← How I Write
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- [00:00]
Interviewer
David Sedaris has long been one of the funniest writers in the game, and he's got a method about how he does it that starts with observation. Always looking for what's surprising or ridiculous, a little bit strange about the world, and then every single day, writing the best ideas down in a journal. But also there's just this willingness to put himself in absurd situations, like when he was working as a Christmas elf at Macy's, or cleaning up litter off English country roads for sometimes eight hours a day. And this guy sold more than 16 million books. He's been writing for the New Yorker for more than 30 years, and he's here today. Teach us how he does it. There's a lot of advice out there of just write. Just write, publish, publish. But you did things very differently from that. You wrote without publishing for many years, and you just really, really worked on your craft before you published your first piece.
- [00:49]
David Sedaris
I started keeping a diary when I was 20, and then when I was 27, I went back to school because I dropped out. I never went to graduate school. It was undergraduate school. And then I was afraid to take a writing class when I got there. So I think I was 28 by the time I took a writing class, took a creative writing class. And. And I basically had one teacher, and he had said, just write, and the rest will take care of itself. And so I thought it sounds crazy, because I'm like, how are they going to find you? But anyway, I just believed in. And that's what happened.
- [01:29]
Interviewer
So why didn't you feel pressure to just publish at the beginning? Was that pressure not existing?
- [01:33]
David Sedaris
I never felt that pressure. I always felt the diff. There's a difference between writing and publishing, right? Like, I never felt like a failure. I never felt embarrassed that I had a job. I mean, I know I knew other writers who did, who felt deeply embarrassed because they had a day job, but I thought, you're only good for so many hours, you know, why not have a job? But. And I guess I. I met a young man yesterday, and he is almost finished with his first novel. And I said, well, if you. You know, if you're looking for an agent. And he said, I'm not worried about that. He said, I just want to finish my book, and then the rest will happen on its own. And. And I. I thought. Anyway, I guess that's how I always felt. But it's so rare to meet somebody who thinks that way. Somebody who. Because I meet a lot of people because I go on tour all the time. So I meet people and they're, you know, they're 20 years old, and how can I get this published? And it's like. And I said, you know, I'm not. I haven't read this, and I'm not going to. But you suck. You know, you suck because you're 20, and this is your time to suck, you know, and you're going to suck for a while and just go ahead and enjoy it and just use this time to take chances and to learn. But you shouldn't be thinking. If you're thinking about publishing everything, you're right, and you're 20, you're on the wrong path.
- [03:07]
Interviewer
How do you think of the premise of your pieces? I was laughing so hard when I was reading the piece that you wrote about Anne Frank's house, because you set it up, talking about how you're living in Paris and then you're looking for a place and you're in that state of mind, and then you decide, hey, we're going to go to Amsterdam. And you get there and you're like, man, you know, this is a pretty good piece of property. And it's a. I don't know if that was the premise that you started the piece with. It was certainly the most memorable part of the piece for me. When you're writing something, how do you think about the premise or entry point? What is it that you're looking for?
- [03:42]
David Sedaris
Well, in that case, we were looking to buy an apartment in Paris, and we'd been looking at apartments, and then we went to Amsterdam and I had a show there, and then we went to the Anne Frank house, and I was like, this is exactly what I'm looking for. I mean, no one ever says that, but Anne Frank's lived in a triplex apartment right in the center of town. No one ever talks about that aspect of it. You get the idea that it's a hellhole and it's. It's. I mean, if the windows were taped over. Yeah. But other than that, it's. It was. And the bathroom. The toilet was like a Delft bowl. That's what the toilet looks. I mean, the blue. Yeah, yeah. On the inside with a pattern and everything. It's beautiful. Beautiful apartment. And I wrote about it because I felt myself saying to Hugh, like, oh, we should move the kitchen up. We should move the kitchen here and instead do. And then I thought, that is so ridiculous. I'm looking at Anne Frank's house like that. And then I wrote an essay about it. But I remember thinking, there has to be a Way to make this work, right? I mean, I read that in London one time. I recorded it for this radio show I have in London. And this couple came up afterwards and they said, we're offended by that piece. They said, who do we talk to? And I said, we can talk to anyone you want. I said, nobody cares. I said, that ran in the New Yorker. I said, if it was anti Semitic, do you think the New Yorker would have run it? I mean, I insisted at the time there had to be a way to not be disrespectful to Anne Frank or not to be. Not to belittle her horrible death, but just to say, like, to explain myself. When you're looking for an apartment, you look at everything like real estate, right? You go into a shop and you think, oh, gosh, if this was on the second floor, this would be perfect. And I divide it up and make the kitchen here and put a window here. And so it took a. It took a. It took a minute, you know, to. To get it to where I wanted to. But I. Those two people were the only people I've ever had to say anything about it.
- [05:51]
Interviewer
So as you're beginning a piece, what is it that you're looking for? A good first sentence, a good premise? Something like that.
- [05:57]
David Sedaris
One of the essays that I wrote, the one I think is most successful, was about feeding wild animals, like feeding crows, specifically. And why do some people. Why are some people inclined to feed wild animals and others aren't? I guess you'd call that a premise, right? I'm going to write about. But then it's always nice when there can be ridiculousness in it, right? And that just came because, you know, I fed crows and I feed squirrels. And then I went to the Dominican Republic, right, with my boyfriend. And then my sister Amy came with us at the last minute, and. And we get to this resort in the Dominican Republic, and Amy said, I'm going to start a rumor that Sting is staying here. And I said, how are you going to do that? And the next thing you know, she's saying, well, Sting told me when I saw him this morning, Sting and Trudy, he said he's going to go jet Ski. I just thought, sting is in the room next to ours. So when I heard the noise in the night, so. And it. And it really happened. And so it fit really well into the story. So it was. It was just another element to the story, and it was another way of even somebody raising their voice when they speak, right? Gives the story texture, you know, it gives the Essay. You're reading something out loud, and there's a point where I speak German in it. That gives it texture. Amy. Speaking in a loud voice gives it texture. I was in Saudi Arabia, right. Trying to feed stray cats, right. So I go into a store and say, meow, you know, and even meow gives it texture. So you're. When you're. Because I read things out loud, I'm always thinking that way. If you can sound differently in the course of reading it, that peps an audience up. That keeps things moving along.
- [07:58]
Interviewer
Yeah, because there's a lot of. One of the most common pieces of writing advice is, hey, read your stuff out loud. It makes you a better editor. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you've done it differently that you've read your writing out loud to other people in front of giant crowds. And how is that influenced your writing?
- [08:17]
David Sedaris
Well, I would never read something, like, really rare that I read anything out loud to Hugh, you know, my boyfriend. I can get a paragraph more than that. He's like, I'm bored. Or, I'm not listening to this. I'm not. Which is good. But even when I read it out loud to him, I just want to hear myself. Usually when I read something out loud to Hugh, I'm just about to throw it away. And then I read it to Hugh, and then I throw it away, and it just. It's a way of killing. It is reading it out loud to him, but reading out loud to an audience. They were my editor. They're my editor. They tell me everything I need to know, and they pay to tell me everything I need to know.
- [09:04]
Interviewer
With. When they laugh, when they cough.
- [09:06]
David Sedaris
Yeah, yeah. When you can feel the audience drifting away, you can feel them being puzzled. You know, I've said to people, I hadn't done this before. I don't know why. And I said, I would like anyone in the audience, when they get the book signed, to correct me. So someone came up and said, it's not Cartagena, it's Cartagena. And then somebody came up and said, you're saying Vegetariatin. It's Vegetariatin. You know, so. And I thought, why haven't I done this forever? Is ask people to come and correct me over things that I'm. That are. That are wrong. Because I have this great resource in front of me.
- [09:57]
Interviewer
What's amazing to me about reading something out loud or showing somebody, like a video I made is I can always. Just by being in their presence and knowing that they're Watching my sensitivity to pacing, rhythm. What's interesting, what's not is so heightened, I don't even need them to give me any feedback. I just need to be almost afraid of them not liking it.
- [10:20]
David Sedaris
It's good for me too. For repeated words, like, I'll look at something and I think, how did I miss that? You know, I used the word lunch, you know, in two sentences in a row, like, how did I miss that? But when I read it out loud, then I'm super aware of it.
- [10:36]
Interviewer
I taught writing for six years and the biggest trouble that my students faced was writer's block. They had so much trouble getting ideas from out of their head and onto the page. But you know what's weird? People don't get talker's block. Like if you just talk out your ideas, it works. That's why I love Whisper Flow and use it for my writing all the time. It's super easy. Press a hotkey and you just talk. And all of a sudden the ideas show up on the page. There's no ums, there's no sloppy punctuation, just a draft that you can work with and shape into something amazing. And since I'm no longer tethered to the keyboard, I can write on the move. And the biggest thing is that I trust it. Look, I love Siri. She and I go way back. We've known each other for years, but sometimes I wonder if she even passed 4th grade English class because she can't even get punctuation right. But Whisper Flow automatically cleans up all your mistakes, digressions, and weird little vocal fillers without losing any of the substance. That's why I love Whisper Flow. I use it every single day and I recommend it to every writer I know. And you can try for free at ref.whispersflow. aI howirite. And how do you go from idea to diary, diary to page?
- [11:46]
David Sedaris
Well, write in my diary every morning and then every now and then something happens that I think, oh, that's. I bet that will come in handy later. So I have something. It's my diary guide. So if something happens and I think it might come in handy later, I put it in my diary guide. A woman came to me in New Orleans a few weeks ago and said, I took my 15 year old son to the DMV today. And we get there and the woman, because he needed his permit, we get there and the woman behind the counter says, no ma', am, you are not coming in here with those protruding nipples. And the woman said, I had a bra on. She wasn't my fault, she said, but the woman wouldn't let me in. And my son wanted his learner's permit, so I had to go to a strip mall, buy a T shirt and wear it over my dress. She said, I wanted to call Eyewitness News because everyone should know about this, but my son would be even mortified than he was. And I said, well, if I were you, I would have just said, do you have a pair of scissors I can borrow? And then I would have cut my nipples off and slapped them on the countertop and said, now can I come in? And with my 15 year old son. And then someone came up to me and said, I mentioned that on stage. And someone said, you know, your nipples are the only body part that completely regenerate. They're like a lizard's tail. So the next night I tell the audience, you should cut your nipples off for fun because they'll just grow back. And a doctor came up and said, no, they don't. I couldn't believe I've been so gullible. But that seems like something that could be of use later. You know, I would say so either if you're writing an essay about how gullible you are, or you're writing an essay about wanting to make a big deal out of something, but not because you'd be embarrassing the person you're with. It just loaded. It was just delicious. Right? So that definitely went on to my diary guide. And then, you know, I saw somebody in a T in a at the airport with a T shirt that said I wasn't always a dick. Just kidding you. Right? So that's what you're going to wear to get on an airplane. And I have a, like if I go through my diary guide and I write in t shirt, it's 50 years of t shirts. Yeah.
- [14:20]
Interviewer
I was just thinking back through all the pieces I've read of yours. What comes to mind is like micro absurdism. It's like there's like the grand absurd stuff, but I don't feel like that's how you roll quite as much. It's just all of these really funny little observations that are just completely absurd and it just layers in all of this humor.
- [14:41]
David Sedaris
Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess that's what I have an eye for, you know, I guess that's what I look for. I mean, I feel like in a lot of ways teaching it. Keeping a diary teaches you what you're interested in. Right. Because when you first start out, you're keeping a diary that you Wouldn't mind if someone found and they would say, oh, my God, I had no idea he was so full of pain, you know, for the suffering he saw around him. Oh, I had no idea he was so concerned with. With politics. Oh, I had no idea he was. Had the depth of his feelings. Right. But then it takes a lot of time and you're to try to please some imagined person who's going to pick up your diary, and then you just start writing about what really interests you, right? And you see what you're interested in. I mean, not everyone knows what they're interested in, right. I mean, most of the people in my family were very lucky. They knew what they were interested in, and so they either went to college or didn't, but they followed it. But then there's one person in my family who to this day has no idea what she's interested in. And I always feel sorry for people who don't know what they're interested in. And one way to find out what you're interested in is just being in the world, you know, being in the world.
- [16:10]
Interviewer
But I think writing down is an important point because, you know, it would be an interesting thing, like if you and I walked down just this one block and we said, we're gonna walk 30 minutes, just up and down the block, and we're just going to write down observations, things we smell, things we hear, things we see. I bet we would both be shocked at how different what we notice is
- [16:34]
David Sedaris
now, boy, I have an artist friend named Ingrid. And you walk down the street with her and she'll say, look, there's Margaret Atwood. And it's a leaf that looks exactly like Margaret Atwood, you know, like a portion of a leaf. And she does it constantly. And she's always right. Like. And you think, how do you have time to. How do you have time to pay attention to what I'm saying when you're. She just realized she's always working. She's not. She's not going to do anything with the leaf. But I mean, she can't turn off her artistic self, you know, And I suppose I can't turn off mine either. But if it's in the same way that a comedian's is always on, right? That's why when people say, like, that didn't happen to you, you know, it never happens to me. It's like, you're not turned on. You're not. Your scanners aren't on every minute of every day. You're not looking for. You're not Looking for it. You're not. Like something could happen for the rest of today that would. I could write an essay about that would. Would be so satisfying to me. But if, If I. Because it's not like I write about big things. I don't mean that I'm going to be hit by a car and that'll lead to an essay, but it could be an encounter with somebody on the street. It could be. There's this fellow who produces a lot of the shows that I do, and we got together to go to the theater one night a couple weeks ago, and he said, what'd you do this afternoon? I said, I went to the post office. And he said, why would you do that? He said, you don't even need to go to the post office. If you have something you want mailed, you have the hotel called FedEx and they come and pick it up. And I said, I don't, I don't want to live like you, you know, I don't want to sit at home and order things. I want to go to the post office. And I went to the post office and it was remarkable. The post office was remarkable. It was in Alabama and the guys, you know, a young man with the Sir Lancelot haircut, and I have never heard an accent like his. And I said, where are you from? And he. It felt. It's like a small town Alabama accent. And just the conversation that we had was just beautiful, you know, And I don't. I don't want to. I want to live, you know, I want to be out there. I want to. I don't want to sit at home and order everything online. I don't want to. Don't want to use all the shortcuts. I. I mean, sometimes you go to the post office and the person's just grumpy and they're not. But even you can even get something out of that, you know, like even a physical description of somebody that could be really satisfying. In my post office, there was a sign on the outside of the door that said, no dogs allowed. And I said, great, you know, because dogs have. I've just had it with dogs. And then it was no dogs at this window. And so that was the window I got called to. And the woman said, oh, that's somebody else's sign. She's usually here, but I'm here now. You know, she didn't want anything to do with dogs. She said, me, I don't. I don't mind them that much.
- [20:06]
Interviewer
The way that you talk about the post office. Is how I feel about cvs. I walk into CVS and something always happens. And also, I feel like a trip to the CVS tells me so much about a city. You know what I mean? How much stuff is behind the plastic these days? How are the attendance? Is it clean? Is it messy?
- [20:28]
David Sedaris
I found in New York, quite often CVS cashiers are impenetrable, you know, like, you just can't get them to budge, like, in terms of having a conversation with them. But the key is to say, did you just have your nails done? Or what color nails are those? Because they. 90% of the women have invested a lot in their nails, and they love talking about their fingernails. And so that's a way in to a conversation, is asking them about their fingernails.
- [21:05]
Interviewer
Yeah, it's so funny. That's very similar to the line in the elf Santa piece that you wrote many years ago about how Santa would always look at the kids jackets and whatnot and say, hey, did you just get that? Did you just get that? Cause they're growing really fast, and. And so, of course, it was new, and it made them feel appreciated by Santa. It's like these little things that you can ask people.
- [21:27]
David Sedaris
Well, I feel like when I'm signing books, advice, and I'm usually right about it, I don't know how I'll say, is that a new dress? Yes. Oh, it's so nice when you have something new and someone recognizes that it's new. I said to a flight attendant a couple of days ago, you smell great. And she said, I just got this perfume. It's the first day I'm wearing it. You're the first one to make any comment about it. And then she was just right there in my hand, you know, also, man, people's reactions.
- [21:55]
Interviewer
So it's really. It's like, okay, there's a story there. So a guy who works next to me at the co working space, I don't know him super well. He's a bit of a grumpy guy. Hopefully doesn't listen to this podcast. And I go, man, you got a haircut. He goes, man, my wife hasn't noticed one in four years. I was like, I don't know what's
- [22:13]
David Sedaris
there, but, you know, but then there can be a way. Like, I went to Yaddo years ago.
- [22:20]
Interviewer
What's a Yaddo?
- [22:21]
David Sedaris
Yaddo. It's a writer's colony in Saratoga Springs. It was to work on my second book, so is a long time ago. And I said to somebody, oh, I see you got a FedEx package, you know, was it anything good? And then she was so offended, you know? You know, sometimes you pay someone a little attention, and they get. They get bent out of shape. Like you're. You're. You're spying on them or you're peeping or something like that. It's, like, so high. Well, no, I. Just trying to make conversation here. Like, it's like, if you said, I. I noticed you got a haircut. And then they were like, well, don't you have anything better to pay attention to than my hair? I don't understand people who aren't observant. I don't. I don't. I think, what are you doing? But maybe we all just. Maybe it's. Some people are less vocal than others. If I see somebody with great clothes, I always say. But I always have an exit strategy, you know? Like, I'll say, you look. Your clothes are just fantastic. You look amazing. And if we're going on the sidewalk like this, I make sure that then I can cross the street because you don't want to be creepy, and then walk next to them. That happened a couple weeks ago. There was this woman, and she was. Most people don't pay any attention to people over a certain age, but she was this woman, and she had a. One of those big boots on. You know, she had surgery on her foot. Other than that, she looked amazing. And I said. I said, your haircut and your clothes. I said, you look amazing. Right? And then I knew I could take off when the light changed because she was impeded by this boot. But then there was a man next to her, caught up to me and said, you made that woman's day. She was just talking about how nice that was that you noticed and you complimented her clothing, but he didn't have an exit strategy. And then he keeps walking beside me. I'm like, fuck. And he's going to Grand Central. And then I'm like, where do you live? And then, you know, having to have a conversation with him. And that's not all right, man.
- [24:32]
Interviewer
All right, man is not what I'm going for. Tell me about the difference between good people and good characters. And you can have a good person who's a bad character and a bad person who's a good character.
- [24:44]
David Sedaris
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, my father was a horrible person and a good character, because he was. And in his mind, he was never wrong about anything, you know, so he was really super confident, but also a buffoon in a way. And that makes for a Good character. My boyfriend, he was a good character because I can bounce off of him. Right. Because he's responsible and he, you know, maybe even a little bit uptight about a lot of things, and that makes him a good character. Man.
- [25:26]
Interviewer
I love characters. People who. They have just a way of saying things like addiction or a vocabulary that they pull from truckers, pilots, people from Boston. Always good characters.
- [25:40]
David Sedaris
And if you're writing humor, all you need to know is do is know some funny people and you can quote them, you know, and get your laughs that way. You're not even.
- [25:52]
Interviewer
You can import the laughs.
- [25:53]
David Sedaris
Yeah. I mean, you're giving them credit, so it's not like you're stealing a line from them. You're giving them credit for it. I think good characters want to make an impact, and either they do it or they fail. But there's something about that, that there's something at stake, I suppose, or there's. Or people can't read the room are good characters. You know, people who. Who give you their opinion when you didn't ask for it are good characters. You know, people who go out of their way to say, oh, I love this one, you know, I guess. Did you read the comments on the comments on that last thing that you did? And it's like, no, I don't. I don't read the comments. Well, people. I don't. Everybody hates it. Like, everybody's really mad at you right now. You shouldn't have said that thing. Well, it's okay. I don't read the comments. I don't need to know that. Yeah. But, you know, some of the things that people are saying and you think. And that's a good character. Because I would never do that to somebody. Right. I would never go out of my way to hurt somebody like that, you know, but it makes him a good character. Yeah.
- [27:14]
Interviewer
Yeah. Most of my friends who are good characters, I would say, are pretty divisive. And a lot of them are very brash. They're just less. They're, like, gauche. They're often a little bit less sensitive to the social moors of the time, and they kind of just don't care. It's almost as if a lot of them. It's almost as if it's in their world that other people are participating in their world. Whereas a lot of people who are less good characters often are just very compassionate, which makes them wonderful people, because they are not thermostats, they're thermometers. They kind of reflect the temperature of the room. But my friends who are good characters. They are thermostats. They come in and so often just set the energy of wherever they are.
- [27:56]
David Sedaris
That's so nicely put. Thermostats, not thermometers. Huh? I like that. Huh? That's going in my diary. I don't choose friends based on whether they're good characters or not. You know, I don't set out to exploit people, you know, I mean, usually I find when people say, I don't want you writing about any of this, it's like, I wasn't going to.
- [28:28]
Interviewer
Right.
- [28:30]
David Sedaris
Didn't say anything interesting. I mean, I don't want to. I don't want to say that, but. Or maybe you know what I should say? Have you read my books? Like, makes you think that I was going to write about that. Right? Right. But I do. I think everybody's interesting. I think sometimes they get in their own way. Right. Like, I'll be signing books, and if someone says, I've got a really funny story to tell you, it's never funny. Never. But that doesn't mean that they don't have an interesting story in them, you know, so maybe I can ask a question or I can find something out about them that way. Not because I want to use it, but because I don't. I want to know that everyone I deal with is a human. Right. If you go to CVS and you say, how are you fine? Or you're looking at your phone, do. I mean, then you don't have any evidence that the person you've dealt with is a human. But if you say, what do you. What do you call that? Fingernail color? And then I'll tell you, and they'll say, you know, this is what I. But I. It's a different place than I used to go to. And I stopped going to the other place because it got robbed while I was in there. You know, then you. You. You're. Then you're going places, right? And if you can go somewhere with someone, why don't you go? Right. It's like saying yes as opposed to saying no. Right. Like, that's another thing. How come that happened to you and it didn't happen to me? I say yes.
- [30:09]
Interviewer
Can you tell me a little bit about your editing? Like, as you're writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. I mean, you emphasize that as much as anyone I've ever had on the show. What is it about that that's so important to you?
- [30:22]
David Sedaris
Oh, gosh. Well, I like to learn as much as I can on my Own. And then I give it to my editor at the New Yorker, right? And so it's nice that I learned everything I could on my own, because then if she says that we can get rid of this, I can say it. That that's my base laugh in the whole piece. But. But also, I'm. I'm not going to give her, like, a third draft. If they're going to be 17 drafts, I'd rather give her the 15th. And then we go two more. Because if I give her the third, can you imagine how bored she'd be? Like, we're going to go through 17. She's got to read it, like 14 times. I wouldn't do that to anybody. So I want to learn as much as I can. And then sometimes, too, it really helps. You know, you're reading something over and over again, and then you come to a point and you realize, this isn't worth the breath it takes to read it. So get rid of it.
- [31:23]
Interviewer
What are the different layers of things that you're looking for? Rhythm, pacing, momentum, humor.
- [31:31]
David Sedaris
You know, I'm looking for an ending, too. You know, there are tricks, right? One thing, you listen to npr, you'll say, and then, you know, they might be doing a story about something. And that's how Simon Lee realized you shouldn't open a store during a pandemic. You know, like, they just slow down to let you know it's the ending. And then you think, that's not an ending. You just slowed down. So. And you can always do that on stage, but then you're overcome with shame when you do it. Me, anyway, Overcome with shame. And I think, I would rather die than read that ending again. So you write a new one. Whereas on paper, you might think, I think I can get away with this. This. Right? But the audience, you're you. It's not like the audience is saying, that suck. A lot of times, if the audience doesn't know it's an ending, then you have, if you have to go like this, tamp down your papers to let them know it ended. Then you had a. You made a mistake, you know, So I want them to know it's the ending. But one of the things I wrote on this trip, people think it's an ending, and they applaud. And it's like, no, it's just a laugh line that didn't work as an ending at all.
- [32:56]
Interviewer
What do good endings have in common?
- [33:04]
David Sedaris
Gosh, you know, it's a tiresome analogy, but, I mean, it's like landing a plane. You Know. And, you know, you want it to be smooth, and you want it to make sense, and you want to. I don't know, you come full circle, maybe, and you people didn't see it coming, and then it just landed. Sometimes you. You have four endings, and then you think, okay, this ends four times before it ends. Like, I gotta get rid of these other. Because then people are really exhausted by the time you get to the fourth ending. There are different kinds of endings. Like when I put a show together, like, there's. I can. Beginning, oh, ending. And it was this essay I wrote about this guy who goes to my fitness center who has a micro penis, right? And then it goes through someone else I knew, someone I knew once who had a micro penis. And then it ends with Hugh, right? With this moment with Hugh in the kitchen, right? And people go, aw. At the end of it. But I know, because I feel. It took me by surprise. I choked up the ending. I felt like, oh, really? Is this happening? I thought I was going to cry at the ending of it, right? And the worst thing to me, I'd rather fart on stage than cry on stage, you know? And then I read it again, and it happened again, you know? And so. And then the audience says, oh, so it. I just wasn't sure if I trusted. But you might think it's easy to make an audience go, oh, but it's not. But I read it the other night in Atlanta, Chicago, and then I choked up at the end. And then I said to the audience, I said. I said, hugh died a couple months ago unexpectedly, and I didn't know I would be so overcome. Hugh's not dead at all. I was gonna say the audience, 3,000 people, complete silence. You know, I mean, I thought people. Because I tell people he was dead all the time, and I can't believe they still fall for it. You know, when Hugh is dead, people are gonna. I'm gonna have to carry an autopsy report with me, right? I told people he's dead so many times. So it's good to have that kind of an end. And then another kind of an ending that just, you know, something that ends like, just with a massive laugh. And another kind of an ending that makes people think, but not make any. Any sound. I Like when I'm putting a show together, I. That's what I think. I think that ends with this noise that ends with this noise that ends with this noise.
- [36:15]
Interviewer
I always like an ending where there's a resolution and something new is opened up.
- [36:19]
David Sedaris
You know what I hate, though? Huh? And you see this all the time. It's a moth thing to me. Right?
- [36:24]
Interviewer
Like the moth speaking.
- [36:26]
David Sedaris
It's where you end it by telling people everything you've already told them.
- [36:30]
Interviewer
Oh, well, that's how the five paragraph essay is built in school. The way that you learn is tell them what you're going to say, then three paragraphs and then tell them what you told them. And I remember being in school, like, so the conclusion, you just want me to repeat. Repeat what I said the entire time, say it again, but in different words.
- [36:49]
David Sedaris
Right?
- [36:49]
Interviewer
And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It was one of those things in school I never understood.
- [36:55]
David Sedaris
No, I find it so irritating. I find it as irritating as what? I don't know if this is true or not, but someone said that Netflix now, like every 10 minutes, you're supposed to remind the audience what's going on because they've been. They're not paying attention. You know, they're busy with their phone or whatnot on. It's not hard to believe, but I just. It almost sounds too good to be true in a way. But that's the way I feel when you're giving me that ending and you're telling me whatever. It's like, I've been here, I've been listening for 15 minutes. What do you. Do you think I just walked into the room? Why are you telling me what you already told me? And people love it. People love that.
- [37:39]
Interviewer
I think that the rhythm of jokes is really important when you're speaking out loud in a way that it isn't on the page. So I went to a wedding last weekend. Best wedding speeches of any wedding I've ever been to. But the best man speech took the cake. And the way that he went about his wedding speech was really interesting. So everybody else had an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper that they read from. Go like this, go like this. This guy was way funnier and way better paced because instead of the piece of paper, he had maybe 25 different note cards. And every note card told the full story. And probably 70% of the note cards had some sort of laugh line on them. And so the pacing was boom, boom, boom, boom. But I was like, man, if I give a wedding speech, I'm not going to do the 8 1/2, 11 piece of paper. I'm going to do index cards. That way I get the cadence of laughs.
- [38:32]
David Sedaris
You're really good at snapping your fingers. I noticed it earlier. I just, I like, I. I can't
- [38:39]
Interviewer
be that I Can't whistle, so it's all right.
- [38:43]
David Sedaris
Wow, that's pretty.
- [38:44]
Interviewer
But my grandpa taught me how to snap my fingers and he taught me how to clap. I got a good clap,
- [38:52]
David Sedaris
huh?
- [38:52]
Interviewer
But one time I was at a baseball game and I was clapping so loud that the guy in front of me got so mad. And it was honestly one of the biggest moments of just like sheer terror and shame in my entire life. He looked back at me, we're in a baseball game, right? And I'm just clapping. He's like, stop clapping like that. I still remember that now. My hands are sweaty. Just telling the story.
- [39:21]
David Sedaris
They should be sore. I mean, your clap is so loud.
- [39:25]
Interviewer
No, my grandpa taught me you just gotta get it in the pineapple pocket. See, that's better. That's louder than what you had before you were doing. Now you were doing this before. It's got to be.
- [39:42]
David Sedaris
There we go. Wow.
- [39:45]
Interviewer
David Sedas learns to clap.
- [39:47]
David Sedaris
Wow. That goes in my diary too.
- [39:55]
Interviewer
I'm at a two diary entry conversation. I'm putting a little, like a little diary entry ticker on top of the screen.
- [40:03]
David Sedaris
Well, another thing about index cards, I learned everything in Chicago because in Chicago that's when I started reading out loud. And I would maybe be on a bill with five other people, right? In a place that seems sat 30 people, right? And somebody would get up there with the stack of pages and you'd think they're going to read all that. And I learned never let people see your pages. There would be other people that would say the first of these 15 poems. And people are like 15 poems and then they're just counting down, right? So it was just, it was just great to learn all that stuff really early on. Just common mistakes that people make.
- [40:47]
Interviewer
What were the other ones?
- [40:49]
David Sedaris
Well, not getting dressed up to me was pretty big.
- [40:52]
Interviewer
You know, just dressing. You're a performer. Dress up to me.
- [40:56]
David Sedaris
If you're going to be in front of people, you should be dressed up. I'm just to. Because it can cover up. There are a lot of things that can cover up your inadequacies, you know, like rehearse what you, what you're going to read. Don't act like you got up there and you never read it before. Right. It's, it's, it's just a way of respecting the audience as well. But it's, and it's with dressing up, like proving to them that this meant something to you, you know, so then maybe they're like, I don't know, they'll give you a Break. There's just so many ways because so much is against you. And now you got phones on top of it, Right. On this book tour I'm going on, Right. Lecture tours. One thing, you're in a theater, people have comfortable seats, the lights go all the way down. Book tour. Part of it is that you can see the audience, which I don't like, you know, and people are scrolling through their phones and, you know, you're on stage and you're like, okay, they're not listening to me. And it just affects your performance. There's so much against you when you're in a bookstore. The seats are uncomfortable, people are standing. You don't want to listen to anything when you're standing up. Right.
- [42:04]
Interviewer
One of the most distinct parts of your writing is just how precise your observations are. And I was looking through and I found an example. So I want you to read it and then let's talk about it. Okay.
- [42:17]
David Sedaris
On foot, nothing escapes my attention. A potato chip bag stuffed into a hollow of a tree. An elderly mitten caught in the embrace of a BlackBerry bush. A mud coated matchbook at the bottom of a ditch. Then there's all the obvious stuff. The cans and bottles and great greasy sheets of paper that fish and chips comes wrapped in. You can tell where my territory ends and the rest of England begins. It's like going from the rose arbor in Sissinghurst to Fukushima after the tsunami. The difference is staggering.
- [42:50]
Interviewer
It's a wonderful paragraph.
- [42:52]
David Sedaris
Oh, gosh, thanks.
- [42:53]
Interviewer
Well, there's a few things I really like about it. I think that we can kind of begin to see through your eyes. We can. It's super specific. And then it ends with. It ends with the Fukushima analogy, which I think really wraps it all up, but in a very different. A very different way. It's like a different. It's like a chord change or something at the end.
- [43:15]
David Sedaris
Well, maybe it's Sissinghurst and Fukushima. So it's two locations at the end. But I can see how people would not know what either of those places are. But they still have good names. Like Sissinghurst. Sounds snobby to me.
- [43:31]
Interviewer
Yes, it does. Sounds like people only wear tweed.
- [43:35]
David Sedaris
Yeah. Or just for sissies, you know.
- [43:38]
Interviewer
So tell me about the precision.
- [43:41]
David Sedaris
Oh, I mean, I was talking about picking up rubbish in England, you know, and so the thing about picking up trash, you know, like when you see a really messy room, you can't even recall any of it. It was just mess, right? You think. And you can't even think, oh, it was A pair of tights. And it was a People magazine, and it was an empty gin bottle and it was a stuffed bear. It just reads as mess. And so I guess it was having to pay attention to stuff that I don't. You know, it just goes into the bag. I can't. If I focus on all of that, I'll be angry. So I don't want to focus on and just want to do my job and clean it all up.
- [44:26]
Interviewer
Do you feel like in your. I feel like if I'm writing something at the beginning, it tends to just be less descriptive. So I'd say a bag.
- [44:34]
David Sedaris
Sure.
- [44:35]
Interviewer
Say a bag of potato chips.
- [44:36]
David Sedaris
Sure.
- [44:36]
Interviewer
And is that part of the editing, of trying to make things more precise, more vivid? What is it that you're going for?
- [44:44]
David Sedaris
I guess I'm looking for language, you know, like caught in the embrace of a BlackBerry bush. You know what I mean? Rather just sounds better than stuck in a BlackBerry bush because when you try to tug it out, it's like it's embraced. Like, it really takes a lot of effort to pull that out of there. So I guess I'm looking for that. And I'm not a poet, and I'm not a fancy writer. I really love poets and I love fancy writers. It's just not my brother. I mean, my. My brother, my boyfriend Hugh. Everyone in his family, I think, is a really good writer, and his brother especially. And I sometimes I think, gosh, wish I could just give something to John to make it more poetic. Just he finds words, like, even if he went to the thesaurus, he wouldn't find the word that he uses, you know, But I'm not him, you know. You know, after a while, you just kind of accept who you are, you know, and make the best of it, I suppose. Flannery Connor said, if someone's going to talk, you need to know what they look like. If they're going to say anything. You need to know what they look like when you don't want to spend a paragraph describing them. If they're just going to say, you owe me another 99 cents. But you can do it quick, you know, you can say that they had a mustache, or you can say that they had a unibrow, or you could say that they had a star shape. You know, one of those little stars that cover up a pimple on their face. Just to give the audience paint a real brief picture so the audience can see who it is that you're talking to.
- [46:36]
Interviewer
Why do you like the essay format?
- [46:39]
David Sedaris
When I write fiction, it's always completely over the top. And I don't mind that. I mean, I read a piece of fiction on this tour. It is completely over the top. At one point, a woman is shot 17 times in the neck and her head falls off onto the street. And that was fun. But I admire people who write fiction that like Anne Beatty. It just seems like real life. But I could not write a fictional story without somebody doing something completely outrageous or saying something completely outrageous. I just incapable of it. I mean, I wrote that book Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, and that's a book of fiction, but they're all out. You know, it's all completely outrageous behavior in that book. So that's just where I go. I never occurred to me to write nonfiction until, you know, I was put on the radio and I was put on the radio and then National Public Radio. And then they invited me back and it had to. It. It had to be nonfiction. And I was like, what am I supposed to do? And when I look at my first book, there are a couple things in there, and there are awful, you know, the first couple things that I had on the radio, awful, awful. I mean, I had to learn a lot in front of people, you know, like, I didn't. I just had to figure it out on my own, you know, from reading and from listening to other people. But, you know, it's embarrassing. It's like being a child actor, you know.
- [48:21]
Interviewer
You know, you're talking about radio and we're talking earlier about, you know, I'm only going to write a few hours a day. Why not just have another job? And I've been. I've been struck by how many good writers were either lawyers or did radio or tv. There's something about that as a prep for popular writing that resonates with a lot of people. I mean, Lee Child came on the show. He worked in television forever. Michael Connolly, he was a lawyer. And there's just something about both of those. I think television with the way or newspaper Hemingway, it forces you to really distill ideas into simple concepts, use simple words. And then I think with law, you develop a kind of expertise and you just do so much reading in a law degree.
- [49:14]
David Sedaris
I think the newspaper thing is hard because I think people get used to writing newspaper ease and it's really hard for them to break out of it. I find the same way as like writing, you have to unlearn everything you learn before you can start. Right. For me, anyway, I mean, because you're taught to write a topic sentence, right? Like I didn't mind dogs until I was bitten by one. Right. And that would be your opening sentence. Where my opening sentence is about a donut shop in Portland. Right. I like the Simpsons because you don't know at the beginning where the episode's gonna go. You have no idea. And I always admire that about the show. Whereas so many other shows, you're like, oh, that person's gonna get their stink finger caught in a bowling ball. Or, oh, that person's gonna get locked out of their house in the underpants. What radio taught me was that sometimes people will get mad at me, not because I wrote about them, but because I didn't. They'll say, I was at dinner that night. Why didn't you mention me? And I'll say, like, Robert and Amy and six other people were at dinner. Right. But if I say Robert and Amy and Alyssa and Morgan, and with every name, I think of the listener's mind as a stage. And you just filled the stage. And then people are like, how am I supposed to keep all those characters straight? And so why would I put the characters on stage if they're not gonna contribute to the story or if they're not gonna say anything memorable? Right, Right.
- [51:01]
Interviewer
It's like a Chekhov's gun situation.
- [51:03]
David Sedaris
So we were living in Normandy, you and I. And then we had a British neighbor who said, I heard you on the radio. He said, I just got to tell you, you're doing it all wrong. You need to say, what you're doing is. You're saying, and then somebody came to the door. You need to say, and then somebody came to the door. And anyway, there's not advice that I took, but it was. If I were reading to deaf children, then I might read like that. But there's. There's no need. I've had a bunch of things read by actors on the radio, and it makes you just hate when you wrote because it's like that or it's. If something's funny, sometimes you get a laugh by reading it in a way that's not funny. Right. And then. But if you highlight it, the funny bit and then maybe give a French accent, it's horrible. It's not entertaining. It's horrible. It's embarrassing. And when it's your own work that's being done like that, you hate every word of it.
- [52:14]
Interviewer
What's the problem? Is it that they're trying too hard for laughs?
- [52:17]
David Sedaris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I was a young writer, I tried too hard. Oh, my God. Those first few books of mine oh, you can pay me to read them. You know, I just see somebody trying so hard and, like, nudging people in the ribs. You get it? Do you get it? Do you get it? And it took me a long time to trust that if people weren't laughing, they were still listening. Right. I didn't think that at the beginning. I thought, well, they're not listening to me unless they're laughing. But, yeah, they are. If they drift away, you can feel it if you're tuned into them. Right. And you can plant little bombs, too. You can plant little things to test whether they're still listening. Right.
- [53:00]
Interviewer
Like, what do you mean?
- [53:03]
David Sedaris
Well, they wouldn't laugh at. If they. They wouldn't laugh at this right here. If they checked out early in the story. So they're still listening, and they needed that information to inform them of what's going to get you that laugh. Right. Without it, if you cut it all out, then you're not going to get that laugh there. So then you think, oh, okay, they're listening. And also, sometimes you just got to write stuff that's kind of, you know, you describe things or set something up, and it has to be done right. They have to be able to see where you are and to. But you can only get away with that for so long before people start coughing.
- [53:54]
Interviewer
I want to go through some humor tips, and maybe we can just move through them. Boom, boom, boom. A little faster.
- [54:01]
David Sedaris
Sure.
- [54:03]
Interviewer
First one, stretch the story just a little.
- [54:06]
David Sedaris
Well, it used to be that as a humor writer, that was in your arm arsenal, and it's not anymore. That was taken away, oh, gosh, probably about 20 years ago. What happened? James Fry, and he wasn't writing humor, but all of a sudden, everything was held to that same measure.
- [54:26]
Interviewer
And what happened with James Fry?
- [54:28]
David Sedaris
Oh, he's a fellow who went on Oprah, selected his book A Million Little Pieces.
- [54:34]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [54:34]
David Sedaris
And I think. I don't even remember what it was now, but there was something in the book that turned out not to be true. And Oprah was deeply embarrassed because she had chosen his book for the book club. And then after that, everything. Then people went looking for things that weren't. But again, is writing humor. It used to be you could, you know, I don't know if they were five people in the dressing room, then all of a sudden, they were.
- [55:06]
Interviewer
Everything that Hunter S. Thompson wrote to be 100% true. He was giving you a vibe and kind of an impressionistic sketch of whatever was going on.
- [55:14]
David Sedaris
But the same could be said for, like, Mark Twain. But now, different world. Now it's just a different world. And it's not. I mean, when I'm telling a story and around a dinner table, yeah, I'm going to do that. But you don't want to do it to the extent that then people don't believe you.
- [55:38]
Interviewer
Tell me about the. That's not true, guy.
- [55:40]
David Sedaris
Just the kind of person who will say it the worst is Hugh's mother. Now that's not true. And especially like no one loves French people more than Hugh's mother. And if you told Hugh that a French person came and hit you over the head with a two by four, well, he didn't see you. That's not true. He just didn't see you. It was an accident. And I said, no. He said, david, look over here. And then he hit me over the head with the board. Well, he was just teasing. And I said, well, my blood was gushing out of my head. Well, he didn't think he'd hurt you. Like, she just won't accept that. It's like. And it drives me out of my mind. And I really snapped at her a couple of years ago. But then there's just that person too. That's not true. That's who over anything, right? Hugh and I went to a writers festival in Brazil and there was a Nigerian writer there. And it didn't matter what you said, that's not true. And I know she did it to everybody. And I thought, and I don't know, I just, I guess that's her thing.
- [56:46]
Interviewer
I suppose the next one you have is be a great observer. So the question I'm going to ask is, do you feel like you've become a better observer over the years? And if so, is it like you've developed a skill of observation that you've actually cultivated or it's just been being in the habit of just writing stuff in the diary, trying to get stuff in there. And it's just kind of a way of being.
- [57:10]
David Sedaris
I don't think I'm more observant than any other writer, but I think sometimes that can be your laugh is a detail, you know, just something that you didn't expect to find, you know, even when you found, you know, like when you go into the grocery store and you find something that somebody just abandoned in a product that doesn't belong there, like that can just be amazing. Just when you're talking about like chicken thighs next to you can't even make it up. So if I were to say chicken thighs next to potato chips, that's not as good as where the chicken thighs really are going to be when I go to the grocery store. And it can just be kind of a detail, but makes you think, gosh, what kind of a world do we live in that people would abandon something perishable that's going to go bad now? Or it's the same with people dropping something in the grocery store and then walking away from it, or finding a fingernail in your seat on the airplane. You know, like, I bite my fingernails. I don't cut them, I bite them. And then I think, where am I going to put this nail? Like in a car. I roll down the window and throw it out the window. But that's one of the reasons I get most of my pants cuffed, is that I can just tuck it into the cuff of my pants. Because it's really rude to leave a fingernail on a plane. Yeah, but there'd be all kinds of things in that little pocket. You know, if you look, open the pocket, the things you'll find in there. And then if you're writing about a flight, and then if you say, oh, I opened the pocket and I found such and such, you know, like a doll's head again, Whatever it really is, it's in there is more interesting than anything I can make up.
- [59:09]
Interviewer
Flights, subways. There's so much good material in these moments that we just try to get through, you know, like, most people in the suburb are just like, I just need to get to my dang destination. Most people on airplane are like, I cannot believe that I have this whole day, and it. This whole conversation has just been a reminder of, okay, just open your eyes a little bit.
- [59:29]
David Sedaris
Well, I think that's harder now because everybody's on their phone. Everybody every second. You know, there's never a better time to be a thief than now. But to steal someone's phone, steal someone's anything, because everyone's on their phone, they're not paying attention. And as a writer, it gets you to think of all the stuff you'd miss. You know, I mean, the bad thing on my end is what All I see are people looking at their phones. It used to be you'd see interesting stuff.
- [59:59]
Interviewer
Well, and headphones, too. The problem with headphones, I almost think headphones are worse than phones because everyone talks about the phones thing. But I don't actually think phones are as bad as headphones. Because the reason is if you're on your phone, you're sitting at the cafe and you're reading whatever, right? You're scrolling Instagram. And I say, hey, what's going on? How's your day going? You can just go like this if you got headphones in. It just. There's something about. You're more in another world. I say, hey, hey, hey, hey. And then you go, what? Because you don't have any sort of spatial awareness. And so now you gotta take out the headphones, whatever, stop the thing. And there's something about the shift between sound that feels like a bigger shift than the shift between sight. And I think everyone's talking about the phones, but I wonder if the headphones are a worse problem.
- [60:48]
David Sedaris
Well, I notice on airplanes, I think flight attendants hate headphones more, you know, because they're trying to get your attention and ask if you want something. And when people have the big noise canceling headphones on, you know, because I don't think a flight attendant wants to touch you. So I usually touch the person for her. Like, if she's trying to reach the person next to me, I'll touch them. You know, people get so. People get so this whole idea that your body is sacred and that it's a. It's a sacred space and that no one should. You hear that all the time, don't touch me. And it's like, I went like that, you know, I didn't fist you. You know, I tapped you on the shoulder.
- [61:35]
Interviewer
Choose funnier words.
- [61:37]
David Sedaris
Choose funnier words.
- [61:38]
Interviewer
Yeah, that's the last piece of humor advice.
- [61:41]
David Sedaris
Yeah. I mean, again, you don't want to ever look like you reach for your thesaurus, you know? You know, like when somebody would say, a cat walked into the room, the feline creature jumped up onto the sofa, you know, it's like, no, that's not working. That just sounds.
- [62:00]
Interviewer
Stop doing that.
- [62:01]
David Sedaris
You know? And then the pussy got on its hind legs. It's like, hey, no one's called a cat a pussy in a century. Right. And just figure out a way to say it or he or she, or give the cat a name. And so there's. There are. There are other ways to do this. Swapping out a verb, you know, like if you said, I walked to the. You never want to use an adverb. You know, this woman in the audience, I was doing a show a few weeks ago, and she said, I sent you a piece of my writing. Which I. Okay. Would you ever send somebody a piece of writing, like an author a piece of your writing? Like, I would never do that. Right. Unbidden. To send somebody a piece of my writing and say, I want your opinion on this. And I don't do it because you don't know the person and you don't know how much criticism they can take or even if they can take it to begin with. Right? And then it's, it's, it's never any good. Right. But I, this woman sent me something and I said, you, I, I said, oh, you should never write gonna G o n n a or gotta g o t t a. It's just lazy dialect, right? British newspapers do it all the time to show you gunna and g to show you they're talking to an American. Because a British person will say, I'm going to go to the store. And we're going to say, I'm going to go to the store, right? And just looks bad on the page. It's not a good mood. And I said, never use an adverb. And that, that's what she said. You wrote me and told me to never use an adverb. And then I started reading your stuff, looking for adverbs. You know, like I was given advice that I wasn't going to take and hopefully there aren't any adverbs in my book. Or maybe there's just one or two. But, you know, it's, it's the mark of an amateur. And again, there's nothing wrong with being an amateur. That's what you are. If you started writing last month, you
- [64:12]
Interviewer
are, you're an amateur.
- [64:14]
David Sedaris
And most people, when they start pretty young and they're like, amateur. Yeah, you know, I'm a young person, I'm an amateur. But I think when people start later, you know, like the people who say, you know, now that I've retired, I got time to write, that's so insulting to me because I wrote every day for 15 years before my first book came out. So why would you expect that you're going to start writing in February and then you're going to type your book and then it's going to be accepted and published that year. Why would you think that?
- [64:51]
Interviewer
How much of that improvement do you think came from more life experience versus I just became a better writer?
- [64:58]
David Sedaris
Well, I just think you have to put in the hours, right? So it's not. Well, also you, you have to read in order to write. You can't. You have to read. You're going to learn so much from books. Plus, it's just not there. What, you're going to expect people to read your book, but you're not going to read anybody else's? I mean, that seems so stingy. To me. But if you read a book. I remember when I was teaching, I just taught for a couple years. And in Chicago, after I got out of school and I didn't deserve to teach, I never went to graduate school. I don't know what a story arc is. I don't know what. I don't know what any of those words mean, right? But I read Insatia, you know, incessantly. I read everything that I could get my hands on. And those books taught me a lot. And they weren't books on how to write, they were just good books. But also it taught me what the inside of a book looks like. And so I remember when I started writing, I thought, oh, this doesn't look anything like what I see in books. And you could tell yourself, well, that's because I'm a trailblazer. It's like, no, no, there are. What are you going to blaze harder than James Joyce or than Gertrude Stein? You know, really, how are you going to do that? So it's not that. It's that you're not good. You can get good, but you can't rush it.
- [66:38]
Interviewer
And what is the thing that makes you good? Because it's certainly not writing emails. Like, there's people who sit in, right, sit at their desk, and they're just pecking away at the keyboard. So that's obviously not the thing. So is it getting feedback from your friends? Is it revising your own work? Like, what is the actual mechanism driving the progress there?
- [66:58]
David Sedaris
Friends are now, people said that to me all the time. My friends liked it. And it's like, they're your friends, they don't read. You know, your friends, most people, I mean, who send me stuff. It's like, your friends don't read. So they don't. They don't know what the inside of a book looks like either. That's not the people who you should be turning to because they're just being nice and they're being supportive. When I was in art school, I had a subscription to Art Forum magazine, right? Because I love the pictures. And I would cut the pictures out and put in my diary. And the writing in that magazine, I haven't seen it in a long time, was so bad. And it was art criticism, but it was just words like they didn't know how. They didn't invite a reader. They didn't pull a reader in, right? And you have to learn to do that. You have to invite and you have to engage them and you have to entertain, you know, and you have to Realize that you're. It's like yesterday, my day before Yesterday, I spent 12 hours at O' Hare because there were flights canceled all over. So on this day, when you listen to people, that we were supposed to leave at 8:15, and then they said 8:30, and then they said that come back in an hour. And then we came back in an hour, and then they said the pilot wasn't there yet. And then the pilot came and we got on the plane, and then we got on the Runway, and then they said the crew had timed out, so we went back to the gate, and then everybody got off the plane, and they said, stand by and we'll leave in an hour. And then they canceled the flight. So then I had to get my luggage back. And when it happens to you, it's the end of the world. But it's so boring when someone else tells you their story of their day like that. It's so boring. So I think that's something too. It's like, just because this happened to me doesn't make it interesting.
- [69:06]
Interviewer
Well, I think that there's something really real here, is learning to recognize an interesting idea of yours versus an uninteresting idea.
- [69:17]
David Sedaris
Well, I mean, some people aren't that. Just aren't that keyed in to it. But if you're boring somebody, you should be able to tell that you're boring them, Right? But you have to be paying attention enough to be able to do that. I don't have Twitter or anything like that, but I have Q and A, right? So I do my show, and then there's Q and A. And the questions are always the same. So sometimes I just run my mouth, you know, And I found myself saying something about Blue Jays on this trip. And I ran my mouth and people laughed really hard. And then I put it into the essay that I'd written. And it's my biggest laugh in the essay. And I wouldn't have got it unless I was running my mouth, you know, in. In front of an audience. I don't know that I would have come up with that at my desk. There was just something about being in a certain mood and being on stage that I came up with it, and I'm really grateful that I did, you know, the. This tour. So I brought these new essays, and I was out for six weeks. And so they changed so much over the course of the tour. Gosh, I want to go back at the end of the tour to the beginning. Tours, cities, and just apologize to people. Also, it takes a while to learn how to read something.
- [70:41]
Interviewer
Yeah. You know, I want to end with this quote about Flannery o'. Connor. And she writes, the fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.
- [71:04]
David Sedaris
Yeah. Flyer Connor is it. She's it. She's the greatest. She's. Jeez. I remember discovering her and. And it just. I feel like my life started when I. She. She doesn't get enough credit for being a comic writer. You know, there are all these books about her and Catholicism and how, you know, the Catholic symbolism in her books and stuff. And because I love her so much, I got a lot of those books. And then I thought, I don't care. I honestly don't care what a symbol of Christ is in this book. But none of the books have been written about her as a comedy writer and her as Mavis Golant. Same thing. Mavis Golant. Mavis Golant. So funny. And when I. I remember I was put off by her when I found her first things, and there was a While in the 70s, she seemed like she was in the New Yorker every week. And she was Canadian, moved to Paris, and I met her toward the end of her life. And her. Just an amazing comic writer. But I think what most people see is she's writing about French life, and so they're just seeing France. They're not seeing comedy. And I wouldn't. Not a humor. Flannery Connor wasn't a humor writer. Mavis Glant, not a humor writer. They wrote comedy. I mean, it was. It wasn't like. It wasn't polite. CHUCKLING it's falling out. Laughter.
- [72:45]
Interviewer
Yeah, let's end with this. So I want to just ask you about just expression and kind of the free range of the mind that you've developed, like, as much as any guest I've ever had on the show. I just felt like when we were talking so often, there's like. It's like bowling. There's kind of. I kind of can expect where people are going to go. And all these times you went here or there or something like that. And also, even in just the way you dress like you have fun, there's like an expressiveness. And I want to hear if what kind of that project is what's going on there and how you've cultivated that.
- [73:21]
David Sedaris
My dad never liked me, right? And he always wanted to mold me into someone that he would like. Right? So you need to take guitar lessons. The guy who plays guitar is the life of the party, right? So you're going to bring your guitar to a party with you and you're going to play it. Like, but just everything. And I just, I love that I made a career out of being completely myself. Like, it never occurred to him that myself, that myself was a money maker. You know what I mean? It was just the opposite. Like, and when you grow up and gay in the time that I did, then you're constantly hiding yourself and you're constantly. You form a Persona early on and you get the worst thing that could be happen. If anyone really knew you, that would be the worst thing that could happen, right? Because then, I mean, I'm 69, so nobody was gay when I was in high school, you know, you. It would be unheard of to be gay when it was being heard of. Like, I meet kids now who like, come out of their parents when they were 16. If I had done that, I would have been sent to one of those camps, you know, either military school or one of those camps that converts you
- [74:50]
Interviewer
to it de gays you. That's the goal of it.
- [74:52]
David Sedaris
Yeah. So it never occurred to me as a young person that I could ever be myself, right? Look how lucky I am to live in the time that I live, right? And that when I was like 20 years old, all of a sudden there were people who were, were saying, yeah, I'm gay. Then I was able to be like, yeah, I'm gay and I hate dogs. You know, I was able to. I was able to just think, well, just keep going, you know, and just. The audience can tell when you're not being sincere, when you're virtue signaling being a founder. Yeah, every. Everyone can spot that, Right. I think it's just been peeling off layers and just becoming more myself. And I don't think I'm any more interesting than anybody else. I don't, I don't think more interesting things happen to me, I don't think.
- [75:51]
Interviewer
But I do think you have a willingness to do interesting things. What has shown up is obviously the famous story of being an elf at Macy's. Credit to you for finding the interesting and picking up garbage in England. That's not something I would think, wow, that's going to be a lot of interesting is going to come out of that. But where we started this conversation was talking to the person next to you and, and, and, and striking up those conversations and being intentional about that as you go about your life.
- [76:21]
David Sedaris
Right. But I don't. I don't do things to be. You know, like somebody said to me recently, why don't you be an elf again at Macy's? And it's like. Because it would be completely false. Why would anybody even want to read about something that's that, that's that artificial fake. Yeah. Contrived, clearly. Yeah. I mean, I think it's more about being able to make something out of nothing. Right. Just the ability to make something out of nothing. I started feeding crows. It's. It's not. I didn't set out to do it. I just started doing it one day, and then I got this essay out of it. That's just makes me so happy. The essay makes me so happy. And I haven't given it to my editor at the New Yorker yet. And maybe they won't take it, but if they don't take it, I don't think I'll say, oh, that stinks. I'll never read that again. And I'm not saying I'm brave person, but I'm braver than a lot of people I know. You know, like, it takes guts. It takes guts to move to New York City, right? It takes. Because you're really rolling the dice when you move here. Takes guts to move to Europe and to leave everything, you know, and then to go to a place where you don't speak the language and to start over again. And it. And again, it's not like it. It's not like I'm donating two kidneys. And then, you know, but I'm. But I'm saying it's. It's taking a chance. I don't know. I've never been afraid to take a chance, and it's gotten me far. Yeah. Good to meet you.
- [78:10]
Interviewer
Thanks for doing that.
- [78:18]
David Sedaris
I could see your neighbors. Like, will you knock nothing off in there?