71. Layers of Landscape with Jenna Brack

Yeah, I think maybe to, to close, we can maybe just chat about, you know, is there anything that learned in the process that surprised you or that you are sort of taking away or this book represents for you now that you're just sort of carrying forward as you, as you move on to other projects? Um, and sort of what has this book meant to you? Uh, maybe that's sort of the question.

There's been so much learning in writing this book, and I learned a lot about myself, I think, as a writer-

Mm-hmm

... through the process of writing this.

And I, I hope that I grew as a writer as I was working on it.

But, you know, one of the things that was a tension for me throughout writing the book was needing lots of space and time for the thing to come to fruition and then, and ho- really honoring that part of the process, and the part of the process where I did not know what it was becoming or if it would become anything at all.

[laughs] Besides, I think w- it would've been very wonderful to have these stories to give to my kids or my family, but I, I didn't know if it would be out in the world as a published work.

But then at some point, I also had to learn how to really work with my limits and the limits of what I already had and to see the goodness in that, you know?

Yeah.

And to, like, let it be what it was, let it be the thing that I wrote it as.

Even some of these essays that I wrote years ago, um, I maybe would've done them differently if I wrote them now.

But this, a collection does kind of encapsulate some different versions of me, and even some different versions of my writer self.

And so that was a real learning for me, um, as I worked on this project.

Yeah.

I remember w- I was once at a reading, um, with Dani Shapiro.

I forget which.

She's written so many books, I forget which one.

It might've been her memoir about marriage.

But at any rate, I remember that she said something very similar to that, because I think there was an audience question, um, that sort of triggered this response, and she was like, "Well, if I wrote the book now, it would've been a completely different book." And, and I've heard other memoirists talk about that, too, and I, I think I've experienced that myself.

If I had started- my book that is currently out on submission right now, if I had started that now, completely different book than when I started it, you know, six or seven years ago.

And I find that so fascinating, um, as a writer.

And I think there's so much, and you were speaking a little bit to this, this sort of mystery and this, um, very difficult challenge of just allowing.

Yes.

And I think that's very hard because we want to know how it ends and we want to control the process and, or we want to be further along in the process than we are.

Um, but it is a real, um, necessity, I think, in the writing process to, like you said, to let things breathe and sit and let them take the time that they take.