Nicole Hardy with Wendy Hinman

Nicole Hardy and I acted as booksellers for a day as part of Indies First last November at Eagle Harbor Book Company. But our paths had crossed before then. Nicole’s been toiling in the local writing community for years.  In 2012, her essay, "Single, Female, Mormon, Alone," was featured in the New York Times Modern Love column. It touched a nerve with thousands of people, was chosen as "notable" in 2012's Best American Essays, and earned her a book contract with a six-figure advance. When her book, Confessions of a Latter Day Virgin, came out last fall, I fell in love with her intimate yet wry voice which so adeptly conveyed her yearning to find her place in the world and reconcile her faith through a labyrinth of conflicting expectations. Her candid humor transcended the particulars of religion and sex into a story of identity and humanity.

Welcome to the Writers Connection, Nicole. Thanks for agreeing to an interview.

You trained as a poet, getting an MFA from Bennington College and have two published books of poetry. Tell us about your path to becoming a writer. How did getting an MFA help your craft and your writing career?

　Obviously, not every writer needs an MFA. I'm one of those who did. I came to the idea of writing very early--one of my first memories is of sitting in bed next to my mother, who was writing letters on light blue stationery. I was too young to know how to read or write, but all I could think about was my words on that paper, sealed into a thick envelope, wending their way into the world. The urge was palpable, even that young.

Even so, I came to the act of writing late--I was 30 by the time I started preparing my application for Bennington College, and beyond what was required in the one or two creative writing electives I'd taken as an undergraduate, I'd never really written. I was an English major, an English teacher, an avid reader--but those things can only teach a person so much about the art of writing, nothing about the discipline of it.

I woke up one day, in the middle of my teaching career, in the middle of reading a story by Sandra Cisneros--and realized I was living someone else's life. It sounds dramatic, but it's true--I made a promise to myself that I'd forget the “they say” and the “you should.” Which is how I ended my teaching career, became a waitress, and took on the project of becoming a writer.

I needed to learn in triple time, and I needed a community of writers to show me I wasn't crazy for wanting my life to revolve around this impossible, impractical thing. I needed an example of how to be a writer in real life, which is the benefit of low-residency. I still have no idea how I got a spot at Bennington--it's sort of excruciating for me to look back at the sample I sent with my application. But I'm grateful, still, to whichever of the professors there saw potential in me. Those two years changed everything, in the best way.

Not long after I graduated, I had some luck publishing a series of sonnets in the voice of the Mud Flap Girl--the silhouette who gained fame on the mud flaps of trucks in the 70's. I loved the challenge of writing in form--that tight puzzle that has expanses hidden within it. From there, I moved into more lyric poems, and from there, the draw toward full sentences, which at the time was sort of terrifying. 

 Your career was catapulted to a higher level by your essay in the New York Times Modern Love column. How long did you work on that essay? What do you think made it so powerful?

That's a hard one to answer. Ten years of getting ready for it. Two days of purging into a notebook--nineteen single spaced pages, which stayed in my nightstand drawer for over a year. I was afraid to open the drawer. Started sleeping on the other side of the bed. When I got ready to write it, it was really a matter of cutting and shaping--the thing I'd spent eight years doing as a poet; so the essay came quickly. A couple of days, honestly.

It's strange to talk about the power of one's own work--what makes it powerful is more a question for readers, I think. I was only trying to make an honest essay. I'd had a moment of catharsis, just before I sent it to Modern Love. Made a conscious decision not to be ashamed of my experience, not to feel afraid of saying it.

How did that essay lead to a six figure deal for a memoir?

The weekend the essay came out, I--like many other Modern Love essayists have been--was contacted by several agents. I signed with Susan Golomb, who was incredibly helpful in helping me write a proposal for the book. Five months later, we sold it, and I embarked on the wonderful/awful experience of learning to write prose. Mostly by failing at it, draft after draft. It was a brutal sort of mill--knowing I was churning out work that wasn't good, figuring out how to do it better.

Did starting with an essay help when it came time to craft a book-length manuscript? You've said you had to learn the art of building a narrative arc to write your memoir. What techniques did you use to develop those skills? How did writing poetry support your prose writing?

I'm not sure anything can teach a person to write a book beyond the act of doing it. Writing pages, throwing away pages, rinse and repeat. I did read some helpful books on structure and craft. In particular, The Art of Time in Memoir by Sven Birkerts and The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler.

I started by writing scenes, because they work the same way a poem works--at least the way I work through a poem. There's a beginning, middle, and end. Often a turn, sometimes unexpected. A sense of disconnectedness coming together by the last line. I just started by writing in pieces--the funny, easy parts first, which was a TERRIBLE decision, I realized, once I got to the end. And then the linking of those parts--the smoothing over.

What would you suggest to writers who are searching for telling details and metaphors to convey layers of meaning?

In my experience, the metaphors came later--for me it was all the water, and the breath. Drowning, baptism, rebirth, all of that was unconscious as I was writing it. In the moment, all those years ago, I didn't know why I craved my underwater life in the way that I did. I didn't necessarily connect it to my spiritual life, then. But every writer knows--or learns--that there's no way to communicate the abstractions of feeling except through the careful selection of (manipulation of?) the concrete. I can't say I had every one of the feelings I describe during the exact scene I inserted them into. I had the feelings, I had the experiences--it's an artist's job to weave them together in a way that resonates with the reader, illuminates some theme he or she has been building in tiny pieces along the way.

Your book is achingly candid yet full of humor. You also deftly navigate two hot-button topics of sex and religion without making enemies. What techniques did you use to strike that balance?

The humor was difficult--as anyone knows, who's tried to write humor. It can come off as petulant, bitter, sarcastic, or glib--in earlier drafts, mine was all of those things. But humor was an imperative to my story, beyond being a part of my regular voice. 

One of the conflicts in the book is that I didn't feel I had a right to unhappiness. I had clean water, and higher education, and a loving family, and job skills, and good health, and opportunity. It was important for me to be aware of the struggle between those opposing forces--having everything, and suffocating in certain ways. I also like to use humor as a way to make the reader defenseless. I want their heads thrown back, their arms slack, bodies totally open, unaware of the punch I'm winding up to land.

I also wanted to be sure my humor didn't make light of what was sacred, wasn't used as an indictment against any of the characters in the book. You'll notice I mostly make fun of myself, or of certain absurd situations. I tried to be very careful . . . some would say I was too careful, but it was crucial to me that the Mormon Church was not seen as the antagonist in this story--there was much that was beautiful in that place, and I still have reverence for it.

You have a natural presentation style that is full of useful tips and lessons and personal stories. How has teaching helped your writing?

Just recently, I was struggling with an essay--couldn't figure out what was going wrong, why it wasn't working. I took my own advice, from a lesson I'd given two days before at Richard Hugo house. I'd made the students highlight (in pink) all the vulnerable, personal revelations in a published essay--they were few, but scattered throughout in key places. When I tried it on my own essay, there was no pink. I was just telling a funny story--for it to become an essay, it needed to be revelatory and vulnerable. I can't tell you how irritated it made me, to realize I was making the same mistake my beginning students were making. But that's the thing every teacher learns--we're all trapped in the mire, slogging toward the better work. There's no hierarchy--just a shared experience, a shared desire to be better at this difficult thing. One of my students from that class emailed me that same day: "childbirth comes in second to making a good essay." I've never had a child, but I will wholeheartedly agree--I really, really wish there could be an epidural.

What are you working on next?

I'm in the midst of a kickstarter campaign for a memoir called  The View From Picton Castle: a memoir of 324 days at sea

Picton Castle isn't a castle, but a 180 foot sailing barque, with over 12,000 square feet of sail. The book will tell the true story of my year on a sail training adventure called Westward Bound: World Voyage 6. I'll work as a member of the ship's crew and write about my adventures while sailing, scuba diving, living with sailors, and exploring ports from Fiji to Savannah--over 20,000 nautical miles. The book chronicling my year at sea will illuminate the colorful characters I'm sure to encounter, as well as every romance and adventure you can imagine. And, I hope, a few you can't. And when it's over, I'll do my best to write a beautiful, hilarious book about the continuing adventures of a 'daring, dramatic dreamer' as one reviewer called me. Here is the link to my kickstarter campaign.  http://kck.st/1kdUmET

What suggestions do you have for aspiring writers?

Make a writing practice, make a writing community, read really good books.

Thanks so much, Nicole! Note: Nicole is teaching with Theo Nestor and Natalie Singer or Orcas Island in June. Check for details in the resources section below. To find out more about Nicole's work, visit www.nicolehardy.com