AMY RIGBY is a songwriter, musician and performer. Her most recent album The Old Guys was voted one of the top 100 albums of 2018 in the Pazz & Jop US music critics’ poll. Her memoir Girl To City will be published October 8th. She plays her songs all over the world and writes online at diaryofamyrigby.wordpress.com. She lives with her husband and sometime duet partner Wreckless Eric in New York’s Hudson Valley. When she isn’t touring, she pours beer and sells books at The Spotty Dog in Hudson.
How Do You Write Podcast: Explore the processes of working writers with bestselling author Rachael Herron. Want tips on how to write the book you long to finish? Here you’ll gain insight from other writers on how to get in the chair, tricks to stay in it, and inspiration to get your own words flowing.
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Rachael’s author assistant, Ed, can be reached at EdwardGiordano@gmail.com and he’s awesome!
Rachael: [00:01] Welcome to How Do You Write, I’m your host Rachael Herron. On this podcast, I talk to authors about how they write, what their process is, and how their lives fit together. I’ll keep each episode short so you can get back to writing.
Rachael: [00:15] Well, hello there writers, welcome to episode number 147 of How Do you Write. I’m Rachael Herron, completely thrilled that you’re here today. Today I’m talking to the amazing Amy Rigby, who was recommended by a listener and I am just delighted that I got to talk to her. She talks about singer-songwriting, which is something I’m always interested in, and memoir, which of course you know is my passion, and what it’s like to tend bar in a small community while being an artist, and I just thought that our talk was incredibly inspiring to me and I hope that you find it the same way. Little bit about what’s going on around here, I am back in revision on a project, working on that in my happy place, should finish that up tomorrow if I’m lucky. I am also getting ready to leave on vacation, so the podcast will be on vacation for two weeks. It will not be around for the next two Fridays because I’m going to be at the grand Canyon, Antelope Canyon, Zion, Bryce, and Las Vegas. Don’t worry, I have a lot of dogs in my house, this is true, and a big burly house sitter, who is taking care of the house, so please don’t come break into my house while I’m gone. And I hope that you miss me just a little bit, but I honestly do hope that you don’t even notice that there is an interruption in How Do You Write service because I can’t wait to come back and start it up. For some reason, I’ve got a lot of episodes in the bank. Sometimes I’m scrambling the day before, “Well, I should probably get a guest”, and sometimes I’ve got six or seven episodes in the can, and I have that right now, so that’s nice.
[02:53] I have been having a really wonderful, extremely crazy, awesome time talking to people, because of this show, who reach out to me for coaching requests, which you can always look at at http://rachaelherron.com/coach. I do a lot of one-offs. I’m actually not even trying to sell myself right here, I am trying to express to you how much joy I get out of this. Most people I talk to, I talk to maybe one to three times in just these one-offs, where they come to me and they say, “Rachael, I can’t”, and I say, “Oh my God, yes you can”, and “This is amazing because of this”, and “Why don’t you try that?”, and then they go away and do it and they tell me how much it helped to have somebody tell them that they could do it. So without the benefit of a phone call, one on one, with you right now, let me just talk to you for a second.
[03:44] You can do this. You’re listening to this podcast because you want to write. If you don’t want to write, I don’t know why you’re listening to this, because that’s what we talk about around here. If you want to write, you can, and you will, and you do. I was just talking to a class about this today, in fact. We try to learn how to write books. We try to write books, we try to write essays, articles, whatever it is that you are passionate about writing, but most of what we try to do is set up our lives so that we understand how our unique writing processes work. Every single one of our processes are different and that’s why I do this show. I like to talk to people about their processes. I will never understand my process fully as long as I live, and I love that because it’s constantly changing. And mine is very different from what yours is, and yours is very different from the next person, and that’s our full time job.
[04:44] Our full time goal as a writer, for the rest of our lives, is to figure out how we become the person who, when you get distracted away from your writing, you notice that and guide yourself back to the writing. It is exactly the same with meditation. If you’re meditating and you’re thinking about an object and you’re trying to still your mind, you will get distracted because that’s part of meditation. The magic of meditation is not in the moment where your brain is still and quiet, because that barely ever happens. The magic of meditation is when you notice you’ve become distracted and bring it back to centering your mind on whatever it is that you’re thinking about. Writing is exactly the same thing. We wander away, we don’t write for a day, or a few days, or a week, or a few years, we notice that and we bring ourselves back without judgment, without self-recrimination, and we write again.
[05:41] It’s exactly the same thing. It feels exactly the same way in our heads. We try to welcome ourselves back to the page, and that is something that is really hard for a person like me, who likes to beat myself up at every opportunity. I’m really trying hard not to do that now. When I notice that I’m not doing what I want myself to do, I bring myself back to what it is that I’m doing, gently, calmly, and it’s pretty great. So I hope that, if you’re listening to this, don’t beat yourself up, do a little writing, get some of your words and they will make you feel better, even if they’re crap, and I do hope they’re crap. First drafts are always terrible beasts and they should be the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen. You can fix them later. For now, your job is just catching some terrible, terrible, ugly words. Lower your expectations as low as you can, and then lower some more, and then do some writing. That’s how books get written.
[06:37] I feel like I had something else to share with you, but I don’t think I do, so please enjoy this interview with Amy Rigby. I am going to go back to the very fun process of trying to figure out where to go on retreat next year. I usually go to Venice in spring and I’m feeling a little bit Veniced out. Do not tell Venice, she’ll be mad at me. I’m thinking about Barcelona. If you get this in a timely manner, you can always email me to put in your vote of where I’m going, if you’d like to go on an international writing retreat next year, because they are one of my most joyful things that I do all year, I really love that. Speaking of joyful, I know what I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you about Ed Giordano, who I mentioned on The Writer’s Well.
[07:24] He is my new writing assistant and he’s incredible, and he’s hireable. Basically, I’ve been going out to brunch with him for about three years or so and every brunch that I go to, he tells me what I should be doing, and then I don’t do it because I don’t have time. He understands the book business, he understands uploading and downloading and sideloading, and multiple streams of income, and how to make audiobooks, and how to make large print, and how to do all of this stuff that I can’t stand doing, so he’s helping me with it because he was laid off from his job and he might try to make a go of this whole author-helping business. He’s phenomenal, he’s a very fast-thinking, talking millennial and he’s great. So if you want to reach out to him, you can reach him at edwardgiordano@gmail.com, and I told him that I would tell you about him. Edward spelled normally, Giordano is G-I-O-R-D-A-N-O at gmail.com, and I’ll try to remember to put that in the show notes and I bet if I forget, Ed will tell me to go put them up there. The only problem with having an amazing assistant is that he keeps creating more work for me, as he says, “I need this and I need this and I need this”, in order to get these things done, that I’ve been putting off for so long. He’s also local and he’s just darling, and so there’s my Ed plug. Now, please enjoy the show with Amy, I know that you will. Please get some writing done and then tell me all about it. We’ll talk soon.
Rachael: [08:53] This episode is brought to you by my book, Fast-Draft Your Memoir: Write Your Life Story in 45 Hours, which is by the way, totally doable and I tell you how. It’s the same class I teach in the continuing studies program at Stanford each year, and I’ll let you in on a secret. Even if you have no interest in writing a memoir yet, the book has everything I’ve ever learned about the process of writing, and of revision, and of story structure, and of just doing this thing that’s so hard and yet all we want to do. Pick it up today.
Rachael: [09:26] All right. Well, I could not be more pleased today to welcome to the show, Amy Rigby. Hi Amy.
Amy: [09:31] Hi.
Rachael: [09:32] I am so pleased to have you here. A reader or listener of mine, named Holly, told me about you and she’s one of your biggest fans, as I was saying off air. I’m sure you have a lot of those, but I’m so grateful that she turned me onto you because I have now gone and investigated you and I’m reading your blog. Let me give you a little bit of introduction and then I want to talk all things writing with you.
Amy: [09:55] Great, thanks.
Rachael: [09:55] Amy Rigby is a songwriter, musician, and performer. Her most recent album, The Old Guys, was voted one of the top 100 albums of 2018, in the Pazz & Jop – is that how you say it? – US music critics poll.
Amy: [10:08] Like that, yeah.
Rachael: [10:10] I love it. That’s funny. Her memoir, Girl To City, will be published October 8th, so right around when this podcast comes out. She plays her songs all over the world and writes online at http://diaryofamyrigby.wordpress.com. She lives with her husband and, sometimes, duet partner, Wreckless Eric, in New York’s Hudson Valley. When she isn’t touring, she pours beer and sells books at The Spotty Dog, in Hudson. Welcomes so much. I’ve already skimmed through and got really deep into your memoir, in the small amount of time that I’ve had it. I’m so compelled by your voice and I went pretty far into your old back catalog, on your blog. I find that your voice is so immediate and so narrative, and when I was listening to your music, your music is narrative too. Have you always been driven to tell stories? Tell us a little bit about that before we get into process.
Amy: [11:09] I think so, because what got me into songwriting first was reading short stories and listening to country music. I’d been a big punk fan and a big rock music fan, but I think in the early eighties I started getting into old country and listening to the songs of like, Loretta Lynn and George Jones and Skeeter Davis. I loved the stories that they told about the real life, you know, “Take this job and shove it” kind of, just like, people going to work, people taking care of their kids, and it sort of dovetailed with them. That early eighties, there was this sort of explosion of short stories, at that time. You’re too young to remember this, you probably weren’t even born yet–
Rachael: [12:09] Oh, yes. I’m a seventies, early seventies baby.
Amy: [12:14] –but yeah, there was like, Bobby Ann Mason, Raymond Carver. That’s the first time anyone heard of Raymond Carver, and these stories were just like– They were like songs, they were just little encapsulations of real life. No epic resolutions, they were like a little window into people’s day to day, and that really started me writing songs and I really wanted to do that. And so that’s what I’ve tried to do all along using, as my subject matter, myself because that’s what I knew and that’s what kind of gave me my topics.
Rachael: [13:00] I am passionate about memoir and creative nonfiction, and your voice is just so compelling. Yeah, I encourage everybody to check you out. Let’s talk a little bit about your process and how it differs. I think you’re the second songwriter I’ve had on here. Do you know Jeffrey Foucault, or Foucault, do you pronounce it?
Amy: [13:20] Yeah.
Rachael: [13:20] Yeah, he was on here too, and I’m so fascinated by songwriting, and it’s something that I want to try to learn how to do someday.
Amy: [13:31] Well, you should because we’re all starting to try to write books.
Rachael: [13:37] I’ve written a few songs and they were absolutely terrible, but you know, that’s how we all start with any kind of writing. What is your writing process look like? Kind of compare song writing to a longer form of writing.
Amy: [13:51] Okay. Well, since this is my first book, and it was hugely harder than I ever could have imagined anything could be. Writing songs is wonderful because it’s like a three minute arc, you get in, you get out, you tell your story, and also you have a lot of help because, I’ve got melody, I’ve got rhythm, I’ve got harmony, I’ve got the harmony of the melody against the chords that I choose to play. I’ve got the whole history of popular music as references and little– You can say so much with all these things. That’s why lots of songs just have– Even wordless syllables can work because you’re telling a story. If you’re playing a minor chord, then it’s going to feel sad or scary. If you play a major chord, it’s going to feel happy, triumphant, all these things. So writing songs is just kind of– I mean, I just do it really fast, I get an idea, kind of a theme or something that’s bugging me or some conversation I overhear, and I just grab a line from that, and some kind of melody just starts percolating, and then I go to get a chorus that kind of somehow opens it up and tells me what the song’s really about. And then, if I’m really invested, I’ll even write a bridge in there that’s kind of more like a reflective moment.
Rachael: [15:38] You make it sound so easy, but I know it isn’t.
Amy: [15:41] I mean, I guess it happens fast like that for me, but then writing without all that help, without my guitar and being able to play a little riff or some chords, is a lot more like the words have to do all the work, and so it’s a lot harder. It is. We play music and it is like child’s play.
Rachael: [16:13] Oh my Gosh, you’re right. We don’t say that we play writing.
Amy: [16:15] No, absolutely not.
Rachael: [16:17] That would explain a lot. So what did your process look like for writing this particular book?
Amy: [16:22] Well, I kind of snuck up on it by– I wanted to write a memoir, and a friend who worked for an agent, years ago, said like, “Oh, you really should write about kind of–“. My first album was about being a mom, and kind of the breakup of a marriage, and kind of, “Write a book that’s based on that”. Well, I’ve first kind of had to learn how to write. And so I started writing a blog. I’ve started even before they called it a blog, I started–
Rachael: [16:58] I saw that. It was in the nineties, right?
Amy: [17:00] Yeah. And I just called it my online diary, and just wrote about my experiences on the road, you know, touring, playing music, and then stuck in stuff about my temp jobs and my daughter, and yeah, just really mundane real-life details. I love reading that stuff in other people’s blog. I loved when everybody started writing about their– I could read that Pete Thompson, sorry, Pete Townsend had– He was having some kind of itch, he had some kind of, I don’t know, he’d gotten poison ivy or something, and I was like, “I can’t believe I’m reading that Pete Townsend put on a band-aid or something”, and this is someone who was– He was just this mythic figure to me, from the world of rock music, and to just hear that he had this day to day thing, I love that about blogs. So I just was kind of writing a little tour diary, then I ended up moving to rural France and that was– There was no one to talk to. I was learning to speak French, all of our neighbors were these older French people, and I felt very– There was a field of cows across the street from my window and that was it, and I just felt very isolated after living in New York City, in Nashville, living among my musical peers and just being able to hang out with people that live the same type of creative life that I do. And there were many at the time, many expat blogs, there just were hundreds of people just kind of trying to make sense of being in a different place. Then, at the time, there were also a lot of mom blogs, but I had– my daughter had gone off to college, so I would have loved those when she was little, but it didn’t exist yet, so she was off on doing her thing. So I didn’t really feel any– In fact, I was kind of like, “I’m done, I’m done with worrying about child care and lunches, and I don’t have to think about that anymore”. So that just got me writing, and back then, if you blogged, you felt like you should do it a couple times a week at least.
Rachael: [19:32] 2002 is when I started my knitting blog, and we had the same kind of community and you did feel like you had to commit to blogging and also commenting on your friends’ blogs, and–
Amy: [19:47] It was great. It was a great way to just kind of feel connected to something. And it got me just getting more of a writing practice beyond– what really got me focused on writing, not music. Music was the artist’s way, back in the eighties, nineties. It was the nineties. That book was huge for me and got me doing those morning pages, which, you know, it’s never gone away. I have to write when I get up in the morning and I don’t stick to, you know, I’m not like that three page, I don’t do that religiously, but I just don’t feel like I’m really fully functioning unless I do that, which is– I know one of your questions was like, “What’s one of the biggest challenges?”, and it is when I’m on tour.
Rachael: [20:44] Let’s talk about that, your biggest challenge about writing.
Amy: [20:47] Yeah. Having a routine, in some way, is so great, and being on tour, the type of touring I do, which can be, you know, not exactly rugged. I mean I’m not sleeping on people’s floors anymore. I left that behind thankfully, in my forties maybe. But it’s just how there’s no routine sometimes, you know, I don’t go to bed till two or three in the morning. Sometimes I have to get up and drive so early that I don’t really have time to write. Sometimes. Sometimes my husband and I play together and he’s sleeping in the room, and I need to go down to the Holiday Inn express buffet, but there’s a TV blaring, all these things. And I think that’s part of the reason why it took me so long to write a book, because when I was on tour, it just felt– and those would be sections of four weeks or something, where I could not get that mental space to be, you know, to get anything going, but when I come home I just jump right back in, and just, that’s one of the delights of being back home, is just being able to get up in the morning at a kind of nice early time, and have my time and space to do some writing.
Rachael: [22:14] I am such a routine lover. I’m one of those– My wife always says that I set up routine wherever I go. By the second day in the city, I have my favorite coffee shop already. I know the way I like to walk, it makes me feel safe somehow. But yeah, I also– I just can’t work when I’m traveling. Period. I finally learned that about myself.
Amy: [22:33] It’s hard. It is so hard.
Rachael: [22:35] I’ve given up beating myself up about it. So you’ve talked about challenge. What is your biggest joy when it comes to writing? Anything, songwriting book writing.
Amy: [22:43] I guess always just that feeling that I said something in a song or in a story or blog, something that I couldn’t quite get to without writing it. I had a feeling, it was almost like a nagging, like Pete Townsend’s itch, and something that just kind of there, you know, that I want to express and it’s not till I’m actually writing, putting one word after another, that it comes out, and I just love that about writing. It was the same with songwriting and probably less so, because I’ve written so many songs, I kind of eel more compelled now to write just non-songwriting kind of writing, just because I had done– Not to say I don’t still need to get something to sing, but to just write something, just words on a page, that feeling that I captured what I was going through and that somehow, if somebody else reads it, they will just feel the same thing that I was feeling, I just like that connection.
Rachael: [24:07] Just on the top of your blog, the most recent one when we’re recording this, on September 10th, is the story about the tent that you thought your neighbor stole, and– the hammock, sorry, a hammock, but I just love the way you wrote it. Your writing is beautiful and I was there with you and I felt all those emotions, and I just really feel like you have such a gift for this. Can you share a craft tip which might help us at all?
Amy: [24:33] I think the hard thing, for me, writing my book, I found that I like writing scenes, I like writing dialogues, I like remembering what happened, but I don’t like saying how something made me feel or– and that feels like such an important part of sharing what happened to you. It’s like that thing where like, “Why are you telling me this?”. So I find that kind of sneaking up– I guess I sneak up on a lot of things, I just trick myself into everything. But writing, really getting into the scene kind of helps me be able to– Then kind of how I was feeling sort of pops out without having to define it. I can kind of find my way there. I don’t know if this is– I don’t think I’m really being concrete enough, but to just– Even if I just want to write a blog and I don’t know what I want to write, I just just kind of think of something that happened to me at the supermarket, or get out and take a walk and just start imagining something going on at the neighbor’s house and just start to try to write what– just little details of that.
Rachael: [27:36] I do love that. And I love that, especially in any kind of memoir, including songwriting, is the more specific we are, the more universal the story becomes, and I think that’s beautiful. And you’re talking about it the same way that you earlier talked about writing a song, how it kind of opens up to you and leads you, and if you’re inspired, you might write a bridge, and those details are what is landing this to you.
Amy: [27:59] Yeah, very much.
Rachael: [28:01] What thing in your life affects your writing in a surprising way?
Amy: [28:07] I was thinking about that and it’s probably — At the end of my bio, you said that I pour beer and sell books at The Spotty Dog, in Hudson. I never had that kind of job before, in all my years of being an artist, being a musician, having to scrape by and stuff. I did a lot of temp work, a lot of office jobs, so I was never that person with a waitress job in New York City. I didn’t work in the service industry, but since I’ve been in this part of the world I’ve had this job in a bookstore, that also happens to serve beer. And so it really is like a wonderful place, and I love being a bartender. It’s an easy bartending job, but I don’t have to– We just serve beer and wine, I don’t have to mix drinks and throw out bar chatter there, because it’s a bookstore too. But I love just kind of having to interact with the public in a way that doesn’t involve me being on stage, which I’ve done for 30 some years. So I get to just be serving other people and it’s about them, not about me. And I love to hear their stories, I just love the experiences that I have there. I could write a whole other book based on just the kooky, wonderful people who come in, and just the sort of mix of books which I love, and bar chatter, and just being also at the center of a small community, and all the characters that come and go, and then the city people from New York who come up and come through and go, “Five dollars for a beer? How is this even possible?”. It really is like being in an episode of Cheers, and so I never thought that I could enjoy this other job.
Rachael: [30:14] I think that sounds idyllic and wonderful. Oh, I think we froze–
Rachael: [30:24] Oh, sorry, Skype seems to be freezing up just a little bit for us, but I think you’re back though.
Amy: [30:33] Anyway, so that’s been nice. That’s been nice. And I realized, when I was writing my memoir too, that those moments of those day jobs that I had to do, that I suffered through and, while I was there I would be thinking, “When I don’t have to do this anymore, my real life as an artist will begin”. Looking back over that, I realize those were some of the richest moments of my life. Those gave me so much to write about, so much that fed into my art, and I think that if I could tell anybody anything about writing or doing, trying to do something creative, like, “Don’t feel bad about these other things you have to do to support yourself, they can be a rich source for you”.
Rachael: [31:30] I so agree with you. Anything that we’re in today is part of that art. That’s what we’re using and transforming into art. I love that. We are running out of time, but I would like you to tell us where we can find you and tell us a little bit about the book, please.
Amy: [31:46] Okay. Well, this book, I made the story kind of– I zeroed in on my time in New York City. I went there in 1976, from Pittsburgh, as an art student, and trying to do the two things, in New York of the 20th century, so it was a struggle, but it was such an incredible time in the city that I didn’t realize until I left it all behind, and– I know I’m not doing a very good– I’m still so in the book, just trying to– So it’s got a lot about my musical life, and– I love reading music memoir autobiographies of my favorite musicians and people I’ve never heard of.
Rachael: [33:25] Good. That’s also my favorite part.
Amy: [33:29] The thing that always disappoints me is when, like, Keith Richards starts telling me like, “And here’s my dogs and I have these three houses”, or when someone starts saying, “And then I decided to be on Broadway, because I always really wanted to act”, and that’s fine, but when it just turns into a CV of their later accomplishments and I’m like, “Yeah, but I want to go back to where we were scrabbling and you were telling me about–
Rachael: [34:03] Living in a squat, and…
Amy: [34:03] My whole book is like cars breaking down.
Rachael: [34:07] And it is called Girl To City, by Amy Rigby, and it will be out by the time this airs probably. Where can people find you online?
Amy: [34:17] I’m at http://amyrigby.com, and I’ll also be all over the country. I’ll be doing a lot of dates, a lot of book tour dates, which will be, for me, like a combination of reading stories from the book and playing songs that relate to the stories in the book.
Rachael: [34:35] Are you coming to the Bay Area, San Francisco?
Amy: [34:38] I am. I’m coming to Starline Social Club, in Oakland–
Rachael: [34:42] I’m in Oakland.
Amy: [34:42] –on Thursday, November 7th.
Rachael: [34:44] Thursday, November 7th, I’m going to look at my– Yeah, I live in Oakland. I’m looking at my calendar really briefly here. I’m free, I’m going to be there. I’ll meet you then. Thank you so much for this, Amy. What a joy. Thanks to Holly for introducing us and–
Amy: [35:02] Yes. I don’t know where she lives, but maybe she’s in Oakland too.
Rachael: [35:08] That would be rad. That would be wonderful. Thank you Amy so much, and happy writing to you.
Amy: [35:17] Thank you.
Rachael: [35:17] Thank you. Bye-bye.
Rachael: [35:20] Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of How Do You Write. You can reach me on Twitter, Rachael Herron, or at my website, http://rachaelherron.com, You can also support me on Patreon, and get essays on living your creative life, for as little as a buck an essay, at http://www.patreon.com/rachael, spelled R-A-C-H-A-E-L. And do sign up for my free weekly newsletter of encouragement to writers at http://rachaelherron.com/write. Now, go to your desk and create your own process, and get to writing my friends.
Join me.
❤️ Let me help you do the work of your heart. ❤️
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