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A mostly accurate transcript for Ep. 4701.
“It’s also just confidence and knowing that it’s still there, and knowing that you are a writer when you are not writing.” — Megan Baxter, from Ep. 470
Megan Baxter is here. We recorded back in January … I swear, we’re almost caught up with the pods I recorded a billion years ago. This was a pretty electric conversation, not gonna lie.
Megan has got it figured out, man. She has won numerous national awards, including a Pushcart Prize. Her essay collection Twenty Square Feet of Skin was longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
Megan got on my radar when I was doing Prefontaine research and I was thumbing through my stack of True Stories, that chapbook Creative Nonfiction used to put out. I saw this essay titled “On Running” and I was like well, shit, I need to study this. Then I reached out to her and she sent me her essay collections and her memoir Farm Girl, so we dig into that.
Megan’s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Hotel Amerika, River Teeth, and others. She lives in New Hampshire where she runs her own small farm and teaches creative writing through online courses and lessons. You can learn more about her at meganbaxterwriting.com and follow her on Instagram @meganlbaxter.
In this episode, we talk about
- Rewilding her writing
- Rabbit holes
- Actually living the ream
- Hyperattention
- The real housewives edit
- And how Pinterest helps with her writing
Dig it.
On not writing every day …
“Part of this concept, the write-every-day concept which writers hear all the time. It’s one of those things you’re always told by every writing teacher. And I’m certain there are people for whom that works really well, but for me, one, it just doesn’t fit with my schedule. And two, I don’t want my writing to feel like a nine to five. I want it to feel like what it is which is a passion, and to be able to come to it with that same sort of energy, not with the go get yourself a cup of coffee and slog to your desk and sit down and gotta write today, because that’s what I do every day.”
On rewilding her writing …
“I’ve also learned in this rewilding experiment that so much of our time as writers takes place off the page, as we’re thinking about our concepts, as we’re doing research, and when I actually do come to the page and have a chance to actually type out these ideas, I’ve done so much pre-writing over the course of the previous season that that draft comes really easily to me.”
On having achieved the dream …
“I see it less as a dream come true, as having a system finally in place that works.”
On needing distance …
“I think one of the things I’m always telling my students about distance is that you need at least a few years, if not more, before you can really understand your story in the context of your life.”
On selection in memoir …
“We don’t want the security camera footage of a person’s life. We want The Real Housewives edit where somebody throws water in your face, or a door slams. We want those moments where there’s really heightened tension.”
On choosing her path …
“I think it’s hard when you have that one kid who gets the grades and gets the big awards and to then say, ‘Nope, actually, that’s not where I see my future, I actually just want to pull weeds and get sunburns for the rest of my life.'”
On not feeling like we have enough …
“I feel the same way about my books. I know I have books, and that’s a huge goal for so many people, and I feel bad even saying this, but I wish more people read them. I wish they came out from bigger presses. You know, we all have that, that thing that eats at us and and I think that’s okay.”
On the journey …
“The process is the is the reward.”
On world building …
“I think we often forget that our world isn’t the world everyone else lives in, and we have to do that work as a memoirist or creative nonfiction writer in general, to tell people what that looks like.”
Megan’s Rec
Arcane League of Legends on Netflix
Parting Shot: Tactical and Practical
Thanks to Megan for coming on the show. I think she’s got it figured out, man. I really like that seasonality approach to a writing life, not the incessant churn many of us get sucked into to be a working writer. There’s probably a riff in that sentiment somewhere, but not this day!
When I offered my book proposal and slides and master spreadsheet template to people who attended my Power of Narrative talk, it hit me that if you really want to enroll people in your journey you always always always have to be thinking: What’s in it for them?
Unless you’re George Saunders, nobody gives a shit about your day to day, by and large. If you’re offering tactical and practical advice, actionable stuff that helps people get where they want to go, you’re onto something … Then, if you have a book come out like THE FRONT RUNNER, lols, people will hopefully buy your shit.
I say all this because, as you know, I sunsetted the podstack because it was cannibalizing the show notes and was asking too much of people to subscribe to another thing. THAT SAID … I have a new experimental venture that’s in the works. By the time you listen to this, I will have already completed the first installment, on Substack called … PITCH CLUB. welcometopitchclub.substack.com
What the fuck is that, you ask? Well, I reach out to a longform journalist who landed a cold pitch at a publication. They share their pitch with me and I have them audio annotate their dissection of the pitch at various points. So you get to read their pitch, then click the button and hear them explain their reasoning at that moment, or the challenges in reporting out that scene, or why they chose to use that, how they introduce themselves, etc.
The first installment will be from Nick Davidson’s Atavist pitch for his ballooning story. It’s a 1,500 word pitch and I’m going to ask him questions, get him talking, then edit me out, so all you hear is Nick talking you through it.
You get to read what a successful pitch looks like and hear the writer walk you through and analyze what they did. It’s a master class that is not theoretical: These are winning pitches that you can model. Of course, I’ll link up to their story. It’s a lot like Song Exploder. That’s the idea, to explode a pitch into its components and help you get better at landing pitches, so you can do work you’re proud of for the publications you most want to write for.
It might be once a month, or bi-weekly. I don’t know yet. I’ll probably start with once a month to get my legs under me. I often talk about the pitch on those Atavist pods, but to be able to see it in the text and have the writer explain themselves will give you all the skills and insight you need to be better at this.
Honestly, this is what I wish I had in 2012 or so when I started freelancing, when I was so fucking frustrated about how to do this kind of work. Tactical. Practical. welcometopitchclub.substack.com. I hope you’ll come along for the ride. The first rule of pitch club is … we talk about pitch club, that’s right.
Many Moons Ago
400 Episodes Ago
Erica Westly on Softball and Structure
300 Episodes Ago
Leslie Jamison—Make It Scream, Make It Burn, and the Bounded Infinity of Nonfiction
200 Episodes Ago
How did Daniel Kolitz Pull Off His Atavist Story
100 Episodes Ago
- Should you elect to cite this transcript, please check it against the audio and credit me and the podcast. ↩︎
