Writing to open up your mind (and your heart)
On the latest episode of The Side Woo with author Natalie Serber
During the pandemic I was almost entirely alone for about 9 months. In July 2020 I had flown back from an artist residency in Mexico where I had been when Covid first started. While being far from home during such a dramatic event as the start of a global pandemic was scary and uncertain, it was at the same time filled with sun, color, good food, an outdoor studio, and most importantly, other people in my home.
When the novelty of my sewing projects and diving into witchy books started to wear thin, I found it harder and harder to get up in the morning and do much of anything. My job had flexible hours and and the projects we were working on were languishing because of the supply chain and investor delays. Shows were put on hold.
I threw myself into volunteering, and learning Spanish and French - yes, both because I was a woman on a mission. I joined online groups. I burned off energy by hiking up to the top of Twin Peaks, and discovered parts of San Francisco that I had never seen in the previous 15 years I had lived there. Nevertheless, the burden of the isolation and the heaviness of the moment crept in. I knew I was among the very fortunate, but I still felt deeply unmoored.
What helped ground me was a daily practice of writing. That practice was solidified by the gentle community of the London Writer’s Salon. The LWS is a free online Zoom meet-up that offers an hour of writing at 8am in London, New York and then again Pacific time. Before and after each session, the hosts Ma(tt) and Pa(rul) would read Mary Oliver and invite people from all over the world to share what they were writing about. On Wednesdays they did, and still do, a little Zoom mix and mingle where you get to chat with other writers for 10 minutes. I would have unexpected conversations and get to hear how other people were navigating this weird time. (Today they are doing a 24-hour write-a-thon in case you are interested.)
While it wasn’t the same as having an IRL pod, this daily meeting became the thing to get me up in the morning. If nothing else was certain, I knew that I would be sitting in front of my laptop with a coffee at 8, ready to write.
While in Mexico, I had joined a writing group hosted by an author,
in Portland, OR to workshop some of the travel essays I had started to put together. I had my eyes set on a memoir but knew that I didn’t know the first thing about writing one.This group met weekly with 8 other writers. We shared our pages and talked about the nature of the human experience. Many of us were writing memoirs, or stories based on our lives. We asked, how does one communicate an inner life onto the page? I was asked to dissect “Sarah” the protagonist from my lens as Sarah the writer, and it made me wonder if I had been seeing her, and myself clearly.
Natalie, the host of this living room exchange was a guest on a recent episode of The Side Woo. Talking with her brought me back to that time, and all the intensity of emotion that I experienced both inside and outside of our weekly meet-ups.
One of the themes from our conversation on the pod was the way that black and white thinking is a disservice to good writing. This goes for writing endings that tie up too neatly and characters who are only good or all bad.
In Natalie’s book Shout Her Lovely Name, she tells an intergenerational story about a mom, and a daughter who becomes a mom, and so on. As you might guess, there is a lot of bad behavior along the way. The stories are so real that you can’t believe it’s a novel, and it’s in part because of how complex the characters are.
Natalie says of writing about her character’s worst behavior:
They're not jerks, but they do jerky things and they make mistakes. I still love my characters and I feel like you really have to do that. Or you, you have to write from a place of loving your people or they're not going to be, they're just not going to come out right on the page.
I heard George Saunders say something once that really stuck with me. He was talking about a story. He has this great deal with the New Yorker that they look at whatever he writes. And, so he sent a story to Deborah Treisman, the editor there, and she kept rejecting it. And then she just didn't want, you know, just rejected it flat out. And he was crushed and said, ‘Why?’
And she said, ‘You're not writing your characters in the best register.’ And I love that, because it doesn't mean that everybody has to be good. It just means you have to write them with an attitude of them at their best.
There are people that are doing bad things in [my] book or people that are unkind or selfish or whatever, but [you have to] write them in their best register. Not like you're looking down on them at all.
I love how this underlines the idea that if you can forgive and accept others despite their many flaws, you make space for yourself to be flawed but still loved. This is true with real people as it is with people you make up. (What is reality anyway.) This idea gets to why writing and reading are so important to the evolution of humanity. Reading emotionally engaging fiction has even been shown to improve empathy in its readers.
You can check out Natalie and my conversation via the link above, or whever you find your favorite podcasts. If you’re interested you can check out her writing and various classes and even the Writer’s Day Spa (mentioned in the episode) on her website: https://www.natalieserber.com
Happenings:
LA people - join me at The Ruby Fruit this Saturday 6-9pm ish, or you can book a reading with me by sending me an email.
MN people - save the date for the opening of my solo show, Things Worth Saving, opening Friday May 3, with a talk at 5pm at Dreamsong Gallery.