About Me — Dawn Downey
Author, Essayist, Disruptor
I write essays about love and pain.
Writing is the perfect job for me, a woman buffeted between existential doubt and the cosmic laugh. Existential doubt says, “You don’t know how to write.”
The cosmic laugh says, “You can’t make the writing stop.”
I start each day in my home in Kansas City MO at 5:00 AM, with a bowl of granola, a handful of vitamins, and a dose of caffeine. 6:00 yoga. 7:30 meditate online. 8:30 shower — make mental note to clean bathroom. 9:00 set a timer in the kitchen downstairs, then report to my writing room upstairs. For twenty-five minutes I write, which means: type, delete, make faces, change fonts, type just keep typing, and rejoice when the timer finally dings. Run downstairs — build in exercise — turn off the timer. Spend ten minutes in mindless physical activity like sweeping a floor. Reset timer. Lather, rinse, repeat until lunch.
During work sessions, I deploy an app that blocks the internet from my computer. (I cheat by checking my phone.)
External accountability safeguards me from procrastination. Mondays, I participate in a co-working session with other writers. We video-conference while hunched over our computers, cameras turned on. Therefore, on Mondays I have to write. Tuesdays, I have to produce some prose, because my critique partner and I exchange edits on Wednesdays. Wednesdays, I write because I’m bursting with inspiration and ideas after the critique session. Thursdays, I have to come up with a blog post, because Friday mornings, my blog goes out. Friday mornings, another co-working session, cameras watching; I have to write.
The blog also serves as a jumping off point for my books (https://dawndowneyblog.com/books.html). If a story elicits a string of responses like “You hit me exactly where I am right this minute,” or “Are you me?” it’s a message from the world to transform a post into a deeper, layered essay for a book.
The cosmic laugh would like you to know that blog posts about pain get 1000 times more responses than posts about love.
I first earned money for an essay in 2007, when The Christian Science Monitor published “Jingle Frogs,” about a Secret Santa exchange I was forced into at work. For the next decade, I was published and paid frequently enough to keep me dabbling in the written word, while I kept up with the rest of life: job, garden, house. Priorities shifted; writing ascended. I quit the job (damn their Secret Santa). The garden weeded over. Dust bunnies bred like rabbits.
The boundary between personal life and professional blurred.
Super-fans began as friends, listening to my occasional essays at spiritual retreats. New readers became friends, identifying with the hurts and triumphs I described. Friendships were strengthened over coffee and readings in private homes. Heaven for this author? A living room with six people leaning forward in their chairs, listening to my words.
In the age of quarantine, it became necessary to find other pathways to connection.
I asked super-fan, Katherine, “Are you up for an experiment?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Let’s do a Zoom call. I’ll read you an essay, and then we can chat about it. You pick the essay.”
Together, we invented Author on Demand private readings.
Aside from videos, fans and I connected through emails, Facebook conversations, and phone calls. Toni texted me as she read Blindsided: Essays from the Only Black Woman in the Room. “I just finished ‘Liza and Me.’ I’m so pissed. We have to talk.”
I was always a glutton for books. And not faithful to any particular genre. My first fantasy was Lord of the Rings. First historical fiction, The Good Earth. First gothic novel, Wuthering Heights. Later, as a creative perfecting her craft, I stuck with the recommendations from writing buddies. At various times, my favorite authors were Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, and Martha Wells. The list changed regularly.
Except for Ms. Morrison.
For fun, I took up singing. At first, I told myself I was doing it for business reasons. I couldn’t justify fun. Weekly lessons kept the voice in shape for narrating my audio books, but … really … singing was a stunningly joyful laugh-out-loud hoot. Lessons packed a bigger rush than caffeine, because belting the right sound, at the right time, in the right key required participation from the entire body.
Voice coach Suzanne gave instructions that confounded my intellect. “Let your abs take you to the high notes.”
Apparently, the abs understood. Without my analysis, the high notes happened. Total reliance on my body provided a vacation for my writer’s brain. Like yoga, singing put me completely in the present moment — muscle memory the only kind of memory that counted. Previously in-person lessons were recorded on my phone. I played them back to practice the exercises and to hear the laughing going on between Suzanne and me. And every week, I phoned a friend, just to serenade her.
Existential doubt says, “You’re not qualified to write, video, or sing.”
The cosmic laugh says, “Guess what? You’re going to start vlogging.”
