Table of Contents

• News: 2 events

• The Riff: Forgetting how to write

• The Books: 4 memoirs

• The Other Stuff: 7 other stuffs, plus 2 bonus writing retreats

• Pitch Club: new one coming Aug. 1

• ICYMI: July on CNF Pod

• Coda

• Next Month Teaser for Sturgeon Moon Raging

Hello, friend,

Before we get to the meat of the rager, look what’s coming up:

Giving my world famous talk on unauthorized biography (it’s just journalism, man!) with my annotated reading. Free and open to the public. 3 p.m. at the Eugene Public Library. Ten signed, stamped hardcover books will be given out. (The paperback is ready for pre-order so if you want a lightweight holiday present with fewer typos, go here ===> pre-order. Maybe we can get 2,000 pre-orders and be a bestseller (lol). Wouldn’t that be cute?)

On Saturday, August 15, 6-8 p.m. ET, I’m moderating a debut author panel for the online HippoCamp Online Weekend. I’ll try and make them a little uncomfortable :)

Register here.

The Riff

Ever feel like you forgot how to write?

If you answered “no” to that question, please unsubscribe.

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Please do NOT unsubscribe. No-name jabronis like me need platform.

But about the forgetting how to write, I’m stuck in this limbo of not knowing whether I should be pursuing book efforts or magazine efforts or essay efforts. Just focus on the pod? What about Pitch Club?

It’s like I’ve forgotten my story sense. I’ve forgotten how to sniff out a good story or narrative.

I’m also exhausted.

The hamster wheel of being an independent writer/podcaster is tiring. Even when you put something out you might be proud of, it’s onto the next thing. Not a moment after I hit publish on one week’s podcast I’m packaging the next one. Rare is the moment when you can sit with one thing.

Same with stories. I see this with my friends and peers all the time. They might invest months in a story. Then they promote it for a day or a week. Then it’s subsumed by the infinite scroll and the next wave of “content” (ew) that washes all that hard work out to sea.

It’s very depressing how little staying power there is. Seth Wickersham wrote a 15,000-word story about Sean Payton and his madness leading up to the AFC Championship Game against the Patriots. Seth worked on that story for months and months and months. It came out to rave reviews, but now it’s … gone. (I will be annotating it for Nieman Storyboard, so I’ll keep you posted on that.)

This happens with TV shows like Stranger Things. They work for years on a season, and people binge it in a day. Talk about it for a week. Then it’s over.

The Odyssey is all the rage right now. It took years to make. But in a week or two, talk will die down and then flame out altogether.

In the face of that, sometimes it’s hard to start. And your experience from a previous project atrophies to the point that it feels like you’re starting from zero. Key in all this is not to let any of that story skill atrophy in the first place. Don’t develop that beer belly.

Like anything big, it best to shrink it down. I’m in a phase where everything feels BIG, and the inertia to move the thing is too much. So I stand still … and develop a beer belly.

You oughtta know by now, this newsletter starts here, and goes up to 11!

The Books

I’m reading four memoirs in three weeks (woof). Here they are:

1. Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East by Gaar Adams.

2. Girl Gone Wild by Courtney Kocak

3. When Longing Becomes Your Lover by Amanda McCracken

4. Brother Epistles: A Sister’s Memoir by Shanda McManus

The Other Stuff

5. Ever want to know how I make money (or not make money) writing?

6. You attended a writers conference, now what? Here’s 3 actionable things worth doing.

7. Seth’s Riffs? Yep, it’s like he made a his own Twitter feed.

8. Timely as ever, should you use Substack as your newsletter service? This from Jane.

9. Kashmir Hill “got slopped.” (Hat tip to Pablo, a CNFin’ Patron.)

10. Two people I desperately want to interview in conversation with each other? Sign me up for some Lex Pryor and Colson Whitehead.

11. See how Blackwing pencils are made.

    Bonus 1: Two writing retreats to consider in beautiful Idaho.

    Bonus 2: Glenn Stout running the traditional workshop at the Larry McMurtry Literary Center.

New Pitch Club comes out Aug. 1, this with Jarret Van Meter. Very excited to share. In the meantime, check out the archive. Pushing towards 1,000 subscribers! If you’re not on board and you want to get better at selling stories, sign up. Forever free!

ICYMI: July on CNF Pod

• Episode 535: Alex Ronan’s Masterclass in the Depth of Reporting (Atavist!)

• Episode 536: The Blood, Flesh, and Messiness of Human Existence with Matthew Wolfe (Live!)

• Episode 537: Pamela Colloff’s Now-or-Never Moment with ‘Catch the Devil’

• Episode 538: The Enduring Mystery of Amelia Earhart with Rachel Hartigan

• Episode 539: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong TK

Coda

I hope you dug this Buck Moon issue of RATA. To support what it is I do, you can:

• Buy copies of The Front Runner wherever, or pre-order five copies of the paperback.

• Subscribe to Pitch Club

• Leave kind reviews for the podcast on Apple Podcasts and/or leave kind reviews for The Front Runner on Amazon and Goodreads. Can’t stress enough how important these are for no-name rodeo clowns like me.

As my pal Kim says, buying a book or leaving a review is a vote for the next book; it makes us just a tad more attractive to publishers. And, boy, these days, I’m busted, man.

If you have a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket, you may check out Patreon.com/cnfpod.

Otherwise, stay wild, nose to the wind, rage,

b.r.o.

PS — Next Month: Sturgeon Moon Raging

I’m ginning up a serious promotional push for the paperback of The Front Runner. I’ll clue you into everything I’m doing (and not doing).