Jeannie Vanasco: Sure. I guess how I make my living it’s certainly not from writing. It’s from teaching writing. I’m an associate professor of English at Towson University, and A Silent Treatment is my third memoir. I never thought I would write one, and then after I finished The Glass Eye, I said, “I’m never doing this again.” And now here we are, and my fourth book is under contract, so fourth memoir, but A Silent Treatment came out of this promise. 

My first book was a promise to my dad. The night before he died, I promised him I would write a book for him. And I was 18. I don’t know why that promise came out. I wanted to be a writer, but anyway, I don’t recommend making deathbed promises for things that are very hard. Writing is hard enough; it puts a lot more pressure on you. The first book came out, and then I felt kind of bad because it was for my dad, but I wanted to even things out. I thought I should do something for my mom, and I long wanted to write something for her. In fact, my first published work was called “Dear mom.” It was in the local newspaper. I was eleven or twelve when it ran, and it was written in the form of a letter, and it was really cliche, like the sort of thing, though, that moms love. She still has it; it’s framed on her wall. I’ve been wanting to do something for her since writing The Glass Eye for my dad, but I couldn’t find my way into the book because I couldn’t figure out what the tension would be. I couldn’t figure out, not even what would keep somebody reading, but what was the question I was trying to answer? So, for me, for all my books, they start from a place I’m much more influenced by: the essay form. More like in the tradition of Montaigne, or Hazlet, or Lamb, where you start from one place and then you don’t know where you’re going, you’re finding your way through. But each of my books, I think of them more like essays in their movement, and in that they are each inspired by some kind of question I’m trying to think my way through, or some kind of internal conflict I have. With this book, it turned out, the conflict arrived when my mom arrived and moved in with me, when she started using the silent treatment. I was like, “Why is she doing this?” I don’t know if I can find an answer to that, per se, or even if I did find an answer to that, really. When I started, there were all of these questions that came up, like “why am I so obsessed with wanting to be a good daughter?” and “why, if I’m obsessed with being a good daughter, would I write a book for my mom, where I’m showing her at her worst?” and “what does the silent treatment do to a person?” Because, as this was happening, I could not get any writing done when my mom was using the silent treatment. And so, I’m very much of the philosophy, if something starts getting in my way, I think that is the way. I’m going to let that in, and maybe that is the subject. 

So, I decided to do that with my mom’s silent treatment. And I was doing research into the silent treatment, and I couldn’t find any memoirs that focused on it. I couldn’t find any self-help books about that age. Now, I feel like when you’re in your 30s,  you start to read self-help books earnestly and not ironically.

I couldn’t find anything that was focused on the silent treatment or how to cope. I looked on YouTube, and of course, everybody’s like, “Oh, if somebody uses the silent treatment, they’re a narcissist. You have to get them out of your life.” I didn’t like that argument, because that’s so reductive. I don’t know if it was one central question, but I had complicated feelings where I would hear people describe the silent treatment as abuse, and then I would think about my mom’s childhood where she was actually physically abused, and I felt uncomfortable then with the word “abuse.” 

This is the problem. You ask a writer, “What’s your book about?” You get pages and pages and you’re still like, “Okay, but what is it about?” The short version is it’s set during one of my mom’s silences, and I’m trying to cope with it and show what the silent treatment is doing to me. But it’s also very much a book where I’m trying to figure out how to write the book. And I do like that kind of genre. One of my favorite screenwriters is Charlie Kaufman. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen his films, like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Synecdoche, which I recently rewatched. I love I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Animalisa. Anyway, I love his stuff where his films tend to be about the making of the work, or the struggle to make something. And so that’s also a part of A Silent Treatment, and it’s kind of been a part of all of my books. Me trying to figure out how I make sense of this thing, this subject, or question, or whatever. How do I make sense of it?

AL: That is a wonderful introduction, because it lends so well into many of the themes and topics that I picked up while reading A Silent Treatment. I have the book here, and it’s probably so marked up that I probably couldn’t lend it to anyone. There’s so much good stuff in it. I really enjoyed reading it! Your introduction is great because it also leans into some of the questions I wrote up. Some of them are inspired by your book talk at George Mason last week. 

One of the main themes was conflict, as you mentioned. Of course, the main conflict is your conflict with your mother. But you also mentioned all these other small conflicts as well, with other people, passersby, neighbors, your partner. With the conflict often not boiling over, I saw it as simmering, what was the process of figuring out where these other smaller conflicts come in to push along this overarching story?

JV: That’s a great question. I’m reading the audio book this week. I’m like, “Did that work?” But in terms of conflict? I was trying to think how am I going to have some kind of tension, but not necessarily manufacture conflict, but vary the conflict so that it’s ideally interesting to someone where they’ll want to keep reading. And I realized it couldn’t be “my mom’s not talking to me, my mom’s not talking to me, my mom’s not talking to me.” It was very static. And so, whenever I’m working on something, and I find that the conflict is very repetitive, I try to think about ways in which it’s leading to conflict in other areas of my life, because usually that is the case with conflict. It affects us in ways we don’t necessarily immediately see. And so, when I was working on the book, I thought, “Who is this affecting?” I didn’t want it to turn into a book about Chris or anything, but he was immediately affected, of course, living here as well. So, I was like, “How did it affect that relationship?” We would be in conflict about how to resolve my mom’s silent treatment. I thought, “Okay, well, it’s a way for me to show myself in conflict with him. How is this affecting me at work?” I’m having trouble writing, and then I’m having a crisis, because my job is to teach people how to write, and I’m like, “Well, if I can’t write, how can I expect them? How can I expect my students to write?” 

That helped me generate scenes related to the silent treatment. I had students read Mary Ann Moore’s poems I had already assigned. I wasn’t thinking about assigning her poem “Silence” when I was working on the book. It’s just a poem I love, and I realized that I wanted to avoid talking about that poem in class, because I didn’t want to. I was just so sick of thinking about silence. And so, in thinking about conflict, I try to look at the other areas of my life–like friendships, work, my romantic relationship. How are these things impacted? How is my sense of self impacted? How is it leading me to interact differently with people and how to interpret the world around me? So, when my mom was using the silent treatment on me, I would get into this place of assuming everybody was mad at me, or I was really on edge about how I don’t want to offend that person, I don’t want to say the wrong thing. I was very much thinking about trying to keep everything okay with my mom, and when that was not going well, I’m like, “Okay, well, I need other areas of my life. I can’t have the rest of my life falling apart.” 

So, that’s kind of like how I think about conflict. It’s all a piece: conflict, character, setting. When I’m stuck, I try to think about either different themes or different elements of writing and consider how the story connects to each of those. 

AL: That’s perfect. I think it’s really interesting to see how, while reading, you focus on this main conflict of your mother’s silence, but it’s not the only thing you do in life. And I think that’s a really good way to connect, to use a character, because it’s like, “Wow, everyone has had to struggle through something and still had to do all of the other stuff in their life.” I thought that was very compelling how when you have this thing weighing you down, how do you go about everything else? Especially when you are trying to actively write the book. 

It’s very much a book about writing the memoir, which I really enjoyed how you did that. You clearly laid out that you have this deal with your publisher. You are trying to write the book, and it’s not going exactly as planned. And right from the beginning, you tell your mother the subject of the book, and she says don’t pull any punches. I think you wrote, “If I didn’t want you to write about it, I shouldn’t have done it.” 

JV: Yeah, I feel very lucky. I feel very lucky.

AL: I couldn’t imagine doing that. I think if I were to write something similar, and I think a lot of people have said similar things, it’s hard to write a narrative when you’re worrying about how to portray people or how people might receive it. How did you navigate the narrator’s awareness of writing the memoir and telling the story as truthfully as possible?

JV: That’s a great question. First, I’ll say writing the book gave me a lot more empathy for my students, not that I don’t already feel empathy for them, but I kind of forgot I have some students who are living from home and commuting to campus. Trying to write about my mom while she’s living with me, while I know she’s underneath me, and angry, and not talking with me. It was just a whole new level of stress that I’d never experienced.

I think with writing my first book, writing about my dad, he was dead. There was this level of stress I felt of, “Well, he’s not here to correct me if I get things wrong. How would he feel about being written about? I can’t ask him.” 

I felt a lot of anxiety about the memoir genre that I had chosen, and I just couldn’t make it work in another genre; I had tried. With this book, I knew I wanted the prologue, and I wanted to remind readers, because I was also reminding myself, I have my mom’s permission. She said I could go to the Slumber Party. I asked. I told her who would be there. She said I was fine. 

I had this anxiety also, though, of thinking about her silent treatment and the repetitive nature of it. She says this is okay, but does she mean it? She says to write whatever I need to write, but does she know? Does she know the things I’m considering writing about? There was a ton of anxiety about it, and I feel very lucky that she gave me permission. 

And someone had asked me when I was visiting George Mason. I felt bad. I was like, “Oh no. This was maybe not a good answer.” 

He had said, “If your mom had told you not to write it, would you have not written it?” 

I was like, “Oh yeah, no, I wouldn’t have done it, very much.”

I felt bad, because then I was talking to one of your professors, who had said they were trying to get the student to write about it, even though the student’s mother did not want him to do it. And I was like, all right, I was no help. I basically said don’t do it, which was not my intention. 

It’s hard writing about the people around us, because people are so complicated, and my portrayal of anyone else is just my interpretation of them. It’s not them. And I think a lot of writers get it, and some readers get it, but I think a lot of readers, at least the ones I’ve met, sometimes will talk about the characters in the book as if they are the people. And that makes sense, that’s a totally normal thing. I’m not saying that’s a dumb thing to do, but I am often thinking about how constructed a memoir is, and I think that’s why I resort to that meta mode, because I want to remind the reader that this is just my version of events. It’s artifice, and everyone has their own version of a story, or of how something went. If my mom had written her version of A Silent Treatment, it would be very, very different. 

I’m sorry, your question was originally, how do you handle writing about people in your life?

AL: How do you navigate this awareness of writing the memoir, both you as a narrator and you as a person. And then, how do you tell that story as truthfully as possible?

JV: I like that you use the word narrator; I’m not really the same person anymore. But when I’m writing the book, I am not thinking of myself as a narrator. I’m trying to get as close as I can to the voice in my head. Sometimes thinking about it as artifice is helpful, but to get to a place of real vulnerability, for me, I need to just let myself be as messy as possible on the page, and write the things that I’m most afraid of writing, and that I think will be so embarrassing to me, or they could be embarrassing to someone else, but at least get them down. And then if I think that if I’m portraying someone like this is not flattering, well I’m then going to try to interpret the story or events from their point of view. Think about where they’re coming from, how they would interpret my actions. 

I don’t know if I recommend this, but something I do, I think, “What’s the worst thing that this person could or would say about me?” And I don’t know if that makes writing easier or harder, but it helps me think about the ways in which I, as a character and as a person, have failed people, but then how I can use that to give some depth. 

One thing specifically that came up for me, and I thought about a lot, was when I was a kid, and I corrected my mom’s pronunciation of certain words. She would say “warsh” instead of “wash.” And “Warshington, DC,” and I still feel bad about that because she’s someone who doesn’t have a lot of confidence. To answer more broadly, when I think about someone’s character, or I think about how they talk about themselves, if I’m very close to that person, I think about what have I said or done that may have reinforced for them the way they look at themselves. Like my mom will talk about herself as being stupid sometimes, and then I think about what have I done that may have contributed to her feeling stupid?

AL: That very much hits all the parts of the question. Because, at the end of the day, you’re telling the story, your story, your side of things. But you are still writing a creative work. You do have to balance how you do this in a way that makes the most sense to tell the story, to get your side across. I feel like a lot of people outside of nonfiction looking in, they think it’s like, “This is what happened. This has to be the truth.” Or they see it as some old, dusty history book: this is what happened to who and what and when. No, we’re telling something fun. We’re telling something interesting. We’re telling a story the best way we can. I thought your answer was perfectly hit on that.

JV: In figuring out a way to tell the story, this is very much on my mind because I’m recording the audio book. I never, ever want to go back and reread any of my books straight through. So, for me, this is like a version of hell. I have to go back and read it. 

I don’t know if my publicist would want me saying that, but I think about how, with each of my books, I’ve tried to tell them in a different way, or figure out a form that suits the story, and I feel like I’m starting over every time I write a book. But I do want to risk failure with each of my books, and I know not everything will land, but I’m just interested in challenging myself to find the form. A lot of that has to do with how I represent another character. With my first book, The Glass Eye, I had kept binders to organize the different characters for a time, and it was: Dad, Mom, Jeanne (but Jeannie was my half-sister). Her name was pronounced the same as mine but spelled without the letter “I.” And then I had a binder called “mental illness.” I had not given myself a binder. I thought about the book; it uses this binder structure to organize the events. 

My second book is a conversation with somebody. I’m using transcripts to break up the narrative. With this book, with the silence, the challenge was, my publicist wouldn’t want me to say this, it doesn’t always work. The challenge was: How do I bring my mom’s voice into it and when she’s not talking with me and still allow her to be a character? I can write her as a complex character. Bringing in her dialogue within parentheticals that interrupts the prose, I was like, “that’s my way of bringing her voice into it, both the kind things she said and the cruel things she said.” 

I feel like we often, or at least I often, remember the negatives sometimes more than the positives, and that can be revealing of someone’s state of mind. So just to go back to your question of writing about a character. For this book, the way I wrote was thinking about writing about my mom, and how can I bring in her voice as much as possible that interrupts my everyday life when she’s not talking to me? Sometimes it’s a matter of finding a technique or some something structurally that will help me reveal a character. I think that’s part of it. I’m trying to find a structure that will be revealing of the people I’m writing about or offer them complexity.

AL: That’s really interesting. One of the things that I was taught in the first semester of my MFA program is that on experimental work and non-standard storytelling, like standard body essays and all that, is that the harder it is to tell the story, the more likely you’re going to do things differently. I think reading this, I could really tell this was the best way for you to tell the story.

JV: Thank you. I needed to hear that this week as I’m rereading.

AL: And this was something you mentioned at George Mason last week that very much goes off what you just said. You mentioned something along the lines of “who you are as the writer in relation to the story and the narrative.” I’ve never really heard anything like that before, but it made perfect sense to me. I was wondering if you could kind of go into that idea more specifically, and how it’s like, impacted your writing.

JV: Vivian Gornick writes about it in The Situation and the Story. She talks about figuring out what your identity is in relation to the story you’re telling. For me, it was “I’m writing this from the perspective of my mother’s daughter.” Whereas my first book, it’s the perspective of my father’s daughter. My mom was still in that and a part of it, but thinking about it in that way helps me stay a little bit more focused because I need some kind of focus if I’m going to let myself reassociate, just something for the reader. There’s going to be a shape, and inevitably, then, because there’s a shape, there’s going to be distortion, and again, I want to acknowledge that. 

With this book, I realized my identity kind of had to stay focused on being my mother’s daughter. Because there was a point in the book when I really debated, and I don’t know if this is quite getting your question so follow up with me if I if I don’t get to it, but there was a point at which I was trying to decide whether to include the fact that I also share a name with a dead half-sister. And when I found these letters that my dad had saved that my mom had written that were very mean about my dad; one of them, she writes, “He ruins everything he touches.” I immediately thought of his daughter, Jeanne, who died in a car accident when she was 16. He blamed himself for this. His first wife blamed him. He had given her permission to go out that night, and he had held that for a very long time. He never talked about her with me, and I immediately thought of her. That was the only moment when I was thinking about her in the course of A Silent Treatment. I almost brought that in, but then I knew if I bring that in (this is the only time I’m thinking about this), then I could see my dad becoming a much larger character in this book. I already did that book.

I don’t know if I made the right decision or not. It would have changed the book had I brought this in. But I share a name with both my mom legally, my legal given name is Barbara Jean, but then my nickname is Jeannie. I didn’t learn my legal name until I was in kindergarten during roll call and the teacher said, “Barbara Jean Vanasco.” I’m looking around like for a girl who looks like me. I’m like, “Oh, another Vanasco? I’ve never met another kid Vanasco.” I had to decide whether to bring that in, and I decided against it. So, in regard to who I am in relation to the story, that’s one thing I’m thinking about. You also mentioned the narrator. Can you refresh my memory again? I feel bad because I must have explained something, and now I don’t remember how I explained it.

AL: My problem is I’m also trying to refresh myself too, but what I think I was trying to get at, because it is nonfiction about yourself, it’s figuring out, since you are the narrator, who is this you? How are you figuring out how this narrator operates?

JV: I think it really goes back to that idea from Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story: who am I in relation to the story? Because then that’s going to also help me determine what can come into the story. I do try to let material in that is seemingly unrelated, because once I’m deep enough into a project, I start to see the connections with the seemingly unrelated stuff, like watching horror movies, like possessed mother movies. I can bring in The Conjuring. It helps me figure out all the stuff that I’m noticing in my day-to-day life: what could I bring in that might feel a little uneven, but would give it life? That’s something I’m often thinking about. Who am I in relation to the story? But I also don’t want to just be that person either, because then I’m further distorting the story. So, I must think about what is my main identity in the story? So my mother’s daughter: how is that related to the relationships, my other relationships? 

I couldn’t decide: am I making a mistake by bringing Nicholas Cage into the manuscript? But it was because my mom and I had this argument about whether he was a good actor and whether he was handsome. I didn’t care about Nicholas Cage up until that point, but once my mom had an opinion about it, I was ready to argue. I realized I could bring that in because it reveals our relationship. It shows me being childish and reverting back to teenage Jeannie, who will argue with her mother just to argue. That gets back to that identity question, right? Who am I in relation to the story? That helps me shape the narrator. 

The reason I think I was getting tripped up by the question is my understanding of the narrator and character has changed. The longer I’ve been writing memoir, I feel like I’m increasingly writing in the present. And I mean, yes, I’m also writing about the past, but the proportion of my narrator as a character and my past self as a character, I think the narrator is so much more present than the past version of me. I think that’s because I do have complicated feelings about what it is that I do. With writing memoir, just the power that comes with that, in terms of shaping other people’s stories, whether they give me permission or not. In a lot of memoirs I read, the events are set in the far past. It’s someone’s childhood. And even my first book, there was a lot in the past. I think I’m getting closer and closer to writing about the present. That distance between narrator and character has been narrowing, 

AL: The idea of framing it as “mother’s daughter” is very interesting. It shows how everyone’s a multifaceted individual, but you have to pick one side to tell the story. And specifically, your mother’s daughter, I think was a really interesting way of framing the narrative. I usually never think that much, and now I’m trying to look at what I’ve written and say, “Who was I? How was I telling this story?” 

One thing you also mentioned was what to include in the story. This also goes back to the reading last week. I think we were discussing your cats, actually. I think you said you could put them in much more, you could put in other animals, other family members. But you’re just trying to figure out who feels comfortable to be in the book. I habitually add way too many people. It’s like a cast list at the end of a movie when I’m writing sometimes. That was good to remind myself. But in that idea, I was wondering, what was your process to figure out who needs to be included and who doesn’t? Or if there’s anyone who barely made the cut, or you did want to have them in the story, but couldn’t?

JV: One of my very best friends. She’s a novelist. Her name is Lauren Redding, and she was so helpful to me throughout the project, but she’s not in the book. I have so many amazing friends. I’m sure that, had I asked her for permission, she probably would have said yes.

I already had my friends Nina and Jung and Sarah. It’s something I think about, it’s kind of related to scene, I’m looking (this is related to character) to determine who to include. Do I have a bunch of scenes together that are all doing the same thing? Usually, when I find something’s dragging, I’m like, “Okay, these scenes or these characters are performing the same function. There’s no variation happening there. Maybe they’re all challenging me in the same way, or it’s a very similar conflict.” That’s how I decide what is not going to go in. 

I have this former colleague, the one who said a lot of mean things. I decided to include him. I don’t think people, even some current colleagues, didn’t know who I was talking about. I had to decide, “I’m including him almost for comedic relief, because it’s saying more about me than it is about him.” I’m obsessing about having wrinkles on my forehead because I’m just stressed. One of the themes of the book is aging, too. I’m thinking about my mom and how hard it is to get older. I decided to include him, who’s a super minor character, just because it’s revealing of the themes. It’s another form of conflict. I’m getting worked up about something that’s so silly. But then if I bring that in, I want to think about ways in which that can repeat in some way. 

When Chris is like, “You don’t have lines on your forehead.”

  I’m like, “This is why I don’t share work in progress with you. You’re not being honest.”

I try to think about the ways in which I can play with that language of lines as well. I try to think about ways in which I can have, if I am going to include someone who’s kind of a minor character, how is something they have said or done revealing of my character? And how is that revealing of the themes of the book? I do like to have some people in there who aren’t crucial, like my neighbor who nitpicks over everything and goes through the trash; they’re like, “Did you put the right recycling in? They don’t recycle things that are number six on the bottom of the container.” I’m trying to decide if I’m going to include someone like that. First, if it’s not showing them in a favorable light, how am I going to be able to disguise their identity? And second, what is it doing for the story? How is it helping me vary the conflict? It’s hard to decide what to include and who to include. You end up having to make a decision; it’s not always that there’s a right or wrong reason.

I had a lot more pages about my mom’s relationship with her pets, because she was very, very close with her dogs. I think losing them after she arrived at Baltimore, that was huge for her. I ended up deciding, because of when the narrative present of the book was, coming back to it again and again, I just couldn’t figure out a good way to do that. I would acknowledge it. I’ll talk about it. I’ll show how close she is with her dog, Max, and her cat, Brooklyn. But I’m writing about this time frame.

That’s the other thing. I don’t think there are right answers. I think you make choices, and then the choice you make, you have to live with it. You have to work with it, and, at least for me, then I just do the best I can. But there are just so many different ways to write about our lives.

AL: That was really, really cool! Putting characters and scenes, and the work they do for the novel or story, on the same level, is something I’ve never thought about like that.

I’ve got one more question about A Silent Treatment, and then one question about the new project you mentioned earlier. For the last question about A Silent Treatment, one thing you repeated throughout the book was a quote from a podcast: “Artists tend to put their fingers in the wounds in the silence.” As I read, I was thinking alongside you as you told the story, what does that quote mean? The quote is compelling because it’s something you hear, but once you put it on the page, it doesn’t make sense until you get the definitive interpretation. Hearing your different interpretations throughout the book was a helpful way to unpack the idea. But then you finally get a reply from the podcaster, and he’s like, “This is how I think of the quote, but your idea is really cool too!” That reply almost feels like a non-answer. So, I was wondering, how do you interpret that quote now that the book is out, now that you’re moving on, or as you wrote, was there some shift in your interpretation?

JV: I like that it could be both. I like that there isn’t necessarily a singular meaning. Some of my favorite movies and some of my favorite books have very ambiguous endings, where what the reader or the viewer makes of it is what they make of it. I think that’s really exciting. With memoir as an art form, thinking about it more broadly, I often consider where the nuance is. Because a lot of times when we talk about what makes something literary, it means we’re usually asking the reader to do a certain amount of work. And so, in memoir, what kind of work am I asking the reader to do? And how can I ask the reader to do a certain amount of work where it doesn’t seem like I haven’t thoroughly reflected on it? 

There’s that risk of the reader thinking they know they’ve thought more deeply about your story than you have, if you don’t answer something. I’m often thinking about “What do I not answer?” And usually the simple answer is “What I can’t answer.” I can’t answer what that quote means, per se, except I like that it has potentially multiple meanings and that you can interpret it different ways. 

I first came to writing through poetry, where there’s so much pressure on language. In Yeats’ poem “Adam’s Curse,” “A line may take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, /  Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.” You can really labor and labor and labor over it, and yet you’re trying to make it seem like you didn’t, except I do. I think I make it clear that I really labor over what I’m working on; that’s what I use the meta stuff to do. 

I’m really interested in those and stuff like that that can’t be easily answered. I don’t want to just drop something in that doesn’t have an answer. I do want to try and think through it and see how the meaning  changes based on how I’m changing, or what in my life is changing that is influencing me to think about something differently. To me, that’s part of the plot. The way we look at something when we’re 22, we’re going to probably look at differently when we’re 32, we’re 42, and so on. You’re getting me to think about this now, like that quote that’s running throughout. I imagine I would interpret it differently at different times based on how I’m feeling or what’s going on in my life. I find that kind of stuff very exciting.

AL: I love the idea of that conversation that you want to make the reader do some work. Make them do some of the thinking, too. But you don’t want the reader to think, “Did you even think about it?” When discussing books, essays, TV, movies, or anything else with people, I often hear people say, “This makes me think too much.” Or “I don’t want to think too much.”

I think that’s a trait of good creative work. An important part of artistry is that you got to make people think. I appreciate the balancing between making the reader do work, but not doing too much work for them.

Onto my last question. At your reading at George Mason, you gave us a little snippet from the new project, which sounds wonderful. Is there anything you can tell us about the project, or what we can expect?

JV: I’m sure my editor has the same question: “When can I expect some of this?” This is how sometimes my books go. This is what I told them I would do, and sometimes it’s not what I do. I was thinking about how hard it was to get good mental health treatment when I was in my 20s when I didn’t have reliable health insurance. I was trying to keep a diagnosis of bipolar disorder secret. At the same time, I rarely saw the same doctor more than once because I was going to public clinics; you see whoever you see. Sometimes I would also get different diagnoses. I was thinking about that element: how hard it was to get treatment for something while I’m trying to keep it a secret from almost everybody in my life. 

The other element was how much I was interpreting my behavior according to a diagnosis. The diagnosis that had stayed with me was bipolar I. I started to treat it almost as a form of self-knowledge, like “I did this thing because I have this illness.” It was a very reductive way of seeing things, and I didn’t always want to see it that way. In fact, I was very resistant to it. I was like, “This is grief. It’s not.” But it can be both things. 

What fascinates me about it is there is no answer. I can’t say do I or don’t I, or, well, what was it? What’s interesting to me is why am I asking the question? Why now? I think that’s part of it. I know there will be a meta element of where writing the book is part one of the one of the layers of it. I’m 42 now, and almost 20 years ago exactly was when I first got a diagnosis. I have the benefit of hindsight perspective, and hindsight tends to make everything look a lot neater, a lot easier, more obvious than it actually was.

This might be my last memoir. I keep telling them I’m out after this is done, I’m done. I keep getting closer and closer to questioning “I don’t know if this is what I’m doing is okay?” I’m thinking a lot about how hindsight perspective warps my understanding of my past and my sense of self, and it’s easy for me 20 years later, after being on medication, and to be able to say, “I don’t know if that was actually right.” I’m looking back at old notebooks too, and recovering that time. I’m thinking through all of these things. I don’t really know exactly what it’s about.

How I sold it was how hard it was to get treatment, but the about is never what it’s really about. That’s the way in, one of the ways in. Or, people want to know the concrete story, but the story is going to be something else. I’m just not quite sure. I think it’ll have a lot to do with this idea of naming and diagnosing and interpreting human behavior through that. 

Connecting it back to A Silent Treatment. So, I might have mentioned this at George Mason, but somebody it was like, “You know, you really described your ADHD. That was an amazing portrayal of ADHD.” 

I was like, “I don’t have ADHD.” 

And she’s like, “No, you definitely have ADHD.” 

And then somebody else is like, “You definitely have OCD.” 

I was recording the audio book, and the producer had asked me if I thought my mom had bipolar. It’s just interesting how frequently we talk with the language of diagnoses. I think they’re very productive and helpful. It helps people get treatment. I think it’s what we do with them sometimes. And I think for me, I don’t know if it was always the most helpful, but it’s easy to say that with hindsight, so I don’t know. We’ll see; it’s due at the end of next year. Or due next fall, not this year, but 2027, so I need to get working.

AL: It does seem like the idea really hits the taboo of mental health, but also this growing awareness of it. As you were saying, people seem to be diagnosing you or your mother when they read the book. Is that taboo? I’ve even seen it in my own life, too. Mental health often seems to be both talked about and not talked about. Stigmatized and not stigmatized. I think the way you described your project, it seems like it’s going to be a really interesting insight into all of that.

JV: I’m wondering what would happen if we described it in terms of traits. As human beings, we want to categorize–it helps us understand things, and I get it. For a lot of people, it helps make their pain legible, too, because it’s hard. I was talking with a friend about this, and she was saying, “I can’t tell my boss. I can’t come to work because I’m crying. But if I say, ‘Oh, I have major depression, and it’s documented,’ now someone will understand.”

It’s unfortunate that that’s how things are. I am interested in thinking through what it would mean if we were to recognize a lot of these things as traits, and not necessarily so quickly cling to, like, labels. But I also think they’re useful. So, the thing is, I don’t have an answer, and I don’t have a take on it or an argument. Ultimately, when I’m writing a memoir, I’m trying to capture and have an experience. I’m not quite sure what that will be. We’ll see. Hopefully I finish it.

AL: I think that hits the idea that creating these works of art is also a way to help ourselves figure out parts of our lives, figure out things that have happened to us, our own experiences. And then David also has a question.

David McMullen: Hearing you talk at George Mason, and hearing you during this interview, I think that you exhibit a lot of empathy for the people around you. At the same time, and I don’t want this to sound wrong, you do always think of, like, yourself in these situations too. There’s an empathy for other people in situations and their complexities, and an empathy for yourself in those same situations and their complexities. Do you see that empathy as related? And how important is empathy to memoir writing?

JV: I think empathy is everything for memoir writing. I mean, it’s like what politicians write when they’re running for office. “Look what I’ve overcome.” It’s PR material. It’s important to have empathy for oneself, because we all make mistakes, and we have to be able to live with ourselves to keep going. If we’re constantly feeling guilty about things, it’s going to be hard to move on and do better the next time. Demonstrating empathy for others, practicing that so that you have more patience, because I think that also helps you have patience with yourself. I think sometimes we’re a lot harder on ourselves than we would be on other people. Some of the things that I say to myself, or think of myself, I would never judge another person for that. I can’t imagine doing that.

I don’t know how one would write a memoir without empathy. I wouldn’t want to read a memoir by someone who doesn’t show empathy for their characters. For even the most difficult person, I don’t know how you write about them with any complexity. At the same time, not all of the characters in your book are going to be dynamic. It won’t make sense. I could think about ways in which I would empathize with that colleague who would say mean things to me. I don’t think he’s an evil or an awful person, but it’s a proportions thing. Considering which characters are identifiable, which people are maybe more identifiable, and then treating them with complexity by practicing empathy.

DM: Just you showing those two are inseparable things: empathy is ingredient zero, before you begin writing something that you really can’t do without. I do appreciate that too, that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to make every single character the most complicated person in the world, right? Your relationship with the story is the central thing with memoirs, while still thinking of other people’s relations around that story.

JV: I say I’m on the fourth one, and I’m out, and I’m doing something else. The thing is, you can do multiple memoirs. You’re coming at your life from different angles. And in fact, my second book came out of an idea that doesn’t even take up half a page in my first book. It was a scene that was there, and somebody at a Q and A at a bookstore asked me about why I didn’t write about it more, this thing that was in the first book. Then I ended up turning that into my second book. So, it’s the proportions. It depends on what angle you take. It’d be hard to include empathy for every single character you mentioned, because sometimes they’re not really even a character. There are some people in my book that I don’t even know if I would call them characters, if that would be fair. They don’t have that much depth. They’re there for the purpose of maybe illuminating a particular scene or a theme.

I don’t know why I keep doing this. I think it’s fun. If I can’t get a question out of my brain, or if there’s an idea, I just can’t stop thinking about it. I think there is a part of me that likes writing, as hard as I find it, that keeps bringing me back to the page trying to figure out these questions.

AL: Beautifully said! Thank you so much! This has been wonderful. I found so much good in this conversation. We really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us for this interview, to talk about your book and your upcoming book! It’s super exciting, and we can’t wait to get the results for the competition this year! Thank you!