CORRECTION: Included the wrong link about “how to write a book proposal” from the officially sanctioned, first-of-the-month rager. Here is the link: https://thecreativeindependent.com/guides/how-to-write-a-book-proposal/

Hey CNFers, happy CNFriday, we are in it, man, summer.

This weekend we’re under a heat advisory with temps into the 100s. The challenge becomes choreographing the house’s coolness and keeping the dogs (and us) from overheating.

Few houses in Oregon have central air, or even windows capable of your classic window AC units, so we have two bulky-ass AC units with the hose that extends out the window. We turn those on once the house becomes a bit unbearable and usher the elder dogs into one room and Lachlan to the other.

The beauty of Oregon in the summer is that though it gets super hot during the day, overnight it tends to drop into the 50s, so you get this reset where you can flush the house with cool air. The excessive heat warning means the nights remain relatively hot and the hotness compounds over three or four days. It’s stressing me out. But I’m so triggered of late that the slightest blip sends me into psychosis.

It feels like getting run over by a Mars rover. It feels like writing: oppressive, suffocating, sweaty.

TL;DL: Maggie Gigandet’s Own Ultra

Maggie is a freelance writer and her Atavist piece, “The Extra Mile,” chronicles the journey of a couple as they heal together and embark on a grueling race as a means of healing and deliverance. She came on the pod to talk about it.

Brendan: I like what you just said about what Laz said: humans are meant to try. And extrapolating that or overlaying that on on your life, what is the nature of your try?

Maggie: Yeah, it's definitely through launching myself into this career. That is my try. And it's funny that you pick up on that, because the longest piece I had written before this one was 2,500 words. And it was one of those things like, you're so inexperienced that you don't know what you're getting into. When I found out that I was doing this for the Atavist, I was ecstatic. I was so excited. And then months later, after I followed the race, and I go to I'm like, ‘Okay, I have to write it now.’ Then it starts dawning on me. Colleagues, when they find out how long it is, their reactions, I was like, Why does everyone keep reacting that way? You sort of realize what you've gone into.

I started thinking of it as this is my ultra, this is my writing ultra. And I had a conversation with Laz. I interviewed him last fall for this piece. He has such a way with words. So I told him before Volstate (the name of the ultra race), there's something that it's called The Last Supper. And everyone meets at a Chinese buffet restaurant in Union City. And it's to give them instructions and that kind of thing. And Laz gave a speech to the crowd, and he ended it with ‘I'm not going to lie to you for the next five minutes, this is going to be hard.’ And he concluded his speech by saying, ‘After 40 years of watching this race, there's one difference between the people who finish and those who don't: the finishers didn't quit.‘

And I had this doubt in my mind the whole time. By the time I interviewed Laz, I was really starting to question my ability to finish this. And I keep reminding myself about what you said at the Last Supper. And we had just been talking about the bench of despair (a moment in the race where runners can rest and often feel a pull to quit), I was learning about the lore and the history of the bench. And I said, ‘You know what, maybe I'm on my own bench of despair. And I've got to decide, I'm either going to just quit or I'm going to get up and finish this thing.’ And he said to me, ‘You are on the bench of despair. You can either get in your car, go home and regret it for the rest of your life. Or you can get up and keep going and regret it for the rest of the race.’ And he was talking to me just like a runner. And it was at that moment. I was like ‘Yeah, I'm okay. I'm gonna keep going.’ I thought of this whole thing as my own ultra. And that helped.

Parting Shot from Ep. 419: On Disappointment

We’re down to the last month in the Prefontaine book, give or take a day or so. My editor, to his credit, is still excited about the book. But I get the sense he’s like a coach who is watching his athlete flub through drills deeply wondering My god, why can’t this kid spin the correct way? It’s not that hard.

Here’s an example. There’s a  moment, 1970 cross country championships and one of Prefontaine’s rivals/peers decides he’s going to sprint to the front of the field and lead nationals, not because he can win, but because he could get on the cover of Track & Field News. It’s a joke to him. After the first mile, Pre catches up to this guy and says, “The fuck you doin’?” And carries on. It’s a great, funny little scene. 

But my editor made a connection I didn’t see coming, and I think he’s mildly bummed I don’t see these types of things throughout the course of this book: To everyone else, getting to the lead like that is a joke; also, to Pre at this time in college, his competition was a joke. And BOOM, that is the bigger meaning and interpretation that you can extract from scenes that elevate them beyond mere points on the space-time continuum. 

And this is making the late-stage revisions particularly stressful. I wrote through the chronology, but biographies are more than just chronology. The author has to have the courage to wield some power by calling attention to certain events and imbue them with meaning, and given the glut of research, make assertions. This isn’t to say an agenda, but if the author doesn’t bring their point of view, their point of reference, a shaping, then you might as well read the Wikipedia page. When viewed through this prism, leaves naturally fall off the tree. Oh, this cool vignette, while neat, while likely well-researched and laboriously crafted, isn’t doing any real work for my book. Maybe for someone else’s book, but not mine.

My editor challenged me to bring a similar eye to my work that I do for my podcast reading, seeing into the microscopic levels and how the atoms are bonding. [It was cute that he called the pod my day job. It’d be cool if it paid even a part-time wage, but that’s my failure as a business person and neither here nor there. Thank you, patrons!] He’s got a great point, but weathering the disappointment is tough for me and my headspace because you want to put a stamp on something because it’s ready, because it’s great, not merely because it has to be done. There’s a part of me that’s not 100% sure it’ll be published because of my failure to make these kinds of bigger picture assertions and observations. Which, if we’re being honest, is not a great place to create and compose from. I’m writing more out of fear than joy. This is the “adulting” part of being a writer.

All that said, it’s coming together. I’m moving things that are more thematically germane closer together and trying to draw out a satisfying arc as to who this guy was, why he was the dawn of a new athlete, why he was, in a sense, the last amateur athlete, why he was, in many ways ahead of his time, and why he still matters today. 

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