“[W]e all know that the hardest part is actually beginning. Once we are in it, we do have more control than we think.” –Diane Zinna
Diane Zinna is the author of the novel The All-Night Sun (Random House) and Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss, a forthcoming craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories. Since 2020, she has led a free Zoom class called Grief Writing Sundays. Meet her there or at www.dianezinna.com.
On Saturday, November 30th, Diane Zinna is teaching a class for the WLT called “On Writing Grief.” In this class, you’ll learn new strategies for beginning (and ending) your grief stories.
Here’s what Diane had to share with us:
Scribe: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you write? How did you come to writing?
Diane Zinna: Hi! I’m Diane Zinna, a longtime writing teacher and novelist. My book The All-Night Sun came out from Random House in 2020, and since then, I’ve been focusing mostly on creative nonfiction and flash, memoir-style pieces. Most of my work has to do with grief, and I’ve been teaching a free Zoom class for the past four years called Grief Writing Sundays. I have found many safe ways in and out of grief writing, and that has made it possible for me to help so many students to put down on the page the difficult stories they’ve been carrying around inside for too long.
Scribe: In your own work, how do you approach overcoming the challenges that come with writing, be it writer’s block or craft or business-related challenges?
DZ: I believe in timed writing more than anything else. I will set an alarm for a very short amount of time, usually no more than 10 minutes, and tell myself that I can only write for that amount of time. Without fail, I have found that ideas pour out of me because I have set myself up to have a way out if the writing becomes difficult. Especially when people are writing about grief, they worry that they are going to be sucked down into a long stretch of retraumatizing scenes; no one wants to sit down and begin that. But we all know that the hardest part is actually beginning. Once we are in it, we do have more control than we think. Usually, once my alarm goes off, I want to continue.
Scribe: Has there been a moment of epiphany in terms of your work, when you thought, “This is it! Now I know what I’m doing!” How long did that feeling last?
DZ: This is such a good and funny question! I think there are two things at play. First, every project is different, and there’s really no way to replicate what you did in another piece. In many ways you are learning to write again with each new story or poem. But there are tools that we acquire along the way, and I like to think of myself adding those tools to my writerly tool box and being able to draw from it exactly the tool I need in a given situation. Here is the problem: I so often forget that I’m carrying that tool box around! Usually halfway through a writing session I remember that I do have certain techniques and craft elements I can employ that will help me in the storytelling. It’s sort of an “Oh, yeah, I feel better when I pray/exercise/meditate/eat regular meals!” kind of moment.
Scribe: What piece of advice do you find yourself giving to writers again and again?
DZ: Well, the advice I gave to my class this morning was this: We need to risk sentimentality if we are to really move people with our writing. A great writing community can gently help you know if you’ve crossed it, but if you’re not working snug up to that line of sentimentality, you aren’t working in daring enough territory. Your truth lives right up against that line.
Scribe: What is one thing that people will take away from this class?
DZ: I’m going to be sharing some of my favorite writing prompts from my upcoming craft book on writing hard stories, Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss. I think these beginnings into stories will help people keep writing long after the class is over.
—
Thanks, Diane!
Click here to learn more about Diane Zinna’s upcoming class.
