Sitting Down in a Virtual Swamp With Hannah Ford
Hannah Ford's essay "Trail" is available in Saw Palm 11.
What’s your connection to Florida? What most compels you about America’s Australia?
A confession: this piece was written about the Lowcountry, but not specifically Florida. I spent much of last year working and living on a barrier island just south of Charleston, SC, where I fell in love with Southern culture. I’m still here, studying for my MFA at the University of South Carolina. As “Trail” suggests, the Midwest will likely always be my true home, but the South is inching its way into my soul more and more.
Tell us a little about your piece in Saw Palm. What inspired it?
When I wrote this piece, I was working at an environmental education camp in Charleston, a camp located on one of the barrier islands. I had left Michigan to follow my boyfriend to this island—to South Carolina, where I’d never been, to work as a biology teacher, which I’d never done. It was a leap, a risk, to leave behind everything and everyone I knew to follow this one person.
This piece came about in the way I wish most of my writing came about. I was on an afternoon walk through the maritime forest and the words just came. The rhythm of walking sometimes does that, prompts a sort of cadence and organizes my thoughts. The piece is stream-of- consciousness and was barely edited; it just happened. That’s not always the way that writing works, but it’s certainly nice when it does.
What do you hope readers come away from your work thinking or feeling?
This piece is short and self-reflective, so I can really only hope that readers come away with an impression—vignettes are like poetry in that way. A feeling or a taste of something, a taste that hopefully lingers.
Do you have a writing routine? Describe your writing process.
My writing routine is, admittedly, sporadic. Some days I write for hours, some I edit two lines of a story. I’m a fiction writer, so my writing is usually one of two stages: the initial “shitty first draft” of the story, or the sometimes-painful, often-lingering editing process. Depending on which stage I’m in, I could either churn out pages in one setting or stare at the same sentence for hours until I settle on a fitting phrasing.
What writing advice has stayed with you?
I’m a Bret Lott fan, as both a person of faith and a writer. His essay “On Precision” has stuck with me over the years.
“Precision calls for patience, it calls for searching; it calls for striving; it also calls for letting yourself trip over what is right there in the path before you. Precision is indispensable; it is just beyond your reach. You don’t have the technique, the language, or the courage to achieve precision. But if you want to write, then for all these reasons — and chiefly because we serve a precise God who is creator of all things — you must reach for precision. As a writer you must always be striving for that which you cannot yet achieve and for that which you cannot yet know (from Letters and Life:On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian)
I can’t say it any better, so I’ll leave this answer at that.
What is the most surprising piece of writing you’ve come across recently?
I finally got to George Saunder’s Tenth of December collection; per usual, the short stories were diverse and surprising. I appreciate his ability to write with such diversity of tone, setting, character, style.
Is there a certain piece of writing you find yourself turning to again and again?
There are quite a few works that I return to again and again, but I’ll list my top few. Nicole Krauss’ History of Love; E.J. Levy’s Love, in Theory; Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitterage; Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. My current focus in my MFA program is linked short stories, and ¾ of these works are fantastic linked short story collections. History of Love is a novel, but it’s a braid novel intertwining three narratives, so the concept is similar.
I realize that there’s a “love” theme in these titles. That’s merely coincidental. I also do read and enjoy many male authors, counter to the percentage in this list.
I also re-read Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and The Chronicles of Narnia about once of year.
The “Florida Man” Twitter account curates news headlines of bizarre domestic incidents involving state residents, such as “Florida Man Fights to Keep Pizza-Loving Alligator.” If you had to write a Florida Man-style headline about yourself, what would it be?
“Florida Woman Causes Traffic Pile-Up When She Stops to Save Snake in Calamitous Circumstance”
(It’d be my headline because it did essentially happen.)
Where can we find out more about you? Social media, website?
fordcommahannah.com. Check me out.
What’s your connection to Florida? What most compels you about America’s Australia?
A confession: this piece was written about the Lowcountry, but not specifically Florida. I spent much of last year working and living on a barrier island just south of Charleston, SC, where I fell in love with Southern culture. I’m still here, studying for my MFA at the University of South Carolina. As “Trail” suggests, the Midwest will likely always be my true home, but the South is inching its way into my soul more and more.
Tell us a little about your piece in Saw Palm. What inspired it?
When I wrote this piece, I was working at an environmental education camp in Charleston, a camp located on one of the barrier islands. I had left Michigan to follow my boyfriend to this island—to South Carolina, where I’d never been, to work as a biology teacher, which I’d never done. It was a leap, a risk, to leave behind everything and everyone I knew to follow this one person.
This piece came about in the way I wish most of my writing came about. I was on an afternoon walk through the maritime forest and the words just came. The rhythm of walking sometimes does that, prompts a sort of cadence and organizes my thoughts. The piece is stream-of- consciousness and was barely edited; it just happened. That’s not always the way that writing works, but it’s certainly nice when it does.
What do you hope readers come away from your work thinking or feeling?
This piece is short and self-reflective, so I can really only hope that readers come away with an impression—vignettes are like poetry in that way. A feeling or a taste of something, a taste that hopefully lingers.
Do you have a writing routine? Describe your writing process.
My writing routine is, admittedly, sporadic. Some days I write for hours, some I edit two lines of a story. I’m a fiction writer, so my writing is usually one of two stages: the initial “shitty first draft” of the story, or the sometimes-painful, often-lingering editing process. Depending on which stage I’m in, I could either churn out pages in one setting or stare at the same sentence for hours until I settle on a fitting phrasing.
What writing advice has stayed with you?
I’m a Bret Lott fan, as both a person of faith and a writer. His essay “On Precision” has stuck with me over the years.
“Precision calls for patience, it calls for searching; it calls for striving; it also calls for letting yourself trip over what is right there in the path before you. Precision is indispensable; it is just beyond your reach. You don’t have the technique, the language, or the courage to achieve precision. But if you want to write, then for all these reasons — and chiefly because we serve a precise God who is creator of all things — you must reach for precision. As a writer you must always be striving for that which you cannot yet achieve and for that which you cannot yet know (from Letters and Life:On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian)
I can’t say it any better, so I’ll leave this answer at that.
What is the most surprising piece of writing you’ve come across recently?
I finally got to George Saunder’s Tenth of December collection; per usual, the short stories were diverse and surprising. I appreciate his ability to write with such diversity of tone, setting, character, style.
Is there a certain piece of writing you find yourself turning to again and again?
There are quite a few works that I return to again and again, but I’ll list my top few. Nicole Krauss’ History of Love; E.J. Levy’s Love, in Theory; Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitterage; Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. My current focus in my MFA program is linked short stories, and ¾ of these works are fantastic linked short story collections. History of Love is a novel, but it’s a braid novel intertwining three narratives, so the concept is similar.
I realize that there’s a “love” theme in these titles. That’s merely coincidental. I also do read and enjoy many male authors, counter to the percentage in this list.
I also re-read Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and The Chronicles of Narnia about once of year.
The “Florida Man” Twitter account curates news headlines of bizarre domestic incidents involving state residents, such as “Florida Man Fights to Keep Pizza-Loving Alligator.” If you had to write a Florida Man-style headline about yourself, what would it be?
“Florida Woman Causes Traffic Pile-Up When She Stops to Save Snake in Calamitous Circumstance”
(It’d be my headline because it did essentially happen.)
Where can we find out more about you? Social media, website?
fordcommahannah.com. Check me out.
Hannah Ford grew up in Coldwater, Michigan. She graduated from Hope College with an English degree, a heap of book knowledge, and a gnawing dissatisfaction with her own writing ability. For the next three years, in an effort to satisfy that dissatisfaction, Hannah will be attending the University of South Carolina to pursue her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Fiction). Hannah has been published in The 3288 Review, Lunch Ticket, Lipstickparty Mag, and Opus. She has been awarded for her writing in both fiction and nonfiction.
