Chapter 151: Distance

We’ve published a terrific new story this week that succeeds, I am compelled to say, despite me. The piece, My Home Towns by Kellianne Jones, captures powerfully the experience of being caught between the home you left and the one where you’ve settled. Because, as Kellianne writes of her own experience, not only do you never fully leave the place where you grew up but in essential ways you never really wish to.

Despite me is perhaps too self-deprecating a description. I did help Kellianne in the early stages of the story, when we went back and forth over her reporting memos – we don’t believe in writing drafts from the outset – trying to find the story, the narrative, the drama. I went back to that shared document – the first memos began in 2019 – and was struck by how hard Kellianne pushed herself, and how much of that early material found its way into the story: the history of her town, Fayetteville, Ohio; her family’s place as outsiders, even after decades, because they had come from someplace else; the role of the Catholic church; her fond memories of the place, coupled with a desire to leave; and through it all, the pull back, if only for visits.

But over time I came to feel that I was not the editor to bring the story home. I had gotten too close to the story, so much so that I was unable to do what editors must: provide the distance that helps writers, up to their necks in reporting, see the story fully. 

I asked my colleague, Mike Hoyt, to pick up where I had left off. I’ve never written for a better magazine editor than Mike, and knew that Kellianne would be in the best hands. That she was. Mike could see what I no longer could – a frame, an idea that only after much struggle looks so wonderfully, elegantly simple.

I wanted to know whether the time it took to find and tell her story helped Kellianne. In ways that surprised her, it had. She told me that she first started thinking about her story in 2013 and began playing with the idea in a book writing class she took with my colleague, Sam Freedman. She then brought the idea to The Review and we started the long, and always difficult process of searching for what her story was about.

“I moved quickly on my initial research,” she replied. “I made phone calls, connected with new sources, and wrote free-flowing memos, recounting my memories of growing up. All that happened fast. 

“You started telling me not to think about ‘writing a draft’ in the traditional sense, which confused me. You told me that I should be using writing from those early, diary-like memos I had written. I was confused. Those memos were mostly about me. I didn't picture the story as having any first-person narrative or any thread about my own life. I wanted to do a narrative piece about the town.” 

Then, she wrote, she came to what in retrospect was a crucial phase in the life of the story. “At that point, I began slowing my pace. A year or more went by. The project became stressful, something I had on my plate for years but wasn't making much progress. My job was busy, so that was a distraction, but it felt like it was hanging over my head. A task on my to-do list. I asked you and later Mike to assign me deadlines, which you never really did. I was confused as to what the story was about; to me, it was about the church, but both editors insisted that it was about me, too. You at one point described it as my ‘love story’ to Fayetteville. I stepped away from the story for so long, I forgot all my material and had to spend hours refreshing myself on it. 

“As journalists, we are taught that we shouldn't be part of the story-- and I think it took me some time to come to terms with the story being partly about me. But the story had always been and I just wouldn't admit it. Why did I write all those early memos about myself in the first place? 

“Mike & I disagreed what the nut graf was of my early draft (I thought it was a few lines I had about the church; he thought it was a few lines I had written about why I care about Fayetteville). But that was the beginning of me overcoming my resistance to the story; we figured out that the story was equal parts about me and my hometown. Once I accepted that I had a place in the story, it became easier to write. 

“I tried to remember what the turning point was -- whether it was time itself that made my mindset change -- or if I had some kind of realization. I think it was just time. It wasn't one singular event. I needed all that time so my brain could have a series of small epiphanies about the story that would have never come out if I had tried to force them. These small epiphanies are documented in my phone's notepad -- a line here and a line there. They weren't even full thoughts on their own, but each just a small piece of the mystery of why I cared so much about Fayetteville to begin with. I needed more life experiences, more conversations, and more time to think. All that time it didn't feel like I was doing anything -- and it was stressing me out -- I think I was actually still more productive than I thought. I was ‘researching’ deep within myself. I had no power over when these thoughts were uncovering. I just had to keep living so that they would be.”

Kellianne’s story has gotten me thinking about my own work, and how vital it is for writers to be able to place some distance between themselves and their stories. In particular I’ve been thinking about this newsletter, and how I feel I’d be better serving you, and yes, myself, by stepping away for a bit, to clear my head and with that distance to allow in new ideas and new questions. Much as Kellianne did with her story.

When I say a bit I mean the summer; my work life is still aligned with the academic calendar. 

My plan – and here I speak for my colleague Diego Courchay as well – is to step away until September. 

We’ll see you then.

Enjoy the summer and if you’re writing, consider giving yourself some time away. This work is hard enough and you have earned it.

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Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture.