Going From Idea to Published Book

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow on building narrative muscles

Today, I have a special interview for you with freelance journalist and author Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow. She has a fascinating new book out on April 8th, Atomic Dreams, the inside story of how nuclear energy has become the hot topic of the climate debate, and perhaps a vital power source of the future. Through her immersive reporting, we meet a cast of surprising and complex characters: “activists and polemicists, converts and curmudgeons, who all debate, with each other and themselves, the future of energy,” writes Russell Gold, author of Superpower and The Boom.

I first got to know Becca through a longform journalism group, becoming friends over the years. We ended up developing one of those special writer relationships, in which we can text each other and within minutes hop on FaceTime to talk about the latest creative or reporting challenge of the day, which might be anything from dealing with a difficult source, to a tough edit, to a story pitch that needs a home, and much more.

In the freelance journalism world, some of us call these “accountability buddies,” who listen to each other as we embark upon new projects or find ourselves navigating through the middle of one. These friendships can also extend well beyond journalism or accountability, into everyday life.

For The Reported Essay, Becca talked to me about her relatively new career in narrative writing, and how nervous the idea of it made her in the beginning—going from essays and ideas reporting to more in-depth narrative pieces that involve telling human stories about complicated people.

So, I hope you enjoy this frank and honest conversation with Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, whose writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, New York Review of Books, The Nation, the Times Literary Supplement, and The Guardian, among other publications. She is the author of Personal Stereo, a short cultural history of the Walkman, which was named one of Pitchfork’s favorite music books of 2017. Her work has received support from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation and the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Here is our Q&A, which has been edited for length and clarity (note: Becca regularly back-reads The Reported Essay for copy edits, and part of your paid subscriptions will continue to support her work on this newsletter. Also, Becca and I share the same agent and book editor, and I can attest to them both being great).

Author and freelance journalist, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow.

Before we discuss your book, my previous familiarity with nuclear power had to do with some of the same issues you address in your reporting—the fears and concerns. Of course, my mind always flashes to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki whenever I hear the word “nuclear.” So, the idea of the “new nuclear evangelists and the fight for the future of energy” was rather new to me. How did you come to this issue and why did you feel like it merited a book that you wanted to write?

I came to the issue out of concern about climate change. I had always assumed that renewables like wind and solar were the solution. But in the 2010s, I started hearing more from scientists and other experts that nuclear power actually had to be part of the solution to climate change. That caught my attention. I thought that I should at least hear them out, even though, like you, I also had vaguely negative associations.

Also, as a journalist, I'm automatically intrigued by something that sounds counterintuitive. So, the idea that environmentalists would be supporting nuclear, whereas historically, environmentalists had been the most passionately anti-nuclear group, seemed like a paradox that was worth exploring.

In longform and narrative nonfiction, we hear this word “counterintuitive” a lot. Oftentimes editors say that is what makes a story great—the unexpected angle. Can you talk about why you're drawn to that aspect of a story like this?

Well, I guess I'll go back to when I was coming up as a journalist. I wrote for The Boston Globe Ideas section, and I remember pitching my editor there, Gareth Cook, some stories. He told me: “These are good ideas, but they lack the element of surprise.” It may have been something about that era of journalism too, because I also read Slate religiously back then, which was known for being counterintuitive and almost contrarian. I also think it can go too far. It can be just glib. Especially for longform, there might not be enough to sustain a story.

But in the case of nuclear, there was that element of surprise, and there's so much more. It's so rich. It has this incredible history of association with weapons, but also energy, and how that had all these cultural and political implications. The science is also complex. It's an issue that I always felt ambivalent about. My attitudes kept evolving depending on who I was talking to, and what I was reading. Even now, I don't have a settled opinion. That is what really sustains my interest. I'm drawn to stories where there's not necessarily a clear lesson or clear moral or takeaway, even though that kind of journalism is also really important. I tend to be more drawn to ambiguity and ambivalence.

So, you started researching this, and initially it led you to publishing a New Yorker story, before it became a book.

I started looking into this in 2019, and specifically there were a couple of different pro-nuclear groups that caught my interest. I found out about these two very small groups. One was called Generation Atomic, and that was founded by a young man who considered himself an environmentalist. And then I found out about this other group, Mothers for Nuclear, and they were even more classic environmentalists. Tree huggers, hippies, and yet, very pro-nuclear.

A classic example of something that seems counterintuitive.

Yes, although it turned out to be more complicated. I feel like often for journalists, at the beginning of a story, we have an image of who our subjects are, and we want them to embody a story or a message. It almost always ends up being more complicated. At first, we might feel disappointed by that. But it also always ends up being a better story when it's more complex. I heard Sarah Stillman give a talk once, and she made that point.

That's a great point. People are imperfect. They're contradictory. They're flawed in some ways, or insecure. Did you realize that when you went into this one initially, too?

I realized it eventually. People are more interesting when they're not just the perfect avatars for a cause. When they're not just virtuous.

You mentioned earlier working at The Boston Globe, but how did you get into journalism in the first place?

I always loved writing. I loved words. I tried writing poetry as a teenager on my typewriter in my bedroom. Or short stories. Not necessarily journalism, because like a lot of writers, I was introverted. I was drawn to nonfiction, but to ideas rather than narratives. Writing essays came more naturally to me.

I thought essay writing was about being smart, coming up with clever lines, having insights. That's what I wanted to do. When I first started freelancing, I wrote a lot of book reviews and essays, but I eventually realized that unless you are Susan Sontag, that only gets you so far.

Pretty soon after I graduated from college, I started thinking I wanted to pursue journalism, but I always had other ways of making money to complement that, partly because it's impossible to make a living as a freelancer. I was living in New York and writing for the Village Voice, and teaching ESL to subsidize my writing. And it's not like I was turning down job offers. Maybe if an opportunity had arisen for a staff job, I would have wanted to do that. But I also really like the autonomy of freelancing, and being able to pursue my interests, and follow them wherever they lead me. To not rely on freelancing financially took the pressure off, so that I didn’t have to take an assignment for the money. My journalism has always been something I did because I was passionate about it. More recently, I've done writing and editing for nonprofits to subsidize that.

Did you start to realize, ‘Okay, there's another form that I could start trying? I’ve published ideas, and I should try narratives?’

I always wanted to write narratives. I read The New Yorker and other magazines. I thought: I want to do this. But it seemed hard. What's interesting is, in some ways, it's hard, but not necessarily more intellectually demanding. Even though what I'm doing now is more ambitious, I also do so much more grunt work. It’s about tracking down one detail, and spending so much time talking to someone, and then you use one line from a two-hour conversation. It's putting in the time.

Yes, you go inside of a nuclear plant, and spend days on reporting trips, or getting into the psychology and chronology of somebody's life, all of which takes a lot of time.

The other thing that seems hard or daunting is spending a lot of time talking to people. As I said, I am sort of an introvert, and I always used to dread interviews. Now, I'm more comfortable and more confident. I actually enjoy interviews. But I always was hesitant to write character-driven stories, because I thought it would be uncomfortable to be writing about real people.

I think a lot of people feel that way. What is it that you think is uncomfortable about it?

When you're talking to people and spending time with them, you have a certain rapport. Then, when you go to your laptop and start your writing, you have to maintain some distance. There's something interpersonally that I always feel uncomfortable about, even though I know it's just part of the job, and I hope they know that too.

I love almost every part of this work, even the parts that are not pleasant, exactly, like fact-checking and copy editing, and all the little tweaks at the end. But something I've been thinking about a lot is how there can be a tension between who you are as a person and who you are as a journalist. For example, as a friend, I like to think of myself as very discreet. But as a journalist, being discreet is usually at odds with doing your job.

As a person, if somebody does something nice for you, you should reciprocate. But with sources, just because they're helpful doesn't mean you should treat them any differently than you treat another source. You should be fair to everyone, but you shouldn't do them the favor of representing them in a certain way. That is uncomfortable. Sources give a lot. They give their time. They often give you leads to other sources. But as we've talked about, portraying them as real, imperfect people is the most stressful part. Though some might actually welcome it.

Sometimes you think people will be upset with you, and sometimes they are. But you are not writing the version of the story that they would write about themselves, the memoir version. We're coming in as journalists who have taken in other points of view. Some subjects are psychologically okay with that portrayal. Some people are not.

There’s this brilliant line from Janet Malcolm:

“What gives journalism its authenticity and vitality is the tension between the subject's blind self-absorption and the journalist's skepticism. Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.”

I don't think of my subjects that way. But I do find that quote, especially the second sentence, helpful to remember.

Again, it's the surprising parts that make someone interesting, or the unexpected parts, their insecurities or blind spots. A lot of times you're pointing it out. You're holding up a mirror. Speaking of people who are not perfect, one of the first longform stories you wrote was for The Cut, “Do I Really Want to Hurt My Baby? Inside the disturbing thoughts that haunt new parents.”

Yes, it was about a postpartum mood disorder that is little known and widely misunderstood, called postpartum OCD. It's rooted in anxiety but often manifests in images of harming your own child, and so mothers often fear they are at risk of harming their children, even though they're not going to. Finding the right person to focus on for this story was a challenge.

I started by talking to a few experts, and one of them posted on a Facebook group. A bunch of women reached out to me. I talked to maybe 15 or 20 women. I found a woman I thought would make a good protagonist, and I met her in person and spent a couple days with her. I wrote a draft, and my editor said: “This isn't working.” Basically, the woman didn't have a severe enough case of postpartum OCD. I had to convince my editor to let me find someone else. I think there was a chance they were going to kill it.

But I found someone else who was incredible, because she had experienced this very severe postpartum OCD and was extremely open about it. I eventually met up with her in Miami.

I learned a lot from writing that piece. I mean honestly, I'd never written a scene before. None of this comes naturally to me. Then, the next longform story I did was “The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power,” an online feature for The New Yorker.

People should know that you can acquire those skills of scene writing and interview people with complex stories, even when it feels like it's not natural.

When I was writing the book, there were a few books that I tended to go to for inspiration. One was “Golden Gates,” by Conor Dougherty, about the housing crisis in the Bay Area. I cannot recommend that book highly enough. And I don’t think I realized how good it was until I started using it as a model. Sometimes, when a journalist makes something look easy, you don't realize how much effort it took. I also turned to several books by Michael Pollan, who is probably my favorite author, and Elizabeth Kolbert. I would look to these different books for different aspects of what I was trying to do, whether it was starting a chapter or writing a first-person scene or trying to spice up the writing.

How did your nuclear power story go from article, to proposal, to book?

I would never have gotten the book deal without the article. The article attracted the attention of my wonderful agent, David Halpern, who worked with me on multiple iterations of a proposal. Then he shopped the proposal around, and Madeline Jones, an editor at Algonquin Books, was interested in acquiring it. Maddie is a fantastic editor, and I feel very lucky to have worked with her.

My New Yorker article was about these activists who were trying to save Diablo Canyon, the nuclear plant where they worked. They had a mission. The state and PG&E had decided to shut it down. They wanted to save it, but it was a long shot. Nobody ever thought they would actually succeed. In the article, it was helpful for the narrative, because they wanted something, and they were also trying to change the conversation around nuclear power.

Then, in 2022, when I was already working on the book, the state actually did reverse the decision to shut it down. For my book, it gave me a structure that I didn't have before. I basically alternated chapters, the story of that single nuclear plant, with the larger context and issues.

What we need for narrative is time unfolding, and twists and turns along that timeline. The story is headed somewhere. And the tension is what will happen next. How will this turn out?

I was also trying to bring to life this subculture. I like reporting that allows me to infiltrate a subculture and learn its particular mores, even its language, and the attitudes and views that people share. It can be fun and quirky. It felt like there was so much there that I hadn't explored in my article.

You've got this idea, and what's the process of thinking about how to structure the book?

When I was a younger writer, it was all about sentences. A beautiful or clever line. Now it's so much more about structure. Our friend Barry Siegel has talked about how this happens as you mature as a writer. I didn't know anything about structure until relatively recently.

I remember getting started in the beginning of 2022, and I was very excited to be working on the book. I read all this history, and archival newspaper clips. I really enjoy that. I wrote multiple chapters of history. But I ended up totally scrapping them. Later, I integrated some of that history into the book. But I basically tore up my first drafts.

When I’m writing early drafts, I start by laying out material I’ve gotten from interviews and research. But then I have to go in and insert my own voice in different ways. That doesn't necessarily mean using first person, but it could mean taking a detail from somewhere else and weaving that in, adding a playful line, or somehow making my perspective clear.

It's giving it voice, rather than bare bones facts. That is a skill, and perhaps it also comes from your ideas training. How do you convey an idea in a way that's not flat?

A lot of what I've written about is science, so one challenge is how to strike the right balance between precision and accessibility. You don't want it to sound like a technical academic paper. You're going back and forth between the narrative and the explanatory material.

You can't get into all the tangents, because this is the problem with academic writing. You have to be so strict with your thinking: We just need to get to what readers need to know.

And one other tip, not so much about writing, but research. I read a lot that was repetitive. I still felt like it was worth it. It took time to learn and absorb the material, especially the science, so reading the same thing ten times would drill that into me more. But also, that’s how you learn what is a cliche. You start to realize: Everyone says this, so I won't say it the same way.

Also in this book, you have a bit of yourself in there, and I know you've wrestled with “how much do I need to come down with an opinion” or a takeaway. You’ve pushed against that even. How did you handle that, especially in this climate of media that wants us to be talking heads?

I thought about how there are a lot of people who have strong opinions about nuclear, and you can find them very easily. I feel the value that I'm trying to add is to tell the story of why people feel so strongly in different ways. Present their views in context, so readers will hopefully understand the range of perspectives. And of course, to also try to tell a good story. I didn't feel like I had to be polemical in the end. But I did feel like I should provide a sense of where I stood. If you've been researching this for five years, you've got to have some thoughts, even though my thoughts are still somewhat unsettled.

Do you have advice for other writers, who might feel intimidated to try narrative writing, or who want to write a book one day?

It really helped that I wrote a short book first—Personal Stereo, a cultural history of the Walkman. I had always wanted to write a book but had never quite found the right topic or the story, and I was actually intimidated by the need to write a sample chapter for a proposal. That was actually a big stumbling block for me. But then I learned about the Object Lessons series published by Bloomsbury, and they're maybe a third of the length of a traditional full book. So, from 25,000 to 30,000 words, and the proposal only had to be a few pages. That experience of writing that short book made me a lot more confident when I sat down to write a full-length book. For writers out there, maybe try to write one of these first.

Yes, and I know there is another publishing house, Columbia Global Reports, that commissions authors to produce ambitious novella-length nonfiction about big issues.

Also, I just want to reiterate the importance of showing up. Not even just in person. Of course, there are even more advantages to showing up in person. But going back to what I said at the beginning about how, at first, I wanted to sit in my room and pull smart insights out of my own head. Now, I enjoy talking to people face-to-face, or getting on the phone, or getting on Zoom with people, or showing up at an event where no other journalists are going to be. You get so much, and you end up with all this material to work with. I just can't stress that enough.