On Going, On Staying, On Cheese Cubes: An Interview of Dina L. Relles by Christina Berke
Henry on the left and Bugsy on the right
This week, in our ongoing series of interviews with Split Lip FAM, I talked with contributor Dina L. Relles. Dina is a writer, editor, former lawyer, and mother of four. She is the nonfiction editor at Pidgeonholes and works in communications for a school outside of Philadelphia. Dina’s writing, which has been published in Wigleaf, DIAGRAM, Passages North, and elsewhere, explores themes of distance and desire, the peculiar intimacy of strangers, and the uncertainty at the heart of all things.
True to the themes that show up in her writing, we were two strangers at the beginning of our phone call, living in distant states, looking out windows at different kinds of weather.
People don’t seem to do that as much anymore—chat on the phone. Actually I was inclined to email over some questions, and get a reply back, adding to my digital detritus that someone might find in my tech-hoarding cloud a century later. But there’s something magical about picking up the phone and having a real-time conversation with a human being on the other end. I stumble on words, I repeat myself, I backtrack, I say “like” so much I cringe. And yet in between those spaces are threads that weave into a cozy blanket of conversation, of connection.
Dina and I spoke over the actual telephone about love letters, lawyers, and R.E.M. Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Christina Berke: Thanks so much for agreeing to be interviewed for Split Lip Magazine. We really loved your piece, “On Going,” which was in our tenth anniversary issue. You also have an impressive publication history. Congratulations! Can you take us back to when you were first starting to write—a first byline, or the first time you were paid to write?
Dina L. Relles: In this really bizarre turn of events, I first published in The Atlantic, which is a byline that I never expected to land. I really had no idea what I was doing at the time, and I didn’t even realize what it meant to be published [there]. In some ways, I think being clueless allowed me to be more brazen about it. I didn’t even know that I should be so nervous to send an Atlantic editor my work—I just sort of did it without thinking and didn’t get in my own way.
CB: You were off and running! Any bumps along the way?
DR: The comments section was brutal. It actually turned me away from that kind of writing. I didn’t want to be writing about my kids or my family as much anymore. And I certainly didn’t want to be writing controversial think pieces because I don’t have the thick skin required for the kind of ad hominem attack on the writer that followed. That was not what I was in it for.
CB: So, what are you in it for?
DR: Honestly, I don’t have a clear end game. I just can’t imagine not writing. When I’m not writing, I don’t feel whole. So I just know I need to do it. And a lot of it feels like a way to process things I miss or things I long for. It’s the way I get in touch with my deepest emotional truth. Connecting with others is a huge secondary bonus. It’s so fulfilling to have that be an outgrowth of it, but I think when that comes I’m always surprised.
CB: You’re joining a long line of lawyers-turned-writers including John Grisham, Jamila Minnicks, and our very own Maureen Langloss. What was the road that led to this?
DR: When I practiced law, what I loved the most was the writing element of it. I would immerse myself in writing briefs and motions and proofing those documents on a sentence level, to the point where people I was working for were like, it’s good enough, let it go. And I couldn’t let it go. Later on in my career what ultimately became clear was that I didn’t love other aspects of practicing law enough to give myself over to it in the way that it demands. I had three kids in three years. And I was at the point where I’d have to really double down on my legal career to make partner at the firm I was working at. It was just a crossroads moment. My family was moving at the time. There was a natural transition, a natural breaking point. I decided, instead of going for partner, to step away from practice.
Then I was home full-time with my children and writing became this necessary intellectual outlet for me. I started writing creatively for the first time in earnest. I was blogging at the time, mostly parenting writing, which is not something that I really do at all anymore. But that was my first exploration of what it means to write regularly. I was keeping a blog just to keep my brain engaged and stimulated. It was like a life raft. It was so fulfilling. It brought with it this really robust, interconnected community of mother-writers. And I felt like I had found new colleagues and a new outlet for my desire to write.
CB: I love to know about a writer’s practice—consistency and rejections are two things that I struggle with personally. What does yours look like (workshops, rituals, editing, bouncing back from rejection, or stagnation)?
DR: I have to confess—I have not been writing as much as I want to lately because I have a newish job working at a school, so a lot of my writing energy is going into that. But I have always loved writing in the early morning. For as long as I can remember, if I have a kernel of an idea that I want to explore, or a piece I’m excited about, or a new conceit or structure to apply to a work-in-progress, I will wake up as early as I can manage before my kids are awake, before anyone needs me, even at 3am. Because that is when I am the sharpest, and the world is quiet, and I can focus. And I brew the coffee. It’s just me and the coffee, and the dark world, and my deepest thoughts. That is when I’ve had the best experience writing and when I produce my best work.
I find that typically it’s very hard for me to write if I don’t have something I really want to say. I have a friend who journals every morning; she has a ritual of, no matter what, handwriting in her journal for an hour. I tried doing it and it produced complete garbage because I just didn’t have something I wanted to write about every morning. Forcing it didn’t work. There are fallow periods for me and I have to just accept that even though I get really antsy about them. But I also have to honor that and not force it because I need to have this burning thing that I really want to explore in order for the writing to come the way I want it.
CB: Not forcing it is so important because I think when we take something that we really love and make it into something we aren’t excited about it can create problems, at least for me. I become resentful.
DR: Yeah, I often say to writing friends of mine when we are motivating each other—go where the heat is. I don’t know if I made that up—I am always worried about taking undue credit—but I believe it’s a wonderful motto.
CB: One of the things that struck me in your bio was that you read old letters, and it reminded me that I used to have a lot of pen pals. Some of these people buoyed me through some trying times in my life. So I’m curious—are these pen pal letters? If so, what’s the longest you’ve written someone (or your first, or last letter you wrote or received)?
DR: I have had pen pals, and even some in the writing community. And there are writers who will take on writing postcards to fellow writers like Kendra Fortmeyer—she has done that in the past. It’s a really beautiful way to connect with other writers, because even in the space of a postcard, they can just capture these gorgeous, gorgeous little nuggets of thoughts and feelings.
But what I’m referring to there is more that I have an old trunk filled with the most special letters that I’ve ever received over the course of my life starting from nursery school. I’ve saved everything that has ever meant anything to me, which, you know, is beautiful and problematic. If I’m anything, I am deeply nostalgic. I have letters from my second grade boyfriend, my high school crush—all these relationships throughout my life. So anyone who’s ever written me a love letter, or written me a poem. It’s not always romantic, it’s friends, too. Now I have letters from my children. It all goes into this chest.
At one point I did a purge and got rid of anything that didn’t have some substance or some meaning behind it. It was getting a little unwieldy. That produced a piece that was published in Monkeybicycle, called “All I Have Left,” and it’s one of my favorites that I’ve written. It was basically excerpts from this collection of letters that I had accumulated over the years, because I felt this strange urge to cull through and distill it down to the ones that held the most meaning.
Sometimes I’ll pull out a batch from a certain time period or relationship and just revisit all of that emotion. You see something new, and you learn something new about yourself or your world every time. I like sitting with all of that sentiment and nostalgia.
CB: I keep letters and cards too, but it’s overwhelming to think about going through them, organizing them…
DR: If anyone is inclined to do it, I recommend it. You save these things for some reason, or they made you feel a certain something, and then you sort of come to terms with a past self and time passing and what remains and what you’ve lost and who you are. And it’s just a really interesting inquiry into the self, and into relationships, and to sort of just the way you exist in relation to the people and the places you’ve been, and the person that you’ve become over the course of your life. Just a really powerful exercise. It’s a really beautiful thing to revisit some of your influences. It’ll always trigger memories, and then you have endless little avenues to explore.
CB: Speaking of influences, I’m curious about yours. This could include artists in general—music, visual, nature. What’s something you read or saw recently that you couldn’t stop thinking about?
DR: There are writers that I have been heavily influenced by. Sarah Manguso, Chelsea Hodson, Jenny Boully—I was reading the three of them right around the same time. They all do these beautiful aphorisms; sometimes their chapters are a single line. Seeing that gave me permission. These short bursts of memory or truth, that’s where I feel most at home. It’s what I love to read. And it’s what I love to write. Those writers were already doing that. It was really exciting to see.
I also read a lot of Judith Kitchen. Her writing is so heavily steeped in place. I found her at a time when I was realizing that my writing also draws heavily on place as a way to access memory. So she was really inspiring in that way. I live in a rural area, and the vast winter landscapes influence my writing about the relationship between distance and desire. I’m also really taken by gas stations and diners and airports—these common spaces, places of passing through. I want to take a cross-country road trip to photograph and write about diners and gas stations.
There’s also a poet, Devin Kelly, who is just a beautiful writer. I know if I’m going to read something he writes, I’m going to want to write. I have to set aside time if he publishes something new when I know I can be generative or when I’m feeling well rested, because I read him and then I want to write, which is the greatest compliment I can give to a writer. It’s really admirable and compelling. Oh and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li—that book made a profound impression on me, and I wish I could encounter it again for the first time.
CB: Yeah! Sometimes when I get antsy about writing, I’ll flip open a poetry collection or listen to some spoken word.
DR: Actually I heard Terrence Hayes speak recently with a dear friend. Sometimes I feel, not guilty, but…worried…should I really be reading other writers before I start writing? If my writing comes too close to theirs, it feels like I’m trying to mimic them. Shouldn’t it be more original than that? Hayes has this really wonderful way of speaking about how poets do this all the time. They read work that is in the vein of what they’re trying to create as sort of a springboard. He said we’re all writing “after” something. We’re all writing after other poets and relying on work that came before as a way to be in conversation with what we want to create. It felt like permission to have the work exist in conversation with other writers and not feel like you have to apologize for that.
CB: I read a book recently where in the acknowledgments, they listed music and conversations and just so many other things that I didn’t even think that we’re influenced by. But I was also stressed because I wonder if this is going to be the new standard in terms of keeping track of everything that has ever influenced you. Listing everything seems overwhelming, but also a cool way to say, I was reading these things or listening to this or watching this at this time. And maybe these ideas sprung from there. Or even just, this kept me going when I felt like giving up.
DR: Sometimes it’s really subconscious—what has lodged its way into your brain and what you’re accessing when you’re writing and sometimes you don’t even realize it, but it was a song you heard earlier that day or a conversation you had with someone. It’s all rattling around in there. I think it’s all fair game. It’s all influence. We don’t exist in a vacuum; we exist in a really complex interconnected world. And we’re all drawing on that when we create art in different ways. It’s actually something to be celebrated.
CB: Speaking of music—what songs are you listening to on those “winding along country roads with the music too loud”?
DR: I have to mention R.E.M. because I have listened to them since I fell in love with them at eleven years old. They are forever my favorite band. So I can always blast their music and feel fulfilled. But I have to say I have discovered Spotify—I am very late. Definitely played actual CDs for a very long time. Anyway, so now I have this playlist of favorite songs that began with Gregory Alan Isakov. He is a singer-songwriter I grew up with at summer camp actually. And that brings up all kinds of suggested music—Radical Face and The Head and the Heart, among others. I understand digital music now and the value of it. I hope it’s not hurting the artists. I keep thinking I shouldn’t be able to access all of this; something is wrong.
CB: So the last question I have to ask is less high stakes… maybe not, I don’t know. What have you been snacking on lately?
DR: Mary’s Crackers with pepper jack cheese cubes!
Christina Berke is a Los Angeles based writer and memoir reader for Split Lip. Her work can be found in Teen Vogue, Pithead Chapel, Catapult and elsewhere. She’s currently working on Well, Body: a memoir on body image, eating disorders, and childhood trauma. More at www.christinaberke.com.