Streamlining this rager. The text of the parting shot is now with the show notes, mmkay? Shouldn’t be as overwhelming on your e-mail machine.

Rhythms, man, I was thinking how I feel the greatest, the most optimistic, the most anything-is-possible-ly between the time of 6:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. The air is super cool, the windows allow the cool air to pour into the house. It’s like dry water or something.

At this time, I have usually performed Easy Strength and taken either the elders (Hank and Kevin) for a walk or Lachlan for a walk. I’m whipping up some cold brew, or instant coffee. I’m not hungry yet and won’t feel guilty for eating too much food given that I’m trying to lose a few lbs on account of my deathly high blood pressure. The journal pages are filling up with nonsense and inane bullshit. No task for the day feels insurmountable! The to-do list will be slayed!

After 8 a.m., the weight of the world begins to close in. Book panics set in. The air temperature is 95 degrees and climbing. What file is my working file? Which one is my editor’s version? Which one is Melanie’s version? I have a call at noon? A podcast to produce? Better go play Zelda! Take a walk! Do the dishes! Make some oat milk! Eat another snack! Lay on the floor like Margot Robbie in Barbie!

This week we have Rebecca Renner, freelance journalist and author of Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades (Flatiron Books). Good talk, good talk.

TL;DL: World Building

Excerpt edited for concision and clarity.

Brendan: I posited how and what I love about certain books and nonfiction in particular is this element of world building. So take us to the the world building element of this book.

Rebecca: Well, I really liked the concept of world building, my writing background started or and my reading background started in fantasy. There are elements of this book that follow a fantasy mold, like the the map and the beginning of the book. I emailed the my editor and asking for a map like in a fantasy novel. And I also follow the structure of the hero's journey for Jeff's journey into the wilderness. And that allowed me to gradually go into the depths of the Everglades as a place. And I think that I might have difficulty describing this because … it isn't a difficult thing to put on paper, a place that you recognize and understand and don't see as fantastical in a way that is illuminating to someone who has never been there before, but also people who know it well. Being a writer for National Geographic has really helped with that. If I was writing a pretend National Geographic article and like sort of making fun of it, it would be every little thing that the reader doesn't know you define it in a sentence or in a clause. And so I learned to take that with me to be able to define the world, where I need to step back where I don't.

And part of that is where editing comes in. Because there are places where I had written something and I had genuinely not realized that somebody would not understand what a fan boat or an airboat was, both my editor and my agent said, you need to define what this is because most people are not going to be able to call a picture into their heads with just that word. And I, I thought that was really funny, because it's just such a regular part of my world, that I hadn't even thought of it. But it's things like that. I started with the texture, the specific words, I had to learn to name the world. And I had to talk to people like Jeff and other people who lived down in the Everglades. I asked them what everything is and what all the plants are. And I had several expeditions, basically where I'm like, I point to something and ask what it is. And that really helps a lot with world building.

I also think that in nonfiction, what makes it different is that I can ask people to define their worlds and I can let them tell the stories that they think are indicative of their world. And so a big part of world building for me wasn't just all the window dressing the it's not a tree, it's a cypress kind of thing. It's the shape and the cadence of speech and the stories that people tell and trying to figure out why these stories are important and what they show about this place.

Gosh, somebody shared a story the other day that I didn't even bother to read because it was all about leading the person that you're interviewing to answering your questions. And I was just like, that is the complete opposite of what I think a good interview is, I think the best interviews are conversations and if you're forcing them to answer your questions, you're probably not getting to the meat of the real story. If they're a regular person, they know what's important, and they know their their world better than you do. So the biggest part to me is to be able to listen and figure out the things that are important to the storytellers within the story. And that created the world.

Brendan: Another element of the world building that you accomplish so well is the duality of Jeff's interiority, as he's assuming a different identity while trying to maintain his own. And that in and of itself is extremely challenging and deft on your part. So there's that physical world, but there is an interior world to that you were able to accomplish.

Rebecca: I was really worried about that. I was afraid people would say it's too literary. And then I was just making stuff up, because I don't know what he's thinking. But the way that Jeff tells stories have made that possible. Because when he would be talking, he would be telling me the story. And then he would pause, like a narrator of a written story, and tell me what he was thinking then. And he didn't always do that.

So sometimes I would have to ask him, or I would go back and ask him when I was writing, if I needed some interiority, but that started because that's the way he told the story.

Coda

Gonna plant a wee seed here: We are less than a year from publication of my Steve Prefontaine biography. Title TK. (We’re changing it from The Gift to possibly The Front Runner or The Last Amateur) Pre-orders are the name of the game, so I just want you thinking about it. It’s not available for pre-order just yet. Again, just getting you thinking about it. Dead in the water without pre-orders, friend.

Also, for face-to-face time and to support the podcast, you can window shop at patreon.com/cnfpod.

And if you leave a review on Apple Podcasts, take a screenshot, send it to [email protected] and I’ll coach up a piece of your writing of up to 2,000 words.

Rage,

Brendan