Selling Art Or Selling Out With Asa Merritt – WN 154

TRIGGER WARNING: Please note that this episode of the Write Now podcast contains mention of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please talk to someone you trust, contact your local crisis center, or (if you’re in the United States) call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. 

Sarah Rhea Werner (00:01):
Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write.

Sarah Rhea Werner (00:12):
Hello friends. I am Sarah Werner, your host, and today I am back again with a good friend and an incredible writer, Asa Merritt. And I have a bio here that I’m very excited to share because Asa has done so many incredible things. So get a load of this. A former international reporter for NPR, Vice Sports, the Guardian, and ESPN’s 30 for 30 Podcast. No big deal. Asa brings a compassionate documentary eye to ambitious fictional projects. His one woman play about mass movements, True Believer, had a sold out run in New York City. To research that piece, Asa traveled to Cairo to meet with underground performers who helped ignite the Arab Spring. For his new audible original podcast, “Six Sermons,” starring Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu from “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, Asa spent a month embedded with a team of pastors at a Lutheran church in Cincinnati, Ohio. “Six Sermons” is dedicated to the actor and musician Cas Liske, who died by suicide in Moscow in 2017. Asa lives with his family in Mexico City, and we would love to extend a warm welcome to the show. Welcome. Hi.

Asa Merritt (01:27):
Thanks Sarah. This is so exciting. I’m grateful to be here, and thanks for taking the time to talk.

Sarah Rhea Werner (01:33):
Oh my gosh. Well, I’m so excited too. So, hello. I was going to say, tell us a little bit about yourself, but we heard a little bit about yourself and it’s incredible. You’ve done so many things, so you have a new project coming out. I would love to hear just how that started creative impetus wise, if I may.

Asa Merritt (01:54):
For sure. Yeah. I love this question because this project has really clear roots, unlike other projects. This one, the sort of emotional seed was very one-to-one. A good friend died by suicide. That happened. I had feelings I didn’t know what to do with and needed to do something with, and I was like, okay, I’ll try to write about this. And then the sort of… okay, it takes place in the church. I didn’t grow up going to church. That was a real kind of exploration for me in this project. But that had a really clear origin too, which was I did a freelance gig for a seminary where I was listening. Yeah, it was amazing. And I was listening to sermons and it was a workshop of sermons with sermons, older master ministers or master preachers mentoring up-and-coming ministers about the art and rhetoric of sermons. So I was just listening to sermons and I was like, oh my God, this is incredible audio. And so that was sort of the formal seed, and I knew right away I could build an audio structure or an audio story with that kind of formal spine using sermons.

Sarah Rhea Werner (03:07):
I love that. And this has a special connection with me. My dad was actually a Lutheran pastor, and I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, so I feel like there’s a little bit of synergy there, which I appreciate.

Asa Merritt (03:19):
Wow, that’s so wild. Okay. Wow.

Sarah Rhea Werner (03:22):
Yeah. So looking at this intensely personal experience leading to an intensely personal story, what was that process like taking something from this raw emotional experience? Did you find yourself better able to process things? What did that whole process look like?

Asa Merritt (03:43):
Yeah, I mean, it was creating this character, Pastor Alexis (that’s Stephanie Hsu’s character) was a real opportunity to kind of map my own feelings. And the beauty of writing is you can just keep going and write and write and write and write and write. So the other formal convention of the show, there’s a handful, but another significant one specific to this world of faith is prayers. We hear her praying. And so upon writing drafts and drafts and drafts, these are essentially kind of personal meditations or journal pieces or sort of reckonings with my own thoughts about Cas, my friend and what happened and why it happened and how and who and all the things that you up when you lose someone in general, particularly to suicide. It’s sort of writing her prayers and writing her sermons and writing her reckoning with this was an opportunity to just go in every nook and cranny of my feelings about it.

(04:45):
And of course, only a handful made it into the show. Right? Of course, from those you distill what serves your story and what serves your drama. But the process itself was vast. It’s a long show. It’s almost four hours long, it’s 12 episodes, and the original version of it was much longer. So it really enabled me, which was a mandate for the project. It was like, Hey, we want this to be an epic, which was cool. I think it was going to be anyway, but it really was like I had to explore every nook and cranny of those feelings to produce this story.

Sarah Rhea Werner (05:21):
That’s really fascinating. I know that many of my listeners do use writing as a way to process their feelings and to tell their own very, very personal stories. Were there things that you found that were important to you that ended up getting cut? And how did you deal with that part of it?

Asa Merritt (05:42):
Oh yeah. I mean, oh yeah, it was fine. I just love it. Every time I’ve ripped my heart out, someone’s like, oh, this isn’t, we don’t want this. No thanks. No thanks. Yeah, I mean there was a lot of that. I mean, it’s coming on Audible. Audible is a platform that caters to a wide audience. They’re trying to bring in as many listeners as possible. It’s a really ambitious project. It’s really literary. There are sermons, it’s a demanding listen, compared to a lot of other audio properties that one can turn on. And so consistently the editorial was cutting, simplifying a lot of what I sort of treasured most, which was this really kind of existential explorations on the Pastor Alexis is going through a real kind of, I’m a big dork and a big reader and just kind of geek out on close reading, which I think the contemporary Protestant church excels at.

(06:44):
And so the sermons were much longer, they were much more kind of academically rigorous, and lo and behold, they’re like, we need to make this one quarter of the length. But that was a real… that’s just growing. I was like, okay, I need to see this for what this is. This is not a one woman show that I’m putting up in New York City to a 50 person room. This is something that’s trying to meet a wide audience. It’s like, okay, how can I meet this halfway? How can I embrace? And I know that you’ve been through this journey to some extent when you’re working with executives working for these major entertainment companies, there’s just, they’re coming to the project with radically different sets of priorities and imperatives and mandates. And I think the task of running something personal, and it’s a real balancing act between advocating for what you care so much about the parts that the hills you will die on artistically, yet not being the person who won’t bend. And for me, this was my first project of this kind, and for me that was a huge part of the education.

Sarah Rhea Werner (07:55):
I feel you on that. Like you said, I have had a, not exactly the same experience, but a similar experience where I was working with executives to tell a story that I felt very personally connected to, and figuring out the balance of when to put your foot down, if you should put your foot down, what is worth it to you, because it ended up for me being a, I feel like not even concessions as much as little sacrifices. What will I sacrifice so that this can live on? And was there anything that you absolute, that they were very adamant that you take out that you absolutely insisted be kept in, or were you pretty chill going with what they wanted?

Asa Merritt (08:37):
Oh gosh. I mean, they were definitely for everyone’s benefit. I’m not a war historian, but I’m sure there’s someone out there who could create analogies of certain battles that were just fought for weeks on end. But yeah, there was the opening beginning minutes of the show, there’s an enormous amount of discussion around that. The basic DNA remained from the very first draft to what will be released tomorrow. But I mean, that was a real kind of test and a real, that was a place where I did ultimately have to work very hard to find a compromise that I was comfortable with because there was really a different vision, but we were able to do it. And that was great. And I feel fortunate that in general, I had a really great relationship with the executive producer on the project, and we were able to, there was just a give and take.

(09:33):
And I think there are things in that show that he wishes weren’t. And there’s things in that show that I wish weren’t, and it was just kind of a very, I trust you here and I trust you here, and we’re just going to do this negotiation. And the analogy that came once there was a series, it was a notes moment, and I had all these ideas that I wanted to do, and I approached it as if I was kind of writing a bill to Congress or something like a spending bill, knowing advanced, knowing that I’m going to have to make concessions. So you’re kind of like, alright, I’ll do all these knowing from the jump that they’re not going to let me do a h and l or forget about it, but what I really want is B and D. So I’m like, okay, guys, fine. I don’t need H. I can live, I can live in it, fine, take my H when really, I’m just like, yes, B made it through and it’s just like a dance. And I think I was fortunate that makes it sound kind of like Machiavellian, which there’s an element of that. But I was fortunate enough, generally speaking, to have a positive relationship in terms of the give and take. And I never felt we had one casting decision that was vetoed, but we ended up with somebody. Awesome. So it all worked out.

Sarah Rhea Werner (10:51):
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing all of that, too. I know that for a lot of my audience, this is a completely foreign process for them. This is not something that they’ve yet, and I’m going to choose my words carefully here, gotten to experience, and I know this is something a lot of people really look forward to is the day that they can work with a team to tell their story. What would you say are the benefits of working with a team like this as opposed to telling the story word for word, exactly how you wanted it without any editorial messings with, is there a story that you would ever insist on doing all by yourself, full indie with no compromises?

Asa Merritt (11:35):
Gosh, I mean, all right, Sarah, let’s just get out the bottle of whiskey and set aside two nights to answer that question properly. So the main thing that’s happening when you’re working with an audible is that you’re making commercial work and the sort of implications of that are many, and that comes to the core of what your project as a writer is. And I think that’s a question that you interrogate really well on this podcast. And I think it’s kind of like, for some people, compromising is not what they got in the game for. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, I didn’t come here to put my soul out in these prayers only for them to be cut down to four sentences. My friend died, you jerk. Why are you doing this? You know what I mean? And it’s just, that’s a hundred percent not what a lot of people want to happen when they write.

(12:33):
And so I think the decision you’re making, to me, the biggest thing is like, Hey, I can really reach people with this. That the reality of our media system is one in which there are only a handful of gatekeepers that determine the vast majority of content and media available to us is just quite simply how it is today. At least. Hopefully that’ll change or evolve. But this platform does have millions of subscribers, and I do have important things to say about suicide, and I do want this story to reach people. And so for me, that was sort of a calculus that I was able to navigate, not always. Well, I think it’ll be much better next time. This was my first commercial project. I came up paying for my own plays in tiny stages in New York, and this was a totally different thing. And there was a lot of pain there because there’s just such a different orientation to the material from the folks who are paying your paychecks from the people who are deciding whether the show even comes out.

(13:47):
I mean, it’s just, so… Sarah, I remember you talking about grief and mourning that can happen with work. And I think that really when you spoke about that in Austin, that really resonated for me because it’s just so much is on the line. What I’ll say is that it’s important also to recognize that you don’t always know best about your work, which seems super obvious.

(14:17):
But I guess what I would say in that is you might immediately know, oh wow, my work is so much better because of this friend and this friend and this mentor and this teacher. You have your inner circle of creatives that you rely on your first readers and they give you those insights that just completely revitalize the draft and push it and forward. You might feel like you already have that infrastructure and you might say, oh, well, I don’t need a suit. I don’t need the notes of somebody who’s only thinking about the bottom line.

(14:48):
And I guess it’s in the course of this project. I try to become a little bit more humble about those notes and just not, not see them personally, just kind of see them as a perspective, not sort of a comment on me as a writer stuff. It is just like, okay, here’s a perspective and this is a smart perspective. It’s not necessarily if I did have unlimited funds to finance all my own projects, I might not take this note, but this does come from a place that has been thought through, even though it’s a different line of thinking that what I did. You know what I mean? So I think honestly, the other thing is that’s the only way to get through it, and that’s where I say with some success more than others, because so much, I was so bitter about so many notes.

(15:37):
I would come around, but I would just steam and fume about like, oh my God, they don’t get it. How dare they cut all that? That’s so critical to the core of this piece. And I would just steam about it. And it really ate me up and took a lot of emotional energy that I think the future writer showrunner of me is going to be able to temper. And obviously that no one likes it when your work just gets stomped on. But even that articulation, it’s like, well, that makes it sound personal and it’s just not.

Sarah Rhea Werner (16:11):
I appreciate you saying that so much. It would be so easy to brush over that and you didn’t. Thank you. What I’m saying is I really appreciate you sharing how you actually felt and some of that bitterness at getting notes on how dare someone else tell me how to improve my own story. But what an excellent point to say that there’s a reason that the executives are where they are, and it’s because they’re doing a very specific job that is very different from yours, but also no less necessary. And I think that’s just such a good perspective to carry into the project. I love that you were willing to talk about your personal growth as a writer throughout this process and receiving notes and learning to be humble and realizing that next time, oh, I might expend a little bit less energy, feeling bitter or angry at this point and this point, how did your story grow and change through the process? I know it got a little bit, well, the sermons got shorter, but was there anything that really developed or blossomed in a way that you were surprised to see?

Asa Merritt (17:23):
Well, I would say in the most macro, the script is just better than it would have been hadn’t there been the pandemic?

Sarah Rhea Werner (17:32):
Oh, go on.

Asa Merritt (17:34):
Yeah, just from a really actual practical standpoint, although it’s just not the kind of thing I would’ve realized, it’s there was more time for more notes. And it’s just kind of like when you have a project that’s four hours and 12 episodes, it’s like it usually can get better. And it’s kind of like that was what happened. It was like, okay, well, we’re not going to production, so let’s read this script one more time. And that led to this complete… there was a plot direction that I wrote a whole new kind of appendage to the story, which ended up, did not remain in the final version, but it just pushed every story element farther along. So I guess just at that level, that was kind of like a revelation. The show, a lot of it is about reckoning with suicide and kind of really smart people came on and off the project.

(18:33):
There was some drama and some really talented minds were on it and then left, which was super unfortunate. But because this project was five years in the making, so some of it was drama, some of it was just time. People were like, oh, well, I am not working here anymore. And it’s like, oh, okay. You’re the new person. A lot of people came in with their perspectives and everyone, particularly towards the suicide piece, a big part of this story is kind of engaging with, oh, why did this person take their life? And it was really, there was a collective wisdom moment that happened, I think by so many people having to engage with that part of the story and kind of adding their 2 cents, being like, okay, well, I know it’s important to you that it’s not clear why this man did it, but X, Y, or Z or at the end there really is at this top of the show, a man died by suicide, and we don’t ever really get any clue of why it happened.

(19:37):
And for me, that’s actually one of the specialist things about this, the stories like that particular articulation of cause. But a lot of people wanted crave that explanation of like, oh, why did he do it dah, from a real kind of narrative perspective. And that was just a cool unraveling of, I mean, it just gets sort of dense, but ideas of how we tell stories about suicide and what does it mean, the meta questions about responsibility of writers and accountability in terms of what kind of narratives about suicide we’re putting out into the world. And I would say I was relatively clearheaded about my thoughts about that when I set out to do it, but became even more clearheaded as the course of the process because so many really smart people did have specific and different reactions to that overall concern.

Sarah Rhea Werner (20:29):
Beautifully put, and I appreciate you talking us through that too. Sort of looking at how this whole project started, was this something that you wrote a pitch for and then pitched to them? And if so, what was it like having such a taboo subject as the center of your pitch?

Asa Merritt (20:48):
Yeah, I could talk about pitching all day. Love pitching. I mean, I do, but I mean also facetious. Yeah. Yes. I pitched Audible directly, and that’s kind of a little mini hustle lesson and how that came about. I was able to leverage a certain kind of success in nonfiction radio to open the doors to Audible. That was a cool, my early ambitions had been in dramatic writing. I was a player, and then I worked in journalism for five years, and it was kind of just a lesson was like, oh, all you need is juice. All you need to, oh, this guy made something for ESPN, he’s probably really talented, alarmingly, oh, you must be able to write a good audio trauma. No one cared. Yeah, obviously, if anything qualified me to write audio drama, it was like being a playwright for a decade. So that was kind of alarming, but also useful for those out there.

(21:51):
Just… you can really leverage any kind of success, I think, to get what you want in another area was my experience at least. But yes, I sent them a three to five page little deck with the story and pitched it directly to Audible, which I think is much harder to do now. But this was five years ago, and thus it began and it was so daunting. There was never a guarantee that it would get made. I was told that I would own none of the derivative rights. I didn’t have representation, I didn’t have a lawyer. I was so eager for any opportunity to make something, to actually be paid, anything to write. That’s what we’re all fighting for, dah, dah, dah. And here it is, and it’s just like, hindsight’s 2020. But I took the opportunity, that’s how it started. And it did take five years because the scripting phase took a long time because I was freelancing. Surprise. They weren’t paying me enough money to only work on that. Exactly. And then Covid halted productions. Yeah, that’s how it started.

Sarah Rhea Werner (22:56):
Thank you for sharing that. So I’ve been doing the Write Now podcast for, oh my gosh, eight years now. And I’ve heard so much advice. You just said something that has never been talked about on this show before, and that is leveraging prior success. And now that you’ve said it, it seems obvious. Yes, you have to essentially work your way up, but there’s different ways you can work your way into different positions. And I really hope that listeners took that to heart and that resonated with you, that you don’t have to be a award-winning children’s picture book author in order to write a children’s picture book. You could leverage experience you have in other areas. Boy, thank you, Asa. I appreciate you saying that so much. I think that’s something a lot of people need to hear,

Asa Merritt (23:48):
And I think it could be even farther than in this case, it was like, okay, I can leverage nonfiction audio into fiction audio. I have a friend here. We kind of have this big brother kind of vibe, and she’s right out of college, and so she’s my chess teacher, so I play a lot of chess, and I go to this chess club, and it’s this family of chess masters. Her father was this master and all this, and so she, of course, she’s like the Mexico City champion of chess and all this when she was 16. Oh my gosh. And so she’s having her “I’m out of school” moment. I don’t know what to do, applying for these jobs, and we’re doing some role playing some of the stuff we’re doing, some language exchange and all this, and she’s telling me about her degree and the courses she studied.

(24:41):
I’m like, Senet why are you not talking about your chess achievements? She’s like, oh, it’s not relevant at all. And it’s like, yeah, but come on. This is something you have such, and it is so personal, you just flip. This switches for all of us when we talk about something that we do well that we have a pride in and a certain expertise in, and then it doesn’t even matter. You know what I mean? And I just can imagine whatever telecommunications executive who was interviewing her and Senet launching into the story of how she won the Mexico City Championship at 16, and it’s just like, I dare you to not give me a job.

(25:19):
I think. So, yeah, I think leveraging what you’ve got can go a long way because here’s the other thing that there are no good ideas. So it’s like if you have a good idea and some kind of rock to stand on, I think a lot of doors will open because there is such a hunger for just quality stories and quality pitches. And you all have heard this before, but I think what’s important is what you really need is just confidence and a good story. Because if you have a good story, it’ll open doors and it’s worth a lot of money. Quite simply,

Sarah Rhea Werner (25:57):
The idea of focusing on what you do have that’s valuable and not focusing on what you lack, that’s such a good takeaway, focusing on what you do have. Okay, so when you were pitching your show to Audible, you did not have representation. And when we talk about representation, we’re talking about an agent, a manager, someone who can kind of walk with you through this process to make sure you don’t get screwed. This is such a difficult thing for a lot of, especially new writers or people who are looking to really take their writing to the next level to work with is how do I get an agent if I don’t already have something published? It’s a very chicken egg thing. And you talked about walking into this without representation and ending up not getting any of the rights or anything. Do you have any regrets with that? Do you think that’s just how the system works or would you have any advice for people who are just getting into this process?

Asa Merritt (26:59):
I think that it was a decision I made with a lot of information, I think ultimately is the best decision. It was an emerging artist contract. So what that meant was it was a weak contract in a lot of ways. The pay was low, there was not derivative rights, but what it did mean is it was kind of a boilerplate, and they were handing them out. The whole contract, if the show made it all the way to release was a $10,000 contract. So they’re just throwing them out in a lot of ways. Not to negate $10,000 is $10,000, but to write four hours is not a lot of money. And for Audible is not a lot of money. So what was appealing about is I knew the contract was going to go through, it was going to go through, there wasn’t going to be a negotiation period.

(27:51):
There wasn’t going to be, it’s basically I could sign this thing and I could start writing and I might get an audio drama, and that is what happened. That is what happened. And to this larger point about the strength of your story, this project was promoted by the time it was all said and done. It started out well, would’ve been one of their kind of lowest tier projects, but people got excited about it. The executive got excited about it, he really believed in it, and so it then jumped to a whole other tier, and there’s more money for more actors and more marketing. And so once we went to a production mode, I wasn’t able to earn more money as the showrunner at that point. I did have a lawyer and I did negotiate and advocate. And so it’s really hard to turn down an opportunity.

(28:40):
I don’t think I would’ve done it differently. I credit myself for asking the questions for making somebody point blank tell me, yes, if this goes to television, we don’t even have to put your name on it. Making someone tell me that, I think it’s important to ask those pointed questions because that’s what gets you respect down the road because people can tell if you’re experienced. So even if you aren’t experienced and you sort of articulate, Hey, listen, am I getting this right, you’re just kind of playing dumb. My understanding is this contract, lemme get this straight. So it’s 300 pages and it’s going to be a two year process, and we’re looking at $10,000. And if I’m reading this right here and section three, it says that if it goes to tv, Amazon owns everything. And it’s just like the answer. The answer. They know the answer, but I’m a real believer of just advocating and you just need say it because it does change the way they think of you. And that does give you leverage creatively because all of a sudden you’re a professional who’s taking a bad deal, not an amateur who’s getting run over. And if you’re presenting as a professional, that is going to garner respect even if it’s not going to get you paid on your first project.

Sarah Rhea Werner (30:05):
That is so good. And again, I’ve had a similar experience. I did get to negotiate on my contract. The downside of that was it took two full years to get the contract signed. I’m talking whatever that ends up being 700-and-whatever days to sign a contract. And so then it was forever before we could start writing and all of that stuff. And so I’m curious, a lot of writers identify as introverts or shy people or, oh, I’m a writer. I don’t talk to people. Maybe that’s a little extreme, but there’s the whole like, oh, I’m up in my little ivory tower and then I send the pages off. It sounds like you’re much more involved as a writer creator in the development of your work so much that it’s almost kind of networking, it’s getting people excited about your work, it’s getting people excited about working with you. Do you have any advice there for our listeners?

Asa Merritt (31:00):
Oh yeah. I mean, I think it’s a decision you have to make. For me, there just became a moment that was like, I want to be a working writer. I want to make a living writing. And that just changed the way I made decisions. And if that becomes sort of a mandate for you, I was getting older and tired of making money doing other things to pay for theater and stuff. So it is kind of a mindset. It’s kind of like I’m trying to make a living here. I’m not a genius, so I have to tell stories or I have to write and pitch stories that have a good chance of selling. If I’m sitting on 10 ideas, the one I’m most excited with might not be the most commercially viable. The good news is I think you can have this mindset without selling out or cutting yourself short as an artist at all.

(31:55):
Right? A thousand percent do not think these two things are… You can maintain your integrity as an artist, but still put on a hat of like, okay, listen, I’m trying to not wait tables. I’m trying to not tutor. I’m trying to not do that. What are the decisions I can make to empower me and put me in a position where I am getting paid to put words on a page? And I think that, yeah, that’s a mindset that one has to take, but that’s just sort of one answer to the way you put the question. Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of advice though, fortunately again, there’s just so many amazing creatives out there that it’s actually not hard to find people who both inspire you intellectually and creatively and represent the kind of folks who you aspire to professionally or are the kind of people who could help you professionally.

(32:50):
Again, it’s kind of find your people. Obviously. Sometimes your creative soulmate might not be the person who’s necessarily going to position you best for a professional career where you’re making enough money to support your family, but it totally can be, you know what I mean? I think it’s really surrounding yourself with people who have the same professional and creative priorities. And then just, I mean, the hardest part is first identifying those priorities in a lot of ways, which is where I’m at right now, is I’m in this totally new moment. I’m kind of starting over in the sense that I live in Mexico, I’ve lived here five years. It’s really important to me to work where I live and be part of the entertainment industry here. I can speak Spanish, can I write beautiful drama in Spanish? Definitely not. And it’s kind of a whole moment where I’m determining what those priorities are in a lot of ways. But I think once you have identified them, it’s just being strategic about being like, where am I going to invest my time and resources? Who inspires me? Who believes in me, who can help me? But I think there’s a way to do to hustle in a way that’s true to yourself and your ideals. It’s just kind of deciding where to put your energy.

Sarah Rhea Werner (34:09):
Yeah. One of the things that I realized in getting people excited about my own work was just to show that I was excited about my own work to them and to have people share that excitement. And so just being genuine and really being in love with the work is, it’s so magical.

Asa Merritt (34:25):
Yeah, it’s so true. If you believe your stuff, people will believe in it.

Sarah Rhea Werner (34:30):
Yeah. There’s so much right now being muttered about with a marketable story, with a story that will sell. And you talked earlier about having a strong story and having that be really important. Is there any discrepancy that you see between a strong story and a marketable story and should there be and et cetera, et cetera? That’s not a very clear question, so let me know if you want me to rephrase.

Asa Merritt (35:01):
I think what I can say to that is there are strong stories that each of us have. You have your strong stories. I have my strong stories. Each of us, we have our sort of wheelhouse, our traumas, our passions, and it’s kind of like there’s a set of things that I know that I can work on for two years and get so stoked on what’s going to come out. And those are my strong stories. And so then it’s kind of like, these are the cards I’m holding in my hand. And I think the first work is what are the cards I have, which is the real artistic side of it, kind of a lot of free writing and testing and just talking to your fellow writers and really existing in a pure creative space. And then you’re like, okay, here are the cards that I have.

(35:48):
Then you’re looking out and you’re like, okay, what cards are people looking for? What am I seeing a lot of on TV right now? Or what am I hearing? And that’s when really the efficiency comes in because to sell something as you know is a Titanic event and effort that takes enormous resources. And so for me, it’s kind of like, okay, what am I going to lean into here? Because to go there, you have to start flexing and leveraging all the relationships you’ve built, all the doors you have to go knock on them, and you can only go knock on them. So many times you have these email addresses that you get one email a year, and they’ll read it, they’ll read it, but you can’t just throw them every idea, every idea. And so that’s where the kind of professional writer piece enters into the equation. It’s like, which of these cars does somebody out there want?

Sarah Rhea Werner (36:42):
Yeah, that’s such a good analogy for that. When you were writing this, when you were in the writing phase, did you have a dream cast? And then when the contract was signed, were you like, oh my gosh, I hope they ask this person to play this person, or what was that like for you?

Asa Merritt (37:00):
Oh my gosh, I definitely did not have a dream cast at all. It was so much more primitive. It was just kind of like, I hope this gets made. I hope they like the story. It was so, the aspiration of a movie star or something was literally beyond anything that I was possibly thinking about. A lot of writers really do write to an actor, and I think I’ve, the handful of times I tried to do that, it’s like, oh, wow, this is actually a really great tool, but it’s not one that I had instinctively, so I wasn’t writing to that, so I didn’t have a dream cast. We got a dream cast, and I think that is to the credit of the director, this woman Sarah Benson, who’s this incredible director, and she comes from the New York theater scene, and that was a little lesson is like, oh, get a great director and your project just sort of trickle down benefits of who you’re collaborating with smart people, but get smart people and talented people want to work with talented people. And on account of Sarah Benson, we put together this incredible cast of folks who mainly the project resonated with them. They had the script and stuff, but they wanted to work with her. And now I know why because she’s amazing, but that’s how that cast came together and she’d worked with a lot of those people before.

Sarah Rhea Werner (38:22):
Was there any time during recording anything like that? And I’m not sure, I haven’t been on this side of things before, but during recording, did actors ever suggest changes or align or was it much just, Hey, please stick to the script?

Asa Merritt (38:37):
That’s a great question. I think so. The only actor on the project who took liberties with the script was Bill Irwin, who some of you may or may not know. You’ve probably seen him in a lot of movies. He plays the senior pastor in my show, six sermons. His training is as a clown. He’s a renowned clown and really well known in the Broadway scene. He’s won a couple Tonys, he’s like a Beckett expert, and he was the only actor who just went for it doing that. And that was, I think because he is 70 and just knows how good he is.

Sarah Rhea Werner (39:21):
I love that.

Asa Merritt (39:22):
He just knows he can do it. He just knows he can do it. And I think that he just, and I’m not talking radical improvisation or anything, but he had that facility, which I think relates to his larger project as an artist, as a clown, which is so much agile, nimble in a total sense, that affords that kind of freedom. But the other actors were really, really loyal to the script until we really invited a space for improvisation, which was great. So it was like a lot of this is just kind of Sarah running this room, but that’s kind of how it unfolded. We definitely took opportunities to get, I hadn’t learned this word before this project — walla, do you know this word?

Sarah Rhea Werner (40:03):
Walla? I do, but I’m going to assume that many people don’t. So please explain the concept of walla.

Asa Merritt (40:07):
I definitely didn’t before this show. Walla is kind of… my working definition is sort of filler or texture or words around the dialogue, which is so at the heart of this project, but we have the actors do walla. So for example, there’s two characters. They’re best friends and they work in a McDonald’s, and if you listen to the show, you’ll hear it at the beginning of a scene, they’re chatting about chicken nuggets and they’re like, did you know that we got this recipe from…. McDonald’s actually just stole the KFC recipe, and they’re just riffing. They’re just riffing about chicken nuggets and it’s gold, and it made it into the show. So there was sanctioned like, okay, go be improvisers now. Which a lot of that really made that in terms of manipulating the actual script. No one did that except for Bill Irwin, and he did it very, very strategically and limited and always to great result. So some of his lines are slightly improvised.

Sarah Rhea Werner (41:10):
Thank you for sharing that. I have a fictional podcast of my own, and it was one of the simultaneously most alarming, but also delightful and gratifying things is when I heard some of my lines spoken in ways that I hadn’t really meant or intended, but that actually worked better. Just what a delight. What a delight to your words, interpreted by someone. I mean, it’s just a delight.

Asa Merritt (41:38):
A hundred percent. I mean, I think that’s the principal experience of working with great actors.

Sarah Rhea Werner (41:45):
So I do want to be respectful of your time and not keep you on the microphone for a hundred hours, but are you going to go back to also writing stage plays or is it Nope, I’m a hundred percent audio drama now. Or what’s in the future for you?

Asa Merritt (42:02):
Yeah, so again, I mean, I think in a non-capitalist society where art was endorsed structurally, I would still be writing plays, but I don’t think I’m going to be writing plays because I’m still very much, this project is a huge win for me. I hope it’s going to do well. It’s a huge accomplishment. I think it’ll get other projects, but to continue to support myself as a writer that precludes any kind of return to theater for me. You know what I mean? I tried to do that. I applied to grad school and didn’t get in and really tried to do that route and wasn’t able to find success there. So again, I mean for me it’s just practical. It’s like, Hey, what do I want? I want to be a working writer. How can I do it? This is how I’m doing it. So for me, I don’t know, maybe I should be more ambitious or something, but for me, what I’m focused on is how can I tell stories that I care about and get paid for it?

(43:04):
And that’s kind of guiding my decisions right now. Theater does not fit those options unfortunately. I would love, I love the theater. I love the theater, and I go to the theater and it’s just kind of sacred. But yeah, again, that’s a call I made. I think I have this conversation with a lot of peers. I have a really dear friend who’s an incredible photographer and an incredible art photographer, and he made the decision that he was, and he’s had success as a commercial photographer as well. He’s had week-long $30,000 shoots for brands, but he didn’t want that. He wanted to be able to focus on taking the pictures that he wants to take, and they’re amazing, beautiful pictures, and he has a job as a teacher. He teaches at a public school in New York City, and it’s like that’s the path that he chose. What I mean, which is awesome. Yeah, I mean, again, that’s just a call I made for many years. I was supporting, I was a public school teacher and then I was a tutor. That was my path. I was working in education to support myself to do other things, but then the decision I made is like, okay, I’m going to try to just write what does that look like for me?

Sarah Rhea Werner (44:19):
That was so poignant. There’s so much in that, so much emotion that I feel, and I’m sure so many of our listeners feel from hearing you say that. I always like to talk about writing and creativity as being in different seasons, and I think that sometimes when you move towards something, you feel like you’re moving away from something else, but really you’re just taking a longer path to get there. So I would love to think that, yeah, you’re going to make so much money writing for these other projects that you’re going to be able to fund your own theater projects that it’ll work out. Or maybe I’m a little optimistic or naive, but I really do believe, I hope that you get there.

Asa Merritt (45:03):
I hope to write a play again too. I think you’re absolutely right, and it’s like, I do think it’s important to make sure. Well, I mean, I’m a short horror film right now. I know. See, this is my new direction. It’s called “The Allegan Ape”. It’s getting shot this fall directed by Marion Jamet, a her project, and she brought me on as a co-writer and just to be so in that project, I’m not a showrunner, I’m not hiring people, I’m not doing any of that. There is no client, there is no producer, there is no Netflix future. There’s just like an ape and this guy in the woods and some scared students, and I’m just kind of there for that. And so I do think that I am sitting here being like, you have to make strategic decisions so you can get paid. At the same time if you want to keep writing, well, you do have to find opportunities where it’s just thrill, where it’s the good stuff. Unless you give yourself that pure space, eventually it’s going to dull your powers if you’re always thinking in terms of like, oh, what’s an executive going to think of this pitch? So I’m so grateful for that collaboration and that opportunity, and per the idea of theater, it’s not that I will never do it. I want to do a street show here. I used to be a street juggler and I want to do a show here. I have big ideas for that.

Sarah Rhea Werner (46:39):
How is this not in your bio?

Asa Merritt (46:40):
I know, right? I guess it should. Yeah. Yes, it should be. Anyway. Yeah. So I think it is important to do that, and I do think it’s a balance, of course, but generally, I guess I would hold to my earlier point that there are so much exciting stuff. There’s so many exciting people. There are so many different paths that if you want to make money writing, you need to plan. I would stick to that and commit and commit, which is hard.

Sarah Rhea Werner (47:08):
I did do that as well. Just a small note, readers know that, or listeners know that it’s not just you who’s doing this. I had to make a decision last year. I made this decision. I was not going to do any freelance projects. I was not going to do any coaching or mentoring. I was just going to write, and that was a decision that I had to make and stick to. Even if financially it hasn’t been the strongest move I’ve ever made, it can be hard, but you got to do what you need to do,

Asa Merritt (47:34):
Right? Yeah. So for this project, I kind had to walk away for six sermons. I kind of had to walk away the last few months, the stress of the project, it just kind of broke me. And so the final few months of the project, my creative partner, Matt Kagan, the co- showrunner of the project, he held it on his shoulders, and it’s just like I just had to stop. I think it is, like you said, it’s all in a sort of a season. I do think there’s these seasons of the season of hustle where you’re out there and you’re meeting people and you’re making the calls and having the zooms, and then there’s the season of I’m going to work on somebody else’s horror movie and I’m just going to love it and I’m going to rest because I can’t do those other things now.

(48:20):
And I think, yeah, the sort of macro journey is getting to a place where it’s not recovery, where you can sort of manage whatever you’re doing or not do that. That’s kind of what happened to me with six sermons. It was such, I don’t know if I want to be a showrunner again. I don’t know if I can handle that. So I think that’s another huge part of the journey is all these things that you do, you think you’re just, oh, I want to be a showrunner. It’s like, well, maybe I can’t do that, or maybe I can’t be in a relationship or a father. What’s going to break? Because all these things can’t function concurrently. Yeah.

Sarah Rhea Werner (49:01):
Boy, I appreciate this so much. Asa, you have given us so much today. Just in the short time that we’ve spent with you, I feel like we could continue talking for about eight more hours and just never run out of things to talk about. I feel greedy asking this, but you’ve given us so much advice. Do you have a favorite piece of writing advice that you haven’t mentioned yet that you’d like to share?

Asa Merritt (49:25):
Well, okay, here’s kind a hack or whatever. Part of my process that was a real breakthrough for me was so Morning Pages tradition. So I kind of adapted that and made, so basically now before I write, I’ll do work morning pages. So instead, traditionally the book is like, you’re just your feelings and your life, dah, dah, dah. So for me, I would fast long form write sort story, just story problems. I’m like, okay, well, I know that Alexis, we need to somehow justify the fact that she goes back to his house, okay, what do we do? What do we do? And it’s just kind of fast and it’s just churning through. I’m like, okay, well how does that relate to this theme? And it’s kind of analytical, but also super generative and brainstormy and low stakes in the way that morning pages are supposed to be, but it’s still the work, right?

(50:22):
I’m still kind of just story breaking, and then I’ll do that and then go back to the script. As soon as I started doing that is when I really started to write effectively or just much more efficiently. That was a hack for me. So maybe there’s someone out there that that’ll work too, to sit down, pull up act two, scene four, and you’re just dropped into some kind of conversation to me is so much of it is just problem solving. So for me, it’s easier to solve problems from a little bit more of an analytic prosy type point of view than to solve while concurrently concocting loose and dynamic dramatic stakes in a moment between two human beings, it is pretty herculean to concurrently solve story problems. So by starting on the page, doing long form kind of riffing, it kind of gave me a foundation to go back into the scenes.

(51:21):
And then I would say the other thing that I really subscribed to is Hemingway recommends stopping while it’s going well. That was a rule of his, if things are really going great, is a good time to stop. I like that too because, and again, this is coming from a point of privilege when I had time to work every day on something. I think it’s different if you’re really trying to carve out times to write than if you have the time to write, write. But if you are in a place or have the discipline where you’re up from five to six 15 every morning or whatever, if you have gotten to the place where you have a strong routine and structure, bookending it with first some generative like, okay, what the heck am I doing with the story? What am I trying to say? What’s the problem here at this transition? And then ending it while there’s still some hot magic in the lines on the scene for me, was a really effective model to write a four hour show.

Sarah Rhea Werner (52:15):
Okay, there’s no way you could have known this… Did you see my face when you were talking about morning pages?

Asa Merritt (52:22):
No. No.

Sarah Rhea Werner (52:23):
Okay. Those of you who are listening, I mean obviously this is a podcast. Nobody was able to see my face, but this is just such weird synchronicity. I was actually talking with… do you know Maggie Croft?

Asa Merritt (52:35):
I don’t.

Sarah Rhea Werner (52:35):
Okay. Well, that’s fine. She and I were talking literally yesterday about morning pages and how we feel like we’re pouring so much energy into them and then having to pivot away into our work and you talking about marrying that process to and gesticulating wildly, for those of you who cannot see me, which is all of you, oh my gosh, that’s so beautiful. So seriously, thank you for saying that.

Asa Merritt (53:03):
Sometimes it would start with the personal, I think it’s also just a phase of your life. Right now, I’m kind of a mess. I’m super anxious about my show coming out. I don’t know what I’m doing, my kid. So now I like morning page and write things about my life. So it would start would be maybe half a page of like, okay, here I am. Good morning. I’m tired, whatever. Forgot to take out the cat, whatever. I don’t even have a cat. I don’t even know why I said that. I forgot to take out the dog like morning pages. But then I was like, so how do I get Alexis to the church? So that was the evolution. Sometimes it did even start from the traditional kind of orientation. It works really well in that way.

Sarah Rhea Werner (53:44):
So I do morning writing sessions where I write from eight to noon-ish. Sometimes it’s like five to nine or something. But I have a chunk in the morning when I write, and today I left off with what I call the Hemingway stop, which is you’re in the middle of a really good idea, really good flow, and you don’t want to overexert yourself. So you just step away. I don’t know you saying those two things. Sorry, because everything’s about me. No, I’m kidding.

(54:10):
That was fantastic, Asa. Everything that we have talked about today has been so resonant, and I know that it is going to, I was going to say punch so many people in the heart, but I don’t know if we necessarily want that, but it’s going to hit home for a lot of people, and you being with us today has just been such a gift. I’m so grateful. Is there a place people can find you connect with you, find your show, et cetera, et cetera?

Asa Merritt (54:36):
Yeah. I mean, what would be most meaningful to me is to go listen to six sermons. That’s the show that I’ve been talking about today. It’s on Audible. You need a subscription to get to it, but you don’t have to spend a credit. So if you’re an Audible subscriber, you can just go and download it, and it doesn’t take a credit. If you’re not an audible subscriber, this show is worth your free trial. It’s really great. But the name of the audio studio that my friend Matt and I started is called First Rodeo, and you can find us on the internet at First Rodeo Audio.

Sarah Rhea Werner (55:12):
Wonderful. There will be, of course, links to “Six Sermons” and first rodeo audio in the show notes for today’s episode. I do encourage you to check those out. And gosh, ASA, thank you for being your wonderful, brilliant self today and for sharing so generously all of the insights and advice that you’ve shared with us today. I truly appreciate it.

Asa Merritt (55:40):
Yeah, you’re welcome. My pleasure.