Very Fine Day #50: Erin Chack
"Iit’s insane to get used to the idea that stuff you write won’t get seen for years."
VERY FINE DAY features weekly interviews with writers, creators, reporters, and internet explorers. Learn more about the people who keep the internet humming – and check out previous editions here. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter, or just follow Brad. Subscribe now and never miss an edition.
“I remember that I knew they made more money than us on editorial and I was never tempted, because I was like: I have no interest in that. Like: I don't ever want to be writing to make a company money. I want to be writing cause I have things to say. And now I'm in my 30s and I'm like: does anybody need me to write??”
Late one this week.
It’s Friday, and after a big week of work and birthdays and family and drinking and broken TVs I am about ready to sleep for two days. I am getting old.
Erin Chack has lived a hell of a life already, I feel like. More than I have. Childhood illness, travelling across the country twice, working at perhaps the digital publishing Golden Era’s most iconic media empire from rise to fall (BuzzFeed, and I know, it ain’t falling yet). She’s our guest on VERY FINE DAY today.
My recurring experience of Erin – outside of working with her – is seeing her appear online, in various forms (mostly tweets) on random Instagram accounts that compile funny things or retweeted across my feed on Twitter by some network of broken connections. Some people have a talent for cooking, some people can just run fast, and Erin can just make words… good. I’m working on it myself, clearly.
As luck would have it, Erin also recently broke her leg. I think. I’ve seen pictures and things online. So send her your best wishes. And if you happen to be the CEO of Universal Pictures, let her make a movie or something. I’ll buy you a coffee.
That’s all from me. Thanks for reading. Tell a friend about VFD today!
See you down the road.
VFD: Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it. I realized when I messaged you last week that I’m not sure what you’re doing. Like: What is Erin doing?
Erin Chack: Let's use this hour to talk about “what I'm even doing”. It's a great question. Last thing I was doing was working at Amazon Prime Video, doing viral marketing pitches for all of their original shows and movies.
VFD: Right.
Erin Chack: So the idea was to reverse engineer BuzzFeed posts and the thinking behind it. Like: what could we have the talent do that would get picked up by media companies and get coverage. Free advertising. So I was working with on that for four months, and then they disbanded the team at the end of the year. So now I'm just… I'm good.
VFD: Oh shit, alright, was that full time?
Erin Chack: It was full time freelance, which has been the gig ever since I left BuzzFeed. Which is cool, because I can go surfing during the day and stuff. But it's bad because they'll just email you that your job is over. And then you're kind of scrambling.
VFD: Yeah, that's fun. That's really the archetype outsider perspective of Amazon. I don't want you to flame your former employer, but that sounds very multi-trillion dollar company of them. You're in LA, right?
Erin Chack: Mmhmm
VFD: Most of my interactions with you and my understanding of what you're up to is on social media. And for the last two or three years, I'm just like: Erin surfs everywhere and goes camping and has great times. She just chills. Was that the original plan when you went freelance?
Erin Chack: It's cool how unemployment looks like that to you from the outside. From the inside it's a lot of panicking and emailing and trying to ask people what jobs are out there.
The idea when I came out here was to work in TV or film, which I guess is most people's idea when they come out to LA. But it's been a tough nut to crack, which I think is pretty typical. So I've just been writing scripts and meeting people and going on lunch dates, which was hard during COVID. I’m in a writer’s group with a lot of BuzzFeeders. It’s just really manifesting that for 2022, because I’ve been out here since 2019. It's been three years - it would be nice for something to finally shake loose.
VFD: Yeah. Yeah, certainly, really good timing from you with the pandemic and all.
Erin Chack: Dude, we weren't even out here six months when everything popped off. We have this weird perception of LA now because I used to be able to get to the beach in 30 minutes because everybody was in their house. And now it could take over an hour. I was like: is that what they're talking about when they're talking about LA traffic?
VFD: So you were in New York before. I forgot about that. Are you from New York?
Erin Chack: I’m from New Jersey, which is very close to New York. When I started at BuzzFeed I used to just take the train there from my mom's house.
VFD: Right. What's New Jersey like?
Erin Chack: It's… the best place on earth.
VFD: You hesitated.
Erin Chack: Well, because everybody… Look. You’re from Australia so I don't know what your association with the state is, but I have to brutally defend it every day. I come out just swinging. People will be like: Oh, you're from New Jersey? And I’m like: It's the best place to be from!!! It’s very close to New York and has 100 miles of beach!!! I love Jersey. It's a tough place to be. People are tough and people have a lot of pride. And the food is very good. It’s a scrappy place to be from.
VFD: Is it like a city - like metropolitan - or is it more suburban?
Erin Chack: So it sits between New York City and Philly. So it's pretty suburban. And there's the Philly people and the New York people, and we're on the New York side.
VFD: You're on the New York side. What's the difference between them?
Erin Chack: Well, we call like it North Jersey and South Jersey, and South Jersey - to me, it's like another country. I don't know much about South Jersey people. It's a different vibe. I could talk about this for two hours, but this is not the point of your Substack.
VFD: Oh, no, that definitely is! We’re pivoting, 2022.
Erin Chack: There's a geological thing that happens halfway down into Jersey, where the soil is very sandy and the trees can only grow a certain height. Have you heard of the Pine Barrens?
VFD: No.
Erin Chack: Yeah, nobody knows about this. I read a whole book about it. It’s protected. I have to look it up. I don't know the specifics. It's a very protected land and the people who live there have lived there forever and you can't build there and, like, that's where the Jersey Devil is from. Have you ever heard of The Jersey Devil?
VFD: No… What is the Jersey Devil?
Erin Chack: You know the hockey team?
VFD: Well I know about hockey.
Erin Chack: Well, there’s a hockey team called the Jersey Devils. So, the Jersey Devil lives in the pine barrens. So, the 13th child of this woman, who gave birth, he flew out of her vagina up a chimney and now he lives in Pine Barren.
VFD: Obviously. Yeah. It's coming back to me. Now I remember, I remember reading about that.
Erin Chack: Yeah, yeah, of course, of course, very famous.
VFD: So North Jersey, was that… were you desperate to get into New York City? I feel like that must be the stereotype. New York is right there. And all you want to do is…
Erin Chack: Go? Well, OK. Lets do that. But first I want to ask you questions, too. I know this isn’t about that.
VFD: People are doing this now. It’s a whole thing. You can absolutely, but this year, all of the interviews I've done this year have been people being like: I have questions for you now and I’m like ‘uuuhhhhhhh’.
Erin Chack: That’s not what this is! I haven’t been face to face in six or seven years at this point. So it's nice to see you again.
VFD: Yeah, you too.
Erin Chack: But the thing about New Jersey is people either really commit to never leaving, or they get out. There's two types of people: Bruce Springsteen made an entire career on pretending he's the kind of guy who wanted to leave Jersey, but he still lives in Jersey. So people stay in Jersey.
Anyway, moving to New York felt inevitable to me. Not that I was desperate to do it, just that it was going to happen at some point. And I liked living in New York, but actually moving to LA was very interesting because I was like: Oh, I really like LA. New York just felt like: Of course I'm gonna do that. And LA is like: Oh, this suits my personality and my lifestyle. And this is a choice I made. And it's better.
VFD: Yeah, yeah. And you guys drove across, didn’t you?
Erin Chack: Yeah, we lived in the van for six months on the way over.
VFD: Cool. Was it fun?
Erin Chack: It was fun because I wasn't freaking out about work yet. It was just living in the moment every day. And we saw a lot of stuff. And it's the second time I've gone across the country, so I knew what to expect. And it was good. But then it ended and now I'm unemployed. Or really I have been employed, unemployed, employed, unemploye… so it’s been a bit crazy.
VFD: How did you make the initial decision to leave BuzzFeed? Was it jumping into the void? Or did you have something lined up?
Erin Chack: Yeah, well, okay. So it always sounds like I'm lying when I say this, but I bought the van in December. I had made the decision to quit. But I waited and I got married early January - in fact, BuzzFeed asked me to hit up the Austin office. Remember when Austin was a thing?
VFD: Yeah, yeah.
Erin Chack: They wanted me to go down and help with editorial down there. And I considered it. I flew down, checked it out. And I was like: I don’t think I want to live in Texas. It was between Texas and California.
So I was like: Okay, I'm gonna quit and just figure it out in LA. And then I got laid off in like two more weeks.
Erin Chack: And then I got severance. So I was on severance for six months which was great, because we were in the van and I just gained full paychecks and had full health insurance. The goods.
VFD: I got the same thing. But I went straight into another job. So I was like -
Erin Chack: Oh yeah yeah yeah…. well you got the double paycheck.
VFD: Exactly. But then you realise that you don't really need the double paycheck. Maybe it would have been nice to have a break. But, y’know.
Erin Chack: What was the second job? Was it Vice?
VFD: No, it was a company called Pedestrian here, which is an Australian Youth publisher. I was kind of doing the same thing there but with a bit more seniority, and a bit more freedom, and it was really good. But then after like six months I'd realised I'd broken my brain. Which is good!
I guess it's mental health adjacent, but as a writer or a creator of any sort, as some who – and I hate saying ‘content,’ It sounds so mechanical – but as someone who made things, I found myself having figured out how things work and how the internet works and how all the algorithms work. And it totally devalued doing anything that didn't serve that purpose. So the idea of writing long form things, or writing books, or doing reporting that was more in depth… I’m like: why the fuck would I waste my time with that when I can do a dumb thing in 20 minutes that gets half a million views that everyone goes “snap for Brad, you’re the best” over. And then I could just go home and keep living my life.
Erin Chack: It sounds like you got addicted to the cocaine hit, is what it feels like, of the instant gratification of internet writing.
VFD: Yeah, no, absolutely, entirely.
I was the archetype, well-trained BuzzFeed professional. I had been trained to only and solely focus on that. I mean, I dropped out of university to get that job. And I was 19. So I did not have any other kind of context of writing for anyone else or working in any other environment. So I was like: ‘This is what you do’. Which I think quite a few people did. A lot of people probably did at BuzzFeed.
And yeah, it was good to realise that I'd created that deficient in my mind, and took me about two years to repair. But anyway, me! Plenty about me! Enough about me. Did you ever have that kind of experience?
Erin Chack: I think so.
I wrote a book in 2017. And it was insane. Basically, I'd written an essay for BuzzFeed, and an editor at Imprint at Penguin read it and because the essay is kind of broken into 10 parts she was like: what if we pull these parts out and make a full length book? And I was like: Fuck, yeah, I've always wanted to write a book.
It's like the dream, y’know? So we started working on it in 2015 and it took two years to write. And it’s insane to get used to the idea that stuff you write won’t get seen for years. BuzzFeed ruined me like that, because I was like: I need instant feedback on this. And it comes out and it's just set in stone. You can’t see how it did, and re-iterate, and do it better. And get a better post out of it. It's whatever you made it, you made it, and you made it two years ago.
I was 25 when I sold the book, I was 27 when it came out. And I don't even know if I still agree with the things I was saying two years ago. It's too late now. I can't open it. People I know are like ‘You must reread it a lot!’ like: Never. No, I can't I’m afraid to read it.
VFD: Is it like, cringe? Or is it just personal?
Erin Chack: It’s - I wouldn’t say…. did you just ask if my book is cringe.
VFD: Well, I don’t know, like, I mean - is that how you feel? I don’t know hahahah. Is your book cringe?
Erin Chack: I would say that it's the feeling of reading an old diary or something, which is not that it's cringe, but there’s growth that happened. So you’re looking at a past version. It's a little cringe just the way reading anything like that. I will read an old BuzzFeed post that did well, and I'm like ‘eugh’.
VFD: Oh, God, all of them, all of them, absolutely all of them. I’m like…
Erin Chack: Dude, oh my god, there's so many that I wish I could erase from the internet, that I don't even want to tell you about.
VFD: Yeah, so how was writing a book then? Is that… hard? Did it flow out of you? Because some people can. The speed and necessity that's imprinted in you, from working on the internet, can sometimes translate to larger outputs. You see some people and they just start writing heaps of books and they make screenplays and they pump them out. And you’re just like: fuck. How the fuck - why don't I have that in my dumb brain?
Erin Chack: I would agree that I don't have that in my dumb brain. I sold the book on contracts, so I had been paid for it. So I was like: I have to give them a book now. But people who just do that without a contract - that, to me, is like: wow, good for you, man.
It flowed out of me, but I had a team helping me. Work started at BuzzFeed, we were 10am to 6pm, and it took me an hour to bike to work. So 9-10am I would bike. So 8am-9am I would work every single day on the book, Mondays through Fridays, and sometimes on Saturdays. So it took two years of just working, 8am-9am, Monday through Friday, before working another six hours, writing. So yeah, I was pretty burned out at the end of it. I'd say that's why I was ready to leave BuzzFeed.
VFD: Right. Yeah. Did you ever feel weird about writing about your life as a 25 year old? Or 26 year old? Is that too personal and introspective to be like: I have lived! Does that make sense?
Erin Chack: Yeah. No, it does. I'm a middle child so I feel like nobody… Let me put it this way - All the family albums are of my older sister. You know what I mean?
VFD: Jesus ahhaa. That’s such a heavy thought.
Erin Chack: It’s so true though! Like, I'm not used to being a star. I'm the middle kid. It’s always about my older sister or my younger sister. I'm just being pulled around, pulled through life. So it was difficult to be like: you want to hear what I have to say?
And I was quite young and I knew that people were going to have a problem with that. And people -va lot of men would say to me: well, what have you done? And well, I had cancer when I was 19. That's what they were interested in. It was a kind of nonfiction, like John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” vibe. They were going for it.
So they were just looking to find a nonfiction version of that love story, I think. So that's what it was sold as. But I had grown men being like: Well, who are you to write a book? Which was always fun to answer. But it's okay. I mean, I'm happy I did it. It feels like a career high watermark which is a little scary. Because the more time that passes, I'm like: oh, fuck, what have I done now? Besides learn to surf?
VFD: That's hard. So you don't have plans for another book?
Erin Chack: Well, I would love to write another book. But now I'm so obsessed with screenwriting. I've written two pilots, a feature, a spec, and I'm on a third pilot right now. That's where all my energy goes. I just have samples in case anybody ever wants to read them.
VFD: Right.
Erin Chack: Nobody wants to read them.
VFD: How do - what is the process there? Like, I actually have no idea. Is it just about talking to people and making connections and then hoping they want to fuckin read what you have?
Erin Chack: I think that is it. I mean, that's what people tell me at least. People said that because I had a book that would help but it doesn't seem to be helping very much. But I have a couple friends who have gone into rooms, so I'm just hoping they'll put in a good word. You know how it is. And then if they do I’ll have samples to send. If they ask.
VFD: How old are you? How old are your sisters?
Erin Chack: I'm 32, Liz is 3…7? No, she's 36 and Emily's 26.
VFD: If you hate her we can change the age completely. We can be like: she's 48.
Erin Chack: Yeah she’s 50 now, dude, I have no idea. But yeah, they’re 10 years apart and I'm right in the middle. So Emily’s probably 26 or 27.
VFD: Yeah, yeah. What do they do?
Erin Chack: She's an architect. Essentially, she's an architect.
VFD: Right, essentially an architect.
Erin Chack: And Emily does graphic design.
VFD: A pretty artistic family sounds like.
Erin Chack: Yeah, well, my dad's an engineer. And all of a sudden the arts - I don't know where that recessive gene thing happens.
VFD: Yeah, yeah. You're never drawn to tech and learning to code and stuff?
Erin Chack: I can hardly do math.
VFD: Right, right. How did you end up at BuzzFeed then? Making a career out of putting your brain words onto paper - or on the internet.
Erin Chack: I had gotten a degree in journalism so I wanted to write - in fact, it was so long ago they didn't even have media as a major. They had magazine journalism or newspaper journalism and you had to pick one or the other so I was a magazine journalist. Whatever. It's so embarrassing to think about. They were like: we don't think this internet thing is taking off so we're not offering degrees in that. I actually thought I was gonna work for Vice for a really long time.
I got an interview with them right out of college. I was like: this'll probably work out and it didn't. I just kept applying for media jobs and then… BuzzFeed. I used to volunteer for this Thanksgiving thing, feeding people, and this dude, Eugene, was there. And I was like, do you work at BuzzFeed? And he was like, oh, yeah, I do. He was an engineer there. And he told me to apply to the fellowship, because I was applying for writing gigs and I didn’t even think of a fellowship. So I wrote a BuzzFeed post. I was like: ‘10 reasons you should hire me for the fellowship’ or something.
VFD: Classic.
Erin Chack: And this was before that was a done thing. This was a very long time ago. Now it's so corny. But at the time it worked.
VFD: Okay, you’re the original. You were the first.
Erin Chack: I was the first one to ever do it. Everybody else is copying.
VFD: And then it just happened?
Erin Chack: Yeah, they hired me into the fellowship. And then I got hired out of the fellowship. And then I kept being promoted. And then basically, my 20s blinked before my eyes and I was 29 aand that's when I made the decision to quit and then I got laid off. Which is good. I'm happy about that.
VFD: Yeah.
Erin Chack: And then three years have passed and I've worked random marketing jobs, waiting for some TV writing gig to happen. So if you wanna manifest that for me, I appreciate it.
VFD: Yeah, well, hopefully. I don’t actually know who reads this. I know people read it. I don't know who they are. But hopefully it's someone like that. The CEO of Universal.
Erin Chack: The CEO of TV?
VFD: Yeah yeah, the CEO of TV, I’m sure.
Do you have a mid-to-long term plan of: I'm gonna keep cracking at this and then, at some point, not crack at it? Or is it just like: no, no, no this is happening. I'm headstrong. like, what's your approach there - to keep writing and keep going to those events, or trying to go to those meetings, and put your work in front of people.
Erin Chack: I love how the question is, essentially, are you going to give up?
VFD: Hahaha. Well. Are you?
Erin Chack: It’s a fair question. I feel like I moved very far. I mean, I really like it out here, so I'm happy to be out here. But I've moved my husband out here, too. And I have a lot of friends who are breaking in. And I do think it's a waiting game. I think it's just a big endurance game. And I have jobs in the meantime. I was making more money doing marketing than I was at BuzzFeed.
VFD: How depressing is it? Not depressing, it’s just…
Erin Chack: It’s depressing because I don't want to be doing that. Like, when I worked at BuzzFeed - I feel bad, I feel like we’re dishing right now - But when I worked at BuzzFeed there were people working in marketing, and I remember that I knew they made more money than us on editorial and I just was never tempted, because I was like: I have no interest in that. Like: I don't ever want to be writing to make a company money. I want to be writing cause I have things to say. And now I'm in my 30s and I'm like: does anybody need me to write??
VFD: Does your company have money??
Erin Chack: We adapt, we evolve, we adjust. I hope this is temporary. The companies I've been working for are really cool and the people I meet are really cool. So that's always fun. In the meantime, I've been working on editorial stuff on the side because the amount of money you get paid for posts is not enough to live on, really. So I have a couple things happening. I got two New Yorkers that I'm proud of, and a McSweeney's I'm very proud of, and just a couple essays here and there. So I'm still getting stuff out there. But the bread comes from marketing.
VFD: I don't want to end on that. I don't want to live on marketing alone. Can you talk about what any of your scripts are?
Erin Chack: We could talk about it. I mean, obviously, everything comes from experience. So I have one: the feature I wrote was about two people in a van, and because it's very stressful living in a van it becomes a pressure cooker. So I wrote a comedy about two women who are going to a mutual friend's wedding and they have to take the van. The van keeps breaking down. A lot of emotions come up.
But the one I'm working on now - I try to think about screenwriting like: what if I could rewrite the way the world is? Because you can do anything you want in a script. So if I could rewrite reality, what would I change? So I don't know if you're aware, but the health care in America is a fucking nightmare.
VFD: Whattttttttttttt… hahaha.
Erin Chack: And I had cancer as a teenager, as I've mentioned - and I got pretty fucked by the healthcare system when I had cancer. I had insurance through my dad because I was 19. But then I had to drop out of school. This is pre Obamacare, right? Obamacare allows you to be on your parent's insurance till you’re 26, but this happened before they made that law. So I had to drop out of college to have cancer, basically.
VFD: Wow, fucking hell.
Erin Chack: Well, to be treated. And they said: Oh, if you're not in college anymore, then you're independent from your family. If you're not in college, you don't have a job. You're independent. You're over 18. So I had no health insurance. So basically, I decided to write a pilot about a young girl who has terminal cancer and she starts robbing the healthcare CEOs of billions and paying for everybody's healthcare, because she knows she's gonna die anyway so it doesn't matter.
VFD: Oh, I like it.
Erin Chack: Yeah, so that's the one.
VFD: You're living vicariously through this character to be like: fuck you big health.
Erin Chack: Yeah, basically. I think it helps because you have a lot of feelings towards it. And you write more passionately, you know?
VFD: Yeah. How did it - if you don’t mind me asking - what did you do? Like how did you pay?
Erin Chack: I was gonna say it's the age old story. This was pre-GoFundMe - But basically, the town I lived in found out and they did a big fundraiser.
VFD: Awww.
Erin Chack: Yeah, very sweet. They did a car show. Are you familiar with car shows? Where everybody brought their fancy cars? And you'd have to pay to come look at the cars?
VFD:Oh, cool, is this a Jersey, like North Jersey tradition? Or is it like -
Erin Chack: It honestly might be - you know the classic car show where everybody brings really old cars And then I think it's a pay to register. But they gave me all the money from that. My old softball coach was the mechanic in town. So he kind of organised it. Very, very impressive.
VFD: Well, well, I'm glad that that happened. I was really hoping when I asked that question that you weren't gonna be like: Oh, I am hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
Erin Chack: Yeah. It's fucking insane. But I still have college debt from going to school.
VFD: Man. It's almost like America isn't… built very well structurally?
Erin Chack: It’s almost like this is the worst place on earth and we're in hell.
VFD: We're not - you’re in LA! - you got the beach!
Erin Chack: Hey, the weather's good. Tacos aren't bad.
VFD: Never rains! That's the only thing.
Erin Chack: The never raining thing is terrifying though, because everything catches on fire. But somehow I'm not in debt currently, which is insane. But it was dark there for a minute. Fingers crossed for that screenwriting gig.
VFD: Yeah, yeah. CEO of TV. Can you please, uh, message Erin? Email Erin?
Erin Chack: If you’re reading this.
VFD: Yeah. Well, thanks for chatting to me.
Erin Chack. Of course. It was so good.