A Special Bonus
Lilly Dancyger on the book she had to write
Happy Tuesday, Bleeders!
I hope everyone had a relaxing holiday weekend. Congratulations to my non-American Bleeders on avoiding the existential f*ckery of yesterday's celebrations. It was a bit fraught for many of us, and I'm glad to be back to a regular ol' weekday.
For the latest episode, I did something a little different — I discovered a new podcast that I really like and it's also about book writing and publishing, so I wanted to share it with you. The podcast is called The Book I Had to Write, and it's hosted by book coach Paul Zakrzewski. I love that he brings that book coach perspective into his interviews with leading authors, memoir writers, journalists and other coaches, who share stories about how they wrote some of today's most compelling, influential nonfiction.
Today’s guest is memoir writer Lilly Dancyger. Lilly's dad was an artist in the 1980s East Village art scene, and he became the subject of her unwitting memoir about him when she was attempting to archive and share his work as an artist monograph. But as they do, the project took on a life of its own. In this interview, Lilly and Paul unpack the long process of researching this book, kind of like a detective on a case, how it evolved over time, and ultimately led to some personal healing.
Here’s a lil preview from the interview:
"You write about somebody struggling with addiction and they become an addict. And that's who they are, that's their narrative function, that's their whole identity, and the humanity and everything else that they are kind of disappears, which was something that I worked really hard to not let happen in writing about my father."
Where I write:
I ask each guest to give us a peek behind the scenes. For this edition, Paul sent a "shelfie" of his living room writing space with a piece of gorgeous art on the wall and some feminist signage lingering in the background. Nobody’s asking, but I very much approve of this nook!
Episode links:
🏃♀️ Follow Lilly on Twitter @lillydancyger and follow Paul on Twitter @bookihadtowrite to stay up-to-date on the show.
💻 Check out The Book I Had to Write website.
🛒 Order Lilly's memoir Negative Space.
🎧 And, of course, pop in those earbuds and listen to The Book I Had to Write: The Memoir as Detective Story on your favorite podcast platform.
Online reading about writing:
Lidia Yuknavitch Describes Her Four Perfect Writing Spaces - We have been blessed with a new novel from Lidia Yuknavitch, and thus, got this gorgeous piece of book promotion: Lidia waxing poetic about her perfect writing spaces as only she could.
A solution to writer's block: Transcribe yourself - Austin Kleon offers a handy hack for overcoming writer’s block: Recording yourself and transcribing it or using your computer’s speech-to-text. I’ve employed this technique as a laxative when my writing process feels constipated, and it rarely fails to get the juices flowing again. However, sometimes I forget that this tool is at my disposal, so this was a helpful reminder.
Elle Griffin posted this John Grisham quote from his latest New York Times profile on Twitter, and it got me thinking about the commercial success vs. critical acclaim paradigm when it comes to art:
So… ROLL CALL! 🗣️
Where do you fall on the commerce-critical spectrum? Are you writing to make money first and foremost, or would you rather be a literary darling and wow the critics? Or, perhaps most well-adjusted, do you not concern yourself with such thinking and let the chips fall where they may?
Let’s connect on social media! I’m at @courtneykocak on Twitter and Instagram. For more, check out my website courtneykocak.com.