Writer Tony Rehagen: The Generalist Interview

I met Tony Rehagen at a conference in Atlanta, in 2013, when he was nominated for Writer of the Year at the City and Regional Magazine Awards. I first saw him as he is here, playing guitar.

I didn’t know what I was walking into when I arrived. Rehagen’s friend, fellow writer Justin Heckert, had urged me to come to a house party, where it turned out pretty much everyone but me had come prepared to sing.

I heard a lot of great music that night, played by a lot of great writers. In addition to Rehagen and Heckert, Thomas Lake was there, as well as the novelist Charles McNair. And when I remember that night I think mostly about the relationship I felt between their singing and their work. Every moment seemed an act of creation, and Rehagen was one of the stalwarts. He sang and when others took a turn at lead vocals he supported them with his guitar.

By that time I’d read his award nominated stories and already counted myself as a fan. Rehagen’s great strength, it seems to me, is adapting his voice to his material. For the sake of this interview, I asked him to send me a few stories to use as a jumping off point to talk about writing in specific and the magazine business in general. The three stories he chose are incredibly varied in tone.

“The Crossing” is spare and muscular, like something I’d imagine Cormac McCarthy producing if he lit off after a true story about trains: Some death, an existential dread, the creeping sense that everything isn’t going to be all right.

My favorite of the three is “This Land Is My Land,” which is perfect from its well-chosen title to its inevitable, crushing end. I think of it as the nonfiction equivalent of some dusty tune by The Band, capturing the romantic myth of what it means to own—a house, land, a legacy—and the dangers of wanting too much.

I was pleasantly surprised when Rehagen sent me “Re: Fredi,” which is light—jeez, it’s about baseball—in comparison to the other articles he chose. The fun here is Rehagen’s novel structure—a one-sided email exchange between him, and his editor.

The Generalist: Let’s start with some introductions. You’re a University of Missouri J School grad. Tell me something about that experience, please. When did you know you wanted to be a writer? Give me your origin story…

Rehagen: I totally fell into this profession. I set out to be a musician, played in bands all through high school and college. I liked to write and was at MU so I figured journalism would be a fit for a degree. I liked sports and started there, with zero experience. The first story I ever wrote was a volleyball preview.  Along the way, I fell in with a group of classmates and fellow sports writers (especially Daimon Eklund, Justin Heckert, Wright Thompson, Steve Walentik, and Seth Wickersham) who introduced me to the work of Gary Smith and Tom Junod and Michael Paterniti. The guys in that little Mizzou sportswriting cabal were just a bunch of writing junkies—talented junkies who inspired me, and continue to inspire me. But I burnt out on J-school. I took a break after graduation and played music. After a year or so, I was married and had to start making money, and I had this journalism degree, so I went to work for this small-town weekly newspaper where I could write what I wanted and as much as I wanted. The fire was just reignited.

The Generalist: So, let’s talk about these three stories on the docket, beginning with “The Crossing.” I imagine you read about the circumstances in the paper. I pulled a few of the briefs. They all run along pretty much the same line: “Man killed by train while trying to rescue crash victim.” These are 200 word stories, but you saw something else there. How did you come across this, and what made you decide it was a bigger story?

Rehagen: I did see it in the paper, and it immediately struck me that there was something profound there. I mean, the idea that these three characters—two complete strangers and the train—would arrive at the same place at the same time and their courses were forever altered because of it…I knew I wanted to explore it.

The Generalist: Can you tell me anything about the pitch process? The seeming waste—a 48-year old man dies trying to save an octogenarian with bone cancer—isn’t a sexy story. It’s pretty brutal. Was it a hard sell?

Rehagen: There was no pitch. My editor, Steve Fennessy, saw the same story and had the same idea, the same sense that there was something deeper there. He brought it up to me before I had a chance to pitch it.

The Generalist: That in itself is remarkable. A story like that could be so easily passed over without much consideration. I’d add this, too: This piece ran five months after the men involved died. And as a reader, I don’t think I learn anything more—not a single detail— about Atlanta by reading it. But as a person, I feel like I was put in direct touch with the precariousness and seeming unfairness of life. I think a common problem at city and regional magazines is to be so caught up in connecting people to the area they live that we can forget that a universal story, as I’d suggest this is, is still worth sharing with “local” readers. I’m curious if there was any discussion about whether the story had enough to do with Atlanta.

Rehagen: Well, one thing that makes it very Atlanta is the train. I mean this is a railroad town, founded as “terminus,” and the rails are still a major, if overlooked, presence throughout the city. Reporting this story, I also discovered a pretty significant subculture of trainspotters who collect photos and videos of trains. (In fact, I found one spotter who had taped this very train just fifteen minutes or so before it hit Dekai—that’s where I got the details of the train in the last section.) But your point is valid. Fortunately, I have an editor who wants those universal stories. He lets me travel the entire state to find them. But, of course, he’d prefer I find them in the city casting reflections on what’s going on here at the moment.

The Generalist: You know, as a Yankee, and a writer, I probably romanticize the South and its story telling culture. When I saw that this story ran at all it struck me as being of a piece with my image of the South, anyway, as a place that understands that the value of a good yarn—complete with hard, life and death themes—transcends anything so temporary as “news.” Is there any truth in that admittedly shopworn image of the South I’m carrying around?

Rehagen: Well, Missouri, especially Mid-Mo, where I’m from and went to school, isn’t exactly the South. It’s this weird border-state nether region that had plenty of people fighting on both sides of the Civil War. So moving down here from Indiana (which I found to be more like Mid-Missouri than North Georgia), I had the same romantic notion of the stories of the South. I’ve indulged that notion, written about moonshiners, land feuds, alligator hunting, peach farmers, and cotton mills during the War Between the States. But I think there is a special esteem bestowed on writers down here. And I always joke that the warmer climate makes people a little more stir-crazy (or just plain crazy), yielding more fascinating stories. That’s why my journalist friends in Florida are neck-deep in bizarre, compelling material.

The Generalist: I admired the story, in the end, for how poetic the language is and how spare—just over 2,400 words and nothin’ extra. Can you talk to me, a little, about the writing process? I’m assuming your target was the 2,500-word bin of the feature well. Was that tough to do on this?

Rehagen: I didn’t set out with any parameters of length. In fact the first draft, which was told chronologically, was around 4,000 words. But it wasn’t working, too much backstory on the two men, it took too long to get to what made the story special (the actual crossing). So my editor, Steve Fennessy, suggested I try telling it backwards, unpacking the backstory quickly through the scenes. And it worked, I think. But with the climax now appearing so close to the front, I felt I had to get out of the piece as quickly as possible before readers lost interest. So the 2,400-word total was more the byproduct than the goal.

The Generalist: I find that fascinating. I’ve generally worked in places where the range, in terms of word count, can be pretty rigid. The word count can be very generous, maybe 5,000 words, but as the writer you’re then duty bound to give them something within five hundred words of that, give or take. Are you usually able to sit down and write the story as long as it needs to be, without too much care for its length?

Rehagen: Usually, the same thing applies to me here. My editor drills me on tightening. A 5,000-word piece would be the exception. And I usually write well over that limit and try to cut it back within range. But in this case, my editor seemed open to what form it could ultimately take, and he gave me time and encouragement to play around with it.

The Generalist: I told you, about a year ago, that I thought “This Land Is My Land” is one of the best stories I’ve read in recent years, sprawling and epic. It’s not just the generous size, a shade under 6,000 words, but the various themes involved in this story, a land dispute that resulted in murder. Before I gush too much more, please tell me a little bit about how you found this story.

Rehagen: This story was actually waiting for me when I arrived at Atlanta magazine in August 2011. Fennessy had found this in the local newspaper (a story that didn’t quote either side). He had assigned it to two previous (and incredible) writers, dear friends Thomas Lake (now of Sports Illustrated) and Justin Heckert (Esquire, New York Times Magazine, etc), but both left the mag before getting to work on it. I had heard Heckert talk about it and I was instantly jealous, so I was elated to inherit the idea. I mean, this story had everything: Land feud, a guns dealer and moonshiner…in the North Georgia Mountains! Writes itself.

The Generalist: The piece deals in a lot of history, dating back to how land was allotted to whites in 1832, in a Gold Lottery that drove the Cherokee tribe westward on the Trail of Tears. From there you chronicle how the boundaries surrounding these properties, once clearly defined, became confused. “Into the 1950s, owners would sell a land lot of forty acres, ‘more or less,’ even if the actual lines had long been blurred, moved, or skewed, or if parts of the original square lot had been broken off and weren’t technically theirs to unload. …Meanwhile fences went up, gradually becoming accepted boundaries—whether they ran along actual property lines or not.”

The section is just so richly detailed. You write, “…surveyors would enter dubious landmarks such as ‘rock piles’ and ‘big trees’ into the deed descriptions.”

Please tell me a little bit about your research process here—how you got the information, and how happy did you feel when it turned out that land surveying is so fascinating.

Rehagen: While I was first thinking about this story I went to see the movie Prometheus. The movie was a disappointment, but when the humans are first landing on the alien world and see the structures lined up, the lead scientist says, “God does not create in straight lines.” It hit me: This story was about lines (I even co-opted the spirit of that line with “There are no straight lines in nature.”) So I started researching the history of that land in books and online. But the actual surveying didn’t come until I got into the legal documents of this specific case. There were volumes of deeds and sales and maps and surveys and it didn’t make any sense to me. I started talking to area surveyors who spoke generally about this situation and even one guy who had dealt with Dempsey previously. But when I finally got ahold of Webb, the surveyor who did the last survey for Dempsey, it all came together. It clicked. He just explained it all in a way that was interesting and funny and made sense. He had one of my all-time favorite quotes: “I once came across a property line described as ‘Two smokes on a mule’s back from the chestnut stump,’” says Richard Webb, who in thirty-six years as a surveyor in North Georgia has dug through volumes of yellowed maps and deeds. “Well, how big was the mule? And what were you smoking?”

The Generalist: Tell me about the process of learning about these two main characters, Jewell Crane and Lewis Dempsey. What kind of cooperation did you get from interview subjects, in capturing the history of these men and their families, and how did you gain it?

Rehagen: In the rarest of rare instances, I got full cooperation from both sides. Both families felt that they had been given a raw deal. Dempsey swore he was innocent, that he had acted in self-defense and felt he’d been denied his day to prove it in court. The Cranes obviously felt cheated out of justice for their dead patriarch. All I had to do was tell them that I wanted to get their sides of the story out and hit record.

The Generalist: That’s pretty special right there. Did the two sides lobby you much, or worse, ask you whose side you were taking? I’ve certainly covered disputes before where, at the end of the interview process, before I’ve written, the protagonists want to know if they won me over.

Rehagen: The Crane side didn’t seem overly concerned with my stance. They seemed very confident that they were clearly wronged by Dempsey and the courts. They’re the ones who lost a patriarch. Dempsey, on the other hand, was constantly pushing me to see his side, pleading his case. But he seemed sincere. After all, because he didn’t get his day in court, I was the closest he could come to judge and jury in his mind.

The Generalist: Without giving away anything of your ending, the point of tension is that Dempsey believes he has a claim on what had commonly been considered Crane land, some of which was used by the Cranes to grow corn. But of course it turns out that the land is symbolic—not the real issue in the dispute between these men. Is that something you already knew, or expected, when you started in on this story or found in the course of your research?

Rehagen: It hit me when I went out to personally walk the land in dispute. It was just a few hundred square feet of mostly steep, rocky hillside. Mostly worthless. The area with corn was miniscule. So I knew the argument had to be about something deeper. Besides, from all accounts the families, even Dempsey and Crane, had gotten along for years before their falling out.

The Generalist: Let’s talk about the writing here. How’d this one come together? How many drafts? The story, as it progresses, is true Americana. If The Band split up and started writing nonfiction feature stories, they’d have done this piece. Did you have any sense yourself, when you sat down to write, that you had something special on your hands?

Rehagen: This one came out pretty smooth. I knew I had a story that I, the writer, could only fuck up, so I was determined not to get in the way. I wanted it to read like a David Grann story.  I had two editors (Lake and Fennessy). Lake tweaked the lede, suggested combining my second and third sections into the second section that ran, and did a tight, tight overall line edit really firming up the language. On the second draft, Fennessy had a few good suggestions and questions. And that was pretty much it. What you see is very recognizable from the first draft.

The Generalist: Yeah, I would imagine a lot of writers picked up on this sentiment when you joked earlier, that the story “writes itself.” I find that moment, when I realize the material is so strong that I need to work, mostly, not to diminish it, to be one of the most humbling for me.

Do you relate to that feeling, in stories other than this one? I hate to say it because of course I’d like to think I’m capable of moving readers with a well-constructed sentence but I think I get my best results when I get out of the way.

Rehagen: I always feel that way. That’s why I’ve come to believe the story idea is the most crucial part of what we do. Great idea trumps great writer every time. (Of course, there’s no reason these two have to be mutually exclusive.) And that’s the part of my game that I’m really trying to improve upon—identifying great ideas and sussing out the best approach, which, if the idea is really good, is usually the simplest one.

The Generalist: Finally, “Re: Fredi” is in such a different mold. The whole piece is a series of emails from you to your editor there at Atlanta, pitching him on the very story we’re reading. It’s deliciously meta but of course I have to ask how many of the emails in the story did you actually send?

Rehagen: All of the emails were written anew for the story. The first section is not too far off from the essence of the pitch email I sent. That email was not nearly as detailed (or well thought out). But the premise is absolutely true. Fennessy would constantly complain about Fredi and I finally pitched him a story proving him wrong, which he greenlit.

The Generalist: How did you guys settle on this incredible, novel structure?

Rehagen: This is another story where I had Lake and Fennessy as editors. The “pitch” idea was first thrown out by Lake, but I was reluctant, thinking that my outsider status weakened my argument. So I wrote a traditional profile of Fredi and Lake and I worked it into a draft for Fennessy. Fredi wasn’t very accessible. The story was okay—not very special. After a first read, Fennessy, completely independent of what Lake had said, mentioned the idea of a story pitch format—and he convinced me that my outsider status would actually be a strength. Fennessy volunteered to try a back and forth, but after I dove into it, I felt it’d be fine with just my side of the correspondence—and as an extra, tongue-in-cheek on non-responsive editors that you and other freelancers will get immediately.

The Generalist: And what kind of response did the story receive?

Rehagen: Very positive from Braves fans on Twitter. But other than that, very little response. When it came out, the Braves were doing well, off to a hot start. Besides, Atlanta is notorious for being a rather apathetic sports town (although the Braves can be the exception, especially to fans outside the city).

The Generalist: Did you feel hemmed in by the “email” structure at any point?

Rehagen: It was a little cumbersome trying to work in my sourcing as if I had just casually talked with them (ie Chipper Jones told me…) But other than that it was a pretty natural and quick rewrite. I mean the idea from the start was a baseball-centric argument for why this guy was actually a good manager. The email format actually freed me to ignore all the profile conventions and just lay out my argument. I got to type out entire grafs and sections of stuff that I had used talking over the story with Lake and Fennessy that didn’t fit into the original, traditional format.

The Generalist: Can you tell me a little bit about your writing process? Do you sit down and do a read through of all your notes before you write? Do you outline the story before beginning? Do you write in the office, or at home? Is there a particular time of day when you’re most productive/creative as a writer? Do you ever listen to music as you write? Do you need silence?… Do you generally set aside a specific number of days to write a draft of any given story? These questions might sound picayune, but I’m fascinated by how other writers go about even the physical process of the job. Feel free to answer them all at once with a general description of how you get the work of writing finished.

Rehagen: Sometimes I read through my notes, but the best stories are those I just dive into and then refer back to my notes later. I’ve only started outlining in the last couple years, and it’s been a godsend. Turns out I’m a very detailed outliner and the preorganization of information has made it so much easier to write that first draft (although that is still my least favorite part of the job). I write both at home and the office, though usually each story lives in one place or the other, if for no other reason than because all my notes and materials reside there. I’m much more productive in the morning or late at night. Most of what I write after 3 pm will need to be rewritten. When I’m at home, I rely on a good run at lunch to help me mentally sort out my last push in the early afternoon. Sometimes I listen to music (always classical or movie scores Hans Zimmer, James Horner, etc.—no lyrics) that I can associate with the tone I want in the story. But when I’m really struggling, only silence (or the white noise of a newsroom) will do. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m good for about 750-800 good words a day. Sometimes I’ll get more out, if need be. But I’ll rewrite them that night or the next morning.

The Generalist: This question is a bit of a shot in the dark but you’re a musician and I wonder to what degree, if any, music influences your writing. Do you ever find yourself thinking, ‘This story needs to read like this piece/this album/this band sounds?’ I think of writing this sort of nonfiction as likely coming from a similar place as any creative endeavor, including music…

Rehagen: If there’s a connection between the rhythm of the language and my built-in musical metronome, it’s totally subconscious. But I certainly draw inspiration of tone from songs and albums. I remember thinking that I wanted “This Land Is My Land” to have the same feel as the song “Decoration Day” by the Drive-by Truckers. I remember listening to Christopher Young’s score to the movie of The Shipping News while writing a story about spending two days on a shrimping boat. So there’s definitely a connection.

The Generalist: Lastly, is there one piece of advice on reporting or writing that anyone’s given you, or any specific lessons you’ve learned, that you’d like to pass on to your brethren?

Rehagen: Never close yourself off from criticism. I think you have to have a healthy ego to put yourself out there like we do, and ultimately, you have to know deep down whether your work is as good as it can be. But I don’t think it’s good to ever get to the point where you think you know it all. And when I say criticism, I mean not only from editors and fellow writers, but from readers. “Don’t read the comments” has become a mantra for writers, but I think you should always read the comments. Granted, I don’t get as many comments as some writers. And yes, 95 percent of them will range from uniformed to baseless to irrelevant to batshit crazy. But lost in that sewage can be a comment that helps you see things differently and that you might be able to learn from.