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Episode 523: Lidia Yuknavitch Troubles the Edges
0 Playsin 10 hours
"The Chronology of Water story was an 11-page story written in tiny fragments. And the MFA program I was in, they told me, that's not a story. It's a poem or something. It's a list of fragments. I'm like, 'Fuck you!' My whole enterprise has been to trouble the edges," says Lidia Yuknavitch, bestselling author of several books, most recently a memoir titled Reading the Waves.
Lidia Yuknavitch makes her thrilling return to the podcast, this a live recording of the show at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene in partnership with the revival of the Northwest Review. My understanding is that there’s a significant literary prize, including creative nonfiction essays. You might want to try you filthy animals. The Northwest Review was the first place that ever published Lidia, a short, 11-page story called the Chronology of Water, so, maybe YOU could be the next Lidia Yuknavitch, though we know that’s impossible so don’t even try.
She’s the author of eight books of fiction, nonfiction, and the editor of an essay collection on menopause called The Big M. She’s best known for her memoir, or anti-memoir called The Chronology of Water, the novels Thrust, Verge, and The Small Backs of Children. And her most recent nonlinear, fractured memoir is the brilliant Reading the Waves.
She won the Oregon Book Award in 2016 and also stood on the TED stage and delivered a beautiful talk about misfits. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Ms., and Another Chicago Magazine. She founded the workshop series Corporeal Writing in Portland, Oregon. She is a very good swimmer.
We talk about:
- Getting rid of the good/bad binary
- Writing in a group setting
- Inventing your own rituals
- The beautiful and the brutal living next to each other
- Taking your turn
- Troubling the edges
- Being good compost
- And how her market days are over and she’s cool with that
You’ll want to pair this episode with 217, Lidia’s first time as well as:
- Episode 447: Brooke Champagne Sits Back from the Suckitude
- Episode 498: Sasha Bonet on Not Holding Back, and
- Episode 123: Elena Passarello on Listening to the book, Polaroids, and Self-Doubt
Dig it, friend.
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Pre-Marathon Anxiety
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, ACNFers, I haven't been super talking about this because I don't think it's going to go well. But if there's no episode next week, it's because I'm running the Eugene Marathon on Sunday and I'm dreading it and not feeling confident and i'm actually kind of scared about it. And it's not uncommon for people to keel over and expire during these things. It'll be my first episode.
00:00:19
Speaker
marathon in 20 years nearly to the day and my long runs over the past four months have been hit and miss like this one time i ran 18 miles and i felt okay believe it or not and then this other time fairly recently i ran 13 and my heart jackhammered beyond the reading of my heart rate monitor and i thought i was going to pass out and die but maybe it was just a panic attack i don't know It was way north of 180, so no pod next week if I croak. If you're a CNF and patron, you might want to consider canceling in about eight days.
00:00:51
Speaker
ah but But if I'm back, keep that credit card firing, baby. Whoever coached us to aim for beginning, middle, and in a linear fashion, I'm suspicious of them.
00:01:05
Speaker
I have a feeling they were trying to keep us down. I think it might be the man. And I think we should disrupt that at every moment possible.
00:01:20
Speaker
OAC and Everett's Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I talk to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, the art and craft of telling true
Live Recording with Lydia Yuknovich
00:01:28
Speaker
stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara, pod maxing over here.
00:01:33
Speaker
Lydia Yuknovich makes her thrilling return to the podcast, this being a live recording of the show at Gratitude Brewing in Eugene in partnership with our buddies, the Northwest Review, nwreview.org.
00:01:45
Speaker
My understanding is that there's a significant literary prize. including creative nonfiction essays. You might want to give it a shot, you filthy animals. The Northwest Review was the first place that ever published Lydia Yuknovich, a short 11-page story called The Chronology of Water. So maybe you could be the next Lydia Yuknovich, though we know that's impossible, so don't even try.
00:02:10
Speaker
Like, wow. Does Lydia even need an introduction? I didn't think so.
00:02:20
Speaker
who Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, you little jackrabbit. Lydia gets a proper introduction. She's the author of eight books, ah fiction and nonfiction, and the editor of the essay collection on menopause called The Big M. She's best known for her memoir, and or anti-memoir, depending on your frame of reference, The Chronology of Water, which was adapted into a movie by Kristen Stewart.
00:02:45
Speaker
The novels Thrust, Verge, and The Small Backs of Children. And her most recent non-linear fractured memoir is The Brilliant Reading the Waves.
Engagement and Support Call-to-Action
00:02:55
Speaker
Loved this book.
00:02:56
Speaker
She won the Oregon Book Award in 2016 and also stood on the TED stage and delivered a beautiful talk about misfits and that turned into the Misfit Manifesto.
00:03:08
Speaker
Her work has appeared in Guernica, Miss, and another Chicago magazine. She founded the workshop Corporal Writing in Portland, Oregon. She is a very, very good swimmer. Okay, a little housekeeping. Show notes of this episode more at brendanomero.com. Hey, there.
00:03:25
Speaker
You can find show notes and stay abreast of the CNF pod expanded universe, which includes the sub stack pitch club. Welcome to pitch club. Sub stack.com and the rage against the algorithm newsletter, which is going through some identity struggles at the moment, but we still love it.
00:03:39
Speaker
If you want to help the show with some of that sweet, sweet coin, head to patreon.com slash CNF pod for some cool perks and access to the flash 52 sessions. You don't know, check them out. I'm telling you, it's pretty special. Free ways to help the show are always linking up to it, leaving kind reviews and ratings on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Spotify is just a simple boop, and you leave a review, a rating with the stars. It couldn't be any easier, and there's a bunch of you who listen on Spotify, and all you've got to do is hit that star.
00:04:12
Speaker
Apple's a little more complicated, but those ratings and reviews go a long way to validating the enterprise for the wayward CNF-er looking for a new podcast to party with. And you can also consider leaving kind ratings and reviews for the frontrunner on Amazon. Can never have too many of those.
00:04:28
Speaker
It'll help the wayward shopper make a decision. Because your boy is something of a no-name, and they see a lot of ratings. They'll right, I'll give that shit a shot. I hate Amazon as much as you, but those ratings and reviews matter.
00:04:40
Speaker
They do. So we have Lydia here for a live recording of the podcast.
Disrupting Storytelling Structures
00:04:45
Speaker
I love the live podcast. They always turn my gut upside down, but I think that's just part of it. um Always a different vibration to these events. Pretty magical. In this episode, we talk about getting rid of the good-bad binary in writing, writing in a group setting, inventing your own rituals, the beautiful and the brutal living next to each other, taking your turn, troubling the edges, being good compost, and how her market days are over, and she's cool with that.
00:05:13
Speaker
You'll also want to maybe pair this episode with episode 217, which was Lydia's first time on the show. Episode 447 with Brooke Champagne, titled, Brooke Champagne Sits Back from the Suckitude. Episode 498, Sasha Bonet on Not Holding Back. And episode 123, Elena Passarello on Listening to the Book, Polaroids and Self-Doubt. Parting shot on remembering to try to enjoy things while they're happening. But at long last, here's Lydia
Symbolism in Personal Storytelling
00:05:41
Speaker
Yuknovich.
00:05:41
Speaker
Riff.
00:05:48
Speaker
People who do this for fame are foolish. That is, it's so true. I actually would not mind just growing people's flowers for them. Go get a gelato and chill out. And I was like, I can't. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:06:13
Speaker
How great is this that that that everybody here is you know meeting in person. We're doing an inconvenient thing by coming out in public. i We could very well be housed in our beds, taking a nice nap or a like long walk. But everyone came here to experience this in person. And we don't do enough inconvenient things often. And I'm just so i'm so grateful that all of you showed up. And certainly, Lydia, thank you for doing the inconvenient thing and coming down the five and spending an afternoon with us.
00:06:38
Speaker
I'm here for you and tell everyone you know to listen to the podcast because this person is doing it right by working on behalf of everyone else.
00:06:50
Speaker
And so, Brandon, I love you.
00:06:55
Speaker
Well, the the feeling's mutual, of course, Lydia. And i i think a fun place for us to jump off of, and I was reading this interview you did with um on Cheryl Strayed's substack, Dear Sugar, and you talk about you're you're in your room, you're you're writing, and this dragonfly came through the window and landed on your desk. Just paint that picture for us, because it's an incredibly evocative moment and serendipitous and ephemeral and weird and cool and awesome.
00:07:23
Speaker
Well, dragonflies in general are all of those things. I mean, they're bizarrely beautiful creatures and they remind me of dinosaurs writ small.
00:07:33
Speaker
I think they're beautiful, more beautiful than language. And this one came in to where I was writing because I was living in a wooded area near water.
00:07:45
Speaker
And it it was the kind that had the blue bodies, the brilliant blue bodies, and it landed on my desk and arm. I'm like, thank you writer gods or whoever that makes these things happen, that's so beautiful. And then it died.
00:08:05
Speaker
Like it stopped moving. And how I know it stopped moving is I sat there for hours. watching it, waiting for it to move, and it did not.
00:08:22
Speaker
But I was able to tap into that meditation impulse where I knew I should just stay until it felt right. And at the end of several hours, I took it outside and put it in this area where if it came back to life, it could...
00:08:43
Speaker
like have a good chance. And I've since learned because of course I researched all of this after the fact and found important things out about them, just leave them alone.
00:08:55
Speaker
But this time I spent with this dragonfly reminded me of impermanence and death is life is death is life is death is life is death is life. And all of that always
Attention to Detail in Writing
00:09:06
Speaker
reminds me of writing.
00:09:07
Speaker
I love that this the serendipity of this dragonfly flying there and landing there and vibrating and dying, it also sent you down this cascade of research, too. It's like you were maybe never going to research the life cycle of this dragonfly and that it spends most of its life as a larva and then it... Like a salmon coming upstream, it's kind of by the time it's matured, it's almost over that's for it. And it's just it's a wild thing that can send you down this really cool rabbit hole. And just that how um just how invigorating is that for you to kind of surrender to to that?
00:09:42
Speaker
Oh, my God. It's everything. I mean, table of writers. Isn't this true? When you're at your best, it's because you're noticing something. the tiniest things that everybody around you is going, what the fuck are you talking about? ah you you know they're They've got their attention on the big events or the drama of life, but a writer or an artist of any sort will be drawn to something no one else sees that's infinitesimal.
00:10:10
Speaker
And so those moments, actually they're everything, and I'm not the first person to think of that. Virginia Woolf noted that. She wrote that great essay about watching a moth die. But the the core idea was the same, that you have to have that ability for brief noticing intensely, and then conjuring meaning from that, and finding the worth of the small moments.
00:10:38
Speaker
that could be as epic as you know those books like the Odyssey, whatever. Because I'm something of a knucklehead sports writer, I always devolve into kind of this idea of film study, of going into the inspiring text and and replaying it, going back and forth, rereading and rereading. And I wanted to get a sense of what your practice of rereading is and revisiting texts to draw inspiration for your own work or just to kind of fill your soul.
00:11:10
Speaker
Well, um, sports, yeah you know, I was a swimmer.
Writing as Repetitive Practice
00:11:16
Speaker
You've heard. Yes, I have I think I, what I draw from, I learned from swimming laps.
00:11:24
Speaker
They never end. You have to get out of the fucking pool for that motion to end. And you know, on the one hand, that's about having been a swimmer.
00:11:35
Speaker
But on the other hand, it's where I learned, go back, make the return. which is kind of what this book is about, Reading the Waves. Make the return, only notice something different this time.
00:11:47
Speaker
Make the return and quit acting like you have to arrive somewhere that's better than where you were. It's in the return that you know this motion, which runners know about, for example, and other kinds of people who do intense physical sports of all kinds, they hit it.
00:12:06
Speaker
They hit like runner's high. Isn't that what the running one is? There's this magical zone apparently. I do not reach it. I loathe running. I would rather stick forks in my eyes than run. But if you dip me in water, I get it. But it's that you know you're physically in a sweet spot where creativity moves differently and the return is everything.
00:12:31
Speaker
Whoever coached us to aim for beginning, middle, and in a linear fashion, I'm suspicious of them. I have a feeling they were trying to keep us down.
00:12:43
Speaker
I think it might be the man. And I think we should disrupt that at every moment possible.
00:12:52
Speaker
I don't suffer from writer's block. I actually sometimes suffer from like interview block. Sometimes I don't know how to get into it as much as I've done this. And you know we're already in it, so that block is gone. But there was a ah particular quote that I found from George Saunders on Instagram today. I'm like, ooh, that's a good on-ramp. And it was just ah an interview he did with Paris Review. And he said... um Yeah, that's one way of looking at craft. We develop a storytelling style that accommodates the different people who exist inside us.
00:13:23
Speaker
And I really love that, and feel like that gets to a sense of voice and style. And as you've written before, like trying on different identities, through the course of the millions of words you've written, how did you arrive at something that felt uniquely you?
00:13:36
Speaker
Well, there's a problem with me orienting to the question because I'm a Gemini. My mother was also a Gemini and she said being in a room with a Gemini is like being in a room with 50 people.
00:13:51
Speaker
And I don't know how I feel about that, if that's true or false. And I'm not sure I care about you know signs. However, I think my identity has come from exploring the differences and the othernesses inside me and trying to build word bridges to the otherness and differences outside of me.
00:14:16
Speaker
And therefore, i think my identity is more shapeshifter and a willingness to not grasp a single mono identity so hard because I haven't you changed a lot.
00:14:32
Speaker
I was going to say every decade of your life and then I was going to say no, it's more like every year of your life. then I was like, no, it's every month of your life. No, actually, we shape shifting every nanosecond. I don't know if that's true, but you you are different person ish depending on who you're with.
00:14:51
Speaker
It's just a theory. stay calm.
00:14:57
Speaker
I just notice when I'm observing, people shift. And there are humans on the planet who know more about shape-shifting than others, and I think we should talk to them. Yeah, there's a moment in the in reading the waves too where you talk about you know storytelling as ah as a way to kind of you know bring things, ah bring a shape to things. I think I have it you know somewhere tucked away in here, but it was, let's see if I can find it here.
00:15:24
Speaker
Got a lot of notes here, Lydia. ah yeah Here it is, is towards towards the end. He's like, storytelling can be anything we want it to be. For my own part, I hope that storytelling is becoming plural, shape-shifting. My place in the story is not important. The story the storytelling motion is. Yeah.
00:15:39
Speaker
That's back to that watching a life-death cycle or witnessing nature doing its thing or understanding there's no such thing as death without beginnings emanating from it or birth or creation coming from it.
00:15:55
Speaker
That The storytelling space we all enter, including painters and poets, you know I think storytelling space is art making space, that's what I mean by it.
00:16:06
Speaker
It's everything, and humans are puny, and we're actually lucky to participate in something so much bigger than ourselves. And at this I learned from Joy Harjo, that there's an ocean called storytelling space and each of us has a little teeny tributary that we're trying to create that leads to a bigger river, that leads to the bigger ocean, that then you know evaporates at its surface and becomes rain. We wanna go be part of that.
00:16:44
Speaker
We don't need to be riding to something called the market. i This is my chance, so just let me say it. ah don't think you should write toward the market anymore. Sorry.
00:16:56
Speaker
um But this other thing, that creativity is becoming part of a creative cycle, that's the ecosystem from my point of view. Yeah. I love this idea of kind of like a molting of skin, too.
Finding Authentic Voice in Writing
00:17:11
Speaker
that ah Maybe there is a and an impulse early on, like you gotta find your voice and crystallize into one thing. you know, I came up as a newspaper reporter and then went to an MFA program and kinda got an MFA voice and then it's like I had to really shed a lot of that until I found something that felt... How'd you find it?
00:17:30
Speaker
Am I allowed to ask? Oh yeah. How'd you how'd you find that fucker? The MFA voice? yeah it was ah It was me trying to sound precious or pretty. Oh, okay. you know and ah it It was one of those things that I had to really shed and almost get back to how I wrote in high school.
00:17:50
Speaker
That was a returning, if we're going to do a flip turn. yeah. I remember my my buddy Pete, who's kind of like my ideal audience, whenever I'm just my one buddy Pete. And I used to write these emails just to a group of four of us about like a drinking game thing. I just don't ask. But the voice of that letter, he's like, B.O. He's like, I get what you're trying to do with like the book writing you're doing and all that. He's like, but these emails you write are are actually really funny. And like that is actually I'm more excited to read that than like your prose work. And that was really illuminating. I was like, oh, yeah, like ah I don't have to sound like everybody else. I just have to in some way embody a certain juvenile, at times sophomoric, but just a really raw energy that I had all along. But it got kind of drummed out of me through education. Yeah, it doesn't sound sophomoric. It's I'm so down with what you just said, because finding your.
00:18:43
Speaker
Your most honest voice or the one that is organic to you, your body, and your life involves this series of excavations where you're either shedding skins, that's one way to put it, or we ask a question at Corporeal Writing ah all the time when you present a story, we go, and what's the story underneath that?
00:19:07
Speaker
And then the person gets frustrated and go, writes what the story underneath, and they turn it in, it's like, and what's the story underneath that? Until you're down to kid you or younger you who was funny.
00:19:22
Speaker
and who gave a shit about something and who had an organic passion about something. And for me too, like when I was doing Chronology of Water, it took going back to sitting alone in the backyard talking to trees as a 10 year old because I didn't know how to talk to anyone else.
00:19:44
Speaker
And when I reclaimed that voice, other voices in me like opened up like an array, a huge fan of experience and language. Yeah. Well, embedded in that, it takes an incredible amount of repetition and patience and even
Challenging Literary Standards
00:20:01
Speaker
late blooming. And, you know, we're so almost fetishize the the precocity, you know, that that really like out of a cant shot out of a cannon kind of writer and getting on these 30 under 30 lists that they used to publish, which like fuck that list. I hated those. That that killed me
00:20:18
Speaker
Well, of course we don't like it. Yeah. ah when ah When I was 29, I'm like, how the fuck did these guys get on this list? And like you realize that they're anointed. But I wasted a lot of energy. Did you say anointed? Yeah.
00:20:33
Speaker
Worked. Yeah. It just it frustrated me to no end. And I wasted a lot of energy like in my early 30s worrying about those kind of things, those prestige things. I wish I didn't. And maybe for people, younger writers in this audience, too, who might be worrying similarly about those prestige, those badges we want to wear, we want to look like the writer instead of doing stuff that's really pyrotechnic.
00:20:54
Speaker
You know, what advice might you share for someone to just really stay in their own lane and and make the best possible work that energizes them and by extension will energize our readership? Well, it's back to that little call you know call for resistance for your table. Everything, I mean, I'm on the clock now. i This is the third room of my life. That's what someone older than me called it, and I just liked that.
00:21:21
Speaker
metaphorically that's sort of beautiful instead of you're old you're getting old you're on the runway to old the third room of your life sounds beautiful so it's not gonna be about me so what I would say is you can see it in the world it's breaking apart this is a good thing everything we've inherited in terms of art and the literary is also breaking apart and experiencing plate tectonics also a good thing.
00:21:49
Speaker
So maybe instead of trying to meet some standard outside of yourself that we were you know inheriting, it's time for the new forms. It's time for the innovations that match your experience and the languages that match your experience. And I can't give it to you.
00:22:07
Speaker
I can jam my foot in the door and cheer you on, but it's gonna come from you, not someone who's been anointed. I love this.
00:22:18
Speaker
Not an anointed person. They can go take a nap. You need to be inventing, innovating, and finding what's the language that matches your experience and your identity, and what does that look like on the page?
00:22:34
Speaker
That would be a thing to say. Yeah, and then even being on, i came to view of like being on a list of that nature as more of a curse than anything. Imagine the pressure of having to live up to that. And then even if, just say, my my ambitions weren't taking me to where I wanted to go, even where I wanted to go at at certain age, and I would even so say that now, is I don't i don't know if I was ready for that thing that I wanted And yeah, I'm not skilled enough to be there yet to be like these kind of writers that I admire and the work that I that I want to see my byline on. And I wonder just for you, you know, when you were certain things were kind of at your feet and you said no to it and had you accepted, it might have been self-destructive and like you had to wait. Right.
00:23:19
Speaker
A hundred percent. I identify with that so much. There's this novel I wrote called The Book of Joan, which is a kind of a rewriting of the Joan of Arc story. Just whacked.
00:23:31
Speaker
rewriting. It was super fun to write. But I had the idea when I was 26, but I knew it was taller than me and bigger than me, and there was no way on the planet i could have written it.
00:23:47
Speaker
And I could have written it anyway, right? Written something that was that idea, and it would have been the wrong time. And i felt it, and I knew it, and I waited.
00:23:58
Speaker
and I didn't end up writing it till I was in my 50s. And that's just how long it took for my my hands to have the proper frequency and vibration to write this story. it's Just to write it, I'm not even saying it's any good. I'm just saying I had to wait, and that's part of the game.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, the drawer is a magical place for a lot of projects. The drawer holds much. Also, under the bed a very, very magical And sometimes just buried in the backyard. Also, have you done that?
Writing Without Judgment
00:24:30
Speaker
i i I long to. ah i actually have worked very deserving of ah of a grave in the backyard that I am actually probably one around 5 p.m. I might go dig a hole. and Dude, I highly recommend it. I've buried entire manuscripts in the backyard.
00:24:46
Speaker
and then watched it to see if something would sprout. Nothing did, it was just munch. But it's cool. Just Blackberry. I really like the deterioration Yeah, I just picture some Blackberry taking root. I'm like, goddammit, this thing's not going anywhere now. This is how you chose to live? This is how you repackaged This is how you rebranded yourself?
00:25:09
Speaker
Oh, and I love this idea too, um and I think a lot of ah writers early on have a hard time writing a lot of bad stuff before they can get the good stuff. You gotta get comfortable with bad shit, and good shit will eventually come out, so that's sometimes hard to get your head around. So just for you, Lydia, what's the been the practice of writing a lot of bad stuff and then knowing that with enough practice, it gets better?
00:25:33
Speaker
Yeah, ah the first thing that helped is I got rid of the value system that's a binary of good and bad, and that helped a shit ton. But I kind of moved toward a different model of there are only other versions.
00:25:51
Speaker
And by going through many versions, like in the natural world or in other models in life and in space, something solid rises to the surface that you can then curate and arrange.
00:26:07
Speaker
And so i've I've left the first you have to make a bunch of bad writing for it to become something else. And just there must be pages with words upon them.
00:26:18
Speaker
and it's okay if the first version looks like barf. and it's okay if the second version you know looks like Barth with flowers in it. And it's okay if the third version looks like, okay, is there anything in this Barth?
00:26:34
Speaker
Oh, look, if I pull this little piece out and this little piece out, they're becoming magical. So I just replaced what we're told to do with different languages and different models of creativity.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yeah. And I always love getting a sense of the idiosyncrasies that we all bring to our writing practice or our routines. It's like, you know, whether whether someone wants to cherry pick it and be like, oh, that's a cool habit. I'll add that to my cart and check out later and see if it works. Try it on for size. yeah um But I just love like extending that to you because I think we're all a little voyeuristic about how we go
Rituals and Collaboration in Writing
00:27:10
Speaker
about the work. And just for you, Lydia, what's the the practice by which that you like to kind of warm up the engine as you sit down to work?
00:27:18
Speaker
um Well, one thing I would say that I've been putting into practice for the last 20 years is do it with other humans. Like collaborative writing, kinetic writing with even one or two other people.
00:27:32
Speaker
Even you're calling them at weird hours. So it's not just the myth of the solo genius tortured writer, which is some bullshit. And putting yourself in connection or network or mycelial connection.
00:27:47
Speaker
Models, that's a good one, that's very popular right now. um So that, but I also do a great deal of meditation before going in, and I'm a huge believer in inventing your own rituals right before you're writing.
00:28:05
Speaker
And they can be as weird as you want them to be, but heavy on the ritual element. So that when you go into writing situation or practice,
00:28:16
Speaker
It feels cool. It feels like you've reminded yourself it's the realm of magic. It's the realm of creativity. It's the realm of there are things more beautiful than just you alone in your life.
00:28:29
Speaker
However you do ritual, go get it. You brought up Joy Harjo earlier, and there's a passage in the early early in reading The Waves where you know you cite her from Poet Warrior. like At some point we have to understand that we do not carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental, feel the story, which is physical, let the story go, which is emotional, then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge.
00:28:57
Speaker
So what was it about that passage that really struck a chord
Transforming Past Experiences
00:29:00
Speaker
with you? It really struck a chord with me because in my adult life, one of my core,
00:29:08
Speaker
wisdoms, I hate this word wisdom, because I am so not wise, but I've heard there's this thing called wisdom. And one of the core ones for me is that we're carrying too much too long from the things that have happened to us.
00:29:26
Speaker
and we carry them literally in places in our actual bodies, which is what corporeal writing is all about. Let's go look for them, liberate them, and de-arrange and rearrange them instead of clinging to the hard things that have happened to us and carrying them too long. So when I read that, it wasn't it kind of a version of don't carry that shit too long, figure out how to transform it, rearrange it,
00:29:54
Speaker
you know, make it different. And so it really wrung my bones. Right, and do you find that when you're putting something, you know, trying to maybe reshape the past, make sense of the past and write it down, that do you experience a ah letting go or do you sometimes worry that it might be imprinting?
00:30:16
Speaker
Oh, man, life is so hard. Life is so hard and memory is so fucked up. And here is why. Because when you go to write nonfiction, you're sort of screwed because there's what happened to you, like the events, the actual events, that you have to put through this thing we call memory, which is imperfect, and then enter a third stage, which is called storytelling.
00:30:46
Speaker
which is the curation and arrangement. And so trying to write nonfiction, do you see what I mean? It's like, wait, isn't so aren't we just writing fiction?
00:30:58
Speaker
I mean, a person could say that, or isn't that just poem? if you put it through all three of those? And the answer is kind of yes. But I will say that, like in this book, I have discovered because we are entering the third room, or I am, you're not, you're still young, that I can go back to things that have happened to me and I feel completely different about them now.
00:31:24
Speaker
But I don't often allow myself the freedom to let that feeling release, as you say. or I call it dissolve and form into something new, something else. So I went and stood in a different place to things that had happened to me and walked around it and asked some people who were not me what they thought.
00:31:47
Speaker
And lo and behold, the trauma story that I've been caring about the thing turns out to have been like, well, no that's not the whole story. And so, yeah, the word release is tricky for me because I'm a recovering Catholic.
00:32:03
Speaker
But dissipate, dissolve, become sediment again, those work for me. Yeah, you were early on, you also relayed, know, one of the greatest transmographical spaces we experience in life happens at the level of memory. Memories are conjuring. At the same time, memory is a mindfuck. It doesn't give a shit what you think about it. It is true.
00:32:22
Speaker
yeah And I love what I love about your writing, too, is that it can go yeah very poetic, but then it gets it can be just crude and crass, too. Like, I love that dichotomy. And I love it cuts against the grain. It can go from pretty to ugly.
00:32:36
Speaker
And you know when you're working in that space, like just what's the the energy that you're working with when you're like, yeah, things are getting a little pretty. It's time and time I yeah kick sluthammer kick it in the shins.
00:32:48
Speaker
Well, it's, I mean, the most honest answer is it's been my life. The beautiful and the brutal live literally next to each other are on top of each other.
00:32:59
Speaker
And I have noticed to bring that word back. that they're not separate and the world is built the same way. The extraordinarily, intensely, transformationally beautiful is right next to the bomb crater and the small body of a child and they don't cancel each other out, they live within each other And so me figuring a style out where it could go from lyrical to crass or beautiful to brutal is me kind of, it's not me at all. It's me tapping into a rhythm that is what I perceive to be the existence around me.
00:33:44
Speaker
and trying to capture some of it. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't, I just sound like an asshole. You know late in the book too, I love this, just a one sentence, your failures and fears are portals, step through.
00:33:58
Speaker
So how did you learn to embody that in your in your in your art?
Tragedy as Creative Opportunity
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, well, um I'm gonna say a sad thing.
00:34:09
Speaker
I'm giving you a second. And some of you already know this. I had a daughter who was born and died at exactly the same moment. She was stillborn.
00:34:22
Speaker
And yes, that was trauma for me for many, many years. But when i the trauma dissipated eventually and I worked through those ideas and feelings, what began to surface was that I have to let go of a lot of ways of thinking and ways of creating that don't correspond to my experience. That's what I was trying to say earlier.
00:34:50
Speaker
So I learned that birth and death in that moment are not binary, for example. I learned in that moment that the great wave of sadness and depression and trauma that can descend upon everyone at certain points in their life is also a place of new beginnings and generative, whether we want it to be or not, you know, no mud, no lotus is a more eloquent way of saying it.
00:35:18
Speaker
And I learned it in a terrible moment. But the terrible moment has never stopped yielding beauty and extraordinary flowers and ways to create.
00:35:33
Speaker
with the With the fear and leaning into that, how long did it take you to get up to that threshold and have the courage to walk through it? I am one of those people, and I want to say it out loud in case there are other people in the room, I'm terrified every single day of my life.
00:35:51
Speaker
I mean, I think George O'Keefe, is it George O'Keefe who has the me, you know, she has that sentence about that, but I did it anyway or something like that. I'm one of those. um And I mean it literally. It's hard for me to get out of bed. It's hard for me to leave the apartment on the daily. And I'm not, I don't know that I'm that much better at it than I ever was.
00:36:13
Speaker
um But what pulls me forward is that that idea from earlier where if I stop my creative activity and my little tributary runs dry and stops, what if that impacts some of the other tributaries that we need?
00:36:34
Speaker
If I'm not taking my turn, How are we gonna help keep the whole ecosystem alive? That gets me through the fear is how can I take my turn and not fuck my turn up?
00:36:49
Speaker
And then on the days where I just can't do it because whatever, 10 million reasons, it's someone else's turn. It's your turn. But we're making this agreement.
00:37:00
Speaker
Don't tell the man though. Don't tell them out there. we make this like secret agreement to take turns. and So those are the kinds of things that push me through. Yeah, well, and speaking of like ah know taking turns and taking the stage and then and making space for other people too, there's a passage in Reading the Waves where you know you have this you know this kind of prestigious teaching thing in upstate New York, you know and you're suffering with that imposter syndrome or whether to take it or not. And I'll just say, the the next emotion I felt was unworthiness. It is not a lie to say I know hundreds of writers who are more talented than I am, whose work lifts me and keeps me from giving up every day of my life. Some of them are famous, some are not. yeah What matters is the fact that their words coming alive on the page is in spite of the world. You know, honor all of those writers you love by being present inside the great storytelling rivers that lead to an ocean bigger than all of us. Step up, woman.
00:37:55
Speaker
Hold the space for whoever comes next and do what you always do when you let let in a door of privilege. Move over and share the space with other writers you love. See how you can inspire youngsters to fuck shit up.
00:38:09
Speaker
Yeah, that. Yeah. And that section is about how i got I got a really cool thing that happened once, or you know more than once in my life, and
Platform for Collective Growth
00:38:20
Speaker
I went through that bullshit, kinda, I'm sorry, white guilt of like, oh, maybe I should turn this down, I should step aside, and maybe I should've, but that part where I was lingering in the woe-begone of it was just more gross than accepting it.
00:38:38
Speaker
you know like oh poor me. So um i'm this is lifelong work to figure out what does one do inside that space and how can I poke holes in it or you know like fracture it or or move it around so that it's not so singular. Yeah, and then there's an element of you might feel like you don't deserve this thing. All the time. Right? and then But if you can accept it, be like, oh, wait, ah maybe I can leverage this privilege I've earned.
00:39:11
Speaker
Kick open that door and put your foot in the jam so like people can then walk through it and then make make a go of it themselves. So you can use it and be like, oh, you know I've been given this gift of platform. It's up to me now to kind of give it away.
00:39:24
Speaker
Kind of, yeah, or let it dissolve or like, oh, I got a thimble full of light on me. You know, do I stand in it or do I do something else with it? But a thing I've been thinking about really recently is that the global majority is BIPOC.
00:39:43
Speaker
and the new forms aren't gonna have anything to do with the privileges that have existed up until now. And therefore this idea of that privilege being something we have to fret about or figure out or, you know, I think it's broken and breaking and that is, in I'm glad I'm seeing it in my lifetime and I can't wait for what comes next and it was not mine ever.
00:40:13
Speaker
nor should it be singularly anyone's. It should be a wave of collective. I think some a tendency, especially maybe early on in a writer's career where things feel very zero sum.
00:40:25
Speaker
Like if someone else gets published there, then I can't. or Or you stuff like that. That scarcity model. Exactly. And um you know there's a you know moment late late in the book where you go, like where I have bloomed, let me decompose and generate another's growth. And I feel like in that embodied in that is this element of of lifting others up, you know, and being willing to maybe step aside and let someone else go through the door and be like, i well, you know, i had my I had my time. I'm here for counsel. But it's time for you to pick up this ball and roam with it. Absolutely. And also, I mean, it's my hope that we we understand each other as energies and as, again, mycelial connections and more like the world around us than apart from it.
Embracing Struggle in Writing
00:41:07
Speaker
and maybe let go of the institutions that tried to create the idea that knowledge is mono. We might have to let them fall, and we might, that means those of us on our way out, that's good. We'll be excellent compost.
00:41:22
Speaker
Be excellent compost. That might be the title of this podcast when it's published. Like, Lydia Yukovic says, be excellent compost. Be of good poo.
00:41:37
Speaker
And what are some of the things, you know, you've been writing for a long time, and what are some of the things that you still struggle with today that, you know, never go away when you sit down to write?
00:41:48
Speaker
I like the struggle. I have never been contra the struggle. Maybe that's a skill set that people who are born born up and through trauma and abuse, like, maybe that's a skill set in addition to being an affliction.
00:42:06
Speaker
it also has generative skill to it. So I embrace the struggle. I'm curious about the struggle, therefore it's not a big bad daddy coming at me. Oh wow, that was a very large sentence I just said. I have learned to inhabit and incorporate the struggle so that it too will dissipate. So nothing nothing stops me on the page anymore.
00:42:33
Speaker
And also I don't care what how it will be received. A recent novel I wrote called Trust cured me of that. I had so much fun writing that novel and it was a like career ending like market dive.
00:42:51
Speaker
product, but I was more happy writing that novel than I've ever been in my life. I learned everything from that feeling. So um my market days may be over, I don't give a shit.
00:43:04
Speaker
That was it, that was touching it. Yeah, this is a ah a note I have in my notebook about fucks to give. And, you know, we're born with a lot of fucks to give.
00:43:14
Speaker
I think it's incumbent upon us to get the fucks out of our system as fast as possible. And ah you you see you're speaking to it right now with thrust. You didn't give a fuck. like So at at what point did you, ah how did you how how have you reached this no fucks to give? That's a hard one for me because, like, I started off trying to write against the grain.
00:43:37
Speaker
Like the first things I wrote, the chronology of water story was an 11 page story written in tiny fragments. And the MFA program I was in, they told me that's not a story.
00:43:50
Speaker
it's ah It's a poem or something. It's a list of fragments. I'm like, fuck you. So I can't, like my whole enterprise has been to trouble the edges or shiver the edges or vibrate the edges. so That hasn't been the hard part for me. The hard part for me is has been finding connection with others.
00:44:15
Speaker
And that's in life. On the page, I can do it. it's And if I could live in the creative realm and never come out, I'd be fine.
00:44:27
Speaker
It's regular life. That's my struggle. Yeah, well, and even with the connection with others, you know there are certain ah even like writer types that I find insufferable and annoying. and Who are they? Name them. oh Tell us. Just give us One? just sit one Well, I'll give you a ah type. so i in I won't say the the name, but there are some very famous writers who will who will say they they're not doing the podcast rounds or something.
00:44:56
Speaker
But then I start seeing them on the podcast rounds. And it's because I'm not a big, big vault and vaunted name that they can put on Instagram that makes them ah elevate their status. you know I think that there's a status status ballet we see with a lot of people.
00:45:10
Speaker
Maybe they'll, if they, if even and this is what I really hate is when say writer a appears on famous podcast and mine, they'll promote the famous one and they'll say nothing about mine.
00:45:23
Speaker
And that just reveals everything I need to know about you. It does. It actually does because it presents the hierarchy you already knew was there. That is ah anointing and legitimizing some voices and not others. I'm going to need the list. a And B, I'm going promote you like a motherfucker. Oh, my God. Well, yeah, I don't didn't want to make that about me at all, but that's just a kind of thing I noticed because I'm plugged into this ecosystem in ah in a way where I can see, like, oh, you see that that person elevates my status in a way and it lowers somebody else. Yeah, and i I don't like it. No, I don't like it eat it. It's evil, but I still want to list. Yeah. All right. Give you the dossier. I'm at the point, because again, I'm in that third room. I can out people, no problem. Like, what if I care? Like, are they going to trash my reputation? Oh, dear. You know, like, already did that to myself. So, you know, like, give me the list. All right. All right. what the we'll we'll ah we'll We'll make an arrangement for that. right it is Well, we are at like about 40 minutes of the conversation. I want to give some ah so some voice to the audience ah for a little bit of Q&A before I totally bring this plane down for a landing. Carol, land that plane, Carol. Sorry.
00:46:40
Speaker
It's a movie. Very nice. so Are there any questions? And I'll repeat into the mic. Okay. In the moment, I didn't repeat the question, so I'm punching in here to say the question. First question came from ah someone in the audience and it said, is there such a thing as sharing too much information and worrying about family reaction?
00:47:03
Speaker
I totally hear you and okay, so this is one kind of answer, it's not the answer, but I run into what you're talking about all the time in my own writing and I do find it useful to create patterns and rhythms so that you can give the reader a break.
00:47:27
Speaker
So like what I mean by that is maybe weaving in humor in betwixt the difficulty, or I'm a big fan of bringing forward big metaphors and images that give the reader some breathing room and a place to rest their heart while I'm telling them, and then this happened. ah And I don't know that there's such a thing as too much, but I do know there's such a thing as you don't want to kill the reader.
00:47:58
Speaker
You don't want to harm them. You don't want to injure them. So I think a little bit I'm also saying create aftercare within the storytelling space, places where they can rest, places where they can breathe, places where they can get a glass of water. And so there's like a list of strategies, lyricism, weaving that in, humor, weaving that in, going to anecdotes or allegories instead of just the facts, because the story isn't just the facts.
00:48:31
Speaker
So I'm saying enrich your storytelling space with rhythms and patterns that allow the reader, invite the reader in, but give them a little care. Does that make any sense?
00:48:43
Speaker
Yeah. In reading the waves, Lydia does that exceptionally well. There are these interludes to a little conversation with your sister. It's one page. It's gray. So it's even a different visual thing. And yeah, there is this give and take. There's a tide of intensity followed by interlude or something slow. I that word. They are interludes. That's beautiful. Yes, that's exactly what they are.
00:49:11
Speaker
Beautiful. Awesome. man All right, what else? Thanks. And the next question had to do with Lydia's relationship to craft. I mean, if you had to guess.
00:49:28
Speaker
I'm suspicious of what we've inherited. Can I say it like that? And there are some recent books that help. with that, but there is a book that helped me personally and by Carol May, so called Break Every Rule, cleverly. I'm suspicious of craft and how it's been used upon artists.
00:49:54
Speaker
And I feel as if it's a very good time to redefine and reorient to what is meant by the word, the concept and the infliction of craft, because again, it shuts down some voices and anoints others. And again, the globe,
00:50:12
Speaker
majority is not white and male. So, you know, what could craft mean? Maybe that's the better question. What could craft mean if we reinvented it, revivified it, redefined it?
00:50:26
Speaker
or could I mean, I don't like the sound of it, crap. just like it's I mean, maybe it's just time for new language to Next is, how does Lydia make the distinction between writing fiction or nonfiction?
00:50:46
Speaker
No, but apparently I'm not supposed to say that out loud. Not in the least. I was talking to another amazing writer in the room who is Charlie J. Stevens, who's sitting over there next to my son, Miles, whose books you should go out and buy immediately tonight.
00:51:05
Speaker
There's that. um I was talking about how, you know, in the novels I've written, I've said more true things about myself and my life than any nonfiction I've ever written or am going to write.
00:51:19
Speaker
But the market doesn't accommodate that idea. So I just do whatever I want, and if people get it, they get it, and if they don't, they don't, i don't care. But for me, the line between nonfiction and fiction fiction is, um I think I've written overwritten this line 100 times.
00:51:36
Speaker
More thin than infant skin. Like thin membrane. And in fiction, you're curating forms. In nonfiction, you are also curating forms, so could we just be honest about that?
00:51:52
Speaker
The forms aren't that different. What about you? So I'm reinforcing what you already thought. Oh, you do. Okay, lay it on me. Give me your one sentence justification for that.
00:52:12
Speaker
Autofiction is bad. o Where's the phone? I gotta call Justin Torres. i gotta call him. I'm gonna call him in.
00:52:29
Speaker
Justin, Justin Torres. I mean, I guess also Garth Greenwell and Alexander Chee and like, now I'm gonna list an entire thing and you and I are gonna go in the back and bring it.
00:52:41
Speaker
Arm wrestle. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. um Auto fiction is bad be because...
00:52:54
Speaker
Oh, well that's fair. That I would agree with. That I would agree with. But that just means more people need to punch through with the reality of why it's profoundly important.
00:53:08
Speaker
But I hear what you're throwing. The market. you know When they accept your book, a nonfiction book, it's three years before it's published anyway. That's such an amorphous thing that you even aren't aiming for. but yeah And sustaining a market that didn't care about us in the first place. Just a reminder.
00:53:24
Speaker
Well, very nice. As I bring these podcasts down for a landing, here we go, coasting it, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind. That could just be anything you're excited about, Lydia. Sometimes I say like it doesn't have to be a book. It can be a brand of socks, a brand of coffee, or a fanny pack.
00:53:38
Speaker
what would What would you recommend for the listeners out there? Go see or get your hands on the movie Resurrection by Be Gone and study the fuck out of it.
00:53:52
Speaker
um as writers, also just humans. And that can be a good inspirational tool for reminding you why innovation can have a a tether to history or what's come before, but the innovation is more important than what's come before.
00:54:13
Speaker
And that what's come before is just sediments. It's not bigger than you. It's not more important than you. So do something else with it. But that movie, I i couldn't walk.
00:54:25
Speaker
Like I had to sit there when it was over for about 15 minutes and then I walked outside and it was night and I couldn't get to my car because I couldn't remember where it was.
00:54:36
Speaker
and I was, all of my senses were like throbbing and firing. But it reminded me what art is. And I live for that.
00:54:47
Speaker
I live for witnessing art. Oh, amazing. Well, well Lydia, it's some people say you shouldn't meet your heroes, and I'm so glad that I got to meet you and in in person. We've spoken but spoken before, but what a joy to to meet you and speak with you in front of this wonderful audience. Just thank you for everything you've done over the years and continue to do. Just thanks for your time. and Dude, the pleasure was mine. I'm going to light you up. Lydia, everybody.
00:55:27
Speaker
Awesome. Well, I have partners to thank, don't i Thanks to Gratitude Brewing for the venue. Thanks to Northwest Review for as being a good wingman.
00:55:38
Speaker
Thanks to Lydia for driving down to Eugene to sit on the stage with me and have ah a really electric and fun and cool conversation. i think i think yeah i hope I hope you loved it as much as I did putting it together and so forth.
00:55:57
Speaker
Remember to check out brendanamero.com for show notes and to subscribe to Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. We've got a new one coming out May 4th with Ruby McConnell with her amazing story for Alta Journal. It's going to be a fun one.
00:56:09
Speaker
Club is back open after month, after a hiatus of sorts. A one-month hiatus because someone pulled out on me. It happens. It happens.
00:56:21
Speaker
Sometimes it's cool to have a break, though. All right, well, maybe it was DVD commentary, or maybe it was with um Julia Louis-Dreyfus when she joined Jerry Seinfeld on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. But they talked about the nine-year run on Seinfeld, and both agreed that they wished that they had enjoyed it more while it was happening.
00:56:41
Speaker
And I may have even heard Amy Poehler talk about this too with Parks and Rec because the days are so long. It's a grind. It's very stressful. And even though you know you're making something great,
00:56:54
Speaker
Sometimes it's hard to enjoy it in the moment. And then when the moment's gone, you look back and you're like, fuck, I really wish i had enjoyed that more because we were doing something special. I think of this a lot.
00:57:06
Speaker
i I know I basically wasted my college experience by not really enjoying it. yeah There were moments, but by and large, it wasn't the greatest experience in the world for me. I have some great friends that I still have today, just a yeah couple.
00:57:20
Speaker
That's all you need. And we had some great times, especially living off campus. But maybe I compared it too much to what I'd seen in movies or TV or when my father told me these would be the best years of my life.
00:57:33
Speaker
And when they were objectively okay, not very good, not very great, I was like, well, fuck, I'm in for a real doozy of a life now. Now, if that was supposed to be the best of my potentially 80 years on this planet,
00:57:51
Speaker
I'm something of a an airless sponge, a hard, flat rubber cake, a person largely incapable of joy. I'm not just the stick in the mud. I'm the mud.
00:58:02
Speaker
I need to flesh this out with a trained mental health professional, but it has dogged me my entire life. I remember sitting in a bar in Durham, North Carolina with a bunch of people I knew when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004.
00:58:16
Speaker
I remember seeing some of my friends, like friends from college, native mass holes. And when Kevin Falk flipped the ball to first base to Doug Mankiewicz, And they won the World Series for first time in 87 years whatever the hell was. And there was a frenzy, and I just sat there emotionless. My then-girlfriend, and amazingly why she stayed with me, now wife, looked at me confusion, like, how is this person so impossibly dead inside? It's like when the emotions get heightened around me, I tend to level out almost to the point where it looks like I'm completely absent.
00:58:50
Speaker
I'm having trouble pinpointing other examples, but they are myriad. I'm prone to bad moods and they can sweep in faster than lightning and linger, you know. i remember being at Red Sox games growing up and people invariably would start the wave way out in the bleachers.
00:59:06
Speaker
And my dad would find it so annoying and stupid and say so. And if my mom, you know, stood up to join him he shot her a look that shrank her to about the size of a mouse.
00:59:17
Speaker
If he saw parrot heads, you know, like Jimmy Buffett fans in their Hawaiian shirts, he'd call them losers. If someone laughed too loudly around us, he'd be angry and make some comment. If people were cheering too loud around us, he'd get annoyed. If someone gained weight, he'd make comments. And naturally, I internalized all of it through osmosis.
00:59:37
Speaker
And oh, my God, it's from him, isn't it? And my folks split up when I was 12. And if I'm being honest, I'm actually very happy they did because I don't think I could have lived in a house with my father as I crested into high school. It would not have been pretty. I mean, I love my dad and all, but I don't think it would have gone well.
00:59:56
Speaker
I know it would not have gone well. All of this to say, sometimes I have to step off the podcast treadmill and take a solid look at the body of work and enjoy it while it's happening.
01:00:09
Speaker
I just interviewed, I don't know if you heard, i just interviewed Lydia Yuknovich in a live setting, the sixth live podcast. But this was in a room of 45 people. There might have been 50 people in there. It was a really big audience and it was great.
01:00:23
Speaker
It was our biggest by far. might be the biggest ever. It was incredible. I get to talk to superstars. Now, I don't make any money, so that's a bummer. I'd like to think that if the show continues to grow, the platform will lead to book contracts, and that's my plan. That's been my strategy. yeah What I'd hate more than anything is say, I sunset the show, and then I look back and say, man, I wish I had enjoyed that more. That was pretty special, and I just got swept up in the machine of it and never thought to think about the amazing people I got to talk to.
01:00:55
Speaker
Me. They talk to me. Christina Koch, one of the Artemis II cosmonauts, said, I used to say find your passion, but for me it's changed to find what you can do the slowest for the longest and still absolutely love it and go in that direction. Quote card I saw on Instagram. I don't know what publication or interview, where it appeared, but I saw that.
01:01:21
Speaker
I think my writing and podcast career, I hate the C word, but here we are, is indeed very slow and very long. And while it's not great all the time, I still absolutely love that I get to make this thing and hand it over to you.
01:01:37
Speaker
I'm happy to recognize that before it's too fucking late. So stay wild, C&Evers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.