How to do something you’ve never done before
Oh, hi friends!
The more you want something to happen, the more that something resists.
Have you found this to be true, too??
I remember once waiting to hear back about a job — absolute agony. The more I wanted, no, desperately needed, a response, the more the silence whipped me into a frenzy.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t take steps forward to make it happen. Effort is good. Action is great. But there usually comes a point when there’s nothing left to try, so you pause. (This isn’t failing or giving up! Merely pausing the frenzy.)
You focus your energy somewhere else, or you enjoy being where you are now. You stop resisting and let go a little bit.
And that’s when something happens.
Maybe it’s not exactly what you pictured — or maybe it’s better.
But something will happen.
"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
—Haruki Murakami
Yesterday I gobbled up this new story in GQ written by my friend Sara Lieberman. It chronicles the adventure of 19-year-old Arthur Germain, who swam the length of the Seine River in France. (That’s 480 miles!) Her article was filled with so many incredible moments that I wanted a behind-the-scenes look at how the piece came together — and what advice she has for tackling a major new endeavor and doing something you've never done before.
You nailed writing this story—rich characters, tons of details, and you made Arthur’s journey of pushing himself every day somehow feel relatable (even to people who have never seen the Seine). How did you discover the story and how long did it take to report and edit?
Thank you so much! I discovered the story thanks to a local English-language newsletter I subscribe to called Bonjour Paris. I started pitching it at the end of March, assuming an outlet would want to run it *prior* to his starting the journey in June (news journo mindset!), but didn't have much luck landing a commission. It was hard to know what to focus on: the adventure aspect? the environmental touchstones? Was it too local for the U.S.? Too obscure? Ultimately, I landed the GQ commission a week after he began swimming in early June—about three weeks after I first pitched it to them.
After making the connection with his girlfriend, I spent an hour with Arthur a few weeks in a little outside Paris, then again at the end in Le Havre where I was more of a fly on the wall, observing the scene and his arrival, and then lastly back in Paris about a week later where we chatted for almost two hours. I wrote it over the course of a week, and then spent about the same amount of time with my editor at GQ editing it. There was a lot of back and forth. He treated it like a print feature by reviewing small details from word reps to tenses and more. Overall, he was very respectful of my voice and writing style, and wonderful to work with. Throughout the process, he kept reassuring me they'd only publish something I was truly happy with and felt like me—and that ended up being the case!
What hurdles did you have to jump over to finish this piece?
Ooof, well, the major hurdle was the timing because, as often happens with freelancers, it was slated to run smack dab in the middle of a long-planned vacation with my Mom who was visiting me in France. Knowing this, I actually filed it a whole week prior to my deadline and gave my editor the heads up. But they have their own schedules, so in the end, while I did have some feedback before my trip, the majority of the intense edits happened in the five days leading up to publication on August 26. Not to mention the six-hour time difference between New York and France, so I'd wake up to edits from him, work on it for a bit before he woke up, leave it with him again before going to sleep, and repeat for a few days.
When it comes to writing, what is your “brass ring”? What are you always reaching for?
I suppose I aim to touch or move people with my writing—not necessarily just my prose, but my storytelling. Hearing people say they felt like they were on the journey with him after reading this piece gives me great joy. And even more so, hearing from the source, in this case Arthur himself, that the piece perfectly encapsulated his adventure and what he was trying to achieve was immensely gratifying.
What did this piece teach you, and what are you working on next?
In earlier iterations of this piece, I had more of a presence myself. But I was reminded that, as is the case with journalistic profiles, it is not about me. While I do generally enjoy profiles where the writer occasionally appears within the piece, or offers his or her take or observations (holla Taffy Brodesser-Akner!), in this particular case it really needed to be about him and his journey. My editor helped me see that. I also learned that detailed, thoroughly reported stories like these are journeys in themselves and there are rarely just two drafts.
I'm not currently working on anything longform at the moment, but hope to again soon for sure as these are precisely the types of stories I want to be writing more often. That said, I'm working on a guide to Paris for The Infatuation and a piece for AFAR on weekend getaways from Paris. (No Seine swimming involved!)
You can find more of Sara’s writing at her beautiful website, follow her adventures @SaraLieberman on Instagram, and subscribe to her delightful newsletter Overthinking It!
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara