Interview with 2024 Q3 Creative Nonfiction Essay 3rd Place Winner, Carol Ovenburg

Carol Ovenburg—A visual artist. A writer. An Argentine tango social dancer. Her habits: 1) timed writing every morning perched in her favorite chair, sipping a cup of mushroom blend “coffee.” 2) searching through recipe books and preparing delicious hot lunches (She’s a real foodie); 3) Traveling to other U.S. cities for social tango dancing festivals; 4) searching for great fabric to make her own flashy tango dresses. 5) Painting and creating digital art.

When Carol is not writing, cooking, sewing, dancing, or making art, she and her long time partner enjoy good books and foreign films in their Talent, Oregon home, rebuilt after a devastating fire that leveled 2,600 homes. Her biggest desire is to find more time in the day to do it all without wearing herself out.

Her memoir is currently going out to publishers—small presses—for consideration, even though she’s still tweaking and changing the title—more titles than she can count.

Carol has had four CNF essays in the top ten of WOW-Women on Writing, two of which have been in the top three. She’s excited to have her latest CNF essay published in this year’s Q3.

Visit Carol’s website at carolovenburg.com.

Facebook: Carol Ovenburg
Linkedin: Carol Ovenburg

---interview by Marcia Peterson

WOW: Congratulations on winning third place in our Q3 2024 Creative Nonfiction essay competition! What prompted you to enter the contest?

Carol: Thanks, Marcia.

What prompted me to enter the WOW contest is simple—I feel my writing has a home with Women on Writing. I love the opportunity for critiques whether I make it to the top ten or not. The critiques keep me inspired to write better. And I love to be in the company of other wonderful women writers.

WOW: Your entry, “Borrowed,” is a compelling look at what it’s really like after a catastrophic wildfire destroys your home. What inspired you to write this essay?

Carol: To heal from the trauma, I wrote about the Almeda Fire of September 8, 2020 in several longer essays but nothing much happened with the essays. Writing gave me distance from the devastation. Still, during the summer months, the constant threat of fire keeps me anxious.

Through WOW, I enrolled in Chelsey Clammer’s course on writing about trauma. For me that meant write about the fire. For inspiration, I pulled up the previous essays I had written. I saw them as overwritten—too much unnecessary detail—too many words to resurrect for Chelsey’s assignment. I decided I wanted to write about the one aspect of the fire trauma that lingered—the seventeen months of displacement waiting for a home of our own again. The content of this new essay unfolded in one complete package. But the re-writes along with Chelsey’s deftness, helped me create a piece of writing worth submitting to WOW.

WOW: Do you have any thoughts or advice for writing about difficult things?

Carol: Yes. First, don’t be afraid to write from your gut. Go deep. Get it out and on the page. Bleed. Read it aloud to yourself. If you cry while you’re reading, you’ve hit pay dirt. Don’t judge yourself. You’ll re-shape your writing in the re-writes. Take breaks. Long breaks if necessary. Pamper yourself. Eat chocolate. Walk in nature. Swim. When you’re soaked in self-love, go back to the page and write from your gut again.

WOW: Great advice! You’ve also completed a memoir that’s going out to publishers. Can you tell us anything about it? What was your writing journey like with this project?

Carol: Yes. The new working title (was Pearls, then Ruptured, other titles before those) is 
CHASING BLISS: An Artist’s Quest to Break Free of Mother and Mythical Daddies. It’s the story of an artist who grew up under the narcissistic thumb of a mother who expected perfection from her daughter—beauty as well as talent. It’s also the story of an absent alcoholic father who became a fantasy figure, a mythical daddy—the measure all future relationships including three marriages and a child—this artist’s third marriage came together and held together through the glue of meditation. It was the perfect marriage until it wasn’t. This is the story of an artist’s desperate journey of survival from loss and eventual liberation through meditation, creativity, and dance as told through her artist eyes.

My writing journey is still evolving This memoir project was long in the making. Finding my voice, finding the right structure, learning how to write. In the beginning, this story was all “poor me and you bastard.” But over time as I learned to write scenes, use active voice, get rid of all my clichés and “little darlings,” rid myself of “ly” adverbs, use concrete nouns, let go of traditional syntax, and find rhythm, the memoir took shape to tell the story that needed to be told.

WOW: Thanks so much for chatting with us today, Carol. Before you go, can you share a favorite writing tip or piece of advice?

Carol: You’re welcome. And yes, my favorite writing tip or piece of advice: Sit down every day (I like mornings) with a pen and a tablet. Give yourself a prompt. Set a timer for 15 or 20 minutes and write without punctuation, without lifting your pen, without editing, without thinking. Read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I find the best writing starts out this way. I write to learn what it is I’m writing about. Sometimes I write word associations—let the words lead the writing. When the timer goes off, I read it aloud, then “type” it up. Then I re-write. Do not edit your work until you’ve re-written it several times. The art is in the re-write.

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