A Conversation with Glorious Owens

I had the honor of attending a POPS The Club meeting at Venice High School a couple of weeks ago. If you don't know about this organization, then let me introduce you. POPS -- aka The Pain of the Prison System -- was created to support young people who have a loved one who is incarcerated. Did you know that 2.7 million children have a parent in prison? To think that a child can visit but cannot touch his mother or father is heart-wrenching.

Co-founders Amy Friedman and her husband Dennis Danziger are deeply woven into the fabric of our storytelling community in LA. They started the first club at Venice High School in 2013 (in Dennis's classroom) and have begun to expand across Los Angeles and other states. POPS has even caught the attention of the White House!

POPS members are encouraged to write and share their stories, many of which have been compiled into published anthologies. Below you'll find an interview with POPS member Glorious Owens, a remarkable young writer who is shining her light.

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GLORIOUS OWENS is a soon-to-be-graduating senior at Venice High School where she has participated as a member of POPS The Club. She's from South Central LA and is one of eight kids. As a writer, she recently won first place in the Beverly Hills Literary Society contest, and one of her essays will also be performed at the “Street Angels” gala evening at the Kirk Douglas Theater. Glorious will be attending El Camino College this fall where she'll be studying to become a social worker, and South Central Scholars will be mentoring and guiding her through college and university.

To read her prize-winning essay, click here!

POPS The Club is devoted to enhancing the lives of those students who have been impacted by the pain of the prison system (aka POPS) -- those with incarcerated loved ones and those who have been incarcerated themselves. Spear-headed by Executive Director Amy Friedman, POPS establishes and sustains high-school clubs that offer students community and emotional support as well as opportunities to publish the writings and artwork they create through the club.

Karin: What is your relationship to POPS?

Glorious: My relationship to POPS is that my father, my grandmother, my cousins -- almost half of my family, maybe a little bit more -- have been incarcerated at one point or another, on my mom's and my dad's side. And some of them have been affiliated with drug addiction. My mom's side - her dad and her mom were drug addicts. On my dad's side - his dad and his mom were drug addicts. So all my life -- all 18 years -- I saw things. It was like a vision of a movie. You think none of this could happen in someone's life, but it does. It actually happens and what do you do with it?

Like what? What are some of the visuals in your movie?

Basically I have seen people selling drugs, face to face. Somebody in my family getting caught for it and sent to jail. Someone getting beat up, jumped. Seeing my grandma in jail, going to visit her. Going through the process of literally taking almost everything off and getting searched. It feels degrading and makes you never want to go there. And my dad - I had never seen my dad in prison - but every other year it seemed like he would go back for something. He would always clean himself up and then go back. And my parents would say, he was 'on vacation, vacation, vacation' because I was little. But I knew better. I was like, why would he go on vacation for one to two years and not come see his kid?

They didn't take you to see him?

No, because they thought I didn't know!

But you went to see your grandma.

I went to go see my grandma, because we were super close -- we were like two peas in a pod. We always hung out. She was basically my babysitter and I was always with her no matter what the time was. When she went, I was one of the first people to know, because me and my grandma were that close. And she knew I understood what was going on, she knew I wasn't a slow child. And she just told me what happened, “Okay, I'm going for this, and I'm gonna be gone for a while. Just make sure you send me mail and come see me,” and all of that stuff. So it was one of those traumatizing experiences, “Now my grandma is going, like what's going on?” And it was continuous blows.

Someone that I love is getting taken from me. Now I have to go back, and someone I love is being taken from me again. I have to keep going, I have to keep pushing.

Keep pushing what?

Keep pushing like... they want you to succeed. Everybody wants you to succeed. But they keep doing stuff bad, so why do I have to succeed when you can't even do it? It's like, “What's the point? You guys aren't even gonna be here to see it. So why should I have to do anything?” It was stupid, I don't know why I would think that it was a really good excuse to not do anything.

And then you continue the cycle.

It's like... okay, I have to keep fighting, I have to keep doing homework. I'm gonna be somebody when I grow up. I'm gonna make sure everybody's alright, they don't have to worry about money. It always seemed like we were worrying about money. Anything that had to do with it ended up around money. So it was like... okay, I'm gonna be somebody who can make money and make sure that everybody in my family is okay, everybody's set. I don't have to worry about anything. But it felt like I was always the one who cleaned up the mess. Even though they don't think that, they think they did it on their own. Of course they think that!

But you always have someone who helped you get somewhere, even though you worked toward it yourself. Somebody helped you along the way to get where you are. Somebody who told you to get your life together... somebody who helps you, literally sits you down right there as you do your work. Or a passerby who happens to give you a hello that gonna make you smile for the rest of your day. It was always one of those things -- always being positive, always knowing how to help somebody. You never know what somebody's going to be going through.

So that's basically how I was, always a smile. There's no reason not to have a smile! Even if you're sad.

What gave you the motivation to rise above?

I didn't want to be like them, at all. I know jail is not for me. I know that I don't want to be on the streets. I know I don't want any type of pain to be inflicted on my family -- emotional, mental -- I don't want any of that. What I have to go through, I don't want them to ever have to go through. I don't want to have to add on to anything. It's already enough.

When it comes to POPS, how has it helped you?

It gave me a voice to whatever I'm thinking. Like how I'm talking to you now... I couldn't do this last year, at all. I don't tell anybody my business. I used to never even speak about anything. And then I came to Mr. Danziger's class and he told me about POPS, and he had us write stories about our lives. And that's when I was like, “I actually get to tell my story? Are you sure?” And he was like, “Yeah, you get to tell your own story. Write down everything that happened in your head and everything that you know happened.” And not be judged for it. Not have somebody tell you, “Are you sure that actually happened to you? Are you positive? That's not how it went.”

Everybody has their own story to tell, and everybody has their own perspective on it. But it was my perspective. This is what I felt; this is what happened when I see it. And people get to read that and understand. And you have people in POPS who understand what you went through because they have gone through the same situation. And so that's why it was a very good experience for me.

Was there anything challenging about it?

Just writing the story. And actually telling people my story, that was the hard part. Because it was like, “I don't want people to really know about me. That's none of their business. This was my story, but do I really want to put it out there?” That was the main thing. I've never been big on talking about myself but now I get to talk about myself full force. So what do I do? I was like, “Okay, I'll give you a little bit.” And Mr. Danziger was like, “No, I want more. I want you to actually put your whole life on the paper.” And that's what I did. It was my life and other peoples' lives. My mom would tell me stories about how her and my dad met, or how they would play basketball together,

I was playing basketball from elementary school all the way up to my freshman year, and I still play with my dad. Sports was the main affiliation with our family. In order for you to go somewhere you have to do a sport. And so this was something that I didn't have to do a sport for! I didn't have to work out. I can actually do this and get noticed for it -- besides having to do volleyball or basketball or run track. So it was a big eye-opener for me. I didn't expect this. I didn't even really expect anyone to notice me. I've always been a team player, all these team sports, team, team, team. I was always doing something for somebody. I was always fighting for somebody - for something, for your school, for a friend. You want to win because it's what all of us want. And this was something that was just for me. Even though it's technically for somebody - it's for POPS. They helped me. So I'm giving something back.

But it's your story. 

So what did you realize after the fact, in writing down your story, that you didn't know before?

There's always gonna be one or two people who have gone through the same thing and don't know what to do. If they're in that situation in that moment and they see my story, they might go the opposite direction. Instead of doing what their friends or somebody else told them to do, they'll take the right road. I want people to understand that they're not alone in whatever they're going through. They're not alone. Even though they may think, “You'll never understand my story.” Everyone has a different story, but there's always going to be a similarity to your story.

What about the personal aspect?

It's still one of things, like, I don't like you knowing! Because now when people see me, you see my story, not me. It's like, “That's how you are, how can you change that fast? How can you be so positive? You're faking it.” That's how I feel like people see me. I can tell you my story, but I'm a completely different person from my story. I'll do my best to help anybody in need in every possible way that I can. It's like, “How can you go from this background to this?” I don't know how to tell people the transition; I just tell you my story.

Isn't part of your story how you changed -- how you grew through it -- how you've transformed and become the person that you are? Or is that still evolving in terms of what you've written?

I feel like it's still evolving because all that stuff is still me. I feel like they see that part, and that's the bad part. That's still me. But I'm still pushing forward to that other me, the one I want to be.

That's a beautiful story, I'd love to read that.

To learn more about POPS The Club, visit popstheclub.com

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A Conversation with Shelly Peiken

My conversation this month with multi-platinum, Grammy nominated songwriter Shelly Peiken sheds an inspiring light on what it means to create and be an artist in this digital age. Shelly is best known for writing the #1 hit songs “What a Girl Wants” for Christina Aguilera and 'I'm a Bitch' sung by Meredith Brooks. Her memoir Confessions of a Serial Songwriterrecently hit the shelves. Read the full interview below!

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Shelly Peiken is a multi-platinum Grammy nominated songwriter who is best known for her #1 hits “What a Girl Wants” and “Come On Over Baby.” She earned a Grammy nomination for the song “Bitch” recorded by Meredith Brooks. She's had hundreds of songs placed on albums, and in TV and film. Shelly is a contributor to The Huffington Post and is well known in the music industry as a mentor, panelist, consultant and guest speaker.

Shelly's book Confessions of a Serial Songwriter chronicles her journey from a young girl falling under the spell of magical songs to writing hits of her own. It's about growing up, the creative process, the highs and the lows, the conflicts that arise between motherhood and career success, the divas, the egos and the back stabbers, but also the lovely people she's found along the way. It's about the challenge of getting older and staying relevant in a rapidly changing and youth-driven world.

She is a New Yorker at heart who enjoys her life in Los Angeles with her husband, composer Adam Gorgoni and their daughter, Layla.

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Karin: How has the experience been for you to release your memoir into the world?

Shelly: This is a first for me, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a story I needed to tell and it's been very cathartic. Everyone asks me, “How's the book been doing? Is it selling?“ I have no idea. I'm not asking, because it wouldn't change how I'm putting one foot in front of the other. I'm getting enough reaction and enough response that it encourages me and makes me feel, even if it's just a small community -- and I think it's bigger than just the small community -- even if it's just them, I feel like I made a difference.

I don't think it's just about songwriting. It's certainly not about songwriting “how-to's,” although that's sprinkled within the pages. But I really think it's more about life and getting older, and fitting in, and finding what to do next. It feels good to focus the conversation on those kinds of things once in a while.

People will message me or I'll see the reviews on Amazon, and people will say, “This isn't just about songwriting, this is about life.” It's not like I sat down to write a book about life, but I guess what I was feeling had to do with that. I don't know if I could have planned it that way and perhaps if I did plan it that way, I wouldn't have been able to hit my target. I think a lot of my creativity is to not think too much. Even in my songwriting career, if somebody said, “Write a song for Whitney Houston,” there were a lot of writers who could listen to her record, know her high note, know her low note, what vowels she sounded best on, was she legato. I could never do that analysis. I sat down and tried to feel, you know, what might she be feeling. Or maybe I would just write a song because I wanted to write a song and then ask myself, who could do this?

So I just wanted to tell this story, but I'm so happy when somebody says to me, “This helped me with where I am in my life.” I think that those feelings came from more mature readers, let's say 40 and up. And then the younger readers would message me and say, “This was so helpful in knowing how to navigate the landscape.” So I feel like I did two things peripherally, without sitting down and planning to do it that way.

What are the similarities and/or differences between writing a three-minute song and a 288-page memoir? I imagine both are very personal.

The book was way more personal for me, because I wasn't trying to get somebody else to say that the book was theirs. When I started out as a songwriter -- I was much younger and thought, well, maybe I'll write my own record someday -- it was very personal then, because I was writing songs that were mini-memoir. And I thought, maybe I'll write my own record and these are the songs I'll sing. Carly Simon was my idol, and she still is my idol, because she was never writing a song that Bette Midler could sing. I mean, maybe she could, but she was writing songs that were reflections of her life. But as I got more into the business and I wanted to make a living in songwriting, I had to think about, well, who's going to record these? I mean, sometimes I could write something personal and somebody else would relate to it and record it, but it got to be a little bit more about craft.

The book was just a big spewing about how I was feeling over the course of my songwriting career and how there were certain things that changed in the music industry over the course of the last five years that sort of stopped me in my tracks. I started asking myself, am I having fun anymore? And if I'm not having fun, then what do I do next? I've been doing this, it feels like my whole life. I am not ready to retire - I mean, I'm coming up on the age that I could - but I don't want to. I want to keep being creative; I want to try new things. But technology had changed the process a lot, in that you didn't have to pick up an instrument in order to be a songwriter anymore. You could just turn on your computer and find some app that helped you put sound bites together that could qualify as a lyric. And you didn't have to play an instrument because you could program things on a computer. I was trying not to put a value judgment to these aspects but just saying, how does it make me feel?

This made it easy for tens of thousands of people to become songwriters. So I was competing with all these people and a lot of the competition didn't really have to do with how remarkable a song it was, but what your relationships were with the gatekeepers of projects of artists who were making songs. I was certainly getting older and so many of the songs have to do with partying and going out to the clubs, and did I care about this stuff anymore? So if I was feeling pushed to the side a little bit, it wasn't my imagination. I just didn't know how to continue. So writing the book helped me find my way through that. I didn't know that maybe I would find these answers as I was writing the book. I just thought, I need to tell this story!

Writing the book sounds like it was a transformative journey. Can you describe how the process changed you?

I was forgetting that I was special. Everybody's special, but when I look back Karin, at songs I was writing 20 years ago, I think to myself, wow, what a gem. When I look back to songs I've written over the past five years, I'm bored to death. And I think that's because I started trying to do what I thought people wanted to hear. I think I started following, instead of just saying, what do I really want to say? I think I started second-guessing myself and trying to be more fashionable. I don't want to write those songs anymore. I'm 50-something and I'm trying to think of what does a 20-year-old want to hear? I wasn't excited about it and it's not going to resonate. I think we have to be true to ourselves. I know that sounds really cliché, but we really have to be true to ourselves. I just don't think any of that stuff works.

There is a value to -- like if I'm given a brief for a movie and they say, 'It has to be this, it has to be that' and they give me boundaries and a storyline. I listen to it because if I'm going to write something for that, indeed it has to be about what they tell me it has to be about. But then you have to put it on the back burner and say, okay now forget about it, how do you feel? And I think I lost touch with who I was, and what I started doing this for.

So by writing your story, did you get back in touch with it?

I think I'm getting back in touch with it, because I'm following my instincts now. Rather than if somebody calls and says, “Get in the studio with so-and-so, she's got a record deal.” Two years ago that would have mattered - and it does make a difference, because if someone has a record deal they're half way there - your song has a better shot at making the record. But I want to listen to their demo and say, does this move me? I was not paying as much attention to, is my own material moving me? Because I was jealous of, or envious of, maybe a colleague who is able to just write this song that followed that algorithm and became a hit. I can't do that. And I had to respect who I was, and maybe I'm not my colleague. I can wish I wrote that song she wrote, but I have to be able to recognize that that's maybe a song I can't write.

When I go back and look at the few songs of mine that changed my life, I wasn't following any formula. And then I wrote 50 songs that I didn't like, and those are the ones I was chasing something. But the ones that really made a difference, when I think about it now, were the ones where I was being really, really personal and true to myself.

I wondered after I wrote the book if I would ever write another song again, and in fact, I am. I was in the studio last week with Idina Menzel. I'm going to this beautiful songwriting retreat in Bordeaux in two weeks hosted by Miles Copland in his beautiful castle. I'm indulging myself a lot more. I'm getting into rooms with people I'm interested in, I want to write with. I don't want to be one of 50 people who are called to get in with an artist who's coming into town that week and I'm allocated three hours to work with them on a Wednesday. We used to spend a whole week with an artist. We used to go for hikes and take walks. And songs would come out of conversations. So it's a story about how organic it used to be. And now it just seems very contrived and analyzed.

Did you go hiking with Idina Menzel?

No hikes. But we talked for a good two or three hours before we wrote. The song we wrote definitely came out of the conversation we were having.

You know, I get together with some young songwriters now and they get in the room at 12 and they're like, “Well, I gotta be somewhere at 3.” It's like having sex, really fast, without any foreplay.

So yes, at least we talked about our lives. And she said this “word” - and I said, “Well there's our song.”

Can you say what the word was?

I'm not gonna tell you.

The reason why people feel like there's no time to hike anymore... The last many years, Karin, I know you must feel this too, with social media and with so multi-tasking, there's just not as much time as we used to have to relax and indulge in a concept or an idea. So I just feel like I've been rushed. I mean I sit down in front of my computer and start doing one task and then I get a little 'ding!' and then I'm like, oh, what was that? And I forget the first task I sat down for. It's ridiculous. We're so extended. We just don't have as much time in general unless we make a choice, a decision to do that. I think every recording artist and everyone who's writing a book, we're so challenged by all of the spots we have to touch during the day. We gotta make sure we tweet; we gotta make sure we're on Instagram. I mean, who can fucking write a song? Who has time to go on a hike?

When I started writing this book, I had been put in touch with an agent who was not a young agent. She had been around. She read a couple chapters and she said, “Look, you have a voice, Shelly, but you are not a well-known name outside of your songwriting world. You're gonna have to brand yourself. How many Twitter followers do you have?”

I had none, I wasn't on Twitter.

“What do you got going on Instagram?”

I wanted to go, are you kidding me? And I knew she knew how absurd this was, but she's also in a business. And she knows if she was gonna represent me (and she wasn't my agent) she was gonna have to go around to publishers who were gonna ask her the same question. And that is because if you have 100,000 Twitter followers who adore you and you tweet about your book, half of them are gonna buy it regardless of what it's about. So this is business.

I found that absurd, but as I thought about it more and more, I accepted it. And I wound up doing the things she said I should do. I got my website together, I branded myself “a serial songwriter,” I made a Facebook page, I got people to 'like' it, I started an Instagram thing, I got my Twitter thing going. I did all those things.

Do you think it helped?

I don't think it helped get the publishing deal I got actually, ironically. What it did help me find are my people, who cared about the same things that I wrote about, for sure. Because I'd be up at night and I would do a blog, something that was trending or something I cared about in the songwriting community. And people would 'like' my page and they would have conversations with me about it. So it helped me find my audience. It helped me engage people who were interested in my subject, who would buy my book.

I wound up being published by a company called Hal Leonard, which does a lot of books on music, many “how-to” books. But they had recently started an imprint called Backbeat that was doing memoir for musicians. And I thought, well, bingo.

I know you traveled a long, winding road to get that publishing deal.

I sort of let go and said, “I surrender control.” I just know I want to put this out. I don't know how it's gonna happen. And if no one will help me, I'll do it myself.

And then...

The book The Alchemist, you know it? It's all about believing in something strongly enough that the universe conspires with you to make it happen, but you have to believe in it strongly enough or else the universe won't help you. That book to me said it all. Because there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I needed to do this, and that I wasn't going to.

To learn more about Shelly Peiken, visit www.shellypeiken.com

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A Conversation with Adam Skolnick

Have you ever wanted to write someone's life story, perhaps one other than your own? The interview this month with my dear friend Adam Skolnick offers some great insight into the creative process behind his first narrative non-fiction book.

An experienced journalist, Adam was covering an international freediving competition in the Bahamas when the unthinkable happened. Renowned freediver Nicholas Mevoli died tragically during the competition just 10 feet away; and after covering the story for the New York Times, Adam couldn't shake the experience. Now three years later his book One Breath (Crown Archetype, January 2016) has hit the shelves. Through the portrait of this young man, Adam explores the fascinating sport of freediving and the desire of these unique athletes to push human limits.

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Adam Skolnick has written for the New York Times, Playboy, Outside, ESPN.com, BBC.com, Salon.com, Men's Health, Wired, and Travel + Leisure, among others. He has visited 45 countries and authored or coauthored over 25 Lonely Planet guidebooks. His coverage of Nicholas Mevoli's death at Vertical Blue earned two APSE awards. From that emerged his narrative non-fiction book, One Breath -- a gripping and powerful exploration of the strange and fascinating sport of freediving, and of the tragic, untimely death of America's greatest freediver.

“Skolnick shows sharp reportorial instincts in this multilayered narrative...This is a page-turning book... but it’s also about the competitors drawn to the sport, the ones for whom ‘freediving is both an athletic quest to push the limits of the body and mind, and a spiritual experience.’ A worthy addition to the growing body of literature on adventures that test the limits of nature and mankind.”

— Kirkus Reviews

Karin: When you wrote the book proposal, what did you find to be the biggest challenge?

Adam: Well, I think I had this book right away; it was going to be an Into the Wild story. And then I turned it into my agent. My agent didn't want to pin it all onto Nick. He thought maybe a more generic freediving book would be better. Easy to sell or easier to execute. He didn't want to over-promise, under-deliver type thing. I didn't agree with him, but I just thought, I actually have no idea how this world works. He does; I have to trust him. So I followed his lead.

Meanwhile, I'm just finishing up this Lonely Planet L.A. manuscript. I'm in the desert locked away in hiding; Coachella is going off all around me. A friend of mine happened to be in the desert - said there's an extra wristband if you want to come. I go out and end up falling into this Asian drug crew and having really speedy ecstasy. After an hour and half night's sleep, wide awake, I get a message from my agent saying Crown wants to talk to you about your book, can you talk to them? And I'm like, can I talk to them tomorrow? I'm not really in the condition... And of course I thought I'd blown it, like that's it, this is your chance and you're a druggy loser.

So the next day I get on the phone with him and he's saying, “I really like this world but what's the through-line, what's the narrative?” And so I say, “¥ou know, I was always going to write it this other way to be honest. Whoever was going to buy this book, I was always going to talk to them before I started writing; that this is the way it should be done.” He said, “I need three pages to give to people, we're still far from any deal.” So basically I had a day or two to come up with the three-page hook that pitched the narrative.

I know it was a process to get Nick's family to “buy in” so to speak. How did you get them to get behind you and this book - the telling of their son's story? 

My approach was, no matter what they say, I am going to get them to be a part of this. I didn't put too much pressure on that first meeting. I'm pretty organic. I think I blocked out four days to be in Tallahassee, maybe three days. And so that day, on my way there, I just realized I would tell his mom the story of how I came to be the witness to her son's death.

She opened the door, and right away she spun out, like, “Okay, what are you doing here, Adam? What do you want, why are you here, what's going on?” Like right away, I haven't even walked into the house. I said, “Okay, well, can we sit down and can I just tell you how I ended up being there that day?” And I told her the whole story and my own heartbreak. And before I was even done, she was talking. People want to talk.

When tragedy happens in your life - we're all grown ups, we've all had our share of bullshit - my experience of it is, at first everybody's there for you and wants to hear, and then pretty quickly three months later, they'll listen to you but pretty quickly their eyes will glaze over. It's not that they don't give a shit, it's that they don't have the capacity to give a shit anymore. And I was the type of person that, whenever you want to talk about this horrible thing that happened, I'm happy to talk about it. So in reality I filled a number of roles over the course of this thing for the family. I was kind of a surrogate nephew, I was a brother. I wouldn't go so far to say I was a surrogate son, but whenever anyone wanted to talk to me they knew they could. That, I think, has value for the family.

You know what I'm good at is 'access', that's really probably the thing I'm best at. It's never been a problem for me. I don't have any sort of plan or how I go about it. It's really pretty organic. I think anybody can be good at it. If you're interested and you're genuine, people want to talk about their stories. 

You said you had 10 weeks to write the first draft. Did you have a structure or writing ritual that you followed to meet that deadline?

My ritual is just, you gotta write 3,000 words a day if you're trying to meet a deadline like that. If you think about it, my goal was a 100,000-word manuscript, because that's about a 300-page book. So if you think about 3,000 words a day, that's a little over a month and you're done with a draft.

That might sound like a lot, but just think about that for a second. If you write 1,500 words a day, which all of you can do, that's two months.

And the reason I got to the 3,000 word number is from Lonely Planet manuscripts having very tight deadlines and having to produce them really quickly. At the time of my first one, I was still writing magazine stories every once in a while and didn't have to have that same attention span expansion. And a colleague told me, “You can do this, just do 3,000 words a day.” After a while, you do build up to that. It's a vibration, it just tunes up. At first it might be hard, you just keep doing it.

How you get there is an extremely detailed outline. I did a full outline with the editor, kind of mapped it out. I had each chapter outlined. Then when I got to that chapter I outlined it even further. I would break it down, what I wanted to say in that chapter. I'd funnel in all the information that was in my massive notes. I'd pop it in my outline.

The point I'm trying to say is, 3,000 words is only a lot if you don't know what you're going to say. That's when it becomes really hard. If you find yourself staring at the computer not knowing what to write, it means you don't know what you want to say. It doesn't mean you're blocked.

So if you can take that big mass white page and put it down to small little bricks, and just fill those spaces, it's much easier. Much easier. And then everything becomes demystified. 3,000 words a day, or make it a 1,000 words, or if you have a day job, 500 words. Even 500 words a day, in six months you're gonna have a book. That's not that much time.

What was the editing process like?

So then I wrote the whole thing. 430 pages is the first draft.  And I've got a week until I gotta turn it in. I was so happy to have finished the first draft and then I start reading it the next morning, and I think oh f**ck this is horrible. It's a failure.

But luckily I had a good friend come help me edit it. I had a week to go. So I start going through my first 50 pages and make my changes - and hand over those newly edited 50 to him. And he goes through those 50 and makes his notes. When he's done we get together and go over his edits. So pretty soon, almost immediately day one, we have three versions of this manuscript happening. We have the original raw one. We have the one I fixed. And we have the one he's fixing.

And that process gave us a great global view of things, because one of the biggest issues when you're doing what I was doing is, where am I repeating myself? - especially with physiology of freediving and the history of some of these athletes and all that. That's the best way to clean out stuff. But then also overall it just kind of distilled it.

By the time that first pass was done, in just a couple of days before moving on to the second pass, we found it. It was just right there.

I would never have predicted that, it was totally organic. And now I don't think I'll ever do another book any other way.

Where do you write?

For me at this point I travel so much, I can do it anywhere. I generally work better in the daytime. But if I want to swim, I still need to be in the water, so at one point I would be in the backseat of my friend's car on the way to the beach. I had rented a room from a friend in Hollywood for all this time. It's an hour each way to the beach, so I'd be in the backseat writing with the headphones, and on the way back with the headphones. At this point I'm an experienced reporter so I'm on the road a lot. It doesn't matter.

I think the sooner you can get out of the “precious environment” type of stuff that is totally natural to someone who is just getting into it as a real habit or a real lifestyle.... The sooner you can get out of that sanctimonious stuff, sanctifying the writing process, I think the more natural it becomes. That's my own personal take. It's not super sacred, it's just a practice.

To learn more about Adam Skolnick, visit adamskolnick.com

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