Speaker 1: Hey, there are part time genius fans. It's Mongas particularly
Speaker 1: aka Mango, and I'm here with a very special feed drop.
Speaker 1: Years and years ago, when Will and I were at
Speaker 1: Mental Floss, we had a little magazine. I was always
Speaker 1: looking for great writers, and when I was scouting the
Speaker 1: front pages of New York Magazine, I'd seen this guy
Speaker 1: who had written this little tidbit on the Park Slope
Speaker 1: food co op, and I thought it was so wonderful.
Speaker 1: It was historical, it was funny, it was written in
Speaker 1: this like really sharp and brilliant way, and I thought, man,
Speaker 1: I really want this person to write for Mental class
Speaker 1: So we sort of recorded him. And his name is
Speaker 1: Matthew Cher, and he wrote a couple articles for us,
Speaker 1: and every time he wrote an article, I just felt
Speaker 1: so lucky to have his words in our magazine. Now,
Speaker 1: Matt has gone on to have this incredible career, not
Speaker 1: just as a journalist but also as podcaster. He's made
Speaker 1: some of my favorite shows at his company, Campside, and
Speaker 1: he has a new show out called Origin Stories, and
Speaker 1: it is really so good. It's him sitting with other
Speaker 1: writers or directors and talking about the creation of these
Speaker 1: works that are close to their hearts, and for me,
Speaker 1: as someone who's always felt like an outsider writing, I
Speaker 1: never got to learn at someone's elbow or looking over
Speaker 1: someone's shoulder at a big magazine or a big publishing house.
Speaker 1: I've always loved shows like this because it gives you
Speaker 1: real insight into how to write, and how writers think,
Speaker 1: and how storytellers really perfect their craft. Anyway, for today's
Speaker 1: PTG recommends, we are recommending origin stories, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to play you just a little clip with the incredible
Speaker 1: author Stephanie Fou. I know her primarily for her work
Speaker 1: at This American Life, but she also wrote this incredible
Speaker 1: memoir that was a huge best seller, What My Bones Know,
Speaker 1: And they talk about how she worked her way through
Speaker 1: telling the story about both her struggles and also really
Speaker 1: about the healing process and the journey she goes on.
Speaker 1: So take a listen. I think you'll love it.
Speaker 2: Did you have readers in the writing process? Did your
Speaker 2: husband read it, for example, or did you have friends
Speaker 2: read versions of the manuscript?
Speaker 3: Totally, it's funny because I guess this is a really
Speaker 3: nice thing. He thinks it's a really nice compliment. He's like,
Speaker 3: you are the best revisor that I know, he was like,
Speaker 3: your first draft was so bad, which doesn't didn't make
Speaker 3: me feel good at the time, certainly, but he is
Speaker 3: always like, your first draft is always terrible, and then
Speaker 3: you get your edits, and then by the second draft
Speaker 3: you have really turned things around and it's beautiful and
Speaker 3: it's magical and it's great and you really know how
Speaker 3: to like take edits well, So thanks, I guess Joey.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that is a skill that not everyone has,
Speaker 2: to be fair to Joey, there are people who are
Speaker 2: really bad at taking edits in one of two ways,
Speaker 2: are one of multiple ways. They get angry, or they
Speaker 2: get defensive, or they're just like, I'm not taking these edits.
Speaker 3: I think that I have a good gut feeling of
Speaker 3: when to not take an edit. I try to take
Speaker 3: like ninety percent of edits, like my editor. One of
Speaker 3: the edits you gave me was that my book had
Speaker 3: too many fart jokes for a heavy book about trauma,
Speaker 3: and I was like, no, I'm keeping in the fart jokes. Thanks.
Speaker 2: How many is enough? How many? How would like two
Speaker 2: have been fine? Are great?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it was just like, you know,
Speaker 3: this is a lot of potty humor, and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: first of all, I'm Asian, potty humor is our culture.
Speaker 3: And second of all, I wanted it to be a
Speaker 3: funny book, like I wanted there to be respite in
Speaker 3: the book, and fart jokes are one way to do that. Sure,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I imagine having the self confidence to just
Speaker 3: be like, I'm not taking edits. Making edits is like
Speaker 3: an act of kindness to the audience. It's a way
Speaker 3: of like looking out for them in terms of making
Speaker 3: it easy for them, making it smooth for them to read.
Speaker 3: Your editors your like first audience, right, And I think
Speaker 3: for my book anyway, I thought, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: some artists think about this differently, and they make art
Speaker 3: for themselves and they think my audience will come along
Speaker 3: for the ride, who are like me. But for me,
Speaker 3: I was thinking very intently about my audience in every
Speaker 3: single sentence of this book. I would go back and
Speaker 3: read it over and over again as different people in
Speaker 3: my mind, and specifically people with different kinds of trauma,
Speaker 3: Like I would read it as somebody who had sexual trauma,
Speaker 3: read it as somebody who had childhood trauma. I'd read
Speaker 3: it from somebody who was queer or whatever as Asian.
Speaker 3: I just really wanted the book to be gentle and
Speaker 3: good and helpful to people with complex trauma, because it
Speaker 3: is really really hard to have complex PTSD, and it
Speaker 3: is really really hard to read about complex PTSD. It's
Speaker 3: really painful, and it can easily feel very judged. I
Speaker 3: wanted it to be gentle and good for them, and
Speaker 3: so yeah, especially with my editors, who were all readers
Speaker 3: with complex PTSD, I took their input very, very seriously.
Speaker 3: Like one of my first endings was more ungi dory,
Speaker 3: like everything's so great now. One of my readers who
Speaker 3: had complex PTSD was like, this is not realistic enough.
Speaker 2: It is hard.
Speaker 3: It continues to be really hard. You have to convey that,
Speaker 3: and so I did change the ending, and I think
Speaker 3: that was a really great edit. If you're not writing
Speaker 3: for your audience, I don't know who are you writing for.
Speaker 2: I don't know yourself to hear the sound of your
Speaker 2: own voice, which I think is common. I'm really struck
Speaker 2: by the shape of this book because in some sense
Speaker 2: it's really traditional, Like have you ever heard the phrase
Speaker 2: that there's only a few different kinds of stories? And
Speaker 2: we repeat them over and over again. It's much more
Speaker 2: than that. But if you were to like diagram it out,
Speaker 2: if you like map it out, it's someone who has
Speaker 2: a bad experience, learns to understand what it is, experiments
Speaker 2: with understanding, like really digging into the literature, and then
Speaker 2: tries to find her way through the end. It's like
Speaker 2: a clean art, although it's not too clean as you
Speaker 2: say it's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the hero's journey, though definitely I'm the character.
Speaker 3: I am the main character who's like going on the
Speaker 3: journey and looking around trying to find the answers.
Speaker 2: And was that instinctual as soon as you knew that
Speaker 2: this was going to be your book, was the shape
Speaker 2: of it relatively clear to you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think so. It's clear from all of my
Speaker 3: work in the past that that's how you have to
Speaker 3: do what. There has to be a main character who
Speaker 3: is looking I wanted to be a first person narrative
Speaker 3: first of all, because I have mostly dealt in first
Speaker 3: person narratives throughout my entire career. That's again what I
Speaker 3: know how to do. But I also know the power
Speaker 3: of it. If you have like a very clinical book
Speaker 3: or a book that's telling you how you should feel
Speaker 3: about something, or straight facts and figures. I mean, I
Speaker 3: struggle with a lot of nonfiction in reading it because
Speaker 3: I get bored. But also I think that you have
Speaker 3: the possibility of really pathologizing these topics and not making
Speaker 3: them human. I think when you have a first person story,
Speaker 3: the primary benefit of that is people feel seen.