epic:
This American Wife Episode 11 - “Coming and Crying”
Meaghan O’Connell and Melissa Gira Grant, creators of a self-published anthology about sex, discuss their journey on the verge of the project’s tearful release. Erica Moore reads a heartbreaking story from the book about being free, while producer Eric Martin tells a story about going down - just not like you think. Chin up, it’s This American Wife.
Hosted by Ned Hepburn and Eric Martin
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Despite a little initial trepidation, it was a lot of fun to work with Eric and Ned who were professional and creative. I’m actually a fan of the podcast (if you haven’t listened to Justine Bateman’s episode, stop what you’re doing and go find it) but alerted them from the start that I lacked the usual coquettish wit and ballsy female charm to which they tend. (“Awkward” was a personal disclaimer frequently proffered.)
Lucky for me, they were fine with focusing part of this Very Special Episode on rambling, heartbroken, mildly-erotic and overly-analytical dispatches from “the middle of nowhere.” Which IS right in my wheelhouse. Win!
So, check out this episode in which Meaghan and Melissa provide a smart, wry summary of the book-making business.
Then I take a deep breath and read the first half of my C&C story, which was scary and vulnerable but falls in the category of “Things You do After Saying What the Hell And Ultimately Don’t Regret”
Finally, producer Eric Martin shares a pretty epic, funny, pause-giving story about surviving and what the hell you’re going to do with this one life you’ve got.
Things like this, apparently.
(Source: epic)
I have followed Erica’s writing online for a couple of years now. Since I first found her blog and was lit up by something she’d put out into the world, we’ve written email after email, usually late at night and always rambly (in my case, at least). She has encouraged and inspired me in ways that would be sort of awkward to get into in an interview intro (although this is kind of that). Anyhow, for her interview we decided that we’d take our exchange to paper, via snail mail, because why not?
I got her letter (interview responses!) after a very long day and read them on the couch, a little drunk and very grateful. Here they are.
ERICA:
For years I blogged mostly about travel. I sat at these refurbished, dusty Dells in developing cities and wrote in a physical and mental vacuum about what I was experiencing and thinking and it was all just very one-sided. I hung it out on a little shingle and my friends and family offered biased praise from the motherland in ten words or less. It offered such a false security—left so much latent potential.
The thing I have come to love about Tumblr is that it’s not just writing in community. It’s reading and thinking and inspiring discipline and teaching in community. Some of the best things I’ve read anywhere have been on Tumblr by people I can email later that night. And correspondingly, I think some of the better things I’ve written this year were fleshed out and finished and offered up publicly because I know that would mean something to a community of not just friends but writers. I knew I would receive thoughtful feedback (when the writing warranted it) and might even prime the pump for someone else—returning the favor they’d done me with their piece I couldn’t stop reading the month before. And if my writing is flat—contrived or lazy or some flimsy imitation—well, I’ll know that through them too.
Writing in this community is life-giving and adds a fuel and urgency I haven’t felt in more static, one-dimensional platforms.
The book itself is a community of a different sort. Sometimes I envision it as a lit up apartment building, and I am standing across the street at night. I live across the hall from these people, quite literally, our stories are housed together but I don’t know most of these people yet. There’s a bundle of kinetic excitement I drag into each new story I read. A bundle of anticipation of new stories I’ll hear from writers I already love and all the moments I’ll meet from people I am related to but not in relation with.
ERICA:
When I reread this intimate little story, it’s not necessarily the transparency that gives me pause. It’s the fact that this is vulnerability and honesty as a snapshot, a still unfolding situation paralyzed in time and offered up for judgment. That’s daunting.
Oh, and yes, I do consider what people will think when they read it. The subjects of the story and the man that follows. But I don’t regret opening the blinds and showing a story—a process—that means as much to me now as it did then. There is something heavy in sharing it now as both a memory and one still tender. I think about friends and more accomplished writers scanning the paragraphs and the people I email at night, with the graphic portions open next to their laptop. And I wonder how some of them will see me differently—of course I do. But that is not a bad thing. It’s a thought without value judgment right now.
More so, I feel a little thrill…like the beginning of a relationship and those first emails you send in which you begin to make admissions and tell secrets and you are waiting with antsy fingers and a rumbling heart for him to respond. This is my life, this is my experience pulled out and pressed down like clover for you to consider; these are my basest feelings on love and sex and loss and climbing back under it all, all over again. And maybe this is a contribution to erasing the yoke of dignified conversation and what we are not allowed to talk about. Now, for better or worse, you have more of me, unrefined. Through the book, I will have more of a few of you. And maybe in the months ahead, through your own writing outlet, I’ll have more of all of you. This too remains thrilling.
Early this morning it occurred to me that it is almost March. And the first, next elated thought that followed was: It’s almost time for Coming & Crying to become a real live book!
I’m looking forward to this book more than I am the culmination of friends’ pregnancies (No offense ladies - babies are great). I’m anticipating it not just for the content (though I’m booking plenty of Alone Time In the Bath Tub for reading it) but for the process and what it makes possible.
I think we underplay how significant it is to watch this collection of talented and dedicated women (AND MEN, I know!) create and continue hoisting forward their work. Despite their resources, geographic relevance, fame or lack thereof. In spite of what anyone may think of them, what people will surely say. I’m encouraged by a world where Katie West’s photography and writing will be lauded, where she has the balls to put it out there and keep putting it out there and saying, this is what I do and I’m proud of it. Where Tess Lynch doesn’t have to just be funny, she can damn well write earnestly about handjobs if she wants to. And the list goes on. I don’t know Melissa, but she writes with a matter of fact forthrightness that is convicting, that makes me want to be less flippant, less self-deprecating. And I’m encouraged that we’re listening and considering and not disregarding her or any of these women as sensationalistic; The furthest thing from what they are.
And of course, Meaghan. Of whom I am proud like few other people I know. For her guts and work and focus and transparency. Yeah, it’s not for everyone. I know, I know. Some of us have Grown Up jobs or children or simply value our privacy too much. That’s fine. But there’s something to profoundly admire in how much Meaghan and Melissa and the whole crew believe in this project and are willing to bare themselves because they believe in Conversation. Meag so sincerely regrets the dearth of honest, reverent writing about sex and what an important, complicated, elating, crushing part of our lives it is that she’s going to clamor to correct that it in the public square. And then she’s going to go out and find KickStarter and unflinchingly ask people she knows, loves, doesn’t know, doesn’t like to contribute to this and be a part of it. Both in terms of their finances and their own stories. Because it matters to her. Not just in private, not just in one segmented room of her life. It matters to her no matter where she is and she has the artistic courage and transparency to say that and let the world be damned. To tell her mom and her aunt and her sister about it. The men she’s dated and will date yet. Her employers and her former employers.
She’s unconditionally proud of what matters to her and her ability to write about; How many of us are willing to be that earnest about anything?
Maybe most of all, the thing that kills me is all of these women’s ability to stake a new flag - to say: This is who I am. I am a writer who writes from my guts about Anything I want to say and I won’t cushion it to get some lucrative corporate job with people who wouldn’t approve. Or to ensure that some man won’t think I am too much, too honest, too difficult, too aggressive.
I guess I mean she and so many of the other women in this book are not compromising. And that’s not the entire point of the book but it’s a little manifesto that catches my attention and makes me proud to be a woman, and to have the chance to support them.
So that’s it - that’s my point.
There are only four days left to buy this book. And more importantly, to support a group of writers and artists who aren’t sitting around, remaining limited by convention or conventional publishing or our judgment.
I’m so excited to watch this thing happen. You should be too.