Episode 493: Masha Hamilton Asks Is the Writing Worth Rearranging Your Calendar For?

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever!

“This has to be meaningful to you. It has to be a story that won’t leave you alone, a story that you’re willing to rearrange your calendar for.” — Masha Hamilton, whose piece for The Atavist is titled “I’ve Gone to Look for America.”

Hey CNFers, it’s CNF Pod, and it’s the Atavistian time of the month so consider heading to magazine.atavist.com to subscribe. I did. I don’t get handouts or kickbacks.

Yeah.

I am in route to Idaho at this very moment. Got two things in Ketchum, two things in Boise. I have too many books. I’m on the hook for more than a $1,000 worth of Front Runners. I’m so screwed.

OK, this is the show where I — if I’d just shut the fuck up — talk to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. Today we have Masha Hamilton, a journalist, a novelist, a fan of the show, a fan of Pitch Club. You’ll want to visit mashahamilton.com to learn more about her wide-ranging career covering the world. She’s the author of five novels and trying to sell her sixth. She was at one point the director of communications and public diplomacy at the US embassy in Kabul.

Her story for the Atavist is about her driving the entire length of I-95 with her photographer son Cheney, and stopping at just about every rest stop to speak with strangers about how they feel about our country. “Conversations and revelations about an ailing nation along Interstate 95.” Man, those Atavist editors sure can write the hell out of a dek.

And guess who’s back!? Seyward Darby! Do your best Kermit the Frog dance. Very nice to hear her and this piece challenged Seyward in ways I didn’t see coming: Meaning, she didn’t share Masha’s optimism … or hope. Seyward, for lack of a better word, disagreed with it, so there was an interesting tension she brought to the edit.

As for Masha Hamilton, this piece really illustrates the things we carry, that politics isn’t a monolith. We talk about a lot of great stuff like:

Novels as complimentary to her nonfiction
Covering societies in change
Healing through story
How this was piece was a therapy session
Accelerated intimacy
Endings
Middles
Finding the meaning
Writing you rearrange your calendar for
And belonging as practice.

Rate, review, do it up.

Masha’s Rec

Pilates

Parting Shot: Florence Festival of Books

Awesome, thanks to Masha, Seyward, and you. Visit magazine.atavist.com to read Masha’s story and be sure you’re newlettered up with my Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter and Pitch Club, welcometopitchclub.substack.com.

Not a terribly long parting shot, but figured I’d riff on the Florence Festival of Books, which was a fun time, tabling The Front Runner. I’d say most of the authors at this event were self-published. Not all, but a good chunk, so there was an little crackle in the air when a few authors approached me and asked if I was self-published. I said, no, it was an imprint of HarperCollins, to which the eyebrows raised and they kinda looked at you in disbelief. And the tone they take stinks of their years of frustration of trying to find an agent and not, of trying to land a Big 5 deal, and not.

And I understand deeply that frustration, I do. Truly.

I was approached by a guy whose wife, tabled her self-pubbed titles. And he went down the line of questioning with me. Do you have an agent? Did you self-publish? Yes. No. There was a lot of judgement in the air. And I don’t judge and begrudge the indie publishing scene. It’s pretty punk rock, but to do it well takes significant personal investment. I’ve seen any number of self-published things and there are typos all over the place and it feels unfinished; it feels hasty. I imagine there were some great indie authors there and some can lock into an audience and make a living, be fulfilled, not be beholden to gate keepers.

I sold my books for $15 apiece. As many of you know, it retails for $32.99. I only sold 12 books, so there was no way I was selling anything at full price so I figured it was best to take a loss than to sell zero copies.

I forgot what it was like to sell books. The spiel. I did this a lot with Six Weeks in Saratoga, it was odd doing it for The Front Runner. You soon get used to it.

Then Ruby McConnell and I had a fruitful discussion and Q&A sitting on the edge of the stage for the dozen or so people who stuck around. Ruby talked about radical incrementalism as it pertained to a literary career and I loved that notion of the small, done repeatedly, over geologic time, leads to something seismic.

I had fun, and I’d do it again.