How to Create, According to Mitch Albom, Bonnie Tsui, Roy Wood Jr. and More
Catch up on Origin Stories, Campside co-founder Matt Shaer's show for anyone curious about the workings of the creative mind
This is part of Inside the Tent, a series going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning podcasts and business.
Have you ever wondered exactly how your favorite movie, book or podcast got made? Origin Stories has you covered. Each week, veteran journalist Matthew Shaer talks to a different writer or director about the creation of a work close to their own hearts (and to ours).
Here’s your chance to catch up on the latest episodes:
Steve Burns on Alive with Steve Burns
Steve Burns is best known as the first host of the groundbreaking kids TV show “Blue’s Clues,” which debuted nearly three decades ago, in 1996.
After leaving “Blue’s Clues,” Steve worked as a voiceover actor and a musician; his song “Mighty Little Man” became the theme song for “Young Sheldon.”
Matt says, “I was excited to talk to Steve Burns because of the fascinating path his career has taken, and because of his ability to speak directly to his audience in a compelling and authentic way.”
In this episode, Burns talks to Matthew about the creation of his new podcast, “Alive With Steve Burns,” and the learning curve involved in experimenting with a new medium. “I watched like 40 hours of Dick Cavett and then I realized that was not useful to this forum in any way,” he says.
“And that I’d probably be better off taking some improv classes and understanding what journalism is. Right now, it seems like it’s improvisational journalism if it’s anything. But I’m still flailing around in a sea of fear when I’m here.”
Watch now or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Mitch Albom on Twice
Mitch Albom is a journalist, playwright, and the author, most famously, of “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.” Before scoring his breakout hit with “Tuesdays With Morrie,” Mitch was a longtime sports reporter for The Detroit Free Press, where his column still appears every week.
I was excited to talk to Mitch Albom because of how he thinks about his books, which all explore a single theme – to Mitch, as opposed to a lot of other writers, the ideas come first; the characters, second.
In this episode, Mitch talks to Matthew about his new novel, Twice, and the importance of putting theme first. “The ideas always come before the characters and even the plot,” he says of his creative process. “So I always start with, ‘What theme do I want to write about?’ Never what plot, or what’s the story, or an idea for a character.”
“It’s, ‘What do I want to tackle?’ Because I know I’m going to have to live with that theme for a long time. Plots come and go. Characters can come and go. But if I’m not happy about what it is that I’m writing about, or what I’m trying to sail towards – my North Star as I’m writing – I can’t live with it for that long.”
Mitch says he writes every day, for no more than three hours. “You need to fill your heart back up again. It’s a regenerating thing, like blood. Like Red Smith said about sports writing: ‘It’s easy. You just sit down and open up a vein and bleed out a story.’ But if you close the vein, you put a bandage on it, the blood eventually comes back in and you get back what you lost. I think it’s the same thing with ideas and words.”
Watch now or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Roy Wood Jr. on The Man of Many Fathers
Roy Wood Jr. is a comedian, actor, and former correspondent for The Daily Show. He talks to Matthew about his new book, “The Man of Many Fathers: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir,” which is structured as an extended letter to his young son.
I was excited to talk to Roy because I think creatives who work in a different medium (in this case stand-up and TV comedy) have a lot to teach other sorts of writers about their process. For the record, I wasn’t wrong!
Early drafts of his book, Wood recalls, were composed by voice note, while walking to the set of The Daily Show – a process that helped give the book its emotional power and irreverent humor.
“I don’t believe you type the way you talk because you’re constantly thinking about grammar and sentence fragments. Whereas I’m just walking down the street, and I’m like, ‘This dude, he snorted cocaine, he stank, he looked like a gorilla, his shirt was sweaty, had brown teeth. He had one tooth that was more yellow than the other. How you get extra tartar on one tooth?’”
“These are abstract, weird thoughts and if I’m in a flow of talking aloud, they’re gonna come out. And I can take those, transcribe them, and then at night, really look at this story and go, ‘Okay, this part should go here. This is disjointed, let’s move this around.’”
Watch now or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Bonnie Tsui on Why We Swim
Bonnie Tsui is a veteran journalist and the author of several critically-acclaimed books, including On Muscle, American Chinatown, and Why We Swim, which was published in 2020 by Algonquin Books.
I was excited to talk to Bonnie because she writes with such versatility, mixing elements of memoir, reporting and scientific research. As expected, she had a lot to say about how she manages to switch between those modes – and always keep her writing fresh.
She talks with Matthew about the challenges of writing Why We Swim, which mixes rigorous scientific reporting, history, and long passages of essayistic exploration. “It’s an instinctive way of writing,” Bonnie says of the latter.
“I mean, you know you have to come back to the points that you’re trying to make, with the chapter or the piece or whatever, but it is not the same as going to report something, or interview a person, and get all those details in. It’s about feeling your way forward and finding your way to some truth.”
Watch now or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Evan Ratliff on Shell Game
Evan Ratliff is a magazine writer, podcaster, and author of Mastermind: Drugs, Empire, Murder, Betrayal, which was released in 2019 by Random House. In addition to co-founding Longform and The Atavist Magazine, Evan was also one of the founding editors of Pop-Up Magazine.
I was excited to talk to Evan largely because he’s one of my oldest friends in the journalism business, and it’s always energizing to catch up with someone who’s seen a lot of the same developments and trends and challenges as I have. But I was also pumped because Shell Game, Evan’s new podcast, just plain rules.
Evan talks to Matthew about Shell Game, a hit narrative podcast Evan funded, created, and distributed independently, working with a small team that included Evan’s wife, Samantha Henig, and the independent producer Sophie Bridges.
“I’ve had pretty good experiences doing projects with friends,” Evan says. “And enough of those projects have worked out that I feel like it’s worth taking some risks, especially in this environment where like the media industry is constantly devolving in new and unexpected ways that you didn’t even think about last year, where you were like, ‘Oh, well that’s solid,’ and now it’s gone.”
Listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Catch up now on all of Matt’s Origin Stories interviews. Email us with questions or comments: questions@campsidemedia.com.
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