Millions of Suns
an interview with Sharon Fagan McDermott and M.C. Benner Dixon
Today, I’m excited to share our first collaborative interview with Sharon Fagan McDermott and M. C. Benner Dixon. I’d love your suggestions of other writers, artists, mindfulness practitioners, and wise humans that I might feature here. Feel free to email me with ideas. You can just reply to this newsletter. ✨✨
I’ve been teaching high school English with Sharon Fagan McDermott for the last five years (which must equal at least ten regular years because of pandemic year equivalencies). We also share an office, so I regularly witness her in conversation with students, guiding them along their own journeys as writers and readers. I feel very lucky to have a colleague and friend like Sharon, with whom I can not only connect about the joys of teaching, but also about how hard it is to find time to write. Sharon is a fellow Aries, a brilliant poet and essayist, a musician, gardener, and a spirited storyteller who is always up for a laugh (something utterly necessary in the often absurd life of a teacher). Sharon’s writing teaches me how to make your voice real and engaging on the page—I always feel that she is talking directly to me—and her imagery is vivid and realized. There are a number of stories she shares in the essays in her new book that are now lodged deeply in my long-term memory—one of a pig on O’Hara Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and another about a visitation from the ghost of her beloved Grandma Fagan. Sharon brings her love of the world, and the close attention she pays to it, to her writing as well as her beloved course on Environmental Literature at our school.
I’ve gotten to know Christine through Sharon and also through her writing. At the book launch for Millions of Suns this past November, Christine gave a spirited reading of her chapter on Inspiration, making everyone in the room, laugh, sigh, think, and feel. She gave us a metaphor for writing that will stay with me forever: “I propose writing as a house that a person looks to enter.” She goes on to say, “wanting is the primary prerequisite.” Christine’s vision of writing invites us in, as she writes, “your mind, with its own little quirks and habits that define its working, has given you a set of keys that will get you inside at least one door. Your door.” Yes! Christine’s view of writing is open to everyone, and all you need is desire. All you need is you. It’s no wonder that teachers and students at my school still talk about what a gifted teacher she is. It’s no wonder that she is now the interim Executive Director for Write PGH, a nonprofit organization that offers writing workshops for teens and adults in and around Pittsburgh and online.
Sharon and Christine walk the walk; they live out the joy and the struggle of what it is to write and make art in this complicated world. I hope that you’ll consider getting yourself a copy of their new book (which Poets & Writers Magazines calls one of the best books on writing!), Millions of Suns: On Writing and Life, linked here. I had some serious writer’s block over this winter break, and decided to just read rather than forcing myself to write. I picked up this book and immediately, the ice of my writer’s block melted and I was writing down lines in the margin. This book is one that is framed explicitly as an “invitation to write,” and I assure you that it delivers on that promise. Read on for their interviews and TWO excellent writing & mindfulness prompts, as well as a call for submissions to a writing contest they’re judging that is open now 📝.
What is your writing practice like? Do you have any writing rituals?
Christine: I am not one of those writers who has a highly ritualized writing practice. Part of this lack of regularity is practical—some days just don’t allow for extended writing time—and some of it is about who I am. I’m impatient. Once I have an idea, I urgently want to get it written down. I tend to get swept away in my project until it’s almost all I can think about. I’ll stay up until 2:00 a.m. typing furiously until I get to the end. Even when I do lie down, I go to sleep working out plot problems or thinking through dialogue. But I can’t sustain that level of intensity for too long. So after I reach a pause point, I’ll turn to a different writing project for a while or focus on my editing for clients or spend a day in the garden. A little benign neglect can be good for my writing. I let it age a bit before I come back to it.
Sharon: I’ve always had to hold a full-time job while trying to write. My writing has to come in fits and bursts during a school year, but when summer break comes, I am fiercely focused and dedicated to writing. I sit down each morning with a cup of tea, and my practice usually involves one of four actions: 1.) write something new (poem or essay) or 2.) revise something or several “somethings” or 3.) put together a poetry or essay manuscript or 4.) read others’ work for inspiration (Yes, Ada Limon!!). I’m most productive when certain parameters are in place. I find that I write the best in the early morning hours; 5:30-11 AM is prime-creative-time for me. In those earlier hours, my “editor”– that negative, bossy voice in my head– is still sleepy, so there’s more freedom for the subconscious to do its magic. Also I need total quiet when I’m writing. I can’t handle music, podcasts, or construction work outside, etc. Stillness and quiet allows me to enter a state of immersion in my writing.
What kind of writing are you working on? Are you working on specific projects or journaling or something else?
Sharon: This Thanksgiving break, I just–finally–finished putting together my new poetry manuscript, Smoke and Sparrow. I’ve been working on it, off and on, for over a year now. I’m really happy with how empowered my inner editor was on this project, culling the weak poems out, revising lazy diction, and moving poems around so that they better “dialogue” with one another. I’ve also started a new essay project about being a neighbor, and the complexity of neighborhoods/community. I’d say this project is in its infancy, though I daydream about it a lot.
Christine: I usually have several writing projects active at one time in various states of completion. My big work in progress right now is a Shakespearean space opera starring women in their 60s and 70s. But I also have short stories, poems, brainstorms, outlines, a one-act play, and few other tidbits lurking in my folders.
What helps you when you get stuck with your writing?
Christine: Having a bunch of different active projects is very helpful to me. The required shift in mindset (from editing to drafting, from realism to surrealism) to move from one project to another frees my thinking from whatever rut it got itself into. It feels like one of those dances where you’re constantly switching partners. I have to look each piece in the face and sync my movements with what’s already on the page, and that keeps me flexible and creative.
Sharon: As a full-time teacher, being “stuck” in my writing process often means feeling guilty, because I think I should not be focusing on my soul-work, but should instead be grading students’ work, or creating curriculum at all times. So, to allow myself space for my own writing, I joined an online writing group called “The Grind.” The administrators of this group put a call out over email, each month, to see if you want to commit to writing or revising a poem or prose piece once a day for that month. Once you sign up, you are given the email addresses of twelve other individuals from across the country to send your work to each day (they send you work, too.) There’s no feedback or constructive criticism required. Writing your work and sending it to your group keeps you accountable and is a way to keep generating new work, whatever else is happening in your life. It has helped me continue writing during the school year. (And thus, saved my sanity!)
What are your mindfulness practices?
Sharon: My sister-in-law, June, who teaches Tai Chi classes, created a video of Qigong exercises during the early months of the global pandemic and shared it with me and my sisters. I found that regularly doing this ½ hour practice both grounds and refreshes my mind and body. Walking my dog is also great for this. But, come spring and summer, it is my pollinator’s garden that becomes my blooming, growing mindfulness practice. I can easily spend an hour planting or pruning or photographing flowers and insects or watching birds. When I stand in my garden for any length of time, attuned to its vibrant life, my brain feels cleansed and refreshed afterwards.
Christine: For me, mindfulness comes easiest in the kitchen. There are a lot of scents, textures, and sounds to keep me grounded in my body, and I can allow myself to simply be present to the task at hand. I'm not entirely sure why this is. It might have something to do with the repetitive movements of chopping and stirring. It might have something to do with the fact that feeding the body is such an essential act, completely necessary and completely unattached to email and notifications and all the other cluttery parts of modern life. But I also appreciate how every meal is a journey and a story. The ingredients start in one form, each in its separate jar and shelf, and by the end of our time together they have been recombined and transformed into something new. It's a replicable magic . . . and usually pretty tasty, too.
How often do you practice mindfulness and when/where?
Christine: I don’t have a regular mindfulness practice, per se. Mindfulness is something that creeps in organically, especially when I have something to occupy my hands. Working on a painting or taking a walk, I can slip into that state of awareness and reflection that feeds the soul.
Sharon: I only seem to be able to have a sustained mindfulness practice during my summer break. However, saying that, I realize that, in my daily life, I try to pay close attention to the natural world around me in Pittsburgh! I feed the birds and watch them eat; I study new flowers on the verge of blossoming; I go outside at night to view what phase the moon is in or how many stars I might see on a given night (granted, it’s hard to see many of the constellations in the city.) In other words, the daily, intentional act of paying attention to my world is a kind of mindfulness practice and can often lead to moments of awe.
What do you do when a mindfulness practice doesn’t seem to be working?
Sharon: That is a constant battle for me, as I have lived with anxiety disorder since I was a girl. When anxiety arises or I feel overwhelmed, I first have to face the amplification of my own nerves and try taking a walk, or use my breathing techniques, or try phoning a friend to quell it. But, because I’m in love with nature, my attention can always be distracted by and become engaged with the minutiae of our planet—ladybugs and falling maple leaves, crow calls and snow flurries glittering the sidewalks. Shifting my focus to those moments helps to counteract the anxiety and rebalance me.
Christine: I try to be patient with myself. I certainly have spates of anxiety and worry, and it can help to put some boundaries around the moment for myself—usually the thing I’m worried about is in the future or it’s already happened, and at least for a few minutes, no one needs me to be doing anything about it. I try to let go of the crisis emotions until it’s time to deal with the problem head-on.
Do you see your writing and mindfulness practices as connected? In what ways?
Christine: Writing is all about paying attention to your senses, your thoughts, your surroundings and articulating them as clearly as possible. Telling a story puts the passage of time into context and asks you to pull a thread of meaning out of a snarled human experience. And then you go back and examine your words and interrogate them for truth. If they aren’t true, they don’t get a place on the page. That’s a deeply mindful practice, I would say.
Sharon: Yes! What Christine said here!
How do you see your writing/mindfulness practices related to your teaching?
Sharon: As part of a diverse community in a classroom, I think my state of mind/lack of mindfulness on a given day can have real ramifications for the class dynamics. Realistically, there are moments when it’s hard to draw on mindfulness practices, whether you’re in the midst of a personal challenge or whether you’re putting out student “brush fires” during your day. However, those bumpy days are exactly when I need to remind myself to just breathe or to take a quick walk around the school during community time. In order to foster the warmth of a thriving community in a class, I need to get out of my own head and open myself to what the students need at that moment. We all benefit from being nurtured. Taking a beat to center myself during a school day can make all the difference.
Christine: I think it’s vital that teachers model their own experiences as writers for their students. All of it—the clunky drafts and the misfires and the abandoned material—not just the finished product. It’s so important to talk about the satisfaction that comes, not in achieving perfection, but in the convoluted and thorny creative process. How disheartening to go along expecting to reach some pinnacle of enlightenment and finding it’s always out of reach! Better to learn early on that the out-of-reachness is part of the game of art.
Prompts
Change Something
(from Christine): This is a technique for bringing fresh eyes to revision, and the principle is very simple: change something. Change the font or the margins (for prose, I recommend 2” margins and a switch to/from a serif font). Transcribe the whole piece by hand or type it out (whichever you didn’t do the first time). Use a screen reader to listen to the words in a robotic voice. This almost always shakes something loose for me, and I suddenly understand my work differently and have new ideas about how to hone its point.
Zoom In, Zoom Out
(from Sharon): So, here’s one of the many writing prompts from our new book, Millions of Suns. I think this prompt offers another way of thinking about mindfulness. It invites us to shift our perspective, as well as challenges the writer to pay close attention to something you might otherwise overlook in your life. Here’s the prompt. (It’s at the end of the “Imagery” chapter in our book)
Write a pair of poems or scenes where you are entirely focused on something–a child’s face, a broken-down fence, the ruins of Rome, a praying mantis, an alleyway at night.
In the first poem or scene, use your language to take an intense close-up, much like you might do with a camera. Write the fine, subtle, specific details about your subject of choice.
In the second piece (you might, for instance, want to pair the two together in a chapbook), zoom out, again like a camera. Give us that same subject in a larger context or at a greater distance.
More on Millions of Suns…
There’s a Millions of Suns writing contest open for submissions now at University of Michigan Press! The contest is judged by Sharon and Christine, and you can submit writing in poetry, fiction, or nonfiction for a prize! Definitely one to add to your list. Deadline is Feb 28th.
Check out this book trailer (shot in Pittsburgh’s stunning Mellon Park)
Nancy Reddy at Write More shares a wonderful pair of excerpts from the book!
Sharon Fagan McDermott is a poet, musician, and a teacher of literature at a private school in Pittsburgh, PA. Her most recent collection of poetry, Life Without Furniture, published by Jacar Press (2018) wrestles with finding and feeling at home in the world and seeking sanctuary in an often challenging life. As National Book Award winning poet Terrance Hayes says about this new collection: “Sharon Fagan McDermott inhabits the spaces between the common and the uncommon…The whole world, visible and invisible, inhabits this wonderful new book.” Additionally, Fagan McDermott has published three chapbook collections, Voluptuous, Alley Scatting (Parallel Press, 2005), and Bitter Acoustic, which won the 2011 Jacar Press Chapbook competition. Read more at sharonfaganmcdermott.com, and you can find her on instagram.
M. Christine Benner Dixon, Ph.D., lives, writes, and grows things in Pittsburgh, PA. She is quick to make a pun and slow to cut her grass. Christine works as a freelance editor and writing coach. Her debut novel, The Height of Land, is the 2022 Orison Fiction Prize winner and will be released by Orison Books. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Reckoning, Funicular, the Los Angeles Review, The Hopper, Fusion Fragment, Appalachian Review, and elsewhere. Christine is the interim Executive Director for Write Pittsburgh, a nonprofit organization that offers writing workshops for teens and adults in and around Pittsburgh and online. Find more at bennerdixon.com, and you can find on twitter and instagram.
Be Where You Are is a newsletter about how to use writing and mindfulness to be where you are. If you have ideas to share for future newsletters, you can reply to this email or email me at emilymohnslate@gmail.com. You can support this newsletter by liking, commenting & sharing it with other people. You can also find me on Instagram or Facebook or find more info at my website. Thank you for reading!
That is one beautiful brooch!