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Episode 279: Athena Dixon on Opening Doors, Day Jobs, and the Personal Essay
227 Plays3 years ago
Athena Dixon (@AthenaDDixon) is the author of the essay collection "The Incredible Shrinking Woman."
We talk about day jobs, finding the time to write, and stringing together essays for a collection.
Sponsors: West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing and the Empathy Prize.
Social Media: @creativenonfictionpodcast on IG and @CNFPod on Twitter.
Patreon: patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Submission Reminder for Audio Magazine
00:00:03
Speaker
Hey, before we dive into the interview, I want to remind you that the submission deadline for issue 3 of the audio magazine is November 1st. The theme is Heroes. Take that football and run with it. Essays must be no more than 2,000 words. Bear in mind this is an audio essay.
00:00:23
Speaker
So pay attention to how the words roll out of your mouth. They shouldn't tumble. They should roll, man. Email your submissions with Heroes and the subject line to Creative Nonfiction, podcast at gmail.com. Come, come. Hey, and I pay writers too. That's cool.
Defining Writing Success Beyond Mainstream
00:00:41
Speaker
Dig it. What is writing success to me? Like, what can I accept? What do I want? And what don't I want?
00:00:48
Speaker
And so I never had this idea that I wanted to be a New York Times bestseller or that I wanted to necessarily have things that I write be optioned or to be a person it's always like the go-to when something happens. I'm like, I would just like to build my audience and my niche and have those people look forward to the stuff that I write.
Introduction of Athena Dixon
00:01:15
Speaker
Oooookay, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. How's it going? This week's guest is Athena Dixon, author of the essay collection, The Incredible Shrinking Woman. It is published by Split Lip Press. Great collection of linked essays that is in effect a memoir. I really like the essay collection as memoir. It's so fragmented. I like fragments.
Balancing Writing and Day Job
00:01:45
Speaker
Anywho, Athena delivered a really great talk this past Hippo Camp about cultivating a writing life around a demanding day job. And she broke it down in various ways of breaking it down, like on macro level, on micro level. We don't really unpack that here, but it was really nice to see that process. And as you know, that's something I often dig into on this podcast, balancing the day job and having a creative life.
00:02:11
Speaker
because so many of us wanna be doing creative work and wish that it was the thing that was ultimately supporting us. Some people don't, but most people, I think, we harbor that hope. But we all have all these obligations that get in the way. Some of it is bullshit, but most of it is just life, man. Fact is, most of us, or most of the people we admire,
00:02:38
Speaker
are juggling these things all the time but nobody talks about it so we're left to think about these people we admire that they're just doing the thing all day long and instagramming that shit and we're like where the hell did I go wrong so we'll dive into all that shortly but first support for the creative non-fiction podcast is brought to you by
00:03:01
Speaker
Good ol' West Virginia Wesleyan colleges. Low residency MFA in creative writing. Now in its 10th year. Hey, we're in year 9. Crazy. This affordable program boasts a low student to faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Right, Hank? Yep.
00:03:16
Speaker
Recent CNF faculty include Random Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and CNF Pod Alum. Sarah Einstein, yep. There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty include Ashley Bryant-Phillips and Jacinda Townsend, as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple. No matter your discipline, man, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit all these letters, listen to this, nfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
00:03:47
Speaker
Oh and yes, you can keep the conversation going on here on Instagram and Twitter at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram or at Brendan O'Meara on Instagram and then of course Twitter is at cnfpod at Brendan O'Meara.
00:04:04
Speaker
great place to share the show with your fellow CNF-ers. And if I see it out there and you tag the show, I am prone to giving digital fist pumps and sometimes the James Hetfield gift. It looks
Sponsorship and Empathy Prize Announcement
00:04:18
Speaker
like it might be like, don't tread on me.
00:04:22
Speaker
Uh, better yet, head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes, to this and a million other interviews, and to sign up for my monthly reading list newsletter. It goes up to 11. Rage against the algorithm, bruh. Hey, no new reviews to read this week. Sad face emoji.
00:04:40
Speaker
but realize that the literary community, especially on the level that I play at and the many others play at who are guests on this show, is fueled by kind, honest reviews left on Amazon or Goodreads for books and Apple Podcasts for the humble podcaster. If you leave a written review,
00:05:03
Speaker
I'll give you a big time shout out here and I will read it and I will say thank you. Ever want a free shout out as part of the podcast? Hey, just send me an email asking about advertising, bet on me forgetting to reply, and then rely on my feeling guilty, which I do, and you just might get a free ad read at the top of the show. Enter the Facing Project for Nonfiction, established from the publication of J.R. Jameson's memoir,
00:05:32
Speaker
Hillbilly Queer. The Empathy Prize is awarded for a book-length work that embodies connecting across differences, current events, and lifting up underrepresented voices. Submissions for the 2023 Empathy Prize are due September 30th. It's like a couple days from now. More at thefacingprojectpress.submitable.com. I don't know why I do that. It makes
Early Influences and Writing Journey
00:06:01
Speaker
me laugh.
00:06:01
Speaker
Okay, so Athena Dixon, she's a poet and essay writer. She writes some Black Panther fan fiction, which is pretty cool. She hangs out at the underscore muse underscore paper on Instagram, so it kind of reads like the muse paper, yep, yep. And at Athena D. Dixon on Twitter. You can find out more about her work and her, obviously, at athenadixon.com.
00:06:28
Speaker
Stick around for an itty bitty parting shot at the end of our interview, but for now, let's talk about the incredible shrinking woman herself, Athena Dixon.
00:06:50
Speaker
sense of how you got into how you got the writing bug as a young person and how you've been able to keep that a major part of your life to this day.
00:07:03
Speaker
So my earliest memory that I really had when it came to writing was writing what I now know as fan fiction. So as a younger person, I was an only child for a very long time. And so I was very into music and sports. And I found myself writing these little fictional pieces concerning the people that I liked and sports teams and musicians and things.
00:07:27
Speaker
And when I got to about eighth grade, my student teacher one semester told me that she thought that I wrote like Emily Dickinson. And I had no idea who that was. But she was like super, super encouraging. I was like, Oh, hey, great. I don't know who this person is. But I'm going to keep writing because you seem to like it. And so I started writing poetry. And then that kind of morphed into
00:07:49
Speaker
teachers and things making me do like presentations during assemblies. And I wrote for the school newsletter in high school. And then by the time I got to college, I was like, I might be kind of good at this. So I went to school as a magazine journalism major.
00:08:04
Speaker
And from there, I just started doing open mics and writing anything that I could. I wrote music reviews, album reviews, book reviews. I worked for newsletters, online magazines. I did open mics, poetry slams, and all of that eventually led me to Provincetown one summer in like 2005. I went there for a week and within like a
00:08:26
Speaker
three months of going there, I ended up in the MFA program. So I always stayed into writing because people thought I was good at it. And it was a way to express myself in a way that I couldn't normally. I'm generally a pretty shy person. And so it was the way that I could get things out into the world. Those first poems that I wrote, there was a 47-part poem called The Outcast.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, I was going through a lot in eighth grade. And so it was just a way to get people to understand what I was going through. And then since that was my primary means of expression, I just kept writing no matter what. What did that mean for your teacher at that formative age to say that, oh, Athena, you're really good at this, even though you didn't know who Emily Dickinson was at the time. What did that mean to you at that moment?
00:09:19
Speaker
It made me feel like I had like a little bit of a spotlight. I talk about even now as an adult, feeling invisible sometimes and very much on the outskirts of the world. And so that was one of the first times outside of my immediate family.
00:09:32
Speaker
But I can really remember somebody saying, you have this skill set and I'm going to nurture it. And so it kind of sparked this desire to keep writing. It helped me actually reach out and start reading other poets and other writers. But it also kind of sparked a little bit of a people pleaser in me.
00:09:50
Speaker
Because I always think of writing as a way to not only express, but also to guide readers. And it was the first time I was like, oh, OK. So if I put these words in a certain particular order, or this way on a page, I can make people feel things. And so all of my writing since then, in some way, has been chasing that and finding ways that I can make people feel and see things.
00:10:14
Speaker
isn't that kind of the the fun part or why a lot of us might get into it because we might read some somebody that we really like and then we start digging into all their books and we see their name on the cover of a book and we're like oh okay I know what I'm gonna get into when I when I'm reading a book
00:10:33
Speaker
a book or a poem by Brian Broome or Dave Eggers or fill in the blank and it's just like oh I want to maybe elicit that feeling that I get when I look at that name on that cover or that byline. Isn't that part of the juice for you? I know it is for me. It is.
00:10:49
Speaker
It is. It's very much like I want to have people say, oh my gosh, how does she think to like make that connection? And how does she think to put that word next to that word? Or how does she pull me from this very first paragraph and now I'm at the end and I want to go back and see where the breadcrumbs were? Like it's like a little bit of a jolt. It's the same thing you feel sometimes when you're up doing presentations. It's like you might be very, very nervous and unsure sometimes, but it's just like this small say it's like a sense of power seems kind of
00:11:19
Speaker
egotistical, but it is. It's like a little bit of a sense of power that you can manipulate words in this way. And it's something that I always look for when I'm writing. And so as you're as you've got that initial, you've got that initial bug of the writer thing, and then you say you get to Provincetown in 2005, but there's some years in between there. So what's the what was the next step for you as you were starting to cultivate, you know, your skill as a writer as you were progressing through high school and into college?
00:11:50
Speaker
I think probably the defining moment for me when it came to me wanting to be a writer, seriously, was my freshman year of college. So I've been through college three times at this point. And so my first tour through undergrad, I was on campus. I was very, very shy. It was my first time being away from home. And I tend to have people approach me and tell me, hey, I'm going to be your friend because they see me kind of hanging on the outskirts of things. And I met a poet named Kelly.
00:12:19
Speaker
And she came up to me one day. I'm not sure exactly where we were on campus. And she said, I do this open mic. I'm president of this poetry society. You should come and read. And I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm not going to come read. And she convinced me to come. And within a year or so, I was like vice president of the organization. I was reading open mics almost every week.
00:12:39
Speaker
And she was like a person who really was like, you're again, like my eighth grade teacher was like, you're good at this. You should share this. Kelly did the same thing for me when I was about 18. And she really kind of held my hand until she graduated and led me down different paths. So she got me involved in the open mics and that organization
00:12:59
Speaker
She was editor-in-chief of the Black Student Magazine on campus. When she graduated, I became the editor-in-chief. She went to Provincetown the summer before me and asked me to go. And so she was always like, here are these opportunities that I'm coming across. You should look into it. You should do this too. So as she was building her own writing path, she was like pulling me along behind her. And it's because of her that I ended up in Provincetown that summer because she was very, very influential with me actually going to that
00:13:28
Speaker
to that program because I had never heard of Provincetown before she went the summer before.
00:13:33
Speaker
That's incredible that to have someone of that nature plowing the field ahead of you, plowing the road and opening those doors and not even opening them, but actually letting you know that they're even there in the first place. So in what way, like how important, maybe you can just speak to the importance of that, but also the lesson you've learned in paying that forward and opening and showing the doors for the people coming behind you now.
00:14:00
Speaker
That is 100% the reason why I take my time to read things for people, especially fledgling writers is the main reason I'm always willing to sometimes cover the cost of events for people. It's why I'm always willing to say,
00:14:15
Speaker
hey, this opportunity is not right for me, but it might work for you. It's 100% because of her, because she had not given me the goals and the opportunities that she did. I probably wouldn't be where I am right now. It would have taken me a lot longer to get there. So because of her, I'm a lot more willing to not only be concerned about my own well-being when it comes to writing, but other people's. So I'm very much a person who feels like if you have even
00:14:45
Speaker
small grip on the publishing industry. There's still somebody behind you who doesn't have a grip at all. So your job is to maintain your spot, but also to make sure somebody else can get their grip as well. So I make that a daily thing, whether it be reposting things to my story on Instagram or
00:15:01
Speaker
emailing people particular opportunities that fit them, or, like I said, reading and editing things for people for free, or spreading the money that I can't spread to people, giving people free books, whatever it is, just to help their writing journey and to help them have that same spark that those people have given me, I'm willing to do. And it's strictly because of Kelly.
00:15:20
Speaker
That's amazing. It's such a generous act and such a generous spirit of what you're doing and that kind of energy you're putting out into the literary world, because as we know, there can be toxic jealousies and competitions.
00:15:36
Speaker
things that can really fuel it doesn't burn clean and so you doing that kind of thing it just it's putting wind in people's sails and it definitely very inspiring and I I wonder if if you've ever wrestled with the flip side of this generosity where you where you might have had maybe a more scarce mindset or maybe you never did and I bless you if you didn't
Writing Community Realities
00:16:01
Speaker
No, I'm 100% human. And it has happened. There have been times I talk a lot too about when you like demystify the idea of writing community. Because sometimes I think that we get in this position where we think, all writers support each other. And we're always super happy for each other. And we're always like passing along opportunities. That's not true. That's a lie. I get jealous. I
00:16:22
Speaker
get a little bit worrisome that if somebody gets an opportunity, I might not have the chance now because there's not that many opportunities out there. But there have been times where I've been like, and this sounds so bad, but I could pass along that thing, but I feel some kind of way today. So I'm just not going to, if they're meant to see it, they'll see it.
00:16:41
Speaker
I will say, as much as I'm human, I do that not very often, because I do feel guilty if I do do it, but it has happened. I will say that. And those are days where I have to stop myself and be like, why are you acting this way? And why are you like,
00:16:56
Speaker
feeling this particular way in this moment. And I will say it's a testament to having friends both in the writing industry and other creative fields who actually check me and who are like, Athena, your path is completely different. That's not for you, but you know what's for somebody else. So let them have it and be okay. And I'm glad that I have those kind of people can bring me back to earth when I get that way, but it does happen.
00:17:20
Speaker
Absolutely. I love talking about this. It's a theme that crops up on the show all the time because it is very natural to look over your shoulder and wonder why someone else might be who might by all objective measures seem like you're starting on the same base, but you might not realize that someone got a certain kind of an internship or maybe they've been doing this.
Transition to Personal Essays
00:17:44
Speaker
since they were like 14 years old and they just like kind of strung for the local paper when they were little and they always wanted to be a journalist and meanwhile maybe you picked it up when you were 24 so they had a 10-year head start on you and like these things you just like you don't know you don't know that story and then you're comparing yourself to them and then it just Opens up a whole can of worms and you just feel like shit about yourself all day
00:18:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that too, I always tell people like my wheelhouse at the very beginning is poetry. So I wrote fiction when I was a kid, but like when I really seriously started writing from eighth grade up until about 2011, I was a poet. I didn't write my first personal essay until 2011. And I wrote that because I couldn't figure out what to say in poetry. And so I have to stop myself sometimes and say, okay, this is not your first genre. This is very early stages of your, your
00:18:35
Speaker
creative nonfiction career. And so you need to be very aware that there are people who've been doing this and studying this, and have been practicing this for a very long time, and they deserve everything that they get. At some point, you may get there, some way you may not get there, but they have their own path and you have your own.
00:18:53
Speaker
I love what you said in your Hippocam talk where you said that there is no writer's life. There is only the writer living. And that was, I thought, so poignant. And I wonder how you arrived at that through your prism and your experience.
00:19:09
Speaker
I think the biggest part of it is it took a lot of guilt and self shame on my part to get to that point. And that's because I allowed myself to wholesale buy into the idea if I wasn't writing every day, if I hadn't hit certain milestones by a certain time, if I didn't have certain publications under my belt, if certain people weren't talking about me or interested in me, that meant I had failed. And it took a lot of introspection to say no,
00:19:38
Speaker
you're still successful in your own ways. You still have accomplished these things. You're still a writer. You're a writer who doesn't have as much time. You're a writer who has a regular day job, but you're still writing actively every day. So there's no cookie cutter life that you could possibly have. And you honestly wouldn't be happy probably in the idealistic version of a writer's life that I have in my head. So it really took a lot of
00:20:03
Speaker
self-reflection, a lot of self-talk and journaling and writing and tough conversations with my friends to really suss out what I really needed and what kind of writer I actually was or who I am. Yeah, you also said too that you're not going to be Roxanne Gay, nor do you want to be someone who is that
00:20:24
Speaker
visible and you know that much of a sometimes a lightning rod depending on you know whatever she feels like saying however beautifully put she says it so I mean that takes a lot of reflection and honesty with yourself to be like you know what like I used to think maybe I wanted that but honestly I I can't I can't stomach it so I mean how did you arrive at that
00:20:48
Speaker
I will say this, if I could write at that consistent level and have the confidence in that writing that she does, I would be.
00:20:58
Speaker
gloriously happy. Yeah, but I realized from seeing her on Twitter and how people interact with her and other writers of that caliber that I my personality in my heart in my mind are not built to be able to withstand that. So I had to make a decision I can't normally put myself in a situation where I can't even some days be an actual human being who has thoughts that fluctuate, because people are waiting for you to say something people are waiting for you to have a misstep. And it
00:21:26
Speaker
kind of dulls your own personal shine, because you kind of belong to the world. And because of that, I had to decide like, what is writing success to me? Like, what can I accept? What do I want? And what don't I want? And so I never had this idea that I wanted to be
00:21:41
Speaker
a New York Times bestseller or that I wanted to necessarily have things that I write be optioned or to be a person it's always like the go-to when something happens. I'm like, I would just like to build my audience and my niche and have those people look forward to the stuff that I write, but also be able to maybe transition out of my day job. And if I can do those things, then I'm happy with my writing career. But it took a lot of kind of dismantling
00:22:11
Speaker
what writing success is, I think sometimes as creatives, especially in the publishing industry, we get this set of metrics like thrown on the desk in front of us. And we're told if you don't meet these certain criteria, if you don't have an agent by this time, if you don't have a big name editor by this time, if you don't have a book that sells to a big five publisher by this date, or these things don't happen, then you're a failure.
Handling Rejection in Writing
00:22:32
Speaker
Like it took a lot of like sifting through that and figuring out what parts of those things I wanted and which parts weren't important to me.
00:22:40
Speaker
And how did you come out from the shadow of maybe the requisite shame that sometimes comes up to the surface when you're not necessarily meeting these metrics, these very subjective metrics that we tend to hold ourselves to? What did that process look like for you?
00:23:02
Speaker
Am is still in process. It just depends on the days. Some days I'm really like, I have to get all these things checked off of my list. And if not, then I'm a failure. But really it was making very definitive goals for myself. For the last two years on my list of things I wanted to accomplish is I wanted to find an agent. And I have not done that in the last two years. But I let myself have the grace to understand that it's going to happen. And also allowing myself to grace to understand that people get rejected by
00:23:31
Speaker
a lot of agents before they get one. And I'm not special when it comes to that. I can't have this expectation in my head that things are going to work out on the first try or the 10th try for me. It also became with me having a very clear monetary goal in my head that if I don't want to be this big name writer and I don't want to have these particular advances and things, then what do I need to be happy with a writing career?
00:23:58
Speaker
And then understanding, too, that writing for me doesn't have to hit certain metrics because a writing career for me isn't just writing. It also includes editing and publishing at some point. So kind of sussing those things out and making actual plans and lists of what I want, it gives me a way to be able to check things off and to anchor me when I start feeling like a little bit lost in the world.
00:24:22
Speaker
Now, I love talking day job stuff too, and your Hippocam talk really hinged on that, about how to live that writerly, not writerly life, but live a life as a writer when you have this thing that takes 40 or 50 hours of your physical time, not to mention the sort of bandwidth it takes to gear up for the job and to come down from the job, which is another several hours a week. So how have you...
00:24:47
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So how have you cultivated your love of writing and being a contributor to this amidst this job that is the thing that is subsidizing the thing you really want to do?
Day Job and Creative Writing Balance
00:25:03
Speaker
I do my best to keep a buffer between those two worlds. Generally, I create like an hour, half hour to an hour between work and when I start to do my creative works at night, just as a way to like transition. But the biggest part is convincing myself to give
00:25:21
Speaker
the same level of dedication and respect that I give to my day job that I do to my creative work. Because sometimes it's very easy to say, I've worked this full eight to 10 hour day and now I'm very tired and I don't want to take the time to write or outline or edit, but to stop myself and say, okay, Athena, you're tired today, but you have a half hour to write, set a timer. I found like I think I mentioned in the Hippo Camp talk about,
00:25:49
Speaker
joining a writers group where we have set writing sprints three times a week. So if I do nothing else during the week because I'm so drained by that job that I actually take the time to write for those two hours three times a week or one hour out of that two hours or whatever it may be. So it's really convincing myself to have a buffer between those two worlds and not mixing them as much as possible and then also making myself
00:26:14
Speaker
give the same kind of dedication that I do to my day job for my creative life, which is a struggle some days, I will say. Some days I just cannot balance it, but I do my best to at least do something creative every day, even if it's not writing.
00:26:29
Speaker
with my little micro-podcast that I do occasionally throughout the year. It's called Casualty of Words, and it's a writing podcast for people in a hurry. And every episode is usually about less than three minutes long. And I did a short little series. When I'm in a run of doing it, I do it daily. And I did a short little series called The End of Job Shaming. And we have this idea that a lot of the people that we admire in our heads, they're just doing this thing where they're
00:26:58
Speaker
Oh, they're just cranking out work and they're supporting themselves on this amazing creative art in this writing. And then, you know, here we are, we look at ourselves and we're like, oh, shit, I got to I got to punch the clock for this. And it's I'm working this, that, the other very long hours. And I don't know how else, how am I going to do this? And then we sometimes shame ourselves because we've got this thing that helps pay the bills and all that stuff.
00:27:23
Speaker
So I wonder maybe you, how do you make sure that you're not shaming yourself, that you've got this thing that does support the work you want to do, even if it is taking time away from the work you really want to do?
00:27:38
Speaker
Um, it's kind of two pronged and the first prong is because of my father. So when I took my job that I currently have, I took my job in 2009 and I've been with the same, the same position ever since 2009. And when I took the job, I was transitioning from being an adjunct. So I got out of grad school in 2008 in January and by
00:27:59
Speaker
the end of January essentially I was teaching, and I was driving between three universities in South Jersey and I was teaching comp 101 and comp 102 intro to lit, and I had this illusion in my head that I was going to be teaching creative writing and it was going to be wonderful and great, and it was not.
00:28:15
Speaker
And I took my job strictly for money to be 100% honest and for benefits, like I had to be able to survive. And my father told me when I took my job, he's like, I know that this is not what you went to school for. I know this is not what you want to do. But you use this money to live the life that you want to live. You stockpile your vacation time and you take time off every year to go do a workshop or to travel or to write or do whatever else. You use that money to buy the books you want. And that
00:28:43
Speaker
kept me going for quite a few years. Like I do that still, I take all my vacation time and I like hoard it so I can have like a week or two off every year to go to a workshop or a conference or something like that. But I will also say that the second prong is a very practical prong, which is I am an adult human being that lives in the United States of America, and I have to pay rent.
00:29:07
Speaker
and car payments and car insurance, and I like to eat, and I like to have clothing. And it's just a very practical thing. And once I got past a certain age, I was like, I have lived the starving artist's life, and I was probably more productive then. However, I like to have a stability in my income, and so I'm going to have to figure out a way to do both. And it really is just a basic human need to be able to survive.
00:29:33
Speaker
that I had to take this job. I will say that there has been like some shame where I feel like, well, technically you can go get a job that is in the publishing industry or you can go teach. But realistically, I don't think people talk enough about, especially if you've had a regular day job for a while, transitioning from that regular day job into a publishing industry job.
00:29:58
Speaker
that the money that those jobs sometimes pay is markedly less than what you can make outside of the industry. And they may be difficult to get if you haven't had internships or you haven't had experiences in the publishing industry that are paid, it could be very difficult to transition. And so I had to get to a point where I had to make a decision like, do you want the stability in the retirement plan? Or do you want to be able to say,
00:30:23
Speaker
I am XYZ in the publishing industry. And for me, the title in the publishing industry wasn't as important as being able to take care of myself. So I had to make the practical decision.
00:30:34
Speaker
Well, also being in the publishing industry, too, can be this shadow career that might make you feel kind of bitter and angry about doing your own kind of creative work, because you might be seeing some other people just on a bad day or even on a good day. You'd be like, how is this happening? How is that person getting that?
00:30:55
Speaker
Every bit is capable, but here I am, I have to cultivate these people and bring them along. And I think it might, in a way, pollute the work, even though you might be in that ecosystem. But if you can have something that is on a completely different set of train tracks, at least there is separation, and then you can come to your work more refreshed.
00:31:15
Speaker
Yes. I think, too, I'm like, and I think, honestly, working outside of the publishing industry, as much as it can be a strain and a stress, I get to talk to people in my day jobs that I probably would never talk to if I worked in a different industry, and just the level of people from any kind of background you can think of, in any kind of personality type you can think of, and people who have like, who are like the most educated people you will ever meet in the world to people who
00:31:44
Speaker
are functionally illiterate but are like some of the most intelligent and funny people you will ever talk to. So I get this wide strata of people that I deal with in my day job that helps me then write because then it sparks a memory in my mind or it makes me think of a connection that I forgot about or it like unlocks some kind of core memory and then it makes me want to write. And I think that that's like the advantage of having an outside job outside of like the monetary and the stability and stuff like that.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's just a blessing and a curse, I will say that. Yeah. It sounds like based on how you wrote about your father and the incredible shrinking woman and how you just spoke about him, your dad sounds like a pretty amazing guy.
Life Lessons and Self-Expression
00:32:29
Speaker
He is, he is. He is like, very much a person who he'll let me do what I want to do. He doesn't tell me like this is a bad idea. But then later on have like, well, I didn't know that was the best idea. But what did you learn type conversations. So he's very much like, I'm going to let you go your own way, even if I don't always understand it. But he always has like the best advice. If you ask directly, sometimes I don't, I'll say that.
00:32:57
Speaker
What's a great piece of advice he's given you that you still use to this day? Um, wow. I think probably his best advice is to like, don't pigeonhole myself. He is always giving me like lessons along the same line of
00:33:15
Speaker
you might not be doing exactly what you want to do. However, all the experiences you've had around the thing that you want to do shows everybody in the world that you're capable of doing exactly what you want to do. He's like, because you've had such a multitude of experiences that it proves that you can do just about anything, that people will be a fool not to take you up or take you into their particular organization or a project.
00:33:39
Speaker
And in the book, one of the many lines that I've highlighted throughout, one really stood out to me too, and I think this is congruent with the theme of the entire collection, was that you wrote, I've always felt invisible, so accurately telling the story of me starts with a disappearing act.
00:33:59
Speaker
And I just want to maybe burrow into that a bit. And you brought it up earlier in our conversation already about feeling invisible and dissolving into the walls. So maybe you can take us to the invisibility you feel and maybe gravitate towards. I think part of it has to do with just my personality. When I have these kind of conversations with my friends and my sister,
00:34:24
Speaker
I always say that my invisibility starts because I'm very low maintenance. And so sometimes when you're low maintenance and you're not a lot of trouble, people have this assumption that you can just take care of yourself. And so their focus shifts elsewhere. And I think because that is
00:34:40
Speaker
kind of a common thing. Sometimes I'm very self sufficient, I'm generally pretty stable and dependable. So I've gotten used to people kind of being like, Oh, yeah, you're, you're here. And, and existing in that way. But I think part of it too, is
00:34:56
Speaker
self-fulfilling. I have learned, for better or for worse, to morph into what I think people want me to be or what I think they need from me. And so parts of myself have always like faded to the background.
00:35:11
Speaker
And sometimes it's very difficult to bring myself back to the forefront when that happens. And that's not because anybody has particularly told me it had to be these things, but I've always felt like this particular person needs this from me or this particular situation calls for this for me to be quieter, for me to disappear, for me not to say anything. And then it becomes like this shell game. And sometimes there's nothing under the shell if you do it too many times.
00:35:39
Speaker
And talk a little bit about your friend Greta, who is someone you really kind of looked up to as a personality and certainly as a friend when you were growing up.
00:35:50
Speaker
It's so interesting, our moms worked together and they were really, really close friends and still are. And because our moms are like close friends is how we met. And she was just like always the coolest person that I knew. She ran track, she was very athletic and she was like both popular but not like arrogantly popular. She was just like a solid person to have like connections to everybody. And so I always looked at her like, how can I be like,
00:36:17
Speaker
that confident and that cool and be able to like still be holy myself. She's probably one of the first people that I met who was like herself, like holy. And even now we're not, we don't talk very often because we're completely different parts of our lives, but she's still like that person. Like I see her via social media and I'm like, wow, she's still like this super cool, confident person.
00:36:42
Speaker
And I'm still, some days, trying to figure out how she does it. And it's just because I think she was one of the people who, despite her ability to be super popular and athletic, she was very much willing to be chatty with me. I looked at one of my old report cards a couple of weeks ago, and on the report card, they wrote, Athena is chatty in the halls with Greta. So she was always willing to talk to me and be friendly with me, even if I felt completely like an outsider.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, in that same essay, you wrote that finding my blackness among my own self-doubt was paramount. And I was wondering maybe you could talk about that self-doubt that you felt at this particular time in your life.
Identity and Community Challenges
00:37:25
Speaker
I think part of it was because I never really felt like I had a place in any particular group. So I'm from a little town in the Midwest. And it's a situation where like, you're very much black to the people who are not black. And then depending on what you like and what you don't like, you may or may not be black enough for the black people in that same group.
00:37:45
Speaker
as I always felt like I was trying to find a place where I fit. So I wasn't necessarily athletic. I was an orchestra. And even there were a couple of other black people in orchestra, like they were like Greta, she was an orchestra, but she was also an athlete. And my friend Cedric was also an orchestra, but he was also a multi sport athlete. So like they had these other like places that they fit. And so my mom and dad are also very popular. And there was kind of like this weird space where I felt like I didn't fit
00:38:12
Speaker
anywhere. And then externally, I had people who actually said those things to me and like, you're not black enough. And I think I took those took that to heart more than I should have. So I was always trying to find a place that like I actually felt comfortable and that felt like I could be like, all of these things that made me me. And I didn't really find that until I got to college. And then I met a plethora of black people who I was like, Oh, we have
00:38:41
Speaker
a common base. And no matter what else exists in that base, we're like, still a community of people. So it was very difficult. It just was always like this constant like, shifting of self until I found exactly where I felt comfortable.
00:38:58
Speaker
And you're right, too. I believe the essay is The Incredible Shrinking Woman, where you're on an airplane and the woman in front of you, she reclines the seat back on you, and it just kind of cracks open this whole meditation of what it means to take up space and to try to take up as little space as possible. Meanwhile, someone in front of you is just very open about, I'm going to take this space.
00:39:23
Speaker
or maybe you can just talk to that because that was, it's the title essay of the entire collection. I think part of it is always the background of that essay is I wrote it on the plane in real time, especially as it was happening. That's awesome. Because I was very angry and I was like, I can't say anything. So I pulled out my phone and started typing the essay because I was just so, so mad. But I think it really, really opened up for me with this idea that I've spent
00:39:51
Speaker
so much of my life shrinking down in order to not cause trouble, and to not cause waves and ripples to not be a stereotype. And that was one of the reasons why I didn't want to say anything on the plane, because I knew how that could be flipped, this idea of like, I'm six feet tall, I'm not a small person. And
00:40:10
Speaker
I can only imagine if I would have said something, then it could split to like the angry black woman on the plane and then it becomes a whole thing. That essay kind of had me, it had me start really thinking about like, how have I like shrunken myself down so small?
00:40:26
Speaker
for people who don't care. I'm pretty sure she didn't care that she was reclining the seat back on to me. She didn't care about jostling me. She didn't care about her coat coming through the seat. She didn't care about her hair over the headrest. I was spending so much time being worried about what she would think about me and what people on the plane would think about me that I was like, I'm going to sit here. I was flying from Philly to
00:40:50
Speaker
Oregon, I didn't eat the entire flight because I was like, I don't want to be like the fat person on the plane eating and people like looking at me and I don't want to make noise because she's making me uncomfortable. And none of these people cared about me. And so it made me really investigate like, why am I so willing to like shrink myself down and to like, hide for people who do not care? Like what's the worst that could happen if I move?
00:41:15
Speaker
Some days I figured it out, some days I haven't. But that was like the catalyst. It's like, what am I doing? Why am I really making myself so small for nothing? There's nothing to gain by doing this. And at what point do you realize that you have an essay collection on your hand that spans so many different themes and is so raw and vulnerable in certain places that it delves into relationships and sex and your divorce
00:41:45
Speaker
this, this, this shrinking is on the plane and not wanting to take up that space and not wanting to disturb these people who wouldn't ordinarily give you another, you know, a thought of their time. And so I just wonder at what point do you realize you've got something here that can form something bigger?
00:42:04
Speaker
probably after I wrote the title essay, and that was probably about the midway point of pulling things together. And that was because I was starting to think about the essays that I had written. The original manuscript had honestly every essay that I had written from 2010 or 2011 to 2019 in it.
00:42:27
Speaker
And I started to like take things out and call things and like start really thinking about what I was looking at. And I had this idea in my head. I'm like, all of the things are still left in this manuscript. Ever I've taken out kind of the dead weight is one of two things. It's this very hopefulness and this big giant world that I wanted to create for myself and these expectations that I had. And then that kind of
00:42:50
Speaker
core shrinking that happened along that path. So like there are essays in there like the essay about playing hide and seek in the money field with my college friends. This is like buoyant and full of like hope and we're having so much fun and it kind of ends with us walking and the group of us is getting smaller and smaller until we get to the
00:43:10
Speaker
to the dorm. And then you have an essay like karaoke, which is about me having a fun drunken night in Philadelphia with my friends. But in between those kind of two buffers, there's like this shrinking, like I had this expectation that marriage was supposed to be like that and that got shrunken down and destroyed.
00:43:29
Speaker
And I had the idea that sex in whatever form it came in was supposed to be this magical, beautiful thing. And, and there's a couple of essays in there to show it clearly is not. It was very romanticized in my head. And then you have like essays on the plane where like,
00:43:44
Speaker
in that essay I'm traveling to a writing workshop. And I can't even concentrate on the beauty of that because I'm so concerned about what people think. So everything was either this set of buoyant expectations. And then by the time we get to the end, everything is shattered and broken. And I think that's why, too,
00:44:05
Speaker
I was very happy for my editor. She switched the ordering of the book. So the book ends on not a neat note. It ends with things still need to be repaired because all of this stuff is still in progress.
00:44:19
Speaker
And that leads into the thing I wanted to ask you next was because these things aren't necessarily tied, they're thematically tied together in a lot of ways, but they could move around in the book. So the structure of the book can be an amorphous, which is kind of fun. So what was that process like for you as you were looking to move these things around to have the most sort of impact as a collection, if you will?
00:44:48
Speaker
I think that I'm very glad, like I said, for my editor because my first thought was everything should be perfectly chronological.
Essay Collection Structure and Themes
00:44:55
Speaker
That's how I submitted the book. It makes sense in terms of telling the story.
00:45:03
Speaker
The reason why I didn't write like a traditional narrative was because I don't think of my life in that way. And I don't think of like, I think of like, highlights and lowlights in my life. And I didn't want to write a narrative in a way that I had to like, fill in swaths of time or had to like, find bridges between all of the things that happened in the collection, because those things are frankly boring and not
00:45:26
Speaker
interesting enough to include in a book, like nobody cares about that stuff. And I believe they weren't important to me. So when we started the editorial process, we were starting to look at like, okay, so what pieces are connected? And then how do we move through time? And are we moving through emotion versus moving through chronological time? Are things too neatly tied up at the end of the book? And is that what you want? Is that your intention? Like leaving it in a chronological order, it ended with karaoke. That was the original ending essay.
00:45:55
Speaker
And it was just a little bit too neat. Like, yes, I moved to Philadelphia and yes, I have friends and things are good, but also they're not always good. And so that's why we made the essay, Depression is a Pair of Panties be the Last. And so it became more about like a kind of like a wave of emotion. And that's really how the last like 11 years of my life has been. Like it's these highs and lows. And so that's what we ended up doing when we put the final collection together.
00:46:26
Speaker
And you write frequently about this notion of wearing masks and learning how to wear masks. And how has that manifested itself over the course of the book, but also your life? I think that's probably the best thing that's come out of the book, because the majority of my life I've always said, OK, these are the people that I'm supposed to be, and then these are the people that interact with certain people.
00:46:55
Speaker
a big sister to my sister and I'm a daughter to my mom and dad and I'm a friend to certain people in certain ways. And I'm always like shifting my face depending on how I'm interacting or who I'm interacting with. I mean, people even call me different names, like I have so many nicknames depending on the person. And so it was always like this game where I felt like I have all this like turmoil and
00:47:19
Speaker
energy in my chest and I can't fully express it to any one person because I have put myself in this very rigid box of who I'm supposed to be to them. And so the beauty of the book outside of being able to write and get all that stuff off of my chest is that people who only knew me in one particular facet or behind a particular mask now know more of the story
00:47:43
Speaker
And that's been the best part of putting the book out is that I've had people come to me and be like, I had no idea any of that stuff happened to you, or I had no idea this is what you were going through at that time. I thought you were just your normal self. And I'm like, I wasn't, but the mask was there. So you thought that I was OK, but I wasn't. Or you thought that this particular thing wasn't under the surface. But it really kind of exposed for myself and for a lot of people in my life
00:48:11
Speaker
that there's like this fracture beneath the mask. And a lot of people have been like, don't wear it anymore. Like you don't have to be okay all the time for us. So. Yeah. It's kind of like what you said earlier about writing was a way that you could kind of express what was going on, even if you couldn't necessarily outwardly express it. So this book in a way was kind of a passport for other people into your, into what you're really feeling most of the time.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yes. And too, writing some of this stuff, I even find myself doing it now, to be honest. There are certain things that I write that I may not share in the same way that I would share other stuff because I don't want certain people to read it. There's a piece that I had come out this year that I'd never shared in a place where I know the majority of my family could see it because I don't know how some of them would take it. And I don't want them to be upset. And so I'm not ready for them to read it yet.
00:49:08
Speaker
giving more people a greater view, but I still have a little bit of hesitation when it comes to certain things. Now, you've got a wide swath of writing experience and you've done the fan fiction. I think you've even done like Black Panther fan fiction, if I recall, from the book. Yes. Yeah. So you've got that. You've got the poetry. You've got the essays. At this point, where do you feel most alive? What sandbox is your favorite?
00:49:37
Speaker
right now essays um i am
00:49:41
Speaker
deep into writing my next collection. And it's different than the current book, but it's exciting in a way because it involves research and it's written a little bit differently. And it's been my whole focus. I've really not written anything outside of the essay collection, like I haven't written any fan fiction, I haven't written poetry. I wrote a novel draft last summer. I haven't really touched that since. I've just been writing essays and it's like the thing I've been most obsessed about.
00:50:11
Speaker
I love reported or heavily researched essays. Those are some of my favorite things to read. I'm so excited. I've been researching everything from parasocial relationships to deprivation tanks to Elisa Lam and Joyce Carol Vincent and the leftover women of China and all these different iterations of loneliness and disconnect and crafting this new collection. I'm so excited.
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah. Now, let's see, as I kind of, I apologize, I forgot to prime the pump for you on this, but I like to end these conversations by asking the guests for a recommendation of
Recommended Writing Tools
00:50:51
Speaker
some kind. And that can be anything from a book to a pair of socks to a brand of coffee. And I forgot to prime the pump for you, but I'm going to ask you anyway, because maybe you'll have something that comes to the forefront of your mind.
00:51:03
Speaker
So I'll just extend that to you, Athena. What might you recommend out there for the listeners?
00:51:12
Speaker
I would recommend for, I think I recommended this at Hippocamp for keeping track of like sources and images and links and things for works in progress, MilaNote. You can create these beautiful like mood boards that have all of your like links and pictures and articles on one spot that are actually clickable. And that way you don't have to have 70,000 bookmarks everywhere. It's just a really good organizational tool. And I will always and forever
00:51:41
Speaker
suggested people get a subscription to some kind of music streaming service, specifically Spotify. And I would recommend on Spotify, the things they didn't teach you in history class podcast, especially if you're a person who's just interested in just weird and like interesting historical facts and stories and usually knows it's like jumping off points for writing any kind of poetry or essays.
00:52:08
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. And where can people find you online, Athena? I'm on Twitter at Athena D. Dixon, and I am on the Instagram as the Muse Paper, and my website is athenadixon.com.
00:52:24
Speaker
Nice. And I believe you host a podcast with your friend. Is that right? I do. I'm the co-host of the New Books and Poetry podcast via the New Books Network. So we interview poets about their current collections and their writing journeys.
00:52:40
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Athena, this was so great to get to talk to you at length about your path through the morass that is a riding life and get to unpack a bit about your incredible collection of The Incredible Shrinking Woman. So thanks so much for hopping on the podcast and for carving out the time and being just such a generous person in this community. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.
00:53:07
Speaker
Hey, do you have a good time? The show is partly made possible by the incredible cohort of members at Patreon.com. Building up the Patreon conference grants you access to transcripts in the audio magazine and some coaching. It helps pay for podcast hosting, which is several hundred dollars a year to make sure the backlog doesn't disappear on you.
00:53:31
Speaker
Your dollars also go into the pockets of writers who contribute to the magazine, so visit patreon.com slash cnfpod and shop around, see what you like, and know that you're helping support the community and the podcast at large. You might also need someone to edit and coach up your work. I liken this to when you need a personal trainer, someone to hold you accountable, someone to keep you on pace, on track,
00:53:59
Speaker
Check your form. Don't round your back when you're deadlifting and to see things you can't see. So if you're ready to level up, I'd be honored to help you get where you want to go. So just email me and we can start a dialogue.
00:54:15
Speaker
Hey, thanks to Athena for coming on the show to talk about her work and day jobs and job shaming and jealousy and all that fun stuff that we like to dig into on this show. It was great talk. Also, thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing for the support. And make sure you go check out the facingprojectpress.submitable.com and see if maybe you have some work worth submitting to the Empathy Prize.
00:54:42
Speaker
Casualty of Words, the writing podcast for people in a hurry that I produce will be starting up again soon for volume four. The episodes are usually no longer than two to three minutes. They probably take longer to download than to listen to. Anyway, I was thinking the other day about how my 24-year-old self would likely be very upset with my 41-year-old self. But when I boil that down, especially now, it's like, well, what do you want? If you could wave a magic wand and like, poof, it.
00:55:11
Speaker
Whatever it is happens. What would that be? I honestly don't know the answer to that question. And therein lies the problem. I think I'd want this show to reach its smallest viable audience. That would grant me freedom to pursue the creative work that I want to do, but always feel like it's not self-indulgent. That's the wrong word.
00:55:40
Speaker
but almost like you don't have the time or the bandwidth to do it because you have all these other obligations.
00:55:47
Speaker
Well, so what would that be in terms of smallest viable audience? I'm thinking likely 20,000 subscribers or so. I don't know. That seems like a good number. I don't know how many subscribers there are because you just don't know those numbers, believe it or not, for a podcast. But to hit that metric, if I were ball parking, probably need about 19,000 more to recruit. That's all. You know, that's it.
00:56:11
Speaker
And I know they're out there. I just need to do a better job of putting this thing in front of them. I think you've probably heard me say a million times that it's like having an apple orchard and expecting people to just be driving by on the road and be like, oh, look, there's apples.
00:56:32
Speaker
But you need to, if you make and grow great apples, you have to bring them to the market, to the farmer's market. And you might even have to advertise and let people know that you're there. And then you have a nice farm stand with all these apples, because that's where all the apple buyers go. So you're like, oh, okay, I got to go to them and say, look, look at these apples. Goodwill hunting comments are welcome.
00:57:00
Speaker
Anyway, point being is without concrete singular thing in mind, you're walking east and west at the same time and soon enough there's more time behind you than ahead of you, then you start to panic and get a tightness in your chest that you suspect is just a panic attack. But as you feel your heart swell to about three times its size, you're thinking that maybe it's something far worse than a panic attack.
00:57:24
Speaker
When the dust settles, you're like, I'm going to watch the making of Tenet and then maybe an hour of Tenet wondering if all the pieces really fit together or if you've just been hoodwinked by the Christopher Nolan industrial complex. But then you're equally inspired because the guy never went to film school. He just made movies, which gets to another point, man. If you want to be a filmmaker, you just make films. You want to be a writer, do writing on and on and on.
00:57:49
Speaker
We don't need more degrees. We don't necessarily need more validation. What we need is action. So with that, stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.
00:58:20
Speaker
you