BROADCASTS.com

Will Mackin is a U.S. Navy veteran who served with a SEAL team in Iraq and Afghanistan.\xa0His debut book is Bring Out the Dog.\n\n \u201cI wanted to write nonfiction and I started writing nonfiction. And the reason I did that was \u2014 first of all, I felt all the people did all the hard work, and who was I to take liberties? And the second reason was, I just felt an obligation to the men and women who I served with not to misrepresent them, or what they\u2019d been through, or what it had meant to them, or how they felt about it. I kept piling these requirements on to myself: Well, if I present this particular event in this light, this guy\u2019s going to get his feelings hurt. Or, I don\u2019t know how this guy\u2019s family will feel about me talking about this. And it became debilitating, all those restrictions, I kind of kept layering on myself. I was talking to George Saunders at one point about this, and I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if this book is going to happen. I\u2019m just stuck\u2019 And he pointed out, \u2018You\u2019re putting all these restrictions on yourself because it puts this perfect book off in the never-to-reach future. If you remove those and start fictionalizing things and getting at it a different way, maybe it\u2019ll work for you.\u2019\u201d\n\nThanks to MailChimp and Breach for sponsoring this week's episode.\n@mohammedsradio\nwillmackin.com\n[01:35] Bring Out the Dog (Random House \u2022 2018)\n[47:10] "Crossing the River No Name" (The New Yorker \u2022 June 2017)\n[47:40] Red Cavalry (Isaac Babel \u2022 Pushkin Collection \u2022 2015)\n[47:45] "Crossing the River Zbrucz" (Isaac Babel \u2022 Pushkin Collection \u2022 2015)\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices