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Episode 135—Leanna James Blackwell Talks About Fallow Periods, Running with Ideas, and 90s Grunge
129 Plays6 years ago
"Don't worry if you go through a fallow period. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you," says Leanna James Blackwell. Leanna James Blackwell (@baypathmfaCNF) stopped by the show to talk about her True Story essay "Lethe," as well grabbing hold of ideas, dealing with fallow times, and finding community. This episode is brought to you by Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction. Join me on Twitter @BrendanOMeara and @CNFPod to keep the conversation going! Subscribe to the show and consider leaving a review on iTunes/Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
The Creative Nonfiction Podcast is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction. The Goucher MFA is a two-year, low residency program. Online classes let you learn from anywhere, while on-campus residencies allow you
00:00:15
Speaker
to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have pulled surprises and best-selling books to their names. The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni. Which has published 140 books and counting, you'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey.
00:00:38
Speaker
visit goucher.edu forward slash nonfiction to start your journey now. Take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published in Goucher's MFA program for nonfiction. If at first you don't succeed, brith.
00:00:59
Speaker
Oh, man. Hey, it's you. Glad you could be here, man. How you been? Did you get that thing you said you were gonna do done? Did the dentist say you should floss more? Yeah, I get it. There's like five surfaces to every tooth. Do you know that? You gotta get in there. Have you cut back on caffeine? You doing dry January? You still dry? That's good.
Meet the Host and Guest
00:01:25
Speaker
Okay, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. I hate the show where I talk to badass writers, filmmakers, and producers about the art and craft of telling true stories, how they became who they are, and the habits and routines that make them special. So maybe you can apply those tools of mastery to your own work. I'm Brendan Romero, but I think you knew that.
00:01:48
Speaker
We got Liana James Blackwell for you today. For episode 135 of this racket. But we'll get there. We're gonna talk about a lot of things. And especially her long essay, Leafy. Which appeared as issue number 22 of Creative Non-Fiction's True Story series. These stand-alone pamphlets which are super badass.
00:02:17
Speaker
I love these little things, man. You should subscribe. That's a free shoutout if I ever heard one. So I did the thing I said I was gonna do. And what was that?
Writing and Creativity Tips
00:02:28
Speaker
You know that stupid shitty-ass book I'm supposed to be finishing and haven't touched since June? Yeah, that one. I started picking through its carcass. I set a time for 20 minutes. I worked for 20 minutes on it. And I'm gonna work on it for 20 minutes tomorrow and the next day.
00:02:47
Speaker
To borrow a gym term, this way I don't get too sore and need a rest day or two days and can barely walk to the mailbox. I could work in a giant spurt, that flood of momentum, but what'll happen is I'll get burned out and not get back to it for a week. Meanwhile, I could have been chipping away in 20 minute chunks until I can send this appalling dung heap off to my editor. So that's happening.
00:03:15
Speaker
Hey, do you subscribe to this morass? You can find it just about anywhere, all the usual places. Go subscribe, go do it. And if you're feeling really CNFing good, leave a kind review on iTunes.
00:03:32
Speaker
If not, you know, it's no big deal. I'm here for you, man. I want you to know that. Share this show with just one friend. You are the social network and this is how we rage. We rage against the algorithm. Tweet me some love at Brendan O'Mara or at CNFpod and like the show on that despicable social network called Facebook. What else? Oh yes.
00:03:57
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Liana came by the show, and I have to warn you, the first half has this odd clicking in the background, but it goes away by the second half. It's a little irritating, but I want you to let you know that I know it's there. Also, I want you to know that Liana is the type of person who is just as eager to ask me questions as I was to ask her.
00:04:16
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But since I hate the sounds that come out of my mouth, I largely edited that stuff out so you hear more of her. But I wanted to let you know that she is the kind of person who was equally inquisitive and kind. I appreciated that.
Humorous Interlude
00:04:31
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One last sponsor. Today's show is brought to you by the noun anxiety. He felt a surge of anxiety. Anxiety. A feeling of worry, nervousness or unease. About an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Anxiety. Okay, enough monkeying around.
Reflections and Resolutions
00:04:55
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Here's Liana James Blackwell. Party on CNFers.
00:05:04
Speaker
That's rock and roll. Yeah, it's something that I always like to, at this time of year when I record podcasts, usually for the first four weeks of the year, over the last couple years, I like getting a sense of how artists and writers process a new year, goals or resolutions, however you want to frame it. And it being that time of year, I wonder, what's your approach to 2019?
00:05:30
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That is such a good question. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about it because 2018 was a really challenging year on a lot of levels, particularly what's going on in the world and what's going on politically. And I have very strong feelings about that. And there were many things that caused me, I would say grief, and I wouldn't call that an exaggeration. And yet there were also
00:05:58
Speaker
many, many, many things that I will take with me into the next year that were actually quite inspiring and beautiful. And so I spent some time the first of the year sitting with my journal. I do a lot of notebook writing and journal writing, reflecting on the year and writing up not only what hurt, but also what helped and what inspired me and what gave me hope.
00:06:26
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doing that was really interesting because there was so much more than I remembered. And as I kept writing, I thought, oh yeah, I forgot about this. And I forgot about that wonderful thing. And I just kept going and I filled pages. And I sort of did it in list form. And I found that when I finished that, I had this renewed sense of purpose and a feeling that it's going to be OK. My writing is going to thrive. My students are going to thrive.
00:06:53
Speaker
And we're going to get through this period. And it might take a little while, but we're going to get through it. And that was really helpful. And I actually posted about it on Facebook. When my daughter was really little, we used to do this game called Roses and Thorns. And at the end of each day, we would ask her, tell us about a rose, meaning a good thing in your day. And what was a thorn? And there was always something. And it was a way to help her.
00:07:22
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learn to articulate her experience and talk about the things that happened. And, you know, a thorn could be someone didn't sit next to me at lunch or, you know, a kid was mean. And a rose would be something else, something lovely, something small, it didn't matter. And so I kind of use that framework for myself. And I found that helps too, just thinking of it in terms of images, the fact that things are going to be blossoming soon, both creatively on a lot of other levels.
00:07:50
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So that's that's what I did and
Journaling and Creativity
00:07:53
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what is your I love that you brought up the journaling and notebook and journaling practice and that's something I've done for years and adhere to it to this day and What what is your or how would you describe your daily journaling practice? I do it first thing when I wake up and I find that that is the best time because my mind hasn't yet been
00:08:18
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engaged with the busyness of the day. And given my work, I direct a graduate program in creative writing. And there was so much involved with it. As soon as I get to the office, I'm bombarded. And it's all good stuff, but it takes away that inner space that I wake up with. So I wake up, I fumble around, I get some coffee, I reach for my pen. And the first thing I do is write down my dreams.
00:08:48
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I've been doing that for a long, long time now. And there's a reason for it. Partly is that I find that I get answers in my dreams, particularly because I've cultivated this as a practice and also because there are images in the dreams that often will work for me in a story or an essay because dream language is different and dream language is symbolic and archetypal.
00:09:16
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And often I find those images will help me unlock something in a story. So I do that. I do it first thing in the morning. I write dreams down and notes, ideas that come to me. And then I follow that with a meditation. And I find that gets my day off to
00:09:31
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a good start in a way that I notice when I don't do it for a few days. Is it something you these journals and notebooks that you often refer back to or is it just something that you sort of purge what's on your mind and then you know you file them away but you know you you don't go back to them at all or do you reference them? I do in fact I did that yesterday and it was kind of by accident I picked up the wrong journal somehow
00:09:58
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And I flipped through and was looking for an empty page and realized that was last year's. And then I thought, I'm going to spend some time with this. And I'm so glad I did because there were things in there that I had meant to remember and refer back to and use in my writing, including this idea that I've had for a long time about a retelling of the Dido story from the Aeneas. And I've always been fascinated by Queen Dido.
00:10:27
Speaker
And there it was, and this was actually, I wrote down some notes after I read an Elena Ferrante essay in which she talked about that. And I had written it down and it was gone and then I went back and there it was. I thought, yes, that's something that I needed to remember in order to do this. So I don't do it all the time because that keeps me reprocessing the same thing over and over again. Sometimes it's appropriate just to clear and get it out,
00:10:58
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Other times there are clues there, so every once in a while it's really helpful. How about you? Do you go back? Sometimes, but it's hard because I have so many of them and I don't have a really good filing system for them. So I don't know where it is. I tried in my current journal to actually have two pages in the back that is kind of an index. So after I write, I do two pages, which is about 500 words every morning.
00:11:26
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And then I would run right to the back page and say, for pages 79 and 80, I just, you know, just maybe two or three words about what was the main thing I wrote about. So I could, in fact, find something. I could go to that index and maybe find what I was riffing on that morning or what I was feeling or whatever.
00:11:45
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But I've kind of just said, oh, who cares? And I've kind of stopped doing that. So I don't have a very good way to go back and actually find anything I've written about unless I maybe put a sticky note on it or something. Thank you. You've just given me a great idea. I'm going to do that. I have
00:12:07
Speaker
I just read through the whole thing and it took a long time, so filing system. I've never been good at that. I'm gonna try that. Yeah, in the couple days that I did, it was pretty simple. I just flipped straight to the back and then while it's still fresh in your head, you can scribble out two little things on one line. That way you'll just have pretty much maybe two pages that indexes the whole journal and yeah, it'll save you some time if you're looking for something very specific.
00:12:36
Speaker
Cool. Well, I'm glad I could help. Yes. I always find I learned something when I talk to other writers. And even when I work with my students, and I don't mean to say even when as though they wouldn't have good ideas, but just some of my students come in and they don't really have necessarily a lot of experience with creative writing. But I find that there are jewels in almost
00:13:00
Speaker
Everybody ideas that I get and so I love these kind of conversations. They're so helpful Yeah, and that's a big reason why I love getting tactical with so many of the people that come on the show whether they be filmmakers or producers or writers and even if some the questions might seem kind of inane to the to the person but
00:13:24
Speaker
It could be that there's a listener out there that will take that there's one little nugget that maybe that maybe you said or someone else said and they can apply it to their own work in some sense like as we're unpacking your origin story as a writer and and looking into like as we will a little bit of leafy here your true story essay and
00:13:43
Speaker
All that stuff, as we kind of dance around that, there'll be tactical things that we can apply. And hopefully people will be like, oh, that's cool. I'm going to add that to my cart and try it later. And maybe it'll help empower them and make their work better or get them working in the first place. Well, you're talking to the right person because I never believe that there's any such thing as an inane question. And I always say that in my classes. There's no such thing as a wrong or a bad question, even if it sounds dumb and for someone. And it might not be you, but it might be another person.
00:14:13
Speaker
And so it's important. Yeah. So ask away. Cool. Well, let's, let's even, uh, back up to maybe, you know, where you grew up and, uh, and, uh, I suspect you, did you grow up in California?
Liana's Background and Influences
00:14:25
Speaker
I did. I grew up in a town in Southern California that was about an hour and 15 minutes. Southeast of LA. So we were in a Valley and, uh, this was before there were good air control, air pollution measures.
00:14:42
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So we were known as the smog ball. I grew up in the smog ball and so we couldn't play outside half the time because our lungs would hurt. That's changed now.
00:14:55
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But when I was growing up, that was the case. So that was our claim to fame. Not being able to play outside, did that sort of trigger a very more inward way of play for you and more introspection, even as a young person? That's interesting. I never put that together before. But maybe in a way, it just intensified the way I already was.
00:15:23
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which was a book crazy kid. You're probably not going to talk to a writer who doesn't say that. I think so many of us are the same. As soon as I learned to read, I felt as though I had the key. Whatever it was that I was looking for, books, I would find it in books. So my favorite thing in the world was to go to the library and it still is. Go to the library and stock up as many books as I could and then hole up with them, which
00:15:52
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made everyone else in my family angry. I wasn't supposed to be doing that. I wasn't supposed to be isolating from them, which is how it was looked at. So there was often this tug and pull, come out of your room, stop reading, put that book down, which I would do reluctantly. But as soon as I could, I'd go right back. What were some of the very early influential books that you were reading as a, maybe as a kid and a teenager?
00:16:19
Speaker
Oh, God, I had no sensibility in terms of what was good or bad. I made no distinction at all. I read everything. I would read a cereal box. I read a lot of what I read, as it turns out, are old, old books that were in my grandmother's house. We spent a lot of time visiting her, and so there were bookshelves filled with books, and I would just pull them down. So I started with those ancient Nancy Drew mysteries from the 1930s.
00:16:49
Speaker
I read all of those. And I read this odd book called Cheaper by the Dozen about 15 times. I read Gone with the Wind. And then as I got older, I started to develop more of a sensibility. And then by the time I was a teenager, I developed this crush on Herman Hess, which I think is not atypical. I was just reading some kind of critical assessment of him. I don't know why I stumbled across it.
00:17:18
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Ultimately, he's known as the writer that teenagers discover and then grow out of. So I wonder what I would think now. But then I started reading books like that. After him, I read Thomas Mann. And then I got interested in books that had kind of philosophical underpinning. And that's what I started looking for. And Absurdus, I went from there to Kurt Vonnegut and then on.
00:17:42
Speaker
Mm-hmm. What uh, what's your favorite curve on a gift book if you can out of his entire collection if you can remember Oh God probably breakfast of champions. What about you? I might to say I've read I think I've read them all and my two favorite I'll even go three. I love Mother Night Sire sirens of Titan and bluebeard. I would say those are probably my three. I
00:18:07
Speaker
Oh, he was an influence on me then. Would you say he's still an influence on you now? Yeah, I would say so. I love his humor that's not entirely, not very jokey. And he could have just a very dry way of being funny. And his writing was so clear and clean.
00:18:29
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I think I've referred to him in Fred's as one of the first bloggers because his books can be so segmented into very short little chunklets. And it kind of reads like these little mini blog posts that kind of string together. So I love how kind of clear and lucid and funny he could be. That's a way I've never heard him scrap before, but it makes perfect sense, a kind of antecedent to bloggers.
00:18:58
Speaker
Yeah, those fragments sometimes. And each one would contain something, you know, some part wisdom. I liked the way that his world view was revealed to his humor. And it was a dark world view. But it also had so much compassion in it. When you think about everything he witnessed in the war, and all of that is part of it. It's very hard to do. As I have found, it's really hard to weave in humor into something when the stakes are that high.
00:19:28
Speaker
And yet sometimes it's necessary. It's necessary to even look at it or to get through it. And I love that about him. And I love writers that can do that. So how did you eventually want to become a writer? I didn't start wanting to become a writer. I wanted to be an actor. I loved film and I loved theater and I loved literature. And acting was a way to bring all those things together.
00:19:57
Speaker
but with a physical expression. And given the way that I grew up, there was a lot in my body, I guess I could put it that way, that needed expression. And I love dance as well. And so I studied theater for quite a long time. I was a member of a theater company. Maybe we toured and we put on, we mounted
00:20:23
Speaker
a kind of revival of all the great European absurdist plays. So we did Waiting for Godot and we did Ian Esco's The Lesson and we did a lot of Pinter. And I loved that. I really loved experimental theater. But then the realities of being an actor in this world, I started off with a fantasy, you know, of being in some kind of traveling caravan of actors.
00:20:48
Speaker
And I must have seen that in a film somewhere when I was a child. And I still had that in my head that it was going to be like that. Of course, it isn't. And the art form still moves me and is beautiful. And I still participate in it as a writer. But the reality of being an actor is very, very different. And it took a year in LA to cure me of that. And I went back to school to get a teaching credential.
00:21:18
Speaker
And my idea at the time was, well, I can teach theater because I'd been teaching for a while anyway, teaching and directing. And I had epiphany while I was there that it was actually language that had been the strongest motivator for me. It was never being famous or being seen. It was about engaging with words to say something powerful and important. And I started writing and it was my instructors who said,
00:21:46
Speaker
I don't know what your plans are exactly, but I think you should keep writing." And I thought, really? I was shocked by that because it was just something that was never part of the conversation growing up, that it was even within the realm of possibility. But I listened to them, thank God, and found that I really, really loved doing that more than anything else. But I hadn't given myself permission to dream that.
00:22:14
Speaker
Permission is such a key word and something I love to talk to people about like who who in fact gave you that permission like do you do you remember the the moment that you know or what you were writing in the in the person there were persons who told you to keep going I do I remember it vividly it was a teacher named Elise Earthman who was a huge influence on me
00:22:42
Speaker
And she wasn't teaching writing per se. She was teaching us how to be teachers. And so she taught pedagogy. But she took me aside once and she said, I want you to know that when the papers come in and your essays, I save yours for last. And I do that because it's my treat. And you can go and be a high school teacher if that's what you want to do, but I hope instead that you become a writer.
00:23:12
Speaker
I was flabbergasted and thought, really? Because I had mentioned, to me, books were magic. I had this sort of worshipful attitude toward them. And I thought, do I dare to enter that world and think that I could do something like that? And I guess I needed someone outside.
00:23:32
Speaker
Wow. How did you eventually process that as books being sort of these magical things that it almost feels like someone else can do that? They are the anointed people. They are bound and hardcover and that's the altar at which you worship.
00:23:52
Speaker
At what point did you get it into your brain that that's something that you could do, that you could access that with the right mindset and the right amount of rigor and attention to craft, and so that you could enter that and become one with the people and the books that you so worshiped? It was being around other writers. Nothing would have convinced me. Teachers could have said you should do this,
00:24:21
Speaker
But it wasn't until I was around a group of other writers who were struggling like I was, who were also talented people, many I thought were extremely talented, but they had the same doubts, which surprised me, and the same fears, and the same dreams, and they felt the same way about books that I did, and being part of this process with them, and learning how, oh, it does not happen magically.
00:24:49
Speaker
It's work and it's work and it's work over a period of years. And you get better and better. And forming alliances with some of these writers helped me feel that, okay, now I see more of what this really is from the inside. And I can do this because we're all in this together, all of us writers. Even though we're in a room alone, that's the only way to get it done. I know that there are those of us out there and I know who they are.
00:25:18
Speaker
I know we're all doing this together and that we care about the same thing.
00:25:23
Speaker
When you were coming up and starting to maybe take that mantle on as a writer, how were you approaching that when you were sort of given that torch and told that you can pursue this? What were your next logical steps as you were looking to maybe pivot to be more of a writer versus an instructor? Though you do both, but when they say you should be a writer, what was the next step for you?
00:25:51
Speaker
I started to get very serious about it. And then it was a matter of creating a writing discipline that was going to work within my life. And that's complicated for everybody. I know very, very few people who just write. There are a few people who can do that, but the vast majority of writers, writers with all kinds of publications, doesn't matter. Most of us do other things. We teach, you know, we might freelance.
00:26:21
Speaker
I did quite a lot of that as well. And trying to come up with a way that it was going to fit and a way that would keep that creative spirit alive because the world isn't necessarily set up to support that. We're very externally motivated in our culture, you know, and for good reason, we need to eat and we need to pay bills and we raise our kids and I have a daughter, all of that. And that's important means to be taken care of
00:26:51
Speaker
And for me though, the creative process is quiet and it's internal and it requires a lot of space around it and how to find that in a consistent way with everything else going on. That was my main priority. And so I would go away to conferences. I did a lot of that. I went on residencies and retreats and then I would lose it all as soon as I came home. And, and so it took many years, I would say.
00:27:21
Speaker
to find the way to do that. And one of the ways, as it turns out, is looking at a tendency in myself. And this goes into the realm of psychology and not so much logistics. And this is true for a lot of women. As a teacher, I tend to be very invested in my students. As a parent, I'm very invested, obviously, in my child
00:27:47
Speaker
And yet there's a difference between invested and invested to the point of losing the self and making sure that everyone else has taken care of before I am. And often I would be the bottom of the list and then I just wouldn't get to it. And that was a habit I had to look at really deeply and honestly, and just start making some internal shifts. So it wasn't just external. It wasn't just, okay, I'll set my alarm an hour early.
00:28:16
Speaker
which of course I did as well, but it was that. It was making some slight internal shifts, sometimes saying no when I needed to, you know, sometimes saying, I'm not going to be able to go to that event. I've got this thing to do. And that required, you know, we were talking about permission earlier. That required another level of permission and the permission internally. And for some reason, for me, that took a long time to get to. And I feel as though
00:28:46
Speaker
It's much better now.
00:29:04
Speaker
That's exactly kind of what you're getting to. You said you lost your writing for years. What was that period like and how many years was it that you lost your writing and lost a big part of yourself in the process, I imagine? I did. I would say that it was a good seven to 10 years. And it's not that I didn't write.
00:29:30
Speaker
I wrote a lot of magazine pieces for hire. So it wasn't my own work. It wasn't my creative work. I wasn't writing new short stories. I wasn't writing personal essays. I wasn't writing plays. But I was writing for magazines. And that was good. It was good to get paid. But that creative work wasn't happening at all. Not to say that the magazine pieces weren't creative. They were, but not the same.
00:29:57
Speaker
It wasn't my own imaginative, creative, artistic process, something that I was dying to write about. And I felt out of sorts. I didn't feel fully myself. And I would say that it was really hard. I mean, I was facing a lot with my daughter and some of the challenges she was having. So I don't regret any of that, of course, or any of the time that I spent being there.
00:30:28
Speaker
Now that I feel as though I'm back to it, and it's been a few years now that I've been re-engaged, it's very different. I'm a better and happier person this way. That must have been hard to the inertia of having not done it for a long time to the extent that you really wanted
Creative Challenges and Community
00:30:47
Speaker
to. Was it kind of a slow muscle to train and to move that boulder after so long being away from the work that was so meaningful to you?
00:30:57
Speaker
It was. And again, finding kindred spirits, finding other people who were working on the same thing, trying to get back to their work, trying to find a way to integrate it and honor it. And so making connections, consciously making connections with people who have an artistic process and are writing. I joined a playwrights group and that was really helpful because we have deadlines and
00:31:27
Speaker
When it's my turn, I've got to bring some material in. And I found that if nothing else would do it, that would do it. And then it turned out that it's a wonderful, very smart, very interesting, creative group of people who are doing really good work. And that was a huge turning point for me. Yes, the deadlines. Having someone say, I'm waiting, I'm expecting it, I'm looking forward to it, I need this from you.
00:31:55
Speaker
And that would sometimes do it when I couldn't do that for myself. And now I'm better at doing it for myself, but I tell my students the same thing. Don't worry if you go through a fallow period. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. Sometimes it's part of the process, but find a community and hold onto that community because that can really see you through.
00:32:16
Speaker
in the throes of a writing project or ever like, and you've alluded to it with this idea of community and deadlines, but how do you appease that loneliness and self-doubt and that sometimes negative self-talk that can creep in when you're in those moments by yourself trying to make something that you're proud of? Oh, you know, that's such a good question. I think about that all the time because I would like to think
00:32:45
Speaker
this point, I've been writing for a long time and alive for a long time and thinking for a long time. And I have a really good therapist. I'd like to think that I have gotten past negative self talk. And it's just not true. It's it's there. And I have started to take a different approach to it, which is instead of being irritated that I'm not past it yet, which I have been, I've been in that place thinking, Oh, my God, this again, you know,
00:33:14
Speaker
But I realize it comes up every time I start a new project because every project is different. I feel as though, and I'm not the first person to say this, every new project I'm learning to do something else. I reach beyond what I've done before and there's not a formula. I'm teaching myself again. And it's not that I'm not drawing on all the things I know how to do, but I'm reaching into something that I don't yet know how to do.
00:33:43
Speaker
So there's always that uncertainty. And I remember I took a workshop once with Michael Cunningham. It was shortly after the hours came out, which is still one of my favorite books. And he said he always tries with every new book to write a book smarter than he is. And I love that because I feel as though that's what I'm trying to do. And when something is just out of reach, it does tend to bring up all my insecurities. And who do I think I am?
00:34:12
Speaker
What do I really have to say? And I don't know what I'm doing, but I do know what I'm doing. And so I remember that. I remember what he said, and I remember little things, Anne Lamott's shitty first draft, you know, and how most writers would never show you their first drafts. And it is really okay for me to not know what I'm doing at first to make a lot of mistakes, to feel as though
00:34:41
Speaker
I'm kind of lost. And because I've done it so many times, I found myself sort of lost in the labyrinth. I'm used to now knowing, okay, I'm going to get out. I'm going to find my way out of here. And it's going to take a little while. So it's almost like stumbling through in the dark, looking for handholds, knowing they're going to be there. But there is that moment before I find the next one that can be literally scary. And I do a lot of self-talk.
00:35:11
Speaker
now, when those negative voices come up, because they always do. And I now sort of know them. And I reassure them, I'll sometimes engage, it's almost like a dialogue, I know you, I know what you're trying to do. Because often underneath the negative voice is something that's trying to protect you. And that's something that I've learned with a 30 year meditation practice, observing these thoughts, underneath the thought is almost always
00:35:39
Speaker
don't do that, something bad's going to happen. I will stop you. Our unconscious is always trying to protect us, but it hasn't always learned the best way. And so I will engage with that instead of fighting with it and ask, okay, you're trying to protect me. I know that. But it's really, it's going to be fine. We've done this before. And, you know, talk about sounding a little bit crazy. I mean, I find myself having these conversations out loud.
00:36:07
Speaker
And then I have to laugh and just keep going. It's like, okay, here's this crazy woman talking to someone unseen in the room. It does help. Sometimes too, I have found that other art takes me out of this spiral that I can sometimes get into. So I feed myself with music and I like to look at art too. I like to, I go to a lot of museums and galleries and look at art.
00:36:33
Speaker
I try to feed myself with different art forms and that sometimes helps break it open too for me and makes me feel as though I, again, I'm less lonely, I'm part of something. Even if I'm just looking at a beautiful image or listening to a piece of music, that helps address it too. What kind of music do you love? It really depends. I have very eclectic taste. I like everything from the Sex Pistols
00:37:02
Speaker
to the Chronos Quartet. I've been listening to a lot of the Chronos Quartet at least recently, and then sometimes I like to dive back into some of my favorite 90s music like Elliott Smith, who I still just love. And recently I've been listening to more international music, international folk music. There's a lot of really good African pop that's coming out from, for instance, Nigeria,
00:37:31
Speaker
And I listened to that. It depends on my mood and what I'm trying to work through. How about you?
00:37:38
Speaker
I love hard rock, heavy metal. That's my go-to. But I also love Tom Petty, Weezer, a lot of 90s grunge and alternative rock. Some classic rock. But I love that. Nothing gets me like double bass drums and heavy power chords.
00:38:04
Speaker
Did you love Nirvana when they were? The first compact disc I ever purchased was Incesticide by Nirvana, which was their album right before Nevermind, their breakout. I think I was maybe 12 or 13 years old and I had some allowance money and went to the mall and bought that.
00:38:27
Speaker
You know, they had the parental advisory explicit lyrics on the cover and the guy sold it to me anyway without my mom around.
00:38:36
Speaker
And it was, it was just such a cool album. I think Nevermind had been out, but I wanted to, and I had been familiar with it, but that was the stuff. I remember that being the first one I purchased and I had a, uh, you know, a Discman that I plugged in these two little, you know, rinky-tink speakers into, and that was kind of like my little stereo in my bedroom. And I would just listen to, you know, sort of the old Nirvana before they were famous. I remember hearing them for the first time in the car on the radio.
Music and Personal Revelations
00:39:05
Speaker
Um, uh-huh.
00:39:07
Speaker
and something from nevermind and wanting to pull over that it hit me that powerfully. So strong, that feeling of what is this? Who are these? I got to get this. But I've been listening to a lot of the clash at that time. Really love that. And still to this day, I'll go back, listen to them.
00:39:29
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. Uh, there, there was something you said, um, that triggered something to me when you were talking about taking that class of Michael Cunningham or that seminar, um, about, you know, kind of sort of working your way through a draft, whether you feel like, you know, you're worthy of writing a certain thing and, you know, oftentimes, um, have you ever heard of the, what Ira Glass calls the gap? Yes.
00:39:53
Speaker
do you listen to a lot of this American life all the time yeah all the time all the time and his thing with the gap being like you know you have this great idea in your head and and you don't necessarily have the skills to manifest that vision but over time that gap narrows but some
00:40:12
Speaker
When you have that great idea, whether it be for a short story or an essay, and then you start working through and you're like, ugh, this is not coming out the way I have this vision in my head. How do you grind through that part so it eventually approaches that ideal that you started with, that seed that made you want to even begin that project? Oh, God. Well, for instance, Leasy.
00:40:41
Speaker
essay from the beginning to the end was three years, three years. So I started it actually not long after my mother died. And I thought I had an I, I wrote it sort of in the heat of that grief. And in the complicated grief, there's a term that Elvis Costello uses in one of his songs, complicated shadows.
Exploring Memory and Inspiration
00:41:12
Speaker
And that's exactly the way I felt about it. And I wanted to capture those complicated shadows before I lost them. And yet the draft was nowhere near ready to what I actually wanted to ultimately say. And I realized it's too soon. You know, I have some of the first bursts of passion for this, but I don't have the perspective yet. And I needed more time. And so I would continue to go back to it while working on other things.
00:41:40
Speaker
You know, I wrote all kinds of other stuff. I wrote essays, I wrote three plays, but I'd go back to that and I'd take it out and I'd write it again and I'd recast it again, I'd start all over. I must have written 25 drafts before I found the one that worked for me and the key wasn't until, because I didn't know this in the very beginning. I hadn't even made the connection. I reread Virginia Woolf often.
00:42:08
Speaker
And it wasn't until I was rereading something about her and looking at the day of her death and realizing that it was the same day that my mom died and thinking about her and the way she ended her life and the river. And there was something about the river. And from that point, it sort of opened up all the rest of it, the way that it was structured. And so, but that took a long time and I just had to be willing
00:42:37
Speaker
to put it aside and then go back, and then go back, and then go back. And know when I, know when it wasn't finished, but then know when it was, which was hard too. The Mary Heather Noble, another essayist who I've spoke to a while ago. Well, almost two years ago, she had an essay in creative nonfiction, and she's kind of a nature writer. And she spoke of the power of the drawer.
00:43:03
Speaker
and never discarding things. Be like, you know what? This is something. It's not what I think it can be yet, but don't throw it away. Just put it in the drawer. Maybe in the case with Leithy for you, this thing isn't quite ready. He said the heat of that grief was too hot to really touch it, but it wasn't until
00:43:24
Speaker
that strike of that coincidence of rereading Virginia Woolf and finding that the death days were the same and all of a sudden, that was the key that unlocked it. But you had to have that initial patience to wait for the right moment to finish the thing and get it across the goal line. Yes, that's right. Oh, God, I love the power of the drawer. That's great. She visited campus. We had her come about a year and a half ago for one of our writers days. She talked on a panel.
00:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, she's wonderful. She had a lot to say. But I don't remember the power of the door, but it's true. And I say this to everyone I work with. Don't throw anything away. You don't know when you're going to use it, when you might come back to it. There are stories that I wrote when I first began my MFA that I thought, OK, that was just a writing exercise. I'm never going to use this again, but I did.
00:44:24
Speaker
I ended up not using the whole thing, but there was something in it that I did use. So yeah, I totally agree with that.
00:44:31
Speaker
when you start with the there's you know you you talk about the the five rivers and then there's of course the river sticks but then there's lethal which is the one where you drink from that you forget everything you're cleansed and then there's a what's that nemesign river which yes where you are remember everything in the so at what at what point did you make the conscious decision to skier the the tone of the essay towards one river or the other
00:45:01
Speaker
Oh, that's a really thoughtful question. I think the problem of memory, how it works, what it is, how we use it, what it means, has preoccupied me my whole life. And partly because I grew up in a home in which we were only permitted to remember some things and not others. And it was never spoken that way, but it was made very clear. So there were always things that were off limits.
00:45:30
Speaker
that we weren't supposed to remember. It was always like this door that we couldn't open. It was right there in the house and everyone knew it was there, but we were supposed to walk by and pretend either that it wasn't there or that it just had to stay locked. And I was always the kind of kid, if you told me I couldn't go someplace or there was a door I couldn't open, that's exactly what I wanted to do. And I would find, I would search the whole house until I found that rusty key, you know, at the bottom of my father's toolbox.
00:46:00
Speaker
And then I would go and I would open it. And so I think just having had that as a foundation for the way that I think about memory and why I think it matters, why I do think it's important, and also would have come to learn about it, which is over the years, so much research has been done about the way we store memories and about our neurochemistry and also the way that our
00:46:30
Speaker
entire body is wired in such a way that we remember memories in our body as well. And so there's a lot of research being done with people like for instance with PTSD and where those memories are stored and understanding that memory lives in a lot of different places in us. And sometimes we have to bypass our traditional ways of thinking about memory.
00:46:56
Speaker
and access it in an alternative way. And there are things there that we can discover. And once I learned that and started doing that kind of work, I found that I knew a lot more than I thought I knew. And that I could access things, not necessarily word for word, but I could access entire scenes that I thought were lost. There is so much there. And then it became almost a quest.
00:47:27
Speaker
you know, like an excavation to uncover that and to look at what it could teach me. And I think that's what made me decide it's got to be the Mina sign because I can't write about her accurately unless I remember all of these things. And the trick was to write about it in such a way that had compassion for her choice rather than condemnation of it. It's not a choice that I make.
00:47:53
Speaker
And I don't think it was the right one, but I understand it and I have compassion for it. And that took some time too.
00:47:59
Speaker
I love this idea that, you know, you had this essay kind of kicking around for a while and then it wasn't until you reread Virginia Woolf that the floodgates kind of opened. And what was that moment like when you reread that passage and how quickly did you get back to the drawer and pull this out and say, like, I gotta and, you know, what was that creative flourish like once you read and made that connection with Woolf and your mother? It was immediate.
00:48:29
Speaker
It was really interesting. It wasn't like, hi, you know, I think I should, that might be an idea. It wasn't like that at all. It was almost electrifying. It's, it felt as though I had this sudden burst of energy and I could literally feel it like in my veins. Um, I have to go and do this. I'd like now nothing else, you know, I don't care. I'm not going to, it wasn't so as extreme as I'm not going to eat.
00:48:58
Speaker
And I'm not going to speak to anyone. But it was very, very fast after that. The final, final polishing draft, of course, took some more time. But once I clued into what the structure should be, then it was immediate. And absolutely, I would say it was almost an ecstatic feeling. And you know, writers, we don't get that often. But when we do, I feel it's so important to jump on it right away. Don't wait.
00:49:28
Speaker
When that idea comes, don't wait, grab it, run.
00:49:33
Speaker
I love that you alluded to structure too. That's something I love getting into. I don't get into it as often as I'd like with people on the show, but it's so important because things can be artful that do have scaffolding in everything and that'll actually allow the art to come through in a more fluid way if you pay attention to that.
00:49:58
Speaker
How did you approach the structure of this essay and then what was the structure you had in mind and how did you manifest it and how did that help you create what you created? The original structure I had was fairly chronological. This happened, then this happened, then this happened. And I found that that simply could not represent the actual experience of memory, which is not chronological.
00:50:27
Speaker
And because memory is circular, and because we visit many times and many places during the course of a single day, our consciousness is multidimensional and simultaneous. So it's possible, without getting too esoteric here, it's possible to be in multiple time zones at once. And I wanted to get at that, that feeling that while we're doing something in our daily life, there's something else that might have happened 20 years ago,
00:50:57
Speaker
that is informing us in that moment. Or there's something that we can see that driving down the road that can trigger a flood and it can come out of nowhere and we can be consumed with it for a moment and then we can go back. But I wanted to get at that sort of this circular way that memory works and also the way that the water flows. And so thinking about the river and the way that rivers will
00:51:25
Speaker
widen and expand and they will become very powerful and there might be parts that are actually white water and then the river narrows again and then the river turns. I wanted to get this idea that we ourselves had immersed in the river and that we were following it and that there were times when we were sort of circling back and then times when we were rushing forward and that helped me figure out the structure.
00:51:51
Speaker
If you've encountered feelings of jealousy and competition among peers, like how you process that, and if you've processed it at all, or if you've experienced it all, how you go about sort of dealing with that. I think it's something a lot of people deal with, certainly me. Oh, I think everybody does. And I think anyone who says, oh, no, I've never been jealous in my life. I'm happy for you as well.
00:52:19
Speaker
full of it. No, they're full of it. Of course we do. It's human. I mean, of course we're going to feel that way. I think I wish I would have won that prize. I wish I would have been chosen to X, Y, and Z. Oh, I can actually give you a perfect example. It was when I was working with Michael Cunningham. He's a writer that I just admire very much.
00:52:45
Speaker
At one point during the workshop, he took aside two students to confer with and they came back and we were all saying, what did he say? What did he say? And, you know, it was something like, well, he said we had a lot of potential and he was thinking that maybe he could make a connection. And so for everybody else, you know, there was this moment of, oh, okay. You know, oh, why didn't he pick me? And I remember that feeling acutely and, um,
00:53:14
Speaker
feeling very sad about it. I spent a whole day sort of feeling sad about it. And then what happened is it sort of stole my enjoyment of what was happening the rest of the week. And I, I recognize that and I had to ask myself, do I want this to keep dominating my experience or do I want to go back to how much fun I was having before? Because it was, it was wonderful. And I made a conscious choice.
00:53:42
Speaker
And the other thing that helps me with it, because it comes up still, is thinking about why I do this. And I do this because I love it. First, the rest of it is gravy, and it's great. And that is maybe an evolution, just becoming more mature as a person. You know, at first that we think about, and it's natural too, because of the culture we live in, we think about prizes and
00:54:10
Speaker
We think about 30 under 30, you know? And we think about who's getting recognition and who isn't and who was the first to get an agent. But if I think more about why I do this and what my experience is writing, if I go back to how much I love it and what the joy is in finding the right word to describe something that I've been carrying around my whole life and when I find the way to describe it,
00:54:39
Speaker
There isn't anything else like that. And if, yes, of course I want it published and out there. So I was thrilled with True Story. Um, and yet I just, I remind myself why I do it and it really helps. Uh, the fact that you did it as a start and if you keep doing it long enough, you will get that. And it's hanging in there too, you know, and the hanging in there part is the hardest for a lot of the writers that I know.
00:55:06
Speaker
And that's why it's so important to have a personal practice, and not just of your writing, but to be good to yourself in your life, because it's hard what we do. And where do you feel most alive and engaged in the process? I think one of the questions that you had sent to me to think about beforehand, whether or not we got to it, was what do I like more writing or editing? Yeah, yeah.
00:55:35
Speaker
And I thought, oh, that's a good one. Because for me, a lot of the time, they're almost the same thing. And I love getting the ideas down. But I think one of my favorite things is when I go back to what I wrote, say, the day before, or the week before, and start crafting. And that is a joy for me. And I don't know what it is that I love so much about it.
00:56:05
Speaker
getting really deep down at the sentence level and finding, no, it's not that word, it's this word. There's something missing here. What is it? Maybe it's that same thing of solving the puzzle. There must be something in me that loves to do that. But it's, again, it's that thing of opening doors. I get it done, and then I've created a sort of
00:56:34
Speaker
structure but I have to fill it in and that filling in is so I find it immensely pleasurable. I could do it all day and all night.
00:56:44
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Leanne, I want to be mindful of your time. This has been a really fun and illuminating conversation to learn about you and your process to the work and your wonderful essay with True Story. Lastly, where can people find you online and get more familiar with your work if they're not already familiar with it? Through the university where I teach, there's a lot. I keep a blog, and it's the director's blog, and so there's a lot of stuff there.
00:57:14
Speaker
I do a lot of interviews with writers too on that blog and I talk about writing. They can find that on the university website, which is Bay Path University. I'm in the process actually now of putting together a new website. I'll let you know as soon as that is ready and that will gather together everything, which is a process I've been needing to do forever.
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah, nothing wrong with not being a total or being a somewhat digital recluse. I'm kind of receding from that quite a bit. I wish there was a better way to or a more, just a better way to broadcast if you have work or something to reach people than social media.
00:58:07
Speaker
I think it's a necessary evil, unfortunately, but I've been pulling back quite a bit to just put my time elsewhere. I know what you mean. I have a Twitter and it's again through the university, I use it, but it's all about writing. And so I can be found there too. I think it's Bay Path MFA, CNF. And so found there as well.
00:58:37
Speaker
And yeah, like when, when I get this organized in one place, um, I will certainly let you know. That was fun and enlightening when you say, okay.
00:58:53
Speaker
I mean, you could tell me yourself. You could very well log into your Twitter account and tweet me some of that Brendan O'Mara and at cnfpod. I'm off leash from Twitter, so I only check it at night for about 10 to 15 minutes, but I like to retweet or reply when you're cool. And you're always cool. No one's been a dick yet. Any questions, just give a shout. I'm here for you, man. What else? I don't know.
00:59:22
Speaker
Oh yeah. Link to the show on social and head over to brennanomerra.com, that's me, for show notes and to subscribe to my monthly reading list newsletter where I share my book recommendations and what you might have missed from the world of the podcast. Once a month, no spam can't beat it. Thanks again to our sponsors Goucher College as MFA in Non-Fiction as well as The Noun Anxiety.
00:59:48
Speaker
I think that's it, friend. Have the CNFing great week and we'll do it all over again in seven days time. Remember, if you can't do, say it with me. Interview. See ya.