“Anybody who goes into journalism for fame or fortune or awards right off the bat I write off as an idiot.”
“The pipeline has changed.”
“I think it took two years to be comfortable with freelancing.”
Okay, so what’s the meaning of this? Mary Pilon again? For one I could listen to 52 episodes of Mary, but when we recorded I spliced the interview in two parts to shorten it and I’m glad I did at this point because my guest this week cancelled. What’s the lesson kids? Get interviews in the can. When I can it’s brilliant. Can’t always happen. Continue reading “Episode 91—Mary Pilon’s Freelance Rumspringa and the Best Advice She Got from David Carr”
“I can’t think about writing a big project. It’s too overwhelming for me but I can think about a thousand words a day and then this magical thing happens which is you end up with 90,000 words.”
“I think you have to have the basics down as a writer before you can even think about playing with how to tell it. I would say I spend 80 percent of my time on this one reporting and another the other 20 writing.”
“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!
