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Episode 25—Elane Johnson on her Winning Essay, Accepting Your Work as Good, and Writers Block
145 Plays9 years ago
Elane Johnson won "Creative Nonfiction's" marriage essay contest. The title of the essay is "The Math of Marriage." It's distinctive and hilarious. Elane also teaches online courses in creative nonfiction. "Teaching for me is writing," she says. Go on with your bad selves and listen to Episode 25 of the #CNF Podcast!
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Transcript
Introduction to the CNF Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey. This is the hashtag CNF Podcast, a conversation with writers, authors, reporters, and filmmakers about creating works of non-fiction. I'm your host, Brendan O'Mara.
Episode Milestone: Number 25
00:00:17
Speaker
This is a big episode, a milestone, if you will. It's number 25, and in it you'll hear gems like this.
00:00:28
Speaker
A successful writer is someone who alters me.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm amazed I didn't screw that up. For episode 25, the production value needed to be, you know, huge.
Guest Introduction: Elaine Johnson
00:00:42
Speaker
Oh, and who was that, by the way? Her name is Elaine Johnson, and her essay, The Math of Marriage, won creative non-fictions essay contest for issue number 59, dedicated to the theme of, you guessed it,
00:01:00
Speaker
marriage. Elaine is the second Creative Nonfiction contest winner on the show, the first being Harrison Scott Key, who won the Southern Sin contest. I spoke with him on episode four, go check it out.
Involving a Deaf Partner in Writing
00:01:15
Speaker
As for this one,
00:01:17
Speaker
Occasionally, you may hear Elaine's husband in the background. Because Elaine is partially deaf, he acted as her ears when Elaine couldn't read my lips through the video. I tried to edit out the confusing parts, but sometimes you'll hear him in the background talking or laughing. You'll just have to deal. Okay? Good? Good.
00:01:38
Speaker
And one last thing. Go subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and subscribe to my monthly newsletter at BrendanOmera.com. Follow me on the Twitters and the Instagrams at Brendan Omera for both handles. That is it. So enjoy this silver episode with Elaine Johnson.
Early Influences and Mentors
00:02:26
Speaker
That was really exciting, but this is more exciting because I've never been on a podcast, although I think that I'm going to host one. Oh, fantastic. I'll be one of your first subscribers then. Oh boy. Well, so at what point did you know that you wanted to be a writer? Well, I'm thinking like in utero. I'm pretty sure.
00:02:51
Speaker
so you're born to be a writer and then about the time i got to sixth grade i was really sorry i mean really in sixth grade we have this awesome teacher who made us right spelling word short stories every week and so a couple friends and i would compete to see who could come up with them gut-busting short story and as you can imagine they probably suck because they were sixth grade short stories with twenty stupid words but that's how i knew
00:03:20
Speaker
But a lot of times, even at a very young age like that, those little kernels of talent often sort of manifest themselves. Did anyone at that age, did you have a teacher or a mentor that said, okay, Elaine's got some talent here. Maybe I need to sort of nurture this a little bit.
00:03:44
Speaker
Well, it's true. It's that first taste of getting attention for your writing that people are laughing at this, and then they can't wait until next week when you write another one. So it's like, hmm, that's good. I like that. I want to do that some more. Yeah. So that really started it. Right. Yeah. There's that almost stand-up comedian instant validation that you can get from a piece of writing that gives you that energy to keep going.
00:04:13
Speaker
That's true. So who helped you along your path as a writer, as you began to take it more and more seriously?
Evolution of Writing Goals
00:04:23
Speaker
Well, it's like really weird that my mother's brother, my Uncle Mac, was really instrumental in helping me write because he just thought it was the coolest thing ever that I was very young and wanted to write. He was a brain surgeon. So he would sit with me and listen to my writings and then offer critiques. And I was like 11 or 10 when he started that. And then my dad would do the same thing. They both were really supportive because I wrote
00:04:50
Speaker
What are they? Optimist, you know, the Optimist Oratorical Contest, which is the Optimist Club International's speech writing contest. Every year they would have that, so school kids could enter that. And my dad would really get behind helping me write those and perform them and all that. Both of them are males. What do you remember about those early speeches that you wrote? What were they about?
00:05:17
Speaker
This is so horrible. The first piece that I ever remember having published was a poem called The Yellow Rose, and it's just the most hideous piece of crap in the world. I can't believe they published it. I think they thought I was probably mentally challenged, and they were like, poor thing.
00:05:40
Speaker
We're going to print this for her. But then I read a really cool little poem at the same time that was called Is, If, or But. And it was like playing on words. It was really cute. Oh, nice. So when you were getting started as a writer, what did being successful look like to you? And how has that changed over the years? Well, in high school, successful writer met bestselling author
00:06:10
Speaker
huge house, tons of money, that was it. That's what everybody thought. If you're gonna be a successful writer, that's what you're gonna have. And that's completely changed. Now, a successful writer is someone who alters me with his or her work. If I read it and it floors me and I can't get over it, then I go, now that's successful writing.
00:06:36
Speaker
I've had Glenn Stout on the program a couple times. He's the series editor for Best American Sports Writing. One of his big barometers for passing along a piece of writing to then the guest editor for the anthology
00:06:53
Speaker
is does he want to reread it again like he gets to the end of the piece and does he want to go right back to the beginning and start over again like that's his big measure and i think that's i think you hit the nail on the head like that is truly successful prose that it just it hits on a certain level and you do want to just go back and consume it again it's all you can eat buffet
00:07:16
Speaker
That's right, that's true, that's true. Good analogy.
Winning the Creative Nonfiction Contest
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah. So getting to your essay here, the math of marriage, which won the Creative Nonfiction marriage essay contest, which is like, talk about an honor. I'm sure they received hundreds upon hundreds of entries and yours stood above. So what was that day like when you got the notification that you won?
00:07:43
Speaker
This is so bizarre. It really is. I was taking a bath that morning, and when I submit work, I typically forget it. Like the day after I submit, I'm like, okay, I don't think about it anymore. So I had forgotten all about that, and it was like months and months. And that morning I was washing my hair, and I sat up and went,
00:08:06
Speaker
I can't believe they never sent me anything about that story because I really like that. I'm so proud of that essay. I was thinking, obviously, it's been this long. They didn't want it. I got finished and went downstairs and opened up my computer and the first e-mail, it said, the math and marriage and parentheses. I went, oh my God, that's so funny. I'm getting this rejection right now.
00:08:33
Speaker
And then I read it, and I opened it up, and the first thing I saw in there was, and not only do we want to publish it, and I was like, wait, what? And I think I was in shock for like an hour after it, because I really thought about it literally 30 minutes before I opened the unit.
00:08:53
Speaker
Yeah, so that must have like just Because it's so competitive in the creative nonfiction is like the flagship literary journal of the genre I mean, what did that mean to you to to to win this contest? I mean talk about uh, it's just it must have just been so gratifying and validating and just You know brevity yeah well brevity was
00:09:19
Speaker
the iconic thing in my, when I was getting the MFA and our advisor had been published in brevity. So I was like, well, if she's been published in there, I'm going to try. So I sent out a piece to them right before I graduated and then they accepted it. And so I thought, well, this is easy, you know.
00:09:41
Speaker
So another friend of mine who graduated around the same time and I talked about that and we were discussing how just unbelievable it would ever be to get anything in creative nonfiction. And I mean, this was back in 2009 or 11 or something like that. And I was just back then already thinking, oh my God, that would be the pinnacle.
00:10:05
Speaker
So whenever they sent me that, I thought, OK, obviously they are all on crack. I'm really sorry that they have an addiction, but damn. You're like, God bless that addiction. So how did you come to that essay? How what? How did you come to that essay? Yeah.
00:10:31
Speaker
well you know obviously i've been married so many times now when i saw the theme of marriage i was like well i have got to write about that yeah uh... i have always had this image from my first wedding in my head of that the christ that was hanging on the wires because it was really surreal it was bouncing in the air conditioning the whole time i was walking down the aisle and so all of these years i was like
00:11:01
Speaker
I have got to find a way to include that in something. So once I saw that fame, it was like, yay, I have sort of used it. And I think that you were going to ask me what my writing process is like.
Elaine's Writing Process
00:11:15
Speaker
So I'll tell you about that. Whenever I write anything.
00:11:19
Speaker
I'll like see a theme or a prompt or something. And then I have to let it percolate for a long time. I just think about it when I'm driving. I used to drive a lot and and I would think the whole I'm riding in my head the whole time. And then when I'm ready to write the piece after I've been percolating for weeks or months or however long, I really honestly sit down, write it all right then in one sitting because I've already got it.
00:11:47
Speaker
And then I will read it aloud, make sure that it all sounds like me and that I don't need to change anything. And then I'm good. So you put in basically a lot of your drafting takes place inside your own head before you get down and start writing the piece. You just think about it a lot.
00:12:10
Speaker
But I don't ever draft it. The only things I'll ever write are research notes. Like if I know I have to have research for a piece, I'll go do a bunch of research and keep a bunch of notes. But I don't ever write a word, really, until I'm really ready to do it. Huh. So now you've said from an early age you wanted to be, you wanted to be in this, you wanted to be a writer. What were those early days? Like as you go to college, what were some of those first writing gigs like for you?
00:12:41
Speaker
And you mean in the MFA or in just normal college? Just normal. Like right around college, like when you were just getting started. And we'll talk about the MFA for sure. But right at the beginning. When I went to undergrad, my parents had other plans. I thought I was going to go to law school. So they had that design. So I was in a, but I was in an advanced curriculum. So I missed all the core stuff and I, um,
00:13:07
Speaker
took pretty long materials, but I did an English major. So in all of the English classes, we would have, it was weird, there's two professors who were married and I just loved them. And I used to tell everyone I majored in Staggy because I had them back and forth, the husband and wife for almost all of my English classes.
00:13:28
Speaker
But Professor Stegge, the male, told us at the beginning of the first day, on the first day, he was like, don't come in here expecting an A. I don't give As, forget it. And I was like, well, that's my little challenge then, because I was always an A student. I wasn't going to make a B, or I would die.
00:13:50
Speaker
So it was really fun because I just loved the heck out of writing. And I would write and write and write to try to please this guy. It was like, here's my audience. I know I have to make him happy. So I would keep on writing until he said, you've done a good job.
00:14:09
Speaker
So now you've said before you look to expand on a longer piece of writing, you think about it a lot. Do you ever suffer from any degree of writer's block? Oh gosh, yeah, my lord. All the time. How do you deal with that? It's a problem.
00:14:33
Speaker
It's impossible sometimes, and I just don't write. And that's an unforgivable sin, really, for writers, because I just will go for long times when I don't write. I don't submit very much work. I have friends who submit hundreds of pieces every year, and I submit five or six because I just go through these periods where I don't have time or I have writers black.
00:15:00
Speaker
I don't get over it. I really don't. I just don't write that piece and move on and I'll find something else because I have such a hard time with that. Is it like a perfectionist type thing? Like you have a hard time getting it out of your head in that sense or is it sometimes just maybe you don't have an idea that inspires you to get to the page?
00:15:23
Speaker
Well, it's really kind of both. When I was in college, and I even had to write academic papers, like research papers, anything, I would write one draft, and that was it. I was done because I was like, well, this is perfect. So I would now submit this. And it was. I mean, I would always get an A because I knew what to say.
00:15:48
Speaker
If it doesn't come easily for me, I just give up. And that's ridiculous, but I do. And so it's part of that perfectionist thing. But then the not coming easy to me part is because I get really bogged down with a million things to do, like 4,000 student papers to grade. There's just no way that I'm going to get back to writing. So I'll lose that inspiration altogether.
00:16:17
Speaker
Because you invest in those few pieces that you submit per year, because you invest so much of your energy in those and all of us deal with rejection in some form or another,
00:16:34
Speaker
And because you put all that kind of energy into so few pieces, I wonder how you deal with that kind of rejection when you're not putting out 100 pieces where the rejections will bounce off you. I suspect because you submit so little relative to some of your other friends that maybe those rejections kind of hit harder. Maybe I'm just being presumptuous there, but I wonder how you deal with rejection when you put your work out there.
00:17:01
Speaker
Well, there are just so many. There are like 10 rejections for every acceptance or more. But I just have to remember that every single author who's ever been successful in any way also had.
00:17:16
Speaker
dozens of rejections for every acceptance. And if some people outside of your family members, and we'll get to that in a little bit, if outside your family are saying, hey, you know, you're pretty good at this, then you kind of have to think
00:17:33
Speaker
Well, okay. I accept that. Someone else likes my work, so I'm gonna just keep on flagging away. And if you submit a couple of things at the same time, when one of them gets rejected, you still hang on to that little bit of hope that the next one won't get rejected. And that's really the best way to do it.
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah. I have a friend of mine who's in sales. He's not a writer at all, but when he would go out trying to sell ads for this website he was working for, the way he deals with rejection was, no is just one step closer to yes.
00:18:11
Speaker
And so he just, he didn't really let them accumulate. And in a way, I kind of, what I took away from that is like, there's really only one rejection and that's the one on the top, on the top of the pile. And you just got to keep pushing that pile, like underground. So all you see is that one. He was like, oh yeah, I've only been rejected one time, like one time, a thousand times, but all you see is the one. And that kind of, it just doesn't let you get swamped. I know there are some other people too who,
00:18:40
Speaker
who want to see all those rejections and they want them to pile up so they can then use that as motivation. For me, I would get bought that. I find that demoralizing, but so I usually I discard them. So that's one thing that I tend to do if one hurts me particularly is I just don't like delete it really hard. You know, like like a person, the button delay so hard because I'm just so mad at that one particular thing. And that always feels really good.
00:19:10
Speaker
It's like nowadays with the way cell phones are and portable phones, there's no satisfaction in hanging up on anyone anymore. What we need to do is develop an app on the phone that's actually like the slam hang up so you can actually be angry. You hit the button and it actually snaps the phone shut.
00:19:36
Speaker
So you said you're a teacher. So talk a little bit about your teaching and how that affects your writing. Well, I love the teaching part of teaching. I really despise the grading part of teaching. So I'm constantly taking small breaks to go over to Facebook to grouse about how much I hate grading. But I just honestly love the process of
00:20:04
Speaker
getting some information to someone else, especially through the online classroom. It's just the coolest thing because I get to write all the time. So, teaching for me is writing. I get to write my responses to them on the discussion boards. I write them long notes of feedback and it always jump-starts me.
00:20:29
Speaker
when I get back into a class, if I'm having any kind of writer's block or anything like that, as soon as I start having the back and forth with my students, then I get that inspiration again and I start writing again.
Inspiration from Teaching
00:20:40
Speaker
So it's a good thing for me to have a class because I get to have that constant inspiration from them too, because their writing is always pretty inspirational.
00:20:51
Speaker
What questions do they frequently ask you, or what are the most asked questions that they propose to you when it comes to, say, their own work, but also trying to do this professionally in some capacity?
00:21:08
Speaker
Well, most of the classes, all of the classes I teach are creative writing. And I have some, I teach the graduate program, master's program in creative nonfiction. And those people, the students in those classes always are interested to know if anybody would even care about the ideas in the memoir excerpt. That's their biggest fear is that no one will give a rat's ass about their experiences.
00:21:36
Speaker
And that's just the farthest thing from the truth. Because every single person has something that will resonate with someone. So it's like, no, you can't feel that way that what you have to say is not important. Because every one of us has something to say that is.
00:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, to that end, I would say that you have to like toe that weird line between being like kind of self-indulgent, but also telling your story in a sort of captivating way. And I always feel like the way good memoir works is almost like the narrator and all those characters, they kind of dissolve away and then you almost sort of superimpose your own life onto theirs. And so they kind of carry you through, but you're always,
00:22:23
Speaker
You're always living your own experience through them. Memoir almost becomes this hand-holding thing. This is my experience, but I know you're having it too. I get to experience in the book for you, but come along for the ride.
00:22:40
Speaker
That's right. Exactly. That is the thing. And the one thing that I think is hardest for the beginning or emerging writers is to keep in mind that although your experiences are going to correspond with someone else's, the whole point in your writing is to figure out that universal truth or that insight
00:23:03
Speaker
that goes beyond just what happened to you you know it's not good enough to say you know i did this a b c d you have to draw some sort of not necessary conclusion but you have to draw some sort of knowledge that you've gained it from that so that you can share that if you know if you're not doing that you're not going to really reach many people you'll still reach your family members yeah as they're always going to lie to you and tell you that you're writing is fantastic
00:23:32
Speaker
I can't listen to that. Yeah. So how did you get beyond just the pure validation from family members saying that your work was greatly? How did you find that the honest feedback you needed to keep growing in this craft?
00:23:52
Speaker
Instead of family, because my family, I am not joking. They don't read anything, all right? I'm like, what is wrong with you people? I'm your blood. They don't care. So they don't read anything. They just pretend they do. And then they show it when they have not a clue about what was in there. But I have friends who read it, you know, whatever. And I don't really necessarily trust that either because, you know, they're not gonna necessarily tell you that it sucked.
00:24:20
Speaker
But what is better is having online or virtual writing communities, which is what I have. I would love to get in a real live writers group, but I cannot find one. So I just keep to my online ones and I'm in a whole bunch of them.
00:24:38
Speaker
There are tons. So if anyone's out there thinking, you know, you have no one and writing is so isolating, which it is, you go online, you can find a multitude of online writing groups and you just join them and you discuss writing and you share submission ideas and even do workshops, ask people to prove for you, you prove for them. I'm always doing that.
00:25:05
Speaker
So that's the best process because these people are technically strangers and they have no reason to tell you something not true. So how did you find those online communities to form these groups?
00:25:22
Speaker
Are you saying how did I find? Yeah. Yes. Well, first I actually googled, you know, writing groups, but because I'm a member of AWP, which is the Association for Writers and Schools that teach writing, you can find in the back of their
00:25:42
Speaker
the newsletter and things that they send out, you can find all kinds of groups like that. Plus on Facebook, I think I joined one writers group and then Facebook gives you lists of other writers groups. And then I actually created one. So I have the name. What's the name of the one you created?
00:26:01
Speaker
The writers' group on Facebook is Coffee Clouchers, and it was started because I made a forum in my classes at Southern New Hampshire University called The Coffee Clutch, and that's where we could talk outside of the main discussion boards and just chit-chat and have fun. And after my first class ever did that, I loved them so much I didn't want to lose touch with them, so I started this
00:26:26
Speaker
this group on Facebook so that all of my students who want to keep up with me and I want to keep up with them can all join this great writers group. And I love it. I can't live without them.
00:26:38
Speaker
Wow, that's really like a great service that you're providing in a way, like a public service to fellow writers to be able to form a group because it is, as you know, especially if you're writing essays or a freelance journalist of some form or just a freelance writer, books, you name it, it is kind of isolating. A lot of hours just at home
00:27:02
Speaker
kind of by yourself. What inspired you to do this? Did you sort of see your own isolation in a way you were scratching your own itch?
00:27:14
Speaker
when i have student writers who blow me away and i mean i'm going do you have any concept of how fabulous your writing is and they clearly don't they have no idea how good they are i want to push and push and push them to to submit their writing because a student does that and gets published then here she will say okay it wasn't just a fluke it wasn't just this one professor who's really nice so this started way back when i talked for
Student Success Story
00:27:44
Speaker
move a school that got shut down by the government for bad things but i was you know i wasn't part of the bad things and i was teaching in this school and in little lowly composition classes and i had a student who wrote an essay and i was like dear god this is so freaking good you have got to try to get this published it was about raising free-range chickens
00:28:10
Speaker
And she submitted it to her most beloved magazine that she gets about that kind of thing called Country Time magazine that had been around for decades. And dad gummed it was a cover story. They like snapped that sucker up. They put her on the cover. And I was like, you know, just bawling because I was so excited for her. And then even better than that, she went into her favorite
00:28:38
Speaker
um the tractor supply company store and she was like look because they were selling it she's like look i'm in there and they hired her on the spot because she had that so it's like best story ever in my life of a student success i want more of those yeah
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah, so like, all right, I have to push these people and I can't push them enough in the 10 weeks of our class. They're just not enough. So I want them to join the group so I can slam them with submission opportunities and say, hey, you four really need to submit to this and you three need to submit to this and keep hammering away until they do it. And then when they get published, you know, we can have like a big, huge celebration.
00:29:27
Speaker
It's so cool. Yeah, that's great. It's just so wonderful that your students and people in your groups have that kind of advocate in the corner because it really is easy to get down on yourself. It's like the most fun I have. I'm not kidding. It's like I'm not kidding that I have more excitement when they get published than when I get published. It's smaller, but only a little bit.
00:29:52
Speaker
And I'm just like, oh my god, I love that. It's the best feeling. Wow, that's wonderful. So I love asking this question to everyone who comes on. To what extent do you reread books? Some people, they say, there's so many books. I'm just going to try to read as many as possible. Others will just say, there's so many books out there.
00:30:22
Speaker
I can't read them all, so I'm just gonna reread a lot of the great ones over and over again. And some new ones here. I know I'm a re-reader, a voracious re-reader of books, and I wonder where you stand on that.
00:30:36
Speaker
I have, there are so many, I have so many books that I reread to death. I have, we have actually two copies of Stephen King's On Writing. Oh, it's such a good book. One of them is in tatters. I mean, it's actually in two pieces because we write this fine so badly. But I have to, I read that all the time. But another, and if you haven't read this for God's sake, run. Like why are you still sitting there?
00:31:05
Speaker
It's A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel.
00:31:09
Speaker
You know, I read it a while ago. I need to read it again. Oh my God. And I love it so much. My book is like, it's almost ruined. It's water stained from tears of laughter and crying. I mean, it's just so wonderful. I think I've licked it a few times. And it's just, God, I love that book. You just rub it all over your, just to absorb it. I love it so much, hoping it would osmose into me.
00:31:38
Speaker
And also, Bleak House, Dickens, Bleak House, which is a really humongous book, but I've read that more times than I can remember. I don't know why. There are certain terms of phrases that actually all three of those people, and bazillions more, make that I have to go find again. So I feel
00:32:01
Speaker
the feeling that I had the first time I ever read the line, you know, where you're just shocked, you have to stop for a moment, maybe take a value and breathe a little bit because it's just so, so good that you can't believe anyone thought it up. Yeah.
00:32:19
Speaker
I feel that way a lot with the way Dickens closes out A Tale of Two Cities. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their heart and it goes on and on. That entire passage, I almost want to quit writing altogether because it can't be done. It can't be matched. He wins. He gets the gold medal.
00:32:45
Speaker
And it's, it's like, but you know, you get that out of your head and you realize that your own taste and your own sensibility will come through in its own special way. And you let Dickens be Dickens and you, you love him and enjoy him and cherish him for that. Exactly. Yeah. I saw that you had Sarah Einstein on. Yeah. And I'm, I just got her book. Oh, it's wonderful.
00:33:10
Speaker
But and I can't wait. I can't wait. I have to get finished with this week, which is the last week of my term. And then I can actually read. I'm so excited. Oh, it's such a good book. It's it's what I call like an other person centric memoir. It's it focuses so much on on Ma.
00:33:29
Speaker
But she does it's just it's such a good book I read it I read it really fast and and the way she speaks about it Spoke about on the podcast was just it was really cool I think that'd be a good like you read the book and then go listen to her episode and hear her insights into how she Wrote the book in her whole process. It was pretty cool And I just can't wait Sunday will just get here
00:33:55
Speaker
So what does your, say like the first maybe 60 to 90 minutes of your day look like, your morning routine, like how you get the engine started? It's so terrible. I have a collection of coffee cups. And that says, I'd love to stay.
00:34:16
Speaker
But I can't live without coffee. I think that my poor, I have a K cup coffee maker, of course. And it's like every day, the little light flashes to say, more water, please. I'm like, really? Again? Damn it. I thought it was 64 cups. What is going on? So I think I might be overdoing the coffee a little bit, but I can't even function without it. And I stay up.
00:34:43
Speaker
until morning. I almost never go to sleep in the nighttime. It's always seven or eight o'clock in the morning, I'm still up. And then I'll go to bed when the rest of the world is up.
00:34:58
Speaker
Okay. I'm weird. Yeah. Well, that's, um, so when you sort of wake up from that, you know, you, you got the coffee on like, how does now what, what then do you do to start sort of warming up for whatever work it is you're doing? Do you journal in the morning? Well, not morning, but when you wake up, do you journal or like meditate? You know, it's really weird because I have a,
00:35:24
Speaker
a very obsessive little system. I have to go look at both sides of the news. So I go and check the news. I have to look at the liberal news and the conservative news so I can see what bullshit they're spreading. And then I have to go read this one cartoon, which is a really dorky cartoon, but I love it. It's Lou Anne. I don't know why I'm addicted to it. So I have to check in on Lou Anne every day.
00:35:53
Speaker
And then right after I do both of those, I'll go check all email, make sure I don't have anything that I need to do.
00:36:01
Speaker
And then after the email, I got to go over to Facebook. And then I get sucked into there for a few hours. And after that, I will finally go open whatever work I have to do. But I'm not kidding. It's like every day and the whole time I'm on Facebook in the vortex, I'm going, I really shouldn't be doing this. I need to stop. OK, one more. I'm going to read one more post.
00:36:25
Speaker
and I'm just going to scroll one more, just one little more time and then I'm going to stop and I'm going to go do my, okay, but I just, oh, well that is so, I've got to read this one. You know, so I have to do all of those things or I can't function. So what would you say is,
00:36:45
Speaker
maybe some of the worst advice that you've ever received from somebody who's trying to maybe coach you in the right direction, but you're like, that's just, that wasn't very good advice. And I took it and I took my medicine as a result of it.
00:37:02
Speaker
Let me think, I think the absolute worst advice, and it's sort of sad, but it's that anybody can be a writer. I don't know why that bothers me, but it's just not true that anybody can be a writer. It is hard. It's hard work.
00:37:20
Speaker
So when people have said that, it's a dismissive kind of thing that they're putting down the hard work that writers do, and they're saying, oh, I can do it too. So we're not giving you any credit whatsoever. And I just think that's a terrible thing to say to someone. Yeah. And the other side of that is when people say, you need to just not give up your day job.
00:37:49
Speaker
and they're just paying an ass because they think that you have to have a real job that you can't really write and that that guy's for anyone. You shouldn't tell people either extreme like that. There's gotta be somewhere in the middle. Yeah, yeah, how have you, like what has been some of the biggest lessons you've learned in your career writing? Just, you know, what were some of the bumps and bruises you've taken and how have you sort of weathered through that over the years?
00:38:19
Speaker
Honestly, the best lesson ever was that I learned that creative non-fiction, or non-fiction in general, isn't boring textbook stuff. And up until I entered the MFA program, I always thought I was gonna write fiction, and I cannot write fiction. What was I thinking? My lord. So, whenever I took the first non-fiction class, and I found out that they weren't talking about
00:38:48
Speaker
boring crap which is what the majority of people think about nonfiction. I thought now that that's the best thing I can tell people because in my classes all my students come in there with the same exact thought. They all come in thinking they're going to write best-selling novels and they don't have a single clue
00:39:09
Speaker
when they have a distinct narrative voice, that that will work for writing creative nonfiction. I've had so many people figure out, like I did, that writing wasn't what they needed to do all along. That nonfiction is the thing. That's where they fit. I just know that they need to know there's another option if you aren't successful in fiction.
00:39:34
Speaker
So who were some of the non-fiction icons that turned the light bulb on for you?
00:39:41
Speaker
well definitely okay steven king's it memoir is on writing so he was the first and and actually he was the first that i've read and and i thought i would that's what this is okay i get it he's not just a fiction writer he has it all and then haven kimbles zippy was next but then after that i i got introduced to david sedaris and augustin burrows god i think i would
00:40:10
Speaker
anything. I would clip their toenails for them. If they would just, you know, if they would give me their feet, I will do anything at all. And then Ellen DeGeneres is another one. I'd like Tina Fey's, but not as much as Ellen DeGeneres. Anything that's humorous, I'm all over. So I like that.
00:40:30
Speaker
Have you read Mindy Kaling's? I forget the name of her book. That's bad. But her book is hilarious. Do you know who Mindy Kaling is? She was on The Office. Mindy Kaling? OK. Oh, you're going to have to edit this out. But I am not a Mindy Kaling fan. All right. I cannot. I just can't. OK. There are some female.
00:41:00
Speaker
memoir writers. I go, gangbusters to go and buy the thing. And then I read it and I go, what the hell? Who paid this person? That is not fair.
00:41:13
Speaker
They got paid to write that and it is crap. So I get very offended when there are bad celebrity written, you know. Sorry. Ew. Sorry. I usually have a rule of thumb that if the author's picture is on the cover of the book, it's probably not that good.
00:41:35
Speaker
It's by and large. I think Tina Fey's was brilliant. I liked Amy Poehler's. It wasn't as good as Tina's, but Amy Poehler's was pretty good. I was sort of disappointed in Chelsea Handler. I'm like, girl, please don't write anymore of those. Please just do not. I couldn't get through her. I believe it was the vodka one. I couldn't get through it. I was listening to it. I had the audio book and it was by
00:42:04
Speaker
She wasn't reading it, it was somebody else, and the narrator was just kind of irritating. So I wonder if I just read the book, if I would like it better.
00:42:15
Speaker
But whoever was behind the mic for it, it was kind of annoying. I wanted to sound like the person. The thing that appeals to me is when you read a writer and know that that is that person's voice, you can hear them reading those books that way. And the ones that fall flat to me, they don't sound like the person. So I'm like, ah, I just can't believe it.
00:42:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I wonder what other artistic media documentaries or feature films just even go into an art museum. What other stuff sort of inspires you to color in the lines of your non-fiction?
00:42:59
Speaker
Everything. Music used to be my entire life. It used to be. I can't hear it anymore. But when I was growing up, my mother was a singer. That was her profession. And my brother is a professional singer and musician. And I was
00:43:15
Speaker
a vocalist for all of my life until I lost my hearing and that was my thing. So I remember thinking when I was in high school that I couldn't imagine a time that I would ever not be in love with music and have it on 24 hours a day. So it's really
00:43:35
Speaker
Sort of foreign for me not to have it. I miss it a lot but movies take up a big amount of that because of closed captioning whenever I Got really bad and I couldn't hear anymore. They didn't have captions I had to quit going to movies and that was really depressing because then I didn't have movies or music but then they got those little caption readers and
00:43:58
Speaker
And I'm not kidding, we used to go to back-to-back two movies on Friday, back-to-back two movies on Saturday. I mean, we'd just be at the theater the whole weekend. And I couldn't wait for Fridays to get here for whatever new releases were out. So that's my big, huge passion.
00:44:15
Speaker
So what was the challenge of dealing with your hearing loss? Especially that you had such a love for music and then to lose the sense that let you appreciate that. What was that like for you?
00:44:30
Speaker
I hate it. I really, really, really hate losing it. I have the hardest time writing it. I can't write about it because I just fold up and start crying. It's the weirdest thing. I can barely talk about it without just
00:44:51
Speaker
dissolving and I can't figure that out. So I do have to ponder it and write about it in order to figure out what I really think about it. It was such a massive loss to me that I have never processed it.
00:45:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I wonder too, you've won this very awesome award with this beautiful essay, hilarious essay on marriage, and I wonder what's next
New Project: Murder Trial Coverage
00:45:18
Speaker
for you? What's your next project? What's the big thing that you're working on? I'm so excited about this.
00:45:26
Speaker
Okay, this is so cool, but okay, it's not, the story itself is not cool. It is horrible. But a friend of mine from high school in Warner Avenue in Georgia is currently in jail because he was in prison for life for murdering his wife and presumably his six-year-old daughter. They've never found her, so we don't know what became of her. They found his wife in the landfill, which was godawful.
00:45:55
Speaker
so he was convicted of this crime and he went through all of the appeals processes and then out of the blue juror misconduct fell in his lap and they threw out his conviction so he's been moved to the jail instead of the prison and is awaiting the new trial that's going to be in the spring i think or sometime sometime in 2017 and
00:46:26
Speaker
It is just the coolest story ever because they're absolutely two divided schools of thought. I mean, they either think he's totally guilty or he's not at all. And I have no idea. I cannot decide. But I have direct correspondence with him all the time.
00:46:51
Speaker
And I'm loving it because I get to write him. I write him, he writes me back. And I have this really unique perspective on this story. So I'm gonna go out and cover the trial and write. I'm just gonna write this however it pans out. Yeah, very nice. And one last question. Where can people find you online? Say it again. Where can people find you online?
00:47:20
Speaker
Oh, I have a website that is elainejohnson.com. And I'm on Twitter and Facebook. And if you go on elainejohnson.com, you'll be able to find my Twitter and Facebook because they're not as easy to remember. And Elaine does not have an eye on it. So that's the key.
00:47:40
Speaker
Gotcha. Well, thank you so much for coming on the program. Congratulations on winning the essay contest. What an honor. Thank you. An honor for me to be able to talk to a winner of an essay contest like this. So this is a lot of fun. Thank you so much. I loved it. It was great. Oh, you're welcome. I'll let you know when everything's up.