Laura Todd Carns is here to talk about her latest feature for The Atavist Magazine. It’s called “Searching for Mr. X: For eight years, a man without a memory lived among strangers at a hospital in Mississippi. But was recovering his identity the happy ending he was looking for?”
Laura is a novelist, essayist, and journalist whose work has appeared in many places. You can find out more at her website.
In this episode we talk about approaching a story as fiction vs. nonfiction, the challenge of the structure of the piece, collaborating with an editor and how it’s like a record producer and a musician, and more.
First I talk to Seyward Darby, as she was the lead editor of the piece. Enjoy!
It’s called “The Snitch,” and details the story around the serial killer Scott Kimball, but, more specifically, the mistakes made by the FBI, thus turning this true-crime yarn on its head.
The book takes us to the 1920s, a time when wars were supposed to be a thing of the past, a pandemic wiped across the globe, and veterans coming from the Great War had little support at home. I’m glad all those things are a relic of the 20th century.
She’s got a new book out called The Unreality of Memory (FSG, 2020). It’s a killer collection of disaster essays and what we’ve come to expect from Elisa, which is to say deeply intellectual, observant, incredibly researched with just a dash of the personal.
As always, be sure you’re subscribed to this podcast wherever you listen and consider leaving a kind review on Apple Podcasts.
Keep the conversation going on social media @CNFPod across the big three. I’ll be emerging from my social media detox soon since I finished the latest draft of my memoirvel.
If you have questions or just want to say hello to the show, click on the appropriate button, leave a message, and I’ll be sure to address the best questions I get. Don’t be shy 🙂
I brought back the Bookshelf for the Apocalypse, a CNF Pod deep cut of how I’d ask guests what books were so important to them that they’d pack them in their survival pack for the end of the world. You have that to look forward to towards the end of the show. Enjoy, friend.
Rose Andersen is the author of The Heart and Other Monsters (Bloomsbury, 2020) and we jam about that, the writing process, deadlines, music, groove, and addiction.
It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year, so you should listen here and then consider buying it for the memoir/true crime lover in your circle of CNFers.
And I’m bringing back the review-for-coaching deal. If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts, I will give you an hour of my editing/coaching time, a $50 value, so act fast!
Leave a review, wait for it to post, screenshot it, and email it to me creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail dot com. Then I’ll reach out. Keep the work to 2,000 words or fewer.
Also, if you’re feeling kind, link up to the show on social media, tagging the show @CNFPod so I can give you the props and elbow bumps you deserve!
Want the transcript to this episode?! PayPal brendan at brendan omeara dot com $5 and I’ll send you the PDF!
“But there was a sense that I had let down my younger self and ought to find a way to make writing at least in some way, a part of my part of my life.” — Stephanie Gorton.
In this conversation we talk about her Page Turner piece for New Yorker dot com about an H.P. Lovecraft conference in Providence, her home city. We riff on what it was like for her to go from publishing to writing. We talk about the social media and why anyone with platform would trust a journalist with their stories. It’s good, clean fun.
Keep the conversation going on social media by linking up the show and tagging it @CNFPod.
Be sure you’re subscribed to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to my monthly newsletter for book recommendations, writing tips, and what you might’ve missed from the world of the podcast. You’re also entered to win books. What’s not to like?! Sign up below.
Lots of fun speaking to Rani about how her parents nurtured her creative side, but were worried about she’d make a career out of creative work.
We talk about day jobs, imposter syndrome, growth/fixed mindsets, power heels, and dude hats.
She’s the founder of Fuss Class, a south Asian satire site. Very Onion-esque. Rani hangs out on Instagram @raanstermonster. She came to play ball.
I think you’ll have fun with this one and I’d love to hear from you if you did. Email the show and ping us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
We need more submissions to our first ever audio magazine. The theme is Social Distancing: Essays from Isolation. 2,000 words/15-minute read. Deadline is MAY 1. Email your essay with SUBMISSION in the subject line to creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail dot com. I can’t wait to hear what you come up with.
Questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out. This a community. We’re in this mess together. Share this episode with your people and encourage them to share it to. If you don’t feel the need to share it, then I’ve failed at making something remarkable. And I’ll keep working harder and harder so that it continues to earn your endorsement and, more importantly, your valuable time.
So many great insights about negative self-talk, what they feel is fundamentally lacking in most self-help books, and how to ultimately be kinder to yourself.
This book comes at a good time because things are rough. Things are topsy-turvy. We need people like Jolenta and Kristen doing their thing and thankfully their work is out there for us.
As you know, you can keep in touch on social media by following the show @CNFPod wherever. Also, if you’re feeling kind, consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Share this show if it means something to you. We’d be honored if you did.
[Again, no art because my website host hasn’t fixed the issue yet.]
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your pods and to subscribe to my monthly newsletter. Social media is @CNFPod, though, as many of you know, I’ve scaled back quite a bit on this.
You might be wondering, what the riff? Why isn’t there an interview in this slot right now?
Well, this happens, at times, when people cancel on me or miss their appointment and my scrambling to fill the time slot comes up empty. In the creative vaccum that is the time in and around Christmas and New Years, it’s often a losing battle.
My advice to you is, maybe check out some of the interviews that have accumulated in your feed. There’s no shortage. A new interview will be here next week with Kristina Gaddy, and we’ve got exciting ones coming down the pipeline with Tim O’Brien, Pamela Coloff and Rachel Aviv, just to name a few.
Also, in my effort to better serve you, the listener, I’d love to know what I could be doing to better address your needs as a creator in this genre. Do you like the origin questions? Do you like the tactical stuff? Would you like things to stay the same? Am I hitting the right beats that make you energized about your own work? This podcast is for you. I make this for you. Without you there is no CNF. I want to make a show worth sharing and it’s only worth sharing if you are able to add those valuable insights to your cart and check out better for it. So please email the show creativenonfictionpodcast at gmail . com or brendan at brendanomeara . com with your insights. It doesn’t have to be long, but as the show enters its eighth year, I want to make sure I haven’t lost touch with the people who matter most: you.
But this is also a time for me to share a great quote from Charles Bukowski about writing and it goes to the heart of what I think it means to be a writer and an artist.
He writes,
Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with bluebells in their hair. When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.
He goes on … then says:
It was cancer madness. And it was never work or planned or part of a school. It was. That’s all. We work too hard. We try too hard. Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. It’s been looking right at us, aching to kick out the closed womb. It’s all free, we needn’t be told. Classes? Classes are for asses. Writing a poem is as easy as beating your meat or drinking a bottle of beer.
So, as we approach this new year, maybe we don’t need to overthink it. We don’t need permission from anyone. We don’t need another online class from a “master” who, by the way, didn’t need an online class to do the work she’s so famous for. If we approach the work with generosity and rigor, and put our best word forward every time, then that’s the victory.
When four guys in northern california got together and started playing heavy metal music, sure, they had dreams of going out on the road, but it always about the music in that garage. Those guys, give or take because one got booted out of the band and one died in a bus crash, made it because they had always made it.
We make it in this business when we decide. There’s no arrival. Malcolm Gladwell is jealous of Michael Lewis.
So, we make it when we decided to arrive. I hope you decide right now to own it. Own the title. Own your shitty work. It won’t be shitty for long.
I wish you the best arrival in 2020 and beyond. Let’s get after it this year.
