On January 25, 2018, Florida International University (FIU) hosted the first “Writers on the Bay” event of 2018. Brenda Miller was the first, of many authors, to come visit us. Miller is a Creative Non-Fiction writer. It was an experience to have her share with us. On the time we share she read to us from her lasted book, An Earlier Life, gave us some insights about her writing process, and even presented a sneak peak of some of her work that is yet to be published. When we arrived at the Biscayne Bay Campus’ bookstore, it seems they were still setting up the refreshments. These consisted of wine, water, beer, chocolate, crackers, ham, cheese and anything you would imagine would be in an environment filled with English Majors. The part of the store that is usually cramped with notebooks, comics, and snacks to buy, was now occupied by six rows of aquamarine banquet chairs and a podium waiting for our special guest to arrive. As soon as the clock struck 8 pm, the space was crawling with students and professors eager to hear Miller herself tell her story.
The evening began with our very own Julie Wade (English Professor extraordinaire), introducing Brenda Miller. We discovered these two talented ladies met because Miller was Wade’s professor. As they both are successful, the evening promised to be filled with lots of insight for aspiring writers.
Brenda Miller is teaching us something the moment she steps into the podium. She opens by modestly implying she didn’t know what she was doing in the beginning of her career as a Professor. She then moves on to talk about the Hermit Crab Essay, which of course shows, her growth and knowledge as a writer and professor. Miller explains that
“the Hermit Crab is a creature that doesn’t have its own shell. So, it needs to scavenger to find shells in order to exist and move around in the world. A Hermit Crab Essay does the same thing. It takes on an already existing form and uses that to tell its story.”
She then announces that she has an anthology of Hermit Crab Essays titled, The Shell Game and it’s coming out this April!
The first piece she reads to us is from her latest book, An Earlier Life. It was a Hermit Crab Essay in the form of a “How To” article and it was titled, “How to Get Ready for Bed”. Her voice feels surprisingly comforting, almost familiar. Soft and slow, she reads exactly as you would imagine she would if she was reading you a story before going to bed. In retrospect, this might have been intentional, as a reading is more or less a performance of once work. She quickly picks up her pace as her words seem to mimic the rhythm of her thoughts. The essay tells the story of a woman shopping for a new mattress as her thoughts race to an earlier life, what it’s like to be in a relationship with a man, and what it’s like to be in a relationship with yourself, accompanied only by your pets. She talks about what it is like to be a single woman (notice use of the word woman and not girl).
We can see this when she writes:
‘… he keeps saying that most beds wear out because of the combined weight of sleepers compressing the coils and foam. “But that won’t be a problem for you”, he says eyeing your slim hips…’
and
“…perhaps memory is exactly the opposite of what you need when making love…”
Her voice, life experience, and humorous word choice make for a reading you won’t want to stop listening to and a book you won’t want to stop reading.
After her reading of “An Earlier Life”, Brenda Miller proceeds to give her listeners a taste of her future work, a book titled, Canary: A Broken Memoir. She continues to explain that the book was born a Summer she spent with fellow writers where each day they would give each other prompts on something to write about. From her upcoming book, she shares with us an essay titled “Fingernail”.
She read:
‘…his nails grow thick and long, creeping a half inch beyond the rounded flesh. They’re the only part of him that seems healthy. “How can the nails keep growing like this?” I wonder. When his heart pumps barely enough blood to keep him alive.’
Although she shared more, I’ll leave you with this. We hope that like us, you’ll be refreshing your Amazon account in search of the publication of this piece.
After the reading, the part everyone had been waiting for, commenced.
The question portion of the evening started with a Grad Student (and writer) asking Miller how to deal with the fear of producing a ‘bad essay’.
Brenda Miller responds by saying: “This is going to sound really snotty but I don’t deal with that problem. This is because I have a lot of practice writing a lot of bad material. Not bad, not useful material. I see writing now as a practice and I rarely ever now sit down with an idea of what I’m going to write. I write with an image in mind. I’ve come to understand that the more you write, and the more quickly you write, the more your gears are moved up. Not everything you write will make it into a book, but a lot of it will. The writing will show you what your concerns are, what the themes are. If I start with something in mind, I lose interest almost immediately, and then it becomes a chore. So, I think, if you’re asking for my advice, just let yourself write. Let yourself write bad if you want to put it that way. But I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t judge it. I would just say, write practice writing. Do it like you practice anything. You know, a great basketball player, you don’t expect them to be able to score 40 points their first game out. So, it just becomes second nature to you. That’s why it’s important for me to have some kind of writing challenge going on. Somebody that’s expecting something from me so that I can prioritize it in the business of everyday life. For some pieces, I choose to go on a retreat to write them because when you start juggling images and things like that, it becomes harder to maintain focus on with the day to day life. There are different times and places when dealing with different type of writing”.
An undergraduate student asks: “As someone who writes Creative Non-Fiction, what is your relationship with presenting 100% of the truth?”
BM: “I think there are ways to acknowledge a moment like that and do it in front of your reader so you don’t end up having to defend a fictionalization of your experience. I tend to use a lot of words like “I imagined” or “I would like to believe”. I tend to write a lot from memory, and you know, I have a terrible memory, but you know I flesh them out on the page. Afterwards, I might do some fact checking, and then I decide if it’s important to be accurate or it’s important to be beautiful. In my classroom, I talk about the continuum. On one end it’s the experience you had, and on the other end, it’s the literature you’re making up of that experience. And that literature you’re making it’s an artifact, it’s something artificial and so at some point, you decide if your allegiance lies with your experience or the artifact.”
Another different student asks: “I’m a fiction writer, and it’s the first semester I’m writing Non-Fiction and I find that I’m falling in love with the practice of writing. However, I find myself trying to put a story to memory. So, what would be your advice for a fiction writer who is stepping into Non-Fiction?”
BM: “Use all those fiction writer skills that you have. I mean that’s kind of a deficit that a lot of Non-Fiction writers have that there are things that we are just not good at. So just bring in those skills to bare and again, don’t worry so much about the accuracy of a scene until you’ve drafted and then do some fact checking and decide what you want to do with it.”
Someone else in the audience asks: “Who are your favorite Non-Fiction writers?”
BM: My foremother is Joan Didion and my forefather is E.B. White. I always go back to them and I teach them a lot.
That was the closing of our first “Writers on the Bay” event. Shortly after this, the lights were turned off, and the store was closed. If right now you are wishing you could have gone, don’t be too hard on yourself. Our next event is Thursday, March 29th at 8 PM in the FIU BBC Bookstore: The Student Literary Awards Reading and Reception. Following that we will have the final event of the academic year on Thursday, April 12th at 8 PM in the Mary Ann Wolfe Theater at FIU BBC: The Lawrence Sanders Award for Distinguished Achievement in Fiction will be presented to Dennis Lehane, with reading, Q&A, reception, and book-signing to follow at the University Bookstore. If you’re a fellow book lover don’t miss this opportunity and join us the dates to come.