Author Q & A with Nancy Jorgensen

This week’s Author Q & A is with Nancy Jorgensen. Nancy is a Wisconsin writer, educator, and musician. Her most recent book, a middle-grade/young adult sports biography, was released in 2022: Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete. She is also an essayist writing about music, equality, family, aging, and education. Her work appears in Ruminate, River Teeth, Wisconsin Public Radio, CHEAP POP, and elsewhere and more about her is available at at NancyJorgensen.weebly.com.

Her flash nonfiction, The Heart and Other Organs, is featured in Issue #11 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

For over 30 years, I taught high school choir, directing concerts, madrigals, barbershop quartets, collaborations with professional orchestras, and musical theater productions. Every day, I saw 350 students, often with 100 in a class. I now work at home, with just my husband in the house. Very different! 

One thing has been constant and that is writing. While I was teaching, a colleague and I wrote two choral music education books, and there were always concert and theater programs to write, with bios and notes. Now, I write nonfiction books, creative nonfiction essays, and a little bit of poetry. The balance has shifted to more writing, less music. But I still play piano accompaniments for solo performers, and piano duets with a friend. I am also in an early music group that plays recorder, psaltery, krummhorn, and cornamuse. I enjoy bread making, working with textiles, and spending time with my two daughters and their families, which now include two grandsons.

The Heart and Other Organs was beautifully symbolic and poetic. What inspired you to write the story and write it in that fashion?

I wrote “The Heart and Other Organs” in response to a submission call for “letters I’ll never send.” When the essay wasn’t accepted, I continued to edit, revise, and submit to other markets. This is often the path my essays take. A submission prompt inspires a story, and when the piece is declined, I continue to hone the idea, tweak the metaphors, polish the language, and eventually sharpen it into a publishable piece.

What message do you hope reaches your audience through The Heart and Other Organs?

People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Love is complicated. And there is no formula for who, when, or how we love. I want to impact readers who have lost friends and lovers too soon. Who nurture memories for a lifetime.

Is this a tribute to your old friend? What impacted you most when writing it?

We were friends when I was in my twenties and thirties—a time when I made career decisions, established lifelong friendships, and got married. Because those years were so impactful, they are fresh for me today. I think about the songs, the food, the secrets, my circle of friends. Some of those friends are still in my life today, but there is an enormous hole left by others. As I wrote, memories rushed back and made me grateful, but also sad and resentful: what if we had lived thirty years later when AIDS was not a death sentence?

How do you use symbolism in your other work?

Symbolism and metaphor help me frame ideas. They make a point without a literal explanation. Whatever I’m writing—essays, poetry, nonfiction—I look for symbols to enhance the piece. They allow me to tell two stories, one on the surface, and a second one that lives deeper. It’s always a challenge to know how much I should explain and how much I should leave for the reader to work out.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud.

My recent book Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete, was a collaboration with my two daughters. We noticed a hole in the middle-grade nonfiction market, and booksellers and librarians agreed. There are not enough books with female heroes, specifically female sports heroes. We were lucky to have the perfect subject: my daughter Gwen, the Rio 2016 Olympic champion in triathlon. So, the three of us, Gwen, Elizabeth, and I, wrote a book about Gwen’s journey.

Elizabeth and I did the bulk of the writing, with Gwen providing stories and themes for us to capture. Letters are a big part of the book, with Gwen writing to her younger self and to the reader. We kept technical information about triathlon out of the narrative and placed it in sidebars. And we devised a two-timeline approach: one that follows Gwen during the seven days leading up to her Rio race, and a second that flashes back to experiences from childhood to professional athlete. 

Once Meyer & Meyer Sport released the book, we wrote a free Educator Guide for parents, teachers, or coaches with exercises and activities on goal setting, team building, showing gratitude, and taking risks. I’m proud that my daughters and I have a loving, supportive family relationship, but also a respectful professional one that allows us to work creatively together.

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

As often as possible, I write first thing in the morning, from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. I like to have a project or chapter in mind when I begin. For the days I’m not in the middle of a project, I keep a Google Doc filled with ideas so I have a resource for inspiration. In the afternoons, I walk in the county park near my home. Although not officially writing time, ideas often pop into my thoughts. When that happens, I send myself an email, so the next day I have material to incorporate into an existing or new essay. I am lucky to have my daughter Elizabeth as a writing partner.

She teaches creative writing in a public high school and has shown me so much about editing and critiquing. When either of us has drafted an article or a chapter we share via Google Docs. The other person offers suggestions, comments, and line edits. Elizabeth spots inconsistencies, holes, or faulty logic that I miss when I’m too close to a piece. I do the same for her. Elizabeth and I have co-written many articles and collaborated on two nonfiction books.

How have your life experiences impacted the way you write?

To play piano requires discipline and daily practice. For years, I played scales and arpeggios, usually at the same time every day. The routine and time-blocking facilitated progress, and I have applied it to my writing life. I don’t have to search for writing time each day—it’s already built in. 

Creatively, I incorporate experiences from a long life. I was a pre-Title IX student, professional woman, musician, mother of an Olympic champion, and educator. I also use rich memories of grandparents, parents, and their stories of the Great Depression, of women denied an education, and of family dynamics positive and negative.

What is your favorite type of creative writing?

I’ve tried fiction and I’m terrible at it. I’m a beginner in poetry but hoping to learn and improve. My favorite genre is flash nonfiction. I enjoy telling a powerful true story in very few words. Although the word count is low, the challenge is great. To use just the right literary device, to convey emotion, to create metaphors, to deliver a universal message. All in 1,000 words or less.

Which has impacted your life more, music or writing? Or are they equal on the scale of expression?

Writing words and making music are both so emotional. In each, the goal is to create a feeling—to affect the reader or listener. For me, music has more impact because it is a collaboration, while reading and writing are solitary. Musicians work together for hours expressing passion, power, joy, longing. Sharing musical emotion braids a bond of personal emotion. As hard as we try, words cannot describe or evoke that experience. Even when listening or playing alone, music fires a unique chemistry in the brain. Nothing else compares and it’s unlike anything words on a page can do.

What advice can you give to beginning writers?

Writers, beginning or advanced, need a writing partner or writing group. Honest feedback from unbiased readers are essential. Writing partners can see and expose big issues like a hole in the narrative or an out-of-order timeline. They can also reveal smaller issues like repeated words, misspellings, and grammatical errors. Skilled partners will point out literary strengths, too, so we can build on those. An added benefit is that a writer learns from others’ mistakes. And there is an emotional benefit from belonging to a group that shares common ambitions, problems, and goals.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?”

Life can be imperfect and still deliver joy. The good life is filled with strong personal connections, a life purpose, creativity, and positivity. All of those require learning, work, and thought, and that is part of the good life too.

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Thank you, Nancy, for participating in this Q&A and sharing your story and part of your journey as a writer with us. We wish you the best!