Cameron Dezen Hammon’s writing has appeared in Ecotone, The Rumpus, The Literary Review, The Houston Chronicle, and elsewhere. Her essay “Infirmary Music” was named a notable in The Best American Essays 2017, and she is a contributor to The Kiss: Intimacies from Writers (W.W. Norton), My Caesarean: Twenty Mothers on the Experience of Birth by C-Section and After (The Experiment) and Common Prayer: Reflections on Episcopal Worship (Wipf & Stock). She is host of The Ish podcast, and her debut book This Is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession will be published by Lookout Books on October 22, 2019. 

EB: How did you start writing in general and nonfiction in particular?

CDH: As most of us do, I started writing very young. I kept journals obsessively and then turned to poetry in high school. I did an undergrad in creative writing at Carnegie Melon, which was, at the time, one of the few undergrad programs that offered a BA in creative writing. But while I was in college, I had a couple of competing desires: I was a musician—I am a musician. As soon as I finished my BA, I went back to music. I wrote and co-produced and recorded, and for about ten years it was just music. And the church, which is its own story and most of what This Is My Bodyis about. I didn’t really go back to writing until I was in my late 30s.

I grew up an agnostic witchy (half) Jew in New York, and then I had this radical conversion to Christianity in Brooklyn right before 9/11. I spent several years in the church and then had a crisis; I couldn’t continue to identify with a culture that was hurting people I loved and hurting me. I realized I needed to find a way back to who I was before God, and I did that through writing.

EB: What kind of writing?

CDH: Nonfiction writing. I was a blogger—and later I had to work very hard to get those blogs off the internet!—but those blogs helped me find nonfiction. I started publishing with some online magazines and then I found my MFA program. It took me three years to make the decision to go because it was a huge commitment of time and money, but I knew I had to change my life. And the only way I knew how to do that was to write a book. I didn’t know how to write a book, so I thought I would go to an MFA program, learn how to write a book, and write my way out of one life and into another. It didn’t really work out quite like that, but it was, ultimately, what I needed.

EB: When did you start working on this memoir? Was that the book you were working on during your MFA program?

CDH: I did my MFA at Seattle Pacific University, which focused on both faith and writing, though the program held the craft of writing above any religious dogma, which is unusual for any program grounded in faith. For me, it was a safe space to process my religious stuff and write. It didn’t ask me to give up my religion but incorporate it. I was writing about these conflicting desires and the strange way that I came to faith—most people grow up in it, but I chose it, I didn’t grow up in it at all. So, I was writing about that during the program, and about my religious doubt, but it was after my MFA that I entered into a really difficult period in my marriage. The crisis in my religious life and in my marriage both came to a head, and this was all while I was trying to work on a book proposal for a collection of essays, which I promptly realized I wasn’t interested in. Instead, I started writing about what I was going through, and that became the memoir.

EB: I can so relate to writing your way out of one thing and into another. I feel like a lot of writers I know—myself included—use their art as a ladder to get out of something.

CDH: Mhm.

EB: Can you speak a little more about writing about something while you are living it? That can be an incredible process to get raw material, but how did you manage to get perspective?

CDH: I managed it in the editing phase. I wrote the book in five months. In retrospect, it was crazy. I wish I could repeat that, but it’s not working out that way on the second book. That first draft of the memoir didn’t have any perspective, but it had something that got me to my agent. She saw something in the book that had potential, and I began to work through revisions with her, revisions on my own, then eventually revisions with my editor. The finished book came about after two-and-a-half years of revision.

EB: Wow. And my students don’t believe me when I say that the majority of writing is actually editing and revising.

CDH: Yes, all the perspective came through after all that very intense revision. The original form came in the heat of it all, but the perspective came later. I actually told my editor that she knows more about my marriage than my husband does.

EB: [laughter]

CDH: She asked really good questions! Her questions got me to step back and go deeper.

EB: You mentioned your husband—which brings me to something that I really struggle with myself and so I am always asking other writers how they handle it. How do you, when writing personal nonfiction, deal with writing about people you care about? I never know where my story ends and someone else’s begins and what is my right to share and what isn’t. How did you handle also sharing your husband’s story? Did you show him the manuscript as you wrote it? Did you allow him to veto things in it?

CDH: I think that’s the eternal question with nonfiction. It’s central to so many workshops—this is the question under every other question when I teach.

EB: Yes!

CDH: I handled this in a very specific way. For the first draft, I would give it to no one except maybe one trusted beta reader. Through that process I was telling myself that no one will ever read this book, and maybe it will just be for me. But I knew that wasn’t actually true. I was tricking myself into writing it.

At every stage from then on—from giving it to my graduate school cohort, to giving it to my agent, to my editor—I kept telling myself “it’s really hard to get published.” And it is. There are a lot of steps between writing something and it being published, so I told myself that I had to make it the best it could be before starting to panic about all the people in my story and my life and what they would think.

A writer I admire once said you should never give someone a first draft. If you’re going to give someone veto power, give them the final draft. In a first draft you’re raw and vulnerable and it’s all brand new on the page and it’s nowhere near what it’s going to be in the end, so it’s not fair to other people to see it in that phase. So, I just kept kicking that ball as far down the road as I could.

After I got an agent and was going through the book proposal process, I had several hard conversations with my husband. This is a book about my marriage, and he is the person I am married to. But he’s an artist, so he understood that in order to write the book I needed to write, I couldn’t put a soft-focus lens on it. Thank god for that because I don’t want to read that book! I don’t want to write that book!

EB: [laughter]

CDH: My husband and I were in therapy and we were making a point to connect and talk regularly, which was a new thing for us. We would have coffee together in the morning, early before the sun was up, and I would talk to him about what I was working on, what I was writing, and the parts that were making me particularly nervous. So, we were talking through it. And he was bizarrely supportive. He was a total cheerleader for me and for this book. He knew that I needed to write it and that we needed me to write it to move through it, so that’s how we managed.

I have such complicated feelings around any woman giving a man, husband or otherwise, the power to approve or disapprove of their work. I don’t advocate for that. But for me, through this process, his total faith in it and in me really helped me push through my fear.

EB: I also often wonder how writers who are parents handle writing about their children. Did you also talk through this stuff with your daughter?

CDH: During the time I was writing about she was very young, so she wasn’t aware of what was going on. I’ve toggled back and forth between telling her everything or giving her the story in measured doses. But right now, I’ve decided that she is still too young to read it, and I told her that. I explained that I wrote this book and that it is about a lot of difficult things I went through, her dad and I went through, things that happened to me as a woman, and that I hope she reads it someday, but right now it’s not that time. She immediately said, “Oh, no, no, no, that’s cool! I don’t want to know!” She’s thirteen and doesn’t want to know anything about her parents’ personal lives. Thank god.

Everyone has a system, but for me it was taking it increment by increment and sharing it only with the people directly involved, which was, at the end of the day, just my husband. Dani Shapiro has said she wouldn’t have written about her marriage if her husband had been opposed to it. I read that and bristled, but, to be honest, I totally get it.

EB: Thank you for sharing all that. Yeah, I feel like it must have really helped that your husband is also an artist. I feel like people who aren’t artists don’t get it, they say, well, you could just not write it and not have this problem. They don’t understand that not writing it is not an option.

CDH: It’s not an option!

EB: I wanted to ask a little more about your daughter, if you don’t mind. I keep thinking about this case with a Mommy Blogger whose ten-year-old daughter found out she was writing about her and asked her to stop and she didn’t. In your book, your daughter is a minor character compared to your husband, but how do you handle writing about children? How do you make your daughter a fully-formed character but also protect her privacy?

CDH: Do men get this question with the same frequency as women do? And if the answer is no, why? I’m working on an essay right now that involves my daughter more than my book does, and I keep wondering, do I give her a draft to read? Do I wait until it’s published? I don’t have a good answer for that. I’m negotiating it right now. I don’t think there is a definitive answer, that it’s good or not good, black or white. I think it goes back to what we were saying about being an artist—I am a writer and a mother, and I can’t not write about being a mother. Being a mother is part of the life that I write about.

I also know that as a reader I’ve craved more honest writing about motherhood, but there’s still a stigma about writing about it, maybe for this reason. Mary Karr is a great example of someone who handles this well, I think. She writes about her son’s early years in Litin a way that is extraordinarily honest and brave, but also protective. Protecting my daughter’s privacy is very important to me. But yes, it’s something I’m negotiating.

I may have a different answer in a few years. I know that I write to understand my life, and I try to make work in which I hope other people can see themselves, and not writing about being a mother wouldn’t be possible.

EB: That all makes a lot of sense. Also, as I’m thinking about it, when I do hear male writers who are fathers get asked this question, it often seems like they’ve never even thought about it before. Their answer is always something like of course I would write about my kids, they’re part of my life, with no consideration for their privacy or feelings. Which feels kind of entitled?

CDH: It’s a privilege. I also think it has to do with the fact that women are tasked with keeping secrets, especially family secrets, more than men are. And when a woman tells a true story, there is a little ripple of betrayal that comes from a secret being revealed. Men don’t have that same expectation on them. I think there’s a privilege that male writers have to look at their lives as material and just material.

EB: I’d love to know more about your writing process, in particular, how it relates—or doesn’t relate—to your music. How do you write a song versus a piece of prose? Is the process similar for you, or are those two completely different creative endeavors?

CDH: I think they’re very similar, though I tend to rotate the crops. I am rarely writing prose and writing songs at the same time. Right now, for instance, because of the book, it has been a long time since I’ve written a song. Also, for me, songwriting is more collaborative. I wrote songs by myself for years and then I started to write songs with other people, and realized that was where the joy in song writing was for me. But those opportunities are few and far between these days, so I’m just not doing it that much.

But both always start with a line. For songs, a lyric gets in my head—a first line or a word—and that drives me to the notes section on my phone or the piano, depending on where I am. But it’s always words that starts it for me.

EB: And it’s the same with prose? Is it always a phrase or a sentence that sparks things for you?

CDH: Yes, the same. A sentence will come into my head, and that’s where it starts for me—a phrase that sounds resonant or musical. A line that makes me want to write it down.

EB: That’s interesting. I feel like for some writers, even though we all work with words, they start more visually—they can picture the scene or see the character and then have to translate that into prose.

CDH: That does happen for me sometimes. In 2001, when I was entering into this intensely religious season, and my new Christian friends suggested that I get baptized at the beach at Coney Island, before it happened I knew that would be a scene I would write one day. The funeral scene that opens my book was also one that, as it was happening, I knew it was a scene I would write. But that’s more unusual for me.

EB: Oh, I’ve had that happen. I’ve actively been living something and can already feel the future personal essay about it.

CDH: Yeah! [laughter]

EB: Actually, I wanted to ask about your choice to start with that first scene. I really enjoyed how your memoir was not told in chronological order. The jumping back and forth in time and the way you layered the events felt like it mimicked the way we’re always trying to think back on and make sense of our lives. How did you figure out the structure of the book?

CDH: I always knew I wanted it to be braided in some way, and the first draft was actually more braided, with more hopping around, but through the editing process it got leaner. Many writers have talked about the way a braided narrative mimics memory, and I love that. The Art of Time in Memoirby Sven Birkerts was a big help when I was thinking about structure. Do you know that little book?

EB: Yes, I am obsessed with that whole Graywolf series.

CDH: It is an amazing book. My friend Lacy Johnson recommended it to me. It argues for choosing dramatic events based on their importance and for their emotion and power, rather than because they fit into a timeline. The two events that start my book—me standing on a stage, singing at a funeral, wondering how I got there, and then my baptism at Coney Island—there’s a causality between the chapters, which explains why the structure goes back and forth, but also the intensity is preserved when those events unfold in real time. Instead of me thinking and explaining how I got on that stage, I wanted to jump back to twelve years earlier and show how it all started.

That’s also just what I love to read. I love to read braided work—it keeps my interest. Unless you are a celebrity memoirist with a lot of crazy stuff to write about, it’s hard to keep a dramatic arc going, unless you play with time. Does that make sense?

EB: Yes! That’s also my favorite type of work to read. I love books that bounce back and forth in time, or between a personal story and a historical or researched one. The Fact of a Bodyby Alex Marzano-Lesnevich is one of my favorites.

CDH: I love that book! Alex and I grew up in the same town! Isn’t that crazy? But at different times. Yes, that is a beautiful book. Incredibly well-structured.

EB: I’ve heard Alex talk about how they came upon the structure by going through and writing down all the big events from memory and playing with the associative connections, and that’s how all the boring parts fell away.

CDH: Yup. Alex was also very generous in talking to me online about the way that they structured that book. I was struggling with how weird I could get, and Alex told me that the weirder they got, the better their book got, and that gave me the confidence and courage to do the same.

EB: So you’ve mentioned Lacy and Alex helping you with figuring out the structure of your book, and then I was introduced to you by our mutual friend, Alison Wisdom, on Twitter, so I know you are part of a community of writers, and I would love to hear more about that. Who do you turn to for writing support? How has your community helped or shaped your work?

CDH: Community has been everything to me. I’m part of a big online writing community of women and nonbinary writers, and their support has kept me afloat. Everyone is at different phases in their writing and publishing lives, so whenever I get to a part of the process where I don’t know what I’m doing (which is often), there’s always someone who has already been through it, willing to offer their wisdom. I don’t know how the hell I would have made it through any of this without that community.

As far of sharing work, I have a very small writing group I’m a part of. People who were in my MFA cohort—god bless them—will still read work I send them and help me with it. My friend Kate Schifani, who is an incredible writer, just helped me with a couple of essays I published recently. Community is everything.

We are more connected than we ever were before online, and there are tons of downsides to that, but the upside is community. I believe in helping other people, even when (especially when) there is no benefit to ourselves. A high tide raises all boats. For women, for so long we were told that we were competing with each other for publication credits, that there were a limited number of pieces of the pie. That has been the prevailing narrative for women. But by creating community we are actively dismantling that notion. That’s important work and incredibly valuable. Writing is a lonely process, so being able to jump online and talk to other writers who are also in the middle of a lonely process is less isolating.

EB: I could not agree more. My friends in my MFA cohort and I talk about this all the time. I don’t see the point of being competitive or getting jealous when someone else gets a book deal. We all have our own stories and our own perspectives. Even if someone else wrote a memoir about her experience with Christianity and the struggles in her marriage, it would be completely different from your book.

CDH: Yeah.

EB: And writing is lonely. That’s why it’s so nice to talk to people who get it. That’s why I started this series—to talk to other writers.

CDH: That’s why I started the podcast. When I was deciding on guests, I would think about people who knew something I didn’t, who I wanted to learn from. It felt amazing to be able to talk to writers and ask them questions.

EB: So many people have been so kind to me and helped me along the way, why wouldn’t I want to keep paying it forward? When someone reaches out and says they want to know more about what’s like to get an MFA or how I sold my book, of course I want to talk to them about it.

CDH: Yes! It feels like an honor when someone asks me how I did it. I am honored to share and to give someone some hopefully helpful information.

EB: So, what do you find most challenging about writing nonfiction, and what do you think is the most rewarding part?

CDH: All of it? It’s all challenging, and it’s all connected. It’s challenging and it’s rewarding all at the same time. The challenge is often just getting to the blinking cursor and getting the words down. Then stepping away from a first draft and letting enough time pass so I can go back to it with fresh eyes. But then it’s incredibly rewarding to complete a draft of anything. To me, it feels like there is this gnawing inside of me that if I don’t write and don’t finish something, it won’t ever go away, and the only way to fix it is to get my ass in a chair. It’s satisfying, even if the thing is imperfect, which it always is. To see something published is satisfying, to connect with other readers and writers through publishing work is satisfying, but, to me, the most satisfying thing is the doing of it, the making it better, editing, seeing a piece emerge from a shitty first draft. To close my lap top and feel I finished this thing—that is a good feeling.

And then five minutes pass.

EB: [laughter] Right. It’s never done. I know about writers who mark up their published books with changes they would still make if they could.

CDH: Recorded music is the same way. At some point you have to walk away. I don’t understand how people smoke pot and make records—you would never finish anything! You would always hear something else that could sound cleaner or brighter or darker, and, at some point, you have to just shut the computer down and walk away.

When I did my first reading from This Is My Body, I was editing it while I was reading it, just jumping over whole paragraphs.

EB: [laughter]

CDH: But what you read to an audience doesn’t necessarily need to be the same thing as what is in the book. As a performer I am aware of an audience and conscious of when I’m losing them. An audience doesn’t need a lot of back story, they want to stay in the scene with you. They want to be in the moment. But, yeah. It’s never finished.

EB: Finally, what is a favorite passage by a fellow non-man writer?CDH: From Clarice Lispector: “…weep and believe.”