About This Blogger

As 5x5's new nonfiction editor, I want to use this blog post as an opportunity to introduce myself and maybe say a thing or two about the kind of nonfiction I “practice,” and the kind of nonfiction (or literature in general) I admire. But first, a confession. I have never been a blogger before, nor have I ever been the editor of anything (I'm not counting editing my own writing or marking student papers). And as it turns out, I am not as technologically savvy as I'd thought I was—I've been feeling a bit like a granny off the grid (not to generalize grannys or off-the-gridders) as I test the waters of 5x5's submission manager, and email, and now this blogspot (each site, of course, requiring a different user name and password, or so it seems). I would also like to clarify that I never used to use this many parentheses, though I think that development is not too relevant here. At any rate, I am not complaining. I am, in fact, very happy to have been invited to join my fellow 5x5 editors, an opportunity that kind of just fell in my lap, and when it did, I picked it up, and I said, “Heck, yeah.” If I had been channeling my soon-to-be brother-in-law, I would have said, “I don't see why not!,” which is the philosophy by which he has recently been living. Jory, 5x5's Poetry Editor, is the one who tossed the opportunity my way. Thank you, Jory.

Onto other matters...

I'm not very good at introducing my writer/editor-self, which is to say, I am still figuring out what my practice entails, and I still find it hard to pinpoint with any exactitude the KIND of literature I like to read. But I think the two questions are related (what I write and what I read). I want to borrow some words from Barry Lopez, whose collection of essays, About This Life, I devoured over X-MAS vacation, telling my fiance (who became my fiance on Christmas Day) that I think Lopez is a kindred spirit, and why didn't I know about him until now?!? Here is what Lopez says about his own goals in the introductory pages to About This Life: “If I were asked what I want to accomplish as a writer, I would say it's to contribute to a literature of hope..I want to help create a body of stories in which men and women can discover trustworthy patterns.” What has stayed with me most about this statement is “a literature of hope.” What does Lopez mean? I used to think all nonfiction had to be really sad. I thought it was supposed to be serious and full of lament and I almost wished my life was a little more tragic so that I could increase that seriousness and lament to a higher decibel (truthfully). I am not sure where I got that idea. I do think the stories I love most (both those I love to write and those I love to read)—and by story, I am meaning essay, too, and memoir—do often stem from a place of sadness, or hopelessness, but I think they are ultimately concerned with matters of hope, with characters who persevere in the face of disasters, both large and small, characters who have courage to acknowledge the unknown, to speak up, even when it seems like there's no point. I like to write and read about survival (physical, psychological, emotional), which, in the face of a given disaster, is oftentimes impossible WITHOUT the presence of hope. I don't know if that's what Lopez means, but that is what has been on my mind as I work on a memoir concerned with concepts such as family, home, the American Dream, loss, nostalgia, foreclosure. Hope is a life-force. Hope can be redefined (and sometimes it ought to be). And none of this is to say that hope is always hopeful or the opposite of "sad." I think hope can be sad. Sometimes a little hope is the saddest thing in the world, because sometimes hope is hopeless but we are inclined to hope anyway. If asked why I write, or why I love literature (and maybe nonfiction in particular), I would say it's because within the open arms of literature I am encouraged (more so than in any other “place”) to explore who I am and how I became who I am and whether I want to keep being who I am. Particular to my writer/editor-self goals, I suppose, is the desire to offer that place to readers as it has been offered to me--to lead them through a little door they maybe didn't know was there, or that they haven't opened in a while, or ever, and take their coat, and invite them to stay awhile, out of the wind. 

In closing, I want to share with you the tips Lopez once offered a man on a plane who asked him what advice he should give his fifteen-year-old daughter, an aspiring writer:

• “Tell her to read whatever interests her, and protect her if someone declares what she's reading trash. No one can fathom what happens between a human being and written language.”
• “If she wishes to write, she will have to become someone...if her prose doesn't come out of her belief, whatever that proves to be, she will only be passing along information, of which we are in no great need. Help her discover what she means.”
• “Tell [her] to...“separate herself from the familiar...when she returns, she will be better able to understand why she loves the familiar...[to] give us a fresh sense of how fortunate we are to share these things.”

Over the next couple weeks, you might consider these tips in terms of how they apply to your own writing and/or reading practices. Have you recently had to defend your choice in reading materials? Were you able to stick up for yourself in that situation? What DO you believe? What do you REALLY mean, or what is the story REALLY about (rarely is the first answer the true answer...keep digging)? Finally, when is the last time you “got out of town,” so to speak? How might you step outside yourself, or outside the familiar, and see your project with a fresh set of eyes?