303. Writing With Honesty with Anna Moore

Author Anna Moore discovers the importance of writing with honesty, what exactly that means, and how doing it can enhance your story.

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Check out Anna's website:
https://www.annabmoore.com/

Grab a copy of her book:
https://www.annabmoore.com/book/

Transcript

Jennia: Hello, I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the author-focused podcast that takes a whole person approach to everything related to both writing and editing. Most of us would probably say it's important to write with honesty, but what exactly does that mean? And how does honesty equate itself with emotional truth? And why is that essential when we're covering harder topics? Writing professor and author Anna Moore explores this in her own writing, and she'll be explaining how you too can explore it in both fiction and nonfiction.

Jennia: First, thank you for being here today!

Anna Moore: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for having me!

Jennia: So before writing your first novel, you wrote a number of essays and it looks like some of them won awards.

Anna Moore: Yeah.

Jennia: So can you describe what that transition was like from writing essays to writing a novel?

Anna Moore: Sure. I got my MFA in creative writing last century, so (laughs) I've been writing for a long time. And until the novel, I had always published and really zoomed in on shorter standalone essays. Anything from flash to a longer, kind of, full length, 10-to-20-page essay. I played with form a lot because I use the second person in a lot of the stuff that I've published.

Jennia: Okay.

Anna Moore: And I felt like that was super honest because I was using this adolescent voice that continues to take over my life every day. So (laughs). And then—So the novel, I mean, I published a lot of memoir, creative nonfiction, a little bit of fiction, and then the novel came about. I think I started it in 2012 or 2013.

Jennia: Okay.

Anna Moore: Yeah, I worked on it for about seven years. And writing that first novel taught me how to write a novel. And it's so much more than just developing characters and having a larger arc. I feel like I kind of had to have things happen—

Jennia: Ahh.

Anna Moore: —in the book. I'm not necessarily a plot-based person, but I'm starting to—I started to really see the value in that as, like, "Okay, something has to happen here." And so the ways of building that and stretching out what happens into more than just, like, a flashy plot moment—

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: —that kind of came about for me when I was writing the novel. Not exactly, like, drawing things out, but giving them the fullest space possible that they deserved. Like, the scenes, the people, and the character, stuff like that.

Jennia: Yeah, that all makes sense. And I can see how moving from an essay to that, you would have to maybe not necessarily learn those skills, but see even where to add those things in just because, like you said, there's more of that tight focus. Or even like with flash fiction where you are looking at this little vignette so you don't have to worry about all these other things that are happening and then how they're going to come together and how to even pace those out so it's not like this landslide of events all at once.

Anna Moore: Exactly. And it was so funny because—So I'm doing the novel and then I'm working on a second novel now. And it's become so much more natural to me to be, like, writing on page . . . You know, I'm hammering away on page 222 and I'm, like, "Oh my God. I didn't put this information or bullet or anything anywhere else. So I have to go back to the beginning." Or I know something's in there, and I suddenly decided this needs to be developed. So I have to go back, like, way back, and look for it when my brain's not there anymore.

Jennia: Right.

Anna Moore: So my brain feels bigger. Like I don't know. I want to say smarter, but that's not right. You know what I mean?

Jennia: Oh yeah! I always think of it as like an accordion folder where maybe it's all tightly compacted for the shorter form fiction or a picture book or something. But then when we're doing a full-length novel, we need to expand it and really cram every single one of those folders full.

Anna Moore: And it was really interesting—you know, I sent this novel out to an agent who requested to see my work after I got a short story published. And that was, like, long—I think I want to say that was . . . I hadn't started the novel yet, I don't know. And so I sent them some pages and I think it was the first 50. And he replied very graciously and said, "We don't think there is enough dramatic pull here to sustain a book." I was kind of bummed, but, I mean, I was so glad to have been seen and picked out. I mean that was great, but I was just like, "I don't know what he's talking about." I had never written a novel in my life! I was like, "What?" As I (laughs) continued to revise and started having readers of my drafts—which was really important. If it weren't for the Writing by Writers draft program—I hope I would have finished the book, but that really helped when I had a group of peers just reading it. I started kind of piecing together what I was supposed to be doing. Keeping in mind, I mean, I have an MFA, I've been publishing stuff in literary journals for a long time. But I still, you know, I was still really stuck on how to do it.

Jennia: Well, moving on to the topic, how—

Anna Moore: Oh yeah (Jennia laughs).

Jennia: —How would you define writing with honesty?

Anna Moore: Okay, so I think in memoir or nonfiction, that's a pretty loaded term.

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: I guess the basic principle for me, and I'm gonna borrow this quote, I think, from Cheryl Strayed, and I'm not sure if it's hers originally—It's from long, long ago. I'm not sure if it's her originally or if she got it from somebody, but, "You can't cover your ass in memoir." I feel really strongly that when I write nonfiction, I'm not doing it to make myself look good. I'm doing it to tell a story and do justice to dramatic, formative situations and make art. Like, if I look like an a******, then okay, I was, maybe. You know, all right, all right. Everybody is. So that—I guess I think that's probably the biggest principle that I take into working with creative nonfiction and honesty.

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: As far as fiction goes, I think sometimes—sometimes I feel I see these wonderful, complex characters.

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: But then things happen to them that don't feel right or consistent. And I guess what I mean by that is, I want to put the pressure on my characters, but I don't want to hang them out to dry.

Jennia: Yeah.

Anna Moore: But I feel like sometimes, you know, I'm reading some fiction, and this character just gets put through the ringer, put through the ringer, put through the ringer. And that's life.

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: But sometimes, you know, it feels kind of gratuitous.

Jennia: Yes! Exactly. Like there's no break. It's drama for the sake of drama.

Anna Moore: Exactly. And I feel like, you know, oh my god, I'm watching One Life to Live, you know? Yeah. So avoiding gratuity . . . I just had a short story published, actually, and—Oh, good Lord, I worked on that thing forever. I'm so glad it's out there. But there's some violence at the end. An arrested sexual assault scene. And I really wanted to, you know, bring it home. And so it was pretty disturbing. And then I had a few people read it, and just one person said, "I don't think you need this line or this line." And so it took—Again, it takes a village. So it took a little feedback for me to be, like, "That's just gratuitous. It doesn't add anything to this." All those additions, additions, additions—

Jennia: Yeah, exactly!

Anna Moore: Yeah.

Jennia: No, I completely agree with you, and I see exactly what you're saying. Where sometimes it feels like something is happening because the author's almost trying to push you into having a certain emotional reaction instead of letting it just occur.

Anna Moore: Yeah. I try to—and I'm certain I'm not always successful with this—but I try to avoid contrivance

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: —and just that it's sort of—I mean, this sounds so cheesy, but, I mean, it's really pretty honest: Giving the piece that you're working on room to breathe and do things and figure out what characters . . . who they are as you're writing. You know, I just feel like I don't really need to contrive hard. If that's a phrase (laughs). I don't think that's a grammatically correct phrase.

Jennia: (laughs) It is today! And we hear about the characters a lot from lots of different interviews. And so one thing that it sounds like what you're saying, too, is that the characters will also lead the story in the direction it's meant to go. They'll lead you to what their reactions should be to whatever these events are. It's not going to be, "I have to make them do this for the next five pages. I need them to react this way to keep the momentum going." But I think what you're saying is also that you have to have that solid understanding of really who they are, but in a way that requires writing with honesty too. Because how can you write honestly about someone you don't really know?

Anna Moore: Yeah. Sometimes when I'm writing, I—you know, the character is, like, pretty clear to me as soon as I start writing them. And sometimes they're not. And it's through the process that you understand what you're creating.

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: For me, like, if I don't give myself room or give my characters room to do that, it feels fake.

Jennia: Yeah, I can see that happening too. Or like you were talking about with something feeling contrived. And it might just be that the author is really just trying to get to the next step, and so they just throw something in there to fill that gap where they didn't maybe give themselves that room like you're talking about.

Anna Moore: Right.

Jennia: So it sounds like you added some of this to your short story that you just mentioned. But I also want to talk a little bit about emotional truth. So the emotional truth for your characters and how you get that across because I know that you cover a lot of heavier, sensitive topics in your work.

Anna Moore: So as far as the novel, so Myra is, you know, she's really just kind of a—She's a suffering teenage, white, heterosexual girl. In the 80s there were, you know, many of them, many of us. And I think when I started writing it, I just decided that I was gonna, kind of, cast aside some of what I had been taught in writing workshops in graduate school—again, last century (Jennia laughs). Okay? So I'm, I think, really hoping things have changed a bit. But I was a big shower of, you know, showing and telling—

Jennia: Ahh, yes.

Anna Moore: —I relied on that so much, and I love it. But I just—I, think I just decided to get into her head a lot. I decided to get into her head a lot. I was just going to tell people what she was thinking, and that's how I was gonna do it. And so I started doing that, and it became comfortable for me. It became pretty lyrical. I'm just gonna say it: I feel like when you're in the mental and psychological funks, low points, depression disorders, whatever—I'll just speak from my own experience. I don't like saying you—I'll have a dialogue going in my head. It's rhythmic, you know? It's rhythmic, a lot of it is repetitive—or it's not necessarily repetitive, it's saying the same thing, but in a very different way, in a different place, in a different time, with different objects, different things around you. And I think I discovered the rhythm of this beat in Myra's head that really—

Jennia: Ahh, interesting.

Anna Moore: —hurt her, you know, a lot.

Jennia: Well, you can see that, too, with someone who goes through any sort of trauma, and then how it rewrites that self-narrative and then even, yeah, those echoed beliefs over and over again, and how that would filter through not just their internal dialogue, but then their beliefs about the world.

Anna Moore: Yeah, exactly. And Myra, I mean, I'm thinking about her in the book. I don't think she really has any beliefs about the world. She has lots of questions, and she doesn't even know that she has these questions. She's just—She's really buried in her own sadness. The pain of youth and the pain of cultural institutions that gets inflicted upon all of us, some a lot more than others. So, for me, honesty was just, like, you just got to get in there.

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: Just get it on the page.

Jennia: Yeah. I feel like you have to really be able to channel whatever those emotions are that your character is supposed to be feeling. Because otherwise, how would you know how to get it across? And how would you know how to make it feel like it was an accurate representation of what someone in this situation would be feeling and how they'd be responding?

Anna Moore: Do you feel like—Are you talking kind of about, like, writing—Are you talking about writing what you know as far as character goes?

Jennia: Well, not even necessarily what you know, but even being able to just tap into it and have enough empathy that you're able to create a vivid understanding of it.

Anna Moore: Yes! Yeah, I 100% agree with that. But yeah, I did worry—and I do think about this in the novel sometimes, that the drumbeat of Myra's, you know, misery—not a lot of joy in there—is too much—

Jennia: Ahh.

Anna Moore: —I wonder if people00 I'm, like, huh, I wonder if people are going to get a little bogged down in the middle. I would have to see what people—you know, hear, people's reactions to it. But I feel like the novel is extremely true. Yeah.

Jennia: And that brings up sort of another question which might really apply to this and not some of your other work, but are there ever times when you have to hold back on that honesty a little bit just to give the reader a break? When there is maybe an emotion that might feel relentless or a situation that might feel like it's just pounding at them?

Anna Moore: Absolutely, 100%. I feel like sometimes when I'm—this is probably just a really common writers' experience—but as a writer, like, you're writing as a writer. And then other times you're writing as a reader, you know?

Jennia: Ahh.

Anna Moore: Like, some kind of switch has gone off. You know, like, "Oh, wait a minute, hold on, hold on, hold on. I got to think of the reader." I don't know, other writers might disagree with me. I don't know This is my experience writing as a writer, I think. And I feel like that's more of a reader place for me, and I think that's good. But what I found—If something gets to be too much, you know, you use, like, a device, you underwrite it, you start working in images that are evocative, introduce something new. So there's all kinds of ways to continue, like, being honest . . .

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: . . . and building truth without being direct.

Jennia: Oh, that's some really interesting feedback or advice, rather. I can see that working—I'm even trying to picture it in my head right now about, have I read books where this has happened and maybe I didnt even notice it? But I love that because that way you're not departing from writing with honesty. It's more just using a different tactic so that it's coming across a little bit softer so that the reader can continue to whatever they need to continue to.

Anna Moore: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's just like another way of telling a story. Like, for instance—I mean, this is a little different, but a—you know, I'm a teacher and sometimes when I'm working with students and they end a piece they're working on with one of those sentences that kind of sums everything up. And sometimes it's because what they're writing about might be painful. "I don't know what else to do!" And so I always say, "You just move to an image."

Jennia: Mmm.

Anna Moore: Move an image. Like, what's around your character? What might your character be looking at? Some of the best advice I've ever gotten—and I can't remember where it came from, darn it. But was, "In intense moments, maybe your character looks down. What is it that they see? Maybe your character looks up." Like, that one—I mean, that character looking down, oh, that's gold right there! I'm telling you (laughs).

Jennia: That just sounds so simple when you phrase it like that. And yet you can almost feel the emotional impact just thinking about how this could be applied to almost any piece you've read. This is, like, Literary Fiction MasterClass right now.

Anna Moore: Right on! That's great. That's the best compliment I've ever gotten.

Jennia: Well, you're welcome (laughs).

Jennia: So do you think that when you're writing about going back to your novel, specifically one of these harder situations, that you have to have some sort of knowledge about the topic or the situation in order for it to feel like an honest depiction?

Anna Moore: For me, at this point in my life and my life as a writer, I mean, that answer is yes. But I also—I don't think that's an absolute for writers at all. I think writers can do tremendous research and write about experiences that they might never have had themselves. I do think that, like, you know, it just depends. I'm very comfortable with really what I know. But again, that's just me. And I wouldn't want anyone to take that as some kind of a, yes, always write what you know. Don't do that.

Jennia: I do think that goes back to something you said earlier about being comfortable with your characters, because that really seems to be the foundation for all of this. I mean, it really does—You know, I'm looking at speculative fiction and thinking about all these imagined worlds or imagined scenarios that we'll never, ever experience. The Martian, for instance. Pretty sure Andy doesn't know what it's like to be stuck on Mars—

Anna Moore: Right!

Jennia: —But we have an emotional connection to the main character. We're invested in his story and in his outcome. But, yeah, I think it all then goes back to just like you were saying, that comfortability with your character and being able to understand how they would feel on almost an intuitive level without even putting that much thought into it.

Anna Moore: Exactly. I think Flannery O'Connor, who's one of my favorite writers, she said, you know, its—character is everything. Character is the only thing. But it's the principle of that, I think. Cause, like, I love a great detective or a crime show. And sometimes the husband and I will be watching a show, and it's really, really—I mean, the character's just tremendous, but there's holes in places. My husband is, like, "I don't want to watch this." And I say, "I would follow this character anywhere. Like, you're crazy." I don't care if there are mistakes. I don't care if sometimes things don't make sense. I believe this character completely.

Jennia: Ooh, yes.

Anna Moore: I gotta see what happens. Because they're so compelling and believable—

Jennia: I love that!

Anna Moore: —I feel like I just contradicted myself in every single—

Jennia: No, I don't think so at all! Because I think we're looking at almost this relation, then, between honesty and believability. That the two really are tied together. And if you don't have believability, even if you are being honest, it might not feel like you're being honest.

Anna Moore: Right. Exactly. Yeah, I completely agree.

Jennia: Well, you talked a little bit earlier about when something is contrived. So do you have any suggestions for authors on being able to identify those moments in their own work?

Anna Moore: So, for me, it comes with having someone read it and give me some opinions on it. That's the biggest thing that I can say. Because you can't let it keep you from getting the words on the page. You've got to have the words on the page so that you can figure out what to do and so that the words don't just, you know, get lost in the recesses of your aging brain (Jennia laughs). It's, like, a lot of the things that I feel like I've been talking about, for me, are really deeply about revision.

Jennia: Mhm.

Anna Moore: Or more than just, like, sitting down and hammering it out. I mean, if you are sitting down and hammering it out, it's, like, well, you can worry about fixing what's contrived later. You just gotta spit it out on the page. I think honesty and authenticity in writing, it comes with the revision process. I don't think that's something that I would be able to identify right away. You know, you have to, like, go back to your work and go over it and read it and keep going with it again and again and again to discover what's true.

Jennia: Yeah. That is great advice. And I think it's important just to always have that reminder that you're not going to have this beautiful first draft when you finish that's not going to have any substantial revisions necessary (laughs).

Anna Moore: No (laughs), definitely not. So, I mean—and for me, that's the best part. Because getting it on the page, I'm, like, "Cool, it's here! Now I can write!"

Jennia: Ohh! Yeah, I love that—

Anna Moore: You know?

Jennia: —Because we do hear a lot from people about how hard that first draft is, or they want to quit, or they want to give up. But maybe if they go in with the expectation that it's not meant to be easy and that you have all this time and room after to really finesse it into the story you envisioned, it takes so much pressure off, really.

Anna Moore: It really does.

Jennia: Well, before we end, what is the best way for people to find you? And are you able to share any more about your upcoming project?

Anna Moore: Yeah, I am at annabmoore.com. And you can find my published pieces over the last years and you can order my novel there. And that's the best way to find me. The novel I'm working on now, I'm just gonna kind of keep my mouth shut about. But it's a thriller, believe it or not.

Jennia: Ooo!

Anna Moore: Moving from, like, literary fiction into some genre writing . . . That's been a trip, I gotta tell ya. But that's for another—

Jennia: Yeah, you'll have to come back so we can talk about that now (laughs).

Anna Moore: Yeah, absolutely! It's still—It still feels very much like an exercise right now. So we'll see.

Jennia: Well, congratulations on that too!

Anna Moore: Thank you so much, Jennia!

Jennia: You're welcome!

Jennia: And thank you for listening. And be sure to check out the shows for additional information, including Anna's links. Thanks again!