The Longreads Questionnaire with Anne Lamott and Neal Allen: We Decided We’d Try the Questions Too

My sister Anne, daughter Charlotte and I all answered The Longreads Questionnaire questions and discussed the answers by writers Anne Lamott and Neal Allen. If you’d like to answer any of the questions you see listed below, we’d love to hear your responses in the comments to this post.

The Longreads questions are below with Bill’s responses. Anne and Charlotte share their responses on the podcast episode. We’d love for you to answer some of them in the comments section below!

1. Where did you grow up?

• Front yard on Hillcrest Drive in Logansport, the woods outside of Twelve Mile Indiana, Winamac town park, the pool

2. What places feel like home?

• The university lawns / quads at St. John’s University and Appalachian State, the Valle Crucis Park, the aux gym at Watauga High School, driving the team bus, sitting down by our creek watching our dog explore

3. Other than family members, who or what has shaped you the most?

• Fictional characters such as Lloyd Dobler; writers such as CS Lewis, Nick Hornby, and Doug Lemov; teachers like Kevin Zupin, Joe Bentz, Judy Whitis, Sam Watson, Lil Brannon, and Allen Gee. Countless coaches like Bob Knight and Phil Jackson.

4. What is your favorite time of day?

• Morning coffee with Megan, sitting down to the desk fresh, before sleepiness sets in, right after the workout

5. What are you really good at?

• The whole process of teaching from the drive to learn the material to organizing how it will be shared, to energizing the process of sharing and learning, to circling back to help it stick

6. What’s the best gift you’ve ever received?

• I’ve got a customized picture frame that starts off Dear Dad. It ends with We love you, Charlotte and Izzy. It’s got a picture of Charlotte and Izzy in their middle school shooting shirts in the Watauga gymnasium.

7. Describe your favorite meal.

• Megan makes chicken nuggets and horizontally sliced fried potatoes. I gotta say a recent meal at Dan’l Boone Inn in Boone could be way up there.

8. Sound or silence? (And if sound, what sound?)

• I want silence when I’m working. The sound of running water would be next, like when I’m sitting down by the creek.

9. Where do you do your best thinking?

• At my desk in my office usually accompanied by scratching notes and drawing arrows and circles in Notability on my iPad or a piece of paper.

10. What journey–physical, creative, intellectual, or otherwise–has meant the most to you?

1. Emotional of letting people, especially my dad, be themselves
2. Physical: the marathon
3. creative: The indie film The Mushroom Hunter. That seemed harder than a book. (Savannah Film Festival)
4. Intellectual: tenure at St. John’s, especially the academic publishing that came with it in publications such as College Composition and Communication
5. I once promised myself I would never get married again. The journey to promise to share my life with Megan means a lot.

11. Where do you like to read?

• In bed, in my office chair with my feet on a footrest

12. What’s the last rabbit hole you disappeared into?

• Looking for a home for about 4 months. Last day starting with 138, driving by 15 to narrow the list down to 7. And that was just the last 3 days of it.
• I do that kind of thing looking for a job too

13. Name three publications you enjoy reading these days.

• The New York Times. The Atlantic and I’m looking for a third. Maybe its Longreads!

14. What’s one longread that you can’t stop thinking about?

• Shadow Boxing: Lessons About Life, Death, and Writing, from Rocky by Jeremy Collins.

15. What piece of nonfiction are you most proud of writing?

• How Christopher Mello Sows Peace and Community in his West Asheville Garden in MountainX

16. What’s your most reliable way to get creatively unstuck?

• Allow Lamott’s “Shitty First Draft.” Butt in chair. Read.

17. Who’s a writer you turn to when you need some inspiration?

• For life, Lamott.
• For voice, Hornby.
• For teaching, Donald Murray and Doug Lemov

18. What words do you overuse?

• And so…

19. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure?

• This podcast. Watching TikToks. Playing Fortnite. Watching and betting on NFL Football.

20. What superpower would you like to have?

• To sleep well, let’s say a steady 8 hours
• Immediately teleporting to anywhere seems like a good one
• This made me wonder if Superman gets cold flying.

21. What animal or nonhuman being do you most identify with?

• Rivers

22. If you have a free solitary hour in your day, what do you typically do?

• Run and naps come to mind. A nap feels like a luxury but I find them pretty often.

23. What five items would you place in a time capsule?

• After thinking about Trump’s Access Hollywood tape, I decided I’d focus on local items for a local time capsule…

1. Zack Vernon’s Eating on a Mountain at the End of the World
2. an App State football helmet
3. Scars on the Mountain Helene Hurricane Documentary
4. Luke Combs 2017 album This One’s for You. It’s got “When It Rains It Pours on It.”
5. Mast store candy in a Mast store white paper bag

24. What does your writing space look like?

• A big inexpensive white desk facing two windows that look at a valley with the mountains beyond. Lots of basketball memorabilia on the left. A Ted Lasso cardboard cutout. Pop culture artifacts behind me such as a 1985 Celtics Championship hat, an App State volleyball a former Watauga player gave me, and a Super Mario Nintendo World statue.

What is Longreads?

• From their About Us page: Longreads, founded in 2009 by Mark Armstrong, is dedicated to finding and sharing the best longform nonfiction storytelling on the web. We publish personal and reported essays, criticism, reading lists, and occasional book excerpts, interviews, and more in-depth features.
• My favorite way they describe themselves: Longform journalism and creative nonfiction that outlasts the noise.

Anne Lamott is one of the writers answering these questions:

• Born in 1954 in San Francisco, she’s 72
• I came to her through her essay “Shitty First Drafts” and her book Bird by Bird.
• She married Neal Allen in 2019, her first and only marriage. He spent most of his life as a journalist.
• Neal and Anne worked together on a book Good Writing.
• Another of my favorite books of hers: Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers
• She’s got a great Ted Talk. My wife Megan watched her on Good Hang and ordered a few of her books.
• I’ve been wanting to read her first book, Operating Instructions. It’s about having a child and being a single mother.

Thanks for taking time to visit Torg Stories! We’d love to hear some of your answers in the comments below!