Harriet Levin Milan is the author of four published books and one edited. She is also the director of the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing and an associate teaching professor of English at Drexel University. She spoke with Michaela Graf on April 28.
Michaela Graf: Hi Harriet. Thank you so much for talking with me today. I am really excited to get to know more about your writing process and accomplishments and see what advice you have to offer to young or inexperienced writers.
Harriet Milan: Hi Michaela, I am so glad you reached out. Thank you for thinking of me.
MG: Okay, just to start, I want to ask what inspires you to write?
HM: So, I would say that it changes, from book to book, or it changes every decade. I think when I was young and how I first got into writing was that I always imagined a different life. I wasn’t satisfied with what was around me, I longed for a more imaginative life. I would make up characters and imagine different things, and I think that had to do with the fact that I was a very avid reader. I was reading books and I wanted to create these imaginative spaces that weren’t in my life. My parents weren’t very adventurous, and I was longing for a different reality.
In the beginning, I was trying to create an imaginative life. But then—as I got older—it was more about relationships. I would like a boy, or a boy would like me, and I would try to create these imaginative relationships, or I would write something where I would pour out my heart.
As I got even older though, I started finding out more about my own family’s history. My parents are first generation Americans. I really knew very little about where they came from and my parents knew very little. A lot of the writing I do now is to uncover the past. Isabel Allende calls it “playing with ghosts.” What inspires me now is uncovering ghosts or unearthing history, establishing my history.
Each day is historical and I think what inspires me right now is to see my everyday life outside of the present moment. On the other hand, though, I do feel very inspired by the present moment. For example, right now COVID-19, is a pandemic like nothing the world has ever seen. I have a desire to document the present moment, but also to envision how it could be…to imagine it differently.
But, beyond all that, the writing itself inspires me. I enjoy the act of writing, the free time, and the free space. I like to give myself the time to sit down and engage with language. I have grown to crave it, crave writing actually, putting the words on the page.
Reading is important too. I like to read international authors because they bring different perspectives to the work. I don’t like to read just American authors; it is beneficial to read writers from different cultures and different countries. That’s the reason I developed those study abroad trips, for students to have the chance to go abroad and enrich their writing. When you come to a new place as an outsider, and you return to your life, your world, you cultivate a different perspective of it.
MG: Going off that, I want to ask what does your typical writing process look like? Does it differ for each book or each piece? Do you have a general outline or timeline that you follow?
HM: I try to keep a writing practice. Usually the best time for me is to write early in the morning, even if it’s only for 10 or 20 minutes, just something quick. If I can’t write first thing in the morning, I definitely try to think about what I want to write.
Since COVID, I haven’t been able to do that, I’ve been feeling very lazy and unfocused. I’ve just been writing throughout the day. When I am working on a project, I can get very obsessive about it and work on it morning, afternoon, and night. The other thing is, I write in different genres. So, poetry, I like to write as I walk around, drive, and write. Poetry I can keep with me, but for writing fiction I really need to sit down and write at the computer.
MG: Has anything changed because of COVID, other than your schedule?
HM: I’ve been writing more poetry, but I will say that the current novel I am writing, which is intergenerational, had one scene where a character’s grandparents are dying of typhus. And with the current pandemic going on I am going to make it a whole chapter. It’s hard to write about things as they’re happening.
MG: When you’re trying to publish a book, how long would the process typically take you from start to finish, finding a publisher, revisions, and everything that goes into completing a project?
HM: I’ve written four books, and each one took about 10 years. It takes me 2-5 years to actually write, and then another year to find a publisher, and then another year for it to come out. I know there are writers that have books come out every two years, but I have never been able to do that because I am a slow thinker and a perfectionist. It takes me a while to get to a point where I want to publish it, and then like I said you find a publisher and sometimes their schedules are backlogged. I do have a poetry publisher, Cavankerry (https://cavankerrypress.org/) so it may take less time to publish a poetry piece because I could just submit it to them. I’m working on a novel right now, but it’s not nearly done; I think it will take another 3 years. The first poetry book was The Christmas Show. I wrote most of it between the ages of 28 and 32. It didn’t get published until I was 39. Each book probably takes a decade.
MG: Do you feel because it takes so long and is such a long process, that you find yourself feeling discouraged or unmotivated when writing a book?
HM: No, I like that it’s such a long process. Also, because I write poetry, I send it out to journals. I usually get a few pieces published every year in different literary journals, either poems or essays, sometimes short stories but they are hard to publish. I publish a few poems each year or I enter contests, and that always makes me feel good.
MG: Would you say it is the small victories that keep you motivated sometimes?
HM: Yeah, and even with my debut novel, How Fast Can You Run, I sent the first chapter out as a short story and the Kenyon Review published it. That gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement. The literary magazines are wonderful, I find acceptances by those magazines extremely encouraging and they give me the impetus to keep going.
MG: During your writing process, whether it’s a small piece, a poem, or a novel, who do you get your feedback or edits from? Do you ask your students, family, colleagues, friends for advice, and if so, do you find that feedback helpful?
HM: I feel that at different times of my life I had more feedback. When I was in grad school getting my MFA at Iowa of course I had lots of feedback. I think part of the process is that over the years you learn how to do it for yourself. But you still always need eyes, you always need readers. I have some readers I send work to, but it changes. I rarely share my work with non-writer friends or family. I used to call my sisters while I was writing my novel to read them chapters, but it wasn’t so much for feedback. I am an extrovert and after I write something, I just get this feeling that I want to share it with the world.
For feedback, it’s a very small select group of writer friends or an editor. Agent and editor notes are crucial. Even literary magazines, if they do not accept your piece will offer you notes. Editors notes are kind of a dying practice, you have to be very fortunate to get them. But when I get them, I take them and think they are wonderful feedback. That was what was so great about publishing with Cavankerry. They have poets working with them on their advisory board who were assigned to the new poet’s book and I was so fortunate to be assigned Baron Wormser who is a terrific poet. My first poetry book won a prize, the Barnard Women Poets Prize. The recently deceased Irish poet Eavan Boland chose it for publication and gave me notes on every single poem for the whole book. I still have them in a correspondence and they were invaluable.
MG: As a mother, a professor, a wife, and a writer, how and in what ways do you find a balance for all of those identities? It seems overwhelming, but you raised two children, traveled, and are a published author. How do you handle all of it?
HM: Its very stressful. Well in a marriage, you have to balance your relationship with your writing. You need to have clear communication about the time you need to write, that’s super important. I’m really lucky because my husband respects that because I don’t know if all partners do. Children take up a space in your mind even when they are old enough to live on their own. When children are young, it’s very physical and it’s exhausting to write and as they grow older it becomes more of a mental exhaustion. I think I would have been much more productive if I had the mindset of a women today. I was not as courageous as women are today. When I was in my twenties, I didn’t have a lot of role models because women weren’t in prominent positions. The poets Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath couldn’t find a balance. Both of them killed themselves as young mothers. I needed an advocate for women in writing. The book publishers were male, the journal editors were male. It was very difficult to break through to them. They published male writers. Even in grad school, the male writers got all the attention. Throughout my life though, teaching saved me. I want to say that teaching is the greatest privilege. It fit in so well with the writing life and having a family, and I am so happy I got to teach and have an income to support myself because I would never be able to live off of my writing. My teaching job always made me feel good about myself, it gave me prestige when I was having a bad writing day or feeling discouraged.
MG: Okay, that leads me to my final question. What advice would you give to young writers, inexperienced writers, new writers, or writers who are feeling discouraged in the writing process. With everything going on in the world right now, it is very chaotic and disorganized, I just want to hear your thoughts.
HM: Well, this goes with what we were just talking about. I think community is really important. Some of the younger writers I know are involved with communities of mothers, or just other writing groups in Philadelphia. Go to workshops, go to readings, surround yourself with other writers. The author Cherise Wolas says, “Anybody can begin a book, but the real art in writing is finishing a book.” Working and developing characters and finding language keeps you from throwing in the towel, and I think that’s the fun of it—not to keep starting things but to finish them.
MG: It was so nice to talk to you, and I can’t thank you enough for your time and insight. I hope you find time to relax during the pandemic and get to focus on your writing.
HM: Thank you so much. We will keep in touch!
Michaela Graf is a sophomore at Drexel studying Communications with a double minor in Spanish and Writing. She enjoys writing fiction, poetry, and op-ed articles for Drexel’s independent newspaper, The Triangle. She is also planning to go to law school after her undergraduate studies and is in the process of publishing her first piece of poetry in an anthology