We Women Writers
Inspiring and encouraging women to write, to develop a personal writing practice through exploring the real-life writing stories of other women
We Women Writers
Masha Hamilton - Empowering Women Through Writing
In this episode of the We Women Writers Podcast, host Jane Jones speaks with Masha Hamilton, a novelist and journalist, about her writing journey and the challenges women face in pursuing their creative passions. Masha shares her experiences in balancing motherhood with her writing career, the importance of finding time to write, and the value of writing as a means of self-discovery. The conversation also touches on the Afghan Women's Writing Project and how writing can empower women to find their voices and express their stories.
Takeaways
- Masha's transition from journalism to fiction was driven by a desire to explore deeper human experiences.
- The Afghan Women's Writing Project empowers women to express their voices and identify their own solutions.
- Women should support each other in their writing journeys.
Quote:
"Writing helps us understand ourselves better."
Resources:
https://www.mashahamilton.com/
https://www.writingclasses.com/faculty/profile/masha-hamilton
https://muckrack.com/masha-hamilton
Jane Jones (00:01)
Hi there, I'm Jane and this podcast is designed for you. Five minutes of daily writing can change your world. Come with me as we explore the stories of women who transformed their lives through writing. Welcome to the We Women Writers Podcast.
Jane Jones (00:28)
Hi there, I'm Jane Jones and I'm your host. Today we have with us Masha Hamilton. And Masha Hamilton will be speaking to us about her journey. Masha Hamilton is a novelist, a journalist, a speaker and a teacher. She has traveled around the world collecting and sharing and writing stories, both fictional and non-fictional. These stories include stories of terrorists and refugees, kidnapped victims and their captors, both reluctant and eager travelers, street artists, and reporters overseas. She has founded two international literary nonprofits and worked as head of communications for the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan and an international nonprofit. Her published books include The Camel Bookmobile, 31 Hours and What Changes Everything.
Masha continues to teach nonfiction and fiction and business writing as she pursues and continues her own writing projects. So welcome Masha.
Masha Hamilton (00:28)
Thank you, Jane.
Jane Jones (00:29)
Masha, would you please tell us about your writing story, your journey?
Masha Hamilton (01:44)
Okay, I'll give it a shot. First of all, I'll just tell you that I am speaking to you from McDowell Colony out in Peterborough, New Hampshire. A great spot. I'm here for six weeks to focus in on my writing and just taking a small break from that in the closet room actually where there's internet of the library. McDowell has its own library with the work of fellows over the years. But my particular studio is deep in the woods about 25 minutes away and the snow keeps coming down. It's a very cozy kind of time and a great place to do writing. Even so, I have five published novels and a sixth novel, the first one that's in a drawer, and I'm working on the seventh novel while I'm here. But I still have all of the same doubts and insecurities and questions that I think continue to sort of dog us as writers, even as we go along. Each novel for me and each nonfiction project has presented its own unique challenges and I think if there's anything I would say to fellow women writers, it's somehow regard that as part of the process. Don't let that scare you off, don't let that stop you from pursuing your work. Expect it. I'm gonna doubt what I'm doing. I'm gonna think that's not, doesn't make any sense. I'm gonna think no one will care. I'm gonna think I'm not capable. That's part of the process. Don't let that stop you. I'm one of those who always wanted to be a writer. I'm one of those who was writing poetry when I was in third grade and entering it in for little, you know, elementary school chapbooks. I've always understood the world through my writing. That's been my, it's really, I do want to be published, but I have to say that it's even more important for me somehow for the work to be, it's my spiritual work. It's really, I want to write about things that matter to me. I want to pursue questions that are interesting to me. Of course I want to be published, but if I spend two years or three years writing a book, just to have it published, for me that doesn't really make use of the time that I'm spending right then. So, I generally am writing about things that matter a lot to me and that I wonder about at that moment, at that point in my life, at that stage. And I'm really trying to tap into that as deeply as I can. So, although the novels are not autobiographical in any traditional sense of that word, they are a reflection of the concerns, my deepest concerns. So, I want to tell good stories, but I want to at the same time explore a little bit of what it means to be human by tapping into the things that matter most to me, that I'm wondering about, that I care about, that I'm confused about, that I'm confronting in my life as it goes along. So that's kind of what it is for me. I began after college as a journalist.
I was hired by the Associated Press and they sent me overseas, based in Jerusalem for five years. Then I was hired by the Los Angeles Times and spent five years based in Moscow. In Jerusalem, I was there for the first Intifada and in Moscow, I was there for the collapse of communism. It was an amazing, busy five years. And during that time, I had two babies also. The third baby came later, but I had two babies. So, I was very busy. And nevertheless, at that time, I began to dream fictional anecdotes. Every night they would come to me, and I would wake up in the morning, but by noon I had forgotten them because the days were so busy. mean, literally communism was collapsing. There was the brief coup against Gorbachev, the rise of Yeltsin. There were soldiers on the street at one point. I mean, it was, it was a crazy period. But after several weeks of this, I started to think, okay, I'm being shown a fork in the road. I always said that I wanted to write fiction and I feel like the message I'm being given from a higher self or something, and I don't want to sound too new agey here, but somehow I'm getting the message that there is a fork in my road and either I must pay attention to that and pursue these stories or I won't have access to them anymore. And then I can be a journalist. So what is it I'm going to do? And I decided I really wanted to try to write a novel, even though I was afraid to even say that word at time.
I didn't even want to say the word novel. So I left my job and went back to the States. I think much to the shock of my larger family, my parents and my aunts and uncles, I mean, they were used to me, you know, I was on radio and I was reporting and there were big stories and now I'm back and I'm doing what? Sitting in a room writing a what? You know, it sort of like vanished. I wrote that first novel and got an excellent agent, but she said to me, you know, literary novels don't really sell very well, but thrillers do. So why don't we make this a thriller? And I said, you know, I don't really read thrillers. And she said, no problem. I'll send you some of my favorite and you can read them and we'll work on this. And she worked with me. She was Amy Tan's agent and she worked with me quite diligently. She sent me these thrillers and I thought, I'm losing my connection to this piece of work. But I didn't know that much about writing novels at that time and I talked to other people that I met and they said, no, she's a great agent, just do what she says. So I tried, I tried, I would rewrite this. It was really the story of the collapse of communism and the impact on a woman of the collapse of communism. But now suddenly it was becoming kind of a thriller. She was putting little things by her door to see if they got moved and I was losing track of it, but I kept sending it off and the agent kept marking it up and sending it back to me. She was very responsive.
After I would say probably two months, she said, let's talk by phone. And she said, you're right, you can't write a thriller. She said, but I think we could make this a women's novel. And to do that, you have to understand that women don't care about politics. And so the politics that are in there are gonna need to be dumped out. there was this encounter near the very end and that should happen near the beginning. And I was like, women don't care about politics? my God, what am I? What am I gonna do? This was really shocking. So I didn't really know what to do. And by this time, of course, I was working on the second novel, which became my first published novel, Staircase of Thousand Steps. So I didn't do anything at first. I just continued to write. And then I sent her a note and I said, I wanna thank you for all the time you gave me and the attention. But you know, I'm working on another novel and I think you are gonna have the same concerns about it that you did about the other one. It's literary and I think you're gonna, I think the fit's not right for that reason, but I wanna thank you. It was very friendly, partied, and we parted in that way, but then now I'm a writer unpublished and also even without an agent. And so it's scary and back to the beginning. That novel, I did get an agent and it was published by a literary imprint of Penguin Putnam. That was my first novel. And it's...convinced me. I think that there's a really important role for critiquing. I think that when people read our drafts, they're doing us an enormous favor. But I do think you have to come back and be true to yourself, ultimately. You have to be true to the story that you're writing. It's not that you should just disregard the critiques that you're given. You shouldn't. I mean, I'm very grateful for people who say like, you know, what's happening in that scene? I don't understand. But I do think that when you come to the root of what you're writing, you should be true to your voice, to what's pushing you. And there's a lot of things that will make you doubt that. So, if you can try to hang on to that, I think that's very important.
Jane Jones (09:43)
Please tell us about this process of writing from listening to hearing this voice while you're doing something else and then how it felt to make that decision to shift into fictional writing.
Masha Hamilton (09:56)
Yes, okay, I'll do my best, but I will tell you that I do find it different for every novel. I am a slightly different person when I tap into my deepest self, and the book that I'm writing is also different. But in general, I think that I'm looking for a kernel of something that feels like it might be true to me and that I want to explore to see if indeed it is true. The first novel that I wrote, really was, it started out with this idea about time and time and how it kind of goes both directions in my belief. And it started out with one image in my mind with a grandfather twirling his fingers and his granddaughter sitting next to him listening to him talk about time. And that was really the the initial piece that led to that first novel that was published. Again, not the first one I wrote, but the first one that was published.
Jane Jones (10:50)
31 steps.
Masha Hamilton (10:51)
No, that's a staircase. Yeah, staircase of a thousand steps. Each one is, you know, each one is different. The distance between us was really about my inner confusion. I loved being a journalist very, very much. I love hearing people's but I also felt that I often had to interview people without giving back much and that there was this distance and that I had to also cut my heart off in some ways because when you're a journalist in war zones, you're gonna see things that are upsetting. But if you stop and you're upset, then it becomes about you and not about what people are going through. So you do have to sort of cut yourself off a little bit, but the flip side is that costs you a little bit of what it means to be human. So I wanted to explore that tug of war through a woman journalist. So that really came from my interest in what's good and what's bad about being a journalist in conflict zones.
Jane Jones (11:54)
What's the name of that book?
Masha Hamilton (11:58)
That one is a distance between us. And then the camel bookmobile was really prompted by a, there actually is a camel bookmobile, operates in northeastern Kenya near the border with Somalia, serving largely Somali semi-nomadic pastoralists who move seasonally. They move three or four times a year with the rainfall. It's a very drought-ridden area. There was a camel library that started there.
Jane Jones (12:00)
Distance between us, thanks.
Masha Hamilton (12:25)
And it began with a very strict rule because people didn't, they didn't know what a library was. And they were like, what are this and what are books? And they would take them and then the camel library would return and say, you need to give us back the books now. And they go, what? You've seen books and now we didn't even ask for them. And now you want them back. And it was very good. So they sort of reinforce this. They began with a rule that yes, you have to turn in the books. You can take new ones, but you have to turn them in or we will stop coming to your little settlement. And this seemed right to me for conflict, so that really, that story kind of sprang out almost fully right from the beginning. Even though it took me a couple of years to write it, I understood Scarboy, how he doesn't turn in his books, and what problem that causes within his community. And I understood the conflict that I wanted to explore there. So that one was very quick. 31 Hours was the next book. That's a book about terrorism. It's a book about a young man who, 31 hours from when the story begins, is planning to go into the subway and set off a bomb. It's about what it means to be a terrorist and how we might put preconceptions on it. wanted, so like many of us, I was enormously impacted by 9-11. And of course, prior to that, I had also been in conflict zones and experienced suicide bombers and met the parents of suicide bombers. And I wanted to... ask the reader to empathize a little bit with Jonas, my main character, even though he's planning a terrorist act. And I knew that that was a very risky request to make of the reader. And that one also wrote that first draft at a residency, Blue Mountain in the Adirondacks, which was fantastic for me because I had a little room overlooking this very calm, non-judgmental lake. And I really just poured, and I wept while I wrote, I poured out a lot into that first draft. And so that one I thought was quite a risk for me. And then the last novel, this most recently published, What Changes Everything was actually published while I was working for the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan for that year and a half. It was published during that time. And it really is about war and how war changes everything, how it changes things, not just for those on the front line, but for those very, very far from the front line and how we adjust to being a country that's been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for such a long-extended period.
Jane Jones (15:00)
Yeah, yeah. Your experience in writing and being a... You're a journalist, but then you have to sit down and write. And then you're mom, and you're in a foreign place. Could you tell us a little bit about what it's like to be so busy in a different place and being a mom?
Masha Hamilton (15:25)
Well, being a mom is super important to me. I have three amazing kids who I adore. The first time that I went to Afghanistan, which was 2004, I was living in an apartment in Brooklyn, and some of my neighbors, the men, interestingly, came to me and said, you shouldn't be going to Afghanistan because you have children. You shouldn't be taking any risks. And I thought about that at some length. I had covered conflict and I've been in war zones so this is not like I was going in cold although this was my first time to Afghanistan I'd been in places of conflict a number of times and I knew some of the ways and the rules and I ended up feeling that the message that I wanted to give my children was yes the world is a dangerous place but it's not so dangerous that you should shut yourself off it's not so dangerous that you shouldn't explore the things you want to explore and live your dreams and I do still I do still feel that very much.
Jane Jones (16:23)
This is really I guess it strikes really close to me. Did you raise this issue? Not issue you raised the question of what risks should have should a mother or a father but yes context for us is this is women if the number of times that any of the listeners and myself have heard the same thing that you heard was you shouldn't be doing this. You shouldn't be taking risks because you have children. Could you tell us a little bit about how you processed, how you came to this, that it was really important to live your dreams no matter what? Be aware, pay attention, as opposed to, yes, probably somebody else was right.
Masha Hamilton (17:10)
You know, I do want to stress that I, as I say, I didn't jump into Afghanistan on this trip using this as an example. I really did a lot of planning in advance. I reached out by email and phone. I arranged for somebody to come and pick me up. had a place to stay before I had contacts and I knew what I was doing and I, you can make mistakes, but I was not, you know, completely inexperienced. I really was drawn to Afghanistan because I understood at that time that during the period of the Taliban, this was arguably one of the worst places in the world to be a woman. And yet, there were many who'd shown enormous courage and strength. And I wanted to go and report on those women, meet those women, hear their stories, and share them. At that time, and it's not so much true now, but this led to the creation of the Afghan Women's Writing Project. At that time, their voices were generally being filtered through men and through journalists. And I wanted to get close to them. And then this led to the creation of the Afghan Women's Writing Project, which allowed them to express their voices in their own way, connected with mentors here in the United States. And then their work appears on a website, www.project.org. So, in other words, I guess what I'm saying in sort of a long way is that it wasn't just like, why don't I do some war terrorism, war tourism? No, it wasn't like that. I had specific reasons I wanted to go to Afghanistan. They felt important to me. I took the necessary precautions. I was careful and cautious. I spoke to my children about it and I felt it was fine to go.
Jane Jones (18:55)
Yeah, I am so thankful and appreciative of this perspective. So, women who are not faced with the question you were faced with, they're faced with something that in their environment is equally as scary, however functionally, how it presents is very different. So, an individual who wants to start writing and it's in an environment where people are saying, no, no, no, no, you can't, you know or there's tape recorders, there's chatter going on behind your head saying, no, no, no, don't do this, you gotta take your, yeah, yeah. What I heard was that pay attention. This is what you really wanna do. Find a way to do it that works.
Masha Hamilton (19:43)
Absolutely, and I have those concerns too. I have the guilt that we all do. I have three children, you know, and a family, entire... Like many of us, I feel responsible to them. I feel at the front of the line in certain ways. And there are almost constant needs within that, because there's just enough people that there's always... So I do feel guilty even with the decision to come to McDowell here. I leave my family behind and I come to McDowell to write. And my family, you know... I speak to each member virtually every day by phone and they have needs and they want to talk things through and you know, I could certainly be there and I could be making meals for them and nurturing them as they, you know, so it's definitely a push and pull. And what it feels to me is I, again, I take motherhood very seriously and I am also a writer. It's what I've always been. If I had to choose between one or the other, I mean, I don't... I don't want to have to make that choice. So I'm trying, it's a constant finding of the balance and a constant effort to be comfortable with the fact that the balance won't last for very long. If you find it, it's going to go off again. So you have to somehow say, okay, I'm all right with the journey of trying to find the balance. I'm going to keep trying to find it. And it's going to sometimes go like this or like this. And when it does, I'm going to keep trying to balance it again.
And I'm not going to freak out when it's here. I'm going to try to say, this is the process. I want to get it closer to you and just keep working on that. Cause I, I, you know, love my kids so deeply. You, all of us.
Jane Jones (21:23)
I can see that. It's really evident, yeah. Yes.
Masha Hamilton (21:28)
And at the same time, I think it's important for them to know that we are responsible for our own happiness. We are responsible for our own self-realization. That's on us. I can't blame anybody else if I'm not self-realized. I can't blame anybody else if I'm not happy. That's on me. So I have to figure out a way to make that all work. And as a woman, I think it's tougher. But I think it's a challenge worth grappling with.
Jane Jones (21:53)
Excellent. Just what you said at the very beginning was that we each have our own challenges and that things are going to be bumpy. It's part of the process and expect it. And so that shows up in other people's ideas about what we ought to be doing with our lives. Yes. And from those people's perspective, they're right for whatever reasons, but it's the individual themselves. It's an opportunity to stretch a little bit, to grow, to get more clear, to get more grounded, to however one wants to say it, and get that pen to paper.
Masha Hamilton (22:35)
Yes. And I would say, if you can, try to find a support system because you are going to feel guilty from time to time. It's just, I think it's not possible to avoid that. You are going to feel strained. You're going to feel like, should I be? And I think, you know, you don't want someone to just always going to say, yes, think only of yourself, but you want someone who can help you say, look, you know, it's only two weeks or it's only whatever, or this, have you done this?
Have you set this sort of safety net in place in case X, Y, and Z that might make you feel better as you go and do this? But take the time, make it happen. Because I know that women sometimes feel guilty even giving a few hours on a daily basis, you know? And we have to work on those things, I think.
Jane Jones (23:22)
Yeah, so it could be this two weeks, it could also be three months, but it also could be a half an hour. Somebody's this constant demand and this working out in the workforce. I remember when, you know, we've all had my kids, they're little, oh, you're not working if you're at home. Wait a second, I'm working. And then those women, I have the women that find themselves actually working full time.
Masha Hamilton (23:28)
Yes. Easy! Yes.
Jane Jones (23:50)
Having to find those balances and this what you're communicating is and you're communicating in such a powerful way. So, expect it. Just keep, keep, keep just making some progress. Yes. Find a way and this idea of having some support system is absolutely key. Find a, find a way to do it and hold to it. And if, if, yeah, it's almost like you're not, if you, actually, I should ask you that question. Did you ever find that you had decided something and it just, it happened that there's just no way you could follow through on that?
Masha Hamilton (24:30)
Trying to think of specific examples. Certainly I've had to bend things to move them to different times to figure out, you know, when the kids were very little, I got up at 4 a.m. every morning so I could write from four to six. I found where I can make compromises and where I can adjust things. But again, I wanna go back to the idea, because I think this is important, that one of the lessons we teach our kids is that, you know, you can do this. I'm gonna be an example. You can love your family madly and still be self-realized and still be creative and still give time to that inner life, that spiritual life. You can do both and it won't always be easy, but it's possible. I feel that that lesson to teach my children is not by example, is not a bathroom.
Jane Jones (25:15)
It's key, it's vital. There's so many of us, so many women who have fallen short of that in teaching our children, both male and female children, to different degrees.
Masha Hamilton (25:34)
It's a challenge. It's definitely a challenge.
Jane Jones (25:36)
Yes, yeah, yeah. And so, there's this idea about finding this time and finding that, do you have any suggestions for people that just, they're struggling with just actually putting pen to paper?
Masha Hamilton (25:52)
So, my primary suggestion when you're in that kind of situation is don't wait until you have an hour or two or three to write. If you have 15 minutes, write into those 15 minutes. Go ahead and take those 15 minutes. One possibility, I can't remember who was the author who talked about morning pages, the idea of getting up first thing in the morning and writing, just free writing. Thank you. And you can also do it, you could also do it another time of day if morning is like you jump up and you have breakfast to get on the table and it's just not a good time you can pick another time and pick 15 minutes at lunch or Whatever you've got but I do think when my kids were really little and I was just super busy that idea that I could just write for 15 minutes if that's all I had that that Liberated me in some way. I wasn't waiting to find an hour.
Jane Jones (26:44)
Yes, yeah, yeah. That is absolutely key to finding the time. What would you say, what do you feel like is the key ingredient that a woman needs to develop or to light or to turn on to make that finding 15 minutes?
Masha Hamilton (27:02)
The project has to really matter to you. I think if it does, this is another reason why just writing for publication is not enough. I think if it doesn't matter to you or this is how I feel to me, let's make it about me. If it doesn't really matter to me, I am going to put my attention elsewhere. My family, my friends, all the things that are out there in the world will prove irresistible to me. So it has to be a project that truly matters to me. And that is individual. But I think that's important. And when I work, I teach, as you know, and when I see my students coming to me and saying like, I can't write, I'm not spending any time on this. I urge them to go back to the nut that drew them to that project initially to reconnect with that nut and make sure that that's still what they are pursuing. Because we are busy and we have a lot of wonderful, exciting, challenging, thrilling things in our lives. So, we have to make sure the project we're pursuing is one that speaks deeply personally to us.
Jane Jones (28:07)
So, a woman who is in a position where she's just not finding the time. What I heard you say is as a teacher that virtually, your encouragement to that woman is to come back to the nut that drew her to that initially. I'm going to explore that.
Masha Hamilton (28:25)
Yes, why does she care about this? Why is she passionate? And when she reconnects to that, that I believe that we somehow find the time, even if it is only 15 minutes every day, you know, we will find 15 minutes every day, even if that's all we can do.
Jane Jones (28:41)
Wow, that is so, that is really valuable. Because it does happen so often that people kind of get confused and everything else piles in and gets in the way and competes for our attention. But maybe it's to show us that we've lost connection with whatever it was we were working on. Yeah, whoa. That's so amazing. So would you tell us a little bit about the value of writing, that writing brings to our lives? And specifically in the context of the Afghan Women Writers Project.
Masha Hamilton (29:15)
Okay, the Afghan Women's Writing Project encouraged women to value their voices and for them it was often the first time. It also encouraged them, and I didn't expect this or think of it in advance, it encouraged them to identify their problems and find their own personal solutions, not a solution implanted from somewhere else or someone telling them, you know, throw off the burka. Well, no, that's not really my husband. They identified where they felt their own heart was being broken, where they felt their own rights were being violated. And then they found their own way within the context of personal family and lives to solve that problem. And I believe that's the value of writing and voice. The women were encouraged very much to write their stories, but to think critically about them. So, you write your story, and we often would say, okay, but why? Tell me a little more, go more deeply there. What did that feel like? And as they would explore that, they would learn themselves. We don't really realize that so much here in the West because we have so many outlets, right? And we talk to one another women here. And in Afghanistan at that time, women were not really, they weren't sure who to trust. You know, the Taliban left a very dark legacy where women didn't understand their own rights, and they weren't sure who to trust with their feelings that I don't want to marry my cousin, and I don't want to, you know, or whatever it might be. So, these exploring their lives and their voices enabled them to find a better way for themselves on their own terms, what worked for them.
Jane Jones (31:03)
Yeah, that's a crucible for those women where the relationships they have are absolutely, and so what it made me think of was that there's a value that we in the West would do well to be aware of to maximize the time we have together as women so that we are clear about our relationships with one another and we're nurturing, we're loving and kind.
And we ask the right questions by going through that same process in our writing about writing our story, and then asking our questions why, and getting real clear about those. In exploring the, going a little deeper about the value and the importance of writing, how could that awareness of the Afghan Women Writers Project, how can that impact the women in the West?
Masha Hamilton (32:06)
It can be translated and I think pretty easy. I first have to say that I adore my conversations with women and with men and I'm not very good at small talk so I often go pretty deep pretty quickly and I learn through through those conversations very often but there is a different kind of learning when I'm alone writing and asking myself okay what do I really think about this? What is it I'm really trying to say here?
What do I really mean? You know, what does death really feel like to me when someone dies close to me? What does that, no, no, no, not this, go deeper. What does it really feel like? Where does it feel surprising? Where does it feel, does it feel positive at all? Is there, where does it feel negative, and what does that negative feel like, and where do I carry it in my body? Because I want this character to have it. And what does it feel like two weeks out?
And you know, is it worse maybe? Or is it better? And I think that that act of writing, I ask myself those questions. And so I go more deeply into my own experience through that. And then it's enriched by my conversations with women and men, because I understand myself a little better. And we can go a little deeper in our conversations. And I can take that back to the work that I'm doing and think about that more there. So they're very braided together and I feel, I personally feel, I know there are writers who don't have many deeply intimate relationships and then of course there are plenty of people with intimate relationships who don't write. But for me the two together, one is so deeply internal and one is a little bit more external and they complement one another for me.
Jane Jones (34:00)
Is it scary?
Masha Hamilton (34:02)
Absolutely, every time.
Jane Jones (34:04)
Yeah, yeah. Do you ever find yourself having to step back, either physically and or internally from something and then take a wee bit of a break and then...
Masha Hamilton (34:16)
Absolutely, absolutely. The hard stuff is very hard. I believe there's value in understanding oneself. But I love to laugh. I mean, this is a dark conversation and I was just talking at breakfast today with somebody about what I believe is the importance of, you you want to explore the deeper and often darker questions, but they on their own will just be like this, they'll weigh you down. And comedy is so great, but comedy that's not grounded, it floats away. So, there's some mixture in life for, you know, the darkness being explored, but with the ability to laugh too. And I think something like that is what I'm trying to do in the novel that I'm currently working on, is explore the really, I've had a number of hard things over the last few years and to really explore the impact of those, but combine it with the ability to laugh and to find joy.
Jane Jones (35:13)
So, pilot writing is really at a primary is personal and private with all of its, and then it goes out there and through a fictional story, put out something that has a life of its own that is helpful in the larger world. What you're describing to me, the stories, a woman can...
Masha Hamilton (35:33)
Yes.
Jane Jones (35:40)
Or any man could walk away from reading that story, and their lives are altered. And because their life is altered, now other people they interact with. And I've heard a number of times this adage, if you want to be a writer, and I never till this second understood the reason for that. I was like, get my head, I gotta learn how to say things, I gotta learn grammar, I gotta learn, which was really hard, but approaching it like from a totally different perspective that I'm reading because I'm reading what somebody else has done, and my world will be changed. And that's, you're in the business of that when you are listening to people and then putting it through. I am absolutely impressed.
Masha Hamilton (36:31)
I think that it's so great if we can all be part of the larger conversation. But I want to say that I urge writers when they are writing to forget completely, totally about the audience. Do not think about your sister or your mother or the babysitter who looks after your kids or your spouse or your partner. Do not think about the woman who's the teacher of your kids or the yoga. No, don't think about any of people because I believe then you will put layers on the truth. And I think it's very important to write as if no one is going to read it, but you, but except you. And that the purpose is for you to understand at the deepest level possible what the human condition means to you, at least at this point. What it all means and any part of it that is compelling you at that moment to explore. Don't write about it and divorce with thinking like I need to show that the woman character's tough or you know, don't think about readers at all. I think it just gets in the way. I strongly urge you, I wrote a very difficult, I had an intimate friend who committed suicide last year and I wrote a difficult essay about that and I ended up publishing it, but I did not think about anybody reading it as I was writing it at all. And so, there's very personal stuff in there. But it's the only way I knew to use the writing to try to understand and make some kind of sense about what had happened.
Jane Jones (38:14)
Yeah, this really resonates with me and I'm sure it resonates with a lot of the listeners is that the idea that, you know, right with your audience in mind, right so with somebody's, this is, this resonates very differently. It's a different, it's like what we said is to help people see things just a little bit differently to go over here and explore this and see what it feels like and go over the other way and see what it feels like. And it's, it's a, I'm wondering what's the word genuine. It's, yeah, it's abs... I'm searching for a word. Only word I can come up with is that it is a genuine information, genuine offering to begin to see, it's people, women to shift to see things in their world, in their life, in their writing, just a little bit differently. Perfect. thank you so much.
Masha Hamilton (39:08)
Yeah.
Jane Jones (39:10)
Well, you got to go, you got to go back and there's going to a lot of snow and we get to talk about snow shoes. And I would like to have a conversation with you about that bookmobile because we'll do figure in all of our lives a little bit.
Masha Hamilton (39:23)
They do. Jane, thank you so much for your time and thank you for your energy in doing this great project. I know it's important for women. This was great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Jane. Bye-bye.
Jane Jones (39:31)
Appreciate that. And have a lovely afternoon. Thank you.
Thank you for joining the We Women Writers podcast today. I appreciate you taking your time to listen in. I do hope that you've been inspired by this conversation and I'd like to encourage you to pick up your pen today and write for five minutes. I would love to hear from you. Please subscribe and leave a review. Until next time, take good care and have a perfectly lovely day.