Minda Honey is the author of The Heartbreak Years, a hilarious and intimate memoir of a Black woman in her 20s finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.
Minda's essays on politics and relationships have appeared in all kinds of amazing places, including Harper's Bazaar, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. She is also the editor of Black Joy at Reckon, an online outlet where she also helms a newsletter that has nearly 60,000 subscribers.
Honestly there were SO MANY quotes I wanted to pull from this interview. Such as:
“If you're not creating the art that you have been called upon to create,
your spirit isn't going to be nourished by that. It's like when you're really hungry for something, and somebody hands you a candy bar. And it's like, no, no, no, no.
I need some chicken and rice. I need an actual meal.”
How Minda–the daughter of a postal worker and a computer programmer–did the “get good grades, get a scholarship, join corporate America” thing and realized, it wasn’t for her
Squaring all the “Davids and Jonathans”--the typical authors taught in MFA programs–with the Tonis and Zoras Minda revered
The financial move that helped Minda launch her freelance career
The many daily parts of life that count as ‘writing’
Why you NEED to find your writing community
Minda’s recipe for sitting down to write: Lofi music + a trio of beverages and four hours blocked off
Why Minda was doing our interview from Mexico (it involves “skipping winter”, but there’s a lot more to it than that)
Giving up drinking and moving away from home
How an earlier school of personal essays bordered on being too personal, or what Minda referred to as “self-exploitation”, and how to make sure you’re not doing that in your own personal writing
“I’ve had elderly white women who've reached out to me and said, ‘I’ve been married for 40 years with four kids, and this book really resonated with me, and now I better understand the Black experience in America,’ which was not something I set out to do when I wrote my book about dating, but if I can solve racism in America as well, so be it.”
How even when you tell people what your book is about with a very clear title, some people are going to be upset by what you include in your book
Why doing the art that speaks to your soul is the only way to go
Her genius approach to dealing with the inner critic (preview: she proves it’s a liar)
Why not every day is a day for writing
Learning to cry
How Minda uses tools like human design and tarot in work and life
The insights–on double consciousness, omniscience, and overlapping timelines–she got at a recent writing conference
How Andre 3000’s new flute album is cracking open possibilities in her mind
The concept of a braided essay, and how it’s like making a charcuterie board
How people are dismissive of women writing truthfully about all parts of their lives–and how she deals with the haters
“People are very dismissive of women writing about their experiences,
of women writing about love, of women writing about sex,
of women writing in a way in which they are shameless.”
Lightbulb moments:
The concept of self-exploitation was a new term for me
New approach to handling the inner critic—prove it wrong!
Links to specific things we discussed:
Matcha latte made with pistachio milk and a scoop of collagen, blended in a blender (no chunks!)
The satisfying clack-clack-clack of a mechanical keyboard
The Black Southern Writers conference
Zelda Lockhart, The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript
Destiny Hemhill, Motherworld
The concept of double consciousness
Jesmyn Ward, Sing Unburied Sing
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below Speaker, Outkast
Andre 3000’s New Blue Sun
Andre 3000’s interviews with The Guardian and NPR
Incubus, “Pardon Me”
Mybodygraph.com (to find your human design)
Connect with Minda:
Minda’s book, The Heartbreak Years
Listen to Minda’s episodes:
Part 1: Answering the call to write
Listen to parts 2 and 3 here (when they are released on 2/21 and 2/23)
Listen to previous episodes:
Jodie Noel Vinson, part 1: Saving time to stare at the sky + writing about the “shadow side of life”
Jodie Noel Vinson, part 2: Saying your big dreams out loud + so many awesome reading recommendations
Jodie Noel Vinson, part 3: Claiming the title "writer" + acknowledging your privilege
Terri Trespicio, part 2: Getting better at “trembling in the face of resistance”
Leigh Medeiros, part 1: The power of merging your siloes + awesome attention hacks
Leigh Medeiros, part 2: A hilarious—and relateable—story about second-guessing your work