Christina Socorro Yovovich is a writer I met in the MFA program at The University of New Mexico. We took a creative nonfiction workshop together, and I was so moved by her writing and by the way she was able to talk about her life so openly. She was also one of those multi-talented writers who ended up doing a dual-genre dissertation in creative nonfiction and poetry. We are delighted to feature Christina in the month of July! We hope you enjoy getting to know her a little better through our interview with her.
Plume: When did you know you were a writer?
Christina Socorro Yovovich: I think I fully grabbed onto the identity of writer when I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I majored in English with a creative writing emphasis, and helped to restart the school’s undergraduate literary magazine, Canvas, and somewhere in there I started to believe I was a writer. Back then I wrote fiction. I lived in a housing co-op with 12 other people, many with creative bents, and one other undergraduate friend who was also a writer. I remember working on short stories in our respective rooms, and then running up or down the stairs to check in with our progress. I loved being a writer as an undergrad.
I briefly—it seems brief now but did not seem brief then—lost the identity of writer after I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 22. In the aftermath of my psychotic episode and diagnosis I lost the ability to write. It was one of the many heartbreaking aspects of that time. At age 24 I moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico with my then boyfriend, now husband, and it was here that I slowly came back to writing, but not through fiction. Instead I came back to writing through poetry, and eventually nonfiction, and these are still what I write today.
P: Where do you get your ideas?
CSY: At the moment I’m mostly working on memoir, so my ideas come from my own life. I often feel like I’m writing in service of a younger Christina. Back when I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder I was so hungry to read about my mental illness, but I wasn’t that satisfied with what I found. I devoured Kay Redfield Jameson but I wanted more, and I couldn’t find more. I write about my experiences with mental illness for that younger self who was so lost, and so hungry for connection. The thing that guides which projects I work on is often that idea of younger Christina and what she would have liked to read. That sounds dangerously self-absorbed, but I trust that if younger Christina needed to read certain things, then surely there are others out there who need those things too.
P: Where do you write?
CSY: My preferred thing is café writing. In my ideal world, I meet a writing friend at a café, we chat over our coffees for awhile, and then we both put our heads down and get to work. I love writing with a friend across the table. It makes a lonely pursuit much less lonely. I have a couple friends that I have (had) regular writing dates with and I value them greatly. If there isn’t a writing companion to be had, then my second best is to write alone in a coffeeshop. Something about being surrounded by a quiet bustle of other people working and talking helps me to stay focused on the page, and helps me to be brave.
That said, café writing hasn’t been an option since early March. Truthfully, at first I when the pandemic started I simply wasn’t writing. But as it became clear social isolation was going to be with us for a long time, I decided it was time to start writing again. Now when it is time to write, I take my laptop into our third bedroom, which serves as a shared office for my husband and I and also our guest bedroom, and I sit down at the desk I have in there, and I write. I miss coffee shops, but I appreciate the view of the tree out my window, and the watercolor paintings by my son and myself that are lined up against the sill.
P: Do you have any writing rituals?
CSY: Most of my writing rituals have to do with location. The perfect coffee shop. Sitting down with a friend and a cortado. Checking in with them about what we plan to work on that day. All of these are not accessible to me at the moment, so my ritual consists of walking into the office, closing the door, and sitting down at my desk. I do keep a Treadmill Journal when I’m really on a roll with my memoir project. I got that habit from Greg Martin when I took his writing workshops at UNM and I’ve found the practice helps me to stay focused on what I need to do.
P: How supportive is your local community for writers?
CSY: I feel lucky to have a very supportive community here in Albuquerque. There are the friends I meet weekly to write with. I also have a writing group that has been meeting 3-4 times a year to workshop our work in progress for the past ten years now. There are also local readings such as Bad Mouth (which I’ll admit I haven’t been going to that often since the birth of my son eight years ago). But I was invited to read at Bad Mouth last fall, and the community and encouragement I found there gave my writing life such a boost.
P: What are some of your self-care practices?
CSY: Right now my best self-care practice is making sure I get exercise. Exercise smooths out my anxiety and depression and just makes everything better. At first when social isolation started, I was taking long walks with my son every morning. That lasted about a month, and then distance schooling started for him, which interfered with our walk schedule. For awhile I wasn’t getting much exercise, and I could feel it in my moods. Finally I got smart and took a look at our schedule and figured out when I could fit it some exercise time for me. Now I alternate between doing a body weight workout and a spin workout while my son is watching Arthur at the beginning of his screen time.
Another self-care practice is writing an email to my daily check-in group. I have a small group of friends, one of whom I’ve never met in person, that I’ve been emailing with for more than ten years, maybe even more than fifteen years at this point. Checking in with this group each morning, and then sometimes throughout the day, is an integral part of my self-care. It is my way of keeping a journal, only it involves communicating with other people. Sometimes I feel like I don’t know what I’m thinking or feeling until I write it down, and this group helps me to stay in touch with what is going on inside my head.
P: What is your favorite book about writing?
CSY: My most recent favorite book about writing is The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. When I read it, it really helped me to form my memoir project in my head, and to feel like writing it was something I could do. I should probably revisit the book soon, as I’ve been feeling a little lost with respect to this project more recently.
P: Are you able to write during this strange, scary moment we’re living in? If so, what are you working on?
CSY: I’ll admit that at first I wasn’t writing at all. When social isolation started, I made up a schedule for my son, and that schedule didn’t include any time for me to write, besides my daily email check-ins. This was on purpose. I was so filled with fear and panic that I didn’t want to write, didn’t think I could write. I just wanted to focus on getting through each day with my son staying mentally relatively okay. That was my goal. As this time has stretched on, and as it became clear we would be in some form of isolation for a long time, it became clear to me that I needed to look at that schedule and find two things, time for me to exercise, and time for me to write. I now write for an hour each night after dinner. It isn’t a lot of time, but it is enough for now. I’ve been having a lot of trouble working on my memoir manuscript. I can barely even focus enough to read what I’ve got, let alone write more in it. I’m being gentle with myself for now. We are all living through trauma, after all. Instead I’ve been working on a small essay about pandemic parenting, and also I’ve been playing around, trying to find a small project that feels right to work on. I want to learn how to write short, contemplative, lyrical essays, and now seems like it might be a good time to work on that.
P: What writers help you find solace in difficult times? (Either ones you know personally, ones you read, or both)
CSY: Here I can see two answers. The one I’d like to give, and the one that is true for me. I’d like to give you a lovely list of poets and essayists who I turn to in times of trouble, but, really, that wouldn’t be honest. When times are truly difficult, I turn to children’s literature. The year after I was diagnosed as being bipolar was one of the most difficult times of my life. I couldn’t write, and I could barely read. When I did come back to reading, I did it through children’s books. Both re-readings of books I’d read as a girl, like The Little House books and Anne of Green Gables books, and also books that were new to me. That year I discovered Diana Wynne Jones and checked out every book of hers that the library had to offer. To this day, when things are hard, I retreat to these childhood worlds. At the moment I’m in the middle of rereading L.M. Montgomery’s work (Anne of Ingleside right now). I’ll know I’m starting to feel better when I venture back into the realm of adult literature.
Christina Socorro Yovovich lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with her son and husband. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as the Blue Mesa Review, River Styx, and Mothers Always Write. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Hunger and Mutha Magazine. She is currently working on a memoir about parenting with bipolar disorder.
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