How I Got Unstuck

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When we talked last time, you told me you were stuck. Can you tell me now what that was since you couldn't really talk about the project then? And then do you have any sense of how you got unstuck? You know, it's so great as I've erased all that pain from none of that ever happened. Then you bring it back on me and now I have post traumatic syndrome. "I somehow ended up in the 18th century with this weird kind of gripping story," he says.

David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.

“I became very haunted by the stories that [nations] don't tell. Nations and empires preserve their powers not only by the stories they tell, but also by the stories they leave out. … Early in my career, if I came across the silences in a story, I might not have highlighted them, because I thought, Well, there's nothing to tell there. And now I try to let the silences speak.”

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