Author and writing professor Sonya Huber wants you to lower the bar
"When I sit down at my computer every day, I have zero standards. I try very hard to not at all judge my output."
This week, I am interviewing Sonya Huber, a prolific and award-winning writer in many genres, but primarily in creative nonfiction. Her book of essays on chronic pain, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys, and Other Essays from a Nervous System was named by The New Statesman as a best book of 2018. Her other books include Love and Industry: a Midwestern workbook, which came out in 2023, Voice First, a Writer’s Manifesto, which came out in 2022, and Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir in a Day, which came out in 2021.
Phew!
Her shorter work has been published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and her essays have been included in the Best American Essay series numerous times. Sonya is also a professor in the Department of English at Fairfield University and in the Fairfield Low Residency MFA program. And she’s an activist working to support causes related to chronic pain and disability.
Despite all these places where Sonia's work has appeared, I found her on Substack, where she publishes a newsletter called Nuts and Bolts with Sonya. Her recent series of posts about farm sitting and her interactions with the animals—particularly one joyous duck—on this farm have really helped me get through the spring, which I love as a concept but in reality is just too cold and windy and can make me feel done with everything.
This interview with Sonya made me excited to play more with writing, to explore ideas just because I find them interesting, or to try on this idea of having “zero expectations.”
Hope it gets you psyched to play around on the page, too.
Listen to Sonya’s episodes:
Practical matters: Secrets to having a healthy relationship with writing
Catch her other two episodes when they publish later this week here
Things we covered:
Why and how Sonya works on multiple books at one time (“maybe because I’m super distractible”)
Not being afraid to follow a tangent
Having zero expectations for your writing output, and just having fun exploring the things you’re curious about or mulling over
How much “tiny steps add up to bigger works”
How farm-sitting goats pays as much or better than writing
Strategies for keeping your various ideas accessible, if not exactly organized
Using writing as a tool for dealing with chronic pain
How to deal with the fear that your personal writing will hurt someone in your life, or get it ‘wrong’
How writing about your own life can deepen relationships with people close to you
How getting long Covid inspired Sonya to write three books in three years
Her beautiful vision of the future include a possible memoir of living with anxiety and… goat writing retreats!
The insanely awesome sounding “coffee smoothie” she makes each morning
Lightbulb moments
It’s a completely valid approach to writing to “f*ck around and find out”—just write for play, or catharsis, with no specific expectations for where it’s going, and follow that thread of interest to see where it leads
“I think of it as a series of puzzles as opposed to, ‘I am writing a book.’ I'm just trying to unsnarl one tiny knot that I've made for myself.
Specific things we discussed:
Bill Roorbach, who taught the creative nonfiction class at The Ohio State University where Sonya discovered the genre she’s gone on to publish several books in
If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, the 1938 book that played a big role in Sonya’s ‘write for the fun of it’ approach
Evernote and Scrivener, the tools Sonya uses to house and (somewhat) organize her writing
Hanif Abdurraqib, a poet who has been called “the Mr. Rogers of his generation,” whom Sonya considers to be one of her creative role models
The TV series Constellation, which Sonya called “bizarre but fascinating”
Listen to past episodes:
Joanne McNeil, practical matters: On finding your ambition and building your own opportunities + a Trader Joe’s shopping list for fueling your writing
Joanne McNeil, inner stuff: Owning your outsider status + “doing what I can do with with the tools that I have”
Joanne McNeil, What’s coming up: “I just want to make writing part of my life throughout my life”
Hayley Krischer, practical matters: The power of just keeping going + how to capture those great ideas that come when you’re not at your desk
Hayley Krischer, inner stuff: True confessions about how “horrible” writing can feel + why–and how–she wrote her next novel in longhand
Hayley Krischer, what’s next: What she’s recently learned about understanding her character’s psyches + the incredible allure of hot tubs
Jennifer Fink, practical matters: Writing what you know + the book she found at the library that launched her writing career
Jennifer Fink, inner stuff: Dealing with internalized trolls + aqua aerobics!
Jennifer Fink, what’s next: The lure of leaving it all behind and becoming a flight attendant + the Post-It note sayings that light the path
Love Sonya Huber! I will definitely give this a listen.