“Joan Didion said ‘Writers are always selling people out’ and I have chafed against that because I don’t feel like I want to be.”
“I’m a pretty binge-y writer.”
“The essay lets you learn as you’re writing.”
In a week where Creative Nonfiction reached its Kickstarter goal to support its monthly offshoot True Story, what better than to have the latest True Story author on the show?
“I don’t need to hear another story about how you went to the baseball game with your dad.”
“We wanted to have that feeling of experience of how people experience baseball over a lifetime.”
“How do you set up your story and how do you make it move?”
“There’s so much great real stuff happening that it seemed dumb to make up anything.”
“You have to write every day and you have to ask every day.”
This week I welcome Chris Arvidson for Episode 75 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in narrative journalism, radio, essay, memoir, and documentary film and try to tease out their stories, habits and routines so you can improve your own creative practice.
Chris co-edited along with Diana Nelson Jones The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans published by McFarland. It’s a beautiful book and we talk about its genesis, what makes for good baseball writing vs. horrible baseball writing, what’s the most important thing for Chris when developing a story, the organic nature of building a network, favorite books on writing, and much more.
Chris also edited the anthologies Reflections on the New River and Mountain Memoirs. You can find more about her and her work at chrisarvidson.com.
Pulitzer Prize winner Madeleine Blais joined me on the podcast. Maddy is a dear friend and treasured mentor and it was so great to speak to her about her work and her new book “To the New Owners.”
“[True Story] is a snack between the main meal.” —Hattie Fletcher
It’s The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction, leaders in the world of narrative journalism, documentary film, essay, memoir and radio and try to deconstruct how these masters go about the work so that you can improve your own.
This week I welcome back Hattie Fletcher, who is the managing editor for Creative Nonfiction Magazine. What prompted a second trip? Hattie, along with Lee Gutkind and the team over at Creative Nonfiction, started a $27,000 Kickstarter campaign to support the second year of True Story, their monthly offshoot to the quarterly magazine.
True Story is a 5,000-10,000-word stand-alone piece in chapbook or digital form. It’s pretty rad.
In this episode we talk about:
What makes the green-lit pieces pop
What the rejected pieces have in common
And also some of the goodies you can expect with a pledge.
I hope after listening to this you’ll head over to the Kickstarter campaign and pledge some hard-earned dough so they can keep doing the work they’re doing on True Story.
Full disclosure, I don’t get any kickbacks of any kind.
What a guy.
It would be nice if you shared the episode and even left a nice review over on iTunes to help validate the podcast so I can keep doing this thing. I’d hate for the business office to come down and slam the door shut on this enterprise. Keep the reviews coming so I can keep the doors open at CNFHQ.
“That sense of discovery when you come across a story you had no idea existed.”
“The book project was my last hope for getting to do the type of writing I wanted to do.”
“I’ve kind of learned to live with the self-loathing I think.”
“I try to picture myself telling the story to someone at the bus stop.”
It’s the Creative Nonfiction Podcast where I speak to the world’s best artists about creating works of nonfiction. Leaders in the world of narrative journalism, memoir, essay, radio, and documentary film share their tools and tricks with you so you can improve your own work.
