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Welcome listeners to A Writer's Life.
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I'm your host, heike Baum, the author of the novel Secrets in the Shadows.
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This is a place where I'll be in conversation with fellow writers.
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We'll discuss all things writing, they'll read from their latest works and we'll explore what happens beyond the pen in a writer's life.
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It's gonna be a page-turner.
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I just know it.
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Pull up a chair and join us Along with hosting this podcast.
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I'm also the writing guide instructor at Crow Storyhouse, where I share writing tips and lead workshops to help you bring your stories to life.
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Thank you for listening and being part of A Writer's Life.
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Consciously and deliberately crafted to convey these deeper things that I've learned in life and I want to convey, and I need to do that by using Welcome listeners to another episode of A Writer's Life.
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Today, I'm thrilled to have Erin Steele as my guest.
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Erin is a writer, low-key philosopher and an insatiably curious explorer of life's many facets.
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She's the author of the memoir Sunrise Over Half-Built Houses, where she reflects on the complexity of the human experience.
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Erin also writes on being human, on Substack, and her work has been featured in Human Parts by Medium as a 2022 writing by Writers Fellow.
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She brings a thoughtful and introspective approach to her craft.
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Currently living in Kelowna, bc, erin balances her writing with a love of nature, yoga and long-distance trail running From the beauty of arrowleaf balsam root blooming to the deepest quest of existence.
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Erin's curiosity and insight shine through her work.
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Erin, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much, Haig.
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That was such an amazing introduction.
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Really appreciate that.
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So happy to be here.
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Wonderful.
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I'm just going to launch into this question.
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If you could describe your childhood home using three sensory details something you saw, something you heard and something you smelled what would they be, and how do those details capture the essence of what that time in your life felt like?
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Wow, okay, treehouse Van Morrison, enchiladas.
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Sorry, what was the last half of that question there?
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Sorry, what was the last half of that question there?
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How do those details capture the essence of what that time in your life felt like?
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You know, I would say it felt like a little patchwork of everything.
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You know, I think both my parents are very eclectic, quirky people and you know, the house I was raised in is actually it was the smallest house with the biggest yard in a neighborhood of you know, the suburbs, where it's, like you know, all houses are right beside each other, and so I spent a lot of time outside, you know, and then inside my mom was always playing music and cooking interesting food because she's from California, and so, yeah, I think I mean I think I've you sort of insinuated space in general and being introduced to things that you might not in the suburbs, where every house is just kind of blocked in, and yeah, Great answer, thanks.
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I'm going to read your prologue and then I'm going to ask you some questions and then I'm going to ask you some questions.
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I've changed completely and hardly at all.
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But this isn't a story about change, not really More like what moves us through the change.
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I've changed completely and hardly at all, but this isn't a story about change not really.
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But this isn't a story about change, not really More like what moves us through that change the pulling hunger, the vehicle.
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There are places, things I've done I'd like to keep hidden in corners.
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But a story needs shape, doesn't it?
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And the things we work so hard to hide do shape us, whether or not we admit them.
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So I'll start in the suburbs, in Fraser Heights, where everything is beautiful on the outside, manicured and kempt.
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Manicured and kempt, the kind of place that holds you by the wrists gently but with an ever-tightening grip.
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I'll start on a warm night.
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The darkness of the past, inconsequential.
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The Darkness of the Future, unimaginable, the Summer of 2002.
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18 Years Old, the Smashing Pumpkins, david, my Boyfriend.
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What inspired you to write your memoir and what was the initial spark that led you to share?
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your story.
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I think you know, so interesting, the initial spark would have taken me way back into the days and you know I don't think it's too much of a spoiler alert to say that.
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You know, my book ends up delving fairly deep into addiction.
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My book ends up delving fairly deep into addiction and I would say the spark was, you know, back then, where.
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You know, I didn't have paper.
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I had a pen.
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I was always a writer.
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I was always a writer, even even since I was a child.
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I was a writer.
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And I just started getting this realization, even though you know I was, I was was messed up on drugs and my brain was not functioning optimally.
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But I just couldn't shake this idea that whatever this thing was that drove me to using drugs was very similar to what had driven me to, you know, the wrong kind of love, was similar to what drew me to even things like, you know, being a kid and sucking my thumb and like finding these external sources of comfort, and so I just like started, like ripping open cigarette packs at the time and like I'm gonna live a very clean life now, like I am not a smoker, like do not do drugs at all, you know, but at the time.
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So, like ripping open these backs of cigarette packs and just writing ferociously, just like crazy town, need to get this down, because I have all these ideas flowing through me and I mean, of course I'm living this life where I don't have the capacity to do much else, but those ideas were just so true to me and true in this way.
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That's like just that like deep knowing, um, and so that's, that really is where it started and, um, that sort of ends up being the structure of my memoir and that's sort of what I'm.
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I mean, I don't want to speak about this too deeply without spoiler alerts, but that's, those are the ideas that I, yeah, came across and I mean, so that would have been how long ago?
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I mean over to like 20 years ago for sure.
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So that's that's sort of where that spark and inspiration was almost just like I need to and and I didn't know when this was gonna happen you know, I did like at the time, my, there was no way that my brain was starting to, you know, think about writing a book or anything, even though that's always been sort of in the back of my head.
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But then one day I was living in Yellowknife, northwest Territories, and my partner at the time went to live in the mushroom patch for the summer to pick morel mushrooms.
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And then I just sat down at my computer one day and I started writing and I guess that was just time.
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So yeah, Wonderful.
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Your prologue mentions both complete change and hardly changing at all.
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Can you expand on what that?
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duality means to you and how it unfolds throughout your memoir?
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Yeah, absolutely, that's a good question Because it's a.
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I know that is a bit of a risk of a line so early on in a book because I know readers like and want and appreciate and need change, that sort of like evolution of spirit, emotional or you know, all kinds of change.
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I mean it's kind of what we read for in a lot of cases.
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So even that line specifically, yeah, is risky and deliberate and yeah, I mean what it means to me is sort of that idea where it's like, like I said, I'm these days I'm living a very, a very healthy life.
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You know I practice like physical asana practice every day, yoga study, the philosophies, you know, really allow myself to sit with my feelings and feel my feelings and but at the same time, even, I would say even within the last half of a decade, I would, I would need to go for a 5k run in the morning and if I didn't go for a 5k run I wouldn't feel like myself.
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And I think that's essentially what I mean there, where you know my book gets into the you know the character of me, or me back in the day, not feeling like myself, without drugs, living a very different life.
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That same governing thing makes me not feel like me without going for a run.
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You know which makes me, which made me just zoom out and realize that that's a lot more of this connective idea that I think people can understand.
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So that's what that line is about.
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So that's what that line is about.
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You write this isn't a story about change, not really.
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When, then, would?
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you say sorry.
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What then would you say, is the central theme or driving force behind your memoir?
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Well, it's about.
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It's about fulfillment.
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You know, if I were to distill it all down to one word, um, it's about fulfillment.
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And it's interesting because, like you'll see, the, the character I say the character just because I'm like, need space, need space, but it's uh.
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So, you will see, the character does change and the character does evolve, and the character does do things differently and the character repeats these cycles and I'm sure it's maddening for the reader at times, for sure, like, why are you doing this again?
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Why are you doing this again?
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You know, at the same time, what I really wanted to convey was the repetitious nature of these things.
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And you know, in the book there is a lot of like turning to substances.
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Oh, we're, now we're turning to this substance, and now we're turning to this substance.
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But I think the book also speaks to or illustrates transcending that as well.
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So it's like, oh, turning to this thing, well, that's very similar, but that's very different.
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And then, oh, during this thing, like, that's like we consider that a healthy thing in society.
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Maybe we understand each other better than we think we do.
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So, yeah, you hint at secrets or things you'd rather keep hidden.
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What was it like deciding what to reveal in your memoir, and did you feel a sense of liberation or discomfort in that process, which is a huge process?
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oh, yep, uh, I I felt a lot of discomfort.
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I feel very little liberation, to be, to be completely honest.
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Um, it's interesting.
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Yeah, so many thoughts with this.
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It's interesting, yeah, so many thoughts with this.
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It's like it's annoying.
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I think probably one of the most challenging elements of writing this memoir is putting things in there that I don't want to talk about, I don't want to write about, I do not, I don't, I generally, I generally don't talk about, and I think that's the sort of like I don't I generally, I generally don't talk about, and I think that's the sort of like friction between the damn writer in me and then the like human in me, and this human in me has an ego, and that human in me is like oh my gosh, people are going to judge me.
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Oh my gosh, what are they going to think?
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You know, and the writer in me is like which, maybe call it my higher self or whatever, but that side of me is like it doesn't matter.
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It's like these are your stories, but they're also not your stories.
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This is.
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You need to put this in there because you need to create and illustrate a character that has nuance and complexity and layers, and if you leave this out, then you've just scrubbed this clean and it's not going to have that resonance that just being unabashedly real in all my darkest corners is going to have, and that's what I want, and that's what I want to, that's what I want to convey.
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So I would say I feel a lot of discomfort.
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I feel I am going away to an alpaca farm this weekend Airbnb to just like hang out with alpacas and just breathe, and you know, because there's a lot of feelings, for sure, a lot of discomfort, but at the end of the day, you know, this was never a cathartic release, this was never a I need to get it down on paper.
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This was very consciously and deliberately crafted to convey these deeper things that I've learned in life and I want to convey, and I need to do that by using a flawed and real character, and it just unfortunately happens to be me or fortunately, we'll see.
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I guess it's too.
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It's getting comfortable with allowing yourself to be vulnerable, being vulnerable and being okay with being in a place of discomfort.
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I know for me, when I was writing my novel, there was so many areas that I felt really uncomfortable with.
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Once it did get published and it was just what I realized it's me being vulnerable and showing that vulnerability, and how is that going to be received by others, my vulnerability?
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Is it going to wound me or hurt me?
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And and there's a big part where you're always learning okay, how much do I tell, how much I don't, how vulnerable do I make myself and how strong am I, how thick is my skin to take that vulnerability?
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Um, the hits that could come with being so vulnerable.
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That's right, that's exactly it and that's the.
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You know.
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You really hit on this piece.
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I think you know this is probably one of my biggest life lessons, and it's since the book too.
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It is to welcome discomfort.
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It really is like if we as humans, avoid discomfort at all times which I mean in some ways we are neurologically programmed to do we miss out on so much richness of life and so much connectivity.
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You know, I think, the times in my writing where I have been most vulnerable.
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So I used to work at a newspaper, a little weekly newspaper in Northern Alberta, and I would write a weekly column called thoughts, and sometimes I would write political things and sometimes I would write about you know what city council is doing, but town council, but sometimes I didn't know what to write.
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So I would just write something really personal, because this is just kind of how I write, and I would, wednesday, the paper would come out and I would walk down main street and just feel like I was naked and on display and I would be like, what am I doing?
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Why do I do this?
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But then somebody would reach out and say, oh my gosh, like I can't believe, can't believe you said that, like that's exactly how I feel.
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Or like like wow, it was so moving reading that thing and I was like, oh, okay, and I found, 100% of the time, the more vulnerable I felt, the more discomfort I felt and the more I've done these things anyway, whatever they are, I end up feeling more connected on a human level to everybody and myself, even because I don't have a thick skin.
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To be honest, I'm a very sensitive.
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I am am a very I'm a very sensitive person and it's taken me a long time to embrace that with open arms, um, and not look at it as a problem.
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I'm even like on the flip side.
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If something good happens, I'm just like the most elated person in the world and I'm so full of joy and I'm so happy and like and like.
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I have to constantly have these little talks with myself.
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It's like Erin, it's good to feel happy, it's normal to feel sad, but what I've really been trying to do over all of these years is is find this deeper place inside of me, that is this center that sees and can, can observe all of the feelings and all of the thoughts and all of the reactions and all of the everything, and just hold steady and it's knowing and that's the place that I've been nurturing regularly.
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It's not a perfect system.
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No matter what, if some, if I get a bad review or poor feedback, of course it's gonna.
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Of course it's gonna feel sad, but that's also part of it too, where I'm like, okay, I feel sad now and that's normal and it makes sense, and then you know I won't be, and so just I think, um, the more resistance I have to any of my feelings, whether it's, you know, intensely good or intensely bad, the more I am almost like at the mercy of these things that truly are fleeting, so sensitive as I am, I just let things move through me and I try, I try in life and work and writing and receiving and all of those things, to not take things personally, and sometimes it's very hard and sometimes it's surprisingly easy.
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So just feeling through the world when we're talking about the discomfort of things, a question came to my mind.
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I'm not even sure it's a question your drug addiction earlier in your life.
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Do you think part of that was because of being so in such a place of discomfort, of accepting that you didn't want to feel that discomfort, using drugs to numb the fear around that?
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and discomfort, absolutely.
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So much of my addiction was about avoiding, avoiding discomfort and in a lot of ways it's a, you know, the sensitivity piece plays, plays a huge role in that, because it's like the, the intensity of feeling, um, I don't think I was able to handle it.
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You know, I didn't have, I didn't have tools to handle it.
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And you know, when I was happy, that's great.
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But when I was sad, or when I was hurting, or when I was, you know, feeling all of those so-called negative emotions, you know, falling in the wrong love with the wrong people, and just try the, the feelings associated with that, absolutely I could not handle it.
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And drugs gave me a way to basically remove the feeling and allow me to intellectualize on the feeling, which I've since really understood now as a coping strategy.
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So then I'm freaking expert.
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I could tell you everything about my patterns, I could tell you about everything, about all these intellectual characterizations of feelings, but I did not let myself feel my feelings for a long time because it felt so uncomfortable, and I think part of it is me, I think part of it is society as well.
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I think we're we're really in a society that's like here.
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Here's anything you need to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
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Take this and take that, and take that and pretty soon we're just not accustomed to being uncomfortable, we don't know how to manage it.
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Therefore, we avoid it.
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And then we're I mean really, we're buying things to feel better and we're drinking to numb.
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And yes, long-winded answer, absolutely, absolutely.
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So much of my drug addiction was avoiding discomfort, was numbing things out because it just felt too intense.
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Well spoken.
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You mentioned being 18 years old in the summer of 2002.
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What was it like for you to revisit that period of your life?
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Did your perspective on that time shift as you wrote?
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Interesting, yeah, so I mean it's interesting to go back to that time.
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I think, you know, recollection is interesting.
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I mean, I think we always have perspective looking backwards if we choose to notice it.
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But this is such a common question that I get is just from, you know, friends and people in my life is like was it cathartic to write your, your book and writing this?
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And I journaled throughout all of that time?
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You know what, Sometimes I'm like, oh man, you were in a rough place girl.
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But you know, I have all my journals and it's like that was sort of the release that I needed at the time and so revisiting it, it's a different perspective when I'm approaching it in a literary way.
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I think, yes, I'm always learning.
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I'm always a very introspective person by nature.
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I'm always sort of looking back at my life and sometimes it's very annoying where I'm like, oh, look at you 17 years later repeating the same pattern.
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Damn it, why are you doing this?
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And then she continues doing it Spoiler alert.
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But at the same think I think that's the gift and beauty of memoir, and you know, my memoir is really written.
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It reads like fiction in a lot of ways but interspersed through these vivid scenes and recountings of these times is my higher perspective that I have, or at least you know, had when I decided to cut it off and say this is the perspective I'm going to write from, because I'm always going to keep growing and evolving.
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My memoir will never be finished if I keep incorporating things that I've learned and all of that said.
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At times it was challenging to revisit those.
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I thought it was okay because I've, you know, processed a lot of things through my life.
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But it's like I do go back to some really tough times and then I like bring them to life in these very vivid scenes.
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That puts myself there and hopefully my readers as well, and I think, because I approach it with such a literary perspective and because I have done so much work around it and the, you know, cathartic release was a different thing.
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I think I underestimated, though, just how hard it was at times.
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For sure, cause I'm, you know, I did bring myself back there.
00:24:08.531 --> 00:24:11.701
I was feeling a lot of those feelings, and you know it.
00:24:11.701 --> 00:24:22.487
It was a lot of isolation, you know self-imposed or not, and a lot of, you know, confusion and tumultuousness inside of me.
00:24:24.009 --> 00:24:24.852
So, yeah, I mean it was.
00:24:24.991 --> 00:24:25.712
It was hard to write.
00:24:25.712 --> 00:24:38.031
I would have to definitely take breaks, and even throughout writing it, I think maybe I didn't give myself just the full love, maybe I needed to just feeling through some of that stuff.
00:24:38.031 --> 00:24:38.692
So yeah, it's.
00:24:39.902 --> 00:24:40.182
Wow.
00:24:40.182 --> 00:24:44.413
What role does memory play in your writing process?
00:24:44.413 --> 00:24:51.632
Did writing this memoir bring clarity or did it stir up new questions about your past?
00:24:52.354 --> 00:24:53.217
I think it brought.
00:24:53.217 --> 00:24:56.846
I mean, I mean, memory is an interesting thing, you know it's.
00:24:56.846 --> 00:24:57.769
What do they say?
00:24:57.769 --> 00:24:58.991
That you don't really remember?
00:24:58.991 --> 00:25:01.626
You don't remember, you don't go back to the original memory.
00:25:01.626 --> 00:25:03.010
You remember your.
00:25:03.010 --> 00:25:06.509
You remember the last time you thought about the thing you know.
00:25:06.509 --> 00:25:09.249
So it is this fickle thing.
00:25:09.249 --> 00:25:16.288
You know, I think I came at this book, at least when I started revising it, because I think at first I just needed to like write everything out.
00:25:16.288 --> 00:25:20.779
I went through eight or nine drafts throughout this process.
00:25:20.779 --> 00:25:31.371
It did a lot of writing, revision, but you know, pretty early in the process I knew what I wanted to accomplish with it on a literary level.
00:25:31.371 --> 00:25:32.553
I don't know.
00:25:32.553 --> 00:25:48.232
I think I came, I think I brought that clarity to it and then I kind of put, I worked the story into that sense of clarity and then so like that meant the this I deleted scene.
00:25:48.232 --> 00:25:53.470
I am telling you things that I thought were just beautiful, I thought you were just like.
00:25:53.470 --> 00:25:56.002
You know those like oh, look at me, go, that's great.
00:25:56.002 --> 00:25:57.287
Oh, that's good.
00:25:57.346 --> 00:26:01.344
And it's like oh, I have to delete it because it doesn't conform to the theme, Damn it.
00:26:01.344 --> 00:26:11.332
So there was a whole lot of that and I think that's just because I like, as early on I just I had that vision and I didn't want to waste people's time.
00:26:11.332 --> 00:26:14.828
I mean, it's a memoir like a memoir and I'm like you say, I have a low key presence.
00:26:14.828 --> 00:26:17.623
I'm like a, you know, kind of a shadow.
00:26:17.623 --> 00:26:22.569
I mean, in some ways I'm not out there building a big online presence.
00:26:22.569 --> 00:26:30.971
So I knew that I couldn't waste people's time and I needed to make it something that people who don't know me could get something from.
00:26:31.559 --> 00:26:36.653
And that was really just looking at that theme and questioning what is the nature of addiction.
00:26:36.653 --> 00:26:37.903
You know why?
00:26:37.903 --> 00:26:48.964
Why are we just looking at addiction, as you know, drugs and and alcohol and people who are living without homes, and and then we're like oh, this is so, this is so, not us.
00:26:48.964 --> 00:27:13.614
But I know from personal experience that I mean I can't say everybody, because I can can only speak for myself, but between my own experience and the vast different things that I've turned to for some sort of external sense of fulfillment that have been vastly different and still similar and carrying the exact same emotional energy.
00:27:13.614 --> 00:27:25.602
It's just a truth that I know, and so that's what I was trying to convey and that's what I sort of built everything around once I started drafting more built everything around once I started drafting more.
00:27:25.622 --> 00:27:31.031
Did you use any kind of techniques, prompts, imagery to trigger memories?
00:27:31.031 --> 00:27:37.526
Did you have a hard time recalling certain memories and if so, what did you do?
00:27:37.526 --> 00:27:39.788
How did you get to those?
00:27:41.230 --> 00:27:44.512
Well, I'm see I'm very lucky because I'm a compulsive journaler.
00:27:44.512 --> 00:27:53.178
So I really accept there was one stint and I mean this is in my book that I ended up throwing my journal in the garbage because I couldn't bear to look at it.
00:27:53.178 --> 00:28:13.730
So that's the part that I had to go by memory and really what I did was, yeah, I mean I nothing specific, but I just went back to the time in my life with the best of my, in the best of my ability, with my memory, you know, and disclaim that at the beginning of beginning of my memoir.
00:28:13.730 --> 00:28:17.016
And yeah, that's it.
00:28:17.016 --> 00:28:26.739
And I do have a very visual way of thinking and so, you know, it's like I can this is the like high school portion.
00:28:26.739 --> 00:28:29.353
It's like I can see those hallways in high school.
00:28:29.353 --> 00:28:36.811
I can see, you know, the, you know the way the light reflects on the, the laminate floor, like those little things.
00:28:36.811 --> 00:28:49.707
I can, you know, remember, I can remember how I felt, you know, I can remember just those feelings very vividly and I think that yeah.
00:28:49.930 --> 00:28:52.959
I think I just just sort of wrote through it and then I did.
00:28:53.298 --> 00:29:40.791
I did go through and be like wait a second, okay, like making sure I have the dates right and, um, this and that, but I I allowed myself to remember what I remembered and then made sure that it conformed to the theme, and I think that's kind of the thing that can be sometimes misunderstood about memoir, or people approach it in different ways, where it's like you know, this is not the story of a life, like I'm not going to write about every single day of grade eight, but I'm going to remember these moments and generally I trusted myself that those, those specific moments were the ones that I remembered, that had the level of emotional impact that I needed them to remember, that I wouldn't have to go excavate things that I think I was forgetting, because those were clearly those emotional punches that meant something.
00:29:41.692 --> 00:29:46.077
And then everything else I had journals for for and it was easy to be like, okay, this, no, this, that, that.
00:29:46.077 --> 00:30:07.680
So yeah, it's interesting, it's uh, yeah, it's interesting process to to go back to some of the toughest times of my emotional life and my emotional journey, um, you know, and pull them out into, into something that into rebuilding those scenes again for the world.
00:30:07.680 --> 00:30:10.184
It's a, it's a funny thing.
00:30:12.291 --> 00:30:25.742
How did you decide on a certain theme that runs throughout your memoir Did did you just notice it or purposely you wrote towards that theme?
00:30:27.731 --> 00:30:28.594
I purposely wrote.
