PTG Recommends: Origin Stories!

On today's Rec Center, Mango introduces listeners to his pal Matthew Shaer's brand new podcast Origin Stories. If you're someone who misses the Longform podcast, loves to learn about the craft of writing, or just want to hear more from your favorite author and filmmaker, Origin Stories is probably what you've been looking for. On today's episode, Matthew interviews the bestselling author Stephanie Foo about her memoir "What My Bones Know." If you want to hear about why morning pages don't work for everybody, how to approach a rewrite, and why it's ok to include more fart jokes than your editor might want, give it a listen. 

For more Origin Stories, including Stephanie's episode, be sure to click here. Or find it wherever you get your podcasts.  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, there are part time genius fans. It's Mongas particularly
aka Mango, and I'm here with a very special feed drop.
Years and years ago, when Will and I were at
Mental Floss, we had a little magazine. I was always
looking for great writers, and when I was scouting the
front pages of New York Magazine, I'd seen this guy

(00:22):
who had written this little tidbit on the Park Slope
food co op, and I thought it was so wonderful.
It was historical, it was funny, it was written in
this like really sharp and brilliant way, and I thought, man,
I really want this person to write for Mental class
So we sort of recorded him. And his name is

(00:43):
Matthew Cher, and he wrote a couple articles for us,
and every time he wrote an article, I just felt
so lucky to have his words in our magazine. Now,
Matt has gone on to have this incredible career, not
just as a journalist but also as podcaster. He's made
some of my favorite shows at his company, Campside, and

(01:05):
he has a new show out called Origin Stories, and
it is really so good. It's him sitting with other
writers or directors and talking about the creation of these
works that are close to their hearts, and for me,
as someone who's always felt like an outsider writing, I
never got to learn at someone's elbow or looking over

(01:28):
someone's shoulder at a big magazine or a big publishing house.
I've always loved shows like this because it gives you
real insight into how to write, and how writers think,
and how storytellers really perfect their craft. Anyway, for today's
PTG recommends, we are recommending origin stories, and I'm going
to play you just a little clip with the incredible

(01:51):
author Stephanie Fou. I know her primarily for her work
at This American Life, but she also wrote this incredible
memoir that was a huge best seller, What My Bones Know,
And they talk about how she worked her way through
telling the story about both her struggles and also really
about the healing process and the journey she goes on.

(02:13):
So take a listen. I think you'll love it.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Did you have readers in the writing process? Did your
husband read it, for example, or did you have friends
read versions of the manuscript?

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Totally, it's funny because I guess this is a really
nice thing. He thinks it's a really nice compliment. He's like,
you are the best revisor that I know, he was like,
your first draft was so bad, which doesn't didn't make
me feel good at the time, certainly, but he is

(02:47):
always like, your first draft is always terrible, and then
you get your edits, and then by the second draft
you have really turned things around and it's beautiful and
it's magical and it's great and you really know how
to like take edits well, So thanks, I guess Joey.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Well, I mean, that is a skill that not everyone has,
to be fair to Joey, there are people who are
really bad at taking edits in one of two ways,
are one of multiple ways. They get angry, or they
get defensive, or they're just like, I'm not taking these edits.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
I think that I have a good gut feeling of
when to not take an edit. I try to take
like ninety percent of edits, like my editor. One of
the edits you gave me was that my book had
too many fart jokes for a heavy book about trauma,
and I was like, no, I'm keeping in the fart jokes. Thanks.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
How many is enough? How many? How would like two
have been fine? Are great?

Speaker 3 (03:46):
I don't know, but it was just like, you know,
this is a lot of potty humor, and I was like, well,
first of all, I'm Asian, potty humor is our culture.
And second of all, I wanted it to be a
funny book, like I wanted there to be respite in
the book, and fart jokes are one way to do that. Sure,

(04:07):
but yeah, I imagine having the self confidence to just
be like, I'm not taking edits. Making edits is like
an act of kindness to the audience. It's a way
of like looking out for them in terms of making
it easy for them, making it smooth for them to read.
Your editors your like first audience, right, And I think

(04:32):
for my book anyway, I thought, I don't know, maybe
some artists think about this differently, and they make art
for themselves and they think my audience will come along
for the ride, who are like me. But for me,
I was thinking very intently about my audience in every
single sentence of this book. I would go back and
read it over and over again as different people in

(04:54):
my mind, and specifically people with different kinds of trauma,
Like I would read it as somebody who had sexual trauma,
read it as somebody who had childhood trauma. I'd read
it from somebody who was queer or whatever as Asian.
I just really wanted the book to be gentle and
good and helpful to people with complex trauma, because it

(05:14):
is really really hard to have complex PTSD, and it
is really really hard to read about complex PTSD. It's
really painful, and it can easily feel very judged. I
wanted it to be gentle and good for them, and
so yeah, especially with my editors, who were all readers
with complex PTSD, I took their input very, very seriously.

(05:37):
Like one of my first endings was more ungi dory,
like everything's so great now. One of my readers who
had complex PTSD was like, this is not realistic enough.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
It is hard.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
It continues to be really hard. You have to convey that,
and so I did change the ending, and I think
that was a really great edit. If you're not writing
for your audience, I don't know who are you writing for.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
I don't know yourself to hear the sound of your
own voice, which I think is common. I'm really struck
by the shape of this book because in some sense
it's really traditional, Like have you ever heard the phrase
that there's only a few different kinds of stories? And
we repeat them over and over again. It's much more
than that. But if you were to like diagram it out,
if you like map it out, it's someone who has

(06:21):
a bad experience, learns to understand what it is, experiments
with understanding, like really digging into the literature, and then
tries to find her way through the end. It's like
a clean art, although it's not too clean as you
say it's.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, it's the hero's journey, though definitely I'm the character.
I am the main character who's like going on the
journey and looking around trying to find the answers.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
And was that instinctual as soon as you knew that
this was going to be your book, was the shape
of it relatively clear to you?

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah? I think so. It's clear from all of my
work in the past that that's how you have to
do what. There has to be a main character who
is looking I wanted to be a first person narrative
first of all, because I have mostly dealt in first
person narratives throughout my entire career. That's again what I
know how to do. But I also know the power
of it. If you have like a very clinical book

(07:15):
or a book that's telling you how you should feel
about something, or straight facts and figures. I mean, I
struggle with a lot of nonfiction in reading it because
I get bored. But also I think that you have
the possibility of really pathologizing these topics and not making
them human. I think when you have a first person story,

(07:37):
the primary benefit of that is people feel seen.