- 6 weeks ago
Orchids. Infernos. Rin Tin Tin. What do these things have in common? They’ve all been the subject of books by Susan Orlean. In her new book Joyride, she pulls back the curtain on how she does it. Susan and Dan dig into how she decides which ideas are worth pursuing, how she pushes through the doubt, and why audiobooks might just be the purest way to experience a story. Plus, she shares the one writing habit she wishes she could ditch.
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00:00an editor could have been perfectly within their rights to come back to me and say this is appalling
00:06you know and i i think that i have a certain ability to sort of separate myself from the
00:14anxiety that you might have turning in a piece with a lead that might stop you in your tracks
00:24hey everyone welcome to how success happens i'm dan bova writer and editor at entrepreneur.com
00:31today we have a guest who is very successful and just published a book about how it happened
00:37so everything is really coming together on our show how success happens right now uh susan arlene
00:44is a longtime staff writer for the new yorker uh she's also the author of multiple best-selling
00:51books including the orchid thief which was adapted into the academy award-winning film adaptation
00:57and she's got a new one out now joyride uh which i began reading and i was loving it and
01:05then i
01:05slammed it shut and i'll explain why in a second welcome susan so happy to be with you great to
01:14talk to you so yes i was reading your book and as i said really loving it and then on
01:20page 47
01:22you explain that you don't like to prepare for interviews all that much you don't like to cloud
01:28your head with too much research and i thought who the hell am i to disregard susan orlean's advice so
01:35i
01:36closed the book so the last thing i was reading you were writing for an alt weekly did anything
01:42interesting happen after that nope that's it my career my career came to a screeching halt
01:48uh and the rest of the book are is blank pages okay
01:56uh well no i uh so it's from what i i really did stop reading it but i'm really anxious
02:03to get back to
02:04it because uh you've just done so many incredible things and i think whether you are a journalist or
02:11not uh it's it's hard not to envy you know what you've been able to accomplish over the years and
02:17these incredible stories that you were able to find so i guess i wanted to start by asking you
02:23you've done a lot of such different things like how do you decide what you're going to do next
02:30uh that's a great question um it it is a big part of being uh self-employed which is the
02:40case for
02:41many writers um i'm a staff writer at the new yorker but i'm still essentially self-directed and
02:50self-employed so each choice about what i do really is a choice that i'm making
02:57um and i don't have an agenda i don't finish one project and think now i want to do something
03:08quite
03:08different or you know i don't i don't plot it out in that way i tend to um like mixing
03:19up
03:20the duration of the project you know it's nice to go from a very long project to doing something
03:29shorter get a little more immediate gratification um turn something around a little more quickly
03:37but you know stories fall into your lap kind of as they happen and you can't always predict
03:48whether you're gonna stumble into something immediately that's going to turn into another
03:55very big project right after you finish a big project you know you just don't know
04:00i like being busy so if i have not done if if i finished one project i'm usually kind of
04:11hankering
04:11for what i'm gonna do next so i'm more open to ideas and my brain is kind of working in
04:20that
04:20in that mode of what would be an interesting story to work on next do you have any i just
04:29finished my
04:30book traditions like i typed the end i sent it off i'm done with it is there any way you
04:36celebrate
04:37or anything you do uh well on one book i got a tattoo i felt like that was a nice
04:46kind of marking of the end of the book um and i thought about doing that again when i finished
04:55joyride
04:56but i thought i don't want to be a person who has a million tattoos so i don't know if
05:02that's the best
05:03tradition but at the time that i finished that book it really spoke to me as kind of a great
05:10way
05:11to commemorate finishing the book um you know it's interesting because there's the day you hit send
05:19when you send your publisher your completed manuscript but that's just the beginning um you
05:27then do your edit then you do your copy edits then you do your fact checking there are so many
05:35moments along the way and then you know i suppose the real moment that feels like you finish
05:42is when you get the finished book for the first time um and that is so ceremonial in itself that
05:51you
05:51don't feel a great need to do something in addition right right you open the box you see the books
05:59there it is this thing that really got made and it's um it's a very thrilling moment i mean it
06:08really
06:09is like the baby is born right that's that's fantastic so when you get edits i'm just curious as
06:17someone who's gotten edits in my lifetime are you the type of person who gets an edit and says huh
06:23that's an interesting thought are you the type of person uh who's like fuck you who are you to tell
06:30me
06:30what to write well i think uh i'm a little biased in this regard i think people who think that
06:40editing
06:41has ruined their their deathless prose are probably not very sophisticated writers um i would say
06:52i have generally found that you know i've worked with really good editors yeah and they've come with
07:03suggestions that um the thing is that my editors respect what i'm trying to do they are not trying to
07:14reshape my work in their image they aren't trying to impose their style and their taste on my work they
07:24tend to edit for clarity for um to make what i'm trying to do better so i i usually welcome
07:37it and they
07:38they are open to discussion and debate and for me to push back and say i like it better the
07:46way i did it
07:47but i i find it um the sign of maturity in your work that you can look at an editor
07:58as a really good
08:00reader who is saying i don't understand this point or you already you're repeating yourself or
08:08i want more of this and less of that um it's a reader who is responding and so to me
08:17it's always got validity yeah yeah that's that's great and very healthy and very mature so
08:25um so there's so many there's so many parallels to for uh endeavor writing a book versus you know
08:34launching a business or any other creative endeavor and you know one of the biggest questions that we
08:40face uh that we get all the time at entrepreneur is people wondering like how do i know this idea
08:45is
08:45worth the time and effort i'm about to put into it um and there's there's no one answer to it
08:52but
08:52i'm curious for you uh you know a book is not something that you do in a couple of weeks
08:58how are there any signs to you that like i'm on to something or are there ever signs that you're
09:05like
09:05this isn't this isn't worth pursuing anymore i think this is probably the single most important
09:13um instinct you can have and hopefully develop because a book is something that you're talking
09:24about investing years a business is something where you're talking about investing huge amounts of time
09:32and money and you know many ideas many book ideas in you know having an immediate appeal
09:42you hear the idea you have a gut reaction oh this is so interesting this would make a great book
09:50what i do and this is what people always say about shopping online is don't do it immediately
09:57put it out of your head push it away um force yourself to forget about it does it come back
10:10does it keep
10:11surfacing do you keep returning to the idea does it keep nagging at you and i think the other thing
10:22that's really important is would you read this book would you be you know would you find this not as
10:33a writer
10:33but as a reader would this appeal to you would this have you know draw you in um and i
10:44think it's also
10:44important to know that there will be points along the way that you lose your confidence and you begin
10:54thinking look this isn't maybe as good an idea as i thought that is a natural part of the process
11:02and i don't think you want to give up the minute that you have that loss of faith
11:10um i think that's just the nature of starting from zero and yeah you kind of begin the process and
11:23maybe you hit a wall and you think i get i think i misunderstood the kind of appeal of that
11:32right right but i think that's a natural um i think it's a way that you're constantly testing
11:41the idea and and the fact is in the beginning you get started your guns blazing you feel like it's
11:50the
11:50best idea in the world and then something falls short and you feel like oh oh i guess i guess
11:59maybe it's
12:00not such a good idea and where it becomes important is to think do you then give up or do
12:09you push past
12:10that moment of doubt i think it's important to understand that moments of doubt are common
12:18and they aren't necessarily the sign that you should give up um you i think what you try to develop
12:29is the instinct to know the difference between the usual moment of doubt that we all have that
12:38happens when you encounter some off-putting kind of fact versus um this really isn't as good an idea
12:50as i thought right right and that's that's a challenge yeah i was just gonna ask is there
13:00something is there something anyone's told you or that you've come up with along the way
13:04anything you say to yourself during those moments that kind of snaps you out of a funk and gets you
13:11back
13:11on track or is it just you've done this and and you know that this is all part of the
13:16process
13:16well i think it's mostly experience i think i have learned through experience that it's very typical
13:27that at least a few times along the way you're gonna have your doubts yeah yeah um and
13:38usually i think the the best thing in those situations is give it a give it a beat wait
13:47see try to analyze why you're losing your nerve what is it is it that the idea is changing from
13:57what you
13:57first imagined changing is not bad you know you may initially feel like wait a minute this isn't the
14:05idea that i thought it was but that's not reason to give it up i think that's a reason to
14:12take a deep
14:13breath and say all right what i thought it was going to be isn't all that important it's more important
14:21to see what it really is yeah and yeah proceed with what it really is yeah absolutely pause and take
14:30that beat and you know dig deep and figure out am i losing nerve just because i'm feeling lazy which
14:38is
14:38a perfectly you know that happens all the time where you suddenly think you know what i don't really
14:44feel like writing a book this is a lot of work and maybe i just don't want to commit to
14:50such a big
14:51project that's i mean you may wait a beat and come out the other side and go you know what
14:59i really
15:00truly don't want to do a book or you might think i'm just feeling a little lazy right now right
15:05right
15:05right well i'd love to hear about your process because as you said you know you are you're a business
15:13onto yourself you're you're the boss um how do you what is your process like do you have set hours
15:20do
15:21you write when um you know when inspiration strikes how do you go about your day well my days are
15:29two very different uh profiles i write non-fiction so the initial part of my work is research
15:41interviewing people going to the library reading the source material and those are days in which
15:49i don't do any writing i'm a researcher i try to be pretty disciplined i try to have
15:57a sort of task list for each day so i'm not just flailing wildly and you know i try to
16:07think all right
16:08right now i'm researching this part of the topic and i'll just go down that road and pursue it till
16:18i
16:19get to the very end and and nail that down um so i try to be orderly keeping regular hours
16:28is less
16:28important to me than tasks like if i say i need to accomplish this task i don't care how many
16:37hours
16:38it takes me and you know i'm talking about having an ability to assess if a task is a day
16:46-long task if
16:47it's a week-long task you know i think you need to have some sense about that but i also
16:54like to be
16:54very open to the task growing um as i learn more about it it becomes amplified by what i'm learning
17:05so this goes on for months or years depending on the topic um i've spent several years researching
17:17most of my books um they've just required that kind of work and during that time i've not written anything
17:26because my approach is to do all the research and then begin writing i i don't think to me it
17:38doesn't make sense
17:39to begin writing if i haven't learned the whole subject yet so i i'm first a student before i become
17:48the teacher and i look at it very much in those terms that i'm a student studying this topic for
17:58however long it takes and then i become expert enough that i can become the teacher and teach the
18:06reader what i've learned when it comes time to start writing i have a very um specific process of typing
18:17up
18:17all my notes organizing them transferring them onto index cards that to me are a very manageable way of
18:27keeping information organized and then i start to write when i write i don't have a daily amount of time
18:41i have a daily number of words what's the magic number the magic number is a thousand words and i
18:50try to write
18:51a thousand words a day and i'm very precise about it uh and it's funny it reminds me of when
19:00i was a runner
19:01and i would say i'm gonna run three miles and i didn't run two and a half miles and i
19:08also didn't run
19:09three and a half miles i ran three miles and it mattered to me to have a goal to set
19:17it
19:17i would be in a you know there's like a an adrenaline flow that matches your your goal
19:27yeah you hit your goal and you know if i was having a day where i was really in the
19:34groove
19:35i would stay and write more of course i didn't force myself to leave my desk okay yeah but i've
19:44i felt
19:45that having a really specific goal for my productivity was incredibly important and helpful
19:56and it sort of demystified the nature of well how much work am i going to get yeah right i
20:07i think it's
20:07very hard to not have some metric that's very concrete to say today i'm going to write a thousand
20:17words rather than today i'm going to sit down and write my book well no you're not you're not
20:27yeah uh that's that's such great i was i was going to ask you how do you
20:31you know after years of gathering information how do you organize it how do you not look at this pile
20:39of stuff and get totally overwhelmed by it and there's there's the answer yeah well i think one
20:46of the things that for non-fiction writers um learning how to manage the physical nature of what you're
20:57working on the notes the newspaper clips the books it's a big part of being successful you need a system
21:09and there are a number of different systems i have one that i kind of developed more or less on
21:16my own
21:16and um whatever works for you i think is fine but knowing that you cannot have a big mess of
21:29information and then every five minutes scrambling frantically right yeah you try to find that quote or
21:38that you know newspaper clip i mean you need to be very orderly when you're dealing with four or five
21:48years worth of research now uh to bring up a controversial two letters ai are you uh do you see
21:59ai as a tool for
22:00helping writers uh collect uh collect and manage or are you like ai is is the devil
22:10i don't yet see um how ai would help in that process of organizing and and digesting information
22:29partly because you don't want a shortcut you want to read the whole interview get all the good parts
22:39out read the entire book that's relevant to your book pull out the important parts i don't trust
22:48ai i i don't want that pre-digestion i want to do the digesting i want to be the intelligence
22:58intelligence so you know there may down the road there may be applications that um i don't yet know
23:09but i think you know the thing that comes to mind immediately saying to ai summarize this book
23:16well to me that's very dangerous because i'm supposed to be summarizing the book for the reader
23:24if ai is summarizing it well then i might as well say to ai just go ahead and write my
23:31book i mean
23:33that's the you know where i i feel like it's a dangerous shortcut and i'm not anti-technology
23:43i feel like um you know in many ways it has opened the world of reporting um to be able
23:54to search the
23:55entire world to search the libraries of the world you know of course it's an incredible tool
24:03right now though i don't see the application for ai in the kind of work i'm doing you know the
24:13world
24:13has uh for journalists and writers has changed quite a bit uh ai is a part of that equation since
24:22uh you
24:23know since you started and i'm sure you get asked a lot from aspiring journalists and aspiring writers
24:29you know these days how do i get started like some of these like alt weeklies and things like that
24:37don't really exist anymore um and they're not really a means of making a living like what what's your
24:42advice when uh a young person asks you about that this is a really challenging question and when i wrote
24:50joyride i didn't intend it to be nostalgic and yet you know inadvertently
24:58it captures um an era that is largely gone or at the very least changed and as today i started
25:12at
25:12alt weeklies they are i would say 90 percent gone i mean when i was starting in my career every
25:21city
25:22had an alt weekly and every city had two newspapers and every newspaper had a sunday magazine you know all
25:30of the places that i began my work i wrote for a lot of women's magazines i wrote for publications
25:39like
25:40outside and that you know are now a bare ghost of what they were what do i tell young journalists
25:49i mean
25:50it's it's such a tricky thing because i don't want to be negative i don't want to be pessimistic
25:57but most of the advice i used to give to people is not applicable anymore it's not actionable people
26:07can't go get a job at an alt weekly and that was very typically what i would say to people
26:13go to an alt weekly or go to a medium-sized city get a job at the newspaper in a
26:20small medium-sized city
26:22and write and write and write and write so i still believe the most important thing is to write as
26:28much
26:28as you possibly can the free platforms like substack which are often pointed to as the what has sprung up
26:42in the absence of alt weeklies and so forth i actually don't think are the best place for a young
26:51writer to get started i think it's really important to work with an editor to get edited to work to
27:00improve
27:01to be vetted to learn how to you know respond to assignments um the one thing i can say that
27:12has sprung up
27:14as the shrinking of the alt weekly and so forth those worlds have shrunk is that every publication now
27:25has a very big website and lots and lots of room on their websites to be filled and that is
27:36where i see
27:37them bringing in young writers that you know they the landscape has really changed and when i think of
27:46the new yorker you know the new yorker has a fixed number of pages in the print magazine
27:51and those are fought over you know tooth and nail right but then you've got this website that's so much
28:01bigger and it's sort of infinitely expandable and that is a path in that um i think is really worth
28:13for young writers to go in through that door and you know contribute to the website or angle to get
28:23a position on the websites and and to work their way up from there right right yeah it's a tough
28:33landscape
28:33i'm not gonna lie i think it is a challenging um transformation that has made it harder to figure
28:45out how to get your toe in in the door you know uh well speaking of the new yorker i
28:51watched this
28:52documentary about your time there called adaptation and it sounds like seems like you've done well you
28:58you've you've you've come out of your criminal past so uh so well done yes thank you i'm very i
29:05feel
29:06much better now do you when you have you had the experience of people like thinking that that really
29:13happened to you the the yeah i i would say in the beginning when the movie first came out uh
29:20there
29:21were people who didn't get the joke and didn't understand um the part of the movie that was
29:29completely fictitious and fantastical and you know this sort of fever dream of a hollywood writer um
29:40and in the very beginning i was a little worried that people would actually make the mistake of thinking
29:47thinking that had really happened yeah it took some time but i think you know the movie came out 20
30:00years ago and you know it's become sort of iconic yeah the commentary on sort of post met postmodern
30:09um filmmaking and i would say by and large people sort of get it right now did you when when
30:19it was
30:19pitched to you or when you i don't know what the process was like if you saw a script first
30:24but did
30:25you get it immediately or you were like what is this no i didn't get it immediately all i knew
30:32was
30:32i mean my reaction was i cannot risk being portrayed this way because people are gonna
30:41you know think it's true and i didn't i in a way it didn't matter to me that it was
30:53in the part of the film that becomes fictional because i just thought people are going to see this
30:59and make an assumption that it really is true and so my first reaction was you you know you can't
31:08use
31:08my name um you're gonna have to just use the pseudonym i can't do this and they were very
31:16disappointed and said look everyone's using their real name all the people in the film are real
31:22and it's part of the it's part of the joke you know yeah yeah the the whole idea of the
31:31film
31:31and i kept saying no no no no no no you know this is just professionally too big of a
31:40risk and then
31:41um for reasons that i still don't totally understand i changed my mind and said okay i'll do it that's
31:51amazing well i mean and part of your the word risk i mean besides the the time and energy that
31:59you put
31:59into all your work you know you're not writing super straightforward reported pieces like you are
32:07famous for some first lines that make your head snap when you read them for the first time
32:14um are was the first time you wrote an opening like that was it was your stomach in a knot
32:22like
32:22how is this going to be received or were you always confident um you know it's interesting as you're
32:29saying that i'm trying to think what would i consider my first really good lead and i would have to
32:36kind of go back and really look through my work i've always cared a lot about my leads can i
32:45can i read
32:45one of them to you absolutely so uh this is uh your lead for uh the american man if colin
32:55duffy and i were
32:56to get married we would have matching superhero notebooks and that's your story about following a 10 year
33:04old boy right yes exactly and i mean that's an example where i wrote the lead and i should have
33:15been
33:15nervous but i wasn't i wrote it and i felt like it was exactly what i wanted to write and
33:25i sort of
33:27plunged in and did the piece turned it in through i think pure denial i didn't let myself get nervous
33:37about it where an editor could have been perfectly within their rights to come back to me and say this
33:43is appalling you know you're a grown woman talking about being married to a 10 year old boy
33:50um and i i think that i have a certain ability to sort of separate myself from the kind of
34:03anxiety that
34:04you might have turning in a piece with a with a a lead that might stop you in your tracks
34:12right right
34:13well as a reader of yours i'm glad i'm glad that uh that duality in your brain exists because uh
34:21it's it's it's always amazing reading of one of your pieces um i wondered if we could uh slide into
34:31the speed round of this conversation of course so i'm going to hit you with a couple of quick questions
34:38the first one being what's better the book or the movie oh the book okay got it good but you
34:48knew i
34:48was gonna say yeah yeah uh what is a habit that you are happy to have and one that you
34:55wish you could ditch
34:58um i'm happy to have um my discipline i'm not sure if that's a habit but it's a way of
35:09being of being
35:10disciplined um i would like to give up my habit of chewing huge amounts of gum while i'm writing
35:24do you stick it under your desk or what's the problem with too much gum you know it's funny
35:30i've read recently that it supposedly really helps you concentrate and that you know kids are given
35:38gum when they're taking standardized tests and so forth so maybe there's nothing wrong with it yeah
35:43but it felt like an addiction that i was throwing huge amounts of gum and i thought oh my god
35:52i'm
35:52really like if i don't have gum i'm gonna kind of panic and need to go to the dealer and
35:59get gum
36:01well what's your brand i mean maybe if you say at the uh truckle show up at your house yeah
36:06orbit
36:07orbit orbit okay you heard it peppermint orbit people susan orlean needs your help um
36:16what's uh what's your favorite way to turn off your brain doing something physical cooking gardening
36:26going for a walk going to the gym and even something routine like ironing my clothes i find
36:36just doing something physical i can zone out and i don't perseverate on
36:46things that i'm trying to write or things i'm trying to figure out i actually get very emptied out and
36:55and i'm not thinking so it's it's hugely relaxing is there anything that you like to watch or listen
37:03to that might uh surprise someone that this is a a noted new york new yorker writer author of award
37:12-winning
37:12books anything any any silly weird things that you like that people might not expect well i fall asleep
37:21each night to uh true crime podcasts oh okay um my husband thinks i'm slowly gonna become a you know
37:32a uh serial killer right i find it very relaxing
37:40okay um and so you know i'm listening to this story of you know the husband who
37:47stabs the wife and sets her body on fire and i'm like slowly drifting to sleep it's very very
37:54soothing you must have some interesting dreams well i'm sometimes worried i rarely remember my dreams so
38:02let's keep it that way what you're capable of i know i mean i have a feeling it would give
38:12me really
38:12bad dreams but i don't remember my dreams very often so so far so good finally uh
38:19uh does listening to an audio book count as reading absolutely absolutely uh you know
38:30storytelling originated as an oral form and writing down um stories is really a much more modern invention
38:42uh listening to an audio book uh listening to an audio book is different from reading but it absolutely
38:50counts as um intake of a book there there is no question in my mind and i've become an audio
39:02book
39:02lover uh and i will say i i know the differences i know the ways in which
39:11reading affords you a certain exposure to the actual words that you don't get yeah when you hear it
39:21audibly but i have 100 percent taken in these books and anyone who reads my books as an audio book
39:32i feel that they've in a way heard it in the most natural way imaginable which is me telling them
39:39a story
39:40yeah that's great i love that uh well so speaking of that uh i want to remind everyone that joyride
39:48um is out now and what's what's the best way for people to kind of keep up with you um
39:56are you
39:57active i know you're on instagram are you active on that is that a good way to keep up with
40:01you yeah
40:02well i have a sub stack um called wordy bird and i'm on there pretty regularly uh and i have
40:12my website
40:13which is just susanorlean.com and i i am on instagram um with some regularity you know i'm i'm i
40:23check it all
40:24the time i post when the mood strikes um but i'm definitely there and on facebook well susan it's
40:33been so uh great talking to you and uh so great reading your work over the years i can't wait
40:40now
40:41i can finally pick this back up and finish it so i'm looking very forward to that well this is
40:46such a
40:47pleasure it was really nice talking to you dan
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