Today I am happy to host my new pal Wendy Besel Hahn as she discusses her writing process and what she’s currently working on. Wendy and I know each other through the Listen To Your Mother DC show we are in next Sunday. To get to know Wendy more, you can follow her on Twitter at @WendyBeselHahn, or visit her webpage.
1. What am I working on?
In fits and spurts, I am working on a novel set in Uravan, Colorado in 1952 that is loosely based on my grandparents’ lives. Fiction is a new realm for me, one that I was lucky to start exploring with Courtney Brkic in her MFA fiction workshop at George Mason University last fall. My “new writing” file also contains an essay tentatively entitled “Bring Out Your Dead” that examines our death rituals and what they say about us. In the past year I’ve attended four funerals. I need a place to examine why standing over an open casket becomes an opportunity to critique the deceased’s attire. Although I didn’t think of it this way initially, the essay is shaping up to be a companion piece to one that I wrote several years ago about fascination with the pregnant form. These projects provide a more creative outlet for my full time focus on finding a literary agent to represent my completed memoir manuscript, Outside the Temple Doors, about growing up as a non-Mormon in Utah and later confronting my own religious intolerance as a parent. My author website contains a brief synopsis of the memoir as well as past and current publications.
2. How does my work differ from others in its genre?
I primarily operate in the nonfiction realm and am more drawn to developing characters rather than plot. Every day I notice things that make me say, “I can’t make this shit up.” Life is full of contradictions and ironies. Growing up, I always felt like an outsider in my community; now I am a transplanted Westerner living along the Atlantic coast. These experiences inform the way I see the world and in turn my writing. Most of my observations have a hint of melancholy laced with humor. Although I don’t set out to talk about faith, I can’t escape the myriad ways that my religious identity shapes who I am.
3. Why do I write what I do?
When I moved to Virginia in 1999, I wrote to survive. My husband started his first job out of graduate school; I missed my previous life teaching English in a Catholic high school in Salt Lake City, Utah. I spent months in my pajamas, sipping coffee, watching Katie Couric on the Today show, and writing. A bad experience teaching middle school had me questioning my career path, so I had picked up a copy of What Color is Your Parachute? from the local library. The assignment to write about ten stepping-stones in my life gave me purpose and provided plenty of material. I signed up for a couple of creative writing classes through community education. There I met Shaileen Backman who has been my writing buddy for nearly 14 years.
My writing life continued when I returned to the classroom. Eventually, I was reading E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake” and George Orwell’s “To Shoot an Elephant” with a room full of high school juniors enrolled in my Advanced Placement English Language and Composition class. To my surprise, I was reading as a writer, dissecting some of the best personal essays and learning techniques from the masters. That inspired me to hone my craft.
When my husband and I decided to start a family, I left my podium behind and enrolled in an MFA program. My daughter was five months old when I began classes. Reading and writing for my courses gave me a way to combat sleep deprivation and boredom; it was a lifeline. I walked across the stage to receive my diploma while I was seven months pregnant with my son. Both of my kids are now in school all day allowing me more time to pound keys, trying to make sense of my world.
4. How does my writing process work?
I know instinctively which events to write about before I understand their significance, so I guess you could say that I write my way into their meaning. I have to trust that I’ve selected the correct piñata, as I swing a bat trying to crack it open. That takes many drafts and many readers as well as plenty of time for pieces to collect dust inside files on my computer hard drive. Often, there are six to eight iterations of a scene.
My grandparents took my sister and me to Disneyland when I was a teenager. I dragged them through the ride It’s A Small World no fewer than three times because I was oddly attracted to the garish displays and repetitive song. Writing about the trip years later, I kept circling back around that experience, framing it in different ways, but it always sounded like a school essay on my summer vacation. I knew there was something important there, but I just couldn’t identify what. At some point in writing my memoir, I discovered how the experience related to my spiritual journey. On those boat rides in 1987, I encountered a worldview that was more inclusive than my own religious upbringing.
Thanks, Wendy! I’m looking forward to reading more of your work (and hearing your story at the show in a couple of weekends).
I want to read that memoir. I want to read “Bring Out Your Dead” (which sounds like just the right amount of weird and compelling). Could someone please throw money at this woman so that we can read her stuff in print?
I’m with you, Jessica. I’d love to read more of Wendy’s work.
Wow, the imagery of assessing the deceased’s outfit in an open casket is so compelling. I want to read THAT. My husband’s mother died a couple of summers ago and I was both horrified and fascinated that she had an open casket. I’d also like to read about how It’s a Small World is similar – or related to – Wendy’s spiritual journey.
I have to also say that I’m feeling like a total slacker in that I never have six to eight versions of a scene. Thanks for the inspiration. You two are both simply awesome!