Nicola Dixon is a UK-born, Philly-fortified author. She received a 2018 Pushcart nomination for creative nonfiction and was published in the December 2018 issue of the Hong Kong Review. She holds an MA in professional writing from New England College. An excerpt from her essay “Just Like Johnny Cash” can be found here. It appears in the July/Aug 2020 issue of the Kenyon Review.
What was your original impetus for writing “Just Like Johnny Cash”?
Well, obviously there’s a unique exhaustion that comes with being a new parent. I was writing less often, not necessarily because there was “less time” but because I never felt “sharp” and doubted my capacity for anything artistically rigorous. I committed to writing micro-fiction stories regularly—one complete 100 word story every Sunday night—to try to get some elasticity back into my thinking, but I missed writing longer pieces and needed guidance, so I scoured professional writing programs for English departments with women leaders over fifty. I was forty and needed someone older to guide me through. There was no way I was going take out a mega loan as a new mom just to trust an adjunct in their twenties. No offense intended, but I knew what I needed. My creative nonfiction class assignment required twenty-five pages which seemed mammoth after pumping out dozens of 100-word stories. I was hesitant to spend money I didn’t have and divided my tuition by word count to conclude that this assignment, by my grossly bias math, would cost me $84 a sentence. After I committed to that logic I just put every damn word through the ringer.
How did you first decide to connect The Home Doctor by John D. Comrie, MD to your pregnancies? Were there any references to the book that you ultimately chose to leave out of the piece?
I wanted to incorporate it as a device, a transitional object, to get me in and out of modes. Its constancy in my life (it’s the only object I still have on hand from my youth) is quite stark, and its identity as a reference book adds something. To be honest, I think its secondary use, as a proper-up of things, was a better aggregate to my emotional core. I don’t remember sloughing off any references from earlier drafts. I knew I needed it in there more than twice in order to have significance, but I didn’t want it to upstage more important elements and certainly didn’t want it to feel shoehorned in at all.
I loved the lines “Yes, I got the onesies. Yes, I almost died. Of course it was worth it, don’t be ridiculous.” Can you talk a little bit about incorporating your dry humor into your work (especially a serious subject like that of this essay)?
I didn’t consciously incorporate it—I think it would have to be excised if I wanted it out. I was taught early on, at Kenyon Review Writers Workshop actually, to always “find the humor in the harrowing.” The sincerity and humility has to be there, though, for that to happen, and if you’re not using an authentic voice you can’t access it. Curiosity-based science writing will give you a good “in” on how to be awkwardly self-aware, but most of that content isn’t literary, so it’s a good starting place but not comprehensively helpful.
I think it’s audacious to expect a reader to take on not only a sad tale but then saddle them with a sad tone. It throws off the recipe and turns an essay into some kind of unbalanced confessional aesthetic. Besides, isn’t the most repellant/attractive universal paradox the one where life goes on regardless of one’s personal grief or ecstasy or a pie in the oven? Aerial shots of life are more illustrative that granular thumbnails. No one needs my feelings, they’ve got their own, and if I manage to make them laugh while they’re accessing them, I have a chance to create reader/writer intimacy that comes from a giving place as opposed to a draining one.
How has your writing changed since you started out?
I didn’t appreciate the complexity and nuance of structure for a long time. I thought that if you had a discernible beginning, middle and end with some winky, indicative subplot then you were golden. I also didn’t know how to torque a paragraph and make it earn a living, I was too busy being swept away with lyricism.
In my twenties and thirties I experienced inspiration in “bursts.” I hadn’t realized yet that a much more potent and steady form of inspiration comes as the result of just sitting down and confronting the work that needs to be done.
Which non-writing-related aspect of your life most influences your writing?
Music is hugely influential when I’m world building. The first couple of nights when a germ of a new story is really taking off in my head I try to visualize elements of the story working cinematically, then I sit in the dark with my headphones on and create a soundtrack/playlist for it. Then I write to the playlist and only the playlist. (Which can be actually be quite irritating because it often it involves playing and replaying music I don’t particularly like—I have “thought out” a fight scene to Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife” on repeat hundreds of times while I walk to the office. I write a lot on my commute into the city, and I also write at times when perhaps I’m probably too tired to write—having the playlist on hand lets me easily “enter the right room” psychologically.
What is either the best or the worst piece of writing advice you’ve received or given?
The best would be “Transitional objects are a gift horse for slipping in and out plot/subplot.” Also the rule “Coincidences can get you into trouble but they should never get you out of it” is broadly applicable when you’re dealing with any fish-out-of-water elements. The worst would be “Write what scares you.” Trauma-informed and personal-event writing can, understandably, be therapeutic, but it can also be indulgent and do a disservice to the mechanical and omniscient needs of a piece. (Also, peers are less likely to give negative feedback to these kinds of pieces out of respect for the person’s experience, so it’s a tricky area where bad writing habits can bloom quickly. Can you imagine someone piping up in a workshop, “Woooo, Jackie, I think the part where you describe the reflective properties of the knife you’re holding against your delicate wrist for two pages is actually one and a three quarter pages too long!” Ha ha. I mean, I’d blurt it out, but I’m hopeless.)
What project(s) are you working on now, or next?
I’m writing another essay right now. I’m sitting in the Pine Barrens with a laptop. Ultimately I’d like to put out collection of essays. Tonally, this essay is overtly humorous, it’s set in a family campground and starts off exploring the curious branding and naming conventions of American RV manufacturers. I set out to learn how they determine, logistically, how many “Prowler,” “Alpha Wolf,” and “Hideout” models the country needs as opposed to the less predatory sounding “Holiday Rambler” and “Mountain Aire” models. Then I start applying personalities to each RV as I link them to the respective figures in my life. The challenge here is not to devolve into a snarky sense of superiority, because observational introductions can sound privileged and be very self-serving and that’s not OK. It’s actually the most tender piece I’ve found myself writing, and it feels very urgent to me. The greater questions the piece addresses are, “Can one really exist as a whole person without deep, abiding friendship?” and “Should routine-as-a-coping-mechanism ever have a shelf-life?” It’s funny, I swear—but I do need it to be the very best I can do on a sentence level, so maybe I’ll pretend each one costs me $300.