Meet Brittany Ackerman

Today we’d like to introduce you to Brittany Ackerman.

Hi Brittany, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started keeping a diary when I was six years old. I mostly filled it with observations and gossip and secrets; it had a little lock on it and I kept the silver key hidden. I continued writing in various notebooks throughout the years, and eventually, in high school, I got my first laptop. I started organizing my writing by season and year: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. The documents would stretch as long as forty-fifty pages per season, and when I got to college, I started an online blog. I no longer have the blog, but right when the pandemic hit, I used my last day of work printing out the entire digital archive of the blog in the teacher’s lounge. The pages barely fit into a three-ring binder, but I threw them in my backpack and tried to make sense of them over the next few years.

In this way, most of my writing comes from observing the world around me and then trying to process these findings, attempting to make sense of them, even though I rarely can. I recently read Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook” with my writing students, and I feel akin to Didion when she says, “I write entirely to find out what’s on my mind, what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing and what it means, what I want and what I’m afraid of.” I’m constantly taking notes on my iPhone and parsing them out later on my computer, fitting moments into scene puzzle-piece style or breaking down ideas for a newsletter, or channeling the sensation of something I felt into an essay.

Kathryn Scanlan says it well in a piece called “Notes on Craft” written for Granta: “It’s in this recorded footage I rummage when I work. During composition, the footage breaks into parts to be manipulated, exaggerated, extrapolated.”

I went to graduate school to get my Masters in Creative Writing with a concentration in creative nonfiction. But since publishing my memoir, I’ve written primarily fiction. I still write essays and would love to write another memoir someday, especially one about Jewish identity and the female lineage of my family’s generational trauma, but I find myself gravitating toward character and voice and story at the present moment, specifically, stories about coming-of-age and first loves, heartbreaks, traumas, and reconciling with finding purpose.

Each story has become a diary of a version of myself that once was. So I guess I still do keep a diary because all of my writing is an excavation of myself on the page.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I’m not sure that writing is a smooth road for anyone, even if it seems it’s been that way. My thesis chair, Becka McKay, who is also one of my greatest writing mentors and friends, often has to remind me that writing is not a straight shot, but a long journey of peaks and valleys.

I still consider myself very new to the literary world, as I have so much to learn. On a walk this morning, I was thinking about how I’m really just now diving into the more structured plot and dual narratives, organization techniques that I’ve never focused on before. Every book I read is also an opportunity to learn something new, and to see much different scaffolding for narrative and world building and point of view.

The biggest struggle I face, though, is myself. In a recent seminar with Melissa Broder, I raised a virtual hand to ask a question about feeling like no matter what you do, no matter how often you publish or advance in the literary realm, it never feels like enough. She was tenderly candid as she responded with, “It’s only enough when you say it’s enough.”

And it’s true. There are days when I’m so happy with what I’ve been able to accomplish at this point in my life—publishing two books that I’m so, so proud of, teaching creative writing from the middle school level to university students to adult writers looking for community. And then there are days when I harp on the things I don’t have, that I haven’t done yet, that I still wish to do in my career. But when I’m able to see these as milestones to continue to strive for, goals to work toward, and doors that will open when they’re supposed to, I’m able to view my writing life as more than enough. I’m able to view the work that I do as a blessing and a gift.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I currently teach English at Vanderbilt University, a job I am extremely grateful for. In my writing course, we cover everything from creative writing, such as how to write a personal narrative essay, to researched writing, meaning that we spend the entire end of each semester formulating questions for research and writing argumentative papers that both join and challenge the current conversation about a variety of societal issues. I’m lucky to be able to plan my own course, and in it, we examine resilience and brain elasticity, the ethics of space exploration, and the big old World Wide Web.

It’s a lovely day job to have as a writer. Teaching at the college level allows me to have whole days off, which I usually spent exercising in the morning, then heading to a coffee shop to write until lunch, and then reading in the afternoons. Don’t get me wrong; I spend a lot of days NOT doing this and instead napping or watching baking videos. But I think one thing I’ve become proud of over the years is my ability to find balance in writing. I definitely don’t write every single day, but I also don’t go through large chunks of time without my writing practice.

Usually, if I’m working on a larger project like a novel, I try to get 1,000 words a day in for consecutive spans of time. If I workshop an essay or short story, I take a week off before looking at it again to revise it. When I’m not writing, I’m collecting ideas for things or taking notes, as I mentioned above, or just trying to live in the world of a piece by creating playlists for the story or doing research or taking workshops, etc.

I think what sets me apart from some other writers is my drive and commitment. This is a very difficult endeavor to pursue. There is so much rejection and self-doubt and criticism and mean Goodreads reviews and also a lot of radio silence and waiting and uncertainty, but I don’t see myself stopping anytime soon. I truly love the peace that writing brings me, the joy and the mental release that self-expression allows for me.

But writing is not my entire identity. I think I used to want people to know me that way, but really, I’m more than a writer. I am a mother-to-be, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a teacher, a listener, a traveler, a reader, a lover of coffee, a lover of oat milk in her coffee, a lover of cooking and baking, a student and life-long learner, a gal who loves to shop, and yes, a writer, too.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brittanyackerman.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suboatmilk 

Image Credits
Carl Bird McLaughlin