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Episode 485: Tensions and Textures with Poet Patrycja Humienik
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"God, I feel like I'm still enduring that, like it's this sort of ongoing thing where I'm not sure I ever if I'll ever get to a place where I feel like my work and ambitions for the work and daydreams about writing and art-making ever meet my taste," says Patrycja Humienik.
For Ep. 485 we've got Patrycja Humienik. She’s a poet and her debut collection is We Contain Landscapes and it is published by Tin House. Patrycja is the daughter of Polish immigrants and is a writer, editor, and teaching artist. You can follow her on the gram @jej_sen.
So Patrycja and I had nice little jam sesh about:
- Trusting the path
- The Magic of Revision
- Weekly Writing Rituals with her Work Wife
- Tension and Textures
- And writing without the pressure of publication
Some really rich stuff. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, that rag, Gulf Coast, Poetry Society of America and many others. She works between borders: of disciplines, language, body, art activism, conflict/transformation. She’s a true artist, man. You can learn more about her at www.patrycjasara.com.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Importance of Online Reviews
00:00:00
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Hey, it's still August. CNFers and the frontrunners striding into the dog days of summer and getting nice texts and emails. The book being out three months now.
00:00:12
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And if you can, turn those texts and emails into online reviews, please. I'm not going to go read them. I haven't looked at Amazon or anything. I don't know how many are there. I don't know the makeup of
Audio Magazine Issue 4 Announcement
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Speaker
them. I just know they matter.
00:00:24
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And guess what? The Audio Magazine is coming back. Issue 4. Call for submissions. The theme is codes. The Mandalorian and his kind live by a simple code. Always punctuated by saying, this is the way.
00:00:41
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What codes do you live by? What codes were you at one time or another told to live by? do you admire codes in singular devotion or do you feel unfairly shackled to a way of life? Has a code led you to the right path or down the wrong?
00:00:55
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Essays should be no longer than 2,000 words, which is roughly a 15-minute read. Bear in mind that in the end, these are audio essays. Write accordingly. Email submissions to me with codes in the subject line to creative nonfictionpodcast at gmail.com.
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Original, previously unpublished
Introduction to the Creative Nonfiction Podcast
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work only. Please, deadline October 31st, 2025. There is cash on the line, so send me your best fully formed pieces and consider becoming a patron to help put money in the coffers that helps put money in the pockets of writers.
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She said something like, you know, if Bart Simpson had a realistic nose, like that'd be terrifying.
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Oh man, I've been real lazy lately. Hey, but hey, I'm not known for a great work ethic. It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I talk to primarily writers about the art and craft of telling true stories, tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, yada, yada, yada.
Guest Introduction: Patrizia Homunik
00:01:56
Speaker
I'm Brendan O'Mara. Listen, I'm not happy about it either.
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Speaker
For episode 485, man, we're getting close to 500. It's Patrizia Homunik. She's a poet, and her debut collection is We Contain Landscapes.
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Speaker
And it's published by Tin House, Portland-based. Patrizia is the daughter of Polish immigrants and is a writer, an editor, and a teaching artist. You can follow her on the gram. I'm just spell it.
00:02:24
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At J-E-J underscore S-E-N. Yep, just do that. Type that in and you can follow her.
Promotions: Newsletters and Patreon
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All this for bona fides in a sec. Show notes of this episode and more at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, there.
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You can peruse hot blogs, tasteful nudes, and sign up for my two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm and Pitch Club. Got a flood of new subs after issue three.
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let's keep it Let's keep it going. Let's keep doing it Going to have one with Cassidy Randall coming up and Justin Heckert and more. Maybe book pitches, agent pitches, radio pitches, doc film pitches.
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Yeah, you thought I might have just been writing. No, no. And it'll never cost you a dime. All I ask is for your permission for your email address. I will never spam because platform is currency.
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Both are first in the month. No spam, like just said. Can't beat them. And you can also elect to check out patreon.com slash cnfpod to throw some dollar bills into the cnfpod coppers, which helps with the audio magazine.
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But you can also earn some face time with me, if you dare. Sometimes it's just nice to talk things through. Check it out, friend. Helps keep the lights on here at cnfpodhq and cnfpod.
00:03:38
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Damn it. There they go again. the lights just flickered. Shit.
Writing Themes and Challenges
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So Patrizia and I had a nice jam session. Man, that's really fun saying her name. I really like that. Trusting the Path, The Magic of Revision, Weekly Writing Rituals with Her Work Wife.
00:03:57
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tension and textures, and writing without the pressure of publication. Some really rich stuff. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, that rag, Gulf Coast, Poetry Society of America, and many others.
00:04:09
Speaker
She works between borders of disciplines, language, body, art, activism, conflict, transformation. She's a true artist, man. You can learn more about her at www.pub.com.
00:04:24
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dot com p a t r y c j a a r a ah com or just keep listening to learn more parting shot of ridding oneself of all the fucks so cue up that montage producer kevin
00:04:46
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The writing part is where the magic is for me. My students, the kids these days. you know, there's a difference between losing and being a loser. I either work on it or I allow it to torture me for a really long time. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:11
Speaker
Sometimes the fun jumping off point, be it poetry or memoir, essay, narrative journalism, is just getting a sense of the writers or a piece of work that kind of lit you up and turned the world from like black and white into color that made you want to pick up the pen in the first place and then dive into your particular genre of choice. So like for you, like who and what might that have been?
00:05:36
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Hmm.
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I love when I've heard variations of this question, how different answers will pop up in my mind. The thing that came up right away for me was this poem by E.E. Cummings, who I can't say is like even one of my favorite poets or someone that I extensively dug into, but when I was like,
00:05:58
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13 or something, I encountered this poem by E.E. Cummings called Since Feeling is First. And it was such a sensual poem. it has such a play with punctuation and capitalization as He's so known for just wild things were happening in that poem.
00:06:15
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And it was in school, I think. And i I have this vague memory of people being really troubled by other students, feeling kind of stressed out by the wildness of this written piece and trying to figure it out and having this strong feeling like,
00:06:30
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ooh, there's something I like resonate with here and I'm not really worried about the things that I don't get or understand. I'm like really intrigued by that mystery and then the wildness of the punctuation and like a single parentheses, I think, and part of it that isn't ever closed. All of that in my mind as a young person was just thrilling and I think gave me an insight into or the sort of uh-oh feeling of like, well I might be really into this writing thing ah really early on. And I think even earlier than that, though, I was exposed to poetry real young because I was going to a Polish Saturday school. My parents immigrated from Poland and I had to go to school like every day of the week. And I was having to memorize poems like really young. So I think the genesis is probably earlier than that memory, but that E.E. Cummings poem comes to mind.
00:07:25
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You saying that like, u oh kind of like the the bug bit you in a way that it just it doesn't relent. It just has you in its jaws. It's so I love that you brought that up because i was listening to an interview with Richard Russo and I ah he had this quote. I wrote it down in my notebook and this is very apropos.
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And a he said, you know, that's the thing about art that a lot of people don't understand is that when you're bitten by the bug, it generally happens at least a decade before you're good enough to do anything about it, anything productive.
00:07:58
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And I just when you hear somebody like a Richard Russo talk about that in late, you got the bug in particular at one point with that poem you know what How did you endure the ah that that period of building the skill to get someplace skillful where you could publish?
00:08:16
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o God, I feel like I'm still enduring that. like It's this sort of ongoing thing where I'm not sure... I ever, I wonder if I'll ever get to a place where I feel like my work and ambitions for the work and daydreams about writing and art making ever meet my taste. Like I think it's this, that I keep getting bitten or something. It's like a recurring bug.
00:08:41
Speaker
And so from the earlier part of that story though, and and thinking about like my, youth and like loving writing and sort of being obsessed with it and trying but also questioning writing as a path at all I think some of it wasn't that I even skillfully endured or was like I didn't have the foresight to always know to be patient I was just sort of forced to through the journey of life or through times when I'd maybe have an existential question about why write at all and all the disappointments that
00:09:16
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that a lot of writers I think face in the journey of sort of realizing like, oh, rejection is a part of this or just being forced to be patient more than having some kind of approach to it that I can articulate other than maybe in my 20s when I turned away from writing for some time or thought I was turning away and pursuing other paths.
00:09:41
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I think that was kind of ah an important part of it in a weird way, like having to tell myself, like, I'm not gonna obsess about publishing anything. I'm not even gonna force myself to write at all.
00:09:54
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And I needed to take this break. But really, when I look back at that time, i was still like writing and reading and really engaged, but I wasn't identifying strongly
Rediscovering Writing's Importance
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Speaker
as a writer. And I had to have that journey for myself to live in the world in different ways, and then to just be pulled back to it um and sort of fall in love with it all over again. And that was for me the necessary to accept the time, the collaboration with time that it has been, if that makes sense.
00:10:22
Speaker
Sure. What were the conditions of your life that forced you to turn away from writing for a time? I guess that's making me realize, you know, it it all, I guess it was a choice to, I think I, you know, there are material realities too. Like I, and I didn't know, i didn't have family that and didn't grow up in like a literary family per se. My parents were undocumented for a long time.
00:10:50
Speaker
I didn't have like a model of what a writing life could be like and maybe could have done better at seeking that kind of mentorship out. But I think I was just like, dang, how do you make a life in this thing? i don't know how to do that. Then I was also sort of asking that question of like,
00:11:08
Speaker
why poetry at all. And um it was later that the the famous often quoted um translation of Wisława Szamborska, Polish poet, this quote about, I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. That kind of what saved me and brought me back. Because I think the conditions were also just this mental state where I was grappling with like, does this matter? Does this work matter in the world? can i How can I also sustain, put bread on the table and like pursue this? And so i went after other things. I also am someone who loves so many disciplines and have background in different art forms, have this varied work history. And I think it took me a while to realize like, oh, writing is
00:11:56
Speaker
capacious enough. Poetry has enough space for that. All kinds of genres have space for me to be like an interdisciplinary thinker, actually. And that's an asset, not necessarily um ah distraction even. And I think it took me a while to just integrate the different sides of myself.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, you talk about yeah having to put bread on the table. And that's always something I like peeling back a little bit on the show to maybe appease some of the shame people feel about maybe having that that day job they're not really proud about that helps subsidize the art they want to do if they so choose to eventually maybe have that art be their bread and butter.
00:12:34
Speaker
um But sometimes that day job that helps interface with the public in a different way is actually very informative to doing good art and good writing. So just just for you over the yeah the the arc of your career to date, how have you managed that balance of, yes, making making the money so that you can do the art that that nourishes you?
00:12:54
Speaker
I wish I could say that I made really savvy like financial decisions or that like I even was a person who even took some like evil corporate job and now has like very much less debt or something.
00:13:07
Speaker
I guess I have always grappled with this very question and still am because even the stuff that I took on the roles I had were, I worked in like equity and justice in the university.
00:13:22
Speaker
I did various dance things on the side and and some things ah freelance, like interpreting a long time ago, all these different side jobs, none, all of them were following my passions or interests. And unfortunately, my passions or interests don't often correspond with making a lot of money or so it has been so far. And so it was more that I kept grappling with that question, but never being able to fully choose,
00:13:48
Speaker
to do the thing that would just materially sustain me, like the way that my brain works, I have to be really interested in the work to some degree. And so I kept sort of ping ponging between trying to center art in my life, then trying to go a different direction and make some money, but still care about the work I was doing, which was maybe my mistake. And so I don't, at the same time as I'm, you know,
00:14:12
Speaker
I say mistake. I don't actually believe that. i so I so believe that our paths are, I try to trust my timing and the journey I've had. um But I think I want to be honest about, you know, for listeners that maybe have struggled to figure out that balance, that it is a struggle, I think, in the realities of our time. Like we really are in a time where it's materially expensive to be a person at all and to be an artist and writer in the world. And I'm still engaging with that question. And it's part of why,
00:14:40
Speaker
I left a nine to five job and went back to school for a funded MFA, um even when I already had the book under contract. A lot of people were surprised in my life because they sort of associated an MFA with this time to work on a first book. And I was like, well, the health care and time to write and get to teach and work on my next book sounds amazing.
00:15:01
Speaker
And so that is where I've just landed as I just finished that program. And so I've been reflecting on this very question again. And I'm a freelancer right now and finding those challenges. But I think I've just come to a point where writing and art making have to be the center of my life. Otherwise, i just won't be well.
00:15:20
Speaker
And so I'm learning how to do that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I just heard you say a moment ago, just kind of on this, this path or this journey that you're currently on. And maybe that path that we're isn't maybe the as yeah as fast a track as we would like or or fast as we'd like as compared to what we perceive others are doing, which gets us into this comparison trap, which.
00:15:51
Speaker
poisons the well of our own, our own creativity, productivity, if you want to use that word too. And just, you know, just for you in the, in the lane that you've been traveling for, for, for years, how have you you
Personal Goals and Values in Writing
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wrestled with the the comparison trap? It's something I've wrestled with, but I always love getting a sense of how maybe it's affected you.
00:16:11
Speaker
o Yeah, that makes me think of a quote I keep really close by on my desk, like I can turn and look at it right now. um It's the Toni Morrison in an and an interview, I believe it was toward the end of it, she says something like, not paying close attention to what others thought my life should be like.
00:16:34
Speaker
And I just love that reminder of like everything about the language of that, like really considering where we put our attention, if we are putting so much of our thinking on other people's ideas of success, of how to be a writer, of how to be anything, how to be a lover, how to be, if we're so consumed by and putting our attention toward other people's ideas for that, it can be really dangerous to our own life, to making a life, to writing. And so I'm really trying to get curious about like, what, what do I want my life to look like? And how do i actually
00:17:13
Speaker
hear that and cut out all the other noise, which is really a lot harder than it sounds because for so many of us, we've grown up with ideas that just get reiterated in institutions, organizations, media, we might consume like it's constantly, there constantly shoulds surrounding us all about how to be, let alone um how to write. And so i think I,
00:17:38
Speaker
have just had to, first of all, in my relationships in my life, like find the spaces, the relationships, the people where that's really a shared value is like letting each other be as we are, being really curious about each other as we are. Like that's ah relationships for me are such a part of art making of writing where I actually don't feel like I write alone at all. And that I'm in conversation with so many brilliant thinkers who are so themselves.
00:18:08
Speaker
it helps me do the same and then allows me to like engage more richly with the creative research I might be doing. And it's really conversation that's been such a portal for me to write. And so relationships are a key part of that. And then also just like practicing in my days, making choices that are actually my choice, which again, it like sounds so simple and the way that Toni Morrison puts it is so clear and simple. And then I'm like, wow, this practice is ongoing.
00:18:39
Speaker
There's a line, you know, we'll talk more about your your your book later, but in some of the lines that I sometimes highlight, I think there are some great greater themes like the tug on. there's It's it from the poem Holding Ground, and I just circled this one line that the skaters in the parking lot are versed in failure as a practice.
00:18:58
Speaker
And I love that because that we can just extend that extrapolate that to just about just about anything. And through this line of work, there's so much so much failure and trial and error. And just just for you, just how has that played out over the course of your writing of essays or prose and and certainly poetry?
00:19:17
Speaker
Wow, if I think about it with prose, it's so easy to think about failure because essays are so so hard for me. I've been thinking about how I want to step into more prose. And I'm working on some fiction these days and sort of trying to work on essay essays. But I think the way my brain works, I'm still learning how to bring the part of my brain that can be so fragmented or really image based or these these qualities that um I can really i know how to weave in with my poetry that I'm still learning how in the prose realm.
00:19:57
Speaker
how do I bring my obsession with like sound and image and all these elements that do matter in prose to um how do I bring them to the fore and also, you know, like write an essay that, that someone can like follow along with. And so when, so when I think about failure and prose, it's like on, it's every time tried to write prose, I, I feel failed in it, but it comes back to the last thing we were talking about though, which is also like,
00:20:23
Speaker
what do I think I'm trying to write like or so who am I trying to sound like, you know, and and why not lean into maybe my own like idiosyncratic way of writing. And so i think, you know, across genre with writing and thinking about failure, i love really trusting the magic of revision and the collaboration of time that writing is and like what instead of thinking about it so much as failure, just like this ongoing experiment and Someone that jumps to mind who's actually based here, Linda Barry, is this iconic writer, cartoonist, teacher here in Madison who I took a class with ah while during my time in the MFA. And she was highly recommended to me.
00:21:08
Speaker
i'm not I don't draw. And so I was really intimidated to take this making comics class. But its so many writers have recommended it. And for a good reason, because she is so much about This rigorous play, like so much generating, it's so intense how productive that class is, but it's also silly. Like you enter that class, you have a no one knows each other's names till the end of the semester. You take on a different name.
00:21:31
Speaker
There's a great playlist she has going. There's candy. There's all these drawings in the room. It's kind of like chaotic and inspiring in that space and um visually chaotic, but also, also very neat and well set up for the work that we're going to do. And you're sometimes drawing with your eyes closed. And there's, I say all this to say that that kind of rigorous play feels like a new lens on failure. Cause so much of the time, you know, was failing to draw like a realistic depiction of X, Y, Z, but then, you know,
00:22:04
Speaker
she said something like, you know, if Bart Simpson had a realistic nose, like that'd be terrifying. And so how do we like actually lean into what's maybe, you know, the failure might be actually our imagination of the thing or our attachment to how an outcome should be. And it's maybe like the frame of mind, not like the process itself is actually so vital and and experimenting along the way as part of it. And so I think some of it's been a reframe a willingness to keep trying things and not see that as, oh, I'm trying things to trudge up this hill, but I'm actually trying things out to get to like a richer place or to to have maybe, dare I say, some like fun and pleasure
Dance and Writing Connection
00:22:45
Speaker
in the process. I know so many of us writers are like, oh, we hate this. And sometimes there are days where I hate this, but I'm also like, no one asked me to do this.
00:22:52
Speaker
No one asked me to be a writer. and so I sure as hell need to find some pleasure in this thing, you know? Oh yeah. oh I love hearing you talk about that, that class and also this and interdisciplinary nature of a creative life and how, you know, you you've experienced, it sounds like, you know, you do have kind of an interdisciplinary creative life. Is that what, you has that been your experience?
00:23:16
Speaker
It has. I, my study of dance since childhood has been ah huge part of my writing in simple ways to like just trying to feel my feet sometimes while I'm typing. Be like, oh yeah, I'm not just a head. I can feel my feet on the ground whenever I'm teaching. i Students indulge me in trying different somatic experiments and sometimes just visualization and locating different body parts and just trying to realize and remember like we are a body. We have a body when we're writing, you know, and it can be so easy on a computer for me to forget that. And I think dance has been such an important
00:23:56
Speaker
creative education for me that I still rely on for writing, whether it's also just like taking a break to roll around and just like get out of my head a little bit. um Making dance works. It's been a while. I feel more distanced from that. But the memories, those experiences and thinking about how collaborative they were helps me sometimes to reframe or try new things with writing and to still like lean on other writers and artists in ways that ah that came more naturally as a performer and figuring out the ways that my writing life can also be like that. And that can look like something simple, like weekly with a ah brilliant ah writer, Gabrielle Bates, who's also my press mate and bestie. We have a weekly writing ritual that we do on Sundays. Actually, I got to get into that Google doc later today. And just having things like that, where I remember that this is, like you said, it's the,
00:24:52
Speaker
The heat, the spark, all of it comes from actually many different wells like that you were using the word well. And so I think I have to remind myself of that, though, um even things like loving music and having even music on, thinking about the environment I've created to write in is something that I'm trying to reconnect with lately.
00:25:16
Speaker
Tell me about this, your sort of writer bestie in in this sort of date you have. Tell tell me more about that. Yeah, so Gabby and I, we we publicly call each other art wives, and I think it's really sweet to lean into that sort of like romance of friendship and partnership that different relationships rooted in writing can be and in art. So it's something that I...
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah, wish for everyone if they want it of just like finding the people in your life who you can like deeply nerd out with about ah the work. And so I think, you know, her and I for years have tried different experiments for the last um year before this newest iteration. we had these seven questions that we would both respond to at the same time on Sundays. And it was kind of inspired by Banu Kapil, who's got this book called The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers and has these very chill questions. I'm going to, I think I have it near me. If I do, I want to, and we don't want to misquote them, but one of them is like, who is responsible for the suffering of your mother?
00:26:21
Speaker
you know, things that like are just so intense that she interviewed all these women. I can't find the book, but she interviewed, um People in three different countries created this book.
00:26:32
Speaker
I highly recommend people check it out, The Vertical ah Interrogation of Strangers, even just for that list of 12 questions. That is very fruitful to write into. And then Gabby and I made our own seven that eventually...
00:26:46
Speaker
in this ritual became eight later on and we would just both respond to them every week and it was pretty wild to respond to the same set of questions for a year our newest ritual is is different now but we did that for about a year and it was great because there were times where i definitely didn't feel like writing um and so at least i had done this little thing this little response. And sometimes i was just like,
00:27:17
Speaker
would literally write like, I don't want to answer this question today. You know, still like an answer one of our questions was, um what should be done with your body when you die? And it was really intense to have to answer that question every Sunday. Like it's very classic two Scorpio poets. We would do that. You know, it's very, very silly. um So i but I think that those kinds of things like creating something with someone whose mind you adore that you repeat can be really interesting.
00:27:48
Speaker
And so that's one element of our, of our friendship and art partnership where we try to stay in kinds of creative conversation together. Mm and the essay you wrote i think it was like a theme of a solid objects where you wrote about like this vase on um you know blue vase that you' gotten you know chile or is that where neruda is from chile anyway this ah this wrote ah this thing you wrote you said ah you know the vase is essential to my creative practice i'm not sure any object is
00:28:20
Speaker
So much as it reminds me why I'm writing, why I make art, what moves me. The why isn't fixed. And that why isn't fixed really struck me and really and stuck out to me. And I wonder just with the when you bring that why to the to the page, how has maybe your why evolved since you started writing?
00:28:39
Speaker
I forgot about that little essay. It was years ago that I wrote it. And I'm so glad that it had that wiggle room in it because I'm always terrified to make some great claims. And, you know, I think that that that evolution is really necessary for me to feel free, um to give myself room, to disagree with myself, to evolve as a person, to grow. And so...
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, i love thinking about that and tracking that, you know, there's something about now being on the other side of releasing a book into the world. And it's really timely you ask this question, because it's like, I have to, I can't take for granted that the conditions, the quite the obsessions, the everything that made that book happen, it's not the same anymore. Like other, the the way that other books are gonna happen as I'm writing now is coming from different questions. I have changed. I mean, that's the hope too, right? Like writing the book, I asked for that. Like the book changed my life. Like writing it wrote me into a new life. Like that's my hope.
00:29:44
Speaker
that's the intensity level I go for of writing books. And, you know, there's so many brilliant thinkers have said something to that effect, like Helen Sixu says really intense things about like writing the only writing the things that you're terrified of and like that sort of mandate of it's going to likely change our life to write, like to really go in to the things that we're supposed to write on this planet. And it's a hard thing to do to to write and make art at all. So I definitely want it to change me. But then sometimes I'm, I'm scared of that journey. And so i don't always know the why. um
00:30:22
Speaker
ah can't always articulate it fully.
Evolving Reasons for Writing
00:30:25
Speaker
But I can't, it's like you said at the beginning of the conversation, like, the bug bit me or keeps biting me anyway. So like I can't get away from it. And then I kind of uncover some of the why in the journey of writing.
00:30:38
Speaker
But I think lately i have been thinking about how writing, yeah, lets me have that experience though of like even tracking growth and and and people talk about poems sometimes as like, you can see the thinking across the page. I see that with essays that I love too, like how you can witness someone, i mean, especially this is so true for nonfiction, I feel like people let you in on their very thinking. And that's such a dreamy, weird space sometimes to watch how a person changes. And I think we, a lot of us are really like compelled by that. And so that's, I'm sort of figuring out my latest why
00:31:25
Speaker
And i I think the problem too is like, I don't have enough of a why not. Like there are times where I'm like, i you know i this keeps choosing me and it's so hard. It only feels like writing gets harder. i don't know if you relate to that. yeah Oh, 100%. The more I've been in this this mess, it does it does not get any easier as certain skills get more and more refined, and maybe you get a bit more economical in terms of what you're able to impart on the page just from a pure skill point of view. But for some reason, that invites more difficulty. and I don't know why that is, but I guess it's just you get more.
00:32:00
Speaker
The better you get, the harder it gets. But as... as good as you might be getting, it's it's inviting more challenges. So I guess if it's getting harder, you know you're getting better, I guess.
00:32:11
Speaker
Well, I hope that's the case. I guess I should be clear too to say like there's so much I don't know, but I do know this and it's that I want to live and love better and that we sure as hell have to figure out how to do that. Like the world is demanding that of us. And I think that whether it's the right tool or not,
00:32:34
Speaker
writing is one of the tools I have for figuring that out. Is that central now, like maybe part of your why now, just given our our culture, ah that yeah is, is that what poetry is demanding of you now that, that degree of that sentiment?
00:32:52
Speaker
Yeah. I think that, I think that writing, I'd say poetry in particular, but I'm sure, i mean, i would love to hear from all the brilliant minds you've had in this podcast, the people I could learn more from about nonfiction, you know, and genres, such a differences between the genres are.
00:33:11
Speaker
argue, you know, you can argue about how different they are really, but because I'm more familiar with poetry, I'll speak from that place where there's a demand, there's an invitation to really pay attention and get really detail oriented to like about the placement of a single comma, you can spend so much time thinking about punctuation, and these deceivingly small things, and really contemplating word choice and all of that, and how a word can be a portal into so many different ways of thinking. It has its own, you know, etymologies are so fascinating to think about how words change over time. All of that demands patience that
00:33:53
Speaker
our world doesn't have a lot of space for. it like I think it's very counter to the way that we are encouraged to rush through the days, the sort of illusion of urgency in our world that's ever increasing in my view and is really detrimental to our own processing, critical thinking, our ability to like use our imaginations at all.
00:34:16
Speaker
which I believe so much in. And i think there's an attack on our very thinking, on our minds, that really has detrimental consequences to relationships and the whole planet. And I really believe that. And so I am not here to get on some soapbox about writing as the single answer at all. And everyone's journeys are different. But for me, that is...
00:34:40
Speaker
a method ah really attending to language, which I see as like a material of our lives. We use it all the time. it uses us all the time. And so I think i want to be discerning about my use of language and want to use that as a tool, even though I also am aware of its limits.
00:35:02
Speaker
In that same essay you wrote, yeah you cite this one poem from Nicanor Parra, and yeah the last line of a particular stanza was, you have to improve the blank page.
00:35:13
Speaker
And I like what you say after that, not everything I write is an improvement. And I wonder if the sentiment contributed that sentiment contributed to my not writing much poetry for years after my semester there.
00:35:23
Speaker
In recent years, I've been practicing the giving myself permission part. And I think, you know, the youre that meditation on it is like, you might put a little too much pressure on yourself. If the blank page are already for a lot of people and that blinking cursor is already enough pressure and then you're like, you have to improve the blank page. It's like, fuck, no.
00:35:41
Speaker
and like, come on, I just want to make this thing filthy. I got to improve it now. Right. What the hell, man? And so, I don't know, just a a you unpacking that sentiment. How have you maybe given your permission to not improve it and to just fuck around with it?
00:35:55
Speaker
and I need to hear this right now because am going to remember that orientation to the writing that I want to do in the coming seasons. And it's a constant giving myself permission to do that because I i think that I can get in my own way of getting too obsessed with reaching some you know, desired place with the writing that I definitely won't get to in the first draft or first couple drafts or few.
00:36:24
Speaker
And so i think with the book, when I think about making this book, I just needed to write those poems. I kept obsessively revising them. At at some point, it wasn't even like, it just felt like this need.
00:36:41
Speaker
And
00:36:44
Speaker
I love that. Like, i I love that it just wasn't even a question in my mind to, I don't think I got in my way that much, especially and the last like couple years of making that book.
00:36:55
Speaker
It just, I had this drive to work on it where then I didn't obsess over Well, I did obsess. I'm trying to think about this. But I obsessed in a different way. I was really in the actual language itself. And I wasn't thinking about like, oh, this has to be good. I was trying to figure out what it even was. And I was trying to to push it in different ways. And I was just couldn't stop thinking.
00:37:20
Speaker
working on some of the poems. And then that was like the antidote, just that it brings me back to thinking about like, Linda Barry's approach of you just keep making and you keep trying things and you get excited about the process. It's kind of trite to talk about like the process over product thing, but there is something to lean into there of like really really finding the pleasure in it or or if there's not joy or pleasure the satisfaction and like the growth journey of it whatever people need um for those who aren't motivated by pleasure whatever it is that you need to have that's kind of like an arc or experience and so for me i think that that's the way that I let myself write at all because if I just got fixated on yeah the making it better the sort of brutal Niko Norpada um
00:38:11
Speaker
line, then you're right, I would never write at all. But I have to confess that sometimes I still have that, that Niko Naro Para dog in me where I'm like, shoot, I guess I just can't write today. and Nothing's coming out, you know, but I think it's like exercising that muscle and seeing it as like, okay, yeah, i do have to, I do have to show up and try something and I don't have to show this to anybody.
00:38:32
Speaker
But it's part of the exercising the muscle requirement. So when do you know you have a poetry collection on hand? That's a good question because I've been generating a lot outside of this book.
00:38:49
Speaker
As I mentioned, i I did an MFA while the book was under contract and I had to write a whole nother thesis. And that was kind of brutal um to write separate from the book. And I would love to know the answer to that because I have, you know, like the pages, but I don't feel like they're a book. And so when I think back on the process of writing We Contain Landscapes, it was actually ah constant thinking I had a book.
00:39:19
Speaker
and then going deeper into revision and it totally changing, which is why I'm such a believer in the collaboration with time that I've said ad nauseam in this interview, because I think a lot of writers get really fixated on publishing, on getting something out there. There's a lot of urgency and for good reason, like there's a lot of pressures to publish, to get things out there, the opportunities that open up with a book in the world. I really get it. I felt that hunger too, but I'm so glad that I also didn't rush. And even from the process of getting the deal with Tin House, and I had two different options of, there was an earlier date of publication possible in the later one. And I took the later one so that there'd be more of a revision process that I would have time for, because I know myself and I know that I,
00:40:07
Speaker
love to keep revising and like obviously you can overdo that too but I think like to answer your question early on I thought I had this book years before the book was actually done i was like oh this is a book yes I just have a little bit to do and I'm gonna publish this and I'm so glad I didn't get picked up at that point when I think about where the book was at that point I was really more attached to just having a book in the world at that point and excited by some of it, I hadn't done the deep work necessary to make to take that book as far as it could go. And so for me, it's this constant like, but you need that little bit of like delusion, I think, too, because it was really helpful to be like, oh, yeah, I have a book. Yes. and And to just like have that confidence and excitement.
00:40:53
Speaker
um But it would be really mortifying now to think about like the earlier versions of that published. I wouldn't be happy with that. And so I think you'd need that. For me, I need that mix of like, I can feel something growing. I can feel these obsessions and questions that are just so, I have to keep sitting with them. I feel that pull to sit with them. i feel these poems speaking to one another, but I also have to be patient and let myself uncover.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah, that that patient is it's so hard to cultivate that in the face of like that desperation to want the thing that have a dream fulfilled and to table that dream of publication, that that that result, that coveted result.
Patience and the Writing Process
00:41:43
Speaker
when And then say, but maybe it's not ready. Maybe I'm not ready. There's such a push and pull there. And a lot of us might rush to just to get the thing out there to say it's been out there. But I just love hearing you say like, ah you know, I'm going to take that later time and in give it give it more gestation. It's it's so and it's so important, but so difficult to to navigate and cultivate.
00:42:07
Speaker
It really is, and it's also that fine line because you don't want to be overly precious about things. Some writers hold their stuff so long that like they never share it with the world, and I don't want to encourage people to be overly protective in that way because it might really be something that even a few people like really need to read. And so i I don't want to like discourage people from sharing their work. But I think it was important for me to remember too, that I could publish some poems in some beautiful literary magazines and still edit them for the book, that sort of thing. Like the revision doesn't have to end. And that happened for me quite a lot where I still took poems further, even after some folks had engaged with it out in the world to a degree.
00:42:50
Speaker
and In this collection, you are you play with a lot of different forms and formats, and it you know even just the the overall shaping. One poem is like a little spiral, like a seat like a snail shell, you know and so many others have different just aesthetics, just eyeballing them on the page. You're like, okay, this is going to be a different visual experience on top of the reading experience. Yeah.
00:43:13
Speaker
just like i know Just give us a sense of how how you think about that and how that reflects the the content as well as you know how you want it to just look on on the page.
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's something that I love about poems that the meaning making happens on all these levels, like the visual, the sonic, kinesthetic, like you might have ah felt sense from the words that is in tension with you know, the orderly, the neatness of the shape on the page or the even or not even stanza lines. There's all these choices that you can play with that can create tension and texture that I love. And so for me, it was important to have that, especially
00:43:58
Speaker
with a collection that is engaging with questions of like landscapes and place and desire and these very multi-layered ideas. I needed there to be that variation.
00:44:10
Speaker
It's also just how i write. i just, I think form and playing with the shape on the page helps me to get at something. And, you know, it's a classic thing with poetry where thinking about the line as its own world, like,
00:44:26
Speaker
the enjambment or not to continue the thought, like all those little choices are part of the meaning making and the questioning that's possible in a poem. So, I mean, this collection isn't even as and and anywhere near as wild as so many poets who really play and lean into like visual and and form. um It wasn't my intent to go too crazy with that either, though I really admire when people lean into so much that's possible with visual poetics. And I think for this for this collection though, with this question of of landscape and interiority and exteriority, like playing a bit with the visual felt felt really true to it, but also not overly leaning on that as the project too.
00:45:16
Speaker
Another thing, too like several of the the poems are like a you know letter to an immigrant daughter and you being the daughter of immigrants, you you know, how did being the daughter of Polish immigrants really inform, you know, the poems and the way you ah synthesize this collection?
00:45:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's really and inescapable influence to think about being conceived in one place and born in another to be growing up knowing about the sort of mythological homeland and not getting to go because of my parents' status until I was 19.
00:45:55
Speaker
so I had this really like romanticized and fragmented sense of Poland in my mind because I had never been there. I'd seen pictures. I had a lot of family there, have a lot of family there and didn't go until I was an adult.
00:46:08
Speaker
And so that kind of It's so inescapable as a literary influence to think about like a relationship to a home and that question of home and so many children of migration. And really, i mean, any person you could ask on the street, like that word home is so vexed or layered for people. And so then that added sense of of place and disjointedness of family I'd never even gotten to meet.
00:46:34
Speaker
until I was 19. I mean, that is whether I like it or not, a huge influence on how I approach the page and growing up speaking Polish and loving other languages. I then studied Spanish and just thinking about that space ah between languages, all of that influenced how I approach writing. And with this book,
00:46:59
Speaker
it was such, I let myself lean into that element of life story, even as I really struggle with being that candid. It's something I admire in nonfiction writers who just like, I'm like, it's like peeling your skin off, just like sharing the whole, just like going in on the narrative facts of one's life or narrative fact is is a contested word, but like going in like that, um I admire it so much and I struggle with it so much, but it was really, um To then address other immigrant daughters and people in some of those that series of poems who I didn't have to explain myself overly to and that was the addressee.
00:47:38
Speaker
It was really beautiful for me to and helpful for finishing the book because i was really troubled by the ways that immigration narratives could get. weaponized or like sort of the tropes around them. And there was something really freeing in writing that series and being able to address someone who, as varied as all of our experiences are, really like gets it, like some of the layers that can be difficult to explain. So that element of like leaning into personal life to a degree, but also feeling free to not overly divulge everything was really vital to me for finishing the book.
00:48:17
Speaker
Yeah, and when you visit Poland as an adult, yeah what was your sort of intrinsic feeling when you make landfall and you know in a country that you had heard about, seen through images, but had never experienced?
00:48:33
Speaker
I've now gone only a handful of times, and actually last summer went back for the first time in 10 years, which was really emotional. And I'm trying now to like think back on that very first trip when I was 19, which was a while ago now.
00:48:48
Speaker
And I like wish I remembered more, but, and some of it's tracked in the book a little bit. Like there's a poem, Salt of the Earth, where I talk about like,
00:49:00
Speaker
the feeling of being underground in this salt chapel, this salt mine ah with one it with my godmother. And you know some of that's touched on in the book is just like this, the awe, the scale of history, the personal history and the like more geopolitical that just sort of descended upon me when I landed there and that I'm still digesting so many years later and that I felt again with this last trip, which was just like,
00:49:30
Speaker
and overwhelm. and excitement to even speak that language all day, every day when I'm there, to tap into that part of myself. I mean, it's a return and i'm and it's also not because it's so new and I've never lived there. And so it's all always just visits, but it does feel like a kind of return to something, even if it's more like ancestral and sort of hard to pin down and just, but it connects me certainly to something much bigger and and longer than my own life story because when I go there, I'm thinking about like generations back.
00:50:06
Speaker
And so that's really a beautiful and overwhelming feeling that I feel when I'm there. And then also it's just, there are parts of that landscape that are so gorgeous to me that I feel such a pleasure in just seeing and seeing like the deep green of the parts where my mom grew up, the rolling hills there.
00:50:29
Speaker
there's like such a an awe still with that beauty. And so even as there's overwhelm, it's like such a delight to go. But again, I'm also troubled by like the ongoing romanticization romanticization I have because I've still only been a handful of times. So it doesn't feel It feels strange to even talk about it because I've never been there for more than like, you know, a month-ish or five weeks. And so what would it be like to be there in different seasons? I haven't even experienced that. So I find it hard to talk about Poland, but I tried in this collection to even be real about that.
00:51:04
Speaker
And a lot of, ah you know several of the the poems in the book, as as are most people who publish collections, have appeared in other literary journals or magazines. And i think maybe someone of a of a novice might look at, you know, where some of the poems are published, like, you one of your longer poems that kind of has these little resonant echoing things throughout. I don't know the technical term, so I'm calling them echoing things.
00:51:28
Speaker
It's a you appeared in the New Yorker and someone from the outside might be like, like, holy shit, you know, Patricia is in the New Yorker. She has made it. She is a famous poet. And, you know, the fact is, when we publish things, no matter where, you know, we're still ourselves and we still feel crummy most of the time.
Misconceptions of Publishing Success
00:51:46
Speaker
And know you just there's an arrival fallacy to a lot of this. And i just you know just for you, like what ah what a feather in your cra cap and an amazing thing to to say and to be able to put into your CV and so forth.
00:51:59
Speaker
But yeah, how do how do you wrestle with this idea of like having such an amazing publishing credit, but then it's just like, okay, but but the work doesn't stop. i'm you know I'm still me and I still pursue it. And it's not like i have made it suddenly.
00:52:13
Speaker
and Does that make any sense? first of all, I love the the term echoing thing for that as a sonic crown, but I'm going to start calling it the echoey thing. Yeah, you's you picked up on the echo. Yeah, the sonic crown is is such a cool, ah tricky form.
00:52:33
Speaker
And think i think that
00:52:38
Speaker
A friend recently, a really great poet, Stephen Espada Dawson, also just released a book recently and was talking about it being at once overwhelming and underwhelming. And I think that's so true of sort of these accolades, these things that one might hope for so badly. And you kind of like expect more to happen. Like, oh, I got a poem in The New Yorker, like suddenly. of my life is just going to entirely change, you know, I'm like, where are all my bouquets of flowers every day for the rest of my life, you know, whatever, like this, this idea that it's going to be this big thing. And then, like you say, you're still with yourself having to show up for the work. Like, I'm, you know, so grateful that that poem found a home that could then reach many readers, because that's a really,
00:53:25
Speaker
like sort of core poem in the collection of one of the heartbeats of the book. And so I feel so grateful for that. And as you say, like, yeah, we just kind of got to go on with the work. Like all of that is separate.
00:53:36
Speaker
the The author stuff, the publication stuff is actually separate from the work. It's just, I have to see, I have to make space for the actual making and none of that will replace work.
00:53:51
Speaker
the sitting down with it the the reading time that's required, the getting curious about the world that's required. Like it doesn't matter how many fancy pubs or not, like I still have to show up to the page and to my relationships and all the things that fuel the writing. And so I think it's really important for me to not get too distracted by that, even as I crave those things also just for the material support that I hope for. But for writers also, we find out like, oh, even these big things, there's not that much material support. know So I think especially for poets, I mean, maybe that will change when I, maybe this podcast is going to help me get my big nonfiction break. So thank you for that. But think- Oh, yes.
00:54:35
Speaker
I think if I can start to, you know, actually successfully right nonfiction for more than like, a you know, a few essays. um But I think I think that it's just such a good reminder, like that.
00:54:50
Speaker
We. like we we have to find a way, I have to find a way to let like the writing itself, other people have said this, like be its own reward. Like how can I let like the making be it and and find satisfaction in that? Because there will always be the next thing that I don't have and some other way to make myself feel bad about myself as a writer in the world. that There's so many ways to feel that. But I think it is really special. You know, there's this like famous Jean Valentine poem,
00:55:21
Speaker
that I love called The River at Wolf. And there's a line in there, like I might be butchering it, but like, blessed are they who remember that what they now have they once longed for.
00:55:32
Speaker
And just to like really, really sometimes take stock of where I am in my life and be like, wow, a me years ago was dreaming of these stressors, i was dreaming of these particular things I'm anxious about.
00:55:46
Speaker
And so I have to tap back into that, um not in some sort of like fake silver lining way, like we can all feel our feelings, don't have to like, toxic positivity, everything. But I also want to really feel that to tap into like, wow, younger of me dreamed of these things. Let's keep going.
00:56:03
Speaker
Yeah. But there is something that said a moment ago, too, about, you know, that particular poem that ended up in The New Yorker, that it was kind of like the heartbeat of the collection. And I think like poetry and poetry collections always reward multiple readings.
00:56:15
Speaker
and um And in a sense, it is a very alive thing. And know to you, to what extent is you know this collection very alive in that very heartbeady kind of sense? Yeah, it's such a mystery of writing for me that it's what I love in the writing that speaks to me most is that you can't exhaust it when there are pieces that you return to reading that you love, that you get something out of again and again. And that's like my dream for this book for readers. And it's thankfully for myself in writing it, I have...
00:56:49
Speaker
re-encountered or been surprised by things in these poems that have kept them feeling alive to me, where there are things that have even been mysterious to me or that I've noticed later or, you know, reading it in a new place on my cobbled together book tour and suddenly feeling like, oh,
00:57:08
Speaker
but like noticing things even after publication, that's like a ah real gift of it and keeps it feeling alive. There are times where I feel less connected to it and maybe get, let those other voices get in the way, you know, as we were talking about just the the reality of how hard it can be to be a writer and and the threats of comparison that can get in the way of really like looking back at it and being like, wow, I made this thing and it's still maybe teaching me something or I'm maybe looking at It's allowing me to track how i've however I've related to an idea in a new way. There are a lot of obsessions in that book around questions of devotion, desire, borders that are lifelong for me. Like I'm gonna, I didn't,
00:57:49
Speaker
end that book and and wrap up my questions like, oh, done with that. You know, I'm going to be thinking about those ideas for a long time. And now I get to have a record of how I was digesting them. And I think that that's like the beautiful thing about making books too, is that like, then we get to look back and be in relationship to it in a new way, just like with some of my favorite things I've read when I get to read it in a new era of my life.
00:58:17
Speaker
It's suddenly, it's like tracking, it's like tracking your own growth in some way or tracking just how your mind has changed. And I think that that's my hope for writing this book too, is times I look back on it to not be hopefully not look back on it with like, you know, frustration, but rather to just be really curious about how i was processing things at that time and digesting the world and who were the influences on me at that time and all of those things. I can kind of see them more clearly from this vantage now as it's been in the world
00:58:49
Speaker
a handful of months and I hope and I'm sure that will keep happening in the years to come. Oh, very nice. Well, I, as I always love to bring these conversations down for a landing, uh, I love asking the guests, you in this case, for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners, just something, just something fun you're enjoying and that you want to share with them.
00:59:08
Speaker
And, uh, yeah, just anything that might be bringing you joy. so i I would extend that to you. Yeah, I think in the vein of things I've been saying about where our attention goes and my belief in finding pleasure in our lives as a way to sort of fill the well that you've been talking about.
00:59:25
Speaker
I've been really loving attending to the sensuality of food and, you know, i guess, Justin, whether it's solo or maybe with someone, that you adore, like having a meal. And this could be as, you know, whether it's going somewhere really special or literally making something at home, even if it's a frozen meal, whatever one's budget allows to like savor the color, the texture, like audibly enjoy it together, be a little disgusting, like just be like, yes, this is so good. And to like enjoy also witnessing someone that you love taking pleasure in a thing.
01:00:00
Speaker
um I think that I've been trying to really like enjoy that also as someone who's had various like digestive issues and I'm sure that would be thrilling to tell you more about, but I'll spare you the details. But I think that I've been trying to like reframe and think about where I can take pleasure in something that i eat and really like go all the way with like really deeply enjoying and savoring a meal and getting it for writers like letting it be ah creative pursuit like I'll be whisking some matcha in the morning and I'm like I'm a painter getting my green paint ready for I'm you know I'm on the at sea like i I made this ink from the like grasses of whatever like just to like let ourselves use our imagination and if it's something that we feel disconnected from like
01:00:49
Speaker
you know, contact a child in your life because they can like borrow someone's child with consent. more how to Like do a visualization or a play just like a playing pretend thing and make like a full sensory experience with food or with something you're drinking. i feel like it can be a little, ah little gift for the day.
01:01:11
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. Well, I, the, the poetry collection was, uh, you know, a thrill to read once. And then I, before our conversation, I picked through a couple just to kind of get them into the main line a few more and it definitely rewards multiple readings. So just an awesome job in the collection. And, yeah, thank you so much for carving time on the podcast to just talk about how you go about the work and how you went about ah creating this wonderful collection.
01:01:34
Speaker
Thank you so much. Such a pleasure chatting with you.
01:01:43
Speaker
Thanks to Patricia. Thanks to you, Teresian Effer. You still with me? Like, now in the moment and just like in general? You still on the train?
01:01:56
Speaker
Have you not jumped off? It's okay. I've outgrown podcasts. Some people have graded on me, and best of my knowledge, they're still doing their thing.
01:02:07
Speaker
I'm never going away, for better or worse. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletters, Pitch Club, Enrage Against the Algorithm, Embeds, or at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey.
01:02:19
Speaker
All right, so I was driving around Eugene, cruising the Ave, as we used to say, in southeastern Mass, and I was thinking how life is all about running out of fucks to give as fast as possible.
01:02:32
Speaker
You know, we're pretty much born with all the fucks we're going to give in a lifetime. Sure, we we picked them up ah we pick them up along the way, but by and large, we're giving all the fucks and the most enlightened find a way to get rid of them as fast as possible.
01:02:49
Speaker
I remember listening to, ah I believe it was Taraja P. Henson on WTF. It was a couple years ago. And he asked her how she was doing. She you know just turned 50 or just early fifty s and She was just like, you know what? I am out of fucks to give. And it just really resonated with me, you know?
01:03:07
Speaker
It takes a long time. You start hearing people in their 50s really lean into it, saying, you know what? I'm out of fucks to give. And it's liberating, right? Some people don't lose them.
01:03:21
Speaker
and it's kind of sad. Like someone I know who's pushing 70 is still like really concerned about being skinny. And it's like...
01:03:30
Speaker
why waste the headspace? Like, who really cares? No one no one cares. i mean, i have my body image issues and dysmorphia and the like. More on that when I run the Mallory Tarperly pod probably next week.
01:03:46
Speaker
But you start to think, like, why am I letting fill in the blank take up space in my brain? There are certain things in my writing life and podcasting life that still raise my hackles a bit, but I'm getting better at it.
01:04:00
Speaker
It really bothered me when certain people failed to step up and help me with book promotion. People I've helped. People I've platformed. And then to be ignored when I could have used the help, like that really upset me.
01:04:15
Speaker
I don't do this for favors or treat it as a transactional thing. But sometimes it's nice to have your back scratched after scratching someone else's. You know what I mean? i think that's the phrase.
01:04:28
Speaker
Hey, book sales, we just crossed 3,000. Now, ah you know, a few weeks ago in the newsletter, I expressed mild disappointment in sales numbers that were, you know, maybe 2,400, 2,500 or so.
01:04:42
Speaker
um I probably wouldn't have cared, but like the bookseller in town that I primarily work with, he was like, oh, that's it? But as long as I'm allowed to keep going and maybe secure another book contract so that I might be able to pay for health insurance, thus liberating my lady wife from a job that's killing her.
01:05:04
Speaker
That's the win for me. Can I keep the flywheel spinning? I'm trying. yeah The baby proposal for the next book was sent off a few weeks ago, two weeks ago, I believe, and I haven't rested on my laurels, just like I thought. My agent hasn't gotten back to me yet, and I don't expect to hear back from her for at least another week or two because that's just how she rolls.
01:05:25
Speaker
But I'm still i'm building out the book. that I'm doing the research. I'm building context. I'm sourcing up. Not dragging my feet on that. Like I did with the pre-book proposal. Which, like I've said a million times before, it cost me probably six months.
01:05:40
Speaker
And I mourn those six months to this day because I think I could have made the book a lot better. All in all, I'm starting to reach the bottom of all my fucks. I think there's only a few remaining.
01:05:52
Speaker
And I'm trying to poke holes in the bottom of the fuck reservoir so they can fully drain out. you know If I can be void of fucks by the end of 2025, just think how light that'll feel.
01:06:07
Speaker
This isn't to say, like, to not care. It's kind of the opposite. I want to care more about what matters. Just like being kind, platforming a diverse swath of voices on the podcast, getting more headliners on the pod, which brings in more attention to the entire festival.
01:06:24
Speaker
I want my worries to matter. I want to be of service. I want to be a force for good. I know I can be a drag at times, a bit of a miserable, curmudgeonly, seemingly ungrateful, grumpy pill.
01:06:41
Speaker
I realize my complaining is annoying. I mean, it annoys me.
01:06:46
Speaker
But I'm not going to hide and or tamp down how I feel. That's not being honest. And that's putting maybe a false veneer of performative bullshit that's in service of nobody. You yeah know, we all feel like shit most of the time, if not all the time.
01:07:01
Speaker
No sense in hiding that. That's part of being a writer. That's the table stakes, baby. If you're miserable, well, welcome to it. As long as the angst starts stemming from a dry well of fucks given and not fucks to give, I can live with that.
Embracing the Writing Journey
01:07:17
Speaker
So stay wild, CNFers, and if you can't do interviews, see ya.