Flash Memoir Friday: Interview with Nancy McCabe
On hermit crab essays, writing about traumatic events, and finding community through online classes
This week, I was lucky enough have the conversation below with Nancy McCabe, my former colleague at Creative Nonfiction who will now be teaching her much-lauded class The Shapes of Stories through Muse. (The class starts Monday 4/17!) I found Nancy’s responses to my questions moving and beautiful, and I hope you do, too. We’re so lucky to have her teaching a course for Muse!
Nancy McCabe is the author of the connected hermit crab and narrative essays Can This Marriage Be Saved? and the memoir From Little Houses to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood, in addition to four previous books. Her debut YA novel Vaulting through Time is forthcoming from CatCat Books, and her debut middle-grade novel Fires Burning Underground is forthcoming from Fitzroy/Regal House. Her work has appeared in Salon, Prairie Schooner, LARB, Newsweek, Writer's Digest, Gulf Coast, Fourth Genre, and many others. Her work has received a Pushcart and made nine appearances on notable lists of Best American anthologies. She directs the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford and teaches in the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University.
JPC: Thank you for agreeing to this short interview, Nancy! I’m so happy that you’ll be teaching your ten-week course Shapes of Stories through Muse this spring. We are lucky to have you! I’ve been reading your memoir Can This Marriage Be Saved?, which combines hermit crab essays and more traditional narrative essays. The effect you create by approaching life material about two early relationships through these different lenses– it’s really marvelous. Deep and textured and wonderfully human. Can you discuss your experience of coming to the hermit crab essay as a way into this material?
NM: Thanks so much for doing this interview, Joanna, and for hosting my upcoming course through Muse. And thank you for your kind comments about my book. I didn't set out to write hermit crab essays. In fact, while there were examples of the form that I loved, I was worried that any I wrote would feel gimmicky. But it also seemed to me that the heart of some of my essays was the absurdity and humor of sometimes painful experience, and the hermit crab essay is a perfect container for that combination. At their best, I think hermit crab essays create a chiaroscuro effect, using contrast to bring out both the dark and the light. Borrowing other forms, like a women's magazine quiz, an instruction manual, and a school curriculum guide, gave me humorous frameworks and the opportunity to detach a little from the material—and thus to also probe and navigate the more difficult aspects of those experiences.
JPC: One essay in Can This Marriage Be Saved? describes how the crimes of the BTK killer hung over your hometown of Wichita as you were coming of age, and you interweave that discussion with some harrowing material about being sexually harassed by a group of boys when you were in 8th grade and how you had no language for what was happening and really no recourse, as the adults around you either didn’t comprehend or didn’t care about what was happening to you.
I really connected with something you said about how even in the Me Too era, some people don’t take seriously these kinds of traumatic experiences if they don’t involve rape. What was the process of writing this essay like for you? Did you have to wait until a certain point in your life before you felt you were ready to approach the subject?
NM: This was a difficult essay to figure out how to write. It was about an experience that according to our culture at the time, at least, should not have been a big deal, and yet it profoundly influenced me. Still, it was a few years before I could really tackle it.
When I was in my late twenties, a man broke into my bedroom in the middle of the night and shone a flashlight in my eyes until I woke. I screamed, he ran, and others' reaction was relief that I hadn't been "hurt." Sure, it could have been worse—yet being awakened in the night like that felt like such a violation. I've written about this experience elsewhere (most recently ACM). Writing about that experience, and working for two rape crisis centers, and talking to lots of women showed me that unfortunately my own stories—including the ones about my teenage years--were not unique. Everyone had stories. They were often tinged with embarrassment and shame, things we didn't really talk about because for some reason we felt responsible for our own victimization. It felt like telling my own stories was a radical act, a way of refusing these cultural conceptions of experience.
So many women have commented on the essay you mention, "Facts about the Moon," about the kinds of violations we take seriously (a serial killer on the loose) and those we don't (that small daily prevalence and acceptance of this sort of harassment in school). So many readers have said things like, "Something like this happened to me, but I didn't know what to call it." There are people out there inclined to downplay such experiences, but ultimately, those people aren't the audience I was writing for. I was more interested in connecting to those who are sorting through the impact of their own. I was more interested in the way we offer each other permission when we talk openly. We shine a light on the particulars of our experience as a way to shine a light on the things that connect us, that reassure us that we're not alone.
JPC: As a follow up to the last question, do you have any guidance for fellow writers about how to know when one is ready to write about traumatic or difficult life experience? I recently read one book about getting published in which the author noted that she gives students the assignment to write about a “humiliating” experience. I understand where she is coming from, as what felt humiliating at the time is often the most vulnerable material and can speak deeply to others, but I’d be reluctant to give that assignment using that language. I have asked people to explore what they’re scared to write about, though, so maybe that amounts to the same thing. How does a writer develop an internal barometer about when they’re ready to present such material to an audience, do you think?
NM: I have read and taught that very book, and relate to your discomfort with the language, also steering students in the direction of writing about what scares them. And I've been really impressed by their willingness to tackle some pretty difficult stuff. (In fact, I have taught another online course called "The Healing Power of the Artful Essay" in which we explore research, literature, and technique for writing about traumas and challenges.)
I think we know when we're ready to write about those difficult experiences. We might put our toe in the water and then yank it right back out—or we might discover that we're ready to immerse ourselves. I think we have to be attuned to our bodies' signals and honor those. But what my students and mentees have shown me over and over is that people are often very ready to do the writing, but tend to be more nervous about sharing that writing with an audience. I think it's important to just write what we need to write, understanding that we don't have to ever show it to anyone, we don't have to publish it, we don't have to do anything with it. But sometimes in the process we work through the material enough that we discover we're ready to share it with others.
JPC: I’ve been thinking a great deal about how we find writing community and what that means for those of us who spend so much of our lives in a solitary pursuit. Do you have any thoughts about the value of teachers and writing peers as people develop as writers?
NM: My own early development as a writer was largely in isolation (though I still remember fondly the few teachers who encouraged me) and my early exposure to writers' communities led me to see all writers as competitive if not cutthroat. When I started teaching creative nonfiction in the Spalding University low residency graduate program in creative writing almost twenty years ago, all of my formal training was in fiction, and due to the generosity of colleagues, students, and graduates, I got a crash course in creative nonfiction and in nurturing, generous ways to develop as a writer and create supportive networks. I've had a similar experience with teaching online courses like The Shapes of Stories. The communities that develop around these courses are impressively thoughtful and kind and insightful. I love the way the courses accommodate a range of writers, people from a variety of backgrounds and professions, writers who are beginners and highly experienced, well-published writers. A supportive atmosphere, a determination to build on others' strengths rather than to nitpick their weaknesses, can do such wonders for everyone's development, and it's such a privilege to be able to both teach and learn from those who enroll.
Writing prompt: Read “Swerve” by Brenda Miller. Here’s a prompt from Miller based on her own piece (via The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, condensed): Write an apology to someone in your past. Focus on an event, on an image. See where it takes you. When you are finished, look at your opening and ending sentences. Is there a relationship? Can you form one?
NEW COURSES OPENING MONDAY 4/17!
I’m really excited to be offering these excellent courses in memoir and personal essay from Nancy McCabe and Joelle Fraser. Muse is lucky to have these accomplished writer-teachers working with us! (By the way, payment plans are now available via PayPal. See the options at checkout.)
The 30-Minute Memoir with Joelle Fraser, April 17-June 11
Shapes of Stories with Nancy McCabe, April 17-June 25
Also opening Monday: SELF-GUIDED// Writing Beyond the Known: Exploring the Possible through Speculative Nonfiction, April 17-May 15 ($50)
NEW COACHING PACKAGES:
Each quarter, I work with 5-7 clients on writing coaching and editing personal essay/memoir material. Find more information on coaching packages here.
Upcoming Zoom events:
Next session of drop-in Generative Writing Workshop: Saturday April 22nd, 12-3 Eastern ($75 for one session or $200 for April/May/June)
Next two-hour monthly writing session for paid subscribers to this newsletter: Saturday May 13th, 1-3PM Eastern. (Free with paid subscription to Muse with JPC)