"The story is the horse, and the writer is the rider of the horse, and you as the editor, need to help guide them along. And if the rider starts to fall off, you put them back on, and it's your job to lead them safely into the barn. At no point should you shove the rider off the horse, get on yourself and ride it into the distance," says Amanda Heckert, executive editor of Garden & Gun.

Amanda Heckert is something of a wunderkind and an absolute boss of an editor.

In this episode we talk about:

• How she tells her writers to let it rip (within reason)
• How she found empathy for the writer side of the table, and how writers can better understand the POV of the editor side
• Writing a great pitch
• How a story is a horse the writer is the rider
• And the arc of her career that brought her back to her native South Carolina

You can learn more about Amanda at gardenandgun.com and follow her on IG @amandaheckert.

This episodes opens with an audio excerpt of The Front Runner, read by Roger Wayne.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"If you don't cultivate other interests or travel or spend time with friends, this and that, you don't have anything to write about," says Dane Huckelbridge, author of Queen of All Mayhem (William Morrow).

Dane returns to the show to talk about his latest book, but also a smattering of other juicy writer topics such as:

• Procrastination
• Writing around the uncertainty
• Not having much of a routine
• Spacing out
• Niche hobbies
• And staying motivated

Dane can be found at danehuckelbridge.com and on IG @huckelbridge.

This episodes opens with an audio excerpt of The Front Runner, read by Roger Wayne.

Order The Front Runner

Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm

Welcome to Pitch Club

Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"One of the things I've done is to reconfigure the fireworks. The fireworks for me now are getting to have this thing off my desk so I get to work on something new. That's the firework," says Yi Shun Lai, an author, writer, and instructor.

Our occasion for this show was an essay she wrote for Writer Magazine about "arrival fallacy," this notion that once we get "there," wherever "there" is, we will have made it.

She's the author of three books, all in different genres, the YA novel A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic, the novel Not a Self-Help Book: The Misadventures of Marty Wu, and the micro memoir Pin Ups.

Learn more about Yi Shun at thegooddirt.org and follower her on social media @yishunlai.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How to reconfigure the fireworks
• Arrival fallacy
• Money
• Privilege
• And being kind to yourself.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"I would say my books are about three quarters research and sort of mining my research, and then one quarter writing," says Hampton Sides, author of several New York Times bestselling works of narrative history, including his latest, now in paperback, The Wide Wide Sea. It's published by Doubleday.

So Hampton was great. There was a moment halfway through where my dogs got to barking, then howling, which made me give them a stern talkin’ to. I think I edited that out. I should have. Hope I did. I can tolerate a little barking in the background, but the howling is obnoxious. Hampton got a laugh out of all of it … He’s the author of eight books including In the Kingdom of Ice, Hellhound on his Trail, and Ghost Soldiers.

Here we talk about:

• How he found his lane of book writing
• Of transitioning from a journalist to a popular historian
• Finding the frame
• Writing in coffee shops
• Running to the computer in the middle of the night
• And an April Fool’s Day joke gone horribly wrong

Learn more about Hampton at hamptonsides.com and follow him on the gram @hamptonsidesauthor.

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"I talked to my wife, and she was like, 'You're probably tired. You've been writing this book non stop for six months, and you probably just need a break. Like, go get a gelato and chill out.' And I was like, 'I can't,' then I was like, 'All right, fine, I will.' And then I  ate a bunch of ice cream and watched the Pam Anderson documentary on Netflix in the middle of the day. And after, I don't know, four or five days, I had an idea, and I was like, ready to get back to work," says Melissa Febos on Episode 472.

Melissa is the author of five books of nonfiction, including her latest, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex (Knopf).

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Writing in community
• Literary stardom
• Being a weirdo
• Wile E. Coyote
• The jealousy dragon
• The theory of bottoms
• And the liberation of quitting things

Really rich stuff. You can learn more about Melissa at melissafebos.com and follow her on IG @melissafebos.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"We are sort of drinking from a fire hose of content right now. And it makes me wonder, because I feel like I'm stuck on this wheel that I have to produce all the time. Do I even want to write for money anymore? I don't know," says Cassidy Randall, author of the book Thirty Below, and back for her second Atavist story "The Longest Journey."

Writing is in her bones, so she's not quitting, but the freelance production wheel is tough.

We talk about:

• The productivity wheel
• Earning trust for stories
• Constructing a headline and subhead to focus a story
• And how best to immerse readers in a story

Learn more about Cassidy at cassidyrandall.com and @cassidyrandall on Instagram.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"I've also learned in this rewilding experiment that so much of our time as writers takes place off the page, as we're thinking about our concepts, as we're doing research, and when I actually do come to the page and have a chance to actually type out these ideas, I've done so much pre-writing over the course of the previous season that that draft comes really easily to me," says Megan Baxter, author of three books of nonfiction, including Farm Girl: A Memoir (Green Writers Press).

Megan has got it figured out, man. She has won numerous national awards, including a Pushcart Prize. Her essay collection Twenty Square Feet of Skin was longlisted for the 2024 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Megan got on my radar when I was doing Prefontaine research and I was thumbing through my stack of True Stories, that chapbook Creative Nonfiction used to put out. I saw this essay titled “On Running” and I was like well shoot, I need to study this. Then I reached out to her and she sent me her essay collections and her memoir Farm Girl, so we dig into that.

Megan’s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, Hotel Amerika, River Teeth, and others. She lives in New Hampshire where she runs her own small farm and teaches creative writing through online courses and lessons. You can learn more about her at meganbaxterwriting.com and follow her on Instagram megan-baxter

• We talk about: 
• Rewilding her writing
• Rabbit holes
• Actually living the ream
• Hyperattention
• The real housewives edit
• And how Pinterest helps with her writing

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"I don't feel envy. I don't think. Maybe in some deeper and maybe even more troubling psychological level. I do feel competition with with people, competition over resources, trying to claim certain ideas, stake a claim to certain ideas before other people can, especially when you're working with the subject that's in the public sphere. You don't have any personal, any real wider claim to something than somebody else. It can be nerve wracking," says John O'Connor, author of The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster (Source Books).

John returns to talk about his first book, tackling the mythology of Bigfoot and the psyche of those who believe. He talks about writing with humor, making himself the butt of most jokes, and trafficking in a subculture that many — including John — are skeptical of.

Find more about him at johnmoconnor.com and follow him on Instagram @centerforhighenergymetaphysics.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

"I genuinely feel that those of us writing books need to remember that we are writing them simply because we feel the desperate need to write that particular thing. And unless I feel that way, I shouldn't be writing it because it's not for the financial benefit. It is not because it gives me more time to do things with other people. It doesn't matter how many books or lengthy features you write, it's all kind of a painful process. So you have to do it because you're really invested in the things that you are focused on," says Maggie Messitt, author of Newspaper and The Rainy Season.

Maggie is a professor and a journalist and an author. She's was the founding national director for Report for America and currently is the Norman Eberly professor of practice in journalism. 

Find more about her at maggiemessitt.com and follow her on Instagram @maggiemessitt.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com

Will Bardenwerper grew up playing baseball and even was a member of his college team at Princeton. As a result, he has a great perspective to write about baseball as he does in Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America (Doubleday).

That soul, in this book, is partially under attack from private equity firms gobbling up and eradicating minor league baseball teams. It's just one of the many threads of Will's wonderful book.

Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.

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Show notes: brendanomeara.com