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SEAN DIETRICH IS SEAN OF THE SOUTH

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Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

Sean Dietrich is

SEAN OF THE SOUTH

by Kelly Oden

Although he wrote a book proclaiming himself to be the “South’s Okayest Writer,” Sean Dietrich is actually a masterful storyteller in the Southern literary tradition. Known affectionately as Sean of the South, Dietrich weaves wit, heart, grit and wisdom throughout his stories about the people and places that make up the small towns and rural spaces of the American South. A prolific writer, Dietrich has written a column a day for more than ten years on his blog, Sean of the South. He also hosts his podcast of the same name, writes for a handful of national and regional publications and performs his unique blend of music and storytelling live on stage at venues throughout the South. Dietrich is also the author of 13 books with multiple new titles in various stages of development. Dietrich expertly navigates the highs, lows and bittersweet realities of his own life experiences and the experiences and stories of the people he meets along the way, creating vignettes and stories that speak to the heart of the human experience and, in particular, the southern experience.

Sean Dietrich will perform his music and storytelling live at the Imogene Theater in Milton on December 8. The show will serve as a benefit for Big Brothers, Big Sisters, an organization close to Dietrich’s heart and one he has supported in this way for the past five years. Pensacola Magazine had the pleasure of speaking with Sean Dietrich about his life, his writing and the strange territory we often refer to as Lower Alabama.

PM: Hi Sean, tell me a little bit about your background. You’re originally from Missouri, correct?

SD: Well, I was born in Missouri. I spent time in Kansas and then in Georgia a little bit. My father was an ironworker, so we kind of moved around.

PM: What are some of the things you enjoyed doing the most as a young boy?

SD: Gosh, what did I love? I loved to read. I loved to fish. I loved music. Music is a huge part of my life. I played piano from the age of eight or nine. I played music in church and I sang in the church choir. I sang with all the old ladies because that's where my voice register was. I was just kind of a chubby child. Everything I did was funny because chubby kids are funny. I thinned out around 17 or 18 like everyone said I would, but it's rough when you're chubby in your early teens. Your self-image is just so fragile.

PM: Did you know back then that you wanted to be a writer? Were you writing as a child?

SD: You know, writing to me it's not something that you kind of choose to do. It's more or less something that chooses you. I always liked to write or tell stories orally. I like stories. I've been writing since around fifth grade. Back then they were works of fantasy and ridiculous. Lots of westerns and adventures and things like that. They were pretty awful and they stayed awful until I hit 39.

PM: I read that you didn't really imagine yourself being a writer for a living until you went to college and you had some teachers that encouraged you.

SD: Yeah, I mean, I'd been writing, but it was only for my own entertainment. I never expected anything to happen with it. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that some people thought I should do it, which meant something to me because you can trust ‘some’ people. So, I explored it. I kept with it and tried to work at it. One of my professors told me to write how I talk, so I began doing that and I've been doing it ever since.

PM: What was the first piece you had published?

SD: It was a piece that I wrote about my mother. She was living in a trailer. I bought the trailer for her. I went to New Orleans to get it. It was kind of a humorous piece about my mother—where she lived and all that. That piece was published in The Bitter Southerner.

PM: You write a lot about your mother and your father. Your father’s story weaves its way through a lot of your columns and it is the subject of your memoir, May The Circle Be Unbroken. That book chronicles the suicide of your father and then the pilgrimage to spread his ashes out west. Your writing is often deeply personal and often discusses bittersweet or even tragic events. Is it difficult to write that deeply about your own life?

SD: No. It's not hard, because I have a lot of practice. When I started, it was hard. There was a lot of anxiety and I would have a nervous system response when I would start to write about personal events. I would feel it in my physical being—sweaty palms, increased heart rate, very visceral. Then after purging the pus—the infection of trauma—for however many years, it became a lot easier to talk about. I owned it. This is who I am. This is me. So, by the time I wrote the memoir, May The Circle Be Unbroken, I had a lot of practice. I had written, I think, 2,000 columns by that point. By that time, it was just like another day at work. It was really great because I was freed up to write in a more relaxed frame of mind, which is what I wanted for that. I did not want it to come off as this deeply heavy or unpleasant read. Even though I was going to be talking about unpleasant things, I wanted it to have a very positive, uplifting spin. So, lots of practice, to answer your question.

PM: I imagine writing so personally is probably scary, cathartic and embarrassing all at the same time.

SD: It is, and then you kind of get over it. For years I've been telling my story about dropping out of school at colleges and high schools and theaters, stuff like that. Just telling my life—the worst parts and the most embarrassing parts of my life. I recently told the story at the University of Alabama, which is Beulah Land in my mind, a place I'd always wanted to go. So finally, after all these years, I'm on the University of Alabama stage and I'm telling a story about what a failure I am. It did start out as embarrassing, but after you do it enough, you almost take pride in

it and it doesn't feel nearly as humiliating. It just feels equalizing. It equalizes you with your audience almost. It's been therapy for me. It's been good for me.

PM: Many of your stories include other people's stories and anecdotes from previous conversations. Are you a copious note taker?

SD: I don't ever take notes. I've tried that before and once I take notes, I forget everything that I've written because I'm totally disengaged from the conversation. I'm focused on taking the right note and getting it all in. When I just have a conversation, I find that I remember the important parts. If I go back to the car and I feel that I might forget some of the biographical details, I'll scribble them down. Most of the time I don't. And the reason I'm not meticulous about this is because I'm not a journalist, so I don't feel the pressure to get direct quotes verbatim. So, no, I can't take notes. If I do, I totally lose everything. My mother used to say I had a photographic memory as a child, and I'm just going to pretend that she was right. I don't believe I do have photographic memory. I do think I have a good recall for unpleasant things.

PM: Do you still do all of your writing on a typewriter?

SD: Sometimes. Not as often, only because we travel so much and I got tired of carrying my typewriter with me. But yeah, for a long time I did that and the reason wasn't because I'm just a fool, although that is true. Writing on a typewriter forces me to keep the linear thought going and not get interrupted and to accept it once it's there. And the typewriter is just how I learned to write anyway. So, I feel like it's important, especially for younger writers, to learn how to write that way—use pen and paper or a typewriter. I don't feel that a computer is conducive to linear thoughts. I feel like I can tell sometimes when I read someone's work and it's very disjointed. It's almost schizophrenic—there's a thought here and a thought there. I can almost guarantee that they copied and pasted as they were going back and forth with editing. So, anyway, I do that to force myself to write linearly. Now, I do it on the computer. I try to use the same method. I'll dim my screen until it's black sometimes. I just write. I just ignore all misspellings and I don’t edit it until I'm finished. It forces me to get a story out—to kind of perform the act of the storytelling rather than just typing on a computer.

PM: In your latest book, You Are My Sunshine, you take this really long bike trip with your wife—300 miles over 3 weeks. What were the one or two key takeaways that you learned about yourself or your marriage on that trip?

SD: That what we live in is not the real world. The real world is out there in the woods. This is all just an interruption. We have built all this to make it feel as though it's the real cycle. But when you get out there, your objective for daily life becomes very simple—don't die. And that's it. That is your only job. Just don't die. Keep living. That really focuses your priorities.

PM: You write in a very heartfelt, honest and humorous way about your wife and your marriage. You can tell that there's so much genuine love there between the two of you. What have you learned about marriage? What do you think is the secret to a happy marriage?

SD: Well, I would say that I don't know because I lucked out. None of this was my doing. I didn't really select the perfect woman—the perfect woman selected me. So, I'm just kind of living in sunshine accidentally. That's it. If left to my own devices, I would have truly screwed my life up back then. That I was stymied from my own disasters is remarkable.

PM: Let’s talk about the Florida Panhandle for a minute. I've heard you call yourself Northwest Florida white trash, and many people jokingly call the Florida Panhandle lower Alabama (LA). Do you find that to be a fair assessment?

SD: Oh, absolutely. For years, it's been hard figuring out whether I was Floridian or an Alabaman, because we lived 45 miles from the Alabama line. I'm not really sure whether we're Floridians with an Alabama accent or we're Alabamanians with Florida driver's licenses. So yes, LA is real. Growing up, I never saw FSU or University of Florida bumper stickers. It was always Auburn.

PM: If you had to make one key observation about how the Florida Panhandle differs from lower Alabama what would it be?

SD: A lot more money. And, I would say they like oysters a whole lot more in the Panhandle. That's one thing I miss. Where we live now in Birmingham, you can find good oysters, but you’ve really got to look for them. You find that not everyone around you likes oysters. Whereas, in the Panhandle, there's a consensus that oysters are great—everyone loves oysters. Up north they're all like, "Oysters, oh my god, they taste like phlegm."

PM: You’re doing a performance on December 8 at the Imogene Theater in Milton and it's a benefit for Big Brothers, Big Sisters. I think this is your fifth year doing it. What is it that you love about Big Brothers, Big Sisters?

SD: Well, they're doing God's work, there's no doubt. Before I met my wife, she was a big sister and she is the one who first tipped me to that organization. I met the kids. I met these children who have these pretty rough home lives and yet there was this one figure in their lives who could just help them. Then I met some of the Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and listened to their stories and how they stick with these kids to adulthood. It's just powerful to me. I believe in what they're doing.

PM: What can people expect from that performance?

SD: Hopefully, a night that they will forget for the rest of their lives. There will be a lot of humor. It'll be just fine. There'll be lots of music. They'll be bluegrass and laughter, hopefully, and alcohol.

PM: You recently left Florida for the bright lights of Birmingham. What prompted the decision to move there?

SD: Well, we travel all the time, and Birmingham is central to everything. Just this past weekend, in the last few days, I've been to four different states. It's very, very nice not to have to make a drive that's at least six hours. Because from Florida it was like four to six hours no matter where you went. So, that was a big motivating factor. The other one was we've always wanted to live on our own, do our own thing and just try to just do something new because we both were very committed to our family—and especially my wife's family. So, after my wife's father passed and her mother passed, we took it as an opportunity to do what most people do during the college age but we never got to do, which is just separate from home and see some of the world. We're finally living that college kid experience only we're both middle aged now and we have pretty good health insurance.

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