TBR [to be read], a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.
Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?
It’s about loss… the growing load of losses we carry, some
without even realizing, both the expected (parents, pets, relationships, keepsakes,
homes) as well as losses we don’t realize are being lost, such as identities (daughter,
sibling, even author). And it’s about continuing the search for meaning and
contentment through what seems like the loss of hope.
Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why? And which
essay gave you the most trouble, and why?
Perhaps “Northwoods Nap” was the easiest … so did I enjoy it
most? It was easiest because there was a particular mini event to supply shape
and movement: my dog continually waking me during a nap until I realized what
was bothering him. But the writing journey of discovery just in unpacking this
small event was both satisfying and comforting -- because it made me feel even
closer to my dog.
The most difficult could be the last one, “Day of
Reckoning,” because while I was exploring how a childhood perception that I was
decidedly not the “preferred” child in my family had created unhealthy and even
ugly adult tendencies, behavior, and sensibility … something happened in my
personal relationship that was so germane that I had to include it, but was
something deeply personal to my partner. So I wrestled with it, knowing I did
have to include it, but how? … and I ended up putting it into a text box,
almost an aside, and said that it might be the biggest day of reckoning of all.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
The high was definitely being taken by the University of
Georgia Press CRUX CNF series. What a powerful list of names came before me!
The lows were being outright ignored by agents and some
larger independent publishers, even when I was personally recommended.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
Yours! (Below.) Because it’s how I’ve learned to work. I was
probably surprised by something in every essay, then surprised all over again
when the essays made a whole story, with repeating characters, threads of
continuing story, repeated motifs, etc.
Many times, while writing, the surprise discovery or thought did signal
“this is the ending” and I knew to just stop there. Other times the surprise(s)
helped me. So I’ll just say your advice in a different way: don’t have a
hard-and-fast ending planned before you start to write.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
As alluded to above, the biggest surprise was that separate
essays written over a 10+ year span – never thinking they would be in a book
let alone make a book – were actually a woven-together story. I like to
think this is represented in the cover art. I told the designer to look for an
image that was a “single line,” where the artist never lifts the pencil until
completely finished. It represents the “unbroken-line” threads that can be
tugged in one essay to reel-in other parts of the same story in other essays,
but also the designer tripled the line, so it represents multiple pull-through
threads.
What’s something about your book that you want readers to
know?
I want readers to know that there’s drama, tension,
discovery and relief to be found in stories that are not victim-to-victory
narratives. Searching for complicity is a foundation of the kind of exploration
I do in nonfiction writing. In fact, sometimes realizing one’s own complicity
is itself a personal gut punch to stagger away from and then try to stand up
again.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book?
In “The Summer of Letting Things Go” there’s a vignette that
was originally published in Brevity, titled “Feeding Time.” It describes
my family’s custom of family dinner, and ends with a description of having
fresh coconut for dessert, starting with the hard brown fruit, progressing
through the drilling, cracking it with a hammer, then prying the white meat
from the shell.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://cris-mazza.com/
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820367545/the-decade-of-letting-things-go/
READ AN ESSAY FROM THIS BOOK, “Oneiric (another word I’ve
never said)”:
https://therumpus.net/2014/03/23/the-sunday-rumpus-essay-oneiric-another-word-ive-never-said/