Even the time I designate each day for writing, from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m., isn’t sacred. Often I have more pressing commitments, especially during the school year when, as a writing professor, I have to grade papers, plan classroom lectures and activities, and meet with students—I have been known to schedule morning breakfast meetings with students as early as 6:30 a.m. because it’s the only time during the day I can shoehorn it into my schedule.

The writing retreat has revealed how a hectic life can overrun what is one of the most important elements of my life—the thing that brings me sanity and courage and renewal: Writing. I simply have to learn to say “no” so I can say “yes” to the writing.

This writing retreat also brought along something unexpected. Fear. After an eleven-hour drive from my home in northern Indiana, with only a bagel to sustain me for the entire trip, my defenses were gone when I arrived near dusk. It was still about eighty-five degrees and humid. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I was sweating. Exhausted and shaky from lack of food, I got a first look at the place where I’d spend the next three weeks. An enormous white farmhouse along a tiny lane on a hill overlooking a valley of trees and the James River. The only sound was crickets. I instantly panicked, texting both my husband and my mother. “What have I done?” I asked. “I can’ stay here for three weeks.” They tried to encourage me, but I was nearly inconsolable.

There was nothing else to do but write.

I focused on settling into my room, then I sat on my bed and cried. I had to talk myself into not packing up my car again and driving another eleven hours back home. I finally convinced myself to at least stay the night and if I felt the same way in the morning, then I could go.

I felt the same way in the morning, but instead of packing up I drank some coffee, turned on my computer and began revising some work I had done before arriving. Then I moved on to new material. Eight hours later I made myself a bowl of rice for dinner, sat on one of the two porches that span the length of the farmhouse and began to relish the quiet and the solitude. I went to bed early, woke up early the next day and started again. I did the same the next day and the next and the next.

Presented with the all-encompassing quiet, I was only in the company of myself and the writing. I discovered that the fear that had overwhelmed me was like looking into a mirror and really seeing myself for the first time. It occurred to me that I’d spent so much time in my previous work interrogating others that when I was face-to-face with myself, I could barely sit still. Turning my writing eye onto myself with all its inconvenient truths caused me to nearly give up.

Since 2012, I’ve been working to transform my MFA thesis into a memoir and couldn’t figure out what I was missing with the project. After four versions of it, I knew it still wasn’t quite right. Thanks to spending time writing out in the middle of a Virginia forest, I’ve moved into the fifth version of it with a clarity I’ve never had before. All thanks to the quiet and solitude of not having anything else to do but write.

 Jennifer Ochstein has published essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Cresset, Connotation Press, Evening Street Review, and The Lindenwood Review. She has written book reviews for Brevity and River Teeth Blog. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

The post The Panic of Writing appeared first on Newfound.

As the word “subversion” rolls around the mouth, it’s also a word, in action, that deconstructs and challenges. It’s a hard-working word, frightening to those who hold power. The word comes from the Latin subertere, meaning “to overthrow.” I love the definition of the word: “An attempt to transform established social order and its structures of power, authority, and hierarchy.”

I can think of writers who have subverted my understanding of the world—Rebecca Solnit, Sonya Huber, Alice Walker, C.S. Lewis, James Baldwin, Roxane Gay, Cormac McCarthy, St. John the Apostle. While the definition of “subvert,” as a verb, is more negative—“to overthrow; to cause the downfall, ruin, destruction of; to undermine the principles of; corrupt”—I prefer to think of their influence in my life as a something constructive, a gift. Being corrupted is only a matter of perspective. Sometimes being corrupted against the established power, authority, and hierarchy is, in reality, more like finding redemption.

Being subversive, of course, isn’t a prerequisite to becoming a writer. There are plenty of phenomenal writers who uphold and benefit from the status quo and who might be loathe to see it change. (I’m thinking specifically the number of men versus the number of women who are published in the most prestigious literary venues. See Vida, a subversive organization dedicated to women’s literary art, for their annual Vida Count).

I think I became a writer partly because I love ideas and I love figuring out how to subvert people’s perceptions and expectations. I recently had a conversation with a friend about our attraction to body art, including tattoos and piercings. I mentioned that part of the reason I like tattoos for myself is because they subvert people’s first impression of me. Since my husband is a pastor in a conservative evangelical denomination in the Midwest, I’m often pegged, at first, as a traditional pastor’s wife whose only significant use is having babies and offering emotional support for my husband.

In the past, when my husband has been interviewed for senior pastor positions, I’ve been asked how many children I have and how I see my role as his wife in the church (spouses of pastors are often interviewed along with the pastoral candidate). Both are disheartening questions. Being a mother is a job I’m not sure I would be very good at, but besides that, my husband and I have never been able to have children. In addition, I find deep fulfillment in my own job as a writing professor, rather than standing behind my husband as he ministers to a congregation. I’m not all tatted up, but I have a few tattoos, and they are a physical way I can reveal that the preconceived notions most of us hold are worthless.

The same is true with story and with writing. Story disarms. When you can get a reader emotionally involved in your own, personal story or the story of a human character, they’re more likely to see themselves within the pages and recognize that the status quo, which mostly benefits those who are in power, isn’t what it first appears. When someone’s on top, someone else is always on the bottom, and story can give us a picture of the person on the bottom in a way that helps us recognize her as human in the same way we, ourselves, are human.

In my writing and literature classes, I tend to assign readings that are in some way subversive. I’m always quick to point out how the writer subverts our expectations when it comes to a form or a character so that those students in the class who are drawn to the subversive can see how it’s done and why it’s important. Art as a quiet, or sometimes loud, protest can transform the individual in order to transform harmful power structures and ideas.

 Jennifer Ochstein has published essays with Connotation Press, The Lindenwood Review, Hippocampus Magazine, Evening Street Review and The Cresset. She as published book reviews with Brevity and River Teeth blog. Follow her at her blog jenniferochstein.com.

The post The Purpose of Subversive Writing, Or, The Pastor’s Wife Has Tattoos appeared first on Newfound.

I was confident I wouldn’t get lost the next day when I decided to go for a walk. If a seven-year-old could do it, certainly I could. Except that she knows the difference between her right and left. I left my cell phone behind—I didn’t want to be bothered with it—and planned to be gone an hour, tops. Instead of the leisurely stroll I had envisioned, I kept walking in circles, unable to navigate my way out of the posh portion of the subdivision and back to the middle class section where my brother lives. Panic gurgled in my gut when I began noticing the same houses over and over.

As the sun started to set, I told myself I should knock on one of the heavy oak doors and ask for help, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too embarrassed. Finally, I came upon a man and his daughter out for a walk, swallowed my pride, and told him I needed help. His daughter, about the same age as my niece, whispered to her dad, a kind man with an Indian accent, asking how had I gotten lost in the neighborhood? He told her it’s easy to get turned around when all of the landmarks look the same. When I returned three hours after I’d left, my brother said he’d called me several times and was about to set out on a search.

In addition to my brother’s subdivision, here are some places I’ve recently gotten lost:

• On a hiking trail in Dayton, Ohio (where I was caught in a thunderstorm with my dog);
• Along the Appalachian Trail in Tennessee;
• Twice in Seattle—once looking for my hotel, and later, at 9:00 p.m., alone, on foot, searching for a restaurant;
• Chicago, trying to navigate the Red Line train;
• Minneapolis, the Skyway indoor walking path.

You’d think that I’d balk now at the thought getting lost and try to avoid situations in which that might happen, but losing myself has actually made me bolder. I’ve become more comfortable with it, though, I admit, not fully at home. Maybe the difference is that I now expect to get lost whenever I travel or hike—this mindset diminishes my anxiety when it inevitably happens. I realize that getting lost can be risky, but for me, the rewards for the risk far outweigh the dangers. I often feel small and weak in so many areas of my life that when I’m lost and find my way back to some familiar touchstone, my small kernel of courage grows another thin layer.

The same could be said for the writing life, or any artistic endeavor. So often in my writing I’ve stayed away from the margins and gutters of my deepest secrets, unwilling in my pride to admit my shortcomings and embarrassments. I haven’t fully mined the riches of a lived life.

However, after a conversation with a new friend at a writer’s conference, I began making the connection between being physically lost and being what I like to call “lost in my humanity.” I was complaining to my friend that I was stuck trying to make sense of events within my memoir. Marilyn Bousquin, who, like me, graduated from Ashland University’s MFA program, and who started a program called Writing Women’s Lives, convinced me that I don’t have to make sense of the details right now. That comes later. She counseled that the big picture often emerges within the details. For now, she said, let yourself get lost in the details and see what happens. In my pride, I haven’t reached out to my writer friends, afraid to admit I’ve been lost—they never appear lost. After talking with Marilyn, I realize that being lost is often the best place to be. And not knowing my left from my right, while embarrassing, shouldn’t keep me from asking for help in finding my way home again.

Jennifer Ochstein has published work with with Brevity, River Teeth Blog, Connotation Press, Hippocampus Magazine, The Lindenwood Review, Evening Street Review, and The Cresset. She gets lost all the time. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

The post Getting Lost appeared first on Newfound.

The day after the essay was published, one colleague congratulated me for the publication, while another, joking, said he had no idea his office was right next door to a “psychopath.” Earlier in the day the same co-worker stood in my doorway looking a bit astonished and perplexed. He said he’s realizing there’s a darker side to me. He’d always thought of me as Talented and Nice Jen, rather than this dark, more complex person that rears her ugly head in her essays. I didn’t do anything to reassure him in the moment, but it’s not like I sit in my office plotting the deaths of others—though it’s true that my temper occasionally gets the better of me and I lash out in ways that are unexpected, even to me.

After the hubbub over the essay died down, I began thinking about why I’d wanted to expose myself (and family members, since I often write about them), laying bare my terrible tendencies. Much of our lives are spent managing others’ impressions of us, curating our public identities on social media and beyond; why would I show others my darkness? Why would any writer do such a thing to herself, whether through creative nonfiction, fiction, or poetry? Artists work to expose what is real, creating pieces that act as mirrors.

Some might say that in my work I’m making excuses for myself, trying to justify my behavior. Others might say I would do well to leave the past in the past; no harm, no foul. They might believe that the past, exposed, only causes more pain for those in the present, or that “living in the past” leads to self-pitying misery. But I don’t believe that revisiting the past means you’re living in it.

A friend of mine, poet and essayist Sarah Wells, commented on my essay, mentioning her own penchant toward the dark. She explained that a fleeting thought sometimes comes to her as she’s driving: jerk the wheel toward the guardrail. She’s not unhappy or suicidal or depressed. The thought simply arrives as a breath might. She could inhale, hold her breath, and let the thought become her. Or she could exhale. Exhaling it is her “willful turn toward the light,” she said.

Of all the characterizations of my essay, I think that one is most apt. Writing is a way of making sense—this is nothing new, of course. But I find that when I write so personally, exposing myself in the ways that I often do, I need to remind myself of this. Another friend commented that the essay made me seem normal, human—the highest compliment. When we try to white-bread ourselves, to present ourselves as caricatures of so-called normalcy, we reduce our lives to shadows of what it means to be human. In the writing we make a conscious decision to turn toward the light rather than stay in the darkness of our murderous, suicidal, thieving, conniving, cheating hearts. Rather than self-pitying, the writer learns to know herself, smile, wave goodbye to all that, and become a better version of herself. It’s also best to keep on speaking terms with our dark selves, acknowledge them, and even accept them for helping us to become the people we want to be.

Jennifer Ochstein has published book reviews with Brevity and River Teeth Blog. She’s also published essays with Connotation Press, Hippocampus Magazine, Evening Street Review, Lindenwood Review, and The Cresset.

The post My Murderous Heart appeared first on Newfound.

I celebrated my fortieth birthday a few weeks ago, and received a gift, the very best gift: Words. They came in the form of short, personal notes from several of my students (I teach at a small college in northern Indiana). They wished me a happy day and encouraged me by explaining their experiences in my classrooms. I don’t know who organized such a thing. I didn’t tell anyone beforehand that it was my birthday (though, on the day, it splashed across Facebook). Someone anonymously delivered the notes to my office. It was hush-hush, a surprise. By the time I finished reading, I was in tears.

This got me thinking about the clichéd notion of “empty words,” and how untrue that phrase really is. I understand, in a certain context, that phrase is an admonishment or an ointment for wounds inflicted by words, as in, “sticks and stones may break my bones” or “actions, not words, show how a person really feels.” Of course we all know that people sometimes speak without thinking, or say things they don’t truly mean. But deep down we all know words are never empty. Even when we recite empty words and use them in ways that are less than honoring of other human beings, they carry meaning—cruel and kind and everything in between. Because I spend so much time with words, because I enjoy them and use them to create and communicate, I take comfort in them. I suspect that rings true for other writers.

I recently copied a quote from Catholic writer and mystic Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk at that Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky: “God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself.” Because I am a person of faith, that quote has religious connotations, but it also has implications for the writer, perhaps for all of us. Words create—a picture, a feeling, an idea, a perception, a mystery. If I were to tell someone she’s stupid, the words would create a perception of me but also weasel its way into the other person’s perception of herself. Words are never empty in that when they’re uttered, written, even thought, they build in us an understanding of each other, who we are separately and together. It’s not just about creating art. It’s about creating ourselves, one stone at a time.

Jennifer Ochstein is a writer and teacher who has published book reviews with Brevity and the River Teeth blog, and essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Lindenwood Review, Evening Street Review, and Connotation Press. She has an essay forthcoming in The Cresset. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com

The post We Are Made of Words appeared first on Newfound.

Religion and art are saying the same things–stop, pay attention, be aware of the depth of time, see people, see others, be human.” – Frederick Buccaneer

Often when I get sad I read “Dear Sugar” over at The Rumpus or I pull out my well-worn copy of Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. “Dear Sugar” is an advice column in which the beleaguered write in to “Sugar” (writer Cheryl Strayed). The wisdom of her responses seems to come from a place of love and true empathy. It reminds me that kindness is still a force in our world, even when that kindness may not be what the advice seeker wants to hear.

A lot has been made of Strayed since her memoir Wild was published in 2013 and a film based on the book was released at the end of last year. I don’t need to belabor the praise she’s received. I also don’t mind saying I’m a Strayed devotee, for the reasons I mention above — but there is something even more fundamental to my reverence for writers and artists like Strayed.

It has something to do with rescue: a dangerous, risky business. In rescue, you run straight into havoc, moving from a state of perfect safety into a situation that could see you buried, charred, crushed, disintegrated, drowned, dead. More and more I’ve come to see art, like the kind that Strayed creates, as a kind of rescue mission. Artists like Strayed run straight into the fray of their own failures and triumphs and explore them with abandon, no matter what they discover. So much of what we want to believe in—religion, capitalism, the American Dream, money, power, self above all else (keeping us from really seeing each other)—buttresses our arrogance. Art can explode all that. It can dig us out from beneath the rubble. It sends out a search party using spotlights and bullhorns. It reminds those of us who are lost within our own experience that we’re not alone. Someone else has lived through this. It’s a kind of communion.

And after we’ve clasped a hand and climbed, coughing, into the light, I believe that art has the power to heal.  While part of the reason I keep returning to “Dear Sugar” is the opportunity to read about how a person might find redemption and be restored, I also read her because she reminds me what beautiful writing is capable of. Often when I’m stuck in my own work, reading her words acts, for me, like traction freeing me from a snow bank in which I often find myself stranded, spinning out. I tell my writing students to find a Strayed, a writer whose work frees them from their own mud holes, someone who helps them restore their words, and their hearts.

Jennifer Ochstein is a writer and teacher living in Indiana. She has published book reviews with “Brevity” and the “River Teeth Blog” as well as essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Evening Street Review, Lindenwood Review and Connotation Press. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

The post What Doesn’t Kill You Makes Someone Else Stronger appeared first on Newfound.

The part of the show that most piques my interest happens when police investigators haul the suspect into the interrogation room. The scenes are high anxiety as investigators try to buddy up with the suspect and get definitive proof while the suspect tries to evade the truth and not give herself away. Secret camera video footage often captures a person out-of-sorts, divided between herself and what she’s done. I can relate.

Often when I tell people I write creative nonfiction, specifically memoir, a kind of anxious interrogation begins: What is creative nonfiction? How can you be old enough to write a memoir (I’m 39)—and why would anyone care about your story? What are you writing about? I often feel like the suspect being secretly videoed in the interrogation room, trying not to give myself away as some kind of narcissist who thinks her life is so important that others want to read about it. There is an implicit assumption that I’ve got some kind of axe to grind against those closest to me, as if I feel the need to interrogate the people of my past. It always gives me pause, forcing me to think through, again, why I write what I write. Even more, I begin asking, why write at all? Why create any kind of art?

Like a suspect who never straightens out her story, I come up with a different answer every time, depending on the circumstances in which I find myself. This time it’s because I’ve been teaching undergraduates.

Memoir and essay seem less about interrogating the other and more about interrogating the self (maybe that’s why it’s often mischaracterized as “navel gazing,” a form of self obsession). When I teach memoir to undergraduates I remind them of this—memoir as interrogation of self—because they often make the beginner’s mistake of interrogating everyone but themselves, interrogating every idea except their own. It’s a mistake I often make in first drafts, and the writing normally turns out poor.

Maybe any kind of art-making is an interrogation of sorts. If art is a means by which we create meaning, and I think it is, the artist seems like the ultimate interrogator shining the spotlight first on herself and her own assumptions and then taking a wider and wider stance in wider and wider concentric circles, blowing it all up to find a singular truth. Like the Dateline murder mystery suspect who seems beside herself until the truth comes out, there seems to be a kind of karmic relief when the artist unveils her work. The spotlight is turned off and the dead can rest.

Jennifer Ochstein is a writer and teacher living in Indiana. She has published book reviews with the “Brevity” and the “River Teeth Blog” as well as essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Evening Street Review, Lindenwood Review and Connotation Press. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

The post The Memoir Writer Under Interrogation appeared first on Newfound.

In my own behavior regarding social media, I’ve noticed a near constant need while at the keyboard to check for notifications, scroll, and generate pithy status updates. I’ve noticed it in others, too. Writer after writer—my friends—comment about the distractions that prevent them from making progress on their writing projects. As it turns out, the rewards—hearing the sound of the ping and seeing the little red number in the top right of my Facebook page—are precisely what make social media so insidious. Thanks to our biology, the pleasures of publishing can hardly compete.

Researchers have discovered that self-disclosure strengthens our urge toward instant gratification. The minute we update our status and begin waiting for the “likes” and comments to roll in, we are strengthening the pathways in our brains that cause us to seek this form of pleasure again. Victoria Sadaat writes, “An extremely psychologically intuitive business model, social networks take cues from human psychology ….”

Research now suggests that dopamine is closely associated with seeking, working in tandem with our brains’ opioid systems, which cause us to experience pleasure. The notification that we have a “like” or a comment tickles our neurotransmitters, triggering a dopamine dump in our brains, teaching us to seek pleasure in the same form. A behavioral loop is set into motion, and after awhile, it seems we can hardly get enough.

This loop is dangerous for writers. Dopamine and the opioid system are also active when a writer writes and is published. The act of publishing creates pleasure so the writer will then seek out that pleasure again and again, creating a loop in which the writer writes, publishes, writes, publishes. But this loop is often thwarted by social media because, biologically, our brains are wired to choose pleasure now rather than pleasure later, just like Pavlov’s dogs. There is no instant gratification associated with writing and publishing—the rewards are long term.

That goes for the actual act of writing, too. Writers find pleasure when they discover the perfect word or turn of phrase. Doing so takes actual work and thought. The difference is that snapping a selfie or generating a funny status update is much easier than finding the precise words and images for creative work. The pleasure of finding the beautiful word or turn of phrase is endangered by the instant gratification of public recognition.

Lately, I’ve pulled back from social media because I’ve developed behaviors that I find unseemly: nosiness, a short attention span, and, of course, a need to check in too often when I’m at the keyboard to write. I’ve decided I’d rather save my dopamine for when I actually publish. But the decision has been hard. I’ve trained my brain over the past several years toward instant gratification, and I’ve found that pulling back has me going through a certain sort of withdrawal. I’ve had to work harder to refocus on my creative writing tasks. When I find myself stuck, trying to find the precise image or word, I often have to fight the urge to click over to my newsfeed and zone out. It’s been a battle of sorts to remain present in my creative work. When I do succumb, click over and zone out for any length of time, it’s harder to re-enter my creative work and I often find myself stymied by my inattention, unable to locate the words I want and need.

Slowly, slowly, I’m weaning myself away, but I’m addicted. And, I’ve found that my addicted brain wants to zone out rather than do the hard work of writing. I’ve begun logging out of my Facebook page rather than allowing myself to stay logged in. Logging out has allowed me to take a step back and think because it takes a bit of time to log back in. I’ve also changed my settings so the notifications’ sounds don’t interrupt my writing. When tackling particularly difficult pieces of writing, I’ve had to disconnect my wi-fi so I can’t get online.

I know what you’re thinking: why don’t you simply de-activate your account?

I’m not quite ready to go cold turkey.

Jennifer Ochstein is a writer and teacher living in Indiana. She has published book reviews with the “Brevity” and “River Teeth” blogs as well as essays with Hippocampus Magazine, The Evening Street Review and Connotation Press. Follow her at jenniferochstein.com.

The post The Writer’s Enemy appeared first on Newfound.