The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

"They want the secret, and the secret is little and often over the long haul," says Dan John, author of several books on strength and fitness, most recently The Fitness Forge: Master Coaching Tools that Build Real Strength. Today we've got a bit of a curve ball, a backdoor slider, but not really. It's Dan John, who is something of a Swiss army knife of wisdom and kindness and strength and conditioning. He's been a long time strength coach and a master communicator of how to get real-life strong, not influencer, flash-in-the-pan strong, the kind of strong that allows you to fill out your shirt, carry all the groceries in one go, and shovel the driveway without leaving yourself in traction for four days. I've recommended his books many times on this show and in newsletters, and his approach to strength very much rhymes with writing, so that's a big reason why I wanted to invite him on to talk it out. You can visit danjohnuniversity.com [http://danjohnuniversity.com/] to learn more about him  and to buy books like the Easy Strength Omnibook, Easy Strength for Fat Loss, his two Armor Building Formula books and his latest The Fitness Forge: Master coaching tools that build real strength. The real crux of easy strength is that it echoes what Percy Cerutty, the Australian running coach, had his runners do in the 1950s, and it's an approachable system that doesn't feel like you've been put through a wood chipper. I spent most of my 30s training like I was a juiced up bodybuilder, hobbling around most days with that deep, bone ache. As I've aged, training in that manner is unfeasible and, well, fucking stupid, plus easy strength is awesome for running, which I'm doing quite a lot these days. So Dan John has been a champion discus thrower coming up on the coattails of the great throwers of the 1970s, guys like Brian Oldfield and Mac Wilkins and Peter Shmock. His lifting approach has always been geared around utility, not aesthetics, by and large. He has written many books like Mass Made Simple, 40 Years with a Whistle, Can You Go, Never Let Go, and several others. Some are only available on the big A, others are available as PDFS through his website. They imbue a sense of possibility, that things are achievable, and that little and often over the long haul  is doable and repeatable. If you're into fads, Dan is not for you and he often injects so much personal anecdote and wisdom from a life of nearly 70 years into his work and his podcast, the Dan John University Podcasts where he answers listener questions every week. He's very centering for me. Even hearing him talk through something as simple as his daily pirate map, which is a collection of daily habits, and merely hearing him so often articulate that defrags my computer, if that makes any sense. So in this conversation, we talk about: * Parasocial relationships * Marvel and Greek heroes * The spiderweb effect of his brain * Open Culture * Little and often over the long haul * The secret * Being a slave to habits * Parallels between lifting and writing * Collecting the links * Getting small, easy wins out of the way * Inspiration is for amateurs * Having skin in the game * And community making us great You'll find dan @coachdanjohn on instagram and of course visit danjohnuniversity.com [http://danjohnuniversity.com/] to see if his books or his inner circle is right for you.

"It all has to come from within. So we each have to be in conversation with ourselves and with the work. It's really a relationship, not a project," says Ramona Ausubel, author of Unstuck: A Writer's Guide. Today we have Ramona Ausubel, author of Unstuck: A Writer's Guide. It's published by Tin House. Ramona's curriculum vitae is pretty dope. She's the author of the novels The Last Animal, Sons and Daughters of East and Plenty and No One is Here Except All of Us and the craft book Unstuck: 101 Doorways Leading from the Blank Page to the Last Page. Had a TON of fun with this one and it's a craft bomb. Ramona's work has appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, The New York Times, Electric Literature, and The Paris Review online. She has taught with Tin House, Bread Loaf, and she's a professor at Colorado State University. This is a really fun and really crafty chat. We talk about: * Why people want to be writers in the first place * The people who stick around * Coming up with ways through * It's a relationship not a project * No writing is ever wasted * Nobody needs a kind-of-written book * Submission clubs * The offering is the action * Community * Shame, doubt, and envy * Lifelong process of voice * Inviting in other influences * When querying asking 'who will you be?' * Platform You can learn more about Ramona at ramonaausubel.com [http://ramonausubel.com/] and follow her on Instagram @ramonaausubel. If you like this episode, I would definitely check out: * Eps. 48 and 207 with Roy Peter Clark * Ep. 49 with Dinty W. Moore * Ep. 50 with Ted Conover

"I say this all the time, and I'll say it again: the truth is a block of wood, and I know the sculpture I carve out of that block of wood looks different than the sculpture my mother carves out of that block of wood, right? But the truth — the block of wood — is what what happens, but the art we make out of that is up to us," says Isaac Fitzgerald, author of American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed. We've got Isaac Fitzgerald returning to the podcast. He's going to be at Powells on May 29, 7 p.m., in convo with Lidia Yuknavitch, and I'll likely be heading up the 5 to photo bomb them because Isaac has a new book out called American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed. It is published by Knopf. Great talk. We were buzzin', man. In any case, you know Isaac maybe from his bookish appearances on The Today Show, and he's also the author of the brilliant memoir Dirtbag, Massachusetts, a coming of age story. I liken American Rambler to a coming of middle-age story and as Isaac walks and drives in the footsteps of one John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed. It's a book that deals with that squishy time as we crest into our forties and reckon with mortality as well as the greater disconnection we're collectively experiencing, which is why Isaac set out, largely on foot, to put his phone down and live in the world. His essay on walking for The Guardian, linked up in the show notes, very much informed and even catalyzed American Rambler. So Isaac is a pretty special dude. I love the posture he takes in the world. When I had lunch with Lidia before her live appearance on the show, we talked about how Isaac had jumped into the comments on a couple of our Instagram posts and Lidia asked me, "Is Isaac coming to this?" I said, "I don't think so. I mean he's in New York." "It would totally be like him to just show up." And I kinda love that idea. I want to make more of that effort myself. So in this episode we talk about: * Putting the phone down * Living in the world * Walking 20,000 steps a day * The tension between building community and withdrawing into solitude * The scaffolding of the story * How he was late to the arc of his own story * Stories become what they're supposed to be * How the truth is like a block of wood * The black dog as literary device * First lines * And how On The Road informed American Rambler Isaac can be found on Instagram at isaac.fitzgerald and you can join his Substack list Walk It Off and learn more about him at his website isaacfitzgerald.net [http://isaacfitzgerald.net/]. He's also collaborated with the brilliant cartoonist Wendy McNaughton on two books about tattoos, Pen and Ink and Knives and Ink. Great stuff. If you like this episode, I would definitely check out Isaac's first appearance on Ep. 353. I'd also check out: * Ep. 100 with Mary Karr * Episode 200 with Nick Flynn * Ep. 358: Erica J. Berry * Ep. 472 with Melissa Febos * Ep. 503 with Jason Brown

"This is also me saying here's a literary reading of the universe through physics. There's a way you can read The Edge of Space-Time as me  doing close-reading for a few 100 pages. I'm close-reading equations. I'm close-reading Dirac. I'm close-reading Hawking and Ellis, but it's all different versions of a literary practice," says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie (Pantheon Books). Coming at you at the speed of sound, CNFers, with Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who is the author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred and her latest book The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie. It's published by Pantheon Books. She is an associate professor of physics and core faculty member in women's and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Her work lives at the intersection of particle physics, cosmology, and astrophysics and she's also a theorist of Black feminist science studies. Her book is accessible, for sure, but it's mind-bendy and it strikes me as the kind of book you want to read twice. One, it's good company, and two, the material she translates is really difficult to get your head around, but that's the nature of the quantum mechanics, and general relativity, and particle physics, and how the hell did we get here in the first place? Gah! So Chanda talks about: * The publishing business in conversations she had with CNF Pod alum Keith O'Brien * Writing for Black and queer audiences * The different selves who approach the page * Paying attention to acknowledgements * Epigraph rights and how they set the vibe * The fork in the road researchers face when they write a pop science book * Physicist brain * A literary reading of the universe * The world keeps happening while you're writing * Understanding metaphors * And what Newton and Einstein might talk about if they sat down at a bar together Be sure you visit Chanda's website chanda.science and follow her on Instagram at chanda.prescod.weinstein. This episode will pair well with: * Episode 103: Persistent, Constant, Careful Work with Dennis Overbye * Episode 111: The Empowering and Exciting Nature of Film with Emer Reynolds * Episode 307: Greg Brennecka * Episode 334: Katrina Miller * Episode 395: "The Six," Mini-Deadlines and the Twang with Loren Grush

"I'm very comfortable not writing perfectly. I think a lot of writers have difficulty writing because they can be such good editors that there's almost this like, inherent need of sometimes rereading the same chapter over and over again and trying to make it perfect. And so I think, for me, I'm  very comfortable with the idea of, like, let me just get stuff on paper," says Mary Cain, author of This is Not About Running: A Memoir. It's Mary Cain! She's @runmarycain on Instagram and she serves on the board of The Army of Survivors and the founder of the nonprofit Atalanta NYC which employs professional female runners to serve as mentors to girls in underserved part so the city.  For a certain subset of people they're gonna be like, Who dat? To them, I say, Mary was a running prodigy in the 2010s, the fastest high school girl in America and one of the fastest across all ages before the age of 18 in events like the 800 meters and the 1,500. She was recruited by the now disgraced Alberto Salazar for the Nike Oregon Project where she was physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused by Salazar in a win-at-all-costs culture. In 2019, she published a video op-ed with the New York Times that brought down the Nike Oregon Project and Alberto Salazar. It lit a fire and this book is also lighting a firestorm as well. This was a really fun conversation. I was working in specialty running retail when Mary exploded onto the scene, so it was just really cool to chat with her. Part of the appeal for her coming on this show was to talk about the writing, which she's not really going to experience on this book tour, which will primarily be on the running shows. She was very generous with her time and we talked for almost 90 minutes on topics like: Her love of Hemingway * Procrastination * Writing in the present tense * The benefits of reading when you're writing * Finishing as a skill * Not writing perfectly * Sticking to artificial deadlines * Seasonality in writing * Support networks * Starting from pure anger * The monetization of fake advocacy * And the one sentence she wrote that I wish I wrote Mary is a medical student now at STanford University and basically runs for fun. This episode will pair well with my conversations with Maggie Mertens, Christine Yu, Lauren Fleshman and Renee Hess. I had a real blast talking to her and I think you'l enjoy as well. Parting shot on my marathon experience, but for now, here's the super cool Mary Cain.