“Writing Your Story” with Neil White

Show Notes:

Neil White knows how to tell a story. He told his own story in his memoir, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, about his time in a federal prison that also served as the United States’ last leper colony. He’s written articles, essays, and plays. He’s co-written other people’s memoirs. He can tell you a story, but really what he wants is for you to tell your story.

Neil talks to Eddie and Chris about the importance of storytelling. They talk about the process of writing, practical ways to get better at writing, and how special it is to help someone craft their own story--to dig deep into their lives and pull out all the small details that need to be shared. They also talk a little bit about pickleball.

Currently, Neil is the CEO of Nautilus Publishing in Oxford, MS. He is the author of plays including Lepers & Cons, Symmetry, Clandestine, and the editor of the anthology Ten-Minute Plays from Oxford. He has been a newspaper editor, magazine publisher, and advertising executive.

Resources:

Learn more about Nautilus Publishing.

Buy In the Sanctuary of Outcasts.

Transcript:

Eddie Rester 00:01 I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:04

Today we have Neil White with us. Neil wrote a New York Times best selling book "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts," back in 2009, I think is when it released. He's also the CEO of a publishing house. But he's also just one of my favorite humans. Just one of the people that when you get to know him, you are thankful you know him.

Chris McAlilly 00:27

We talk about storytelling today. We talk about writing, the craft of writing, the importance of not only telling and crafting stories that are worth publishing, but just stories worth telling. And it was fascinating. We think a lot about kind of the way in which stories help give meaning and structure to our lives, but also for writing, just how you access a story that's worth telling and writing down. What did you hear in the episode?

Eddie Rester 00:59

One of the things we didn't get to talk about, but that he shared in a writers workshop that he led years ago that I went to, is that sometimes you just need to write. You don't need to have any thought that one day this might get published. You don't need to... Writers, he said, nobody gets rich writing a best seller. And most people don't write best sellers. But we all have this deep need to write. And he talks, particularly as we get to the point in the conversation about the need for creative expression and what that does for us as humans. And so I would encourage you to listen today with just an ear to, what are the stories I need to be putting down? What are the stories I need to claim and own?

Chris McAlilly 01:43

At the end, we talk a little bit about the practice that he's picked up lately of co-writing and helping other people tell their stories. I found that to be incredibly fascinating, just as I, you know, sit with folks who are maybe older and wiser than me. When I think about like, I think about my parents' story, the story of our family, you know. There are so many stories that are worth telling. One of the things he mentions is that there are people that travel through life so fast that they don't sit down to almost like watch.

Eddie Rester 02:13
To watch the movie of their own life.

Chris McAlilly 02:15

Their own life and reflect upon it. And so hopefully the episode does that for you today. And if you really like it, share it with somebody who's important to you, somebody whose story you think is worth telling. And as always, we're glad that you're with us on The Weight.

Eddie Rester 02:30 Thank you for listening.

Chris McAlilly 02:31
[INTRO] The truth is, the world is growing more angry, more bitter, and more cynical. People don't trust one another. And we feel disconnected.

Eddie Rester 02:43

The way forward is not more tribalism. It's more curiosity that challenges what we believe, how we live, and how we treat one another. It's more conversation that inspires wisdom, healing, and hope.

Chris McAlilly 02:55

So we launched The Weight podcast as a space to cultivate sacred conversations with a wide range of voices at the intersection of culture and theology, art and technology, science and mental health. And we want you to be a part of it.

Eddie Rester 03:11
Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO] We're fortunate here today to be with a friend, a fellow Oxonian, Neil White. Neil, thanks for being with us today.

Neil White 03:25
It's my pleasure. Glad to be here.

Eddie Rester 03:26
We're gonna talk about your gift, which is writing, and we're going to cover a lot of things. But first, let's get to what's important. You are a state champion pickleball player.

Neil White 03:36
Well, you know, I get a lot of credit, because the Oxford Eagle has covered us winning pickleball...

Eddie Rester 03:41 Extensively.

Neil White 03:42

Extensivley. They gave us four columns, me and my partner Worth Duperier, for winning the state championship and they gave the poor donors who gave $10 million for the basketball arena a sidebar. So when I walk into the Windshield Magician, they go, "We got the world champion pickleball player!" And I won the 60 Plus division in Mississippi.

Chris McAlilly 04:02

Hey, that's a big deal. Yeah, a lot of sixty year olds playing pickleball in Mississippi these days, which shows you how big pickleball has become. It's quite the game. What do you love about pickleball?

Neil White 04:13

I love it, that it is social, and it's friendly. And what's really interesting is because of the nature of the game, getting low at the kitchen line, women are as good as men.

Eddie Rester 04:24 Right.

Neil White 04:25

So I really like that you can just go out and pick up games and everybody's friendly. There's no snobbery, or very little snobbery, in the pickleball community. In fact, I'm playing here today at five.

Chris McAlilly 04:36
It transcends age, too, in Oxford. I don't know about in other parts of the country.

Eddie Rester 04:40
Oh, my daughter, my younger daughter AC, who's 20 I mean, she plays pickleball whenever she can.

Chris McAlilly 04:44
The college kids go all in for pickleball.

Neil White 04:47

That's exactly right. My son-in-law who makes fun of pickleball says, "Yeah, I heard they're making pickleball dates. That must account for the declining pregnancy rates for college students." He's giving me a hard time about the game, obviously.

Eddie Rester 05:05

Neil, you have a love and a gift of writing. And that's been really your entire career. We're gonna talk about a couple moments in your career along the way. You are the CEO of Nautilus Publishing now. But where did that come from? Was that a teacher? Is that someone along the way? A parent that kind of encouraged that gift in you? How did that come about?

Neil White 05:29
Yes, it was a teacher named Callie Randall. My junior year in high school, she pulled me and my buddy, Steve Smith, who ended up being the head baseball coach at Baylor, aside. It was a writing class, an English classes, and she said, "You guys, I'm gonna give you different assignments from the rest of the class. I want you to sit over here by me at my desk." And she really encouraged me. She said, "You've got a gift for this. You obviously read a lot. You know how to communicate. Your vocabulary is good. Let's work on it." And that was the beginning. So it's always that one teacher.

Eddie Rester 06:01
Do you remember any particular lesson or anything that she said that sticks with you today, that still guides your writing?

Neil White 06:09

Yes. She said don't write like you've been taught, just discover your own voice. And that's still sort of the key is write enough to discover your own voice that's true to you. And that's when it becomes alive for whoever's going to read your work, whether it's just friends and family, or, you know, hundreds or thousands, or hundreds of thousands.

Chris McAlilly 06:33
What have you learned about your voice through the years? Like, what does it sound like? How do you know? How do you know it when you've accessed it?

Neil White 06:41

Well, it's really interesting. What I think I do better than your average writer is I pick good material. I don't write about those pedestrian things. Someone who is a fantastic writer, in terms of literature, can write about that chair and make you fall in love with it. That's not me. In my book, when you read "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts," I didn't send anybody running for the dictionary, not one word. There was no attempt to be literary. I think it would have taken away from the story. So what I try to focus in on is a subject matter, characters, and moments in my life or others' lives that are so compelling, that all I have to do is not get in the way.

Eddie Rester 07:24 Right.

Chris McAlilly 07:25

And that, to me, is a discipline of attention. You know, it's trying to pay attention to the compelling moments of life, and draw others' attention to them. And I think we're living in a moment where there's a lot of fragmentation in attention. I think about my generation. I think about how hard it is sometimes for me to read a book, much less to write anything at length. I guess talk about kind of how have you cultivated the time it takes to attend to a subject long enough to know that it is A, compelling and B, worth writing down?

Neil White 08:00

Well, it's interesting, I'll answer that in two ways. The first is I get so excited about it. I think in addition to attention has to be enthusiasm and passion. You love it so much that no amount of time is too much to dedicate to it, digging deeper, doing research, connecting dots, finding those things that make it meaningful. And so you know, I would say passion, for sure. But then there's this other side, that's not so appealing. That's the ego of the artists that you got to keep out of the way when you're writing. But when you finally get to it, you have this moment where you say, "Wait till they read this. Oh my god."

Eddie Rester 08:37

You talk about the ego of the author. I remember when I was in seminary, and writing for preaching is a slightly different thing. But I just remember our preaching professors saying, "If you keep writing yourself as the hero in the story, no one's gonna want that story."

Neil White 08:40

Absolutely. Absolutely. You have to be harder on yourself if you're writing first person narrative or creative nonfiction or first person essays. If you're not harder on yourself than anybody else, you lose all credibility. And I was given a gift, I think, by my parents of a sense of self worth that laughing at myself is as fun for me as it is for anybody who's participating in it. And I have lots of people who helped me along.

Eddie Rester 09:23
I know some of your friends they do probably laugh with you and at you.

Neil White 09:28 Absolutely. At is fine, too.

Eddie Rester 09:30 Yeah.

Neil White 09:30
There was a young man, and we'll get to this later, a character, an African American from New Orleans, in Carville, who just made unmerciful fun of me. The first week that we encountered each other, he had determined that I was the stupidest criminal he'd ever met, the boringest person in the world, and the whitest man he'd ever met. And then when he found out my name was Neil White, it was just all over with. So he followed me around making fun of me just in front of everybody. And I was bent over laughing. It was hysterical. The guy was brilliant. And that gives you insight into him as well to when you write about him. Absolutely.

Eddie Rester 10:07

So well, let's I don't want to jump there yet... But so you have this teacher in high school that really sets you on the course. What did you major in in college? Did you major in creative writing?

Neil White 10:19

I majored in English. There wasn't much of a creative writing course. Alan Douglas taught one which I took. That was great. But I wasn't ready for that. Evans Harrington, who was a great scholar here probably my favorite professor, the one who encouraged me the most. But I wanted to be a writer. But the truth is, I didn't have anything worth saying until we take that fall that most people do take at some point in their life. And that's when I finally had something worth telling the world.

Eddie Rester 10:50
Let's talk about that a little bit. Because then I want to talk about the book and what that has led you to because I think it's led you in a direction that you wouldn't have chosen.

Neil White 11:00 Not at all.

Eddie Rester 11:01
At all. And probably our paths wouldn't have crossed. Here in Oxford, Mississippi, so.

Neil White 11:04 Probably not. Probably not.

Eddie Rester 11:07

So you're a young man. You've gotten out of college. You're publishing some magazines on the coast. You do something, I think I vaguely remember in the book, that you weren't really aware

Neil White 11:23

Well, it was interesting. It started in Oxford, actually, I started a competitive paper for the Oxford Eagle when I was 23. And, you know, there was a daily paper in Oxford. There was a Daily Mississippian. And then we started a weekly paper. Any business person in the world who would have said a town of 10,000 needs three papers would have said, "You're an idiot." And I was. I had no business acumen whatsoever. But I wanted to try to tell some good stories, do some real journalism in Oxford. And that's where I discovered how to do this technique to buy time when I ran out of money, which is highly illegal. You can't commit it anymore with electronic check clearance.

Eddie Rester 12:02
That's right. You can't do that anymore.

Neil White 12:04

You can't do it anymore. Yeah. But yeah, I was promised a check by a grocery advertiser on Friday that I was going to cover payroll with. And he didn't give me the check. And I wrote the payroll checks. And I had a personal account at another bank. And I wrote a check to myself from myself and deposited in my corporate account. And that Monday, he gave me the check, and I covered it. And I thought all was well.

Eddie Rester 12:29

You found a loophole. There you go. Until the day that knock on the door and you end up in... We don't have to go through all the details. But you end up in this really strange place. And you write about it in your book, "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts," but kind of give us the kind of that moment.

Neil White 12:50

Sure. So I had been doing it off and on for years. I'd even been caught in Oxford one time and they said, "You can't do this," and they shut my account. But nothing ever happened. I mean, there were no consequences. So when I got in trouble on the coast, I continued to use that technique as financing, which is against the law. And the house of cards fell. The FBI came over and interviewed me. I showed them my books, told them everything. And at the end, they said, you know, you're going to do a couple of years in jail. And it's like, "I'm sorry, what? Can't you let me pay this back?" And they said, "No." Now it's typical Mississippi. I was at the country club, greeting new members, and the FBI agent was a new member of the country club. And he had his glass of chardonnay, and I had my glass of chardonnay. And I walked over to him and I said, "Hello, Norman. Welcome to the club."" And he said, Thank you, Neil." He said, "I've been in this business for 25 years, and you're the second person who hasn't lied to me. We're going that it was fully wrong to do, fully illegal.

to take this in a professiona,l business-like sense. And if you keep telling the truth, you know, we'll do whatever we can to help you." So I was sentenced to one year in prison. Most of the guys who did what I did were sentenced to seven years, because they fought it. They went to trial, that sort of thing. And I had moved to New Orleans. The publisher of New Orleans Magazine hired me in the midst of this, and he said, "I love what you did. Come publish New Orleans Magazine for me." And I said, "Bill, I'm under investigation by the FBI." Remember, this is Louisiana with Edwin Edwards. He said, "Oh, hell our governor has been indicted four times. Come on over." So he...

Eddie Rester 14:24
My grandfather loved Edwin Edwards. Loved him.

Neil White 14:27

I'm sure he did. So in the midst of this, I go be publisher of New Orleans Magazine, and I'm going to restaurants and they're not letting me pay the bills. And you know, my life is falling apart, but I'm still on this strange trajectory. So they assign you to a prison based on where you live. If I had stayed in Gulfport, I've would have been sent to Saufley Field or one of the white collar places in Alabama. But because I had moved to New Orleans, there was a new federal prison that I didn't know about that was closest. And they send you there so your kids can
come visit and that sort of thing. And it was pre-Internet. I didn't know what it was. I couldn't do any research. And I show up at this new federal prison, and in short order, I'm waiting for the guard to get me and I see a man walking down the hallway and he waves to me, and he doesn't have any fingers. And I go in and I said, "What's the deal?" I thought maybe prison industry accident. I didn't know. And the guy said, "No. Hansen's disease." And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Leprosy." So that's how I discovered it, when I was there.

Eddie Rester 15:30
Wow. So you were divided, though, right? The folks with Hansen's Disease, leprosy lived in one part of facility. And the prison was really the other part. So where did you interact?

Neil White 15:44

Well, the hallways. There weren't bars and that sort of thing. We had freedom of movement. We went the cafeteria together. We went to the doctor together. We walked the same hallways. My first job was washing dishes and doing the menu board. And so I was assigned to the leprosy cafeteria to write the menu board because I can spell and I had pretty good penmanship. And I got to spend time with them. I helped him with their trays. Talked to them. Saw them in the hallways all the time. When we were waiting to see the foot doctor or the hand doctor, we were all in the waiting room together.

Chris McAlilly 16:16

When did you know this was a story that you wanted to tell? Or that you began writing down? Was it in the midst of it? Were you writing down stories while you were there? Or was it years later, when you decided, I want to reflect back on this and tell the story?

Neil White 16:31

That is a great question. I started writing the day I got there, because I was planning to write an expose day about this horrible government experiment, subjecting prisoners to leprosy patients, and was in my mind comparing it to what went on it with the syphilis stuff in Tuskegee, and so I started taking copious notes thinking this is what's going to get me back on my feet. And you know, about halfway through, I realized this is so much more important. There's nothing wrong with this. The tragedy is that the government subjected the leprosy patients to the inmates, you know. It was just the opposite. And by the end of the year that I was there, I knew that there was this big story there. It was really important. And to be honest with you, I wasn't sure I was the right person to write it.

Chris McAlilly 17:20
How did you decide that you were the right person to write it?

Neil White 17:24

I waited. I waited and I thought about it. You know, I could tell you who said what to whom and had written that down. But I couldn't tell you why it was important. I hadn't really had the time to reflect and search for meaning and see if I really was going to live a different kinds of life, that sort of thing. It took me probably ten years to decide that I think I'm going to give a shot at telling at least my story, if not the story.

Chris McAlilly 17:51

Ten years. Wow. That's something. To sit with the story that you know is worth telling, but to allow it to kind of percolate. I do think that that's one of the most interesting dimensions of the writers that I've been around is kind of knowing, you know, here's a story. Here's a story worth telling. Here's the story that I'm to tell. And this is when it needs to be told. And this is a story that needs to be told, but also published. I mean, all those are dimensions of storytelling. But I think the the great writers that ended up also being great published writers, I don't know, have a keen savvy around that. And I just wonder, you know, for anybody that's out there trying to navigate some portion of that journey into becoming a writer, just kind of any wisdom or insight that you would offer.

Neil White 18:46

Yeah, yeah. Those are those are fabulous questions and complicated questions to answer. But I was working on pieces. I'd written a play that I didn't send off, but only produced here sort of locally. I was taking creative writing classes. My buddy Tom Franklin was saying, "Fictionalize it. Make it perfect." I was like, I don't need to. And I discovered these guys at the creative nonfiction organization, Creative Nonfiction Foundation, and they helped me figure out how to tell a story using the techniques of fiction, but it being a true story. And so some people were saying, "Publish it now. Do it while the story is hot." Barry, Hannah had written a big piece about it in the Oxford American. But I also had some friends who are a lot wiser who said, "the longer you wait to write this story, the better it's going to be. Because you're gonna have that time to reflect." It doesn't mean that it's the best for marketing or publishing. But in terms of writing, I think time is the magic of that formula.

Chris McAlilly 19:48
Time is the magic. I love that. And I do think there is wisdom that comes in allowing a story to have that.

Eddie Rester 19:58 To marinate.

Chris McAlilly 19:59

Yeah, for there to be the distance between the thing that happens and the thing that ultimately gets consolidated or solidified into a structure. Sometimes it's so hard. I mean, I'm sitting here thinking, the primary form of writing that Eddie and I both do is preaching, and so it's a weekly task. And one of the things about that, that I lament and grieve is that it's almost like cooking a bologna sandwich, you know. It's just like, I got another bologna sandwich. And I don't mean... Anybody that listens to my preaching probably thinks, "Yeah, it's worse than a bologna sandwich." But a lot of people like bologna sandwiches. Yeah, that's right. But I do think that sometimes. I think, man, if I had more time with this set of ideas, like, I could really tell this well. How do you think about that, in terms of time and storytelling?

Eddie Rester 20:50
I think it was Rachel Held Evans once said, "You preach a sermon, because it's Sunday, not because it's done."

Chris McAlilly 20:57 Right.

Eddie Rester 20:58

And so I think that, and that's given me a lot of freedom to go back and remine some old sermons from time to time.

Chris McAlilly 21:06
So you remine your old sermons?

Eddie Rester 21:07
Well, I go back to the ideas or the ideals or how I used a story.

Chris McAlilly 21:11 You just phone it in.

Eddie Rester 21:15
See what I have to deal with here, Neil?

Neil White 21:19 I love it. I love it.

Eddie Rester 21:21

But, you know, in a conversation you and I had, Neil, I mean, you talked about polishing and kind of repeating and kind of going back. And even John T. Edge in our conversation with him, talked about moving. He'll handwrite. He has a place in his house where he'll handwrite. Then he goes outside and sits and he types of story up and just kind of there's this progression. And when you think about people writing, at least me through the years, I thought, "well, they just sit down, bang it out. And four months later, they got a book on the shelf." But it's years. It needs to be years.

Chris McAlilly 21:57
Yeah, I appreciate that encouragement. Is there any other wisdom that you would offer to Eddie to make him a better preacher?

Neil White 21:57

It is. It needs to be years. And what you guys are doing with your sermons, that is invaluable for your future, longer works. I can't tell you how many times I went back and read the editorials that I wrote, and the pieces that I wrote for the magazines and newspapers when I was a young man. And to look at that, and see how wrong I was or how shallow our was or what I really missed in what I was trying to do. And I know you guys are a lot more thoughtful and search for meaning on a daily basis. But I think you'll find that those, especially the ones who are really important to you, will be invaluable in your future writings in a different realm, a different genre, because most people don't have the benefit of being able to go back and see what's in writing that they've said.

Eddie Rester 22:55
That was very well played. I'm gonna say, we've been doing this, this is the fifth season, Neil, and that was probably the most well played slight. He's getting better at it.

Chris McAlilly 23:11
I've really been spending a decade with you. I'm learning the ballgame. Learning the ballgame.

Neil White 23:18
I love that. Y'all okay if I pass on that question?

Chris McAlilly 23:21

Yeah, there you go. I like the deflection. But I do think humor. I mean, humor is an interesting form of storytelling, because it's so... I mean, I gave you a slight. I'll come back to you. And in previous episodes, I've done this as well. This is part of you as a writer and as a communicator is, like, timing. Storytelling is all about timing. And joke telling, I think is like one of the most refined versions of that. And, you know, where did you learn that? Like, who were the storytellers that you learn that kind of... humeric timing? That's not the right word... What is it? So can I have confession here? Go for it.

Eddie Rester 24:00
I spent a lot of time in college and in seminary, and beyond, watching Comedy Central.

Neil White 24:07 All right.

Eddie Rester 24:08 That's great.

Chris McAlilly 24:08

Eddie Rester 24:09

To hear people tell stories and to hear people's timing and to learn how they would start often in the middle of a story, and then work to the end and then back to the beginning and then to the end again. I mean, I think that you're right. Comedians among us, the good comedians among us, a Nate Bargatze...

Chris McAlilly 24:30 Amazing storyteller.

Eddie Rester 24:31

Who are the storytellers who have this incredible ability, not only to make you care about something ridiculous, but then have the ability to kind of impart something to you in it. And I think that yeah, I think that's part of it as well.

Neil White 24:47

Absolutely. And people who are good at it are just priceless. I love to be around them. My wife is always saying, "Why are you spending so much time around them? They drive me crazy." Yeah, but it's great material. It really is. And I will just take it all day long. And she always says, "Just because it's funny doesn't mean you need to say it." But I like it when other people do.

Eddie Rester 25:11

You know, one of the things about your book, and I do want to talk a little bit more about writing process, because I think there are a lot of people who would benefit from just the consistency of writing, whether that's typing something down every day, finding a journal two or three, four times a week. I want to talk about that creative process in a moment. But I want to go ahead. I think I've shared this with you before, when the book came out, long before I knew you, there were people in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, that's where I was at the time, who would come up to me and say, have you read "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts? Have you read it?" And there's this whole moment, particularly Mississippians love Mississippi writers.

Neil White 25:53 Absolutely. Thank goodness.

Eddie Rester 25:54

Comedy Central.

They love Mississippi writers. And then I didn't know how far away from the moment it was. And you and I had talked about the Coke bottle story before, that for me, the seminal moment of the book. And for you, when did you realize that that was going to be? And tell a little bit about what I'm referencing. But when did you realize that that was going to be a moment of, "a ha" or a moment of people could go, "Now I'm beginning to see?"

Neil White 26:29

Yeah, great question. And a lot longer than you would think. I mean, I knew it was important at the time. But I spent a lot of time thinking about that. And speaking of funny, I mean, one of the things that, when you write about yourself candidly, we are at so many levels ridiculous.

Eddie Rester 26:44 Ridiculous. Just ridiculous.

Neil White 26:46

And I wanted to be in the Guinness Book of World Records more than anybody. And this prison was closing. The experiment didn't work. The leprosy patients helped the inmates circumvent the rules, and they clandestinely got the place put on the National Register of Historic Places. So the Bureau of Prisons couldn't make the facility secure. So the prison just finally said enough. We're out of here. So they started closing down. They'd lost interest in us. The guards were looking for jobs. I was proofing a couple of their resumes. One of them actually asked me to write a letter of recommendation to a printing company in New Orleans. I was like, "I don't think that's going to help you." But so we helped the leprosy patients set up for their spring dance. They had a very busy social life, and they had Mardi Gras parades.

Eddie Rester 27:28
Because most of them had been there forever.

Neil White 27:29

Forever, for their most of their lives. Yeah. So the dance, the band was about start and Ella Bounds, the woman in the wheelchair who had this hand cranked wheelchair, and I'll tell you a story about that in a second, asked for one to stick around for the first dance. So I pushed her around the side while the band played and a couple of the other inmates went in and broke in on the leprosy patients dates, one of whom we think was a prostitute. And it really made them mad. And the song ended, and a leprosy patient pointed what was left of his index finger and said, "No inmates allowed. You're not invited here." Dead silence. We started walking back to our side and one of the guys said, "Did we just get kicked out of a leper dance?" And that night in bed, I was lying in bed saying, "This may have never happened before in the history of mankind. I could be in the Guinness Book of World Records for this." And I woke up the next morning sort of discouraged because everybody said you got to be a new person. You got to change. You got to be different. You can't live the way you did. And the next morning, I was with Ella Bounds and I told her that and said, "I'm feeling pretty bad. I feel like I'm the same person. I know I can do things better and different." And she told me the story of the Coke bottles. And she said back in the day when Coke bottles were returned, the distributor from Baton Rouge would only send shipped and cracked Coke bottles to the colony, so he wouldn't have to take them back after they'd been touched by the lips of leprosy patients. And there were thousands of Coke bottles. And they used them as sugar dispensers and as flower vases, and with these rubber balls, they would play bowling games with them. But the thing they did that was still around when I was there was they turned them upside down and they stuffed them into the ground to line flowerbeds and gardens like bricks or rocks would be used. So there were these Coke bottles everywhere. And she said, "Coca Cola bottle's still a Coca Cola bottle. Just found 'em a new purpose." And it was this freeing moment in that I realized at the time even, gosh, you know, I'm suspect of people who say I've made a 180. I'm a different person. I'm completely different. I think we're all born with these certain sets of traits and characteristics and skills. And we can use them for good or we can make a different choice. And, you know, so I'm good at some things that that I let get away from me. And so going back out, I sort of tried to use those skills in a different way. Instead of always promoting myself, maybe promote some other artists or help some group or not beyond the vestry the church but help them with their marketing and publications. You know, things that I knew how to do but didn't put me in the spotlight, which was was a real dangerous spot for me at that point in time. So, yeah, you know, that story, for me, it's so true because I do think we can all use our skill sets for good or evil and our ego gets involved and we make mistakes. But I don't think we have to throw everything out and start over again.

Eddie Rester 30:24

Yeah. Yeah, that's the story for me that really, again, we've talked about this before. It's a brilliantly written story in the book. And the book is really this story after story after story. Before we leave, Chris, any more questions about the book before we kind of push?

Chris McAlilly 30:45 Go for it.

Eddie Rester 30:45
So get out of prison, what's the first step? Where do you land? I know you're back in Oxford, you got back to Oxford.

Neil White 30:54

Came back to Oxford. My wife divorced me for lots of good reasons. And I wanted to be in the same town with my children, and they were six and three. And the first thing I did was sign up for a creative writing class with my friend Barry Hannah. I don't know if you know Barry, or knew Barry very well, but he was some kind of character. He's a much better teacher even than writer. And he was sober. When I moved back, signed up for his class, started writing this, he was so encouraging. He said, "Quit doing whatever you're doing, and don't do anything but this. You've got what it takes." And he said, "I've only recommended three or four people. I can introduce you to agents." And I said, "Barry, I want to learn how to do this. But I'm not ready to write the story yet." He said, "I think you are." But anyway, that was the first step. And then I continued to... I think I knew the stories and what I'd seen. But we're born with the artistic talent, but you can hone a craft. And I wanted to hone my craft to tell this story the best I could when I finally had something to say.

Chris McAlilly 31:55 That's great.

Eddie Rester 31:56
So as you think about honing the craft, for folks who may be listening or thinking, "I've always felt like I had a story to tell." How would you encourage them to hone the craft?

Neil White 32:11

Well, yeah, that's a complicated question. But first, write. Second is find a community of other writers, not people who talk about what they're going to write, but who are actually writing, whether it's essays or short stories, or a novel, and get together with them and start a writers group where you submit something, you know, every two weeks, once a month, and you critique each other's in sort of a workshop setting. Pick people who are kind and for you, but not like your mother who just said, "Oh, my God, this is going to win the Pulitzer."

Eddie Rester 32:39
My mom has never heard a sermon of mine she didn't like so yeah.

Neil White 32:42

I'm sure. And then, take some classes. Go to some really rigorous workshops, because there are some sort of tried and true principles. And that is that, you know, people try to write big stories. And when they do that, they try to write something universal. But as you guys know, the universal message comes through from concrete details, from specific moments in time, from things that happened in very small settings with no fanfare, when no one was watching. And it's when you're vulnerable, and you're confessional, and you tell the thing that nobody has any business telling--which is counterintuitive to so much of our culture--that's when people connect with you. And they say, "Thank God you wrote that. I've felt like that my entire life," or, "I had that moment, too." And so that sort of rethinking how we think as a culture in America, and in the West of putting up a good front and being strong and winning... That doesn't make a good story. And so you just work on it. Work on it, and find good teachers, and find good friends who can give you some guidance, and go to workshops. I mean you can pick up so much. I'll lead them every once in a while now. And what I did was I took everything I felt was important for fifteen years, and put it in two days. Doesn't mean you can teach somebody to write a book, but you can save them a lot of heartache by telling them what not to do.

Eddie Rester 34:10
I took that workshop early on in my time in Oxford.

Neil White 34:13 I remember.

Eddie Rester 34:14
And I would encourage, if you offer it again, and you're in the area, it's worth it. It helped me write sermons. It helped me think through that process. So.

Chris McAlilly 34:26

How do you... Are you currently writing? I mean, do you always write? Are you writing all the time? Or do you have specific projects that you're working on or you write toward the direction of a project? How does that work for you?

Neil White 34:39

Yeah, great question. A lot of great writers write every morning. I'm a project guy. I write around the clock when I'm on a project. I sneak away, steal time when I can. I go to a coffee shop, get up real early in the morning. What I've... It's interesting this was the one book I know I wanted to write. I've written essays and other things, but I co-write and ghost write books now. I've spent all this time learning how to sort of craft a book. And I've been hired by lots, or partnered with, lots and lots of primarily men, a couple of women, who have led these remarkable lives and have been racing through life encountering unbelievable historic figures, things that nobody would believe. But most of them never took the time to stop and watch the movie of their life and reflect on it. So what I do is help them, if it's a good fit, and if they're willing to be vulnerable, help them craft that book.

Chris McAlilly 35:38 That's so cool.

Neil White 35:39 Yeah. I love it.

Chris McAlilly 35:40
Yeah, that seems like a totally different way of thinking about telling stories, because now you're not just telling your own story. It's not...

Eddie Rester 35:50
You're helping someone else.

Chris McAlilly 35:51

I think the genre... One of the things I've been thinking a lot about over the past couple of years is the genre of the memoir. I do think, I mean, it certainly is publishable. People buy memoirs. It's hot, as a published commodity. But it's also, I think, particularly in an increasingly secular age, people are seeking maps, for how stories... I think the Bible is like that. The Bible is a story to live inside. And I feel like memoirs give people, in a more specific way, an opportunity to live inside somebody else's story, for a book, for a moment. And I can see how if you've told a story that has memoir like qualities to it, how... I don't know just how fun it would be to help live inside somebody else's story, but then also give it the shape and the texture and the clarity and specificity that you would get when you tell your own story. How is that? What's that like for you? Talk a little bit about the experience of ghost writing.

Eddie Rester 37:03
And then I want to hear what it's like for them.

Neil White 37:05

Well, it's fascinating. It is such a privilege for someone to share their life with you. And you've got to have such trust, and you've got to work out things of what to tell and what not to tell for people who are still alive, who may be hurt. You've got to consider all those things. But I encourage them. I mean, let me tell you how I've had a couple of guys walk away, men walk away who come in and want to tell their story. And I'll say, "That's great. But what I want to know is, what were your lowest moments? Where were your failures? What were your moments of mortification? What are you terrified for anybody to know about you? And it's going to cost you this amount of money." And they turn around and walk out. But that's what makes a good story. But for those individuals who wants to tell their story and understand the depth of a great memoir, it's such a privilege to work with them. I get all of their papers. We spend hundreds of hours talking. I do research, every newspaper article. I do their family tree. I find out what their grandparents did. I end up having their dreams. But it's a remarkable experience for me, and also can help them at some level. You know, the hero's journey that we always hear about... And hero is not as we know it in the secular world. The hero's journey is how you understand the journey of your life. I can help them piece those pieces together. I just finished a book with a gentleman who never felt accepted. And at the end, there's this great passage about all the scars, all the failures, all of the rejection that he felt, ended up making him the person with the drive that he is, and he seemed to have this momentary, "oh my gosh, it is okay to be me." And you know, he made so much money. It's unbelievable. You wouldn't believe it, but it never filled that hole. And so it's a privilege on my part, and I think, sometimes it really helps them. We all get clarity when we know the story of our life.

Chris McAlilly 39:10

Yeah, there's a... I think about... I mean, it's fascinating to think about this role of being a co- writer, almost a ghost writer, you know, as... I think about it within the trajectory of my wife is a therapist.

Neil White 39:23
Counseling. I hated to compare it to that, but it's a big piece of it.

Chris McAlilly 39:28

I see it as akin to it. And, you know, in some ways, particularly, there's like narrative therapy, which is just a particular way of doing therapy that's really about connecting the dots ainnd a person's story. I think a lot of therapists would resonate with this kind of narrative approach. But I think that, behind that there's just this, you know... I think about in the church confessional. It's really at the heart of good therapy and at the heart of good confession is truth. It's honesty, and then allowing that truth and honesty to be held by another person, without going into prison or being completely and utterly exposed. But that story is held in love and then kind of reflected back with great care. And that's it. That's an extraordinary gift to be able to offer another human being. I would imagine.

Neil White 40:24
It is, and thank you. Yes, it is. It is.

Eddie Rester 40:27
There's a book, I've read a chunk of called "The UnLonely Project." It's Alfred. No, that's not his name. Noble is his last name. Alfred Nobel is a different guy.

Chris McAlilly 40:39 Different character.

Eddie Rester 40:40

Different character. But early on, he talks about just the deep loneliness in our culture. It's a significant issue. And he started this project, the UnLonely Project. But part of what he's found is creative expression, the research bears it out, that those who find creative expressions, whether it's music, painting, writing, it gives you the ability to see beyond yourself. It puts you... It almost propels you back into community, just the act of creating. And so I feel like, I wonder if you've seen any of the other folks that you've worked with that have kind of had that awakening that that moment of, ah, I can step in life?

Neil White 41:31

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I want to go back, when I say it's a gift, it's also a gift to me that they trust me and share with me the things that they do. But yes, absolutely. I think creativity in any realm, and you know, there are people who can be creative in the medical field, in the legal field. It doesn't have to be the traditional arts. It's a remarkable, remarkably freeing thing. It also, you know, whether somebody is formally religious or not, when you do creative work, you know that there is something bigger than you because there is some flow. You step into that river. You write something. You create something. You make some music. You compose something that is so much bigger than yourself. I remember a couple of times thinking, "Oh, my God, what if I had not sat down at the desk today? Would this have ever come come out this way?" But I think there is a creative energy that we tap into that helps us be our best selves in that realm, helps us feel free to be confessional, helps us see the world in a way that maybe some other people had not seen it before. And typically, those are not grand moments. They're just the moments of a Coke bottle. And so yeah, I do.

Chris McAlilly 42:53

Yeah. So you know, as you're talking, as both of you are talking about creativity, I was thinking about agency, that what creativity gives you an ability to do is to have agency in the midst of a world that sometimes feels out of control. But what I heard you say was something that I wasn't expecting, which was there's this creative energy. It's almost like this flow. And I think of that more as... I mean, you know, I'm a preacher, and at the end of the day, it feels like something transcendent or something spiritual or something of God, like the work or action of God that flows creatively into our story to help give it shape and beauty. You know, because I think all of us fear we're going to live into a tragic or ugly or terrible story. And I think part of the gifts of creativity is helping give those moments of either scar or failure, or whatever, all of those find their proper place within a beautiful story. So thank you for the ways in which you do that, you know, with your own story, with the stories of others. And thank you for giving us an opportunity to have a window into your work. I'm very grateful.

Neil White 44:08

It's my pleasure. Thank you. And I will say this, you are onto something. If you read Julia Cameron's work "The Artist's Way," she quotes hundreds, hundreds of the most revered artists of the time, and there's not one of them that doesn't mention flow, higher power, God, that anybody who thinks they're gonna go in and create a masterpiece on their own is set up for failure.

Eddie Rester 44:35

If you're looking for a great book "In the Sanctuary of Outcasts." You can check out Nautilus Publishing. They've published just a lot of amazing and a wide array of things. And the book that you mentioned that the man wrote, I know it just... This is in February that we're recording this, and it just released. So give us his name and the book title.

Neil White 44:53

His name is J. L. Holloway and his book is called "Nothing to Lose: A Memoir of Poverty, Resilience, and Gratitude." And it is remarkable. I took it on as a paid job for him, for his family, and it ended up being so good, we published it.

Chris McAlilly 45:14 That's awesome.

Eddie Rester 45:15
Neil. Thank you for your time today.

Neil White 45:16
It's my pleasure. It's my pleasure. Thanks, both of you.

Eddie Rester 45:18
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 45:27

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]