Drue Denmon:
I've read a lot of the stuff you've written on your blog and a lot of it is centered around self-love and self-affirmation. Can you talk a little bit about your journey towards that?
Hannah Eko:
I think I started to become more spiritually aware or curious when I was leaving high school because I was going to military school, and I was not really sure that I should be going or I shouldn't. That's when I started wondering, basically, what my purpose in life was and I started searching. I started in the Christian tradition because there were some things that I really loved about it, even though I had never really felt held there. But as I went on I started to branch out of that. I decided to read a lot about Buddhist philosophies about compassion that starts within, you know? That was where it started and especially when you're going through a trying time you know, my cousin had passed away in 2010 and then, I was in a job that I didn't feel completely at peace with in the Coast Guard. All of that led me to searching for other things that were going to keep my spirits up. … I would say that for me I finally am getting out of this headspace of not enough and "I suck"—not to say that I'm completely out of it, I have my days, you know? Once you start playing around with these concepts, they start infiltrating every area of your life. For me, I had to really learn how to separate the story and the voice of what I've been telling myself … from the truth. … I know I'm not the best writer. I haven't had a lot of things published. I've had some things published, I've had people who've said that they love my writing, or that they appreciate it. Nurturing that, those things … I've had a lot of anxiety when it comes to writing. That's when I realize the importance of … having people. Writing is definitely not a solo endeavor. There's so many people around me: my partner, people in writing groups who I feel like have seen my potential when I couldn't. When we talk about self-love and self-compassion we forget that it's not just about us. I mean, you are a very important part of that equation, but honestly it's people who are like "Oh, I really appreciate your writing," … Sometimes that's enough to keep going. And then when no one's there you have to be the person who tells yourself that. I had to remind myself that I didn't get into it because I wanted to be famous, I wrote because I loved to write. Going back to that space was really important. For a while I was focused on what was going to get me noticed. What's going to get me acclaim? That thought process just killed my writing. It killed my desire to write. …
DD:
Was that interrupting your fiction writing?
HE:
Definitely. Especially with literary fiction there are very stark divisions for what counts and what doesn't. There's this idea that there's only the Raymond Carver/ New Yorker/ Iowa MFA style of literary fiction program and that's what fiction is. … My voice doesn't sound like that initially when I write. And then I just couldn't write because you're just so gummed up about what you should be writing. So I feel like now I'm in this space where I'm allowing myself to just write. I'm taking a lot of pressure off. I always come back to I'm not really going to save the world with my writing. Can I do something that I really like? The stories that I really like that are the ones that I finish. They're the ones that I want to keep working with. The stories that I try to make into something that people will like … those are the stories that I keep abandoning.
DD:
What are you currently working on, in your fiction life?
HE:
Right now I'm working on a really shitty first draft of a novel. At first it was a memoir and then as soon as I started writing fiction it just freed me up. … Right now I'm working on two short stories. One I was working on last year that I'm reworking. It's a story that I've been writing for at least five years. … I feel like I hit a stride where the voice was really coming in. And now I'm going to keep with that voice. So I'm very excited for that.
DD:
It's interesting how you can keep working on the same thing and keep having these epiphanies about it. That's what I feel like I'm going to end up doing.
HE:
I think if you're open to it [working on a piece for that long]. The problem is that our culture is so youth obsessed and so like, you have to break success by the time that you're 26. Which I obviously did not. That makes you feel … you're in a hurry, which can definitely kill your writing. Our world now is so quippy, like everyone has to be witty all the time.
DD:
Like with social media?
HE:
Yeah.
DD:
It feels like an enemy to writing in some ways, because they're like, come up with the most clever thing and post it as quickly as you can. And that's literally the worst thing to do with writing.
HE:
It also doesn't really work that way. … When I write my blog I don't really edit it. That's kind of my space. … I edit for clarity, but if I wanted to comb it and make it into an essay, that would be an entirely different matter. I just, I don't know how people do it. I don't think I could work at that kind of pace. I'm already an anxious person, and that would just, drum up my anxiety to this point. I just don't think everything needs to be quippy all the time and funny and clever. … It can be nice in some ways. Sometimes I see a meme or something and think, "Oh, that's so spot on," but other times it's just so much content and no substance.
DD:
Definitely. And I feel like the only way wittiness becomes good is when it's against other things that are good and deep. It can't just be quippy all the time or it becomes exhausted by it. Is that how your blog works for you? You express everything on your mind?
HE:
It has become that. … The Internet can really kill you. As soon as I got in the Coast Guard I was thinking to myself, you know, "I have this blog, it's going to go worldwide. It's going to be featured on all these sites." For a while I thought to myself, oh man, I just suck, my writing sucks, no one cares. But when I stay true to what it is I want to express, it's fine. There's a theme, right? I really want to find this inner truth. Living within this inner truth. The way to live that is to really know yourself. Not on the surface level bullshit, but to really, really know yourself. That's what I was trying to write for every iteration. I used to have all of these conditions that I had to meet, and now I don't feel like I have to be in that space anymore.
DD:
With your blog you write a lot of nonfiction about your life. Do you see yourself as a non-fiction writer or as a fiction writer?
HE:
At this point I see myself as a writer. Some people can only do one, or they only want to do one, but I believe that you should just write what's there. I have an idea that one day I want to write a YA novel. I have ideas for screenplays that I've had for years. That was one of the first things I wrote as a kid. When I was younger all I could write was poetry … I think that you just kind of have to let yourself write. I used to have this idea that serious writers do x, y, and z, and fiction writers do this. And maybe there are people … you know, who do that, but me, I just don't give a shit anymore. … I enjoy writing these essays and these nonfiction essays. I enjoy research and things like that … I'm always envious of poets. I feel like poets have that language first, and then they can do anything from there. They can write essays, they can write stories if they need to. But honestly there are hardly any writers who do one or the other. Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, she's written essays. Zadie Smith, written essays and fiction. Junot Diaz, he's written essays and fiction. Roxane Gay, essays and fiction. These labels are definitely for the market, they're not for … us.
DD:
How do you stay positive in America right now? I really appreciated your blog post entitled "It's Okay to Be Happy," because it was like a very dark area where I kept assuming oh, I can't have these feelings because, you know, I have to be focused on this goal [being focused on figuring out what to do for America].
HE:
I think it's really cultivating an inner space. I just went to a meditation retreat that was only people of color. … There wasn't this part of me that I had to leave outside the door, which is the case in a lot of spiritual spaces. … For me, it was so nice that we could be our full selves. We could bring our anger, but we could also bring our happiness and our desire for these different futures. For me I feel like I've had this idea that I've been wrestling with for years that there's only some ways that you can be useful as an activist or as an artist. And I realize that that's just really not true. … If you look at nature we have all kinds of functions. … It's this thing that interconnects. Realizing that that's part of it. Me, dressing up sometimes and having fun with fashion. That's part of it. Going to yoga, that's part of it. Me going to a weekend and volunteering with kids. That's part of it. Honoring what it is that's your contribution. For those of us that are writers, that's huge. Because it's very easy to think that writing is more diverse than it is. But it isn't. Every … thing is still dominated by this white male lens. So you just being here, no matter how they seem like they're spotlighting this decision, the people behind the scenes getting the most money still look a certain way. … Just finding the time to do things and find the time to meditate is really important. I meditate every single day. I make a point to do that … acceptance of myself in the here and now and not forecasting into the future. So that practice keeps me more stable.