder why I'm why i'm being told this. like It's okay, this happened to you, but so what? And and you've read a lot of memoirs and and having written your own, so how do we how how do writers, how do memoirists, and there are so many out there, so many aspiring memoirs, get beyond the, this mayor this thing happened to me to the universal experience that is gonna transport the reader to that to that emotional moment that we're after. Yeah, it's a great question. I think it takes a lot of time to figure that out. A lot of time. I mean, I think I think you need you know, there's just
00:29:11
Speaker
so much garbage that's produced over time. I mean, as we write, I mean, I'm sure you've had a lot of writers tell you this. They throw out 75 or 80% of what they write. I don't know. It's a kind of feel, I guess. I was talking to a friend the other day. about sort of the difficulty of, a writer friend of mine, the difficulty of promoting a book. Like, how do you do it? I mean, there's so many books that are produced all the time. And it's such, it's so time consuming to sort of read one. You don't want to be disappointed. You want to choose right. And, you know, it's like, what is it that
00:29:56
Speaker
What are the type of books that I want to read? Are the are they the books that have a really snappy elevator pitch? No. they Maybe I'll be interested for a moment, but it's a superficial interest. What makes me drawn to a writer or makes me read on is authenticity. I mean, and this is a word that's probably overly used and I don't want to fall into some sort of cliche, but maybe even go more cliche, something that seems to come from the writer's soul. I mean, it seems essential to him or her, like absolutely essential to him or her. I mean, when someone is navel-gazing,
00:30:41
Speaker
Like, you kind of get the sense that that writer is masturbating. That writer is not really moving forward in any way. that what they're What they're writing about is not essential to them. That's the thing. I think we when we read, we're like, why are you wasting your time on this? It's not my time. But if you feel like the right the writer really cares about this, really cares about this, he Is something about the writing of this scene or the inclusion of these details? Is vibrating with something essential? And I mean, I don't know that I can put my finger on what it is, but I know it when I'm reading it. It's something in the vibrations of the prose. So as I'm going through revision after revision, like my half orange took me 10 years to write. It went through two languages. I had a hundred
00:31:37
Speaker
articles that I'd written that I could sort of, I don't know, sew together. And what made me decide to keep something? Well, it's because I felt like in that moment I was saying something essential to me. I felt as though I was i was in touch with the subconscious, man. You know, sometimes I think that like when we're writing, at first. and we're sitting down in front of a blank page, it's almost as though we're getting some sort of radio transmission that's really staticky. I mean, sometimes there'll be a kind of stretch of a few seconds of clarity, but then the static will come in and maybe you'll barely hear it. Other times you won't hear it at all through sort of many revisions and you go back to that same transmission. And when you go back to that same transmission, it comes in a little bit clearer.
00:32:37
Speaker
And so the staticky bits come, come you start getting them and and then the the dead bits are staticky. And over time, you can turn this really bad radio broadcast into something that comes across clean and smooth. But it's like you have to keep plugging back into whatever was transmitting it, whatever was was broadcasting it, whether it was from inside me or outside me, I really have no idea. but suddenly you read it and you're like, holy shit, did I write that? That is when I'm saying, okay, I was humming there and it may not even have been me, but I was plugged into something. you know But I'm very, I can bore myself. I bore myself all the time. um'm And I look like, Jesus, this is so boring. I'm like, God. you know And when I feel like, you know when I teach writing, I always say to my students, you have one,
00:33:32
Speaker
have one assignment. Okay, five words at least and then don't bore me. That's it. It's my assignment. Don't bore me. Okay. And I mean, that's really what it comes down to. I mean, if I don't bore the reader, I mean, maybe sometimes I'm going to bore the reader. I'm not saying I won't always bore the reader, but if that's my goal, not to bore the reader. you know, have the reader keep reading, you know. And I mean, how do I figure out if I'm not boring the reader? Well, i'm if if I'm boring myself, I mean, this is again where my kind of self-consciousness comes into play. Maybe on the first draft, I don't want it there. But when I'm revising, I want it there to a certain degree.
00:34:16
Speaker
You know, because I'm like, God, oof, who's going to read this? You know? Yeah. Well, yeah, when it starts to feel stilted in wooden, you're like, oh, yeah, this is thinking of this. This needs to go. but what's But what's what's good about it is that it had to get there sure at least initially for it to be removed. And like that sometimes wooden stilted prose And it might not be in the final product, but it needed to be there to get you somewhere. ah great Right. And it's it's hard. That's where you get away. from If you can divorce the self-awareness, especially in the early drafting, it's like you need to lay down the road so you can find out where the potholes are.
00:35:00
Speaker
And oh sure you have to just get out of the way and just let that happen. And then you can work on removing things later. So so it's like the writing 900 bad words to get to 100 really good ones. You needed those 900 even if they're not there in the end. Totally. You absolutely do. I mean, I'm, you know, we don't waste our time when we are, we don't waste our time when we're writing badly. ah We're not. yeah That is absolutely necessary to write well. I mean, were we wasting our time or I sometimes look back when I, all my ex-girlfriends, was that a waste of time? I mean, no. I mean, it it allowed me and prepared me
00:35:43
Speaker
it's There's a great saying in Spanish. it's about It comes from bullfighting. Just like in English, we've got a lot of phrases that come from sports like, three strikes are out or the whole nine yards. i mean it The sports phrases are embedded in the language. Well, it's true in Spanish with bullfighting. So, for example, if you say, ah <unk> muo manu was scar of that a lot of left hand, that's what the bullfighters use with their cape. It means you you have a lot of finesse. Or if you say, poerinererti you you you put someone in luck.
00:36:19
Speaker
Okay, that means that you're basically setting the scene for somebody for basically the last and phase of a bullfight when the bullfighter has to go in for the kill. And a lot of that in Spanish culture is about luck. I feel as though a lot of these other experiences with exes sort of put me in luck for my wife. And I think that's true also with pros. I mean, not only in, for example, all the writing we throw out before we get to the final product or the final draft, but also the books and failed attempts that we ended up putting in the drawer forever were absolutely necessary for us to get to the point where we were maybe humming to a certain degree where even when we wrote badly, it wasn't a lost cause. You know, when I write badly,
00:37:14
Speaker
For example, i can so there's still something salvageable, but there was a time in my writing life when I wrote so badly it wasn't salvageable. yeah theres There's a moment in the book, too, talking about potentially unsalvageable writing is when you gave your father something to read and he painstakingly called it pure isle. You could tell it like gutted him to tell you that, but he said it out of out of love and a way to push you to another level. But he was, you felt the anguish of him. Cause he's just like, I know you're better than this, ah but this is how I, this is the best thing I can say to you right now. Sure. i I was very, very lucky because, you know, I think the best editors have two things. They're tremendously skilled and they love you. If you have an editor who loves you, they're always going to tell you the truth.
00:38:06
Speaker
It's very, very hard to tell someone their writing is bad. It's very hard to tell someone their writing is bad with love, but you need to hear it. And if you're not skilled, well, then if you tell me the writing's bad, well, then how, why should I believe you? But my father obviously knew what he was talking about and it was obviously hard for him to say that. There was no sort of like,
00:38:35
Speaker
joyful spite in his comment. So just to hear him tell that to me, and there was no way I could dismiss it. There was no way that I could disregard what he was saying. I mean, i he's always a voice in my in my in my mind. i'm I'm always going to to write to him. I was talking to someone the other day about the book and um They asked me, who what was my favorite chapter? Well, that's my favorite chapter. because the this The chapter on Adios to the Reverend, which is the chapter I wrote about my my father. I mean, when I wrote My Half Orange, I wanted to organize it or structure it according to sort of emotional intensity. I wanted to start out with anecdotes that were kind of lighthearted and
00:39:23
Speaker
funny. And I wanted to go deeper and deeper into sort of ah family stuff. And um the final chapters are the most soul-wrenching. And that's i one of the most soul-wrenching chapters at the end. And i when I sat down to write about my dad, I mean, of course I'll write about my dad again in my in in my life, but you only had really one chance to do it. I was like, damn, you know, you got to get this one right. You know, I wanted to really, he was there, I planted him in the book. And I knew the book had to sort of pay off there. When I got to him, I had to, I had to, they had to, they had to be a payoff of the book. And, um you know, that's when I had to
00:40:07
Speaker
You know, I stepped up to the plate right there to get into sports imagery. And it was a 3-2 count and the bases were loaded and the pendant was on the line, you know? And I just said, okay, thank God this isn't performance art. I can sit with this. I can reduce it down. I can get it right. I hope I did. I hope I did. You know, I certainly put the time and effort into it, you know? Yeah, to to me, the book really gained a new level of altitude when you when you hit that, the moment where you're writing about your dad, and then it it it it blends and segues into your father-in-law, and how like and you weren't you weren't able to be there with your dad as he lay dying, but that transitioned to you being able to care for your father-in-law and his declining health, and that that was
00:41:03
Speaker
Connected in a very I think just a ah very skilled skilled way and it I could I could feel the transference to be like, okay, this is For like a better term a tone is like here I can the care I wasn't able to give my dad because I was so far away I I can I can give that to my father-in-law now yeah, it was a kind of serendipitous really in a fateful way and what life gave me in Spain. My father was a very wise man, and he was, as I say in the book, lucid into his final moments, and I'm sure he would have given me tremendous advice. But my father-in-law was also, although he wasn't lucid at the end, he was, he had a kind of bearing which never changed. And that was tremendously illuminating to me, like how someone could
00:41:59
Speaker
sort of die with dignity, almost in silence without complaining. There were there were lessons that yeah that taught me. My father was a talker. Luis, my father-in-law was not a talker. Or he talked only in these sporadic moments. i i Maybe I didn't know Spanish well enough at first when I met him and he had all his lights and I couldn't really talk to him in exchange like I might have but his character was evident and when I think one of the things that's hard when you're writing a memoir is to sort of know when to what type of your life what time of your life there are I think there are times certain times in authors lives that I think are worthy of memoir it's not just one time in my life I don't think but certainly the moment that I decided to move to Spain and let's say my
00:42:54
Speaker
father-in-law passed away. That, in many ways, was a tremendous window of opportunity in my life that I took good advantage of, or I took well advantage of. I don't even know the right word. I think i i took complete its advantage of, let's say. There was a transformation that took place in me. I hoped to capture it with my half orange, because I think that window of time in my life was rich in transform, in transformation. Not only in the language that I spoke, I mean like I come to Seville, I'm living in a new place, I'm at the same time falling in love, right off right off the bat I'm having kids, all things that I never really thought I'd do, I was suddenly doing. And it kind of dovetailed into, I mean I think a huge chemical change within me that hasn't um
00:43:46
Speaker
I mean, you know, I, I look it back at my old self, Brendan, I look back and I just, it feels like a different person. I i mean, totally. I don't, that guy that lived in New York. I mean, yeah, I know a lot about him. I don't know. I mean, it's, it seems like another life, really, a really close friend of mine that I've kind of lost touch with. It's really weird, man. Really weird. you know Given that you know the book is titled My Half Orange, which is a Spanish saying for like soul soulmate, and and ah and in the emotional crescendo of the book, a real it has to do you know really, as we were just talking about, about you about about your father and like building up to that moment and that payoff.
Personal Reflections and Growth
00:44:29
Speaker
And I wonder just for you like name you know naming it for essentially you know your wife, but it's still like really the undercurrent of this whole thing is you know ah honoring your father and reconciling your relationship as he as as he passed away and trying to live up to his name. So I i just wanted to you know get your thoughts on on that and the title and where the emotional crescendos come from. The seminal moment for me was meeting the woman who would become my wife. and So maybe like I said, all my exes put me in luck or paved the way or smoothed the way for her, smoothed the way for her and then for family. Then family kind of smoothed the way to sort of appreciating
00:45:18
Speaker
all that my father offered me, that really I couldn't have had the one without the other. I really do feel as though, I mean, my half orange, I think there's a a section in the book, or I know there's a section in the book like where It's just, I mean, again, you know, you make me complete. That's such a cliche, right? But there is a kind of sense of this citric thing that a half orange is sort of like stuck down on the table. It's stuck, but when you find its other part, it's kind of like rolling. It can be split up and turn into wedges, which what which is what I call my children, wedge one and wedge two in the book. There is a kind of,
00:46:05
Speaker
sense of, well, I suddenly was able to, let's just say I came into myself more thanks to her. yeah And that allowed me to tap into all that my father gave me. There was that unfinished business that she allowed me to finish. Who became my editor once I was writing in Spanish? Well, she did. Who was doing that before my father did? You know, in many ways, the book
00:46:38
Speaker
couldn't have been written without her voice always speaking in the book. Also, there was the fact of, I think that my wife keeps me in line. And I think one of the things that's at the heart of the book is I sometimes say some things that people would frown at. I mean, sexist comments. i mean i And my wife calls me on all my shit. And so she's a great foil in that regard. She allows me to be myself in the book because she keeps me in line. She's the voice of the reader who might be annoyed at me. So she was, I think, a tremendous help structurally for the book, too, because it allowed me to go into territories territory and to speak about certain issues that might make
00:47:30
Speaker
people uncomfortable, especially after, let's say, the Me Too movement. or And you know there she is. you know and as As she says in the book, I'm a woman, not a feminist. I mean, I think she's a feminist too, but um you know I like her definition more. I like what she calls herself more. Yeah, you know she gave you an anchor and and a sense of home abroad and it wasn't until that foundation was fully rooted that and then you're you become the writer you are there and like your your father said being able to write in a second language gave you the forum you deserve.
00:48:08
Speaker
as ah greater greatercent that like one of the greater compliments you could have ever given you. And that is a direct result of you having this grounded foundation of family abroad and it it it bridged the two cultures, it bridged your two cities and you know allowed you know you know allowed you to reach a certain emotional depth with yeah your your homeland and your new home too. Yeah, you know, you know you I'm sure you've heard this, but like, people would always say to me, you know, the writing will start will start giving you things when you when it's less important to you, right? And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? And it's almost like, you know, when my dad would say to me, when I used to play sports, he says, John, just have a good time. And I was like, well, how can I have a good time when it means so much to you and other people if I do well?
00:49:01
Speaker
But I didn't understand what he meant by have fun. I think it means to lose myself in the moment when I decided to put my writing aside so that I could learn Spanish well enough to defend my family if I needed to. You know, and I said, you know, John, just put it on the back burner. Learn to speak and write Spanish will learn to understand what people tell you. All right. Then. Suddenly, I got published? I mean, that is weird. Right, Brendan? I mean, that just seems like it's what people were telling me all the time was going to happen. I'm not saying that I've reached any kind of grand success. I don't believe that at all, but at least I had people reading me. I had people reading me.
00:49:52
Speaker
And before I had no one reading me, and it only happened when I sort of gave the writing less importance, you know, and I sort of focused on What was really important, which was having fun or living life in this family that I... I'm not saying I created it because I didn't create it, but life sort of blessed me with. Okay, just just live in the blessing, John. Live in the blessing, okay? And maybe other blessings will come. And others did, you know? I mean, you know, the frustrations came too, but hey, I mean, that's all part of the package.
00:50:31
Speaker
you know Yeah, speaking of the the fun component, I'll never forget one of my former summer league teammates, ah Aaron Montero. He's a right fielder. He's a real fast runner. He had a big cannon for an arm. ah Decent hitter. And this one game, you know I was just in my my usual sort of emotional funk towards the end of the bench. and ah he It was on his way. He had already struck out three times in the game and he's going up. He's about ready to go up to the plate. He's like, all right, let's see if it's going to be the time for the golden sombrero, meaning like striking out four times. And, um, sure enough, he goes up there, strikes out four times for her his fourth time, gets four hats and, you know, puts one forward, two sideways, one backwards, and he's got the golden sombrero and he's just laughing and I'm looking up at him.
00:51:18
Speaker
And I'm like, Oh my God. Like I can, if I struck out four times in a game, there might not be getting, you might not be getting me out of bed in the morning. And here he is striking out four times and just like, all right, he's just going to go out in the field and try to be the best fielder he can be. And that was just incomprehensible. Incomprehensible to me too. Yeah. Yeah. And you're talking about trying to find the trying to find the fun, and it's like that it's so integral. There are going to be many over four days, and no one's going to care. It's how we bounce back from it. and So how have you maintained, you have my long my long little diatribe here, how have you maintained the fun and found the fun you know even when things might not necessarily be going great? Well, you know what's a big help, especially on the radio?
00:52:04
Speaker
In that, you know, it's it's part of my creative life now, you know, and I get paid to do this. And I, it's all off the cuff, basically performance art. I'm, i'm it's what are called tertullias. I do very little preparation and I just kind of wing it. Okay. And I make a ton of errors. It's impossible for me not to make errors. And I mean, thousands of people are listening and laughing at me. in part with me. And I'm like, i'll sometimes I'll listen to it with my wife and I'm like, oh my God, how do you understand me? I'll send my wife. And it's like, and it's almost being being able to, you know, if I'm making partially my living, I'm almost triumphing with my errors. I swear to you, Brendan, it's like, the more I fuck up on the radio, the more people talking about me. You know, it's funny, I have on i have a lot of followers on
00:53:03
Speaker
Instagram, I teach languages, I teach English and Spanish on Instagram, so I've got this, I've got 375,000 people following me on Instagram, okay? And I did a post the other day that got me 50,000 new followers. It got me an interview on Miami, Univision Miami something, right? And you know why? It was so, because I made mistakes. I was recommending three other English teachers online that I thought were good, and I made three bad errors in Spanish. So all these people started attacking my Spanish. All these people, and I just, I just responded to them that you are the reason why people are afraid to speak another language. And so it created this kind of momentum of
00:53:59
Speaker
I try it with my errors. I mean, that was a perfect example. You know, people say, why don't you take the post down and repost it? And I was like, do you understand what's driving the traffic of this piece? It's got more than, I think it's got something like two million views now. And it's all because of the people were talking in the comments section, arguing each with each other, some defending me, some kind of like criticizing my, ineptitude in Spanish. It was just amazing how, I think, to get back to the question, you asked me, how do I maintain it? Well, I think a constant reminder of my mistakes are not important, and in fact can help me, is the fact that I am making them all the time on the social networks, and I am making them all the time on the radio.
00:54:50
Speaker
You know, on the social networks, it's great because you can kind of like make bad posts and you can bounce back. You can write five or six bad posts and then suddenly you you'll you'll you'll put one up that'll get a million views. Like how how how does that happen? and Well, it was just, I was plugged in in that moment, but I don't really care about the social networks. I don't really care. I mean, sure, it's nice that people know me. It's nice that, you know, i I like the attention. It's a kind of boost to my ego, but my ego is not really tied up in that. My ego is tied up in writing. My ego is not tied up in you know the amount of people following me because i I create interesting language lessons. that's not what That's not what motivates me because it's not really tied to my identity. But nonetheless, it's a constant reminder of my mistakes do not affect
00:55:40
Speaker
My growth, they do not affect my success in a particular field. In fact, they can actually help me. I mean, there are actual examples like that post I put up the other day, perhaps my worst post in the sense of like the three shameful errors that I made in there that I, because I didn't really copy, but didn't really review it before I put it up, just banged it out. So might, but it got me 50,000 new followers on Instagram. How is that fucking possible? Three mistakes. It's so bizarre, man. So bizarre.
00:56:14
Speaker
I made about a five minute cut in this little section and I had to give you context about what comes next in the sequence of this conversation. It was just ah something that John had brought up about a very small and dependent press ah that published My Half Orange. So that that should give you the little runway here to understand what's coming next.
Publishing Industry Insights
00:56:42
Speaker
Yeah, and that's what's great about and an independent press or or anything, and i I'll talk about baseball momentarily to get back to the point I ultimately want to make, is like i I was obsessed with, well, I erroneously thought to get to the major leagues, I had to play Division I ball. Only way you could get there, it's the only path, which is nonsense. All you have to do, yeah you have to have the talent you have to have the ability, the talent, whatever, but ah you need to be on the field.
00:57:12
Speaker
it doesn't matter where ah you can be a division three player and sure there's no scholarship money share the competition might yeah not be quite as good but if you have like so tangibles and intangibles you know the the scouts will find you you go to the right camps you know talent rises cream rises to the top i didn't understand that at the time because my ego was tied and my dad's ego was tied to you know you're at the You want to be this level to be able to say you played division one. Other people that I played with who I was every bit as good at, it at not better or getting scholarships. I wasn't. It was one of those things where it was more of a status symbol. I i think of that too with with writers, it's like, yeah, it would be nice to have these big five publishing deals, whatever.
00:57:57
Speaker
But what matters is, and this is what brings it back around, is getting on the field and getting a you know having a publisher believe in you no matter how small they are. And it gets you on the field to then be noticed, to then write the next one. And it gives you some it puts wind behind yourselves because it is still traditionally published, even if it is independently published. And it's ah i don't i want I always just want people to realize that. it's just you know All that matters is getting on the field. It is. I mean, I would even be, these days I'm suspicious of stuff that comes out from big five publishers. Yeah. I think a lot of it is very much politically based. I think a lot of it, if they're not going to make money off of a book, they want the book to sort of, they want the book to reflect on them in a good way. Okay. And that I think is just not, I don't think they're choosing books for
00:58:52
Speaker
literary quality. I think politics is so wrapped up in American society today that I think it pollutes the arts. It dilutes the arts. And I think a lot of books coming out of the top five or the big five publishers I think are sullied by that in a way or diluted by that. I think that vocational publishers. I mean, i tortoise books just came out. I just read a another book from tortoise books called The Birth Parents by this 35-year-old writer named Frank Santo. I can't believe this book wasn't published by one of the big five, but Frank Santo is white and he's writing about working in the welfare system in the Bronx. A lot of his characters are people of color.
00:59:52
Speaker
And I could see all the red flags coming out if this were put before the editorial board or the marketing team of one of the big five, but the guy fucking nailed it. I mean, he fucking nailed it. And thanks to a small publisher like Tortoise Books, they were able to look at the literary quality and it is a tremendous book. it It's ah a great novel about New York City, and this guy's a 35-year-old Dartmouth grad, Frank Santo, and he really, really writes authentically about the Bronx from the perspective div of someone of privilege entering into that world and trying to make a difference in being aware of all the nuances of that. He wrote a great novel about that, but maybe The Big Five can't really publish that.
01:00:46
Speaker
They don't want to publish that because what will that say about them? You know, I, I don't, I'm suspicious of the ah publishing model is changing, man. It's changed big time. And I don't think we can trust, you know, that the big five know what they're doing. They don't know anything more about promoting books than you and me. They really don't. Maybe they got money, maybe they got connections, New York Times, but you know, like I was stunned when I heard Bryn Jonathan Butler say in one of his podcasts that when his book, when he was featured on the front of the art section in the New York Times and his book was mentioned, it only only moved 1500 copies. That's it. That's it.
01:01:36
Speaker
The New York Times front page, huge photos, everything. The book about Cuba, it only moved 1,500 copies. I mean, in my youth, I mean, I would have moved 15,000. Yeah. Minimum. We're talking 1,500. Brendan, that's nothing. And that's the New York Times. I mean, come on, it's a different it's a different publishing model. That's not how people get their book recommendations now. I just don't think they do. I don't know what they are, but I think people, it's a it's it's really a yeah it's ah it's a mystery, but no one's really figured it out yet. you know What makes a book take off? you know But it's not necessarily the New York Times.
01:02:22
Speaker
you know Yeah, it's what it what ultimately I believe it comes down to. And speaking of someone who has not sold a lot of books, but I think it is. It's writing something that is that not only that I'm going to buy, but I'm going to buy three copies for my friends, because I'm like, this is so good. You guys need to read this. And then you hope that they feel similarly with three other people. And then then it then it does spread exponentially in that sense. But that's I'm not saying it's it's easy, but it is kind of the simple equation to great to great book success. it's just yeah Is it remarkable? Are we talking about it? Do I need to buy multiple copies so all my friends can have it and we can be like, oh, let's I need you to read this. I want to talk to you about it. It's like a movie, like movie like you got to see this movie. Oh my God, the ending is, I need you to see this because I need to talk to you about it. yeah like We need more of that in the book world.
01:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's funny, like I i wonder about, ah for example, this new memoir that's out called Molly. I think um Blake Something wrote it. The author is Blake Butler and a little bit about the book. It got some buzz. ah his His wife Molly i died by suicide and he made some discoveries afterward and wrote about them and it raised all sorts of ethical questions.
01:03:53
Speaker
But there's this kind of controversy around it because he writes about his relationship with this woman. It begins with him going out for a run one day when his wife is feeling down and um he comes back and she's kind of committed. She has she's kind of she has committed suicide. and this And then he goes deep into her kind of past, I think, looking at her diaries. I wouldn't quote me on this, but i'm I'm sort of paraphrasing it wrong, but he sort of comes out that she was sleeping with her students and, you know, cheating on him and he was also cheating on her. And so there was this big brouhaha of whether he was appropriating her story because she's also a memoirist or she was a poet.
01:04:35
Speaker
And so this created this kind of literary controversy. And so now he's on all the literary podcasts and, you know, people are talking about his book. There's a buzz about his book, again, because he kind of walked the line that, you know, was maybe appropriate, inappropriate. There's a kind of morbid interest that sort of in buzz around his book also that I think propels it. But I wonder, like, are people buying the book? Because of that, I wonder, like is that producing sales? There's so much information that I would love to know. that Why is it not available to us? like I would love to know like how many books have how many books, how many mollies have been sold?
01:05:20
Speaker
Since the controversy started, I would just love to know that detail. like Why is that not available? I'm sure there's reasons why it's not available. you know But it just that would be such useful information to know as far as marketing books, but so much of it is in secret. like I can't talk to my publisher, how many books have you sold? How many have you sold? ah they'll be it's their People are quiet on that front. It's weird. It is weird. you know get kind of Getting back to our earlier in our conversation about you know having fun or like being kind of in that moment of appreciation, it's just like being able to hold it and like actually give yourself credit for that, I think is real important.
01:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, it is, you know. That's why I'm so grateful for the work that Tortoise Books put into the editing of it. You know, it really allows me to sort of look back on the work and be pleased that I was pushed to do the best job I could. Like one of the things about writing is you never really know what you did. I mean, I can read another person's writing and I can say, well, I can see what they did, but I'm too close to my own work to sort of see the finished project. like went project Whenever i I hear another writer say like, this is my best book. I'm like, you're full of shit. You don't know if what's the best book. You know what your best book is. You know you you can hope it's your best book.
01:06:44
Speaker
but you don't know if it is. you know so i just all But I do know that you know I was pushed by many people to make it better at various stages and it did become better.
Collaborative Editing and Recommendations
01:06:57
Speaker
i don't know I can be objective enough to say it became better thanks to people pushing me at various stages. Could it have become even better and even better? I don't know. But I know that thanks to what people said to me and thanks to advice people gave me and suggestions people gave me, it jumped about four or five levels. So I'm very, very grateful because, hey, those four or five levels are important. You know, if i they didn't hit those levels, if people didn't make me see the work as it was in that moment, I might have seen it after it was between covers and then that would have been, oh, you know what I mean? Yeah. so
01:07:40
Speaker
Anyway, um so I'm very grateful for the work that Tortoise put into um you know editing it, you know? Absolutely. Well, John, as as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind. It can just be like anything you're excited about that you want to share with the listeners. So I would just pose that to you. What would you recommend for them out there? Well, i'm what I'm excited about, what I sort of said before, I mean, um I'm always looking for a really good literary podcast and i mean having discovered the other day this book by or this podcast by brad listy and um did you have him on because he was a because he was a writer or did you have him on to talk about his podcast with a little of both uh last year he came out with a work of um auto fiction uh called uh be brief and tell them everything and it's okay it's a great great book i really really recommend one of my favorite books of last year and uh so wow
01:08:35
Speaker
had him on to talk about that. It's probably 95% memoir, maybe 5% imaginative. So it's technically a novel, but it's practically a memoir. So maybe I'll do it for maybe I'll do it for book rants. Yeah, it's really good. yeah Really good. Really funny. um Really sad. And, ah you know, it, it, it checks all the boxes. It's just really good. It's tight. It's just really really well done. And ah yeah, and of course when he was on me, you know just talked about the podcast I mean he started his gosh He if you think 2013 when I started mine was early he started other people in 2010 I think Wow, we were kind of on that very first crest of the second podcast boom, but he even got ahead of me well, I mean i'm i I do want to say this I I'm impressed that you have
01:09:25
Speaker
you know, stuck with it all those years. I mean, that's admirable stuff. I mean, I i do think that we got to kind of give back. And, you know, I i know that Brad Listy is a writer as you are. And, you know, in a way, I'm with book grants. It's my sort of contribution to that. I mean, like, There is we have to appreciate the work of others. I don't know if that brings speaking coming back to Coming back to this sort of publicity. Does that bring readers to our own work? I Wonder I I don't know I have to believe so because I had written when we were talking about that a while ago And you brought up kind of book promoting to me I think the best way to promote your own work is by celebrating others it's and so I have to think that in doing
01:10:15
Speaker
and Brad doing what he's done for other ah authors and platforming them. You know, you reviewing things on book grants on YouTube or me doing this for nonfiction writers over the years, at that age it builds a body of work and a sense of community and goodwill that will, you know, when it's time for us to put our work out there, people be like, oh, you know, it's like, it's time for Not that this is why I did it, but it's and maybe it's a nice byproduct of having celebrated so many other people that when it's my time to be celebrated, people are going to be there for it. Sure. Yeah, I think so. I mean, like i I'm seeing this podcast. I'm like, OK, I'm just as interested in his questions.
01:10:56
Speaker
as I am in her answers. And that that that creates a curiosity. you I heard the other day your interview with, um ah by the way, I love the fact that you're putting out the paperback edition. Oh, yeah. ah Love it. It's great stuff. So I heard the um interview that you gave with, ah was it ah from Townie? Andre Dubas. Oh, yeah. Yeah. and your abuse Wonderful questions, man. Wonderful. thank yeah I mean, it's it's like, you know, I'm like, okay, because I know how hard it is to be articulate on the spur of the moment with a question. I'm sure you prepare a little bit, but i'm i'm sure but also there's a sense of your questions of being spur of the moment questions, you know? And I think the ability to articulate a question that's incisive and precise
01:11:51
Speaker
and touches on something that allows the person to give an interesting answer, has to be tied to the ability to be a creative writer. So when I'm listening to Brad Listy, for example, I'm thinking, okay, The way this guy is asking questions, the way that he's composing questions in the moment, and the way they're pulling on whatever you have to pull on to get a solid answer from Lauren Seren, that has to be tied to his fiction or his nonfiction. And the fact that you have recommended his book as also partially nonfiction, well, in a way, right his podcast drew me to his work.
01:12:35
Speaker
right And if I pick up his book and I review his book, well, then it's his work, his extracurricular, outside of his own stuff, that's drawing me to his his stuff. So I know what you mean. It's like, it's almost, we're not doing the book grants or creative nonfiction or other people because we want people to come to our work, but it's almost a part of our work.
01:13:07
Speaker
It's like my my new favorite thing to do at the end of the show is like the what was it. Sean Williams Scott in ah old school with the dark goes in his name. He's like yes. ah Thanks to John. Thanks to you. Name of his book, again, is My Half Orange. It's published by Tortoise Books. And here we go. This is a parting shot. Parting shot. It's actually kind of long. It might be a little too long. Whatever. You're here now.
01:13:41
Speaker
Kelsey by the time you hear this I will have perhaps oh I don't know my last stab my last chunk chunk of major head it's what a word chunk ah before you have to ferry this fucker along the assembly line that fucker being the prefrontal biography that fucker the The last couple weeks, i mildly interrupted by a visit from my in-laws, have been largely focused on part one of the book. The two likely titles are most likely going to be, ah you know so we're we're scared the gift is ah no longer gonna be the title. ah It's gonna be most likely the front runner. I kinda like just front runner, but we'll see.
01:14:28
Speaker
or the last amateur. It's likely going to be front runner or the front runner, um but the ah the latter, the last amateur, is a little smarter given the context of the times, and we'll take some massaging to draw out that greater theme. But we're not exactly dealing with someone who deals in smarter, so expect the front runner. Anyway, at times—well, most times—I get the sense that my very astute editor is thinking, like, why can't you grasp this simple concept of shaping an interpretation? Why are we paying you to write this book?
01:15:09
Speaker
The chapters need to be more than just chronology, and he's correct. He's always correct. And here's why. I think this is what—I don't know if you want to say this is what set the book back early on, but I guess it did. ah my rough draft. I truly didn't have like what you would consider a ah grand vision or even a ah ah true point of view. Aside from me just wanting to tell this man's story more or less from A to Z, I merely wrote through the guy's life, which is interesting unto itself. But it had no real authorial interpretation as to why this matters, X matters, and Y matters.
01:15:53
Speaker
I was skating over the surface. As a result, my rough draft, this 160,000 word thing, ah that it could only be classified as like a narrative timeline, basically. My first draft was 55 chapter, 120,000 word, still basically a timeline, though far leaner by, to I don't know, 25% I guess. I'm doing the math here. My second draft was something like an 18 chapter, 119,000 word timeline. Okay, so now we're starting to distill things. We're merging chapters that have more cohesion
01:16:38
Speaker
Now we're really interrogating things that should have been interrogated a long, long time ago. What is this chapter saying, BO? What work is it doing? And what we're slash I'm finding is that things can now get plucked out of chronology and placed where it belongs in a more thematically germane way. My first couple drafts had a lot of races and a lot of ancillary characters that I found interesting, but it was still too much. you know And i they are even right now, there's still too much, and I'm really working on that. you know What are they really saying about the Steve Prefontaine that I'm talking about, and what are they adding to the story?
01:17:28
Speaker
They have to stand for something. They need to matter. Otherwise, the reader will just skim them and look for a time. Oh, isn't that nice? He ran 354 and changed, blah, blah, blah. You know, one race I had described in great detail is now two sentences long because it it lost the audition to another race that needed more stage time.
01:17:52
Speaker
And it's not like I gave it that one more stage time, more words, it's just I, it's an addition by subtraction. By giving the other one only two sentences and basically leaving the other one the same, the latter here just, it stands taller. There is, however, a moment from that one race that I cut down to two sentences where like Steve blew off one of his rivals in a very cold, condescending, like real dickhead way. And as much as I love it in the chronology, it'll stay because it's a really evocative detail. ah But it's going to go somewhere else more as a callback.
01:18:28
Speaker
ah to kind of dissolve like with like and keep one particular character ah siloed in this one moment, so it's not spread out over two places. All right, so what's the goddamn point, BO? The point is, to get good at writing books, we need book practice. And the problem with book practice is you might write a book and it doesn't get published. This biography will, I think, still be published, but the truth is, to get better at writing books, you have to write books. And the problem is that writing books takes a shit ton of time, and many of us will write a book in because we put all that effort, all that time,
01:19:10
Speaker
into it. We feel we are owed something for our efforts, a book deal, publication. No matter how small or big a book deal is, it's just like, wow, yeah I put in all this effort. Gosh, I want to have something to show for it. It's not too much to ask, but unfortunately it kind of is. This bigraph ah this biography This biography process has taught me just how bad I am at writing books. And I've been a writer for 20 years. yeah This book will be the fourth one I've written. My first wasn't unpublished, though I tried. My God, did I try. Before a mentor told me, sometimes we write books and they don't get published.
01:19:52
Speaker
That's my great takeaway from earning an MFA right there. um My second book, Six Weeks in Saratoga, did get published through serendipity, and i've told i've I might share that story again. I i've frequently shared it over the run of the podcast, and long-time listeners know, but maybe there are a few of you in there who don't know how that book actually came to pass. Maybe I'll share that for another time. True luck there. It's a cool book, and I stand by it. I think it's it's a fine book, but my God, the luck of how that got published. Otherwise, I doubt it would have been. ah Third book, Baseball Memoir Tools of Ignorance, still in the drawer, unpublished.
01:20:36
Speaker
And so we come to my fourth book that, if it hadn't been for a dynamite pre-sale of the book and a friend even introducing me to an agent who thought she could sell it on proposal, ah would likely not be published either. And that's its own form of serendipity, I guess. But here we are. This one is likely going to be published. ah And it's the fourth fourth one of written. All of this to say is writing books is very hard no matter how skilled a writer you are. You know, thanks to my guidance from people like Glenn Stout and my book editor Matt Harper, I am monumentally better equipped to crack the code on the next, if I'm so granted that opportunity. I guess if you want to get better at symphonies or murals or sculptures, I'm thinking like very big art projects.
01:21:27
Speaker
You have to do the long hard seemingly wasteful work of failing before you ever get good at something big. I consider book writing big and it hurts when you can't get your book published and maybe there are obvious reasons why. Like it might just not be good. Or other less obvious reasons like the taste of an agent or publisher just doesn't align. Our best shot at publishing books like Essays and Short Stories or Flash Essays and Features and Profiles and those are just far more the entry bar a barrier of entry if you will or the bar is far lower on those and you can crank out those with more frequency. You just got to do a lot of them.
01:22:13
Speaker
And it's hard to do a lot of books because books just take a long time. You know, there there's no wisdom on offer here other than merely keep plugging so long as you love it. You know, if a book isn't landing, just write the next one. Because you're one book better than before. And that's all you can really control, is getting one book better at a time. So stay wild. See you in efforts. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.