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Episode 156: Sonya Huber—Creative Infidelities
137 Plays6 years ago
"I think that's why people stop writing. It's the not knowing what you're doing that feels so terrible." —Sonya Huber (@sonyahuber).
Sonya Huber, author of five books and countless essays, joins me on the pod.
Shoutout to our patrons in Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction and Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction.
Keep the conversation going on Twitter @CNFPod or on Instagram @cnfpod.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction MFA Programs
00:00:03
Speaker
CNF, the creative non-fiction podcast, is sponsored by Goucher College's Master of Fine Arts in Non-Fiction. The Goucher MFA is a two-year, low-residency program online classes that you'll learn from anywhere along while on-campus residencies allow you to hone your craft with accomplishmenters who have Pulitzer Prizes and best-selling books to their names.
00:00:24
Speaker
The program boasts a nationwide network of students, faculty, and alumni, which has published 140 books and counting. You'll get opportunities to meet literary agents and learn the ins and outs of the publishing journey. Visit Goucher.edu slash nonfiction to start your journey. Now, as in right now, take your writing to the next level and go from hopeful to published. Gouchers, MFA, and nonfiction. CNF is also brought to you by
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Speaker
Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Discover your story! Bay Path is the first and only university offering no residency, fully accredited, MFA focusing exclusively on Creative Nonfiction.
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Speaker
Attend. Full or apart time from anywhere in the world. In the Bay Path MFA you'll find small online classes and a dynamic and supportive community. You'll master the techniques of good writing from acclaimed authors and editors. Learn about publishing and teaching through professional internships and complete a master's thesis that will form the foundation for your memoir collection of personal essays. Special elective courses include contemporary women's stories, travel, and food writing. Mmm, food.
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Speaker
family history, spiritual writing, and an optional week-long summer residency in Ireland, with guest writers including Andre De Bute III, Ann Hood, Mia Gallagher, and others. Start dates in late August, January, and May. Might have missed that May one, but think about August and January. Find out more at baypath.edu slash MFA. Oh man, feeling riffy. Let's hit it. Ooh!
What is CNF? The Creative Nonfiction Podcast
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Speaker
Hey CNFers, what the CNF is up with you? I'm Brendan O'Mara and this is CNF, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I speak to badass writers, filmmakers, radio producers, and podcasters about the art and craft of telling true stories. We get into it, man. Elbow deep in the shit.
00:02:28
Speaker
I'm cranked on several ounces of cold brew, so I'm super pumped to welcome Sonya Huber to the show. But first, I want to tell you that you should be subscribing to this hot mess. Wherever you get your podcasts, you should also join me on Twitter and Instagram at cnfpod. Fun stuff to keep you engaged and motivated and inspired and maybe a little entertained.
00:02:53
Speaker
Also, consider leaving a rating. Also, consider leaving a rating or a review on Apple Podcast. I'm not gonna edit that. They help with the show's credibility. At least I think they do. If they don't, well, we won anyway. Okay, so here's the part of the show where I riff a little bit. This past week, I interviewed a famous and prominent author.
Brendan's Interview Preparation and Anxiety
00:03:16
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It'll air in mid-July, so you can connect the dots when the time arrives.
00:03:22
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I've read nearly all of his 11 books and he's done like 3,000 interviews and I've listened to most of them. So I was super prepared, but also like freaking out in a way that I usually don't. Normally the more prep I do, the calmer I get. If I feel like I'm freaking out, I just do more prep, study more, and then tend to feel more. And then I can just sit in the pocket and read the defense.
00:03:47
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how i see it anyway but also the podcast is like i see it kind of like a dinner party or something and i'm the host and i want to be a good host and i'm always worried that the guest is not having a good time i want to make sure they always have a drink that there's always chips and guac available that the music is sensible but not too loud i was real worried about that because this guy who not only interviews a lot of people
00:04:14
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he's been interviewed by even more but he's also someone who thinks about interviewing a lot so the guy knows what he likes and it's sort of like he knows he knows the game inside and out so it's like you want to stay a step ahead and make sure everyone is having a good time it's all about keeping the guest engaged and i think he was but i don't know and frankly i think i choked it was like someone was waving noodles behind the basket during free throws only
Meet Sonya Huber: Writer and Activist
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Speaker
I was the one waving the noodles. Okay, so this episode is also brought to you by the word disquietude, a noun disquietude, a state of uneasiness or anxiety. Such passages reflect a sense of disquietude, of alienation even, disquietude.
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So, Sonya is a prolific writer of five books and essays, and she wore a killer headset, so she sounds like a straight-up baller. She's also all over the place. Her work, New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity. She's in your head, man. So, this is it. Here she is, seeing efforts. Ooh!
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So I understand you grew up in Illinois. That's right. So what kind of kid were you? What did your parents do? And where did the writer, Sonia, come from? Well, let's see. My parents, they ran. And my mom still works at sort of a family business in radiation. So they used to do sort of
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monitoring of radiation for hospitals, and now they do more industrial radiation cleanup. My parents do nuclear waste, as does my brother. Wow. Yeah. Nice. And you became the writer out of the group. Yes, exactly. You know, I did my fourth grade career poster on the next generation of radiation safety officers, but I didn't go into that. Wow. Yeah. And then I was just, you know, I grew up in sort of a
00:06:35
Speaker
a small town south of Chicago and, uh, just, you know, probably like everybody who turns into a writer. Like I was a nerdy reader and, uh, and then I was always, you know, I, I just been thinking about this recently, but, um, my mom would always get like Irma Bambek books from the library. Do you know her? I'm unfamiliar. She used to do this like,
00:07:03
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in the 60s and 70s, this sort of like funny observations of motherhood kind of a thing. And I really do think that that was one of my first, you know, seeing nonfiction around the house. And then I did columns for the school paper that got me with, I received threats to get beat up for various things. Wow.
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That was exciting. As an eighth grader, if you propose school uniforms or more nutritious lunches, that's the kind of kid I was, seriously. And then I got into activism and that sort of fueled a lot of stuff I was doing with both my time and my writing from college and then after college.
Sonya's Writing Journey and Influences
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So I think that also informs a lot of what I ended up writing about.
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Nice, nice. And so as you were developing as a young writer, even in high school, did you have any cherished mentors or at least someone who recognized that you might have had a kernel of ability and was just like, oh, Sonya, you know, like, it looks like you've got a little talent here. Why don't you just kind of lean into this and give you the permission to keep going? Yeah, yeah. I had, you know, a slew of great teachers and
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We didn't actually have a like a newspaper in my high school or any creative writing classes, but someone sort of saw that I was interested in it and let me do an independent study. And so I would write these press releases for like local papers about what was going on at the high school. And I decided to veer off from that and do this big story about why our school didn't have a newspaper. And it was a very strict
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sort of law and order south of Chicago's big farm town school. And so when I showed them this piece, they were like, oh, will you publish this and we're going to expel you? Oh, man. Yeah. But that's sort of one of the first experiences of like, oh my gosh, you can write things and they could actually make people really mad or threaten people. And that's sort of exciting.
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Well, yeah, it's kind of like you getting threatened to be bullied based on something you wrote, which isn't too far from the truth as you move up the ranks of journalism. The threats just escalate as does the impact of a good piece of writing. Exactly. And so while that was really hard, it was also like a clue that there's something here to keep working on. Right.
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And then when I was in college, I was sort of like, I ended up being a social anthro major and I wasn't really as connected to English or writing. I mean, I was always doing it, but I didn't, I stopped thinking that I could be a writer. So, and why was that? Uh, that you stopped thinking that you could be a writer, you know, went to a big public school. And then from there for college, I went to like a sort of a Midwestern private liberal arts school.
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And it was just kids from a bunch of different places and a mix of people who I hadn't run into before class wise or location wise. And, um, I think I was just intimidated. And so I kind of downgraded my own, like my outlook about what was possible for me a little bit. I mean, I think in the longterm that school was a really great experience, but, uh, in the short term, it made me think, uh, that I was a little dumb. Uh-huh.
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So yeah, so it took a long time to sort of work back out of that. But I think, I mean, the side benefit of having studied social anthro, for example, in college has just continued to fuel my writing too. Even great, well, the great narrative journalists or anything or anyone who spends a lot of time with a subculture of some kind, it kind of is its own form of anthropology. Oh, totally. Yeah. And so much about like,
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you know, figuring out how to elicit personal stories. And I feel like one of the things that's so important is that anthropology and ethnography talk a lot about the ethics of getting narrative and what happens to a person who gives their narrative. You know, so I continue to approach writing with that framework.
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And when you were in college, what were you, I know you were sort of off what you would consider a writerly path, so to speak, but what were you reading at the time that maybe kept at least one toe in the water? I was reading like all kinds, I was reading a lot of poetry, like I ended up trying to do a lot of my anthropology and sociology
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projects about poetry and literary stuff. Let's see. So a lot of like international, that's how I got more into reading international works. Oh, and then just a lot of anarchists. I was hanging out with the anarchists in college. So yeah, I got a good helping of radical direct democracy.
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As we all do, right? Of course, of course. So how did you at what point do you get back on that sort of that path to maybe fulfilling maybe earlier dreams of becoming becoming a writer of nonfiction and other things? I think after, you know, I was I went into social work and with a counselor after college and then, you know, had a series of bad jobs.
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And then just started writing again, like started trying to write stories and poems as a way to cope or just like do something that felt fulfilling. I mean, my job felt fulfilling, but it was also really hard. And I just, you know, so then I turned back to writing just for myself. And then I also started, you know, just going back to journalism and doing like volunteer stories for political papers on various issues. And, you know, then once again saw like,
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people see what I'm writing is useful. And so then I got to sort of turn towards writing in work I did for nonprofits. And then I was working for a group that supported student newspapers. And that led then back to working for this magazine in Chicago called In These Times, which is still around and which is wonderful. And then from there I went to journalism school at Ohio State.
00:13:47
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just sort of wasn't planned, but they had a fellowship that I got was lucky to get. And then while I was in journalism school, all the journalists were saying like, Oh, you got to take this class. It's called creative nonfiction. It's amazing. And I mean, at that time I hadn't heard of creative nonfiction as a thing. And so I took, you know, my first workshops, this was just after Ohio state started offering creative nonfiction.
00:14:16
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I took these workshops with Bill Rohrbach and my head just blew open. I was like, this is exactly what I want to do. So I was like 28. Nice. Yeah. I remember, and I apologize to listeners who hear me say this all the time, but it was the book for me that kind of blew open what narrative nonfiction or creative nonfiction could be was John McPhee's The Survival of the Bart Canoe.
00:14:43
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and just his style. I was like, oh, that's the kind of journalism that kind of appeals to my taste and my temperament, especially. Totally. And so I can remember that especially. So in this class that you took was there, aside from the course itself, kind of blowing your mind. What were some books or essays you were reading that equally showed you what was possible?
00:15:13
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I had actually, so during the, during the journalism program, I've found, uh, John, I found, uh, AG's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. And that just, I mean, that was a life changing moment just to see what he did and how adventurous his writing was. And yeah, I remember the experience of reading that book, you know, and then I was like, this is what I want. And then I started reading, um, a lot of George Orwell's nonfiction.
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And that sort of led to thinking about, you know, like McPhee and Maxine Hong Kingston was another one. So I started to just learn about the world that was there, you know, which, so I think sadly we definitely don't encounter often in school, or at least I didn't, you know? Right. Yeah, I, my experience, I didn't even know it existed until, let's see, I had, I stayed an extra year in undergrad to add journalism. I stayed a fifth year and did journalism one year.
00:16:13
Speaker
And I had a literary journalism class with Norman Simms. Oh, cool. And I had no idea what it was. It just kind of sounded cool. And I needed to cram in a year's worth of journalism credits into a year. So I was just like throwing course loads on. And that really opened the book. And he talked about McPhee and Oranges. Oh, god. And that book. And it was just like, oh, you can
00:16:40
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In a lot of ways, it kind of ruined fiction for me because all of a sudden, I was like, wow, part of the appeal of finding a wonderful story is you can actually, if it's done well, it's like, well, it actually happened. That, to me, elevated the appeal around a certain book.
00:17:00
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Oh, this happened. It wasn't just an imagination or a mosaic of things that might have happened, but you just don't know. But then, but right, you know, but behind someone like McPhee, it's like, yes, it did happen. And it was shaped, but shaped and everything. But it was still like it happened. And that was big for me. Right. And that you want to like, I've done I've started this thing that God knows when I'll finish it. But I've decided I'm going to read everything McPhee has written because I just love him so much. Yeah. And and so with with the book like
00:17:31
Speaker
Oranges or with any of his stuff like what's so amazing about it is that the structure is well, you know He's a master a structure. Yeah, but that you don't know where he's gonna go next, you know And so instead of a narrative or an argument, it's sort of this fairy. It's like a snowflake. You know what I mean? Yeah, and oh gosh I just admire so much what he does but that's so it sort of reveals like what the fun of it is in writing it and reading it, you know, I
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Yeah, exactly. And his latest book, draft number four, where he just talks about the structure and how he just labors over it. And that's where the art and the creativity can come in when you have your verifiably true facts and everything you've done your reporting. And that's where you get creative and you can get fun and have fun.
00:18:24
Speaker
create, you know, just take things that seem so esoteric and kind of dull on the surface and actually make it gripping. Exactly, exactly. I appreciated that book and I really loved how he was so open about his own, the struggle in his writing process because he makes it look super easy, you know, and so the fact that he also revealed that the structure is like this laborious thing to have to come upon after numerous failures is just, it's beautiful.
00:18:51
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And I guess just before we were speaking, I interviewed Scott Eden, who's an investigative journalist for ESPN the magazine, and he and I got to talking a lot about McPhee and structure. It's kind of funny that we're both on consecutive conversations to get to talk about McPhee. I guess there's a big essay in the introduction to the John McPhee Reader that really deconstructs his approach to structure as well.
00:19:20
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So that's something I have not read and I want to dig into that.
00:19:24
Speaker
Oh God, I have to look at that. Cause he has a couple different readers, but I don't think I've read the first one. I've read just enough, like the later one. Yeah. Yeah. So that's definitely a resource worth digging into. Awesome. It makes it kind of approachable in a way too, that there is the mechanics behind it and there is kind of a playbook you can follow, right? Like it, you know, isn't that part of the appeal that like it's work and you just kind of have to keep smashing your head against the wall and eventually you can get there.
00:19:54
Speaker
Definitely. And that there are templates and examples, right? And sometimes you just come upon one of them that works, but you can also follow the example of what other people have done to see if that works for your subject matter, you know? So, yeah.
00:20:09
Speaker
And with respect to your own work, I always liken this to, we always know what kind of, say if you're a baseball player or something, you kind of know what hard work is.
What Defines Hard Work in Writing?
00:20:22
Speaker
Every night you go into the basement and hit 500 balls. And it's just like, okay, that's hard work. Your hands are chapped and bleeding, blah, blah, blah. Input any other athletic thing or whatever.
00:20:34
Speaker
Sometimes it's harder to define with writing or the arts what it means to have tenacity and rigor and hard work. It's not as maybe easily measurable. So maybe how you define that so you know you're sort of paddling in the right direction, so to speak. Oh, that's awesome. Well, first of all, I really like I use athletic metaphors when I teach writing because I really, I really believe in that. And I've seen it with, you know, myself, like
00:21:00
Speaker
I tell my students I don't necessarily think of my class in grad school that I was the most talented person, but I know that if I show up every day to look at a piece of writing and really then go through every day the agony of how much does this suck and how hopeless it is. That's just part of my writing process. I'm working on this massive, massive book right now about
00:21:30
Speaker
the Gold Coast to Connecticut and like income disparity and racial discrimination in Fairfield County. And it's like too much, right? But I know that if I just keep picking away at a corner of it, like I'll eventually get it into shape. But as far as thinking about, like I really do just think about like blocks of time where I don't know what I'm doing. And I know that if I can tolerate that for long enough,
00:21:59
Speaker
I think that's what makes people stop writing is that not knowing what you're doing feels so terrible. Yeah. Well, there's that and you have to be incredibly patient. I've said this before on the show that I think what exacerbates people's anxiety about maybe the pace of their writing career or artistic career is oftentimes you see
00:22:28
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30 under 30 lists or something that make you feel totally devalued if you haven't accomplished anything by age 30. On the other side of that, those 30 people have a ton of pressure on them and that's its own morass.
00:22:41
Speaker
Social media is also just crippling in terms of comparison and toxicity. So it can make the artist feel very inadequate. And that's just not a good mindset to approach the work. Oh, definitely. And also, I feel like I work a lot in the project that I'm working on now. I've done more memoiristic stuff, but this is very... The piece that I'm working on now has a really strong research component.
00:23:11
Speaker
So, uh, you know, the amount, the amount of drafts and just restructuring that has to come between having some information and figuring out how to structure it and then figuring out how to make it readable and make sense and plug into a larger structure is just, you know, people ask me how many drafts and I don't even think of it in terms of drafts, you know, it's just like,
00:23:37
Speaker
looking at these pieces and moving them around and moving them around. Like, really, it's in terms of years rather than, you know, just sitting down and writing a book. So. Yeah. How do you, or I should say, like, what appeals to you more, like the generative phase of getting that big mass together or editing and revising? I think I love editing and revising. I think because I feel like at that point,
00:24:07
Speaker
I'm in a couple different writing groups, and I know at this point in my life that I often get so close to something that I can't see what's not working. So I love the point where I've actually got something on the paper that's in my voice. And then I feel like it can start to have a conversation with other people. But that first phase where I'm just trying to figure out, what does this all mean?
00:24:35
Speaker
Like that's like, that, that is for me, like in this current project, just wading through that, like, and it's almost like this weird thing where that seems to take the bulk of the time with this project that I'm working on now. And then once I start to get going and I start to get the slimmest sense of a structure, then the work starts to build up a lot of momentum. Right. But I think like, I mean, I'm doing this thing like.
00:25:01
Speaker
It's honestly, it's from the glaciers on forward, so it's a little unwieldy. It's ridiculous, it's ridiculous. And so I think there's a lot of, I don't know if you've had this with your writing, but where you're just staring at it and staring at it, sometimes for a week, and then you start to get a glimmer of what a structure might be or what an argument might be, but sometimes it just takes so long.
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah. Oftentimes it is just staring at it. And then even just writing in a completely, you just got to create your own momentum somehow. Like it's on a flywheel, even if it doesn't make any sense. And then sometimes it's just having a notebook right next to you to just dump whatever random stuff is coming into your head. And then you're like,
00:25:48
Speaker
I don't know. There are just any kind of weird workarounds that kind of hack into your brain to try to get you to make sense of whatever's going on in front of you. It's all a mess. Totally, definitely. And I think too, one of the reasons why I'm pretty productive as a writer is because I have a good tolerance for my own really shitty sentences. I'm fine with writing something terrible that's half like
00:26:14
Speaker
xxx to come to come, you know what I mean? And then gradually working up towards something that makes sense. And half of it will just be like notes to myself and then, you know, something gradually coheres. But I have a friend who really writes, she's a fiction writer, but she really writes one beautiful sentence before writing the next. And I just couldn't, I think, you know, different people's brains work differently and I've got to kind of rough everything out first. Yeah.
00:26:44
Speaker
I wouldn't be able to do that personally. I don't know a whole lot of people that can do that because in so many ways that perfectionism will keep you from actually getting to anything good. I think a lot of times, and maybe it works for her and that's great, but I think a lot of times a lot of good stuff comes from working through a ton of bad work and eventually you get to good work. I'm of that ilk. I am so of that, yeah. I'm totally cool writing a thousand words to get to a hundred good ones.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Or I'll feel like sometimes, because I'm doing a lot of research now, I'll read a book and then be like, okay, fine. I got one sense that I needed from reading that book. Yeah.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, but it was totally worth it because that one sentence or that information from that book is going to be so valuable to whatever you're working on. Exactly. And it's going to be loaded with everything, just I guess some context or subtext from you having read that whole thing and not just plucking out that one
Sonya's Writing Tools and Process
00:27:45
Speaker
sentence. It's going to have a bit more charge behind it, I bet. You would hope, right? I would.
00:27:53
Speaker
So like, since you're working on such a Titanic project, you can probably speak to this well now. How do you go about, you know, what's your approach to research and then organizing your research and notes so that you can access it later for your writing? I started using Scrivener probably like four years ago. And that's just
00:28:16
Speaker
You know, I've just dumped everything into there, but not completely. Like I wish I had a completely organized research process, but what it actually is, it's like a lot of stuff in Scrivener and then a lot of stuff in Word documents and then other stuff in Evernote. And so I'm all, I'm sort of circling always between those three things and, uh,
00:28:40
Speaker
And then I've got binders actually. So I've got four, now I've got four different containers. Yeah. And I made a weird place in the book because I just had to restructure it. And so, uh, yeah, so I, uh, yeah, I mean, I do, I do think like, uh, I can't imagine what it would be like to have, to not have Evernote and Scrivener where both of those are searchable.
00:29:08
Speaker
Like I'm old enough that I remember still doing, uh, research papers when it was just index cards, like before you, you know what I mean? This would, this would be like, this would be horrifying, you know? So yeah, I have a lot of timelines and that's actually something that I, I've, I've used since my first book. When I'm, when I'm using history, I always have to have a master timeline that just says,
00:29:34
Speaker
Like in this one, it's like from the 1600s on and just like listing different things that happen because that helps me kind of get oriented in time. So yeah, that's another tool that I use.
00:29:46
Speaker
Wow. And when you're in the throes of a big writing project and you're in the messy middle of it all, what's your approach to the middle where you just have to put your head down and grind through? It's an ugly part to be. That is exactly the feeling, the grind. But I really think
00:30:15
Speaker
Like there's something for me that is connected between research and writing poetry. Like, uh, like there's this phase that I'm in now, say where before I even understand the shape of a chapter, I have to just like leave my mind completely open and like not even, I have to like let my mind be completely open.
00:30:42
Speaker
and sort of let associations come. And so rather than trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be writing about, I will have researched this whole thing and to know what the content is. And then after, I have to just tolerate that state of being where I don't know what is supposed to come first. And then something will emerge, if that makes sense. But it's just tolerating the discomfort
00:31:09
Speaker
And then I sort of start pursuing one narrative and then, you know, just like we were saying before, like just accumulating pieces. Yeah. But, but it's that like, it's, it's understanding that, and I talk about this in my, with my students a lot, like, I think some people are really gifted linear thinkers and some people are very associative and both, both ways of thinking are equally valid and they just, they produce good stuff, but just through different logics. You know what I mean?
00:31:39
Speaker
And so I just, I know I'm an associative person and so I've got to build a chapter through associations that might not make sense on the surface, but I eventually figure out what they mean. But it means I feel like that I'm always going in kind of blind, just sort of with a gut sense of like what matches up.
00:31:59
Speaker
And then eventually I figure out what I'm doing. Most writers can attest to this. It's often a somewhat lonely endeavor, often fraught with self-doubt. So how do you fight off feelings of loneliness and doubt when you're in the course of a big project? And it can be a smaller project too, but the feelings are real, so to speak. So how do you approach that?
00:32:26
Speaker
I mean, it's good. I get together with one of my writing groups about once a month and we sort of are half of our function is like, we'll read each other stuff, but half of our function is cheering each other on, you know, and we'll come and sort of process the, Oh my God, I hate this book so much. And then the rest of the women in the group will be like, Oh, it's the best thing ever. You know, so we're each other's cheering sections. And then I mean, that's one function too, like a social media that I find really valuable is just connection with writers so we can
00:32:56
Speaker
each complain about our books. That's great. A few people I have on the show actually speak nicely of social media, so it's kind of nice to hear that it is actually something that helps you feel connected. How do you balance the use of it so you don't get sucked in too much where you won't be able to get any work done? How do you balance that with your life and actually getting work done?
00:33:25
Speaker
Oh yeah. I mean, I think like I, during my writing, I think that's one of the things that I do is like, I have a really low bar for production. So as long as I'm sitting and like trying to write, like I'm allowed to go on Twitter. That's just my own, my own rules. Yeah. And, and I think partially because my bar is so low, like, I don't know that just works for me. And so like, I don't know. I find the, uh, I love the nonfiction social media.
00:33:55
Speaker
community. I find at least the folks that I'm connected to to be really encouraging. I find lots of recommendations for great stuff to read. I don't know. You know what would you say in terms of your own work that you're better at today than say you were five years ago, maybe even ten years ago? Oh that's a great question. I think the one thing
00:34:26
Speaker
that I'm better at is that knowing that the process feels crappy, but that I can, I can probably make a book out of stuff eventually. So I think really tolerating that feeling of being lost in the middle of a project. And I also like, uh, one thing I've sort of seen really steadily escalate is the amount of information I'm able to take in and shape.
00:34:56
Speaker
Like I noticed that I had written this short guide for squint books on Hillary Clinton. It was just something that they asked me to do. And then it had a deadline in like three months or something. And so, and I hadn't, I didn't know anything about Hillary Clinton. I was just that when she was around the first time I was in the middle of being an anarchist. And so, you know, never the twain shall meet. But, um, and so then I really had to sort of,
00:35:24
Speaker
just read an enormous amount of stuff about her and about the 90s and ended up being able to do it. And I think since then I've sort of started to just trust my own ability to read as much as I really, really want to read about a subject.
00:35:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I've always loved to read, but I've really started to see that one of the things that I can do is multidisciplinary stuff. So not just something about one topic, but you know, I think that's one of the wonderful things about creative nonfiction is being able to take two things that don't seem to belong together and figure out how they can intersect. Yeah. So, um, so yeah, that's something that I'm, that I trust myself more with these days and like figuring out the,
00:36:18
Speaker
the connection between two unlike things, if that makes sense. Right. So what were those anarchist days like? And what kind of person were you at that time and who were you when you came out of it?
How Did Anarchism Influence Sonya's Writing?
00:36:36
Speaker
Well, I mean, I hung out with some very, so this was in Minneapolis. They were really like some very sweet
00:36:44
Speaker
very community oriented, nerdy anarchists like myself. We had reading groups, we read about, I don't know, all kinds of stuff. We made zines, we did street theater. I shaved my head, I dropped out of school for a little bit. My mom was not happy, but then eventually I went back to school and everything was fine.
00:37:10
Speaker
Gosh, that was such a great educational period in my life because, you know, the anarchists are like question everything. Yeah. And I had really, I mean, I was raised, you know, very Catholic, good girl. And, uh, while I'm still that way in a lot of ways, like having that thread of like, question authority has just been a great thing in my life. So it's given me a little bit of, uh,
00:37:38
Speaker
kind of like a counterbalance to my, you know, my tendency to just accept things as they are. Right. And how do you start your day or what's your kind of a morning routine, especially when you know you've got some, you've got some writing you need to tackle? Caffeine. Caffeine? Yeah. Yeah. That's really, that's like basically the underpinnings of my writing process. So I'll usually like, you know, my, my husband teaches high school, so he leaves really early.
00:38:08
Speaker
And then I got to take my son to school and then the house is quiet. And I, I think in terms of an hour, that's part of my like, set the bar really low idea that I've developed. Like sometimes I'll even like, if I don't want to write, which I think happens like every day, you know, I don't hate writing, but I will just not do it if I don't make myself. So.
00:38:38
Speaker
So if it's like 8.02, I'll even like write the time that I start on my legal pad and just say like, okay, go to 9.02. And eventually I'll get interested in, I mean, pretty quickly I'll say, okay, how can I make some order of this? Or can I write a couple of good sentences? It's just that I have all these tricks to just get started. Cause it's the starting that just seems like, I don't think it's that I don't want to do it, but it's just the overwhelm.
00:39:08
Speaker
kind of do you know what i mean oh yeah i am kind of employed something similar i i had to uh... get through an entire war uh... books worth of edits on this uh... baseball memoir that i'm not in the middle of and it was just overwhelming but i i started this thing where i just every night i said a timer for twenty minutes and i was just awesome go go for twenty and see how much you can get done and then and then when twenty minutes is up you just you're done
00:39:38
Speaker
And that's it. And then I would not have any muscle fatigue or soreness the next day. It actually kind of created its own momentum. I was looking forward to that 20 minutes instead of grinding. And then it was only 20 minutes. You can do so much in 20 minutes if you just focus. Exactly. And then you're totally focused for that
00:39:56
Speaker
length of time because you know you get a break at the end, right? So it doesn't seem that scary. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. And I was, I got through it in a relatively short amount of time. You know, it took maybe eight weeks to get through the whole book 20 and 20 minute chunks. That's awesome. Yeah. It was, it was great. I was like, wow.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah, you know looking back. I was like it only took eight weeks I'm like just think of where you were eight weeks ago and think of where you are now It's like wow you got through that and you can send it off the editor and we'll work on round the next round when when those come in But it was like yeah, just take these little bites and don't work out too hard Otherwise you won't be able to work out tomorrow right right and there's that anxiety like I don't know like I always do struggle with that feeling of like I
00:40:44
Speaker
Oh, it's been fine until now, but this is gonna be the thing I'm not gonna be able to figure out, you know? And so to know, like, if you just, like, again, like you were saying, back to the athletic metaphor, and so if you just do something, it doesn't have to be brilliant, you know? It just has to be, like, enough for that time period, so. Absolutely. And do you find that you have a collection of books that you revisit or reread over and over again, just to kind of remind yourself how it's done?
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah. So I like, I think a lot about voice and how like different there's a, there's a voice that each project needs that I usually haven't exactly found. But when I find it, like it's, it's the way to get a book done. Do you know what I mean? Or to get, to get the last part of the book done or to shape, shape the narrative. So often what'll happen is that I'll write a book, but the voice or the tone will be wrong. And I'll sort of,
00:41:43
Speaker
latch on to a book that has a voice that I want. So, uh, so I was reading, writing this memoir, it's, it's unpublished, but it's in progress. Um, and I just, I wanted it to sound like Annie Dillard, you know, so, uh, you know, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek remains like a really, really important book to me. I think I, oh, I did read that in college.
00:42:12
Speaker
Yeah. And I read it as like in the context of environmental awareness, but not really thinking about like how she had written it. Like I hadn't read, I didn't read it as a writer. I read it for content. Right. And then later going back, I was like, wait, it's such, it's so stupid, but like, of course someone wrote this. Like how did she write it? Do you know? And, uh, and so, but Annie Dillard's something about her voice just, you know,
00:42:41
Speaker
I don't write like her, but I wish I did. So, uh, so sometimes if I'm really stuck with something, I'll go back to her and I'll think about, you know, cause I feel like my job often in writing is to really shape language around facts so seamlessly that it, that the reader doesn't notice that they're getting facts, you know, or that they're transported by the voice. And I feel like she does that perfectly.
00:43:10
Speaker
And so, yeah, she's a person that I'll go back to when I just, when I feel like I'm writing a research paper and what I really need to do is think about language. Do you have any other ones too, besides Pilgrim of the Tinker Creek? I like to read a lot of Virginia Woolf. I mean, she's another person who has such her own musical style and language
00:43:40
Speaker
that, you know, when I'm starting to really hate making sentences, if I just read even a little bit of hers and it can be anything like her letters or her essays, that's like a breath of fresh air. No. So yeah. And then of course, you know, anything by McPhee. I just think he's, he's fearless. Yeah.
00:44:01
Speaker
If you ever find yourself kind of in a creative funk of sorts or in a slump, what kind of self-talk do you employ to pull yourself back out of it? I'm always writing two projects at once because I'm always like cheating on one project with the other project.
The Role of Essays in a Writer's Career
00:44:25
Speaker
Like often I'll go to this big book and I'll just, or not often but sometimes, I'll be at a juncture
00:44:32
Speaker
where I don't know what to do next and I don't have any energy for it. And so then I'll let myself play. I'll say, okay, there's nothing happening here. Like do a day of just writing some little essay or look at some notes that you have or write something nutty, you know, like, um, I think you may have seen that. Like I did that. I did an essay recently that was like the how to write an essay list. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:59
Speaker
I think that's how we ran into each other on Twitter or something. I don't know. I think we were following each other, but not like we weren't like interacting with each other. And I saw that when I just thought it was like really cute and funny. And it was like, all right, we got to got to talk to this one. So thank you. But that that was like one of those days where I was like, I got nothing. You know, and so then I let myself just write some weird little thing. And so
00:45:26
Speaker
So I have my most recent published book is a collection of essays on chronic pain. And all of those came out of cheating on a memoir. And so they were all just stuff that I wasn't supposed to be doing. Like I think of all those as like recess from my real job. And it ended up being a book before the other one. That's crazy. Yeah, I was going to ask if any of like this creative infidelity was like
00:45:55
Speaker
if those playful essays actually turned into something or if they were just a sandbox to play in, but it looks like a lot of it actually ends up turning into something. It really does. Yeah. And I think it's helpful for me because it's just sometimes the projects are so big that you almost, you know, like you were saying with your 20 minute things, you can get fatigued and then your lack of excitement about the project like ends up coming up on the page, you know, and you don't want that. So.
00:46:26
Speaker
I don't know. I just, I guess I use a lot of breaks and bribes in my writing process. Yeah. Do you, in terms of, um, like, do you go for long walks or, or anything of that nature too, to kind of, you know, just get out into nature and, you know, let, you know, let some little bit of exercise kind of recharge your battery? Um, let's see, I walk the dog, which is good. And then, um, I meditate often.
00:46:56
Speaker
almost daily. And I feel like that really helps. But I also think like, I really like visual art and I like seeing things. And I feel like sometimes when my tank is empty, like when I'm just not feeling very creative, like I need to go see art. And then that usually like somehow recharges me to want to write again. I don't know. It's weird.
00:47:17
Speaker
Yeah. Well, sometimes a question I like asking people too is like, what other artistic media do you consume to kind of inform what it is you do? You know, you're a writer, but you go to a museum and see some paintings and you're like, oh, that that mood or like that feeling that they're conveying with those tools. Like, how can I do that in my work? Like, so exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like almost every art form, like I'll just
00:47:42
Speaker
just about going to see dance. I mean, that's one of the great things about working on a college campus. There's so much. So almost anything that's not what I do is so helpful.
00:47:54
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I like, especially ballet, I want to write a book about ballet. Oh, really? That's awesome. I've never danced. I've only seen, I think, one show or anything. My wife used to, when she was younger, she danced. But I love the art, but more than anything, I love the almost monastic commitment and devotion to that art.
00:48:22
Speaker
And that's what really triggers me, just that zealous commitment to get to that level. I just love it. And to be like such an outsider to maybe write about that, I think it would be kind of fun just to learn about it, but also learn about these, really these freaks that are just so physically gifted, but they're genetically gifted, but they also have to have a mindset to do it for hours and hours and hours every single day.
00:48:51
Speaker
Yeah, I love reading about like the process and life story of painters for some reason. Like that's another one of those things. You've got to be completely devoted. And yeah, to think of like, you know, that's such a solitary pursuit. And I just always think like, what trust to be able to write, to be able to do something that there aren't even words to sort of catch you. Do you know what I mean? Like it's, yeah,
00:49:21
Speaker
Like I just, I love the sort of the work that each visual artist has to do to pursue their, their vision and their style. So I often will also read, you know, interviews with visual artists and process narratives about, you know, how they develop their style over time. I love that stuff. Yeah.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah, and even to do it with one's physical body, too. And it's a reason I like professional bodybuilders, too, because they've got a similar drive. And I kind of wish I had that. And so I admire it so much. So a lot of the stories I read
00:50:08
Speaker
and the ones I'm most drawn to are these people that just have that focus. My favorite documentary these days, and I've seen it eight times, is Jiro Dreams of Sushi. What is that? Oh my god. It's about the world's greatest sushi chef in Tokyo. He's probably in his mid-90s now. He was about 87 when the movie came out.
00:50:31
Speaker
and he's still working and the guy is just maniacally obsessed with making perfect sushi. Holy smokes, oh my god, I have to watch this. It's on Netflix if you have Netflix and it's directed by David Galb who's someone I've been
00:50:48
Speaker
Hounding on Twitter to get him on this podcast to talk about that. He created the chef's table series on Netflix, too And the movie is just gorgeous the music is gorgeous behind it and then the drive of these of these guys to And specifically Giro and what he's set up is just having this this this devotion to a craft and just Slowly incrementally getting better at it day after day year after year decade after decade. It's just really inspiring and
00:51:17
Speaker
Right. And that is really, I mean, that's really what it is, is like, you know, being devoted to a craft and not, you know, I mean, with something like that, there's no one who arrives and says, you know, you've met a certain level, you know, your, your, your barometer for how you're doing ends up having to be just very internal and have, and, and getting to the point where that is completely internalized is, um, that definitely, you know, it seems like a,
00:51:47
Speaker
It's a far off goal, but I totally I can see how compelling that is.
00:51:51
Speaker
Yeah, and it's just this, it just teaches you that you just have to be really patient and cultivate patience. And that's really hard when you're in the mud and struggling, struggling to get a byline, struggling to make a living with this thing you like. And then to see everyone's successes on social media too. And you're like, man, I feel like I can do that, but I'm just, I'm here in this mud and they're doing that.
00:52:20
Speaker
It can be really hard to cultivate that sense of patience. Oh, definitely. I mean, in a book is not, it's weird. Like a book is just an object and it's like needlepoint, right? Like all the mess is hidden behind it. And so there's no representation of like the long tentacles and roots this thing has, you know? It'd be awesome. Like, yeah, like, can you imagine a book?
00:52:43
Speaker
but having behind it all, like this representation of all the evil that it took to get to this nice rectangular thing. Yeah. That'll be my first sculpture series. Please. I will come to the opening.
00:53:03
Speaker
So, you know, you said you're a part of some writing groups, and you're someone who's very accomplished. You've published a lot of books, a ton of essays, and I suspect people in your group have as well.
00:53:21
Speaker
processed or worked through maybe jealousies that you might have felt towards other people in this line of work, you know, coping with those feelings of competition and jealousy. I wonder how you process that, if that's a feeling that's crept into you at all.
Navigating Jealousy and Success in Writing
00:53:38
Speaker
Oh, I think, I mean, I think that's just a, it's a natural thing when, you know, you're really aware of other people in a community who are also following the same pursuit that you are. I mean, I think
00:53:50
Speaker
I'm often jealous of novelists because it just feels like you could do what you want. Your universe can contain the things that you ... Yeah, but I think then they have the trouble of actually birthing this universe all on their own.
00:54:13
Speaker
I, you know, my stuff is mostly published with a university press, a wonderful university in Nebraska. Yay. But you know, there, I think for a lot of us, there's the fantasy of like, you know, a big five book that becomes a huge thing. And, you know, I think it's also one reason why I love writers on social media, because I feel like the people I follow are people who are like,
00:54:44
Speaker
truth tellers who are intent on unmasking a lot of that mystique about, you know, that fantasy of you get a big five book published and everything is perfect. You know, like we know that's not the case. And we know that you can have a huge book published and then you cannot get another offer of publication if you don't sell well. Do you know what I mean? So I feel like, you know, like the right,
00:55:13
Speaker
the writer Cheryl Strayed, she has written essays about the state of her finances before Wild was published. And I just feel like the more writers talk about money in particular, and the sort of the horrifying state of, you know, being able to support yourself or not as a freelance writer these days. I mean, that really mitigates like sort of any
00:55:42
Speaker
The jealousies, I think, often come from fantasies of not being able to see everything that a book has cost a person to make, you know? And so I feel like I just, so yeah, in some ways, social media is a problem, right? Because it also gives you all this information about all these super productive people meeting great successes. But then it also delivers that antidote if you look in the right direction. And, you know, there's also so many, like,
00:56:13
Speaker
Social media helps me find books that I end up completely adoring that were never huge successes. You know, so I wouldn't have found them. I don't think without social media. And then I become aware, like, I've never heard of this thing and it's the most, or I had, I've almost missed it and it's the most brilliant thing I've ever read, you know, so.
00:56:36
Speaker
That helps me to understand the universe that we work in as, you know, it's capricious and it's somewhat, you know, what makes something a big book is it's, you know, it's a gamble and it's often, you know, just it's whether something is big is just often by chance. So.
00:56:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing how much good work is being done out there that just goes unnoticed because there's just so much out there. But so you really just have to be super grounded in the process of making the thing and not put too much pressure on it to support you, I guess. Right, right.
00:57:18
Speaker
I unfollow and mute people. Like if I realize, I think that's an important tool. Like I protect my mental space and I notice when I'm feeling jealous of someone or when their social media presence like activates something in me that's going to make me distracted with like, okay, they're presenting a compelling narrative of their perfect life. That's doing something to me. Do you know what I mean? Like me?
00:57:47
Speaker
I'll often not unfollow, but I'll mute them because I'm human like anybody else and I'll get distracted by those lives and those narratives even if they're not accurate. So yeah, I keep sort of a close handle on what perspectives about writing I'm allowing into my head. Right. Yeah, the headspace is very fragile.
00:58:11
Speaker
I kind of like that you have ways like you can feel the woodpecker sort of hammering its beak on your head. Totally. I mean, if you encounter someone on social media and all of a sudden you're feeling like your own life sucks, like danger.
00:58:30
Speaker
So one last thing I want to touch upon too. You've got your latest essay, Starbucks and shipwrecks is in creative nonfiction.
The Moby Dick Essay Journey
00:58:41
Speaker
I wanted to just talk a little bit about that and where that came from and how you came about that because this was a particular, an intoxication themed issue.
00:58:51
Speaker
I'm sure you saw that and met the call with your essay. What was the process behind your essay and why was it a good fit for this quarterly magazine? Oh, God, that essay. I was writing this memoir that I think is finished on multi-generational substance abuse, the happy topic.
00:59:20
Speaker
And, uh, and at one phase I had had like Moby Dick was in, in it for some reason. Right. And it made sense to me, but multiple people who read a chapter were like, this does not work. And, uh, I've been, I've been working with Moby Dick in a
00:59:47
Speaker
feeling that it had to belong in a substance abuse essay for, I swear to God, 10 years. And Hattie at Creative Nonfiction, she's so wonderful. Hattie Fletcher in that, you know, I told her, you know, so many essays that I've gotten published there are essays that have, you know, they're like eight year essays, 10 year essays that I finally, they make a call out for something that just fits. So I had them will be dick piece for a long time.
01:00:16
Speaker
And then, but the tone was wrong. Like the tone was like rageful. Like that's not fun to read. And then I had this other piece, which is like me hanging out with my friend. And it was like the sort of joyful appreciative tone. And then when I realized I could put the two of them together, like chocolate and peanut butter, then it finally worked. But it took, it took like wanting to write that essay and like,
01:00:44
Speaker
having it as like a very unsatisfying chunk of a Word document and trying to do it in so many ways for so long. So I'm really happy about that essay because finally it is out of my life.
01:01:00
Speaker
Oh, it's so funny you say that, Sonya. Like this baseball book I'm working on that I just... That's my great motivation to finishing it is I want to move on. I want it gone out of my life. And if it gets published, awesome. I will do the requisite promotion and readings and I will love it. But I want it done because I have other projects I'd love to get to, but it's got to go.
01:01:25
Speaker
Oh yeah, I feel like I've reached that phase with like every single, like I feel like that's what it is. Like you just, you eventually build up this like level of like, I love this, but I also hate it. And when hate is more than love, then it's gotta be gone.
01:01:40
Speaker
Exactly. Well, you've given me a wonderful hour of your Sunday here, Sonja. This was a ton of fun getting to talk to you, really, and for the first time, this was a ton of fun. Thank you so much. Yeah. Where can people find you online, Sonja? I am at www.sonjahuber.com. Nice. And what's your Twitter? Same. Sonja Huber.
01:02:04
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, awesome. Well, let's let this be the first of what I hope are many conversations down the road about your work. Thank you so much, Brendan. You're welcome. Take care, and we'll be in touch. OK, bye bye. Bye.
01:02:20
Speaker
Wowie zowie, that was fun. It usually is, but that one felt like some serious repartee, no? Hashtag repartee. Hey, thanks to Goucher College's MFA in Nonfiction, Bay Path University's MFA in Creative Nonfiction, and for Disquietude for making the show possible.
01:02:40
Speaker
And thanks to you CNFers, you are the reason I make this show. Please consider linking up this episode and others on social media. And also consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also email the show, email me or the show, creativenonfictionpodcast.com.
01:02:58
Speaker
Keep the conversation going on Twitter at CNF Pod, also Instagram at CNF Pod. Let me know what you think, what's stuck out to you, digital fist pumps, devil horns, and skull emojis for those who participate. It's the least I can do. Okay, that oughta do it for this week, friend. Remember, if you can't do interview, see ya!