By Brendan O’Meara
Tommy Tomlinson (@tommyltomlinson) is on the show to talk about dogs … and writing … and about his book Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show (Avid Reader Press).
Tommy is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Garden & Gun, and a million other places. He’s also the author of the brilliant memoir Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America.
I have a soft spot in my heart for very accomplished writers and journalists who speak so openly and candidly about writing and doing the work, and Tommy brings all that to this conversation.
He talks about the one-word summation that helps guide him through his reporting. He talks about how if things are stuck, it’s often a case that he needs more reporting. And also when the writing gets to complicated or flowery, he reminds himself to bring it back down to earth. Lots of great stuff.
TL;DL: The Blurt
Edited for clarity and concision (as best I could)
Brendan: Do you find that you have to or you’ve had to learn how to get comfortable with writing before you were, quote, unquote, ready that way you’re revealing potholes in the road as you’re laying down road?
Tommy: Yeah. And I think I learned that just writing for the newspaper, because you’re always on a tight deadline you don’t have time to wait and do all your reporting and then write. I was doing for a while there for the Observer. I was doing four columns a week, and so I’d have to go out make a couple of calls. I would come back and start writing and have calls out, or need to look up something and then go back and add stuff or change what I already written because I had new information. It was never just like a shift from one to the other. It was always sort of both at once.
And that’s always been the case even as I started longer pieces, if I think of something to write, I go ahead and write it, whether it’s going to be right at the beginning of the book, or something that may end up eight chapters down. I go ahead and write it and stash it somewhere, and then come back to it. And when I come back to it, it may be that I don’t need it anymore, or it may be that it fits better somewhere else, but I’ve already started it, and that’s sort of in my subconscious as I go through the piece, I know that’s out there for me to try to maybe connect other things too, as well.
And so it’s always all kind of mixed together for me. I can’t afford to wait till I’m done with the reporting, because the reporting, for me, goes up almost to the very end. I was still looking stuff up two days before I had to turn the manuscript in. There’s a scene in the book that I had to go back after I thought the main reporting of the book was finished, and I had to go back and drive up to Michigan and spend a couple of days up there for a scene that probably lasted 10 or 15 minutes. Once I realized it was happening, I knew I had to have it in the book, and I was well on the way to what I thought of as being done by then, and that rearranged a lot of things in the book. And so if I had waited, I would have been really screwed, because I wouldn’t have all the other stuff I wouldn’t have written yet.
Brendan: Are you much of an outliner or a planner when it comes to writing long pieces and especially book like stuff?
Tommy: I am absolutely terrible, and it’s the worst part of doing this for me, the part I’ve always found the hardest and the part that I’m I have never acquired good habits at. So I’ll tell you what I’ll what I do with a caveat that nobody else should do this. What I do is, once I’ve gathered a bunch of information and once I’ve had the piece kind of simmering to my head for a while, I get out a legal pad, and I do what I call the blurt, which is I just start writing down everything that’s in my head. And it could be like two words, like “Striker’s coat,” or it could be a quote that I remember, it doesn’t have to be accurate at this moment, or a little scene or something like that.
I just write and write and write on this legal pad until I’ve exhausted my brain, until I can’t think of anything else that is in my head about this piece that I’m doing, or a book length thing. I might fill up a whole legal pad, or maybe a legal pad and a half, hundreds and hundreds of little items. And so then I go back and I read through those items, and I start seeing ones that sort of fit together. Like this is about judging dog shows, for example. Oh, and this little bit has to do with judging dog shows in this little bit. And so I start to, I get a fresh legal pad, and I start to rewrite this whole thing, but grouping things together. And so, if I’m lucky, when I get to the end, I might have eight or 10 or 12, sort of large groups that these things kind of fit in, and those basically become the chapters of the book. And then I’ll subdivide those groups into smaller groups, and those become the sections of the chapters, and that sort of thing. And I’ll always go back and re-look at stuff I’ve saved, or reread passages in books and that sort of thing, because I don’t count on my brain to remember everything, but I do count on my brain to remember sort of the major parts of the story, and then I supplement that with kind of re-researching stuff, and I found, for me, that this works as a way to sort of organize stuff in my head and then on paper in a way that sort of tends to break down into a structure.
Now that’s worked for me so far, I, like I said, I don’t recommend it as a way to work for other people. It may just fit how my brain works well, but that’s kind of the way I do it.
Brendan: The thing about keeping things in your head, in a way, is that it’s kind of self pruning.
Tommy: That’s probably true, although I have to say, as I’ve gotten older, I have to pay attention to how well my memory is actually working, and because I know there will come a point at which, you know, my brain won’t function as well as it as it has, and I won’t be able to count on that. And I’ll probably, at some point, maybe as soon as whatever the next big thing is, I’ll probably have to come up with a better method to deal with this. And I have friends who have very super detailed methods of organizing and structuring their their work. And one thing I hope to do before I tackle whatever the next big thing is, is to learn some tips and tricks from them, so that I don’t get myself in this pickle next time.
Brendan: yeah, you should talk to our mutual friend and acquaintance, Kim Cross.
Tommy: She was, she was the first person I thought of. She’s unbelievable.
Parting Shot: On Submitting the Book and Metallica
As I type up this parting shot, it is the day I have submitted a very late-stage draft of the Prefontaine book which I believe we are officially titling THE FRONT RUNNER: STEVE PREFONTAINE AND THE DAWN OF THE MODERN ATHLETE. A befitting title for the dude.
We’re right around 108,000 words, which means I cut more than 52,000 from rough draft. I cut a short book from my book. I’m liking the arc of it. I like how each part feels distinct and that it builds and builds and builds. My wife read a late-stage draft of this and she’s a battle ax when it comes to editing. When she was about to finish reading it, she was sad because she forgot that Prefontaine was going to die. He had come to life. When she finished she said, “Brendan, you have something potentially great here.” And she doesn’t just toss around words like that.
Of course, it’s going to need some work, some extra polish, but through the absolute brilliance of my editor, the book has a distinct shape. I won the lottery with him. I really did. Some people I’ve confided in can’t believe the attention to detail and counsel I’ve received from my editor. I see a fiery anger in their eyes, almost like, how the fuck did YOU win the lottery. Beats me, but this whole process has been a string of winning lottery tickets.
Kim Cross thought I should have an agent and put me in touch with Susan. I happened to be saving string on a Pre project and she said she could sell it on proposal. Worked on that for a year, sold it with about 14-month runway to an editor who’s a running junkie, but he also happens to be one of the most astute minds in the country.
And here’s little ol’ BO pecking at his keyboard things like ME WRITE GOOD and then everyone is like, good god, can we still get David Marannis to write this?
Metallica, they played two of my favorite songs, one I’d never heard live before and one I’ve heard a million times but never gets old. “Orion”
and “Master of Puppets.”
I blew out my vocal cords and I hurt my neck from headbanging. Seriously, my neck was fucked for about three days after the show and I’ve only now started to get my voice back. Great time being back east with people I haven’t seen in years.
[This anecdote doesn’t play as well in print as it does with audio, so I suggest listening if you can]. So, naturally, I’m at a Dunkin Donuts, I go in, wait for my coffee, and a guy comes in, grabs his coffee and was like, “Thanks Rogah, gotta go outside and show these guys a video of me getting tazored.” This guy was about 48 years old.
Next, I buy some beer and the box had a tear in it. Guy at the register waiting for his girlfriend was like, “Whoa, you got a hole int he box.” I’m like “shit” … and then he said, “I’d hate for you to lose a beer [Boston accent].”
I’m like, this is home. That accent is home. Right out of central casting.
As you know, social media is meaningless so sign up for my Up-to-11 Newsletter. Signup form is below you and to your right. Book recs, book raffles, cool stuff curated by me for you, fun and entertaining. First of the month, no spam, can’t beat it!
Consider supporting the show via Patreon patreon.com/cnfpod. Shop around if you want to support the community. Some great face-to-face perks for the Patreon Gang.
Free ways to support the show?
Subscribe and download and share across your socials. And don’t forget to consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Those go a LONG way.
