Emily Brisse
Oyster River Pages: How does your own writing or art surprise you?
Emily Brisse: How such disparate ideas, moments, and images can coalesce to form a whole. How a seventh draft can be 90% different from a first draft. How I can read a line I wrote years ago and be newly delighted. How my mind moves ahead of my consciousness. How I've stumbled upon a style that is perhaps overly wordy but mine. How much I still love the perfect line.
ORP: What is your favorite piece that you have written or created? If applicable, please link us to the site where it is published so we can share it along with your response!
EB: The essay I published in Creative Nonfiction's True Story, about a neighbor boy's abduction and its effects on me and our community, was one of those narratives that haunted me—until I was finally able to write about in a way that felt right. This essay reminds me of both why I write, and why it's important to never give up on the stories (especially the hard ones) that insist on their own telling.
https://creativenonfiction.org/writing/this-is-my-oldest-story/
ORP: What do you see as the greatest obstacle or challenge to your personal creativity? How do you work to overcome it?
EB: I'm a mother of two little kids. Anyone who has been or who is parenting young ones knows what my greatest obstacle or challenge is: time. But interestingly, I've been more productive as a writer now than I ever was before becoming a mother, and it's because, when I do find an hour or two, there's no dilly-dallying about inspiration. I drop in and write. Projects take me a long time, but I keep at them because they're essential to who I am as an individual, and it's important to me that I keep that part of myself alive and dreaming.
ORP: What is the artist’s/writer’s greatest asset?
EB: Our focus on noticing the now. Life can get hectic, and it's easy to spiral over how much needs to get done or what's going to happen in the future. Writing—when it's at its best—requires a breath-level attention that lends itself to a slowed-down appreciation. For me anyway, this noticing while I write is practice for how I want to live.
