Brian Goldstone on his book, There Is No Place for Us

What allowed me to keep moving forward was an outline that had been heavily edited and revised

Welcome back to Origin Stories. I recently interviewed Brian Goldstone, a journalist and anthropologist whose reporting focuses on inequality, housing, and the fragile architecture of the American dream. We talked about “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America,” his critically-acclaimed new nonfiction book.

I was excited to talk to Brian first and foremost because he’s one of my closest friends – and one of my favorite writers. I’ve never met anyone who is so fully committed to his craft. A lot of the interview is me trying to understand how, exactly, he manages it.

Brian shared that, “In the last five or six months of writing, where I was just in that sort of fever dream phase, I had started waking up at 4 AM. Because with kids, that’s the only way I was going to finish this.”

He went on, “So I would be at my desk at four in the morning. And what allowed me to keep moving forward was having an outline in front of me that had already been so heavily edited and revised. I could be confident that even if I can’t see the forest for the trees right now, I know that if I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, I’m going in the right direction.”

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Thanks,

Matt