By Brendan O’Meara
It’s yet another Atavistian podcast, this with Maggie Gigandet, a freelance writer behind “The Extra Mile.“
After a horrific accident, doctors told Todd Barcelona that he’d likely never run again. So he and his wife decided to run farther than they ever had before.
Maggie used to be a trial attorney, and she made the pivot to freelance writing during the height of the pandemic, so we dig into how she made that change and what skills transferred over.
Maggie is drawn to writing about the outdoors (she subscribes to just about every newsletter in the entire parks system to find story ideas), people with interesting passions, and, well, anything unusual. And ultramarathons are, to be clear, unusual.
In this episode we talk about the red paperclip story, how she had never written anything longer than 2,500 words before this, and how the app/website “write or die” greatly helped her out.
We also hear from editor-in-chief Seyward Darby about the editor side of the table, and she shares great insights into the structure of Maggie’s piece.
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