October 2019 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

My Favorite Book on Writing

Figured I’d take a slight departure and offer you my book on writing.

It’s not Bird by Bird. It’s not Writing Tools. It’s not Steven King’s On Writing and it isn’t Tracy Kidder and Dick Todd’s Good Prose.

It’s Denny O’Neill’s The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics.

This book was assigned/recommended to me by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas French.

There are universal lessons from this book that apply to any genre of writing, not just graphic novels.

Here’s a few great highlights I made throughout the book for you to chew on:

People are interested in people, not things.

In nonfiction, do your reporting. Talk to as many people as possible. Talk to those people as long as possible. People are more interesting than things.

Know the ending of the story before you writing the beginning.

In this week’s upcoming conversation with Cassandra King Conroy, we get into this a little bit, but you’ve heard me talk about the lighthouse in the distance. I love knowing the ending as early in the process as possible. You might not know it on Day 1, but the sooner you get a sense of the ending write to it with abandon.

Telling your story as clearly as possible.

My greatest weakness in my first ten years as a writer was trying to be flashy or showy, trying to light up the page with my prose. This is a mistake most of the time. The story is the star. Not you. Get out of way. Be the conduit for the story. Tell it straight. Tell it clearly.

Never write a scene, or a single panel, that does not contribute directly to your plot. … Every word should contribute to the emotion you’re trying to engender in the reader.

This often means you have to kill your darlings, right? Even if you love a scene, love that turn of phrase, that great quote you must ask yourself: Does it advance the story or reveal a critical character trait? Yes, it stays. No, it’s gotta go.

Look at DVD extras, ideally with commentary, and you’ll get some great insight into why things make the cut and the things that don’t.

So that’s it, my favorite book on writing, Denny O’Neill’s DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics.

Episode 174: Bob Batchelor — Humble Beginnings, Breaking Free from Google, and ‘The Bourbon King

Bob Batchelor, author of *The Bourbon King*.

“These guys were screaming at me from beyond the grave.” —Bob Batchelor (@CultPopCulture)

“I worked to write the longest screenplay possible.” —Bob Batchelor

By Brendan O’Meara

Here we are again, CNFers! What’s new?

We’ve got Bob Batchelor here talking about The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius (Diversion Books)

Crazy story, a story that partly inspired The Great Gatsby, perhaps, maybe.

I hope you check it out.

We dig into lots of great things: How John Updike showed Bob the way, singing a kind of Pennsylvania song, and dealing with a real rotten teacher who made Bob’s life miserable until he got out from under her and made something of himself with mentors who saw his potential in college. It’s a great story.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod. And, if you’re feeling kind, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I hope I’ve made something worth sharing, so please share it with your own network.

A Riff on Success featuring AC Shilton

By Brendan O’Meara

To get over jealousy and the malicious feeling towards the other who always makes it feel like they’re winning, while your stuck knee-deep in the swamp, you can take perhaps the greatest piece of wisdom out of Chase Jarvis’ Creative Calling.

He writes about the skate culture he grew up around, “Nailing an ollie is essential for doing more advanced tricks, so if you can’t learn it you’re stuck. Luckily for me, it was easy to ask for help in a community like that one. … There’s a sense that when one person succeeds, the whole community wins together.”

And so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that maybe the best way to get over these toxic feelings is to feel buoyed by what is possible, that it isn’t zero sum.

The freelance writer A.C. Shilton echoed this very sentiment saying:

Somebody else’s success does not really take away from your own. Yes, there are limited bylines, I should be using their success to push myself to be better. Right? So that doesn’t mean that I haven’t silenced the occasional person on Twitter who is winning at all things all the time and I need a break.
From Episode 171 of CNF.

It isn’t that somebody else had a win and you lost. It should be, ‘Oh, that person had a win, so that means I can too, so long as I work hard and maybe have a little luck on my side.’

And it echoes back to the skate culture: If you learn a new trick, we all win. So if you get that coveted by-line in The New York, we win as a result.

Good on ya, friend, nice trick.

Episode 173: Sonja Livingston — Expeditions in Devotion, Trust, and The Virgin of Prince Street

By Brendan O’Meara

Hey, CNFers! Look who’s back! It’s Sonja Livingston, whose latest book The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion (University of Nebraska Press) is the subject of our conversation.

This is a nice, tight thirty-minute interview. If you want a little more background on Sonja, check out Episode 56. It’s that special kind of memoir that has some journalistic components, something you might find in books by Leslie Jamison or Meredith May.

We dig into what brought Sonja to this story and how she rediscovered a long dormant devotion to Catholicism. The book doesn’t read like some icky treatise on becoming born again. It’s not evangelical in the least. It’s a person on a journey, a literal and figurative journey. And in the hands of a writer like Sonja,

Follow the show at @CNFPod to keep the conversation going. Sign up for the newsletter. Once a month. No spam. Can’t beat it.

Could that be it? I think so.

‘What’s the Thing that Makes It Fun?’ asks Christopher McDougall

By Brendan O’Meara

Whether it’s David Foster Wallace talking about fun or Chase Jarvis telling you to create without judgement, there’s often a sense that writing, and even art, must be earnest and painful.

Speaking from experience, the more loose I am, the lighter I approach the work, the better it is. And that’s something echoed in the work of Christopher McDougall too.

He’s the author of, most recently, Running with Sherman: The Donkey with the Heart of a Hero and Born to Run. He told me during our conversation:

“I sort of learned a lesson in life that if anything is unpleasant, you’re going to postpone it, you’re just not going to do it. And so it’s like for exercise for dieting, any time you don’t want to do, you will find a reason not to do it. And so I think even though you know, all those aspects, with nutrition and exercise and everything, you gotta negotiate a happy compromise. So you got to figure out what’s the thing that makes it fun, and then do that thing. And so what I realized is that as long as the sun is up, I am not getting shit done. I’m not going to be at my desk. And so I get up in the morning and just blast out the door and just busy myself with stuff all during sunlight hours and then around five or six, I’m physically tired. I’m winding down. I eat some good food and then I’m ready to sit down like seven o’clock at night and just busted out till midnight, one o’clock in the morning.
Christopher McDougall on Episode 172 ofCNF.

You caught that, right? What the thing that makes it fun? Sure, some topics are heavy and not always fun. I’m thinking Eli Saslow writing Rising Out of Hatred. Not fun.

But there must be moments of joy, otherwise, why do it? And you can hear it in Chris’ voice that the work is fun and that’s the key to unlocking your potential. Play and fun.

You might want to pair this up with Ep. 172 with Christopher McDougall as well as Ep. 169 with Chase Jarvis.

As always, thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts and leave a kind rating on Apple Podcasts. Newsletter and show notes are at brendanomeara.com and please keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod.

Episode 172: Christopher McDougall — ‘Running with Sherman,’ ‘Born to Run,’ and Finding Your Stride

By Brendan O’Meara

“Like all writing is re-writing. All reporting is re-reporting.” —Christopher McDougall (@chrismcdougall)

This was a thrill. This was a blast. I know you’re going to love this too. Christopher McDougall, the bestselling author of Born to Run, Natural Born Heroes, and Running with Sherman is here to talk about his books, but also the speed bumps of his career.

How did he get his start? Where were the hiccups, and how did getting fired from a pretty steady gig in Philly turn him loose to write the book that effectively changed his life? Yeah, it’s all here, baby.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod and @BrendanOMeara. Instagram has been a little lax of late, but that’s @cnfpod. It’s all a mess, man!

Hope you’ve been enjoying the CNF Snacks that I’ve been putting out on Monday. Creating without Judgement and Be a Fan are the first installments. The tapas of CNF Pod.

Thanks to Bay Path University for the support and for Riverteeth’s promotional support.

Be a Fan First

By Brendan O’Meara

Some lessons from Henry Rollins.

Here is the interview that inspired this CNF snack.

Episode 171: AC Shilton — Arrival Fallacy, ‘The Innocent Man,’ and Chickens

By Brendan O’Meara

“At the end of the day, you need to get paid for you work because it is work. And one assignment is not going to change your resume.” —AC Shilton (@ACShilton)

“Somebody else’s success doesn’t limit your own.” —AC Shilton

AC Shilton steps onto the @CNFPod main stage this week, dropping freelance bombs like Ian Frisch and Seyward Darby, just to name a couple.

We talk about her farm and her chickens, but also her role in the Netflix documentary The Innocent Man, as well her New York Times piece on arrival fallacy and whether or not we’ve reached peak PBR, her first “viral” story.

You know what to do, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts and link up to the show on social media.

Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod and on IG @cnfpod. It’s a lousy place to promote a show, but it’s a great place to have a dialogue and talk about what resonated with you.

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