I live in Iowa where I am a writer, editor, publisher, and mom to two elementary school-aged kids.
My sweet-spot is writing hybrid nonfiction. My work can appear erratic, looped, and at times abruptly punctuated but I find this scattered articulation relevant because life, though ever marching forward, is not always linear. I am most interested in telling the stories that fall outside the traditional narrative arc. A lot of the time, my writing reconciles, through the examination of medicine, theology, and philosophy, what it means to live inside a body ripe with pain.
I am the founder and publisher of Brink, a literary journal dedicated to publishing hybrid, cross-genre work by creatives who tend to reside outside traditional artistic disciplines. Through my work at Brink, I foster dialogue and collaborative community across disciplines and cultural divides. I am also the Nonfiction Editor at PromptPress, a book-arts journal that pairs writers and visual artists to create new work.
Where do you work? What does your space look like?
I have to admit, it’s the kind of room I pictured when I was young and dreamed of being a writer. It’s blue with lots of windows. In the absolute center of the room is a cranky craftsman desk that I found on the side of the road twenty years ago. The wooden swivel chair I sit in is equally as old. It moans with even the suggestion of movement. To my right is a thrifted dresser that operates as a file cabinet of sorts. To my left is the coffee table I brought in from the porch when the weather turned cold. There are books, piles of papers, plants, headphones, framed photos of my kids, pens in an olive-tree cup I bought in Dubrovnik.
Apart from time, what do you need consistently throughout the week in order to be creative?
Coffee, laughter, regular exercise, and something that surprises me.
Do you have a mantra?
I guess I do, though I’ve never thought of it as a mantra before now. It’s scribbled on a yellow sticky note that I have posted on the wall across from my desk. Not at eye level, just above. It reads: “1. Tell my story. 2. Make it weird.”
At what stage did you begin to take your work seriously?
From childhood on, writing has always been part of my life. But it wasn’t until the last decade or so that it became my profession. I had some health problems in my twenties that derailed pretty much every aspect of my life. Because of that, I had to pivot. Everything changed in one way or another–my home, my career ambitions and opportunities, my marriage. The health problems didn’t go away but I learned to live with them and have developed a toolkit that helps me get by. When life became somewhat normal again in my early thirties, we started a family. Because I was still dealing with health problems, raising young children was all I could handle. I wasn’t writing at the time but I would compose poems in my head while I nursed and played with the kids on the floor. The brevity of poems accommodated my shortened attention span. When my daughter was in elementary school I signed my son up for daycare two mornings a week. I used those three hours each Tuesday and Thursday morning to write. I guarded this time. I didn’t clean the house (though it needed it), I didn’t run errands (there was always one more), I didn’t go back to bed (okay, fine, occasionally that happened). It was during this time that I began publishing my work and building from the ground up–because everything had collapsed in my twenties–a consistent writing practice.
Imagine you have two hours to yourself. The house is a mess and there are fifty work emails to answer, errands to run etc. Are you able to focus and how?
Not always, no. It’s difficult for me to focus when certain demands are pressing. Right now, for example, the dining room table is covered in papers because I’m doing tax-prep. There is not a clear surface in the kitchen. I can see blankets piled on the couches and more stacks of papers than I care to admit. But none of this feels pressing because I know it will all be addressed later tonight. It’s incredibly intense to be a single mom and know that the responsibility for the home and our lives lies on my shoulders alone. But on the other hand, there’s an unexpected freedom that comes from being forced to orient my expectations and reliance inward. Over the years I have learned to distinguish tasks I can complete in the company of my children (cleaning, cooking, shopping, email, etc.) from the tasks that require solitude (writing, appointments, sleeping, etc.). When it feels like those parts are in balance I find that I can focus even in the midst of chaos.
How do your children articulate what you do and what do they think of your work/art?
My daughter is in the other room, sitting on the floor petting the dog. I holler from my office, “what would you say I do for a living?”
“I don’t know… write?” she yells back.
“Write about what?” I ask.
She pauses then giggles nervously, “I don’t know… me?”
We both smile because we both know it’s true. I write about our lives–predominantly about my own struggles with chronic pain, my divorce, my understanding of the world; sparingly and hopefully generously about theirs–because this is what I know. Our life is the filter through which everything else must pass.
Can you tell us one surprising aspect of your work that changed after you had children?
Before kids, to write was to capture. I felt an urgency to grab moments and put them on paper so that they wouldn’t be forgotten. It was like I needed my writing to confirm the world for me. It’s a bit embarrassing to say that now because it sounds so arrogant. I don’t think about writing that way anymore. Part of that change happened naturally as a response to age and experience, but part of it has certainly been a response to motherhood. There’s still a sense of urgency, but now I want to grab the moment, put it on paper, and use that moment as a portal to learn something about myself or the world. Writing forces me to engage in a way that simply living it does not. It opens space. It requires me to shift my posture so that I can observe and ask different questions, which, I think, is a lot like the work of parenting.
Here’s the other thing: writing affords me the opportunity to transform some of the narratives my children and I have been given. This is certainly a surprising aspect of my work that has changed since becoming a mother. I write about our lives not just as a means to capture the moments but so that I can rework some of them. That is why I return, again and again, to the page. I don’t love all the parts of the story we were given. That’s why I am doing my best, carefully, one sentence at a time, to rewrite parts of it.
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Nina Lohman she/her/hers
Publisher: brinkliterary.com
IG: @brinkliterary
Personal website – ninalohman.com
IG: @nina_lohman
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