Welcome to the second edition of Interviews with Interesting People! It’s a new feature I started here, mainly so I’d have an excuse to meet, chat, or email people I am curious about.
In 2010, Allison Vesterfelt quit her job, sold all her stuff, went on a road trip through the contiguous 48 states (and eventually made it to the remaining two!), and documented her journey.
I had the pleasure of reading Ally’s new book about that experience, Packing Light, and meeting her at STORY last week. She was kind enough to answer some questions about her book and the writing life.
I noticed that in addition to the theme of traveling light, the theme of rules seemed to come up a lot throughout the book. Where there any other themes that emerged during the trip that didn’t necessarily make it into the book?
There were lots of stories that didn’t make it into the book, but the book is so introspective that most of the themes made it into the narrative. During the time we were traveling I was asking myself questions like, who is God? Does He love me? Can I trust Him? What am I here for? Who will I end up with? Am I worth loving? All of these themes made their way into the book.
But like I said, there were so many things that happened to us over the course of our travels, that there simply wasn’t room to share all of them. There was the story of the man we met in Saratoga, New York, who offered to take us to dinner at a steak house. We agreed, because we had a rule about always accepting free food, and followed him down the street to this restaurant. But about ten minutes into the meal, we started to get the sense that something was a little off. He invited us to come back to his house, so we wouldn’t be “homeless” and we tried to explain how we weren’t homeless. He kept insisting, so we told him we had to go. He asked us why we had to go, and we told him we had to get to the post office before it closed so we could get envelopes to send out packages of Sharaya’s CD she had just received. And he told us he had envelopes — hundreds of them — back at his house. Needless to say, we got out of there very quickly, and moved on to our next location.
There are dozens of funny, interesting or scary stories like that from our travels that just didn’t seem to fit the arc of the story, but that make for interesting anecdotes, so they’re fun to tell… especially when people have read the book.
What were the most rewarding and most challenging parts of writing and then publishing a book, especially one that seems so personal?
The most rewarding part is that, as you put your story on paper, and turn it into something that will be interesting to other people (or at least make sense), it really starts to make sense to you, too. I think this is one of my favorite things about writing. It helps me to see meaning in my story, and in the stories of others. That’s what we do when we take the events of our lives, and arrange them on the page in a way that communicates a clear message — we gain clarity. The hard things we faced before all of a sudden start to make sense. We start to see ourselves, and others, and the world, with new eyes. And that is really intrinsically rewarding.
The part I thought would be rewarding is the part that feels a little tenuous to me, and that’s the praise or affirmation you get for what you’ve written. In one sense, it’s really nice to see people responding to your words, and praising you for them, but I guess it makes me nervous about a few things. 1) I wonder if people feel obligated to say they like what I’ve written, even if they don’t. Especially people who know me and are friends with me outside of being an author. And that just makes me worry my relationships with those people will become cold or inauthentic, if they don’t feel like they can be honest with me about how my words struck them. 2) I’d be lying if I said the praise doesn’t feel good, but it makes me worry that I’ll become dependent on it, so that if I do meet people who didn’t like my story, or didn’t resonate with it, or just didn’t like the way I told it, I’ll feel crushed by their words and I won’t be able to engage with them or hear what they have to say. My greatest hope is that I can just stay balanced, I guess. And that as I work to grow my career as a writer, I won’t forget that I am a person, too. A daughter, a wife, a sister… and many other things. I just pray that won’t get lost as I live out this dream I’ve looked toward and hoped for for so long.
Has it gotten any easier to identify as a writer? What do you tell people you do now?
It’s getting easier. Definitely. Especially since this is literally what I do all day long. Usually, when people ask, I tell them I’m an author. I think publishing a book helped me make this leap, and also working with other really talented writers (I coach other authors, and work with several writers through Prodigal Magazine) who hesitate to call themselves writers makes me see my circumstances with new perspective. It makes me think, “This person is a really talented writer, and still feels insecure about his or her craft. That’s so silly!” I guess that helps me identify myself as a writer when people ask.
Why do you think it’s so hard to identify as a writer?
Great question. I think it’s just insecurity. Deep down inside, I always knew I was a writer. There wasn’t anything else I wanted to be. The only thing stopping me from saying it (and even doing it) was this sense that, if I told people I was a “writer” they would think to themselves: You’re a writer? You’re not a very good one. But once I got over that fear, it became easier to just tell people, “I’m a writer.”
I think this is true for so many people who are in their 20’s and just starting their career. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing — if you’re a lawyer, or a nurse, or a programmer — you’re new at it. You’re young. You’re just getting started. So you’re not going to be the best “fill-in-the-blank” there is out there. But that’s okay. I think calling yourself something is the first step to becoming it. And just because you aren’t the BEST writer ever doesn’t mean you’re not a writer. It just means you’re a new writer, and you’re learning.
Do you ever wonder how things would be different if you hadn’t gone on the trip? Is there anything you would change if you could?
I can’t even imagine a life where I didn’t go on the trip. Or, actually, that’s not true. I can imagine it, but I cringe. I hate what I see. There’s not a single thing I would change about my journey, except just that I wish I would have taken it sooner. I wish it wouldn’t have taken me so long to jump in and get started. I wish I wouldn’t have let insecurity and fear cripple me for so long. I wish I wouldn’t have wasted so much time building a life I didn’t want to live. I wish I would have done this all sooner.
Be sure to visit Allison’s blog and have a look at her new book, Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage
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