Be a Magpie

Collect good stuff from everyday life

A black-billed magpie looking so full of ideas

Check out my first post here to read more about the namesake of this newsletter and make a copy of the input/output tracking sheet if you so desire.

---

In researching* this newsletter (*doing a cursory google) I stumbled upon this audio segment from The Audubon Society talking about how magpies don’t really prefer shiny objects over food, but I’m going with the concept anyway!

---

I don’t write personal essay or memoir (largely because I cannot resist the feminine urge to embellish/lie whenever the opportunity arises), so on the surface, it would appear that everything I write is made up.

But the more my output has gone up, the more I realize I’m actually constantly pulling from real life to populate the specifics of my stories, even those set in hyperreal worlds. Because I write comedy, I tend to magpie in on more absurd, visual details.

Here’s a sample of real-life details I’ve popped into my writing in the past year or so:

• A character in my first novel lives in an area of the city where they can hear the gunshots from a nearby police shooting range all day long, a very specific detail I pulled from the aural atmosphere surrounding a family member’s house.

• The Warwick Public Library that I grew up going to always had a tarantula in a glass terrarium in the kid’s section, which even as a child struck me as a very dumb idea. Sure enough, the cage was soon appended with notes about not taking the top off because the tarantula was a VERY FAST RUNNER and would RUN AWAY, and sometimes he went missing for a while. I love this image and memory so much I wrote it into a book and named the tarantula after my nephew.

• A woman in the dog park told me she feeds her dog whatever she eats for dinner. I asked some clarifying questions—like, a dog version without seasoning? A meal with the same vibes Did she put it in the blender? Nope, she makes him a human plate of the exact same thing and puts it on the ground. She said he loves Mediterranean food. A pet who enjoys a cold mezze platter? That’s going into a scene for sure.

These are smaller details from my life that help give a little pop to comedic characters and locations in my fiction.

But another rich source of ideas and conflict I pick up with my little magpie beak are unsolicited anecdotes from strangers.

I’m not sure what is in my genetic code, but everyone in my immediate family has a face that makes a person in the grocery store checkout line share that their father is currently in jail awaiting trial for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from their aunt’s med spa and no one put up his bail because they think he needs to marinate in his morals (true story).

Here are a few more things absolute strangers told me over the summer:

1. While I was on vacation, I ran into an older woman and two older men in a nature preserve. The men went swimming in the pond, and the second they were out of earshot the woman grabbed my arm and told that her first husband had recently died (!) by drowning (!!) in a lake in the Adirondacks (!!!) and she was also in the lake with him when it happened but she got out (!!!!!) and they had to dredge for his body in the dark??? Then she saw in the paper a few months later that the wife of one of the guys had also died, she contacted him, and now they’re together?? I’m sorry, but that anecdote led me to believe with 100% certainly that she killed her spouse to be with the new dude (whose older brother she had dated in high school!!). The amount of personal information this woman shared with me in three minutes was simply astonishing. I hope she is having a blessed fall.

2. I will not get into the details here for squeamish readers, but someone in a bookstore recently told me in great detail about a very horrific gastric distress situation they experienced on an airplane. No, it was not the notorious Delta flight from last week, but it sounded close!

   

   love to quote noted internet sage jonny bigballs

3. I was at the salon getting my eyebrows tinted so I can make expressions when two of the women working there (and I am not sure HOW we got onto this) told me that you can ask to take your placenta home from this hospital after giving birth if you want and the hospital has to give it to you, legally? I joked that I bet you could find some nice freaks on the internet who would pay top dollar for them, we all laughed and then one of the women said she was going to look into that for her niece because she needed money and still had her placenta in her freezer. We then talked about the safest ways to do a transaction like that without someone getting murdered. I tipped very well.

---

What are the most specific things strangers have told you, or things you’ve magpie’d from your own life for your writing?

---

Here are several newsletters and friend wins I want to shout out!

• Sarah Gardner wrote this great breakdown of the costs of a self-sponsored writing residency in her newsletter “The Anti-Niche.”

• Kara Cutruzzula
  ’s third creativity journal is out now! I have the whole set, and the final installation is called “Do It (or Don’t)” and it’s on boundary-setting. Hmmm this is relevant to many of you? Not so much the disrespecting boundaries side of it, but drawing boundaries for your own time and energy.

• Julie Kling has launched a new newsletter! Mom Rage(r) is a bi-monthly newsletter that offers funny stories, self-care recommendations that will never include an $80 bath bomb, and actionable steps to turn your (totally legitimate, fucking universal) mom rage into meaningful change. It’s delivered to you via planned C-section by Julie, a humor + parenting writer based in New York.

• Writer and copywriter extraordinaire Bizzy Coy has added onto her excellent copywriting guide by creating its companion: “Bizzy Coy's terrifying guide for writers applying for grants and residencies.” This is a GREAT RESOURCE, thank you, Bizzy! Subscribe to her newsletter on her site for more gems of genius.

---

Upcoming Classes!

• “Comedy Writing for Non-Comedians,” September 16th, 1-3pm ET, through Write or Die. Want to be funnier overall? Learn tricks and tools of comedy writing and how to apply them in to emails, speeches, and everyday life.

• “How to Write a McSweeney’s-Style Piece” 4 SESSIONS, October 2, 9, 16, 23, all 8-10pm ET, through Write or Die.

• “Write Like an Athlete,” October 7th, 3-5pm ET, through Writing Co-Lab. Learn how tools from sports and behavioral psychology can help you build a sustainable writing practice, complete with rest cycles, volume builds, streaks, and more.

• “Funny Frameworks for Fiction” through Writing Workshops. Saturday, 10/14, 1-3pm ET, $75

• “Finding Your Story Through Adaptation,” November 11, 1-4pm ET, through Writing Co-Lab. Learn how to take stories in the public domain and flip them into a modern context for novels, short pieces, essays, and more.

---

Do me a favor—if you like these newsletters, hit the heart button! This helps more people in the Substack Network find it.

ABOUT ME: My name is Caitlin Kunkel and I’m a comedy writer, long-time teacher, and creator of The Second City’s Online Satire Writing Program. I currently teach classes and consult on gift book proposals, modern adaptation, satire, and comedic literature. I co-founded The Belladonna Comedy and the Satire and Humor Festival, and I co-wrote the satirical gift book New Erotica for Feminists: Satirical Fantasies of Love, Lust, and Equal Pay, named one of the Top 10 Comedy Books of 2018 by Vulture.