Madison Davis on Following Interesting Threads

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Madison Davis, author of The Loved Ones: Essays to Bury the Dead which is the winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I had a few! The Loved Ones first existed as a number of different projects. The real “idea” was to weave these disparate threads together into a non-traditional memoir. 

There is a section in the book that follows my research into the death of my great uncle who was killed in action in WWII. This storyline began with something like a “bolt of lightning” moment. I had always been fascinated by the story surrounding my great uncle, but I was driving one day—mind wandering in stop-and-go traffic—when I first thought has anyone in the family really looked into this? I realized that the story had been loosely filtered down from my grandmother in the form of scattered details and questions, but no one had tried in earnest to track down answers in the age of the internet. What followed was years of research culminating in a trip abroad to visit the place he died. 

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I tried a few different ways to weave the content together. There are a lot of moving pieces—names, places, dates, and familial relationships over generations—so I needed to find a structure that a reader could follow. Ultimately, I decided to dedicate a section of the book to each of the central figures. Then, after all my main characters had been defined and the details of their lives and deaths had been told, the final section revisits each through the lens of the funerals and physical remains. Once the reader is well-situated in the narrative, I found I could take more leaps in that last section, draw more connections. 

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

For the most part, my writing evolves on the page over many (many, many) iterations. There is rarely clarity in my mind before it’s on paper (and not for quite a while after that). I find a lot of enjoyment in editing the raw material. I love taking a piece apart and putting it back together in different ways until I see something new in it. Of course, there have been times that I believe something will work but it just falls apart on the page and requires total reimagining.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I’m always writing. Most of the little threads go nowhere. Other pieces combine into a project or grow into a whole piece of their own. At some point in my life, I began to see everything as writing material, for better or worse. I never know which seeds will grow, but I rarely experience a lack of ideas; a lack of time is the more common problem!

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I tend to have various projects percolating. I try very hard to follow my interest. If I’ve lost interest in a piece, it probably won’t become interesting if I force it. If there is something to it, I’ll find myself pulled back to it again down the road. It helps to have 2-3 projects in a rotation. If I’m stuck or struggling with one, I can pivot to another. 

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I write alongside my dog, Stevie. She’s an excellent writing partner. She reminds me to take walks every so often but is otherwise content to just snuggle up and listen to the typing. When I’m struggling to focus, I like to enlist a human writer friend to work near me. It’s great to feel the productive energy in the room for a specified amount of time (set a timer!) and then have a fun, rewarding break with a friend. 

Madison Davis is a writer and editor based in Oakland, California. She is the author of the books Disaster (Timeless Infinite Light; Nightboat 2016) and The Loved Ones (Dzanc 2023).

Alenka Vrecek on Healing and Rebuilding Life

By: Alenka Vrecek

In solitude I found a very different kind of strength, one I’d never experienced. I was purging poisons from my body and mind. I was cultivating the soil in which fresh seeds of life could be planted again. And for that, I needed to be alone, as painful or as lonely as it sometimes felt. 

I wrote these words a month into my 2500 mile bike journey. Every day I would spend endless hours pushing my bike up impossibly steep and long climbs, following Sierra and Baja Divide through remote and often hostile environment. I needed the physical pain, the raw feeling of vulnerability on the fringes of life and death, precisely so I could feel alive. During the long stretches of alone time, I created space into which fresh life energy could flow. I captured my thoughts by typing them into the iPhone on the side of a dusty trail, or at lunch break, or laying exhausted on a deflated pad in my tent at night before they vanished. Just like on my long, difficult, and often dangerous bike journey, I was healing during my writing process. Each day I learned something new; I was reinventing myself. 

The idea to ride a bike from my home in Lake Tahoe, to my second home in Baja, Mexico, was born on a short bike ride between my daughter’s games at the soccer tournament in Medford, Oregon. My husband of fifteen years and I were in the process of a complicated divorce. There was plenty of sadness, confusion, fear, and uncertainty. Desperate for a change and an adventure, I wrote the idea on the back page of my Rumi poetry book, which was my constant companion. 

Years went by and life with work and three kids was busy. Then I met the man of my life and six years later we married on the top of the mountain overlooking Lake Tahoe. It was a crisp, sunny, winter day. We found happiness in a home we created for our blended family. The kids were growing older and one by one they left for college. Then, all at once, life unraveled. A devastating ski accident ended my thirty-year-long ski coaching career and with that I lost my identity. While recovering and still on crutches, I felt the lump on my right breast and instinctively knew it was not supposed to be there. Surgeries, chemo, and radiation followed. During the last round of chemo, I had my first routine colonoscopy. It revealed a carpeting of polyps. I was fifty-two-years old and facing the end of life for the second time in the same year. Everything was slipping away in a hurry. While waiting for the removal of my entire colon for which the date was already set, my husband announced he had Parkinson’s. His self-diagnosis was confirmed by doctors only a handful of days later. 

One day, lying in bed and feeling sorry for myself, I reached for my worn out Rumi poetry book and it just so happened, it opened on the page where I wrote the words fifteen years earlier. The idea of riding my bike from Tahoe to the tip of Baja Peninsula was now an inner command. I had that many more reasons to follow my dream and go on this long and crazy bike ride. 

The kids were grown up and didn’t need me much anymore. My cancer and my husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis gave me full permission to do something greater than myself. Sick of hospitals, I deferred the removal of my colon. I was running out of time and I did not want to have regrets. 

On my two month-long journey I wrote a blog to share the experiences with family and friends. People I didn’t even know, encouraged me to write a book. Sure, I thought, what a great idea. I’ll just turn my blog into a book, send it to a major publishing company and they will love it so much, offers for the book deal will rush in. Ha!

I quickly learned how wrong I was. Receiving rejection letters one after another, made me realize how much I had to learn. I asked for help and received it. I wanted to learn more, and I took every opportunity to do so. I continued honing my writing skills by taking as many online courses as I could and attended writing conferences. 

COVID insinuated itself into our lives, and I had no excuse but to write. It was a cathartic, cleansing and a healing process. Collaborating with accomplished writers and working with editors, I was learning, creating and experiencing personal growth. Word after word, page after page, She Rides was born.

Life throws challenges at us all, and even in the darkest of hours, we somehow find the way to survive and the strength to move on. Like the parched desert after the soaking rains, we spring back to life. We all have to find our own way, but reading stories about adventures, struggles and triumphs of others, can inspire us and show us we are not alone. I hope that by sharing my story, others will relate and find the strength to get out of their comfort zone and follow their own long forgotten and deeply buried dreams. 

Alenka Vrecek was born at the foot of the Alps in Slovenia, a part of former communist Yugoslavia. Born with a spirit for adventure, she came to America at twenty years old with a backpack, a pair of skis, and a pocket full of dreams. She was a ski coach and a director of Pedagogy for Squaw Valley and Alpine Meadows Ski Teams for thirty years. Alenka owns Tahoe Tea Company and lives in Lake Tahoe, California, with her second husband, Jim, their four children, three grandchildren, and a Golden Retriever named Monty.

Marianne Bohr on Lightning Bolts, Silent Whispers, & Miles of Travel Create Story Ideas As Long As The GR20

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Marianne Bohr, author of The Twenty: One Woman’s Trek Across Corsica on the GR20 Trail which releases today!

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

When a retired British army general we met on our adult gap year in 2011 heard that my husband and I were avid hikers and were about to circumvent Mont Blanc on foot, he said, “Then, you absolutely must do the GR20.” We were familiar with the Grande Randonée (GR) trail system that’s primarily in France and had done several of the treks, but we’d never heard of the Twenty. We soon learned that it’s a rugged, mountainous trail, often called Europe’s toughest long-distance footpath, and which bisects the French island of Corsica. The general was not a man to be ignored, so we put the Twenty on our calendars and I planned to write about it.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

We decided to do the hike to celebrate our 60th birthdays in 2016 and I thought that how we came to the decision could be of interest to others. I also hoped our story might inspire readers to mark a milestone with a physical challenge. The Twenty starts with making the decision to undertake the journey, then follows our months of training, and finally recounts the hike itself. While writing, I discovered that there was a lot in my upbringing that led me to enjoy pushing myself physically. And so, even though it wasn’t planned, I peppered the story with flashbacks to my childhood. Lucky for me, the group we hiked with had its share of interesting, quirky characters who made the narrative particularly interesting for me to write.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

It isn’t necessarily the case when I write travel memoirs because they chronicle actual events. But when I write fiction, absolutely. I just finished a novel about a young woman who befriends an elderly widow that takes place in France. I started with a rough outline but as I went along, new ideas came to me and all of a sudden, the story made a lot of U-turns. I’ve come to learn that the writing process can be magical with dialog and plot and character ideas that come either from deep within, or simply settle beside me when I’m not looking.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Ever since I started writing creatively, which was when I was about 54, I’ve become very observant and write down so much in my writer’s notebook. The minute an idea comes together, even when it’s rough, I transfer it from my notebook to a “Story Ideas” document I keep on my laptop. As a result, I have list and lists of ideas to pursue, and they always involve travel.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

There always seems to be one that floats to the top without my even thinking about it and it takes over my imagination. I’m always restless for adventure and so now that much of COVID is behind us, we’re planning to celebrate our 68th birthdays by hiking with our dog across England on the 188-mile Coast-to-Coast walk. It’s a through-hike that crosses England from St. Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay. I already have some ideas and notes about fictionalizing the three-week journey and I can’t imagine another story bubbling up before I get that one done.  

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I absolutely love my canine writing buddy. Her name is Snap and she’s a particularly athletic 19-pound rescue, part black lab and part chihuahua. She’s usually on the overstuffed chair next to my desk, looking out the window on watch, but every once in a while, she jumps on my lap. Having her nearby is never a distraction and she even inspired me to include a dog in my novel. 

Marianne C. Bohr, published author and award-winning essayist, married her high school sweetheart and travel partner. She follows her own advice and hits the road at every opportunity. She wrote her first book, Gap Year Girl: A Baby Boomer Adventure Across 21 Countries, over the course of the yearlong sabbatical she and her husband took to explore Europe. The Twenty: One Woman’s Trek Across Corsica on the GR20 Trail, is her second book. Marianne lives in Park City, UT, where—after decades in publishing, and then many years teaching middle school French—she now skis, hikes, and writes.