<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong> UConn Today recently spoke with UConn alum Alena Dillon \u201907 (CLAS) about her newly published collection of nonfiction humor essays, I Thought We Agreed to Pee in the Ocean, and Other Amusings from a Girl in Sweatpants<\/a> (Martlet & Mare, 2013). In vignettes bearing such titles as \u201cRomance Is Dead. I Killed It,\u201d and \u201cI Hate People, They\u2019re the Worst,\u201d Dillon shares the awkward moments and misadventures of her everyday life \u2013 from her disasters in babysitting to the crushing anxiety she endures at the hands of a disparaging boss better known as \u201cCruella.\u201d A native of Fairfield, Conn., Dillon has an English degree from UConn and an MFA from Fairfield University. She is an academic advisor and an adjunct professor of creative writing at St. Joseph\u2019s College in Long Island, where she lives with her husband.<\/em><\/p>\n UConn Today: <\/b>What were you like growing up?<\/p>\n Alena Dillon: <\/b>I always wrote. I started writing my first book when I was 10 on my dad\u2019s clunky desktop. I read a lot. I also was not very cool. I wore all my older brother\u2019s hand-me-downs, so everything was a couple of years out of fashion and for the wrong gender. I was always kind of chubby, and I was not very athletic.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> How would you describe I Thought We Agreed to Pee in the Ocean<\/i> \u2026?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> It\u2019s a collection of humor essays broken into anecdotes, musings, and satire that kind of capture the absurdity of life from the perspective of an everyday woman. But I guess I\u2019m just reading from the back cover of the book now. <\/i><\/p>\n UT:<\/b> You share a lot of real-life, embarrassing stories, and some of them literally had me laughing out loud. What gives you that sort of comfort level to reveal your imperfections and the mishaps you have?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> I feel like sharing all these embarrassing things about me kind of takes the pressure off of who I am as a person, because people kind of lower their standards. [Laughs] <\/i>So that actually makes me feel more comfortable.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> Do you have a favorite vignette in the book?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> I really like the title story. I also like the one about dieting after 9 o\u2019clock, because I like how it ended with, \u201cThe devil is in the Doritos.\u201d I like that pun.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> Have you been compared to any other writers? I thought of [UConn English professor] Regina Barreca right off the bat, and you\u2019re also like a Lena Dunham to me, too. Your writing\u2019s got a self-deprecating humor and a quirkiness, and I laugh when I read it. That\u2019s hard to do.<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> Thank you. There have been one or two reviews where people have mentioned Sloane Crosley [author of I Was Told There\u2019d Be Cake<\/i>], which I take as a huge compliment. Another said David Sedaris [author of Me Talk Pretty One Day<\/i>], who I also really like. They are two of my favorites.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> How do you decide what\u2019s worth writing about?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> That\u2019s tough. People always give me suggestions: \u201cOh, you should write about this\u201d \u2013 and it sounds like a good idea, but if I don\u2019t have the inspiration myself, it\u2019s hard to force something. Funny and embarrassing anecdotes come really easily; a sentence will come to me or something that strikes me as being absurd or ridiculous from the everyday, and it\u2019s kind of looking at it from a different way to draw out the absurdity in it. \u2026 I remember in one of Regina Barreca\u2019s classes, she told a story about how she was struggling to become a writer. All of her teachers told her she had to be lyrical and literary, and then one day she passed a shoe store, looked in the window, and said, \u201cYou know what? I want to be able to buy those shoes. I\u2019m going to write something that sells.\u201d And that\u2019s how she kind of geared her writing more toward the commercial side. So that has been a big influence on me as well. I\u2019ve heard the same kind of pressures from academia \u2013 to stay literary. But sometimes you just want to write something entertaining that maybe isn\u2019t so philosophical. That\u2019s kind of what gave me the motivation to write this book.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> How did you end up landing the book deal for this book?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> My blog [alenadillon.com] has gotten pretty good exposure; I have about 2,000 followers now. It was read by a colleague of mine from my master\u2019s program who launched his own publishing press, and he asked me if I\u2019d be his first book.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> Do you write only nonfiction?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> I also write novels. I have two completed novels that are with an agent \u2013 she\u2019s been shopping them around to publishers \u2013 and I\u2019m in the middle of writing a third. The nonfiction is kind of like my playtime. The novels can be pretty emotionally exhausting and stressful. So I had started writing little nonfiction, lighter essays in my blog as a kind of side project \u2013 and that ended up being this first book.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> What are your novels about? <\/i><\/p>\n AD:<\/b> They\u2019re completely different from the nonfiction. The first book is a psychological drama about a girl who loses her twin sister, and then she starts hallucinating her deceased twin and doesn\u2019t tell anybody because she\u2019s so comforted by her presence. That one is kind of a thriller and not very funny. The second one is about a girl who lives her life very timidly and then is diagnosed with cancer and, faced with her death, has to learn how to live for the very first time. That one, actually, has some elements of humor, if you can believe it. And the one that I\u2019m working on now is about women during World War II and how they were called to the workforce for the first time and were working in factories. My character in particular joins the Women Airforce Service Pilots; they were flying all of the military aircraft in the United States and then when the war ended, they were all dismissed.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> How is it different for you writing nonfiction humor versus these novels?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> The nonfiction comes really naturally. I can spit out 1,000 words really quickly; it\u2019s kind of conversational. The novels I really have to work at. They\u2019re ultimately more satisfying because of the work, but they don\u2019t come as easily. <\/i><\/p>\n UT:<\/b> Do you ever get writer\u2019s block? What\u2019s your advice for tackling it?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> Yes, especially after writing a novel. It\u2019s a kind of binge-purge process, where I\u2019ll be all about writing that novel, and then when I finish it, I have to wait for all the inspiration to pile back up again before I come up with another idea or enough creative energy to do it again. And as far as the blocks for the humor essays go, sometimes I can\u2019t really force myself to sit down and wait for an idea to come, but I haven\u2019t had a period of maybe more than like four weeks before something comes again. \u2026 Everyone has their own process. Find a routine or process that works for you. I like to get up and write in the morning with a cup of coffee. But if something\u2019s not coming, it\u2019s best to walk away from it, in my experience. Everyone is different. Go for a walk, take a shower, or clean the dishes, and put your mind\u2019s attention on something else, let that creative part of your brain kind of relax, and it\u2019ll come back to you.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> Who are your favorite writers?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> For nonfiction, David Sedaris, Sloane Crosley, Nora Ephron. And for fiction, Ann Patchett, Wally Lamb, Sue Miller.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> What\u2019s the best advice you\u2019ve ever been given?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> To prepare for interviews, maybe. [Laughs] <\/i>You\u2019ve stumped me. Oh, wait, I\u2019ve come up with it: To write because you love it, and not because you think that you\u2019re going to get published. If that\u2019s your goal, it\u2019s too hard. The love is going to be what pushes you through. \u2026 [There are] days when nothing comes, and it\u2019s so frustrating. My husband asks me, \u201cDo you love writing? Because you complain about it all the time.\u201d But then you write one great sentence; or you read something and you say, I want to write like that; or your character surprises you in a way that\u2019s exciting. There are days when it\u2019s agonizing, but then there are days where I wouldn\u2019t want to do anything else.<\/p>\n UT:<\/b> What do you want your readers to know about you, or about this book in particular?<\/p>\n AD:<\/b> It\u2019s all real. What I really try to do in my book is stay close to the truth because I want people to relate to it. I want them to see themselves on the page and, while they\u2019re laughing at me, be able to laugh at themselves. I think that\u2019s a real survival technique, but also a way to enjoy life.<\/p>\n Read Alena Dillon\u2019s blog at <\/i>alenadillon.com<\/i><\/a>, follow her on Twitter <\/i>@thealenadillon<\/i><\/a> or find <\/i>I Thought We Agreed to Pee \u2026 on <\/i>Amazon<\/i><\/a> and in select bookstores.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This UConn alum manages to find the humorous side of everyday life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":90993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[49],"class_list":["post-91171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 07:14:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91171"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91178,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91171\/revisions\/91178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/90993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91171"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=91171"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=91171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}