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Saturday, April 5, 2014

SCHNICTION: Hybrid writing revealed

Writer J. Sanders-Nelson, sat out to publish a novella of small confessions. She thought she had a grip on life enough to reveal tid-bits of her life. So, she bundled together writings from over a ten year span and publish them.
However, J. struggled with the title, she struggled with coming up with what exactly it was she was publishing. This went on for about a week and finally, she settled on SCHNICTION. Her choice of the title, in her mind encompassed every aspect of her work, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and prose. It was a hodge-podge of musings, ranting, ravings, journaling, poetic and fictional longing of unrequited love…so abstract, so cohesive that she had to come up with her own name for the compilation. Then, she stumbled upon a post from Brevity magazine’s Facebook page about “hybrid” writing. The door opened and clarity rushed in; her writing was of a hybrid nature, in that it contained influence from all formats, forms and even genres of writing. 

Hybrid writing is a relatively new term and articles regarding this kind of writing are limited. However, Jessica Dewberry’s article, “In the Trenches with Hybrid at AWP 2014” was very enlightening and offered some solace regarding hybrid writing. In the end, however, Dewberry simply calls herself a writer and not a hybrid writer. Because the terms was just too broad, too complex to try and fully explain:

“When people used to ask, “What do you write?” I found myself always wanting to include hybrid in my response. I would start the hot breath sound of the letter “h” before inhaling it back and then just describe a piece I was working on, hoping they got the picture. When I got back from the AWP, I deleted hybrid from my online profiles, leaving writer to speak for itself.” Dewberry


It was at this point that J. Sanders-Nelson, decided that perhaps adding “hybrid” to brand her writing might give a better impression of her style or at least get someone to crack open a page out of shear curiosity. She however, still simply refers to herself as, a writer.