Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 217: Lidia Yuknavitch on Usefulness, Riding the Wave, and Being a Word Creature
166 Plays4 years ago
Lidia Yuknavitch is the author of the Scribd original "Letter to My Rage," as well as the memoir The Chronology of Water, the novels The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, and the collection Verge.
This episode was made possible by Scrivener. Enter the coupon code NONFICTION at checkout for 20% of the regular package for macOS and Windows.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter, IG, and Facebook @CNFPod.
Head over to brendanomeara.com for show notes and to sign up for the monthly newsletter.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey CNFers, look who's back. The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Scrivener. Yes, Scrivener was created by writers for writers. It brings all the tools you need to craft your first draft together in one handy app. Scrivener won't tell you how to write. You wouldn't want that anyway.
00:00:23
Speaker
It simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing. And if you enter the coupon code nonfiction at checkout, you'll receive a 20% discount on the regular versions of Scrivener for Mac OS and Windows.
Brendan's Social Media Detox
00:00:40
Speaker
That'll buy you some coffee to fuel that writing sesh. So whether you plot everything out first or plunge in, write and restructure later, Scrivener works your way.
00:00:53
Speaker
Are you doing a kind of work that is useful to someone besides yourself? Don't be a dick.
00:01:08
Speaker
CNN is a creative non-fiction podcast Then again, you know that the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories today I talk to none other than Lydia Juknovich Yeah, I know that happened Before I get to that
00:01:29
Speaker
keep the conversation going on social at CNF pod link up to the show if you think it's worth sharing digital fist bumps for those who do well, maybe not for a while because I'm doing another one of those famous Brendan social media detoxes.
Sign Up for Monthly Newsletter
00:01:44
Speaker
And I'm not coming back until I finish my book. I need to type up 1061 words port per day
00:01:52
Speaker
to finish this draft by the end of September. So you'll excuse me if I don't get on that digital treadmill and give those digital fist bumps right away. It's not because I'm ignoring you. It's because I'm just trying to rage against the machine. Rage against the algorithm, man. Best way to riff is the newsletter and email. So hit me up hard.
00:02:18
Speaker
hit real hard. Head over to BrendanOmero.com to sign up for the monthly newsletter full of reading recommendations and other goodies.
Introducing Guest Lydia Juknovich
00:02:27
Speaker
You know you're entered into a raffle to win all the books that I get just by being on the list. So every time you're there you're entered. Once a month no spam can't beat it. And at the website you'll find a way to ask me a question. Anything.
00:02:48
Speaker
There's a little plug-in there on the right side of the page and also in the show notes so you can click the appropriate button, ask me anything, and I'll play your question on air probably at the end of the show and answer it as best I can. That's pretty cool, right? I think so. So, like I said earlier, today I speak with Lydia Juknovich, a certifiable badass.
00:03:17
Speaker
Reading her work is like heading into the octagon, man. Let's toast to that. Me and alcohol don't jive these days, so I'm drinking this delicious non-alcoholic IPA, Run Wild IPA, that's what it's called, from athletic
Writing Coaching Services
00:03:37
Speaker
brewing. It is delicious, it's only 70 calories, and won't leave me hungover and drowning in a puddle of shame.
00:03:47
Speaker
That's not even a paid plug. That's just me very happy about finding a non-alcoholic beer that tastes delicious. You know, you need a personal trainer to get in shape. So why treat your writing any differently? Whether you're working on a book, a query letter, or an essay, I want to help you get where you need to go.
00:04:10
Speaker
Working with me gets you email correspondence, Skype calls, transcripts of our call so you can refer to them as notes later, detailed evaluation of the work, and that person in the corner telling you it's all gonna be okay. So if you're ready to level up, I'd be honored and thrilled to serve you and your work. Email me and we'll start a dialogue. How does that sound?
00:04:35
Speaker
Well, anywho, Lydia's latest work is Letter to My Rage.
Lydia's Latest Work & Memoir Discussion
00:04:41
Speaker
It's a short little ditty. It's published by Scribd. Lydia is also known for the memoir or anti-memoir or hybrid memoir, The Chronology of Water.
00:04:50
Speaker
And the novels The Small Backs of Children, The Book of Joan, and her latest collection of stories called Verge. She's at Lydia Juknovich on Twitter. She's LydiaJuknovich.net on the web. And she's a badass. And here she is.
Life as an Introvert During the Pandemic
00:05:21
Speaker
Given the situation we're in, how are you reorienting Tino to yourself in this time?
00:05:31
Speaker
Well, we're, we're definitely holding steady, uh, with minor plummets into despair and fear. Um, and you know, we live under material conditions that could shift at any moment, although it's okay right this second. And we also live in Portland, so there's some.
00:05:57
Speaker
you know, electricity happening downtown, but in a general sense, you know, and I, I'm not the only one who can tap into this feeling. I know there are legions of us, but I'm an introvert. So, you know,
00:06:18
Speaker
The secret is out. This is how we live. And, you know, we kind of enjoy the solitude and aloneness. And that is not to say that this is how I wish it would happen. The suffering is mind boggling and makes me shake every day. But the stillness and the ability to go inward and
00:06:47
Speaker
You know, if you're a writer, an artist, or somebody who needs that kind of solitude, it's worth at least saying out loud that that is available, and so we should probably be doing something useful with it.
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I'm kind of the same way like one of my favorite characters in all of literature is Ferdinand the Bull. Just to be able to sit under, you know, sit under a tree and just like smell flowers and just look out into the pasture like that. That's kind of my ideal life is Ferdinand the Bull.
Creative Process & Inspirations
00:07:24
Speaker
Given just the volume of great work that you've been able to put out into the world, fiction, memoir, essay, you name it, I've been really sort of obsessed with Groove lately. I've been listening to a lot of drummers just talk about how they go about the work, and it's all about feel and groove. And I wonder, for you, how do you
00:07:47
Speaker
tap into it. How do you get into the groove that you need to be into so you can feel like you've had a nice little generative session at the ledger, so to speak? Well, I identify mightily with jazz musicians and drummers, so there always has to be some kind of cocoon of jazz in the room, but
00:08:05
Speaker
My primary metaphor for entering my own creative process is ocean waves. Shockingly, it has to do with water. But, you know, waves, what we see on the surface, that's not actually the wave. That's just the manifestation of the wave. And a wave getting born happens underwater in deep water.
00:08:32
Speaker
and the energy it takes, you know, swells under there and you can't really see it. And the thing we see that comes all the way to shore and tickles your toes at the very end when it peters out is, you know, the last piece of it. And so because I'm not a person who writes every day at 9am, I had to find some kind of
00:08:56
Speaker
mode or groove as you call it or even image or metaphor that corresponds to how I do write which is I go a long period of time with stuff in my gut or carrying it around in my body.
00:09:10
Speaker
And then it accumulates and builds energy. And by the time I'm putting it on the page, it's like spilling over. It's coming out of me. And I got to sit down for like eight hours or 12 hours and do it. Do the thing. That's amazing. It's like you can feel it coming. You're out there just kind of bobbing in the ocean. You see the wave coming. You got to paddle like man.
00:09:34
Speaker
yeah that's it that's it or then it's gone plus now i'm 57 so when it's gone you have to wait a long time
Shedding Doubts & Embracing Unique Style
00:09:44
Speaker
There's a moment in your brilliant TED Talk, which I recently just watched twice again. I had seen it a while ago and I watched it two more times just ahead of our conversation because I just love it so much. There's that point in it where you write about the women writer titans that you were able to meet in New York. I was wondering if maybe you could talk about that. Talk about who those women are and why they're so important to you.
00:10:10
Speaker
Right. Well, a couple of them were Carol Meso and Lynn Tillman. And what was important to me about them is that they were, you know, edge writers. They were experimental women writers who were breaking rules.
00:10:27
Speaker
And, you know, not the mainstream, super bestseller, fancy, rich lady writers, but the people on an edge I wanted to be part of, an edge I wanted to step into because my writing didn't look like anything around me. And so the Titan element to me, I don't know who did and didn't know who these women were, but in my personal canon, they were everything because
00:10:57
Speaker
they sort of ripped open a space for writers who were inventing to inhabit. And plus, they were just hot. Always helps. And to me, hot may be different than definitions for other people, but I think women
00:11:25
Speaker
over 50 years old enter a hotness that we haven't even caught up with language wise. So it's like they step into the, you know, no more fucks left to give. And they're at the zenith of their intellects and creativity. And they may or may not have had children. It doesn't matter. Their bodies are entering this, you know, perfect creature status. So that's what I meant when I said hot.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah. And when you were looking at your own writing and looking outward, of course, and then seeing like there was writing that didn't look or sound like me, how did you start to inhabit your own writing?
00:12:11
Speaker
that writing style that is so uniquely you and to shed off the doubts that maybe I should be trying to sound like somebody else, somebody more mainstream and live on that edge. Well, I guess in some ways I'm luckily misfitted.
00:12:30
Speaker
I mean, my luck was that I couldn't make the stories I wanted to tell about my body or the fiction stories I wanted to tell about experiences. I couldn't make them fit.
00:12:43
Speaker
the traditional forms. I tried really hard. I really tried. And it's not to say I didn't love reading those forms. I did. I have a PhD. So of course I loved reading the tradition. But I couldn't make my stories or my body or anything about my life fit. So the failure moment of not being able to fit turned into the
00:13:07
Speaker
this kind of alchemy of, well, all right, then I'll
Accepting Failures & Expressing Emotions
00:13:11
Speaker
write this other way. And if nobody wants to look at it, then at least I will have put some energy that's eating me alive on the inside out of my body.
00:13:25
Speaker
into the outside. And you know, I'll be less insane with this stuff I'm carrying around. And it was I had to make a choice that it would be okay with me if nobody ever read it. But the process of self expression became more important to me.
00:13:45
Speaker
than holding it all in. And so something about the failure, something about, you know, reaching to express anyway, something about not caring what came back just loosened it all up for me. And at that point, you know, who cares what anyone else thinks?
00:14:06
Speaker
Yeah, and to your point of that hotness of language and everything, that is such a great way of putting it. So simple and so illustrative, because that's how when I read your work, I always just feel like I feel this pulse of energy, of hotness, of feeling like I just was sparring with someone.
Evoking Physical Sensations in Writing
00:14:28
Speaker
The words just kind of, they hit me across the mouth in such a way that I'm like, oh, that's going to smart for a while.
00:14:36
Speaker
And I love that about you. And there's a courage behind that. And I just, I feel like, you know, it's great to read someone who is comfortable in that ability to be so unbridled. Well, I also, I think it shows up a lot in my work and my work with other people too. I probably have a very singular and myopic goal, which is, can I get the reader to feel something in their body?
00:15:04
Speaker
as they read something I've made. And so sometimes I mean that gently. Sometimes I mean it in a shake you up way. Sometimes I mean to agitate. And other times I want to sing you a little lullaby. But the actual physical experience of being a reader, it's in my mind that we have to help each other remember how to be in each other's bodies.
00:15:34
Speaker
every day of our lives because the culture tries to trick you away from that. Yeah. And tries to trick you into fitting into other people's molds and other people's bodies. Like that's the shape you should be. Yeah. And if not, you're worthless. Yeah, right. Exactly. So boo that. Not for that. I am for, you know, I like to, I guess,
00:16:01
Speaker
I like the idea that you could make people's bodies vibrate when they read a book, or that I've said this before, I like the idea that a book could happen to you. And so I'm trying to contribute to that sort of art making. That's a great way of putting it, of a book happening to you.
00:16:23
Speaker
That's great. When I read Chronology of Water, that was definitely the experience I had to. I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, what the fuck just happened? What happened to me here? Oh, hooray. Yeah. And as a result of that, I was working at a bookstore here in Eugene. And any time your book came in secondhand, we had some of them, and people were just looking for books. I'm like, well, here's one for you.
00:16:49
Speaker
And no doubt when they would come back and be like, I read that, and they were just like, universe, it was just like, holy fucking shit, like I didn't even know that was possible. Neither did I.
00:17:01
Speaker
Right? So talk about riding this invisible wave that kind of came up and you just had to ride that shit and hope for the best, right?
Journey into Writing & Influences
00:17:14
Speaker
Completely. Completely. That book came out of me in a fever and a frenzy and a wave. And I didn't even want it to. When I saw what was coming out on the page, I'll be honest with you, I'm like, I don't want to write. I don't want to go there. Look at that.
00:17:30
Speaker
But by that point, the wave was too big and, you know, expression or representation was the only option or it might have eaten me alive.
00:17:41
Speaker
Right. Yeah. It's kind of one of those things where I think my friend Bronwyn Dickey, she says that she quotes Henry Rollins saying like, you know, what is it? It was just like people who write music are the people who are saved by music. And and likewise, she's just like the people who are drawn to stories are the people who are like saved by stories. So I feel like in a sense, like, you know, writing that book in a lot of ways, probably, you know, it saved you in a sense, I imagine. Of course.
00:18:09
Speaker
Absolutely. 100 times every day of my life. It's still the thing that put me back in my body. I'm grateful to something. I'm grateful to water. I'm grateful to the universe.
00:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, and one of the early seeds of that book, I imagine, was in the writing group that you were a part of where you had an exchange with Chuck Palaniuk about your skepticism around memoir and everything. I was wondering, maybe you could share us what that kind of interaction was like that sent you down the path that eventually would let you turn loose on what would become chronology of water.
00:18:56
Speaker
Well, we were having a parking lot discussion about the pluses and minuses of memoir writing, and I was blathering about something to do with my least favorite memoirs are the kind that celebrate the authors and make them into shiny, famous things. And he started laughing, and then he actually parking lot dared me.
00:19:22
Speaker
to write a memoir. So it was kind of this silly joke, dare thing, but at least he didn't hit me in the ear. But I have to be honest with you, there's a different story that happened long before that when I was about 26 and I was going to school at the University of Oregon in Eugene. And I was in Diana Abu Jabber's
00:19:48
Speaker
creative writing class, which I had infiltrated since I wasn't in the MFA program. And I turned in a 10 page set of lyric fragments and tried to call that a story. And everyone in the MFA class, except one person was like, this isn't a story. This is stupid. You don't know what you're doing. You don't belong here, except for Diana. And she said, not only is this a real story,
00:20:18
Speaker
But I think it could be a book someday. And the name of that story, it was The Chronology of Water.
Fragmented Storytelling
00:20:26
Speaker
So 25 years later, I was sort of grown up enough to try it.
00:20:33
Speaker
And the fragmentary nature of that is something that you really latch onto as a mode delivery system, so to speak. Maybe you can talk to that, maybe how you arrived at that, how that feels as a natural extension of your taste and your art. Well, so nothing about my life has jived
00:21:01
Speaker
in terms of a linear narrative that holds still and makes sense. My whole life has felt like a series of jolts and ruptures and retinal flashes. And when I hit upon the narrative fragment as a possibility, it's like I could feel my own spine taking shape. Like I could feel my arms, it's like, oh, oh, this could be the story. If you told it in pieces that kind of came at you,
00:21:30
Speaker
it would feel like what it felt like to be you in your life. And I don't think I'm alone in that. I think there are legions of people who either come from difficulty or damage or abuse or poverty or dispossession or who gravitate toward writing in pieces as a way to tell the story differently than linear, seamless narrative.
00:21:58
Speaker
What it lets you do is admit that storytelling moves. It can move around. It can be broken apart. It can repeat. It can accumulate. It can disperse. And so for some of us, that mode is, it's not, you know, hey, here's a wacky mode to play around with. It just feels precise. It feels like the exact language of our bodies and not some just, you know, zany effort.
00:22:28
Speaker
Mm-hmm Yeah, it what do you think readers expect of you and and how do you maybe? You know cut against that grain or sometimes maybe go with that grain if that's something that that you carry with you. I Have no earthly idea what readers expect And I'm I don't have any deep attachment to that entire matrix I
00:22:57
Speaker
I guess I'm in the category of people who they sit alone in their underwear in a room and make their small little thing. And then they, you know, they blow it out like a dandelion thing out into the world. And that's the last time I look at it. Like I don't, it doesn't belong to me anymore. It's whatever it's going to be out there in the world. I hope it's useful if it's not okay.
00:23:25
Speaker
But then I just go back to my little room in my underwear and make another little dumb little thing in front of me. But the not funny part is that the piece of the process I can't ignore is the part where you sit alone and make something with your hands. It's a matter of mental health. If I wasn't writing and making little arty things, I'd be dead.
00:23:53
Speaker
It's the process part for me and what people think of it out in the world, Jesus, they're going to think what they're going to think. All kinds of people, troll people are going to hate you and hate what you write and hate your shoes and your hair, your everything. And then a few people you may connect with, with your art and it's worth it, even if it's like two people.
00:24:19
Speaker
Mm-hmm. What would you identify as something that you struggle with when you sit down the right?
Embracing Struggle & Impact Over Approval
00:24:26
Speaker
Oh I suppose Well, first of all, I don't mind struggle. I prefer struggle. Hmm since That has been my primary experience coming into the world. So I identify with struggle and And so that's a little different angle on the question but
00:24:48
Speaker
I do have some anxieties around usefulness as an author. I don't think it's true that, you know, we need everything from everybody all the time. And I kind of sometimes I think about, you know, is this useful? And to whom?
00:25:17
Speaker
And why? And so maybe that's one I'm a little wobbly on. I waver on that. And I don't think it's a terrible idea to wake up one day and say, today you should do something else now. I don't know what it would be because, Brendan, I have no skill sets. I don't know what the hell it would be.
00:25:45
Speaker
But that's one. I sort of orbit around like usefulness. I just want things I make to be useful to somebody. And so if that starts to wane, that can give me doubt.
00:25:59
Speaker
And listening to your Ted Talk too, you put us in the shoes of you when you were young 30s and you were looking up at these women in their 50s that broke the world open for you. And I was a woman in your 50s who you have no doubt broken the world open for other people. Have you reconciled who you were and who you are now and what you've been able to do
00:26:28
Speaker
And, you know, countless writers that are coming up behind you. Is that something you've been able to kind of, you know, swim in, so to speak? I think so. I think so because as a younger woman, I was, well, when I wasn't busy trying to destroy myself, which was a lot of the time, I was trying to break in. I was a born agitator, born fighter, born, you know, like break the door down if you have to.
00:26:57
Speaker
the person I am now, it's not like she's gone, but I have a different use value, which is jam your shoulder and foot in the door so other people can get through and hold it open, you know, try to hold it open. And those two women are related. Those are just two different forms of a kind of energy, you know, and so the
00:27:24
Speaker
The older I get, the more I'm watching for, okay, what form should this energy take now and how does it need to change? Yeah. I, I read an interview where you said to like, what, there's a time to be the one who stepped out of the way. Yep. I'm looking hard at that. Well, given the times, um, there's all kinds of ways you can do work and,
00:27:52
Speaker
Some of that work can be off stage, off center, behind the curtain, and it's still incredibly valid work.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I also read, too, that painting is a big influence on you as well. And I think it's a way to, you know, you can, in a sense, you can step aside to that for your own kind of inspiration, open the door for other people, but also put stuff in your tank, too. So how important is that and other artistic media that does maybe create the wave that's pulsing deep in the ocean that will hopefully crest into something that you can ride? Painting is huge for me.
00:28:32
Speaker
It's not huge in that I do it a lot because I'm too chicken shit. I'm still trying to step into some courage there because I love it. And it opens up my whole body to artistic rhythm, expression. It makes my fingers tingle.
00:28:54
Speaker
But looking at the work of other painters is mind-bogglingly important to me. Something about the abstract image, I'm particularly fond of abstract expressionism, but any painting really,
Fear as a Passage to Creativity
00:29:12
Speaker
something about the painted image just, it's like it bypasses language, which
00:29:22
Speaker
is my environment for the most part. And so I'm always in the ocean of language, but painting bypasses that word thing and more like painting is more direct to my actual internal organs. And it speaks to me deeply, but I turned out to be a word creature. So
00:29:49
Speaker
I read that they said the whole process of writing or making art is a metaphor for that stepping into an unknown possibility. And so the fear is a portal. And I love that. So how did you arrive at that and to be able to dance with that fear to enter that portal and to write things, create things that are uncomfortable?
00:30:12
Speaker
I think writing The Chronology of Water was a big breakthrough moment for me in terms of your question. That I wrote that book kind of put me through the crucible of fear in a very tangible way.
00:30:32
Speaker
And so writing that book and I guess a little bit that damn Ted talk, cause I honestly thought it was possible. I was going to die and I was really glad my husband Andy was there. Cause if I did die, he could just kind of quietly collect me off this stage and you know, we could just sort of leave. Um, but I think.
00:30:58
Speaker
The more true answer is that I've been afraid all my life, Brendan. I was the kid who was the cry baby, and I wet my pants a lot. And I was scared to talk. I was scared of my father. I was scared of being out in the world. So terror was an early common experience for me. And somewhere, I don't know, in my tweens or early teens,
00:31:28
Speaker
I don't think I could have articulated it this way then, but it sort of dawned on me. I had to make a choice that I was either going to die from all that terror. Um, and you know, just never be able to get through life or I was going to have to turn it into a door and, and walk into it, walk through it. And, um,
00:31:54
Speaker
once I got myself out of my father's house, it seemed possible I could keep choosing to not make fear the end point, but make fear something you step through. And it's still true. I'm still scared every day of something. I prefer to stay in bed. I prefer not to leave the house. But I know that's a form of stasis and
00:32:23
Speaker
you know, you get one life that plays out like this anyway. And so if fear is part of mine, then I get to decide how to be in relationship to it.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, and Ted Talk, at last count nearly 3.6 million people or at least unbelievable 3.6 million views. It's incredible and it's so well delivered and I can't imagine the work that must have gone into to do that.
TED Talk Preparation & Overcoming Fear
00:32:54
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about how you arrived at that talk of being a misfit and, you know, talking about the radiance that falls on all of us and how you were able to prepare and deliver that. So what was that process like? Heavy prescription medication. Oh, well, the talk is based a little bit off of a chapter that I written in the Chronology of Water.
00:33:25
Speaker
And it's kind of distilled from that and it morphs a little bit from that. And how you prepare is the TED folk coach you for several months in screen time.
00:33:40
Speaker
They, they let you practice and then they give you feedback, which was horrifying. If you're an introvert, it's just like, Oh my God, they're looking at me. Their faces are in my home. They're going to tell me I'm terrible. So that was actually hard for me. Uh, but they kind of coach you and help you. And, uh, the only reason I was able to do it at all though, is my husband Andy who practiced with me every day for months and, and he would like.
00:34:09
Speaker
rattle potato chip bags really loudly or, you know, spill things or make a ruckus and try to fuck me up on purpose so I could figure out how to, you know, keep going. And, you know, you just break it down into little pieces and try to memorize them. Although not everybody does that. Some TED Talk people read from, you know, pieces of paper or note cards, which I could have done. But you know what, I just didn't want it to be true.
00:34:39
Speaker
that people like me couldn't do it. And I knew there would be some other people out there who they just want people who are as misfitted as we are or nervous or scared or bumbly to also get to be up there. And I saw much more bumbly people than me, but nobody but Andy will ever know how
00:35:03
Speaker
close to death, I actually was. Wow. It's so incredibly moving and I just, it's some of the best 12 minutes anybody can spend. Oh, you're kind. I mean, and it's just the, everything you talk about, and maybe it's because maybe on a certain level too, I feel what you're talking about there. And you talk about the shame that a misfit can carry in that. And also,
00:35:32
Speaker
that feeling of maybe you don't deserve to live out your dream or you live out your vision, whatever that is. Maybe you can talk about the seed of that, where that comes from and how you're so beautifully able to articulate that. Well, it's true for me and my life and identity, and it's also true for the people I tend to collaborate with and work with and try to be of use to.
Fragmentation in Identity & Redefining Success
00:36:02
Speaker
Some people call it being damaged or broken or, you know, coming from rough beginnings of some sort that left you feeling fragmented in ways you just never quite get over. It's helped me to understand that maybe there are things we can redefine from that very position, like what we spoke of earlier.
00:36:32
Speaker
fragments could still make a story or um looking down at the ground at worms and insects and dirt and and seeds is a form of hope it looks different than somebody who looks upward for hope but it's hope nonetheless or you know that i just think hope and courage and
00:36:59
Speaker
ability, imagination, it looks different on some of us. And so instead of saying you're doing it wrong, or you're not following the path of everybody else, I wish more of us would start telling the stories of how it's different for some of us. And our accomplishments are as beautiful as anybody's, even if they're a little bit
00:37:25
Speaker
crooked. Frankly, looking at something that's crooked is far more interesting and engaging and it's going to spark something else in you instead of looking at something that is perfectly symmetrical. Well, you know I agree with that. Yes. Absolutely.
00:37:47
Speaker
Yeah, and how did you arrive at this short piece, Letter to My Rage? How did that manifest itself? Well, I had been talking to the amazing woman who was my editor, Amy, for a little while about this letter two form. I'm like, I don't know about that.
00:38:12
Speaker
And she was like, well, what if it was a letter to some state of being? I was like, that's a little more interesting.
Exploring Rage in Writing
00:38:23
Speaker
And so then, you know, like all my ideas, I went to bed for a few nights and somewhere in my dreamscape, a question formed like around what has the worth of your rage been in your life?
00:38:42
Speaker
Um, and because it was in a dreamscape, it could, you know, it didn't matter that it was a weird question. And so then that week I started thinking about, you know, I've definitely talked to my own fear before, like sat down and had a scotch with my own fear and tried to have a relationship and maybe change that relationship. But I've been so busy in my life.
00:39:10
Speaker
using anger like the fuel that I hadn't really sat down and had a conversation like that with anger. And it just seemed like a good zeitgeisty time to start asking better questions about rage and how we carry it. Like maybe get in there and see if there's a way to unbuild it and find better uses for it.
00:39:41
Speaker
So it was a little bit of a weird evolution. The only piece of the process I trust entirely is letting my dreamscape work it out. Do you keep a little notebook by your bed stand, nightstand just for this purpose alone? Yep. And over the years I've come to trust it much more than waking life.
00:40:02
Speaker
Right. You write in the, in the letter to the, you know, where can, uh, or you ask in it, like, where can a woman carry her rage, but in her body? And, uh, I just love that, you know, speaking of like the vibrations you talk about too, it's just like the, that's something that probably, you know, you know, just, it shakes in every woman's body, especially, especially these days where everything seems under attack, under assault. Always, always my entire lifetime, the lifetimes before mine, the lifetimes after mine, um,
00:40:33
Speaker
But it's also the perfect time to be deconstructing what we've understood as our own rage, because maybe our understanding is also in dire need of change.
00:40:54
Speaker
When does, you know, when did you become, you know, when did rage start riding shotgun in your life or maybe even taking the wheel? Like when is, when, you know, when does that, when did it enter your body, so to speak? Well, it's such a tricky energy, isn't it? And I tried to start at the origin story of my life in that essay, you know, so I start being a baby coming from my mother's body. It's like, and asking, is that where it started?
00:41:23
Speaker
Is that the origin story? And then I moved to my father and our house and growing up and, you know, I kind of moved through rage stages as if they're developmental in a life. Um, but at a certain point you have to kind of face off with the use value. And so I can say a sentence like, it is absolutely true that rage, my rage,
00:41:51
Speaker
got me out of my father's house and my father's house was abusive. So that's good, right? Some of us can say that we needed rage to get free of something. On the other hand, when rage just spirals in a body or when rage festers in your gut or heart or spine,
00:42:16
Speaker
it can turn self-destructive or harmful to others. And so that's not good. And so by tracking the sort of organism of rage in my own body, even if all I got to in this essay is, okay, now we could have a conversation.
00:42:41
Speaker
That would be enough. It's like you have to sift it loose from your story and your body and your life just to get to the better questions. So maybe there's another essay down the road that's like, okay, I cleared that out. You know, composted this shit.
00:43:03
Speaker
Could we now talk about what might be some better distributed and more useful ways to use our own very formidable kinds of angers? Do you find that it's more fun and engaging for you as a writer to live and write in questions versus trying to tidy up everything nicely and answer it just to kind of swim in the philosophy of it?
00:43:31
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I'm one of those people who I'm not even sure I believe in answers, but I do believe in energy and wrestling energy and redistributing energy to make better and better questions. Yeah, I think the life of things for me is in the questioning and less in the concluding.
00:43:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. And in this piece too, it's one of the first things that I've read that's kind of come out of the pandemic times too. And so there's a rage and an anger built into that and just in our current climate as we're cresting towards our most volatile election season, probably almost of all time. So just like you feel that, speaking of the pulse of energy, I feel like that's kind of underneath this as well, right?
Pandemic as Systemic Change Opportunity
00:44:24
Speaker
Agree. But I've been mightily interested in writers like Arundhati Roy's essay called Pandemica's Portal, or writer, my friend Janice Lee has turned me on to recently, Bayou Amafilaki, who writes about the virus being both, of course, this terrible thing and there is suffering everywhere, but it is also this
00:44:53
Speaker
generative, unknown space of change and possibility. And so I'm trying to hold open some nuance in my own understanding of the virus and pandemic. You know, trees and animals in the sky and water are happier right this second. I mean, not so much in places where there are fires or drought or terrible, horrible suffering happened, but
00:45:21
Speaker
uh, you know, shifts are taking place, uh, geologically and atmospherically that are worth having a look at. And the people who worry me the most or the people walk around in yearning for things to go back to quote unquote normal. I mean, if this isn't an astonishingly big opportunity for change,
00:45:46
Speaker
If we miss this too, I don't know man. I don't know. You know, I mean, it's like everything is ripping open and if we still can't manage to change, I just hope, you know, I hope that's not how it goes down.
00:46:04
Speaker
Yeah, I know. It's kicked over rocks. It's opening a lot of scars and it's just like this is really a watershed moment to make systemic change and also just, I don't know, just how we live too and not being as materialistic and not being so greedy.
Mirror Metaphor & Societal Pressures
00:46:27
Speaker
Exactly. I don't want to go back to normal. Normal is how we got here.
00:46:31
Speaker
Absolutely. And there's a, you know, in the letter too, there's just so many, so many great lines in it. It's such a, it's great that you can kind of read, you could read this thing and, you know, I'm a pretty slow reader and I can read it in like 20 or 30 minutes. And it's so great to be able to ingest this thing. And some one line that struck me just so, so brilliantly. It was just like mirror mirror on the wall. Who the fuck you? I was never the fairest of anyone. I was instead a swimmer.
00:47:00
Speaker
I just love that was one of those lines that just comes comes across and hits you across the jaw. Yeah. Well, I do tend to get myself into some trickiness on occasion with lines like that. When I start trying to talk about how if you keep women looking in their mirrors at themselves, you can
00:47:31
Speaker
trick them into forgetting that they have considerable agency. But it's best if I just leave my ideas and feelings about those things in pieces of creative writing. When I start getting in there trying to
00:47:52
Speaker
enter the cultural discussions, I just get into all kind of trouble. Do you find like when you, maybe in the early drafting of your essays or you're writing that some of that stuff maybe crops through a little or surfaces a little more than you're comfortable doing and then in the rewrites you're like, yeah, maybe I should turn the volume down. Oh, never, never. I just feel like I should put
00:48:20
Speaker
all my fire into onto the page. And like never at one time, one time I entered a Facebook debate on yoga pants, yoga pants, and I got pill, I got filleted.
00:48:38
Speaker
all right well what do you all right tell us a little more no fucking way i have nothing to say whatsoever about yoga pants i sound no way there's no way no nope
00:48:55
Speaker
There's also another great line, too. And I swim harder inside of books than I did in the pool, where I won so many medals. And as someone who is an athlete, too, and when you put so much of your oomph behind whatever your sport is, and then when you're able to redirect that same kind of energy into this other thing, it was just such a great way of putting it. And I just love that.
00:49:21
Speaker
I read that, uh, what is there a Natalie, uh, Siro or Sirot Sirot. Is that how, how do you pronounce her? Sirot Sirot. Yeah. And it just made me think of that when I was coming, read that line. Then I read some of these writers that kind of like cracked you open. It was, uh, like when you're swimming in books like that, you know, what does that look like for you? Are you writing in the margins? Are you taking notes? Like how did, how are you swimming in the books the way you did in the pool? I do write in them.
00:49:49
Speaker
so that I'm kind of in conversation with them. But I think what's unique about me is if I'm completely, you know, turned on by something I'm reading, I take it into my actual body and I go on long walks where I
Impact of Reading & Genre Blending
00:50:06
Speaker
go swimming. I repeat the lines. I memorize parts of it. I have an idactic memory. So when I look at a page, my brain kind of takes a picture of the page.
00:50:18
Speaker
And so I can see the visual of it. And so, you know, Frantz Fanon is still part of my image bank and he's in my body forever. And, you know, the books that have been the most meaningful to me, I think they sort of become part of my body. Yeah, he wrote in letter to my rage that they can rearrange your DNA.
00:50:43
Speaker
So I think people, when I say stuff like that, they think I mean it as a metaphor and I don't. Yeah, the nucleotides are just, they're just like making new pairs and yeah, we're talking new genetic engineering. Yes.
00:50:59
Speaker
That's great. As you were coming into your own skin as a writer and doing your thing, how did you stem off the
00:51:16
Speaker
I guess those competitive urges and those jealousy feelings that sometimes creep in as artists and creative people and looking over your shoulder, I wonder how you might have processed that so you're putting better energy into your work. Well, so yeah, I guess the way my life has played out, jealousy's not
00:51:43
Speaker
something that makes its way in. I mean, I have an example. So I was accepted into Columbia in the creative writing program in my early 20s. It was the same year I won the writing prize to go to New York. And I decided not to go because I was broke and I took a job instead.
00:52:14
Speaker
And that's so like me. Let the dream float away like a red balloon and just put your head down and take the job to support yourself and others. So something about my hardwiring is about usefulness, which I noticed has come up out of my face talking to you about seven times now. And so I think of things like,
00:52:45
Speaker
I don't think of things like, oh, I wish I was as pretty as so-and-so or as famous a writer as so-and-so, or I wish that would happen to me. I think things like, are you doing a kind of work that is useful to someone besides yourself? Don't be a dick. That's how my hardwiring goes.
00:53:09
Speaker
It's like my energy doesn't even go that direction. I mean, I see things I love and they're amazing to me. And it's amazing to me that any of us survive. It's amazing to me that more people don't give up. And so, um, I'm so, I'm so on a different radar that things like jealousy, maybe it sounds like I'm lying, but it's like, I just, there's too much work to do.
00:53:39
Speaker
Um, I want to love the people I love the best way I can. And so that would subtract energy from what I want to do. So I just don't do it. Yeah. It's a fuel. It doesn't burn clean. No, no, that's right. And it also doesn't even perform entropy where it changes forms. It just becomes static and, um, yeah, not interested.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah. And I don't know, did you ever think that, you know, say not accepting or going to Columbia there or when you went to New York as you illustrate in your TED Talk that for some people they might think that that's a way of hiding. And do you feel like there was ever a part of you that, you know, felt like you were
00:54:29
Speaker
that you are hiding and not manifesting yourself out of, I don't know, out of, out of something internal that you just, like, kind of like you said in the TED talk too, like maybe you didn't feel like you deserved it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That's a really good question. Um, I do know I didn't think I deserved it. I still think things like that, even though I understand that's not really a healthy way to walk around.
00:54:53
Speaker
But I know it's deep in me. I'm not sure about this hiding business. Maybe I have to go think about that and write an essay and get back to you. Maybe. Oh, please. No, really. That's that's a cool question. I'm going to go think about that. But I can say for certain that I have a masochism thread in me.
00:55:19
Speaker
Like if it doesn't hurt, it's not good. And I'm going to be working that one out the rest of my life. I'm a little better. I'm a tiny bit better. Um, but I, you know, I cop to that. I definitely have that. Um, and you can see how that would get in the way. It's not so great. So in the, in the.
00:55:42
Speaker
In the process of creating something, whether you feel like diving in the short stories or essays or whatever, where would you identify as a place where you feel the most alive and most engaged in the process?
00:55:57
Speaker
Well, not too long ago, I would have said fiction every time. And it's still pretty true. The only thing that's changed for me is that this is another one where I should not enter the public discourse on this, like yoga pants. I'm starting to not care at all about the distinctions between forms.
00:56:24
Speaker
And I'm even a little suspicious of them. Because when I look at, you know, Lely Long Soldier's poetry book, whereas, or Maggie Nelson's book, The Argonauts, or Blue It, or Therese Myatt's book, Heart Berries, I care less and less about, you know, or Claudia Rankine's book, Citizen, I care less and less about its
00:56:54
Speaker
you know, preciousness as poetry or prose or fiction or nonfiction. And I feel like the forms that writers and artists are playing with now crisscross and inform and deform and reform each other in the most fascinating ways. So I think I'm more interested in that idea than I am, you know, where are you most at home in the different kinds of writing?
00:57:23
Speaker
Yeah, you've said that you think the the membrane is quite thin between fiction and nonfiction. Yeah, absolutely true. I mean, like a semi permeable membrane. Totally, totally. And I think that about poetry and prose, I mean, I was just teaching in three different writing intensives. And I they were all for prose writers. And the source material I kept bringing in half of it was poetry. And they kept asking me, why are we looking at poetry?
00:57:53
Speaker
Like, how have you gone your whole life as a prose writer and not wrestled with poetry and language in this way? What are you doing? Right, right. How do you even dare make a sentence if you haven't looked at the line? What do you mean?
00:58:15
Speaker
Exactly. When you go up to the gas tank, there are three different nozzles of stuff. You can pick one, you got to fuel yourself on something and you can say, I'm going to put a little of this in the tank and I'm going to try to cherry pick how and just put it in there, put in the slurry and blend it up and see what the hell comes out. Slurry. I like that. Yeah, slurry. Yeah.
00:58:43
Speaker
Well, also, I have a body of work out there now where the word hybrid comes up, so I'm definitely into hybrid forms of writing.
Conclusion & Gratitude
00:58:55
Speaker
That's amazing. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Lydia. This was just a lot of fun to get to just talk about some, talk about some stuff, talk shop about the latest. Oh, of course. Yeah. And you're wonderful. This latest piece is a letter to my rage is wonderful. It's everything I've come to expect when I crack the spine on a Lydia Juknovich piece of work. So you're a certifiable badass. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
00:59:22
Speaker
I'm so grateful, thank you so much, and it was a kick in the pants.
00:59:35
Speaker
So how'd you like that? That was pretty great, right? Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to Scribner for their continued support of the podcast. Be sure to use that promo code nonfiction to get the best writing software you'll ever use. 20% off. Do it. Okay?
00:59:54
Speaker
Yes, trying to stay positive, staying away from social media has helped immensely, yet we run into the trouble of how do we get the word out regarding our work if you're not peddling it on the socials, right?
01:00:09
Speaker
My theory for now is just, or strategy, whatever, make the best possible show for you. Just for you. Yet, you, I'm looking right at you, man. Like, walk eyes. Come on. Maybe you'll tell a friend, and I hope you will. That's, you know, if you don't, that's okay. No bigs.
01:00:31
Speaker
You know, consider leaving a kind review on Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast, but that's the big one. Almost at a hundred. Pretty cool. That'd be great to get to a hundred. It just, it means something, you know?
01:00:45
Speaker
Trying to take my body and mind more seriously, you know? No alcohol for a long time. Haven't had any booze for about two weeks. Dealing with some issues there. Got to exercise more. Might be taking some Adderall soon. That might help. Scatter brain. Adult ADHD or some shit. Who the hell knows what's going on? Talk to somebody about that.
01:01:13
Speaker
You know, gotta leave social media behind. Eat more vegetables. Oh, and keep bullet journaling. That's going well. I'm really into it. Like, really into it. Call me a nerd. Whatever. It's working. I haven't really bit my nails in a couple weeks. I know that's kind of gross, but, you know, it's working. It's working. I doubt you're still listening. Are you still there? I hope. I'm putting this
01:01:43
Speaker
This this kind of thing At the end of the show just to play around get you to those interviews a little bit quicker than normal You dig that essay roll last week. Yeah, it's a work in progress. What are you gonna do? Didn't get any message any messages. I know of So it's either cool or maybe it isn't but I figured I'd just put it out there You know just throw it out there put some good vibes into this world trying to be more positive
01:02:14
Speaker
Not, you know, not be such a drag. You know, I can be a bit of a drag sometimes. Well, the fact of the matter is, though, if you can't do interviews, see ya.
01:02:45
Speaker
you