Ken Budd on Agents, Publicity, and Writing About Those You Love

Meet Ken Budd, everyone! He's the author of The Voluntourist: A Six-Country Tale of Love, Loss, Fatherhood, Fate, and Singing Bon Jovi in Bethlehem. The memoir chronicles travel, volunteering, and the death of Budd's father.

Over the past few days, I've had the chance to chat with Budd - we covered agents, publicists, publishers, and the question every creative non-fiction writer wants to ask: To what extent can we write about the people we love?

In a New York Times opinion piece published in 2013, Budd writes:

"I wrote a memoir in the aftermath of my father’s death, and while the book was many things — a search for meaning, a travelogue, the story of my adventures as a global volunteer — it was largely a book about Dad. I was measuring my life against his, telling his stories, making him the ghostly muse in my midlife crisis, and I wondered if I, too, was doing some kind of wrong."

He adds, "My father never asked to be on display. And what we as memoirists choose to display — what we insist is essential to display — is an easy source of conflict. Dad grew up poor, never went to college, yet reached upper management with high-tech firms on both coasts. I wrote about this. It defined him. It fueled his drive and ambition. It defined me. I always felt like the lite beer to his stout ale."

It was a privelege to get to know Budd, whose answers to my questions were honest and useful. He agreed to let me share some of his insights with you, my dear readers. May Budd's words bring hope and inspiration to writers everywhere!

How did you get the idea for the book? I was about a third of the way through my journey when I thought… this might be a book. I had volunteered in New Orleans and then Costa Rica. At the time I was working at AARP The Magazine. The then-travel editor had assigned a story on volunteer travel that wasn’t working out and I said, “Tell you what: I’ll write about my experiences in Costa Rica. If you want to run it, fine. If not, no big deal.” The ensuing article got a nice response and after that I wrote a book proposal. I sought an agent and got turned down four or five times before finding the right person.

Wasn't it hard to get an agent? First I mailed my proposal to an agent here in DC. I had a slight connection: a colleague of mine had assigned an article to one of this agent's clients. I mailed the proposal and got no response - not even a form rejection letter. After that, I decided I needed connections. A travel writer I know was nice enough to introduce me to his agent. She passed, but recommended to me three agents she knew. They all passed as well. I think they saw potential in what I was pitching, but they were all older, established agents who weren't willing to invest themselves in my idea. They did, however, provide feedback on the proposal when I asked them, which helped me to strengthen the pitch. I'd reached a dead end when an agent pitched me a story at AARP. I said, "Hey, would you be interested in looking at this?" She did, and she was the right person. She was younger than the other agents I'd spoken with and she invested herself in the project. So if you want an agent, I'd suggest making connnections with other writers and asking if they'll make introductions.

How did the shape of the book change after you got an agent? I had originally proposed the book as more of a travel memoir. My agent convinced me that the real story was the fatherhood issues: the sudden death of my father and my struggle to accept that I would never be a father myself. She was right, so I revised the proposal and wrote a sample chapter. We got offers from [two large publishing houses]. After that, I volunteered in four more countries. So my editor made a leap of faith. She bought the book based in part on the sample chapter, but there was no guarantee that the rest of my travels would be memorable.

What did you do to promote the book? Everyone I knew who'd written a book said I would need to hire a publicist, and that's what I did. I got some publicity help from [my publisher] for the first month when the book came out, but publishers today just don't have the money for much beyond that. The publicity firm got me on 50+ radio shows along with some print and online interviews, and I wrote some byline pieces. If I had it to do over again, I'd hire a publicist long before the book came out, rather than after.

How was the book received with your family and friends? Was anyone hurt or put out? [A friend of mine] said, "I have a friend who wrote a memoir. It was a really beautiful book. None of his family will talk to him anymore, but the book was terrific." So that worried me. When you're writing, it's such as isolated process that you're not really thinking about the work being published and someone actually reading it. When my editor read the first draft, she said, "It's good - it's so honest." And I thought... Honest!? Oh shit! Honest isn't good!

What are you working on now? Most of my writing is still tied to the book, even though it came out three years ago. Most recently I wrote an online piece for National Geographic about criticism of volutourism. My primary focus, however, has been on developing a digital TV project tied loosely to the book. I did a fair amount of TV when I was at AARP, and the publicist I hired suggested that TV should be the next step. So I developed a TV proposal, and six months ago I signed a co-production agreement with a producer I'd met. The show would be a 12-episode series; each episode would focus on a different location and a particular quirky, giving-back project. We shot a three-minute trailer and developed an outline of episodes. After talking with some agents, we've decided to pursue it as a web-based series. We can maintain more control and build an audience, which could possibly lead to a network deal down the road. By this fall we'll be working with a company that will try to sell sponsorships.

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In his NYTimes piece, Budd writes:

"If you’re gonna do something, do it right. That’s the approach I took in writing the memoir. And yet I discovered something curious once the book was released: even though it’s my story on the page, readers see it through the prisms of their own lives. For all of a memoir’s exhibitionism, your tale is interpreted by readers to suit their own needs, their own experiences, their own journey. It’s a type of literary scavenging: they keep what serves them and reuse it for new purposes.

But it is still your story. And in telling mine, I grew closer to Dad. He became not more dead, as Lewis warned, but something entirely different. He became more real."

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Thank you to the lovely and talented Tara Lakowski, who introduced me to Budd. Lakowski's story collection, Bystanders, will be published by the Santa Fe Writers Project next year.

Photitos

Behold, the niños of San Roque. Today was my last day for a couple of my classes, and to commemorate the occasion we took an abundance of photos. In addition, I was gifted many lovely things: a hand-knit hat, a hand-knit purse, a pen with a spiky green duck at the end, a bag of Ruffles, a container of some candy that comes in a little cup. Would Ivan Illich hate me for what I've done? Maybe so.

In any case, it is what it is. Good bye, San Roque! Thank you for a humbling and lovely time of it. 

Conversation from last night:

Eloesa: I want to see a picture of you with the kids! You'll look so tall and white!

Kate: Shut up.

Because it's true! That is just how I look. In real life the kids really aren't this tiny, it's just that Giant Kate is throwing off all proportions.

Here is what I can tell you

I haven't seen much of this city, but this is what I know so far.

When you exit the volunteer house, you must use a key to lock your room. You must use a key to unlock the front door, you must slam it closed behind you, or else it won't shut. They say these streets aren't safe at night, and so you must keep your key close to you. You must not carry your camera, your laptop, your fancy backpack, your fancy handbag. You must leave your room with the canvas bag you found in Guatemala, the one with the lettering long faded, the straps worn and thin. You must carry your umbrella all the time, the umbrella you found at the drugstore on the corner, because this place will always be on the brink of rain, or else drizzling, or else, like it now, pouring.

If you take a left out of the volunteer house, you'll come to a street with tiendas and bars and restaurants advertising pictures of grilled beef and tall glasses of beer. Gnarled trees grow out of the pavement, people shuffle past without looking at you, homes with bars across the doors will glare at you. These buildings are pink, they are red, they are orange, they are green; it's like this street is trying to preserve the little sunshine it receives in the colors of its walls. This street is narrow, busy, dirty. This street is beautiful.

If you walk and walk, you'll pass sprawling restaurants with tables set up outside, and everywhere the streetlamps will reflect the puddles of rain on the pavement. You'll pass whitewashed buildings, gated with gardens inside. You'll pass boutique hotels, you'll pass buses, you'll pass the post office. There's a dancing school with its door open; you can see that the girl closest to you is a few steps behind everyone else. You walk past, but the music follows you.

You will come to the bus stop at the corner. If you take the bus through the Tunnels, as the man at your school instructed you to do, you'll get to San Roque, that poor neighborhood in the old part of town. You'll see the market that stretches up the hill, the market that reminds you of every market you've seen since you've been in Latin America: plantains in rows, baskets of gum and cigarettes, hawkers with plastic sacks of thin, fried potatoes. Poles lined with canvas bags for sale, just like the one you bought in Guatemala. You will come to the gates of the school you are to work at; an old man with a cooler of ice-cream pops will stand just outside, his clothes faded and dirty, his back hunched over. He will pass the pops through the bars to the schoolchildren, who hand him coins in return.

And if you get inside the schoolyard, you will see the piles of trash pressed up against the walls. You will enter the tall brick building and see the broken glass on the floor, the dirty walls, the broken lightbulbs. You will see the children, children who touch your hair, children who hold each other's hands and smile at you and tell you hello, ask if you are the English teacher. You will go into the room with the littlest ones, who sit at long, low tables waiting for their breakfast. God, they are adorable, and you will remember why you have come. You will forget to feel scared, surrounded by all this strangeness and broken glass. They will hold their hands out to touch you, they will stare up at you with open faces, they will wave at you when you go. You will talk with the suited superintendent, who speaks too fast and tells you to come back tomorrow to set up a schedule.

And so you will ride the bus home, staring out the window as you pass the long stretch of public gardens, the universities, the grocery stores, the other buses, the tourists. You will wonder why they carry their cameras like that, looped around their necks like some kind of prize.

To Hell With Good Intentions

Searching for Ivan Illich, and ended up here? Welcome. Read a recent update of the below post, here. Thanks for visiting!

To Hell With Good Intentions is a speech delivered by Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich in 1968 to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects. The speech was delivered in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where Illich had founded the Centro Intercultural de Documentacion in 1961. I was not familiar with this speech and this man's work until very recently, and so I've put a bunch of links within this post in case you, too, are not familiar. He's a fascinating man.

His audience consisted of American volunteers, so keep that in mind as you're reading the following few quotes. It's scathing. This passage (which I retreived from the website of the Swaraj Foundation) describes the address in this way:

"In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service 'mission.' Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request."

Illich's address contains, early on, the following:

"Today, the existence of organizations like yours is offensive to Mexico. I wanted to make this statement in order to explain why I feel sick about it all and in order to make you aware that good intentions have not much to do with what we are discussing here. To hell with good intentions. This is a theological statement. You will not help anybody by your good intentions. There is an Irish saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; this sums up the same theological insight."

In his address, Illich pleads with his audience to stop their volunteer projects in Mexico. He writes, "you cannot help being ultimately vacationing salesman for the middle-class 'American Way of Life,' since that is really the only life you know."

I read that and I knew that he was right. When you are traveling or working abroad, especially in the developing world, I think that it is very hard to silence the commentary, the comparisons, that will always be running through your mind. You're an outsider. You do not understand this life. I don't understand many of the activities here, here in Nicaragua and also in Guatemala. Nor can I really understand the way people see me. I don't want to sell my country's values, that is not why I am here, but I think that I'll still do it, just by thinking, just by reacting. We can't help but compare. If I keep my criticisms inside, does that make it different? My body will still be reacting.

Towards the end, Illich presents his audience with the following:

"If you have any sense of responsibility at all, stay with your riots here at home. Work for the coming elections: You will know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how to communicate with those to whom you speak. And you will know when you fail. If you insist on working with the poor, if this is your vocation, then at least work among the poor who can tell you to go to hell. It is incredibly unfair for you to impose yourselves on a village where you are so linguistically deaf and dumb that you don't even understand what you are doing, or what people think of you. And it is profoundly damaging to yourselves when you define something that you want to do as "good," a "sacrifice" and "help."

If you read Illich's speech, you'll see what the introduction is talking about. Illich is biting and sarcastic, and some of what he says is outdated. And, I like to think that there's a little more hope for the international volunteer, that human interaction is important, that mutual growth in some way is possible. Otherwise, ultimately, does my contribution matter? What am I contributing to, anyway? Am I actually making something worse?

I've been working at a little school, an escuelita, here in Granada. I've been there two weeks. I go in and sit at these little tables with young kids, ages five to seven, some a little older. We work through the lesson, we read books, we color, they learn a tiny bit of English, I learn a tiny bit more Spanish. I like them, and they like me. The really hard thing is the teacher. I can hear this speech when I'm with her. I know she's seen people like me come and go, and I wonder how I would feel if some girl without Spanish came into my workplace like that, offering to help. Please, just imagine it for a second, turned around.

The very last lines of the address read as follows:

I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.

His words sting, but in a way they help, too. It's true what I've always suspected; I am not solving any problems, and I do not have to feel like I need to blend in, because I never will. Maybe the best thing to do is to realize that I don't have much to offer, and maybe I have nothing, but this is my life. I am traveling now because I can, and I think there should always be travelers in this world. There always have been and there always will be, and it's never been perfect. But people will always be interacting, all over this planet, and I think the good outweighs the bad in that respect.

And so I am here, where I hire a tutor, go to the market, go out to eat and to the post office. And sometimes I take kids from the escuelita to the library; most of them haven't been yet, although it's just two blocks from school. They go nuts over the books, reading in Spanish, reading in English. We read dozens of books in two hours. Books are not important here; most people don't buy them, and most people don't read. The kids I work with mostly can't read yet. I take them to the library because I think it's sad that they've never been, that they don't get to read books, that maybe their parents have a fourth-grade education, and I take them because it is fun, and they are cute, and it makes me feel good to show kids books, because that is their right. And so here are my values, spread out on the table. Here is my money, my slowly improving Spanish, and the home I carry with me, the home I won't always be able to hide.