Joanna Hershon – C.M. Mayo's Book Notes & Convos

How Are Some of the Most Accomplished Writers and Poets Coping with the Digital Revolution?

This blog posts on Mondays. Fourth Mondays of the month I devote to a Q & A with a fellow writer.

I am not the only one coming to the conclusion, after many years of enthusiastic embrace, that the digital revolution has been a Faustian deal. This month’s “Q & A” is not with one writer but a reprise of a question I have posed to many writers over the past few years, as part of this blog’s fourth Monday Q & A: How have you been coping with the digital revolution? Herewith a wide-ranging selection of their answers. May you find them as thought-provoking as I did.

KATHERINE DUNN: … I have an iPhone that I use mainly for photos…but I’m not attached to it like many people. I have learned to sit down, and state in my head what I need to do, i.e., “I need to get this canvas started and work on it for one hour.”

Simple tiny steps of work. I find I actually get a lot done in a shorter amount of time than when I was younger.

I also do not feel compelled to be in the studio all the time. I’m 62, maybe that is part of it–I have less enthusiasm for other people’s presence.

I think if most people just tried [turning] off notifications on their iPhones it would help! I see some people unable to have a 5 minute conversation without getting interrupted.

I’ve learned to get on and off social media. I deleted 5000 “friends” on Facebook and kept 100 of people I really knew. I never post on it. I only maintain my Apifera Farm nonprofit page. I don’t comment hardly ever on anything of FB. I decided it was a drain and that I was basically entertaining the masses with free photos, stories and more, and was not seeing a return. The nonprofit still can bring in donations through FB. Instagram is eye candy, I use it as a marketing tool for my non profit, and post art when I have it to show.

But that’s it. I don’t interact on it, except to see a baby photo or something of real friends.
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From Q & A with Katherine Dunn on White Dog and Writing in the Digital Revolution, Madam Mayo blog, July 27, 2020

JOANNA HERSHON: I imagine that, like most people, I’m more distracted with social media, texting and email but I still do feel like when I’m writing… I’m writing, just like I always did before the internet existed. Part of what I love and crave about writing fiction is that it’s a process that feels timeless and part of my essential self.
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From Q & A with Joanna Hershon on Her New Novel St. Ivo, Madam Mayo blog, March 23, 2020

BARBARA CROOKER: …I resisted using social media for a long time once we got a high speed connection, fearing it would be a time suck (it is!). I do try to answer emails in a timely fashion, but I limit Facebook to half hour sessions, confess that I don’t see the use of Twitter, but do use it to post when poems are online or if I have an event, and haven’t figured out Instagram yet. . . . The good part about all of this (the Digital Revolution) is that I can easily share work, especially work that has appeared in print-only journals, with larger audiences. I maintain my own website (www.barbaracrooker.com), posting a new poem every month, plus links to poems published online. The downside of it is that I’d need to be cloned to really be able to be a big presence on social media. But I feel my real job is just to write poems, so I’m working as hard as I can to keep the rest of the “stuff” to a minimum.
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Q & A with Poet Barbara Crooker on the Magic of VCCA, Reading, and Some Glad Morning, Madam Mayo blog, December 23, 2019

NANCY PEACOCK: My biggest experience with the digital revolution has been with Facebook. After much cajoling from an agent and the culture, I finally opened a Facebook account. That’s what we’re supposed to do, as writers, right? We’re supposed to promote our work every possible way. I was surprised to find things that mattered to me on Facebook, and then, as those things dwindled, I became addicted to searching for them. In the end, my mind became fractured, and I was unable to focus on what I needed to focus on: the writing. I deleted my FB account. I did not disable it. I deleted it, and I feel my mind healing. It was like coming off a drug…. For me it really came down to either being a writer or presenting as a writer. I chose the former.
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From Q & A: Nancy Peacock, Author of The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson, Madam Mayo blog, March 26, 2018

BRUCE BERGER: I write the same way I did when I began, which is on a yellow legal pad in longhand with a Ticonderoga hardness of 3 pencil, which I transcribe to my laptop, then print for corrections. While I keep up with email and google for info, I don’t participate in social media or text. For the record, I identify as a retro analoggerhead Luddite retard from the Silent Generation.
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From Q & A with Bruce Berger on A Desert Harvest, Madam Mayo blog, November 25, 2019

SERGIO TRONCOSO: I think you have to be relentless about getting the word out about your books and appearances on social media, you have to accept this ‘fast world’ as our world now, even though sometimes I hate it, and you have to do your best not to lose yourself in the posting and re-posting and stupid arguments that too often occur digitally. I do it, then I go back to my work. So I feel a bit schizophrenic sometimes, but I do relish the moment when I turn everything off and lose myself in my work or on a particularly thorny issue of craft. I think you almost have to have a ‘segmented mind,’ that is, learn to function in the realms of social media effectively. But then also learn to take all of this digital frenzy somewhat skeptically. The most basic way it’s affected my writing is that now I write about it, in dystopian stories about where I think our country might be headed, with people too quick to judge superficially, so enamored with images, so lost in our digital world that the real world becomes an aside.
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From Q & A with Sergio Troncoso, Author of A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son, October 28, 2019

ERIC BARNES: My advice is to turn it all off when you write. Phone. Email. Everything. I write on a computer, but have to be sure all the alerts and notifications are off. Not just emails and the Web, but even alerts about software updates and battery life. Everything. Even the word processor I use, I have it set up so all the toolbars and menus and everything else is hidden. I just want a blank white page on which I can type.

Otherwise, the distractions are deadly.
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From Q & A with Eric Barnes on Above the Ether and Turning It All Off, Madam Mayo blog, July 22, 2019

JOSEPH HUTCHISON: I don’t have a writing routine, but when a poem does rear its Hyacinthine head, I become obsessive—preoccupied, distracted—and I pretty much stop answering emails. I have my blog set up so that my posts automatically flow through to a few social media sites, but I don’t generally visit those sites myself, even less so now that I’ve turned off notifications. Unfortunately, I follow numerous sites for political and poetical news, so that when a poem’s finished, I have to wade through days of unread articles. Overall, I’d say that I don’t feel much of a stake in social media, which is generally antisocial and trivializing. I don’t consider it a writerly medium.
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From Q & A: Joseph Hutchison, Poet Laureate of Colorado, on The World As Is, April 22, 2019

MARY MACKEY: I’ve been using computers since the early 80’s, so the Digital Revolution did not come as a surprise. It hasn’t affected my writing, but, like all writers these days, I have to spend time on social media that I would have otherwise spent writing, so I ration my online time carefully. To write poetry, to create anything, you need long periods of silence and intense concentration. You need to be able to hear your inner voice. You can’t do this if you are always checking your phone. My solution is rigorous compartmentalization. I set aside times to write and times to do social media.
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From Q & A: Mary Mackey on The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, Madam Mayo blog, November 18, 2018

What works and doesn’t work for you?

My own sense is that accomplishing anything in this midst of the digital revolution requires clarity of one’s intentions, as well as self-awareness and self-honesty when it comes to assessing one’s own strengths and weaknesses, and time constraints. Hence, everyone’s answer will differ. But we are all struggling with something tremendous.

Much more on this subject anon.

Synge’s The Aran Islands and Kapuscinski’s Travels with Herodotus

Q & A: Shelley Armitage on Walking the Llano: A Texas Memoir of Place

Why Translate? The Case of the President of Mexico’s Secret Book

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.

Q & A: Joanna Hershon on her New Novel St. Ivo

“what I love and crave about writing fiction is that it’s a process that feels timeless and part of my essential self.”
– Joanna Hershon

This blog posts on Mondays. Fourth Mondays of the month I devote to a Q & A with a fellow writer.

Widely-lauded novelist Joanna Hershon’s latest, which is scheduled to launch this April from Farrar, Straus & Giroux– just when the brick-and-mortar bookstores will be reopening, one hopes!–promises to be an all-star book club pick. Here’s the catalog copy:

Over the course of a weekend, two couples reckon with the long-hidden secrets that have shaped their families, in a charged, poignant novel of motherhood and friendship.

It’s the end of summer when we meet Sarah, the end of summer and the middle of her life, the middle of her career (she hopes it’s not the end), the middle of her marriage (recently repaired). And despite the years that have passed since she last saw her daughter, she is still very much in the middle of figuring out what happened to Leda, what role she played, and how she will let that loss affect the rest of her life.

Enter a mysterious stranger on a train, an older man taking the subway to Brooklyn who sees right into her. Then a mugging, her phone stolen, and with it any last connection to Leda. And then an invitation, friends from the past and a weekend in the country with their new, unexpected baby.

Over the course of three hot September days, the two couples try to reconnect. Events that have been set in motion, circumstances and feelings kept hidden, rise to the surface, forcing each to ask not just how they ended up where they are, but how they ended up who they are.

Unwinding like a suspense novel, Joanna Hershon’s St. Ivo is a powerful investigation into the meaning of choice and family, whether we ever know the people closest to us, and how, when someone goes missing from our lives, we can ever let them go.

Buy the book from all the usual online booksellers, including amazon and your local independent bookstore via indiebound.org

Read more about St. Ivo at joannahershon.com

C.M. MAYO: What inspired you to write St. Ivo?

JOANNA HERSHON: The original inspiration was something I experienced on the subway in NYC, where I live. A man began talking to me and something about the conversation was strange and felt almost other-worldly. Another inspiration was a conversation with my husband, who observed that what I was actually interested in was not a more straightforward thriller (which I had originally thought I’d wanted to write) and more along the lines of what he observed I was good at, which is creating suspense and human drama out of tense but ordinary situations.

C.M. MAYO: As you were writing St. Ivo did you have in mind an ideal reader?

JOANNA HERSHON: I have to admit that I never think that way, though I do feel in conversation with forces outside of myself. I think the ideal reader is someone who really engages with a book. Reading is such a private experience, and one can never predict what a reader’s experience will be. I love the mystery of this notion.

C.M. MAYO: And can you describe the ideal reader for St. Ivo as you see him or her now?

JOANNA HERSHON: I think my ideal reader is anyone—male or female—who is interested in relationships, who has loved deeply, who has an interest in platonic, parental and/or romantic love.

C.M. MAYO: Can you talk about which writers have been the most important influences for you?

JOANNA HERSHON: Different writers have come into my life and different moments. Off the top of my head and in no particular order: Leo Tolstoy, Phillip Roth, Michael Cunningham, Grace Paley, Helen Schulman, Jennifer Egan, Susanna Moore, Mona Simpson, Evan S. Connell, Scott Spencer, Wallace Stegner.

C.M. MAYO: Which writers are you reading now?

JOANNA HERSHON: I’m responding to this in the midst of the Corona virus, when I am especially atuned to books which—like mine—are being affected by this awful time. Phyllis Grant’s unique and gorgeous memoir Everything is Under Control is a gem of a book with excellent recipes. Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings is a book of sharp and powerful essays reflecting on the Asian American experience.

C.M. MAYO: How has the Digital Revolution affected your writing? Specifically, has it become more challenging to stay focused with the siren calls of email, texting, blogs, online newspapers and magazines, social media, and such? If so, do you have some tips and tricks you might be able to share?

C.M. MAYO: Another question apropos of the Digital Revolution. At what point, if any, were you working on paper? Was working on paper necessary for you, or problematic?

JOANNA HERSHON: I certainly wrote on paper for many years until the Microsoft Word option of cutting and pasting became such an integral part of my writing. I still prefer to read manuscripts on paper and to use a pencil to mark them up. More and more though, I use Track Changes in Word and write notes and edit with that program in order to save paper for environmental reasons and also because it’s easy and can be very helpful.

C.M. MAYO: What is the most important piece of advice you would offer to another writer who is just starting out? And, if you could travel back in time, to your own thirty year-old self?

JOANNA HERSHON: Read as much as possible. Carve out time to read and to be silent. Also, move through the world open to mystery and strangeness and meaning. When you walk, when you observe, take in the details and pay attention to what you recall, even if it seems meaningless. There’s usually something worth noting if it stays. As for my thirty year old self: I was writing a LOT when I was thirty, so I think I’d probably say to keep going, but maybe to also travel more before having children.

“Read as much as possible. Carve out time to read and to be silent. Also, move through the world open to mystery and strangeness and meaning.”

C.M. MAYO: What’s next for you?

JOANNA HERSHON: I am really not sure. Due to the Corona Virus, I am currently in social isolation in Brooklyn with my family. My kids will begin remote learning in about two weeks. My novel is about to be published. I’d thought I’d be touring and going to book groups and book stores all spring and now I am mostly cooking and cleaning and entertaining my five-year-old. I hope to connect with readers more and more online. It’s hard to imagine that I won’t start another novel and hopefully soon. I have written novels for my entire adult life and it feels like an inextricable part of me.

P.S. Check out Joanna Hershon’s guest-blog post for Madam Mayo blog about her novel A Dual Inheritance.

What the Muse Sent Me about the Tenth Muse,
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

Q & A with Poet Barbara Crooker on the Magic of VCCA,
Reading, and Some Glad Morning

Überly Fab Fashion Blogger Melanie Kobayashi’s “Bag and a Beret”
(Further Notes on Reading as a Writer)

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.

Five Links from “A Dual Inheritance” That Traverse the Globe

Delighted to host the widely-lauded novelist and cyber amiga de Todos Santos, Joanna Hershon, guest-blogging about her novel– pub date yesterday!– A Dual Inheritance (Ballantine Books). Here’s the catalog description of what promises to be fabulous read:

Autumn 1962: Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard. Ed is far removed from Hugh’s privileged upbringing, yet his drive and ambition outpace Hugh’s ambivalence about his own life. These two young men form an unlikely friendship, bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances. But in just a few short years, not only do their paths diverge, but their friendship ends abruptly, with only one of them understanding why. Can a friendship define your view of the world? Spanning from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present-day stock market collapse, A Dual Inheritance asks this question, as it follows not only these two men, but the complicated women in their vastly different lives. And as Ed and Hugh grow farther and farther apart, they remain uniquely—even surprisingly—connected.

Five Links from A Dual Inheritance that Traverse the Globe
By Joanna Hershon

1) A Dual Inheritance starts in 1962 at Harvard, and this article about an iconic restaurant (and the site of a scene in the novel) and it’s closing, evokes both the place– so international and campus-glamorous– and a sense of nostalgia, which seems appropriately representative of this book.

2) This film, The Nuer by Robert Gardner, is the inspiration for Chapter Six. Hugh Shipley graduates from Harvard in 1963 and goes to Africa with a film crew to assist his mentor. It’s there in Ethiopia where his career path changes focus and takes a surprising turn. Writing about a young man on a precipice of his life, in the middle of the bush, so vulnerable to not only the elements, but to his own fragile psyche, was challenging, and while I was writing this chapter, I’d watch this film over and over and revel in its beauty and its otherness.

3) My Pinterest board for A Dual Inheritance. What a pleasure it was to dream visually about the worlds of my novel. It didn’t occur to me to even look at Pinterest until long after I was finished writing, when my imaginary worlds were so much more real than any photographs.

4) Chapter Sixteen is set in Shenzhen, China in the late 1980’s. There’s very little online about this part of the world during this particular time, which was fascinating, in itself. I found a great deal on Chinese delicacies. Here’s a gateway into that culinary world.

5) Here is a link that’s sure to amaze and inspire. Make sure to spend some time watching the incredible film footage. I went to high school with Dr. Amy Lehman, who happens to be an extraordinary thinker, doctor and leader. She is building a floating health clinic on Lake Tanganyika, which makes up 18 percent of the world’s fresh water supply. The lake’s surrounding communities (spanning four countries – Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Zambia) are currently without basic healthcare. Dr. Lehman and her ideas continue to influence and inspire.

–Joanna Hershon

Find out more about C.M. Mayo’s books, shorter works, podcasts, and more at www.cmmayo.com.