I tried something a little new. Not the reading of the essay part. I’ve done that before on the podcast. I added some serious production value to the reading of The Gentleman’s Guide for Arousal-Free Slow Dancing.
I added some music in throughout the piece. I think it helps jazz it up without distracting too much. Let me know what you think because I’ll probably invite writers to read essays and try to do something similar each time.
This essay appeared in Creative Nonfiction No. 62, an issue themed “Joy: Unexpected Brightness in the Darkest Times.”
“You’ve got to be daring. You’ve got to have that unshakable belief that ‘You know what? Somebody’s gonna publish a book someday. It might as well be me.'” —Philip Gerard
“I don’t really have hobbies. I have passions.”—Philip Gerard
“If I do this enough days in a row, probably I’m gonna get there.” —Philip Gerard
“I found that if I hang with them long enough, they would often tell me something interesting.” —Philip Gerard
“I began realizing there was a significant amount of work that wasn’t on the page, but if you did it, it would be on the page.” —Philip Gerard
“My problem is I’m interested in everything.” —Philip Gerard
“At a certain point the journey is over and you know it.” —Philip Gerard
That enough tweetable quotes for you?
Philip Gerard, writer and teacher, joined me for 90 minutes of energizing talk about the craft. I had so much fun and left this conversation fired up to pursue a bunch of stories I’ve got stuffed in the drawer.
Angela Palm signs copies of her kick-ass memoir “Riverine”.
By Brendan O’Meara
“I like that [Riverine] is imperfect, because to me it shows I’m trying this style and approach as an artist.” —Angela Palm (@angpalm)
“You still have to start at Word 1, Sentence 1.” —Angela Palm
“Getting the music in your head to translate on the page was a very difficult thing for me to figure out.”—Angela Palm
Yeah, podcast!
Let’s keep racking them up, baby. Angela Palm is my guest this week. We talked about her delightful memoir Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere But Here (Graywolf Press). We also dive into her essay “Hierarchy of Needs”, which appears in Issue 62 of Creative Nonfiction.
What else? Be sure to check out Angela’s website for the latest on her work. Also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Google Play Music. The badges are on the right of the page.
“You write in isolation and a rejection doesn’t give you a lot of feedback.”—Kim Kankiewicz (@kimprobable)
“What I have to process is my own thoughts and experiences; does that matter to anybody else? The reason I write is to make connections with other people.” —Kim Kankiewicz
Here we are again, picking them off one by one.
Kim Kankiewicz’ essay “Rumors of Lost Stars” won Creative Nonfiction’s best essay contest for Issue 32’s theme of “Joy”. It’s an essay about communal acceptance, overreaching, and then personal acceptance and redemption. She threads this around the mythology of three stars. The parallels between the myths and her story make this essay sing.
“Different writers are different things to us at different times.” —Sybil Baker (@SybilBaker).
“I think most writers would agree that writing is an act of discovery. We’re asking questions and trying to discover something.” —Sybil Baker
Sybil Baker, author of Immigration Essays(C&R Press, 2017) came by #CNF HQ to talk about her new book of essays dealing travel and displacement. And like Paul Lisicky (from Episode 27), she preaches the importance of preserving play in a piece of writing.
We recorded this back in October, so if you expect riffs on immigration courtesy of the Establishment, you’ll find this episode conveniently devoid of such banter.
Sybil talks a lot about travel and how you don’t have to log miles to see things in different ways.
Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Google Play Music (badges are in the margins or below the post) and share it with a friend or two who may enjoy the conversation.
Thanks for listening!
Also, Sybil joined me to talk fiction on my side gig over at SpareMin, a micropodcast app that records phone calls. My show is The Book Show. Have a listen:
“I can’t write about today unless I really go into the rabbit hole with what came before.” —Mary Pilon
“You do compete with Candy Crush as a journalist.” —Mary Pilon
Whoops, never published the companion blog post with Mary Pilon back on Episode No. 18.
Mary joins me on the podcast to talk shop. This was a fun one and I hope I can snag her for Part 2 since I was only able to ask about half the questions I had written down.
Mary is the product of a radio deejay (father) and a psychologist (mother) which prompted her to say, “I grew up in a house where I know more about how to make a mix tape than to take the SATs.”
Wouldn’t the world be a better place if we made mix tapes instead of take the bloody SAT? I took the test four times and got no higher than 1080. That’s another story.
Moving on, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes (can’t get it in the Google Store yet for some reason). By following me on Twitter you can stream it in your feed when I tweet it out. Same for Facebook.
Also, my newsletter is changing. I’m going to a monthly format where I send out a bunch of cool stuff from the month that was or the month ahead: book recommendations, blog posts, podcasts, just a bunch of cool stuff to keep you busy for a month. There’s several ways to subscribe all over my website.
I have big ambitions for the newsletter and the podcast so please subscribe to both. It’s my collection plate.
My longterm goal is to do the type of storytelling I love through Kindle Singles, but first I need to build an army through the newsletter and the podcast so that I can support myself by publishing my own brand of compelling true stories thus bypassing gate keepers. If you like Six Weeks in Saratoga and my other longer features, then you’ll want to stay tuned.
Please share the podcast with people you think will enjoy it. By all means “like” it on Twitter, but retweeting helps extend the reach, so please consider that as well.
If this sounds like begging, frankly, I don’t care!
I mean, don’t take my word for it, let Paul Lisicky, judge of Proximity Magazine’s personal essay contest tell you about Sarah’s essay:
This is a piece by a writer who’s willing to be lost a little while. As readers, we encounter a mind at work: thinking, perceiving, questioning, bewildered. We’re invited into the speaker’s contradictions—her wish to be seen and known, her wish to be invisible—and get a window into an aspect of the American prison system that’s rarely represented, especially with such nuance and intimacy.
Please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and even subscribe to my newsletter. If you think this episode will help somebody out, please share it.
“If you put too much focus on one thing you can kill it.” —Paul Lisicky.
“What would it be like to be an amateur again?” —Paul Lisicky
When I get away from doing the podcast I forget how fun and uplifting the experience can be. Here, for Episode 27 (!), we have Paul Lisicky (@Paul_Lisicky), author of The Narrow Door(Graywolf Press, 2016).
Paul talked a lot about his own process and how that has changed over the years. He also talked about some of the best advice he can give an aspiring writer: cultivating fandom.
Why don’t you just listen to him?
Go ahead and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. If you think you know someone who would benefit from this interview, share it with them. Also, subscribe to my monthly newsletter. You can preview it here to see what it’s about. Dig it? Then put in your info along the right sidebar.
Sorry of the long delay in episodes, but the misses and I are moving to Eugene, OR very soon. I’m hustling to sell our belongings because all we’re taking is a Honda Accord over the Rockies.
We’re starting fresh.
Naturally, everything has taken a backseat to that.
Amy Poehler wrote in her book Yes Please, a book with great insight into what it takes to be an artist, that after shooting an episode during Season 5, Parks and Recreation earned an Emmy nomination for best comedy.
They lost.
Poehler wrote:
We were upset because as we know, no matter how much you think you don’t want the pudding, once people start telling you that you might get the pudding it makes you want that pudding bad.
What did show runner and show creator Mike Schur do in response to the disappointment of his craft’s highest honor? Poehler writes:
Instead of being upset, Mike said, ‘I’m going to go write the scene where Ben proposes to Leslie.’
And if you’re a fan of the show, you know it’s one of the most beautiful scenes in the show’s run. Makes me weep every time I see it…and I’ve seen it probably five times.
So you didn’t win an award. What did you do? Did you mope? Or did you fight back by writing the best damn scene you’ve ever written?
