How I Write has one sponsorship slot available, and I'm looking for a company to fill it. It's become the world's premier writing interview show, and it's growing fast. Our watch time is up ~300% year-over-year and clips from the show are now being seen ~3 million times on Instagram every week. Plus, the guest list keeps getting better and better.
I'm looking for a partner who shares our uncompromising quality bar and wants to work together long-term. If you're interested, email me: hello@perell.com
David Sedaris has long been one of the funniest writers in the game, and he’s got a method for how he does it. It starts with observation, always looking for what’s surprising, ridiculous, or a little bit strange about the world. Then, every single day, he writes the best ideas down in a journal.
But there’s also a willingness to put himself in absurd situations, like working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s or cleaning up litter off English country roads for eight hours a day. He’s sold more than 16 million books, and he’s been writing for The New Yorker for more than 30 years. Today, he’s here to teach us how he does it.
Transcript
00:00:34 Why not to publish your writing
00:03:07 How to find a premise
00:07:57 Reading out loud to crowds
00:11:40 David’s writing method
00:16:10 How to observe better
00:24:35 Good people vs good characters
00:30:09 Don’t give your editor the first draft
00:32:56 What makes a good ending
00:37:38 The power of writing rhythm
00:42:03 Why specific details matter
00:46:36 Writing essays vs fiction
00:52:14 Stop trying so hard
00:53:54 Stretch the story just a little
00:56:47 Be a great observer
01:01:34 Choose funnier words
01:06:37 How to really improve your writing
01:10:42 David’s big inspirations
01:12:45 What makes David unique
David Perell (00:34-00:48)
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.
David Sedaris (00:48-01:28)
I started keeping a diary when I was 20, and then when I was 27, I went back to school because I dropped out and 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. I took a creative writing class, um, 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, well, it sounds crazy because I’m like, how are they going to find you? But anyway, I just believed him and that’s what happened.
David Perell (01:29-01:33)
So why didn’t you feel pressure to just publish at the beginning? Was that pressure non-existent?
David Sedaris (01:33-01:55)
I never felt that pressure. I always felt that 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,
David Sedaris (01:57-03:07)
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 sound. And and I thought, oh, anyway, I guess that’s how I always felt.
But it’s so rare to meet somebody who thinks that way. Somebody who I mean, because I meet a lot of people because I go on, I’m 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 year, you’re on the wrong path.
David Perell (03:07-03:12)
How do you think of the premise of your pieces? I was laughing so hard when I was reading the piece that you wrote.
David Perell (03:14-03:41)
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?
David Sedaris (03:41-05:51)
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 in 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 in the bathroom. The toilet was like a Delft bowl. That’s what the toilet like. I mean, the blue. Yeah. On the inside with a pattern and everything is beautiful.
Beautiful apartment. And I wrote about it because I felt myself saying to you like, oh, we should move the kitchen out. We moved 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. Then 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 talk to anyone you want. I said, nobody, nobody cares, I said. That ran in the New Yorker. I said, if it was anti-Semitic, do you think The New Yorker whatever on 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 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.
David Perell (05:51-05:56)
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.
David Sedaris (05:57-06:24)
What are 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,
David Sedaris (06:25-07:57)
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 and 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 skiing. 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 you’re reading something out loud. And there’s a point where I speak German in it that gives it texture. Amy speaking. The loud voice gives it texture. Uh, I was in Saudi Arabia, right?
Trying to feed stray cats. Right. So I, uh, go into a store and say, now, you know, and even now 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 perhaps an audience of that keeps things moving along.
David Perell (07:57-08:16)
Yeah, because there’s a lot of one of the most common pieces of writing advice that’s, 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?
David Sedaris (08:17-08:20)
Well, I would never read something like.
David Sedaris (08:22-09:04)
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 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. Uh, usually when I read something out loud to Hugh, I’m just about to throw it away.
And then I read it to heal. And then I throw it away, and it just. It’s it’s a way of killing. It is reading it out loud to him, but reading out loud to an audience that 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.
David Perell (09:04-09:06)
With when they laugh, when they cough.
David Sedaris (09:06-09:46)
Yeah, yeah. When you can feel the audience drifting away. You can feel them. Uh, they’re being puzzled. You know, uh, 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 you’re you’re saying vegetarian in its vegetarian in, you know. So and I thought, why haven’t I done this forever? Is ask people to
David Sedaris (09:47-09:56)
be 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.
David Perell (09:57-10:19)
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.
David Sedaris (10:20-10:35)
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.
David Perell (10:35-11:45)
I taught writing for six years, and the biggest trouble that my students face 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 talkers block. Like if you just talk out your ideas, it works. That’s why I love Wispr 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 fourth grade English class because she can’t even get punctuation right. But Wispr Flow automatically cleans up all your mistakes, digressions, and weird little vocal fillers without losing any of the substance.
That’s why I love Wispr Flow. I used it every single day, and I recommend it to every writer I know, and you can try it for free at ref.wisprflow.ai/howiwrite. How do I write and how do you go from idea to diary, diary to page?
David Sedaris (11:46-11:49)
Oh well, I write in my diary every morning and then
David Sedaris (11:50-13:29)
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, uh, 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 were not coming in here with those, uh, protruding nipples. And the woman said I had a bra on. It wasn’t my fault, she said, but the woman was going to 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, Jill, a pair of scissors I can borrow. And then I would have cut my nipples off and slapped him on the countertop and said, now can I come in 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 the doctor came up and said, no, they don’t.
David Sedaris (13:30-13:39)
And I couldn’t believe I had been so gullible, but that seems like something that could be of use later. You know. I would say so.
David Sedaris (13:40-14:19)
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. Fuck 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.
David Perell (14:21-14:25)
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.
David Perell (14:26-14:27)
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. Oh.
David Sedaris (14:41-15:13)
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 and keeping a diary teaches, which 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, I had no idea he was so concerned with, uh,
David Sedaris (15:14-15:18)
with politics. So I had no idea he was, uh,
David Sedaris (15:19-15:26)
had the depth of his feelings. Right. And then. But then it takes a lot of time. And you’re to try to please
David Sedaris (15:28-15:37)
some imagine person is going to pick up your diary, and then you just start writing about what really interests you. Right. And
David Sedaris (15:39-16:09)
and you see what you’re interested in. I mean, not everyone knows what they’re interested in, right? I mean, you know, 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 for this day has no idea what she’s interested in.
Mhm. 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.
David Perell (16:09-16:09)
Being in the world. And but I think writing down is an important.
David Perell (16:13-16:34)
Point because, you know, it would be an interesting thing, like if you and I walk down just this one block and we said, we’re gonna walk for 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 now.
David Sedaris (16:35-16:43)
Boy. An artist friend named Ingrid. And he walked down the street with her and she’ll say, um,
David Sedaris (16:44-17:44)
look, this Margaret Atwood, and it’s a leaf that looks exactly like mark of that one. You know, like a portion of a leaf. And 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 lead. But I mean, she can’t turn off her artistic self, you know? Um, and 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
David Sedaris (17:45-17:56)
your 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
David Sedaris (17:57-18:00)
would be so satisfying to me. But if, if
David Sedaris (18:02-18:37)
I could. 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 will lead to an essay, but it could be an encounter with somebody on the street. It could be this this fellow who, uh, 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.
David Sedaris (18:38-19:07)
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 this.
And I said, where are you from? And he it’s from, it’s like a small town Alabama accent. And
David Sedaris (19:08-19:41)
oh, 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, and I don’t want to. Don’t want to use all the shortcuts, I mean. Sometimes you go to the post office and the person is 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
David Sedaris (19:42-20:05)
satisfying. In my post office, it was a sign on the outside of the door that said no dogs allowed. And I said, great. You know, because dogs have 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’s in me. I don’t I don’t mind them that much.
David Perell (20:05-20:27)
Mhm. 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 attendants? Is it clean? Is it messy?
David Sedaris (20:28-20:35)
I found in New York quite often. See, cashiers are
David Sedaris (20:36-21:04)
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 like 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.
David Sedaris (21:04-21:07)
Yeah. It’s so funny. That’s very similar.
David Perell (21:07-21:26)
To the line in the in the Elf Santa piece, you know, that you wrote many years ago, um, about how Santa would always look at the kids jackets and whatnot and say, hey, did you just get that? You just get that because they’re growing really fast. 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.
David Sedaris (21:26-21:44)
Well, I feel like when I’m signing books, if I am 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.
David Sedaris (21:45-21:53)
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.
David Perell (21:53-21:58)
Also, man people’s reaction. So it’s really it’s like, okay, there’s a story there. So
David Perell (21:59-22:15)
a guy who works next to me at the co-working space, I don’t know, I’m super. Well, it’s a bit of a grumpy guy. Hopefully he doesn’t listen to this podcast. And, uh, I go, man, you got a haircut. He goes, man. My wife hasn’t noticed 1 in 4 years. I was like, I don’t know what’s there, but, you know.
David Sedaris (22:15-22:19)
But then there can be a way. Like I went to Yaddo years ago was.
David Perell (22:19-22:19)
A.
David Sedaris (22:19-23:03)
Yaddo. Yaddo? It’s a writers colony in Saratoga Springs. It was to work on my second book. So it’s a long time ago. And I said to somebody, oh, I see you got a Fedex package, you know. Was there 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 know, you’re you’re you’re spying on them or you’re peeping or something like that.
It’s like, just don’t get. So, you know, 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?
David Sedaris (23:04-24:31)
I don’t understand people who aren’t observant. I don’t, I don’t. I’m thinking, 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 then. Then I can cross the street because you don’t want to be creepy and then walk next to them, right? That happened a couple weeks ago. There was this woman, and she was like, most people don’t pay any attention to people over a certain age, but choose this woman.
And she had a one of those big boots on, you know, for which she’d had a surgery on her foot. Other than that, she looked amazing. And I said, uh, 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 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, oh, where do you live? And then do you know, having to have a conversation with him? And that’s not.
David Perell (24:31-24:31)
All.
David Sedaris (24:31-24:32)
Right, man.
David Perell (24:32-24:34)
All right, man, this is not what I’m going for.
David Perell (24:35-24:43)
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.
David Sedaris (24:44-24:45)
Yeah, I don’t know.
David Sedaris (24:46-24:53)
I mean, like, my father was a horrible person and a good character because he was.
David Sedaris (24:56-25:04)
Into in his mind, he was never wrong about anything, you know. So he was really super confident, but also
David Sedaris (25:05-25:17)
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.
David Sedaris (25:19-25:25)
You know, maybe even a little bit uptight about a lot of things. And that makes him a good character.
David Perell (25:26-25:34)
Man, I love characters. People who they have just a way of saying things like addiction or a vocabulary that they pull from truckers,
David Perell (25:36-25:39)
pilots, people from Boston, always good characters.
David Sedaris (25:39-25:51)
And if you’re writing Helmer, all you need to know is do is know some funny people and you can quote them, you know, and get you get your laughs. That way you’re not even if.
David Perell (25:51-25:53)
You can import the laughs.
David Sedaris (25:53-26:03)
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
David Sedaris (26:04-26:22)
and either they do it or they fail. But there’s something about that. That there’s something at stake dispose or there’s or people can’t read the room are good characters. You know, people who
David Sedaris (26:24-26:30)
who give you their opinion when you didn’t ask for it. Are good characters.
David Sedaris (26:32-26:54)
You know, people who go out of their way to say, uh oh, I love this one. You know, I guess. Did you read the comments on the comments on that last thing that you did? It’s like, no, I don’t I don’t read the comments. Well, people, I don’t. Everybody hates it. Like everybody is really my issue right now. You shouldn’t have said that thing.
Well that’s okay. I don’t read the comments. I don’t need to know that. Yeah, but
David Sedaris (26:55-27:13)
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.
David Perell (27:14-27:55)
Yeah. Most of my friends were 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 mores 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 their world, then 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 are good characters. They are thermostats like they come in and so often just set the energy of wherever they are.
David Sedaris (27:55-28:05)
And that. So nicely put. Thermostats. Not thermometers. Huh? I like that, huh? That’s going in my diary.
David Sedaris (28:07-28:14)
I don’t choose friends based on whether they’re good characters or not. You know, I don’t
David Sedaris (28:15-28:28)
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 write. I
David Sedaris (28:30-28:42)
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 is, if you read my books, like, what makes you think that I was going to write about that?
David Perell (28:42-28:42)
Right.
David Sedaris (28:43-29:08)
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.
David Sedaris (29:10-30:09)
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? Hmm. Fine. Or you’re looking at your phone. You know what I mean? Then you don’t have any evidence that the person you dealt with is a human.
But if you say are you said, what are you what do you call that fingernail polish 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 happen to you? And it didn’t happen to me, I say, yes.
David Perell (30:09-30:20)
Can you tell me a little bit about your editing? Like is your writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting? I mean, you emphasized it as much as anyone have ever had on the show. What is it about that that’s so important to you?
David Sedaris (30:22-30:41)
Oh, gosh. Well, I like to learn as much as I can on my own. And then I give it to my editor of 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 that’s my biggest laugh in the whole piece. But
David Sedaris (30:42-31:12)
but also, I’m not going to give her like a third draft. If there are 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. So can you imagine how bored she’d be? like, we’re going to go through 17. She’s gotta 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,
David Sedaris (31:13-31:23)
you know, you’re 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.
David Perell (31:23-31:29)
What are the different layers of things that you’re looking for? Rhythm. Pacing? Momentum? Humor?
David Sedaris (31:30-31:32)
You know, I’m looking for an ending to,
David Sedaris (31:33-31:45)
you know, their tricks, right? One thing you listen to NPR, you’ll say, ah, and then, you know, there might be doing a story about something. And that’s how
David Sedaris (31:47-31:49)
Simon Lee realized
David Sedaris (31:50-31:51)
you shouldn’t
David Sedaris (31:53-32:56)
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 that’s not an ending. Yeah. 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, I’ll 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, right? But the audience, you’re you. It’s not like the audience is saying that suck a lot of times at the audience doesn’t know it’s an ending. Then you have to. If you have to go like this, tamp down your papers to let them know it ended.
Then you had them. 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.
David Perell (32:56-32:58)
What are you good endings have in common?
David Perell (33:00-33:01)
Mm.
David Sedaris (33:04-33:09)
Gosh. You know, it’s a tiresome analogy, but, I mean, it’s like landing a plane, you know, and,
David Sedaris (33:11-33:40)
you know, you want it to be smooth and you want it to make sense, and you want to, I don’t know, you’ve 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.
Um, through different kinds of endings. Like when I put a show together,
David Sedaris (33:42-33:43)
like there’s like a beginning oh
David Sedaris (33:45-33:46)
oh
David Sedaris (33:47-34:06)
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
David Sedaris (34:08-34:11)
in the kitchen. Right. And
David Sedaris (34:13-34:49)
and people go, oh, at the end of it. And but I know because I feel it took me by surprise, I choked up. The ending, I felt like, oh, really? Is this happening? Like, 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 is. Oh, so it I just wasn’t sure if I trusted,
David Sedaris (34:51-35:02)
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.
David Sedaris (35:03-35:05)
Mhm. Chicago.
David Sedaris (35:06-35:25)
And then I choked up at the end and then I said to the audience, I said, um, I said Hugh died uh, a couple months ago unexpectedly, and I didn’t know I would be so overcome that he’s not dead at all. Right.
David Perell (35:25-35:26)
I’m just going to say, how did.
David Sedaris (35:26-35:29)
I know the audience? 3000 people.
David Sedaris (35:30-35:46)
Complete silence. You know, I mean, I thought people, I guess 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 going to. I’m going to have to carry an autopsy report with me. Right.
David Sedaris (35:47-36:14)
I told people he’s dead so many times. Um, 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.
David Perell (36:14-36:18)
I was like an ending where there’s a resolution and something new is opened up.
David Sedaris (36:18-36:24)
You know what I hate, though, huh? And you see this all the time. It’s a moth thing to me, right?
David Perell (36:24-36:25)
Like the moth speaking.
David Sedaris (36:25-36:30)
It’s where you end it by telling people everything you’ve already told them.
David Perell (36:30-36:55)
Oh, the. Well, that’s how the five paragraph essay is built with 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 what I said the entire time, say it again, but in different words.
Right. And they’re like yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It was one of those things in school I never understood.
David Sedaris (36:55-37:30)
I find it so irritating. I find it as irritating is what I don’t know if this is true or not, but someone said that they’re Netflix now. Like every ten minutes, you’re supposed to remind the audience what’s going on because they’ve been they’re not paying attention or they’re busy with their phone or whatnot.
It’s not hard to believe, but I just it almost sounds too good to be true anyway. But, um, 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’ve just walked into the room?
David Sedaris (37:32-37:38)
Why are you telling me what you already told me? And people love it. People love that. You know.
David Perell (37:38-38:31)
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 eight and a half 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 gonna do the eight and a half 11 piece of paper. I’m gonna do index cards. That way I get the cadence of laughs.
David Sedaris (38:31-38:40)
Um, you’re really good at snapping your fingers. I noticed it earlier. I just, I like, I, I can’t be that.
David Perell (38:41-38:42)
I can’t whistle, so it’s all right.
David Sedaris (38:42-38:43)
Wow. That’s pretty.
David Perell (38:43-38:49)
But my grandpa taught me how to snap my fingers, and he taught me how to clap. I got a good clap.
David Sedaris (38:51-38:52)
Huh?
David Perell (38:52-39:20)
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 at a baseball game, right? And I’m just clapping. He’s like, stop clapping like that.
I was like, I still remember that. Now my hands are sweaty, just telling the story.
David Sedaris (39:21-39:24)
They should be sore. I mean, your clap is so loud.
David Perell (39:24-39:27)
No. My grandpa taught me. You just gotta get it in the pocket.
David Perell (39:30-39:36)
See? That’s better. That’s louder than what you had before you were doing. No, you were doing this before. It’s heavy.
David Sedaris (39:41-39:42)
There we go.
David Sedaris (39:43-39:44)
Wow.
David Perell (39:44-39:47)
David Sedaris learns to clap.
David Sedaris (39:47-39:47)
Wow.
David Sedaris (39:52-39:54)
That goes in my diary, too.
David Perell (39:54-40:02)
I’m. I’m at a two diary entry conversation. Put a little like a little diary entry ticker on top of the screen thing.
David Sedaris (40:02-40:47)
Well, another thing about index cards. I learned everything in Chicago, right? 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’s at 30 people. Right. And somebody would get up there with the stack of pages and you’d think, fuck, 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, fuck 15 poems. And then they’re just counting down. Right. So it was just I it was just great to learn all that stuff really early on. Just common mistakes that people make.
David Perell (40:47-40:48)
What were the other ones?
David Sedaris (40:48-40:52)
Uh, well, not getting dressed up to me was pretty big. You know.
David Perell (40:52-40:55)
Just dressing your performer. Dress up.
David Sedaris (40:55-42:03)
To me. 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’re 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 if I’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 tour is one thing, you’re in a theater.
People have comfortable seats. The lights go all the way down. Book tours. Part of it is that you can see the audience, which I don’t like. You know, 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 and seats are uncomfortable, people are standing. You don’t want to listen to anything when you’re standing up, right?
David Perell (42:04-42:15)
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.
David Sedaris (42:17-42:48)
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 and Sissinghurst to Fukushima after the tsunami. The difference is staggering.
David Perell (42:49-42:51)
It’s a wonderful paragraph.
David Sedaris (42:52-42:53)
Oh, gosh. Thanks.
David Perell (42:53-42:56)
Well, there’s a few things I really like about it. I think that
David Perell (42:58-43:14)
we can kind of begin to see through your eyes. We can. It’s super specific. And then it ends with, um, it ends with the Fukushima analogy, which I think really wraps it all up in a very different, a very different way. It’s like a different it’s like a chord change or something at the end.
David Sedaris (43:14-43:31)
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, you know, but they still have good names like Sissinghurst. Sounds snobby to me.
David Perell (43:31-43:34)
Yes it does. Sounds like people only wear tweed.
David Sedaris (43:34-43:37)
Yeah. Or just for sissies, you know.
David Perell (43:37-43:39)
So tell me about the precision.
David Sedaris (43:41-44:05)
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.
David Sedaris (44:06-44:24)
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’d be angry. So I don’t want to focus on it. I just want to do my job and clean it all up.
David Perell (44:24-44:27)
Mhm. Do you feel like in your.
David Perell (44:28-44:42)
I feel like if I’m writing something at the beginning it tends to just be less descriptive. So I’d say a bag. Sure. Say a bag of potato chips? Sure. And is that part of the editing of trying to make things more precise, more vivid? What is it that you’re going for?
David Sedaris (44:43-45:14)
Um, I guess I’m looking for language. You know, like, caught in the embrace of a blackberry bush. I mean, rather just sounds better than stuck in a blackberry bush. Because when you try to talk it out, it’s like it’s embraced. Like it really takes a lot of effort to pull that out of there. Um, so I guess I’m looking for that.
And I’m not a poet and I’m not a fancy writer. I, I really
David Sedaris (45:16-46:03)
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, 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 because 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, he’s just kind of accept who you are, you know, and make the best of it, I suppose. Flannery O’Connor said that 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,
David Sedaris (46:04-46:11)
and you don’t want to spend a paragraph describing them. If they’re just going to say, you owe me another $0.99, but
David Sedaris (46:12-46:35)
you can do it quick. You know, you can say that that a mustache or you can say that they had a unibrow, or you could say that they had a star shaped, you know, one of those little stars that cover up a pimple on their face, Just, uh, just to give the audience paint a real brief picture so the audience can see who it is that you’re talking to.
David Perell (46:36-46:37)
Why do you like the essay format?
David Sedaris (46:38-47:01)
When I write fiction, it’s always completely over the top. And I don’t mind that, you know? I mean, I read a piece of fiction on this tour, um, and it’s completely over the top. At one point, a woman is shot 17 times in the neck, and her head falls off onto the street. In the street. And, uh, that was fun. But
David Sedaris (47:02-48:20)
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 six 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, uh, 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 of things in there and they’re awful, you know, and they’re the first couple of 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, I, 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.
David Perell (48:20-48:42)
Um, 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
David Perell (48:43-49:13)
popular writing that resonates with a lot of people. I mean, Lee child came on the show. He worked in television forever. Michael Connelly, 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. Mm.
David Sedaris (49:14-49:29)
I think the newspaper thing is hard, because I think people get used to writing newspapers, and it’s really hard for them to break out of it. Uh, I find the same way as, like, writing.
David Sedaris (49:31-49:46)
Do 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
David Sedaris (49:48-50:13)
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 going to go. You have no idea. And I always admired that about the show, where some of the other shows you’re like, oh, that person’s going to get this finger caught in a bowling ball, or, oh, that person’s going to get locked out of their house.
And the underpants. What radio taught me was that
David Sedaris (50:15-51:00)
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 the every with every name, I think of the listeners mind as a stage and you’ve 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 going to contribute to the story, or if they’re not going to say anything memorable? Right?
David Perell (51:00-51:02)
Right. It’s like a Chekhov’s gun situation.
David Sedaris (51:02-51:23)
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 you’re 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.
David Sedaris (51:24-51:25)
And,
David Sedaris (51:26-51:49)
uh, anyway, this is 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 what you wrote because it’s like that. Or it’s if something’s funny. Sometimes you get a laugh by
David Sedaris (51:50-52:02)
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, uh,
David Sedaris (52:03-52:14)
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.
David Perell (52:14-52:17)
What’s the problem? Is it that they’re trying too hard for laughs.
David Sedaris (52:17-53:00)
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, you get it, 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 I. 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 in to them. Right. And you can plant little bombs too. You can plant little things to test whether they’re still listening.
Right. Like.
David Perell (53:01-53:02)
What do you mean?
David Sedaris (53:03-53:44)
Well, they wouldn’t laugh at if they. They wouldn’t laugh at this right here. If they’d 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 left there.
So then you think, oh, okay, they’re listening. And also sometimes you just gotta 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,
David Sedaris (53:46-53:52)
uh, you can only get away with that for so long before people start coughing.
David Perell (53:53-53:53)
No.
David Perell (53:55-54:05)
I want to go through some humor tips and maybe we can just move through them boom, boom boom a little faster. Sure. First one, stretch the story just a little.
David Sedaris (54:05-54:25)
Well, it used to be that as a humor writer. That was in your arsenal. And it’s not anymore. That was taken away. Oh, gosh. Probably about 20 years ago. What happened? James Frey. And he wasn’t writing humor, but all of a sudden, everything was held to that same measure.
David Perell (54:25-54:27)
And what happened with James Fry?
David Sedaris (54:28-54:40)
Oh, he’s a fella who went on Oprah. Selected his book, a million Little Pieces. Okay. 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.
David Perell (54:40-54:40)
Mhm.
David Sedaris (54:41-55:00)
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, uh, writing humor. It used to be you could, you know, I don’t know if there were
David Sedaris (55:01-55:04)
five people in the dressing room. I don’t.
David Perell (55:04-55:05)
Know.
David Sedaris (55:05-55:05)
No one knows.
David Perell (55:06-55:13)
Everything that Conrad Thompson wrote to be 100% true. He was giving you a vibe and kind of an impressionistic sketch of whatever was going on.
David Sedaris (55:13-55:37)
But the same could be said for like a mark Twain, but now a 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 gonna I’m going to do that. But you don’t want to do it to the extent that then people don’t believe you, you know?
David Perell (55:37-55:39)
Tell me about them. That’s not true, Guy.
David Sedaris (55:39-55:44)
I’m just the kind of person who will say it like, yeah, the worst is Hugh’s mother.
David Sedaris (55:45-56:45)
Now, that’s not true. And especially like, no one loves French people more than he loves mother. And if you told Hugh that a French person came and hit you of 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. And 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 I. 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 huge. 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, I don’t know, I just I guess that’s your thing.
David Perell (56:45-57:09)
I suppose the national 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.
David Sedaris (57:09-57:41)
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 it, you know, like when you go into the grocery store and you find something that somebody just abandoned in a, a product that doesn’t belong there.
Like, that can just be amazing. Just when you’re talking about, like, chicken thighs
David Sedaris (57:42-58:16)
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 it can just be kind of a detail but makes you think, gosh, what kind of a world do we live in? You know, that people would abandon the, job, you know, something perishable and 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
David Sedaris (58:18-58:36)
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.
David Sedaris (58:39-58:43)
Because it’s really rude to leave a fingernail on a plane.
David Perell (58:45-58:46)
Yeah.
David Sedaris (58:46-59:08)
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 open the pocket and I found such and such, you know, like I’d a doll’s head again. Whatever it really is, it’s in there is more interesting than anything.
I can make up.
David Perell (59:08-59:28)
Flights, subways. There’s so much good material in these moments that we’re just trying to get through. You know, like most people in the subway 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 this whole conversation has just been a reminder of, okay, just open your eyes a little bit.
David Sedaris (59:29-59:39)
Well, I think that’s harder now because everybody’s on their phone every second. You know, there never a better time to be a thief than now.
David Perell (59:39-59:41)
But to steal someone’s phone.
David Sedaris (59:41-59:59)
Steal someone’s anything because everyone’s on their phone. They’re not paying attention. Um, and 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 that what all I see are people looking at their phones. It used to be. See? Interesting stuff.
David Perell (59:59-1:00:28)
Well, and headphones too. to the 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.
David Perell (1:00:29-1:00:30)
And then you go, what?
David Perell (1:00:30-1:00:47)
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.
David Sedaris (1:00:47-1:01:29)
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. 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 all the time, don’t touch me. And it’s like I’m like that. You know, I kept you on this show.
I didn’t fist you. You know? I tapped you on the shoulder.
David Perell (1:01:34-1:01:36)
Choose funnier words.
David Sedaris (1:01:37-1:01:38)
Choose funnier words.
David Perell (1:01:38-1:01:40)
Yeah. That’s the last piece of humor advice.
David Sedaris (1:01:40-1:02:00)
Yeah. I mean, again, you don’t want to ever look like you reach for your thesaurus. You know, uh, you know, like when somebody would say, uh, uh, a cat walked into the room, the feline creature jumped up onto the sofa and it’s like, no, that’s not working. That just.
David Perell (1:02:00-1:02:00)
Stopped.
David Sedaris (1:02:00-1:03:27)
Doing that, you know? And then the pussy got on its hind legs. Its like, hey, no one’s called the cat’s 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 piece of you write 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 never any good, right? But I this woman sent me something and I said, you should I. I said, oh you should never write. Gunna gonna or gotta gotta. It’s just lazy dialect right? Uh, British newspapers do it all the time to show you that.
David Perell (1:03:27-1:03:28)
You gotta.
David Sedaris (1:03:28-1:04:30)
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 it just looks bad on the page, and it’s just not a good mood. And I said, never use an adverb. And that’s what she said. He 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 they’re just 1 or 2. 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 are an amateur. 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
David Sedaris (1:04:32-1:04:51)
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 why would you think That.
David Perell (1:04:51-1:04:57)
How much of that improvement do you think came from your life experience versus I just became a better writer.
David Sedaris (1:04:58-1:05:09)
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.
David Sedaris (1:05:11-1:06:27)
You have to read. You’re going to learn so much from books. Plus, it’s just not fair what you’re going to expect people to read your book, but you’re not going to read anybody else’s, right? I mean, that seems so stingy to me, but if you read a book, I remember when I was teaching, I was taught for a couple of 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, I don’t know what any of those words mean. Right? But I read in, 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. And it’s like, no, no, there are. What, are you gonna blaze harder than James Joyce? Or then, uh, Gertrude Stein, you know, really, I can do that.
Um, so it’s not that. It’s that you’re
David Sedaris (1:06:28-1:06:32)
not good. You can get good,
David Sedaris (1:06:33-1:06:36)
but you’re you can’t rush it.
David Perell (1:06:37-1:06:57)
And what is the thing that makes you good? Because it’s certainly not writing emails. Like there’s people who sit in, right, uh, 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?
David Sedaris (1:06:57-1:07:59)
Friends are no. 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 cut the pictures out and put in my diary and the writing in that magazine. I haven’t seen it in a long time. It 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, um,
David Sedaris (1:08:00-1:08:14)
and you have to realize that your it’s like yesterday, my day before yesterday, I spent 12 hours at O’Hare, uh, because there were flights canceled all over, so.
David Perell (1:08:15-1:08:15)
I missed.
David Sedaris (1:08:15-1:08:45)
That. When you listen to people that we were supposed to leave at 815, and then they said 830, 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.
David Sedaris (1:08:47-1:08:53)
And when it happens to you, it’s the end of the world. But it’s so boring
David Sedaris (1:08:54-1:09:05)
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.
David Perell (1:09:05-1:09:16)
Well, I think that there’s something really real here is learning to recognize an interesting idea of yours versus an interesting idea.
David Sedaris (1:09:16-1:10:19)
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’m I don’t have Twitter or anything like that, but I have Q&A, right? So I do my show and then there’s Q&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 front of an audience.
Um, 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
David Sedaris (1:10:21-1:10:42)
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 Tour’s cities and just apologize to people. Also, it takes a while to learn how to read something.
Yeah. You know.
David Perell (1:10:42-1:11:02)
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.
David Sedaris (1:11:03-1:11:04)
Yeah.
David Sedaris (1:11:04-1:11:51)
Fire! O’Connor. Is it? She’s it. She’s the greatest. She she’s. 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, she gets. There are all these books about her and Catholicism and how, you know, the Catholic symbolism in her books and stuff.
And 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 the symbol of Christ is in this book, but none of the books have been written about her as a comedy writer and her as
David Sedaris (1:11:52-1:12:13)
Mavis Gallant. Same thing, Mavis Gallant, Mavis Gallant, 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
David Sedaris (1:12:14-1:12:36)
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 O’Connor wasn’t a humor writer. Mavis gallant, not a humor writer. They were comedy. I mean, it was
David Sedaris (1:12:37-1:12:39)
it wasn’t like
David Sedaris (1:12:40-1:12:45)
it wasn’t polite. Chuckling it’s falling out. Laughter. Yeah.
David Perell (1:12:45-1:13:20)
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 guests have 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 they 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.
David Sedaris (1:13:21-1:13:22)
My dad
David Sedaris (1:13:24-1:13:25)
never
David Sedaris (1:13:26-1:14:48)
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 him, and you’re going to play it like, but just everything. And and I just, I, I love that I made a career out of being completely myself.
Like, it never occurred to him that myself. That my self 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. Um, because then, I mean, I’m 69, so nobody was gay when I was in high school, you know? Um, you it would be unheard of to be gay when it would be unheard 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.
David Perell (1:14:49-1:14:52)
To it, digs you. That’s the goal of it. Yeah.
David Sedaris (1:14:52-1:15:22)
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
David Sedaris (1:15:24-1:15:30)
the audience can tell when you’re not being sincere, when you’re virtue signaling.
David Perell (1:15:30-1:15:30)
Being a.
David Sedaris (1:15:30-1:15:51)
Failure. 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, but.
David Perell (1:15:51-1:15:58)
I do think you have a willingness to do interesting things. You know, what is shown up is obviously the famous story of being an elf at Macy’s.
David Perell (1:16:00-1:16:11)
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 going to come out of that. But where we started this conversation was
David Perell (1:16:12-1:16:20)
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.
David Sedaris (1:16:21-1:16:25)
Right. But I don’t I don’t do things to be, you know, like
David Sedaris (1:16:26-1:16:40)
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.
David Perell (1:16:40-1:16:41)
Artificial?
David Sedaris (1:16:41-1:16:41)
Fake? Yeah.
David Perell (1:16:42-1:16:42)
Contrived.
David Sedaris (1:16:42-1:17:05)
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,
David Sedaris (1:17:06-1:18:05)
uh. That makes me so happy. The essay makes me so happy, and I haven’t given it to my editor of 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. I am 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. Um, it 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’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.
David Perell (1:18:05-1:18:06)
Yeah.
David Perell (1:18:09-1:18:11)
Good to meet you. Thanks for doing that.
David Sedaris (1:18:18-1:18:20)
I could see your neighbors, like, were you not?
David Sedaris (1:18:20-1:18:22)
Nothing in there.
