Steve Cuden: On today’s Story Beat.

PS Conway: Yeah, I think stick to your true voice. Right? I see a lot of people trying to be. I mean, I love George R.R. martin as a writer, but even it’s a little bit too much on the nose to be, you know, JRR Tolkien. There’s a lot of writers who want to be Stephen King that lack the authenticity. To me is just maintain your authentic voice. People don’t need near similars. People need original today. You know, I’ve heard this kind of before, but give me something new. Give me something interesting.

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, A podcast for the creative mind. Story Beat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on Story Beat. We’re coming to you from the steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, P.S. pat Conway has published more than 50 poems across four online journals and 16 poetry anthologies. Two of those anthologies have been Amazon Best Sellers. Pat released his first poetry collection, Echoes Lost in Stars, in March 2024. To date, it’s garnered significant critical acclaim. In 2025, Pat released Life Memories and Introspections during the Great COVID Lockdown, a compilation of satirical essays written during the Pandemic. I’ve read Life Sucks and can tell you it’s a witty, acerbic, wry look at life and its many foibles as viewed through Pat Conway’s unique lens on the world. If you like satire written with tongue firmly placed in cheek, I highly recommend Life Sucks to youo. A, uh, two time pushcart nominee, Pat also served as the 202425 poet in residence for the online literary journal the Fictional Cafe. He finds fascination in words birthed from dark, literate and emotive places. You can find more about pat online@psconway.com and poetry by ps.com so, for all those reasons and many more, I’m deeply honored to have the poet and author P.S. pat Conway join me today. Pat, welcome to Story Beat.

PS Conway: Oh, uh, thanks, Steve, for having me. I appreciate it.

Steve Cuden: It’s, uh, my great pleasure. Trust that. So, let’s go back in time a little bit. How old were you when you realized that you liked words and poetry and writing?

PS Conway: I mean, we can go back to 7 or 8 years old. I, uh, co authored a book with my aunt called OG Son of Fire, and it was about a little flame who grew up trying to be a fire. And he called, couldn’t get there fast enough. And we sent it into macmillan Publishing and got a rejection letter really quick. It was really, really a good opportunity to learn something at 7.

Steve Cuden: But this was your 8? Or 7 or 8.

PS Conway: Yep.

Steve Cuden: Wow. Was this your idea?

PS Conway: It was, yeah. My aunt was, uh, a bit of a closet artist, so she designed some sketches. So we made a kind of a picture book out of it. And I wrote the words from, you know, seven years old.

Steve Cuden: You’ve been creating stories and using words and language your whole life then. I mean, it’s been something that you’ve done.

PS Conway: Oh, for sure.

Steve Cuden: And. And were you a big reader as a kid?

PS Conway: I was, um, I. My first book, I remember vividly was the Hobbit in fourth grade. It was a reading assignment at the time, but I got into fantasy and, uh, sci fi really young, so was a avid reader of literate sci fi. And, like, I really got into ASMoV and like, the big names in the space. Tolkien, obviously. I read everything Tolkien’s ever done probably 20 times. But for me, yeah, I was a rabid reader when I was younger, for sure.

Steve Cuden: It’s fascinating to me that when you think about Tolkien, he’s about as poetic a novelist as there ever been.

PS Conway: He’s a lyricist. I mean, what he writes is absolutely beautiful. I think of his connection to nature particularly, which feeds, I think, probably some of my poetry to some degree. He was truly an early environmentalist before there was such a thing, I think, and a naturalist that had been around a long time. But really his commitment to the environment in that post World War I kind of Europe and what was coming out from behind it was absolutely incredible. World War I and World War II.

Steve Cuden: Truly true. And you get people like Vonnegut that came out of that era, these extraordinary writers. Um, did you study writing in school?

PS Conway: There’s always a story, right? Um, so I was a pre med when I started college.

Steve Cuden: Naturally. Naturally, a pre med becomes a poet.

PS Conway: Of course, I went to. I had a full academic scholarship to University of Rochester. Um, decided I liked rugby and joining a fraternity and a lot of fun things along the way. That disappeared the scholarship. So my dad, basically, I got my first day in an English class and I said, okay, I could write, I’d like to read, I like to write. I might as well be an English major. And transferred, uh, schools and eventually became an English major. So I did read and write basically through the back half of college.

Steve Cuden: And were you studying poetry at that time?

PS Conway: I don’t know. Poetry was always something I Did for me, but I never had really any. No. I mean, the honest answer is no. I had a poetry professor who, who was the ultimate hippie in college. I love this guy. And he got us reading all kinds of avant, uh, garde poetry, like really bleeding edge stuff. And I really was fascinated by it. So. But, but for me it was always private. Poetry was never to share. Poetry was my uber nerd coming out in every possible way for myself.

Steve Cuden: And who did you study in the poets? How did you even get into it in the first place? And then who did you admire?

PS Conway: Yeah, I mean, at the time we started this class. Now this is not avant garde, but WB8’s uh, for me was a huge influence on my writing. Uh, my family’s of Irish descent. I mean, so we were, we’ve grown up fascinated and, and kind of addicted to Irish heritage, Irish culture, Irish everything. And so Yates for me was fun, fundamental in that we did, I mean, the really push to the bleeding edge of Ginsburg at the end of this course, and some of Ellen Ginsberg’s more kind of homoerotic poetry. And it was, I mean, it blew my mind. I’d never read anything like that before, shockingly. And it was, it opened my eyes, opened my mind, I think in ways that probably couldn’t have without being exposed to it. Um, so yeah, we went from Yates to Ginsburg in a semester. I mean, it was a trip.

Steve Cuden: That’s a big stretch. You know, I think poetry over time, clearly, it’s maybe the oldest of the literary, uh, arts, uh, going all the way back to the beginning of time. But I think it has lost a little bit of its luster in the last, say, 40 or 50 years. Where it used to be that you would find poets on TV and you know, they were lauded all over the place, not so much anymore. What do you think has happened there?

PS Conway: I thought, well, you know, I blame the Internet for everything. So I think at the end of the day, I think social media has really taken over our world. Um, and I’m guilty as charged for it too. Every morning I get up and there’s a word prompt and I’ll write a poem on my Twitter feed, or X feed, whatever it’s called now, and share it around all my social medias. So, I mean, I do that on a daily basis just to, I don’t know, it’s like 5:30 you’re up and what else will you do besides write? But I really do think the intelligent poetry that like took T.S. eliot type poetry, right, get your modernist and Your postmodernist that came in and their work was so deep and hard that I actually believe we’ve kind of dumbed ourselves down as a culture a little bit. And now we want to read, like, sound bites, as though they have depth to them. And I feel something’s lost in that.

Steve Cuden: Of all the literary arts, it’s the one that challenges people the most. Maybe Shakespeare is also extremely challenging, also poetry. But, uh, you know, you get to an EE Cummings, and that gets very challenging all by itself. But that’s quite some time ago. You get to Ogden Nash, and it’s pure delight. But there are very few, if any, what I would call famous in the Zeitgeist poets right this minute.

PS Conway: Agreed. Um, you know, I think Eloise Gluck is probably one of my favorites that’s in the Zeitgeist right now that, like, I. I see some similarities in my writing to hers. I. I see a lot of what I’ve come to term is like, literary or domestic realism. Like this sense of, like, uh, when you read, like, big journals now, right, you lead Agni or you read Paris Review or. Or poetry, you tend to see these poems about the handle of a cup of. And somehow finding this profound meaning in the split of the handle of a cup. And it’s. I don’t know. M. I was raised on the. More, um, what I would call traditional poetry. Uh, that really still speaks to my ear, that lyric poetry.

Steve Cuden: Well, there’s a principle in storytelling that I’ve taught over time in terms of screenwriting, but it applies to almost all kind of writing. And that is this, uh, the principle of habituation, that as people get habituated to certain genres or styles or violence or sex or whatever it is that they’re seeing lots of in their world, there becomes a tendency over time where they need to push the envelope further. So I think what you’re alluding to there is that poetry was this kind of traditional way of saying things, and people got maybe burnt out on it or tired of it, and they started to go to these little tiny niches. That’s what you’re talking about, right?

PS Conway: It’s exactly. Exactly right. It’s. It. People. You know, we all have our tribes. I find that now that tribalism is a really big thing online too, where people love to go where they’re heard or. And. Or seen. And I think that, you know, um, I don’t value that personally that much, but I guess from an ego standpoint, it’s always nice when you get a community of people reacting to what you’ve written to. So.

Steve Cuden: So obviously you’ve written and published both poetry and prosecution. Do you have a preference? And you say you write poetry every day. Are you more. Do you think of yourself more as a poet than a, than a prose writer or are you everything?

PS Conway: It’s a great question. Um, I probably identify poet first. Mhm. Uh, it’s what I, I mean, it is. I’ve got three works in progress right now, you know, that are, that are getting shopped for a publisher and all poetry. All poetry, yeah. One’s poetic prose. I mean, one’s kind of a story. I lost a friend in high school. And it’s kind of the story that builds up to that. So it’s poetry and prose together. And talk about a niche audience. Who’s the audience buying that book?

Steve Cuden: Well, the question is, who’s buying anything anymore? I mean, there are 50, 60, 70,000 books a year published and very few authors are actually selling enough books to sustain themselves. It’s very, very difficult right now, and especially with all these many distractions like the Internet and other things. Have you been a journaler? Do you keep a journal? Is that how you remember all these things?

PS Conway: Uh, yes. Now, historically, no. I mean, I had a stint from college until I was 50, almost where I barely wrote a thing. I, I didn’t journal. I was very career focused. I kind of almost gave up art to a degree.

Steve Cuden: What brought you back to it?

PS Conway: COVID lockdown brought me back.

Steve Cuden: The COVID lockdown brought you back.

PS Conway: Isn’t that crazy?

Steve Cuden: Yeah, no, you, you. It was something that occupied the time that was no longer occupied by your occupation.

PS Conway: Yeah, I, I went to work for a startup company that we, um, we were not ready for COVID lockdown. And so we were probably working 10, 12, 15 hours a week on an average week. And so the mind wanders, the mind has time and all of a sudden, you know. And I was angry at the world at that point in time too. I was angry at politics. I was angry. You could see it in the book, right? I mean it’s.

Steve Cuden: Oh, oh, yes, there’s plenty of anger in the book. We’ll talk about that in a moment.

PS Conway: It’s acerbic, uh, I think is how you opened it. And I think that’s probably a really good, uh, word for it. So it was done as a lark. I had, I don’t know, by the end of it, probably about 5,000 people following this weekly blog that were friends and family, then extensions of friends and family that were all middle aged Kind of people that got the referential humor, the Dennis Miller type humor where you’re making a lot of pop references in between. And it was a lot of fun because I got a lot of positive feedback, at least in the beginning. Towards the end, as it got more political. It definitely turned some people off.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s the state of our. Our state at the moment, that’s for sure. So how does writing fulfill you?

PS Conway: It. Well, since 2020, for sure. What I. What I. I always had this kind of. I always called it my skeleton closet. And there was just. I kept it locked for all those years because there are all those crazy ideas bouncing it. You always felt it as. There’s always there, that undercurrent. A couple beers would loosen that up once in a while. And so I always knew it was there. But when I opened it, I didn’t realize how big the closet had gotten it done. It’s kind of like a Narnia closet almost to a degree where it just endless and endless heading back. And um. It fulfills me now because the urgency of it. I have to write. I wake up at three in the morning and I have to write. I am in the middle of a meeting at work and I cancel my next meeting so I can write. I mean, hopefully my boss isn’t watching this, but. But I mean there’s some realities of that that the moment strikes and it’s fresh still. Five years later, six years later, it’s still very fresh and eager. I don’t know how else to describe it. There’s an eagerness that needs to be expressed. And I think it’s all that pen up years I didn’t write.

Steve Cuden: Your yearning has turned into burning.

PS Conway: Oh, I like that.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that’s how that works. I mean that. And that does happen. And there’s no rhyme or reason as to when that will happen in a person’s life. It could happen to you at 6 years old. It could happen to you at 70 years old. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. And if you’re able to answer that call, it’s usually a pretty good thing because even if it goes nowhere, it fulfills you.

PS Conway: Oh yeah. My. I have a one word document that’s everything I’ve written since 2020. And it’s like 1700 pages long now of poetry. It is. There’s so. And it’s. And it’s still every morning fresh. It’s still knock on wood. I know writer’s block’s coming at some point, but I’ve been fortunate enough to, uh, not experience.

Steve Cuden: Don’t, don’t jinx yourself.

PS Conway: I know. I feel like Kai basket on that one.

Steve Cuden: All right, so let’s talk for a little bit about Life Sucks, uh, which is, uh, the title itself tells you many things. Just those two words. What inspired you? Was it just the COVID lockdown that inspired that title and why you wanted to write it?

PS Conway: Yeah, the idea came to me about literary comedic nihilism. It was this kind of phrase I came up with in my head. Ah, LCN was. And it was like a tagline. I used to market it all the time on Twitter and build a pretty good following at one point on that. But the idea was that I did have a well read background. I love literature. I mean, my library at home is just full of great books that most people would call it classic literature. I wanted to use that in a way to have social commentary. So I wanted to give some, some, you know, academic review of Troilus, uh, and Cressida or something ridiculous, but then tie that theme into some social commentary that’s outrageous. Like completely unhinged from the academic piece of it. So I called that literary comedic nihilism. Because, you know, you read it, you read it and uh, you basically forget about it when it’s all done because nothing really matters anyway. So. Thus the name of the book too. Life Sucks.

Steve Cuden: Well, you. I’m going to quote something here. It’s a nice little chunk of quotes, so hang with me for a moment. You wrote, and I quote, I created a character, P.S. conway, a pseudo me, an amalgamation of me, a, uh, not me, and an alpha asshole who is christened Pygmalion Shitake, aka Pig Shit, aka P.S. conway. This is where the nihilism comes into play. Some readers took what they read at face value. This created a perception that, that this character was me speaking my opinions, the real P.S. not the character P.S. geez, when I put it that way, how could there have ever been any confusion? Okay, so my question is how much of the book is actually you autobiographical and how much of it is totally fiction?

PS Conway: So you know what’s interesting is I think the part that the book where I’ve gotten the comments from readers that I love is the self deprecation. Some of the things where I’m actually being pretty personal in the book and sharing parts of my life about ulcerative colitis would be a great example. I love to joke about colonoscopies and there’s a whole couple sections of the book on just, you know, poop humor through Those. It was. It was a juvenile way of getting poop jokes out there into the world.

Steve Cuden: Indeed.

PS Conway: It worked. Um, so I would say the parts that, like, speak to my family, speak to me and my personal health condition, the things that are, like, outrageous are like, 10 reasons I’m better than you or like, different things, different sections of the book that are so over the top and are meant to be. Like Jonathan Swift on acid. I mean, like, just this kind of social commentary. That’s rough.

Steve Cuden: And it’s. I didn’t count how many chapters. It’s numerous chapters. Each one of them takes sort of a jaundiced eye at life. Uh, and sometimes there’s a nice outcome to it, but often there isn’t. Uh, there’s. There are a few chapters in there that don’t really have an ending. They’re just. Just little brief takes. Um, and so, uh, the book is also clearly, as you point out, satirical. I’m curious, from your perspective, what do you think defines satire? What makes satire satire?

PS Conway: So I think it’s. It’s a way of making fun of reality. So, first of all, you have to have a real situation that you can exploit, and then you have to take that and make it 50 times worse than it actually is. You have to. Or that was my take on it for satire, was to, you know. But I do go back to even like, Modest Proposal and Jonathan Swift, where, you know, the starvation problem in Ireland’s solved by eating the children. I mean, that’s pretty radical for its time. So trying in a way not to mirror that. You know, I really did try to keep my own unique voice to it, but it was meant to be a Dennis Miller on steroids kind of approach to humor and to throw things in people’s face that hopefully they think about it a little bit afterwards, too. Cause I think what good satire does is. Makes you think.

Steve Cuden: So it’s coming from you and your life, but you’re expanding it or making it larger than it really is.

PS Conway: You’re.

Steve Cuden: You’re, uh, making it, in a way, palatable because it’s not just. Just mundane life.

PS Conway: Right, Exactly. Because, I mean, think about lockdown was all of us sitting around. I met my wife, and I just felt like, you know, we need to go to AA when we were done with it, because it was like a case of wine a week coming through the house. We just. I mean, it was fun till it wasn’t fun. And the writing, for me was an anchor to forget about the crazy that was happening all around us in the world. World too.

Steve Cuden: Mhm.

PS Conway: And the death, which isn’t funny obviously. I mean, all the things that were happening, clearly.

Steve Cuden: What is it that you would like people to take away from the book? What, what are you hoping is the, the message? If there is one?

PS Conway: Yeah, I think the message at the end of the day is to, to not accept things as they’re spoon fed to you, but actually question it and pull it apart and maybe even make fun of it a little bit and then think about the impact of that and it doesn’t change. Change how? Alter how you think about things again. Like break the tribe once in a while, get outside your tribe, get, get into another tribe for a while or try to walk in the shoes of another tribe a little bit.

Steve Cuden: Uh, describe the process in developing the book. Did you write the entire thing during COVID or did it take longer?

PS Conway: Yeah, it was a weekly. Uh, I held myself to 3,000 words a week. And it was going to be just a blog I’d written and I put it up every week. And what was cool, what motivated me was the fan base was actually starting to grow pretty quick. Like friends of friends pulling in and people really reacted to it. I mean, and it was, that’s the fuel for me is if, you know, people pay attention to you, all of a sudden you want to be the jokester and the funster and the. Push it even further a little bit.

Steve Cuden: Of course.

PS Conway: So that was the motivation at the time. It started as the blog and the book came five years later. Um, actually through fictional cafe. The, the gentleman who, um, owned the fictional cafe had been a publisher all his life. And, and he started reading and I sent him the transcripts from the blog and he’s like, oh my God. And he’s like, we have a book here. Would you want me to do a book for you on this? I’m like, do you think it’s relevant still? He goes, yeah, it’s relevant.

Steve Cuden: Well you, it’s not really about the lockdown or pandemic. There’s a little touchy stuff in there, but not, not really. I mean it’s just life in general. So yeah, of course it would be. Still be relevant. Totally. It’s relevant now. It’s going to be relevant many years from now, I think. All right, so I’m going to ask you questions about things that I read in the book that I found fascinating and interesting. Do you think there has been an actual diminishment of critical thinking in society?

PS Conway: Oh my God, yes. I mean, I profoundly believe that.

Steve Cuden: I agree with you. By the way, uh, what do you think has happened? Do you think it, once again, going back to. You think it is the Internet that has caused that?

PS Conway: I think in part, I think, um, there’s some generational differences, right? Like, you and I were not raised on social media. We were out shooting BBs at each other. Like some of the stories in my book, like the Games without Frontier section of the book is real. I mean, that was stuff we did as kids. We used to hunt each other on snowmobiles with BB guns. I mean, I can’t picture my girls doing that today. So, yeah, I do think, I think social media has made us more self aware than we’ve ever been and maybe even a little more insecure than we’ve ever been too.

Steve Cuden: I, you know, I come from that generation, uh, as perhaps you do too. Where Saturday morning came, my brother and I and friends would just run around the whole day. Our parents had no idea where we were or what we were doing or whether we were being safe or not. And we’d show up for dinner later that night. And that was all, that’s all that ever was.

PS Conway: But there were two rules in our house. You never missed a dinner, no matter what, and you never missed church on Sunday. Those are the two rules. Growing up Irish Catholic that, like, we never could deviate from, no matter how hungover, didn’t matter.

Steve Cuden: So you write, quote, even the sweetest looking clowns seem to be hiding something under their painted faces. It’s in the eyes. Close quote, expand on that. What is it about the eyes that makes them so significant?

PS Conway: Yeah, I think when, um, I see it in this generation, all the time, my daughters and I have this running joke for certain actresses of this generation that have dead eyes, shark eyes, they look like that. Life is just like, where is. It’s not even vapid. They’re dead in their eyes. And the, the emotion on the face isn’t real. It’s here. Eyes have become more prevalent to me because of social media. You see people’s eyes, you hold eye contact longer maybe naturally than you would have. And so for me, like, you know, I don’t want to be cheesy eyes are the windows to the soul or something like that. But I think people’s eyes tell you everything you need to know about them when you’re speaking with them.

Steve Cuden: Well, I also agree with the notion, and this has been a notion for a long time, that, uh, clowns or comedians tend not to be happy people. They tend to be kind of sad people. And that the clowning in them, the comedy in them is a cover for the sadness.

PS Conway: A hundred. I totally agree.

Steve Cuden: And so what you’re seeing, you’re saying you’re seeing the sadness in their soul, in their eyes, is what you’re saying.

PS Conway: Edge of a tear, right? Like just on the edge of a tear. You’d see it with people.

Steve Cuden: Exactly. And. And you write about having a morbid fear of clowns. Do you actually have that morbid fear?

PS Conway: Oh, I hate clowns.

Steve Cuden: You hate clowns?

PS Conway: Yeah, that first, like, it was probably the shortest section in the whole book. But, like, that section for me, so real, ever since I was a little kid, clowns terrify me.

Steve Cuden: What happened? Did you go to a circus and get scared?

PS Conway: I would love to know the answer to that question. It’s in the closet somewhere. I just got to pull that closet open a little bit wider and see what’s lurking back in there.

Steve Cuden: So then you also confess to being afraid of monsters.

PS Conway: Oh, for sure.

Steve Cuden: Are clowns and monsters in the same category?

PS Conway: Uh, the right clown. It like, you think of Pennywise. Right. I mean, that’s a pretty good example of it. And yet I’m morbidly fascinated watching it. Uh, or, uh, reading as one of my favorite books of all time, too. I mean, it just.

Steve Cuden: Stephen King has a way of getting under one’s skin.

PS Conway: But all the fears that are natural fears, he exploits them. He’s really good at it.

Steve Cuden: That’s correct. The interesting part for me about King is the joy that you can feel reading his work. You can feel how happy he is writing it.

PS Conway: Oh, and he’s loving that. He’s screwing with your brain so hard. He is in there like a little weevil munching around like Pet Sematary. Still is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. The whole notion of reincarnating your dead kid, and they come back something awful. Oh. Uh, horrible.

Steve Cuden: How do you think these fears that you’ve had your whole life have affected your work?

PS Conway: Well, I think in my poetry, it comes through. I think, um, I always feel like I’m in some sort of existential crisis. Right. If you read my poetry, it’s. It’s very, um, questioning of God, questioning of faith, questioning of humanity. There’s unanswered questions throughout it. And I think that’s kind of how hardwired my DNA is there. So I think to your point, my cover is humor at times, too, to mask over getting into something a little bit deeper than that. Then the tears do come to the eyes and get A little bit more challenging to deal with.

Steve Cuden: Well, there’s no question that if you are using something as a mask, that mask is not going to usually last forever.

PS Conway: Right, Exactly.

Steve Cuden: So it’s going to come through whatever it is that’s bothering you or you’re troubled by. Even though you’re masking it, it’s somehow going to show through in how you’re saying it, the way you’re saying it, what you’re saying, et cetera, et cetera.

PS Conway: My, uh, wife, um, is a clinical social worker. So she’s worked her whole life with people with different press. So I’m like a test case for her on everything. I mean, it’s half the challenge in the relationship. And I remember actually when she was doing her master’s thesis, she wrote a paper about a fake patient. It was really me she was writing.

Steve Cuden: You’re the guinea pig.

PS Conway: Um, I am. Um, yeah. There’s a story all behind that too. Yeah. Humor works to not have to deal with the real stuff.

Steve Cuden: So I want to hear you just discuss, um, the various idioms and expressions that you take issue with, that language is not static and that meanings have changed over time. Uh, explain.

PS Conway: So, um, I think of George Carlin when I think of that. Right. I mean, George Carlin did wonderful bits on that about post traumatic stress disorder. Right. It was shell shocked originally, and then later in life it comes post traumatic stress disorder. Are homeless now, are unhoused. Uh, the way we. The way we water down language to account for not offending people and that delicate sensitivity we have today not to offend. I think it’s kind of fun to offend sometimes, then back away from it and see what happens.

Steve Cuden: It’s a shame because language is so beautiful in that ability to offend.

PS Conway: I think if it’s. There’s. You can offend people in a certain way, right? There’s wrong offense, which is racism, which is, you know, um, ethnocentrism, which is. There’s ways to offend. That is inappropriate, probably, in a grand cultural sense of it, sure. Um, but I think offending to get the best of someone. I always call it the Irish humor to some degree. That little twinkle in the eye that like, I gotcha. I like that type of offense, if you will.

Steve Cuden: You write that people should relentlessly control their children that over. You actually write over parent the shit

PS Conway: out of them, obviously.

Steve Cuden: Is this based on your bringing up your kids?

PS Conway: Oh, my God, Are you kidding me? My daughters grew up knowing if they didn’t bring a 95 or better home on a certain exam. I mean, I definitely was a helicopter parent trying to set them up for success. Right. In the real world. I would love to say I was just kind of get along to get along parent. I wasn’t, I was, my wife was more that person. I was definitely the um, the authoritarian, if you will.

Steve Cuden: So when you say relentlessly control, is it like non stop?

PS Conway: Yeah. I mean, tongue in cheek, non stop.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, but it’s, that’s why I asked because it’s. You write in a very, uh, certain way that makes the reader uncertain whether you’re being serious or not.

PS Conway: It got me in trouble. It’s gotten me in trouble a few times with the book.

Steve Cuden: Sure, sure. You also wrote that Jesus knew kids were dicks. In what way?

PS Conway: Kids are evil. I mean, you ever watch kids when they’re together? It is all about power, control and domination. That’s all it is.

Steve Cuden: As I recall, at one time I was a kid.

PS Conway: Bingo. And I was probably king of the a hole club in that group.

Steve Cuden: You also write a chapter, a lovely chapter about games. Do you think we’re better off as a species having games to play?

PS Conway: Oh, I do for sure.

Steve Cuden: Why?

PS Conway: I think a couple things. One, it’s a release valve, number one. Right. For all the pen up, whatever you might be dealing with. I think that unadulterated joy of game is just something. It’s almost like a childhood feeling you can’t re embrace as an adult at times it’s that sense of freedom that I think the strictures of the world kind of crunch in and crunch in and crunch in as you get older and your behaviors get inside rails. When you’re a kid, you don’t care. You don’t care. You’re the most natural you you’ve ever been. Now you’re kind of a shit at it. But it’s, it’s authentic at least.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s for sure. Lately, I don’t know why it’s been. Lately for me, I’ve been thinking about sports, uh, and games and, and war. And that sports are very much akin to a kind of safer, more gentler way to have war with someone or to be tribal. It’s my high school versus your high school. It’s our country versus your country. It is tribal in a way. And so I think that games foster a degree of tribalism because one has to win and one has to lose. So it’s my win over your loss. Do you think that that’s the way we’re at it now? Do you think it’s good for culture or do you think there’s a problem there?

PS Conway: So I always say culture. There’s a phrase use in the book cultures. You know, we’re one power failure away from finding out what culture really means.

Steve Cuden: No kidding.

PS Conway: I don’t know if culture is a real thing. Right. I quite, uh. That’s me questioning authority thing. But, um, I don’t know that, you know, I don’t know how to answer that question. I mean, the rebel in me says, uh, you know, buck the system and let’s. Let’s just go do it. I think there’s an inherent need for people to be accepted and belong. Let’s start with that, right? I think that’s fundamental. I think it’s. It’s, um, Maslowian to some, right? I mean, I think it’s all that kind of safety and shelter and all those bottom pyramid needs we have that are evolutionary. So that competitiveness. I believe we’re kind of, uh, as a species been groomed to be that too.

Steve Cuden: Well, we needed to be early on in order not to die. You had to. You were fighting against nature and animals and the fires and whatever was coming your way. You had to be competitive and you had to have that strong desire to want to win, to stay alive. But that’s now become in a society sometimes in a society where that need to win actually is. Becomes problematic on a societal level.

PS Conway: No doubt. For sure it does. Um, the challenge I put to people in this book is some of the things pushes so far out there is to say, are we going too far? Are we a bridge too far? Have we really taken ourselves too selfishly, too narcissistically, too seriously, that um, we’re hurting the greater good through that behavior. I think that was like instinctively in my mind through the whole thing.

Steve Cuden: So this is really good. You are attempting, I believe then in the book and correct me if you think I’m wrong, you’re actually holding up a mirror to ourselves and say, take a look at this, guys. This is where some of the problems in our world lie. This is, I’m, uh, making light of it, but it’s a serious subject.

PS Conway: I mean, that is in the back of my mind in almost every essay in that. Other than the weird stuff like the middle little weird vignettes and stuff. Those are just meant to be bizarre.

Steve Cuden: There are some weird vignettes in. There’s no doubt about it. So you definitely write about. You spoke about it a moment ago, but you definitely write about being Irish and that you say something. I found Fascinating. You said one should never take anything the Irish say at face value. Why is that?

PS Conway: Because it’s all about having, having a little game with you, a little bit of fun with you. But it’s. We go to Ireland every year, we’re going in a couple months, and I love to sit in a pub and just sip a pint and just listen to people banter with each other. It is, it’s how people are webbed together and woven together in that tapestry over in Ireland is they just like to have sport with each other. They like that twinkle in the eye. Right. There’s always a little joke behind everything.

Steve Cuden: And the Irish say it better than anybody else. They do, they have their phrases and the way they say, uh, is its own little bubble.

PS Conway: It is. And it’s culturally a little bubble too. Right. I mean, if I only could annex itself from the world and be its own little 4000 year old culture and Irish culture, they would do it in a heartbeat. No doubt.

Steve Cuden: Oh, no doubt, no doubt. Now, we talked about this a little bit earlier. You do deal with a lot of anger in the book. A lot of the pieces that feel angry, like you’re angry about it. Would you say, as a person, as the normal Pat Conway, are you easily set off?

PS Conway: I am. I go to. My wife will tell you I could go from, if a pot drops in the kitchen, I go 0 to 100 with about 15 expletives. And then you instantly back down to 0 again too. But it’s that moment of just like psychotic. What the f. Uh, kind of moment. I hate to admit it, but I getting old enough, I can.

Steve Cuden: Now, anger is not an exclusive province of the Irish. No, but, but the Irish are known to get angry, as are the Italians, the Germans. You know, there’s a lot of people that get angry quickly, that they have a quick point to rise. And so how has that helped you as a writer, do you think?

PS Conway: Well, I think in those moments, I do find my pulse quickens when I write, when I’m into something good, especially poetry, when I know I’m writing something good, there’s. It’s a quickening. It’s. It’s right, you know, it’s not anger, but that next stage would be anger for sure. It’s like if someone interrupted me or like, I mean, uh, I’m going down that tunnel and I’m good in my little, you know, introverted space. That anger is lurking under there, waiting to come out.

Steve Cuden: What, what happens to you if you’re on that roll in that zone? And you’re going. And somebody, say, your wife or someone else comes in and says it’s time to go. We need to do X, Y, Z. And you’re right in that zone. What happens to you?

PS Conway: The reaction can vary. Let’s say the general reaction would be, give me a second and not turn and look right. You just stay here and just hope that’s enough. Uh, my wife knows every way to deal with me, though. She’ll just be like, hey, listen, you get up every morning. I don’t bug you. You do your writing Saturdays and Sundays. You’re at it for hours. So that. That’ll wind me down a notch for sure.

Steve Cuden: So when you’re interrupted like that, are you able to put a, you know, stop finishing what you’re working on at that second? Are you able to put a pin in it and come back to it, or do you lose the steam?

PS Conway: I never feel it’s as good if it’s not in the moment, like when I have to come back to something. It’s what’s hard about writing a book for me, like, uh, like an extended book, right, where you’re developing a character out in a whole plot line and plot series. That for me is. I almost, um. You know, I’m not a pantser when it comes to stuff like that. I really am a plotter. I have to outline everything if I’m going to ever write a real book.

Steve Cuden: Are you a pants or otherwise?

PS Conway: For poetry? I am, yeah. I mean, my best poetry is. Pants are poetry, for sure.

Steve Cuden: And for the listeners that may not know what the heck we’re talking about, a pantser means you’re working by the seat of your pants. You’re letting it fly, as opposed to a plotter or a planner. So your poetry is all on the fly. And then when you do something. Did you outline the various, uh, chapters in Life Sucks?

PS Conway: I did, yeah. And I went back and kind of cleaned them up a little bit to be. Some of them were just so of the moment on a certain week during 2020, when I wrote it, that I kind of. I had to clean up a little bit of it too. So it was more, uh, generalized and not, as, you know, some people aren’t going to remember what February 16, 2020 felt like. I mean, it just. They’re not.

Steve Cuden: All right. So you also write that bad grammar pisses you off, and. And, uh, it does me to a certain extent, too. But I’m not a linguist. I’m just a writer that I work, you know, quite naturally. I’m Not a well trained writer, uh, though I’ve learned to become a pretty decent writer, I think. How often do you find bad grammar in your life and work and what do you do about it?

PS Conway: First of all, I’m self editorial. I mean it’s. There is my trip word all the time. The variations of there. I write when I mean T h e r e. I write T h e I r all the time in emails. And I will literally withdraw an email, pull it back and rewrite it because I’m so embarrassed. Like I wrote the wrong there, there. Just terrible. So I’ve been very self critical.

Steve Cuden: As you know. I taught screenwriting for 10 years. I still teach occasionally, but I taught full time for 10 years. And you’re dealing with 17 and 18 year olds in today’s world. Uh, and they allegedly want to write and they really don’t understand any of it. And so that’s a very interesting thing that people will think to themselves, I’m a writer, I’m going to be a writer. I want to be a writer now I’m going to write. And they can’t get any of it proper. Uh, it’s a problem.

PS Conway: Well, I mean I would make the analog to that being you want to be an artist and all you can do is stick figure. I mean it’s kind of. That’s what grammar is to me. Right. It’s, that’s the basis.

Steve Cuden: Well, but, but here’s the sad thing about that commentary. There are actually artists who do stick figures and are hanging in museums. Wow.

PS Conway: Okay.

Steve Cuden: I mean they’re essentially stick figures.

PS Conway: Now if they could show me, they could paint like a landscape or something in addition to the stick figures. I, you know, street cred goes way up on that one.

Steve Cuden: You write the ghost Jesus had a holy pet named Reg. What in the world is that all about? How do you know this?

PS Conway: The lambent of God. It was Easter that week. I couldn’t come up with anything good with that. And I was just trying to think, you know, is it Jesus or the Easter bunny? And then making it being both towards

Steve Cuden: the end and who the heck is Dingle Sneem McCarthy.

PS Conway: So that actually comes from autobiography. Uh, so Dingle, we’re actually going to Dingle, uh, in Ireland in May. And my youngest daughter, my m wife was pregnant one of the times we went over there with her. And so we stayed in Dingle and there’s a town called Sneem. So he said, God, wouldn’t it be great to have a kid named Dingle Sneem? Conway. What a great name. And so that made its way into that piece. Because of that, it was like a long standing joke. She was going to be Dingle Sneem.

Steve Cuden: Oh my goodness. Uh, going through life with the name Dingle that just. Did you imagine that would not be good? Maybe a last name? Yes, but not your first name. That would be horrible. Um, you write about Occam’s Razor as well, which I thought was really, really good. And that it’s the simplest solution proposed for any problem is usually, if not probably the best one. Is that true for writing poetry?

PS Conway: I think as I progress in writing poetry I believe that to be more true than I would have maybe five or six years ago. I find compression and concision in my poetry especially I submit to lit journals and stuff like that. Trying to get some stuff published and getting out in the world a little more authentic or um, academically, you know, a little more street cred, little CV building. I find it’s helpful from M A reader perspective number one, because most poetry readers today are brainwashed social media, you know, acolytes that need to have things compressed and shortened for them. So I think there’s a commercial element to it for me there. The bigger piece though is that it’s harder to write less verbosely. It is. It’s really hard to get big concepts done in 260 characters. It really is.

Steve Cuden: Well, I said this on a recent episode. You know, it’s the alleged Abraham Lincoln quote about um. I’m sorry that this letter is so long I didn’t have the time to make it shorter.

PS Conway: It almost sounds like Mark Twain.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, yeah, I’m paraphrasing but that’s, that’s the gist of it. Uh, and so yeah, it’s really hard to be concise. I guess there’s an old cliche that goes brevity, uh, is the soul of wit. The more condensed and tight something is, I think usually the better it is. But it’s very hard to get there.

PS Conway: It’s when you like there’s a very conscious effort on my part to write staccato like I’m a drummer. So for me, like I always think rhythmically when I think of anything and I try to write sentences and non sentences. There is a bit of poetry to how I write in this book in the sense that it’s. They’re not sentences, right? They’re thoughts with a period at the end of it, but they’re short and staccato and that kind of breath catch at Each period to keep your, you know, it ups the tension. Actually, to be honest, in some of the more angry lyric that I write in there, that it’s, it’s very, um. To me, that was my attempt through a book in prose to be a little more poetic and capture that sense of brevity in the sentences.

Steve Cuden: So you alluded earlier to Maslovian, which is um, a term for Abraham Maslow, who is a famous psychologist. Uh, I guess he was a psychologist and also a University of Wisconsin badger. You quote him by saying one can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again. Fear must be overcome again and again. And you’ve already talked about, you have certain fears and clowns in particular. Do you have any advice on confronting fear and moving persistently forward, especially in the arts?

PS Conway: Boy, that’s such a good question. I mean it’s. So it’s a couple things I think it’s about. It starts with addressing fear because fear can be all consuming. So I think tamping down the fear, not that you can get. I can’t get rid of it. It’s there, the anxiety is there, lurking. You know, I always know it by the back of my knees, sweating. I just sweat on the back of my knees. I know I’m in an anxious moment. And so it is kind of pushing, you know, forcing your way through it a little bit. Right. Smile until it means something kind of. My mother in law used to, you know, say things like that is that, um, it’s amazing. If you just make yourself try and be happy for a minute, you can at least extend the exterior of being happy. Whether or not you’re naturally happy, who cares? That’s on you.

Steve Cuden: Well, I think a lot of life is faking it, fake it till you make it. Right.

PS Conway: I mean, some of these idioms come around for a reason. There’s some truth in them, um, that I find as I, as I get to know, especially as I become more of an executive in business over the years. Um, most of the people feel like they are. They’re waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under them. That the success they’ve achieved, they really don’t believe they’re worthy of that success. And they got lucky. And it’s not being self deprecating, they genuinely believe it.

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s, that’s fear of success. Yeah, it’s a very common problem, uh, especially in the arts. People don’t believe that they’re as good as they are and they think that they’ve Got everybody fooled.

PS Conway: Yeah, it’s a form of imposter syndrome, right? I mean, it’s basically imposter syndrome. I feel that every time I put a poem out in the world, I feel like it’s like these people like it. It’s amazing.

Steve Cuden: Well, has anybody ever come to you and said you stink?

PS Conway: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, we have. It’s a funny thing though, you know, um, if it’s somebody like, I know who, a background in writing or criticism or like, has a literary background, that means a lot to me. If someone said that, never had that person say it to me. I think about. I did a, a Goodreads giveaway, um, for my poetry book. And I was so psyched. Like 5,000 people for 10 books signed up for it. And one of the people left a comment said, your words are too big. No one talks like this. Two stars. I’m like, come on, you’re killing me. Why, why would you put in for a poetry book?

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s like, that’s like the, the King in Amadeus saying too many notes.

PS Conway: Yeah. Bingo, right?

Steve Cuden: I mean it’s, you know, that one

PS Conway: still sticks with me. My 12 star review and I hate it. I look back at it once in a while.

Steve Cuden: What, what is your proclivity toward Harry Potter and Severus Snape?

PS Conway: My daughter and I, my oldest daughter was. Came up at the exact same time all the Harry Potter books came out. Every one that came out, we bought two and we read them together and we would talk about them. Then we started getting into some heavier stuff along the way. Like we got Harry Potter kind of advanced us a little bit. Then we got to like his Dark materials and some of this God is Dead type. Really kind of not great for a 13 year old without a parent. Kind of help him, guide him through that thinking a little bit. But yeah, she and I were relentless. It was a contest who could be done first too. So we had a lot of fun.

Steve Cuden: So you used it, uh, it became an exercise in furthering her education.

PS Conway: Uh, for sure. I mean she. Yeah, she went to Indiana for opera actually, but ended up being so competitive. Like, I mean these, the girls were all. My daughter’s very kind, gentle person. And these girls were just cutthroat in the Soprano program with her. And she just burned out of that and became an English major. And she’s, um, a very good poet in her own right. She’s a big excellent writer.

Steve Cuden: Well, like, I think a lot of writers you talk about in your book, uh, that you write partly to leave Something of you behind. So this is. That’s a part of, if not entirely your legacy. Although, of course, your children are your legacy. And what you do in work can be your legacy, but your writing is leaving yourself behind. Do you think it should be that way for most writers, that they’re thinking about their legacy as they write?

PS Conway: I hate telling other people what to think. You know what I mean? It’s like, for me, it is the end result of writing. So for me, there’s a selfishness in writing. Sometimes I’m feeling a certain way and that feeling has to come out. So to me, uh, poetry particularly is a form of expressing feeling in words. So for me, if it’s good and it lasts, cool, because my kids have something to read when I’m dead that’s kind of neat. But I don’t know if that’s like the forethought, it’s kind of the afterthought of it all is like, huh, that’s gonna be neat. There’s a couple books. If I never do another book, there’s a couple books in the world I wrote. And that’s kind of cool.

Steve Cuden: Absolutely. And you know, for me, as I’ve thought of it over the years, and I’m not the first person to think of it, um, for sure. And that is that writing, words, literature, are the greatest form of time machine that we have. That you can open a book written by someone 2800 years ago and read what was in their mind, and you may not actually interpret it exactly as they had it in their head, but you’re in their mind 2,800 years later. And that’s a kind of a legacy as well, that is leaving that behind. Do you find for you that that’s what drives you or something else, drive you right now?

PS Conway: It’s. It’s, uh. It’s is more basic. It’s more fundamental than that. It’s still that sense of urgency, that need to create. I don’t. If you. People who write understand that comment, and people who don’t write don’t understand that comment that.

Steve Cuden: Do you feel that the work that you do as a writer is not actually you. That it’s coming through you. You’re a conduit for it.

PS Conway: I have definitely felt that before. Like, I always joke about my muses because they are the ones who wake me up at three in the morning where I have to write something. But there is a sense of, um, occasionally, particularly a sense of voice that doesn’t sound authentic to me when I write it. That’s not me. So what is it? Right? I mean, it’s something in me. Or, you know, maybe there is some kind of weird. I don’t know.

Steve Cuden: I’ve been. I. You know, I’ve spent years now talking to creative people. And it’s a common theme that most creative people don’t think they’re doing the creating. They’re responsible for it, obviously, but a lot of it’s coming through them from somewhere else. It’s bolts out of the blue. It’s whatever phrase you want to use. And so I was curious if you felt the same.

PS Conway: There’s definitely been times. I mean, and I don’t know percentage of times wise, but there’s been times where I just. I don’t feel it’s my voice, but I’m like, boy, it’s pretty damn good. I mean, I’ll take it. Thank you.

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It becomes yours. Yeah, you should take some responsibility for it and take the credit for it as well. You know, the book’s called Life Sucks, that there’s an implication in there that there’s pain to life. Life is full of pain, that there’s problems with it. You also then write, if life sucks, laugh at it. That’s your. I’m quoting you there. How do you laugh at life when you’re in pain?

PS Conway: Yeah, I think, um, we were raised that way in my house. Let’s start with that. We made fun of dark situations. You know, someone died. You’re not sitting bemoaning that death of the person. You’re telling funny stories about them. My grandma. Grandma Healy’s Hooley is one of my favorites in the book because that is literally verbatim what happened. I mean, that is autobiographical. And 100% of the way we’re puking, carrying her casket up for her burial. After the night, we acted like Van Halen coming to this little rural Adirondack town. So, yeah, it’s, uh. I don’t know any other way to be. You know, I mean, life has its crap, right? I lost my parents in the last couple years. It’s hard, right? You deal with that stuff. But it’s more fun to tell the happy story, the funny stories than sit. Oh, woe is me knowing the rest of the world’s being bombed over in Iran right now and in Palestine, and, like, the world’s got some serious problems. More so than me losing a parent or two.

Steve Cuden: Well, yeah, and I think that this is, uh, evident in your Irish history or Irish culture as it is. In almost every culture that has a good sense of humor, which the Irish do. Uh, because if you’ve run through all of these difficulties and struggles and pain and whatever it’s happened in your society and for yourself, that the. For lack of a better term, gallows humor helps get you through it.

PS Conway: And I think you’d find a good bit of gallows humor in this book. I mean, there’s definitely and maybe even beyond.

Steve Cuden: Oh, for sure. You have to actually read it and not think to yourself, is this guy serious? Because the first chapter I read, I thought, is this guy serious? And then I realized you weren’t serious, and then I was. Okay. But at first, it takes you a second to go, wait a minute. Because you’re quite serious about it, but it’s not serious.

PS Conway: You nailed it. I mean, that’s the shtick, if you will, of the book. Right? Is it sounds so intensely serious, but undergirding. All of it is a bunch of just gallows, dark humor.

Steve Cuden: Yes. You’re just jerking the reader around, which is a lot of fun. Uh, I, like you, am a fan of schadenfreude for the audience that doesn’t know what that means. What’s schadenfreude?

PS Conway: Well, it’s the joy of other people suffering. Right. Taking joy. Other people pleasure in other people’s suffering. Germans have great. I love that. That part of the book, too, because I just love that Germans have these great broad words that encompass these concepts. And schre. To me, it’s like it’s. I laugh every time I think of it because it is just that. That’s one of the darker parts of the book.

Steve Cuden: And like certain German words, there is no actual other word in another language to describe it. You have to describe it with multiple words.

PS Conway: That’s right. Right. It’s a concept encapsulated in a word. What a talk about poetry. I mean, my God, that’s the essence of poetry.

Steve Cuden: You put one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes in the book. Actually, two of them. You wrote, uh, it’s from Macbeth. It’s a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I love that phrase. And you also have a quote from Julius Caesar. What a terrible era in which idiots govern the blind.

PS Conway: Welcome to America 2026. Huh huh.

Steve Cuden: And I was just going to say, it seems like we’re seeing more and more of these kinds of idiots. What is happening in your. Your, uh, take on the world? What is happening to us?

PS Conway: Yeah, I think the underbelly of America that we didn’t pay much attention to, has got the reins right now. Right. That’s kind of racist, white ethnocentric, just terrible underbelly that. You know, I was a lifelong Republican, but in a very kind of liberal Republican sense of a moderate Republican senior since all my life. Trump won, you know, the reign of Cheeto Christ, as I call it in my book. Um, what did it for me. And, um, it was really the reason I probably lost so many followers. I mean, the opener, you know, the opening section of the book, I talked the forward. I talk about how I lost a lot of, like, lifelong friends over politics. And, you know, it. I’m okay with it now, but it really hurt a lot at the time. Like, that bothered me that, like, I could write something that was serious, but also a joke and that people through would take that as an indictment of themselves. And, um, that. That bothered me a lot.

Steve Cuden: Well, you also talk in the book, in a chapter. I think the chapter is called My Favorite Positions. I think that’s the title of it. Uh, and that you’re, you know, P.S. conway for president. What would. President Conway. How would you run things differently?

PS Conway: The giveaway on that section of the book. It is. I mean, that is my most tongue in cheek section of, um. What? We’re going to take kids out of school and conscript them to build roads and bridges.

Steve Cuden: Well, you’re right. Legalize murder and education, confiscate wealth, white slavery, mass immigration, leave earth, disarm the public, execute the elderly. America or else.

PS Conway: Is that what we’re living in? Does that feel like today, though?

Steve Cuden: I mean, sorta.

PS Conway: Yeah. Right. In a very dark, direct way.

Steve Cuden: Exactly. And you just put it right out there. It’s like there’s no cover on there at all.

PS Conway: No. And a lot of people took umbrage with that, for sure.

Steve Cuden: I mean, I believe it. I’m going to leave the book for a few moments because, uh, we’re starting, uh, to ramp the show down a little bit. But tell me more about your poetry writing. Why do you write poetry? What is it that drives you to write poetry?

PS Conway: Yeah. So poetry for me, I have to write poetry. It’s the only way I can describe it. It’s not, um. It’s less a desire and more compulsion right now. Um, there is something in me that I will watch something on TV or see something online, or I’ll hear a phrase or a word I haven’t heard in a while, and all of a sudden I have to get to my laptop and I have to. I have to get something down. And I don’t know how other describe it than compulsive. Compulsiveness. Like it’s a, um. I can’t stop it. Imagine having an itch and you had no way to get at that itch and it just kept driving. It’s that physical of a thing.

Steve Cuden: Does writing then get rid of the itch?

PS Conway: It does until the next itch comes along. I mean, he just said it’s like eczema you can’t treat, right? Just keep thinking at it.

Steve Cuden: Yes, the eczema you can’t treat. It’s poetry, right?

PS Conway: Read my book.

Steve Cuden: Um, what do you think is the future of poetry at this juncture? Is it all going to go over to AI? Will there be no more human poets or will there always be human poets?

PS Conway: I hope not. You know, I hope there will always be human poets. Let’s start with that. I mean, that’s, you know, I know hope’s not a strategy and whatever, but my hope is that humanity wisens up a little bit and that I’m fine with AI we use AI at work for all kinds of things about data mining and finding out information. I work for an AI based company that we do content based on AI so it has its place. My fear becomes when real and unreal blend together and they become the same thing, or they feel like they’re worse. They’re not the same thing. They feel like the same thing. Ask an AI. You could go out on ChatGPT right now and say, hey, write me a sonnet. Um, make sure it’s an iambic pentameter. Make sure it fits the form. There’s a volta, all the things you would have academically with a sonnet, right? And it will write a passable sonnet. What it will also do is trigger word things. There’s. There’s AI trigger words out there like fracture and rupture and the debate over EM dashes and all the things that AI does today that I think literary people are becoming more in tune to it. And I think we’re going to develop AI that’s counter AI to reject AI driven work. So I hope that the humanity stays in poetry because I don’t know a thing that’s never felt something trying to, you know, approximate that just never is the real deal.

Steve Cuden: Well, I’ve been watching this for quite some time and it scares the bejesus out of me. Uh, I think what’s coming is going to, uh, swamp humans, uh, badly. And it’s. And part of that is in the arts and what I do, what you do. I think that the AI will eventually write high quality screenplays. They’ll write high quality, uh, novels and so on. And it will be very hard for humans to tell the difference. That’s what I fear.

PS Conway: Uh, it’s my greatest fear of all. I mean, I’ve got that little glimmer of hope in me that says we’ll get smart enough to it and stop it. I don’t know. At the end of the day, you know, for humanity to expand, you go into the sci fi world like we started with, right? And it’s. Maybe we all need to be uploaded into some sort of master intelligence to be able to actually expand.

Steve Cuden: And in fact, we might, at some point, we might all be uploaded. AI may get into our own brains and suck our humanity out of us and upload it into the cloud. And that’s the end of it.

PS Conway: It’s the Borg. It’s Star Trek all over again. It’s the Borg in the most real sense of it.

Steve Cuden: I would prefer if it was Bjornborg, but that’s a whole other story.

PS Conway: That was my best tennis racket I ever owned as a kid was my, uh, Bjornborg Danae racket.

Steve Cuden: Well, I’ve just been having a great Fun conversation with P.S. uh, Pat Conway, and, uh, we’re going to wind the show down a little bit. And you’ve clearly done a lot of things over your life and you’ve met a lot of people. I’m wondering, in your writing career or in the arts career, do you have a story that you can share with us that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, strange, or maybe just plain funny?

PS Conway: The, uh, you know, when I go back to the book, the section I wrote on colonoscopies, now there’s a personal element to. I was sick for a couple years with it, pretty bad. I mean, it’s. I don’t wish it on anybody. It is a horrible affliction till you get a hold of it. Um, and it’s been well managed now for, knock on wood, the last 15 years. But throughout the book, you’ll see that the colitis, ulcerative colitis, actually rears its ugly head. I mean, the true story about my wife and her first becoming our neighbor. And I was in the middle of a colitis rampage on that. And I had to go like, my daughter drove into a pond at this guy’s house. This guy pulled my daughter out of a pond and I was in the middle of a colitis flare up at the time when that happened, and I was like, I pooped myself. It was just terrible. And. And it turned out it was my wife’s first, which just. We already moved into our neighborhood, and it was her first from way back in the day. And the funniest part of that was that, ah, this is all true story. No names, but just. True story was that his wife, uh, hadn’t realized she’d been out for a run. And I was. I was going for a run myself by their house, and she was in the garage taking her top off. And I’m like, there it is. I’ve seen your wife naked now, too, pal. Now we can be friends.

Steve Cuden: So. So that’s very. Yeah, that’s the. That’s what’s reflected in the book, that rawness of life.

PS Conway: Yeah. And some of it is very autobiographical because you can’t make up. Some things in life are too funny not to get exactly as it was.

Steve Cuden: Exactly, exactly. And sometimes things in life are not believable if you tell someone. And, uh, that’s part of storytelling is believability, because you can write something that’s completely not real and not believable and make it believable. And you can also take something that’s very real and write it or present it in a way that makes it seem not believable.

PS Conway: And I’ve spent a long time training teaching salespeople, and I really work on the soft skills of selling. Not the kind of product demonstration price quote, that type of stuff, but the, uh, storytelling is the number one hiring point I hire for. Can someone tell a good story? Do they make me laugh? Do they. Do they engage me? Those are things to me that, like, if you could bring that out into life, whether you’re right or not, you’re going to be. You’re going to be the person at the bar. Everybody’s kind of gathered around over a pint.

Steve Cuden: I think that that’s absolutely true. All right, so last question for you today, Pat. Um, what’s the best piece of advice or a tip that you can give to those who are maybe starting out as writers or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to the next level where they’re maybe published and so on?

PS Conway: Yeah, I think stick to your true voice. Right. I see a lot of people trying to be. I mean, I love George R.R. martin as a writer, but even it’s a little bit too much on the nose to be, you know, JRR Tolkien, and just there’s just a little much, a little too much of that for me, there’s. There’s a lot of writers who want to be Stephen King that lack the authenticity, the. The real believability of it. So I think, to me is just maintain your authentic voice. People don’t need near similars. People need original. Today, everything’s too much, derivative, too much. You know, I’ve heard this kind of before, but give me something new. Give me something interesting.

Steve Cuden: Well, this is absolutely true and great advice, which is to be yourself, to find your own voice and to express that. And sometimes it takes a while. It took me many years to find my voice.

PS Conway: I’m still figuring it out, so.

Steve Cuden: And. And I’m still figuring it out to a certain extent, too, but I. It took me forever before I thought I had a voice. That’s my point. And so, uh, I think this is very right on the money to say be true to who you are and to just keep going at that, because that’s how you get there. Pat Conway, this has been an absolutely wonderful, uh, show today on Story Beat night. Can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy, and for all your wisdom. And for those of you out there that are, uh, interested in more about Pat, uh, check out, uh, either Life Sucks or, uh, Echoes Lost in Stars. And you can check that out psconway.com. pat, thank you so much for being on the show with me today.

PS Conway: Steve, this was awesome. Thanks so much. I really appreciate you.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s Story Beat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you’re listening to? Your support helps us bring more great Story Beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.